Mrs.
Malloy (Page 2)
I didn't run into Mrs. Malloy that night, as I had been secretly dreading as I carried my plastic sack down up and down the five neighborhoods nearest my home that night. Instead, I saw Mr. Kendall, our third grade teacher, get into an argument with his wife (she was a kitten with Calico stripes. He was a dog with basset hound ears.) over how much candy to give us.
When I got home that night, the bag was a third lighter from the candy I'd been stuffing into my mouth. My mouth and lips were sticky and starchy from the Tootsie Rolls, Jolly Ranchers, Nerds and Sweet Tarts I'd been eating.
I got home, washed my mouth out as I showered, and went to bed.
The walking that night had tired me out. Instead of dreams, sleep offered only total darkness. It was so complete, that when the noises started, it felt the beginning of a dream.
It was a tap. Then another tap. And a scratch. It was a rhythmic noise, and my sleeping brain must have processed it as such: it could have been a few minutes that I continued to fumble between sleep and awakening. One of the taps must have caught my attention because my body jerked awake as if I were falling. My foot kicked, knocking the blanket from me.
Tap.
Tap.
Scriiiiitch.
The sounds had followed me from sleep, so they made sense in the way that the last remains of logic from a dream fit the edges of reality's puzzle. For a few seconds, I was sitting up, not really hearing the tapping, even as it continued.
Tap.
Tap.
Then the scratching.
Sometimes during storms, hail would hit that window. On the occasions when my mother was awake enough to hear the ice falling, she would take me away from the roof window near the bed and let me sleep in her room, or in the living room. Hail hit that window because it was exposed. Trees grew around the house, but nowhere near my window. The tapping couldn't be a tree's branch.
Light from exposed moon made turning on a light unnecessary. I got up, crawled to the window's edge, and looked outside, pushing aside the pale blue curtains. Beyond the edge of the roof, I could see part of the street. A street lamp lit pale orange next Bill Anderson's aging green Ford LTD across the street. I looked left and right. I couldn't find the source of the sound.
I leaned back into bed, beginning to shove my feet under the covers.
Tap.
Tap.
Scriiiiiitch.
Quickly, I got back up, batted the curtain to the side and looked outside. The lamp across the street stood nobly against the onslaught of moths circling its bulb. Nothing else. Thinking the sound must have come from outside, I unfastened the latch holding down the window. I lifted the frame as cold air rushed in just above the windowsill. It was one of the only windows in the house without a screen. I poked my head outside, hearing in my head the sound of my mother's voice warning me against going outside in the cold in pajamas and catching cold.
To the left, a Frisbee I'd never bothered to retrieve lay forgotten next to a storm drain. Leaves circled in dance as a breeze pushed them against each other. I started to turn to the right and that was when I felt something grip my hair, pull at it and stretch my neck back until the back of my head until it touched the top of my back. The nails digging into my scalp were sharp and strong, like knives. I thought, briefly, that they were perfect for tapping, for scratching, for gouging and tearing into the flesh of caught prey.
