Ding Dong
At first I thought I hadn’t heard anything at all. I mean there was no way someone just rang my doorbell, right? Not at this time of night. I was lying in my bed and a cursory glance at the alarm clock on the night table told me it was 2:42 AM. If this had happened today, I would have looked at my cellphone, but this all happened in 1996 when I was just 16 years old. I stared at the alarm clock and those big red numbers stared back. They almost felt like a warning sign.
I shook my head, closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I had just been hearing things. Had to have been hearing things. I had begun to feel myself doze off when…
Ding Dong
My eyes opened. The clock now read 2:45 AM. Someone was ringing the doorbell. If my parents had been home, I wouldn’t have been as frightened, no not nearly as frightened at all. My dad probably would have been snoring loudly in his laze-e-boy, a warm unfinished beer in his cup holder. I’d jostle him awake and we’d answer the door together, father and son.
But I was alone.
My parents had traveled out of state to visit my Aunt who wasn’t feeling well. And for all my teenage bravado at the age, I was still afraid of the dark. Still afraid that someone or something would get me when the sun went down and the neighborhood went quiet. Still afraid of being alone at night, in an empty quiet house.
And there was that room upstairs…
Ding Dong
This time the bell sounded almost accusatory. I know you can hear me. Come on up and answer the door you scared little boy. I’m not going to stop ringing until you do.
I took a nervous breath, touched the locket I wore around my neck for good luck, and carefully got out of bed. I lived in what you would technically call a three story home. There was the first floor which you reached when you walked through the front door. That’s where our living room, kitchen, and sun room were. Then a set of stairs lead to the lower floor and that’s where my bedroom was. From the first floor there was also another set of stairs that went up to the top floor of the house. That’s where my parents’ bedroom was, a bathroom, a storage room….and that other room.
I suppose you could call the other room the guest room of the house. Though no guest had slept on that bed in 10 years. The last person to stay in that room was my grandfather, who had come to stay with us in 1986 when I was just 6 years old. My grandmother had died just two years prior and my grandfather’s health had taken a turn for the worse. Not being able to afford a care taker, my parents decided the best thing to do was for my grandfather to stay with us.
I hate to say it, but my grandfather terrified me. He was rail thin, almost as thin as a skeleton. He had a gaunt face, with sunken eyes, and a toothy grin, that curved up into a demented looking smile. My grandfather smiled a lot, despite his waning health. Like he was always thinking of some horrible inside joke to himself.
I feel bad for describing my own grandfather that way, and I suppose a lot of what I saw in him was encouraged by that….oh by that sensation of fear children get around old people. When you’re a kid, there’s just something about the elderly that doesn’t feel right. Sure old people could be sweet. After all who doesn’t love a fresh batch of grandma’s home made cookies? But they could also be incredibly cruel as well. The old can be such bitter people. Where every word they speak is spat with a kind of poisonous venom. And you just hope you don’t run into them as you turn the corners of your house.
My grandfather spent all his time in that room, except for when my dad or mom could walk him to the bathroom on days when he had the strength for it; which was rarely ever. I mostly avoided the upstairs during that time, but would occasionally peek into that room to see him sleeping. He never looked like he was breathing when he slept. No, my grandfather looked dead to the world when he went to the sleep.
But it was better to catch him sleeping. The worst was when I would look into that room, and I would see him staring right back at me, wide awake. And he would smile that toothy demented grin. Sometimes he would laugh a horrible wheezing laugh. It was a mean spirited laugh. The kind where you could tell he was laughing at you, not with you.
“Cat got your tongue, boy?” He would say or something to that effect, and I would shut the door and run downstairs crying. I tried to avoid that room as much as possible.
One day when my father was at work, my mother said she had to run an important errand that couldn’t wait. I begged my mom not to leave me with my grandfather alone in the house. My mother took it the wrong way. She thought I was worried for my grandfather, not worried because of him. She told me to sit tight, and that if anything happened with grandpa to run over to Mr. Harrison, our next door neighbor, and ask for help.
“I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Be good and watch your grandfather.”
When she was gone, I sat in the living room watching TV. I would occasionally glance upstairs, hoping that the silence coming from that horrible room wouldn’t be broken. Not before my mom or dad got home at least. But that hope was too good to be true.
A horrible coughing broke the silence. And I heard my grandfather talking.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone here?” He said in between those deep bellowing coughs. There was almost a kind of pitifulness to his voice, that I had not heard before. He sounded sad. Scared even. And so instead of being frozen by fear, I crept upstairs and quietly opened the door to his room. My grandfather’s eyes were closed. One thin hand was bawled into a first, which he used to cover his mouth as he coughed.
“Grandpa?” I said nervously. “Grandpa are you okay?”
His fist uncurled one long bony finger, and it beckoned me to step forward. I slowly walked over to him. His coughing stopped, and he lowered his hand and laid still. He looked like he had fallen asleep. That is to say, he looked dead. For a moment the only sound was my nervous breathing.
“Grandpa?” I said inching closer. “Grandpa are you-“
His hand shot out and grabbed me. He pulled me in closer and those horrible sunken eyes opened and glared at me. His mouth twisted into that awful toothy grin.
“You gotta give it back,” My grandfather said in a soft poisonous voice. An insane sounding chuckle broke out of his mouth, along with a steady stream of drool that dribbled down his chin. “You gotta give it back, boy. Oh you gotta give it back or else.”
I struggled to break free. That bony hand of his was so much stronger than it looked, and his fingers dug into my shoulder.
“Give it back, give it back give it back!”
“Grandpa please, you’re hurting me!”
At the sound of my mother walking through the front door, he released me and I ran away crying. I told my mother what had happened, but both she and my father had put it to my own imagination.
My grandfather died of a stroke one week later. And I avoided that room ever since.
And so 10 years later on that night in 1996, as I was getting out of bed to answer the door, I didn’t want to think of that room, even though I had been thinking of that room since my parents left. My parents were only suppose to be gone for a week, and I had hoped I would get through all seven days without having to confront that room in anyway. But as I reached for the baseball bat beside my bed, I had a feeling that would not be the case.
As I quietly crept up the stairs, I again placed one hand on the locket that I wore around my neck at all times. It was a round silver locket that I had found just three weeks prior, and it had become a sort of good luck charm. Since putting on the locket I had managed to ace a school exam that I had barely studied for, had been promoted to the school’s varsity football team after one kid hurt his ankle, and even won 150 bucks off a scratch off ticket I had bought from the gas station for 2 bucks. Even the girls in the my school seemed to look at me differently, and one them even asked me out on a date. Coincidence? Maybe. But I couldn’t help but think a lot of my good fortune was due to this quaint little locket I had found in the woods that day, just past a little broken down fence that had a “NO TRESPASSING” sign, which I dutifully ignored.
I made it to the first floor and turned towards the front door.
“Who’s there?” I said nervously.
There was no answer.
I said it again, though more loudly this time.
Again, no answer.
I walked up to the front door. It was locked, thankfully. I had remembered to do that before going to sleep, but I had forgotten to turn the front porch light on. I quickly did that now. Seeing the light calmed some of my nerves. Then creeping closer I looked out the front door’s side window, which looked right out to where the doorbell was. I couldn’t see anyone there. The angle wasn’t very good, but someone could be there, if the person had rung the doorbell and then moved off to the side of the porch.
“Hello?” I said.
Again, no answer.
I let out a sigh a relief. Probably had just been some kids playing ding dong ditch. Doing it this time of night was absurdly cruel, but I guess that had been the point. Still holding the baseball bat in one hand, I turned around and started back for the stairs.
DING DONG
I froze. Turning around I still couldn’t see anyone out there, but someone had just rung the bell again. Someone was out there…
“Who the fuck is out there?” I said angrily. And for a moment anger had taken over fear. Someone was fucking with me and it was getting on my nerves. I rushed towards the front door, turned the lock and swung it open….
Nobody was there. The fresh air of the night greeted me. I stepped out and looked around. The street I lived on was dark and quiet, except for the sound of crickets chirping. I walked out a little further, in case the ding-dong-ditcher was hiding around my drive way, but there was no one out there either. I stood in my drive way, one hand clutching the baseball bat, the other gripping the locket that hung around my neck.
“H-hello?”
Silence. All the crickets had gone quiet. Then a large gust of wind swept over the neighborhood. It shook the trees and the wind chimes of every home on the street, and for a brief horrifying moment it felt as if something was passing by me. The front door to my house slammed shut, almost as if someone had ran in and shut it. But it was just the wind I told myself. Just this horrible wind.
Now feeling really terrified, I quickly ran back inside and locked the front door. The wind outside abruptly stopped. I felt very foolish for ever stepping out there. The anger I felt was subsiding, and fear was taking over again. I had begun to feel very nervous about everything that had been going on. I walked towards the house phone, decided I would call my parents first and then the police second, if necessary. But I needed to hear the reassuring sound of my parent’s voices. They’d probably be pissed that I called them at this time of night. But even hearing my dad chew me out would be good. I picked up the phone.
Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.
The phone line was dead. Of course it was. And that steady pulsing sound coming from the other end almost sounded like it was jeering at me. I slammed the phone down on it’s receiver. I turned towards the front door, expecting to hear the bell again. What I heard was worse. Oh, so much worse.
I heard the sound of someone coughing. It was coming from that room upstairs. The baseball bat slipped from my hand and clanged onto the kitchen tile. I felt numb. There was no way anyone could be up there. It wasn’t possible. But that horrible deep coughing came, and it sounded just like…
The coughing abruptly stopped and there was only silence now. Had I just imagined it? I was gripping the locket in both hands now. Silently begging the locket to give me some of that good fortune it had given me in the weeks prior.
Congrats son, you aced the exam. Well done.
Davidson pulled his ankle and I’ve been impressed with your play. How would you like to play for varsity?
You know you’re kind of cute. How come I never noticed how cute you were? You want to go out sometime?
I walked up the stairs and slowly opened the door to the guest room. My hand flicked the room’s light switch, but the lights didn’t turn on. A shape sat up in the bed. Yes, there was no question that someone was sitting on the bed. The curtains were open and I could see him sitting in the moonlight.
It was my grandfather.
He was just as rail thin as the last time I had seen him, but now his skin was a horrible gray color. His eyes were still sunken, but they were yellow now too. They gleamed devilishly in the moonlight. He smiled that horrible toothy smile, only now his teeth were rotten and black. And when he opened his mouth, a large black beetle crawled out and disappeared as it climbed up his face and into his white hair. He let out a horrible cough and black oozing phlegm sprayed onto the white sheets of the bed.
“You gotta give it back, boy,” My grandfather said. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard. An unbearable smell had taken over the room.
“Grandpa how-“
“It ain’t yours!” My grandfather screamed. “You gotta give it back!”
“Give what-“ I tried to say and fell to my knees as the room, no the whole house, began to shake uncontrollably. It was that same wind from before and it was storming itself around my house, like some great tornado. It felt as if the entire house was going to collapse at any moment. I had fallen right by the bed. My face was almost touching the black phlegm which had stained the white sheets. A bony hand reached out and grabbed me.
“GIVE IT BACK!” My grandfather screamed. Only now his voice sounded like a hundred different voices, all speaking at once. “IT’S OURS! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!”
He coughed again and this time I felt that horrible black phlegm spray my face. The house continued to shake, and as it did dumb realization came over me. I opened my hands and looked at the locket clutched between them. I had not been able to open the locket since finding it, but now the locket was open, and on either side of the locket was a photo of a person. A man on the right and a woman on the left. Both their faces were scratched out, but through the scratches on the right I thought I saw a familiar face. I shut the locket and ripped the chain from my neck. I held it out and waited. A cold, slimy hand touched mine as it pulled the locket away. There was the sound of chuckling and then it faded away.
The house stopped shaking. When I looked up, my grandfather was gone. The black oozing phlegm had disappeared from the white sheets of the bed, and I felt nothing as I wiped my face except for my own sweat and tears. I was alone again. A great weariness took over me and for the first and only time, I fell asleep in that room.
My parents eventually returned home a few days later, and said my Aunt was going to be okay. I told them nothing about what had happened.
“She’s very lucky,” My mother said of my Aunt. As for my own luck, it returned to normal. I did bad on exams I didn’t study for and got cut from the varsity football team. That was all right I suppose. The girl who said she wanted to go out with me had suddenly decided that she didn’t want to go out after all. No, she didn’t want to go out with a square like me. That was also all right.
You gotta give it back.
My grandfather said that to me back in 1986, 10 years before I had even found the damn locket. Could he really have known back then? How? In my heart I knew that I would most likely never find the answers. I decided that was all right too. It was all alright now. Just so long as I never heard another cough coming from that damn room ever again.
And I never did.