The night was pierced by a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream that reverberated throughout the house. It awakened everyone in the house. Robert opened his eyes and thought, “Was that a dream?” In the dim moonlight flooding into the bedroom from the window, he could see the outline of Kathy next to him. When he saw her sit up, he thought, “If it is a dream, then Kathy is having the same one.” He sat up in bed, and she turned to him.
“Did you hear the……..” she asked, but before she could finish, another scream severed her words, and Robert was out of bed. Leaping over her with a bound, he disappeared through the door. It was unmistakable, the scream was coming from upstairs, and Kathy bounced out of bed right on his heels. It had been years since they had moved so fast, and within seconds, they were running up the stairs three at a time. Robert could see Bud in the doorway of his room with Ricky peering out from behind him. They had heard it too, and he could see the fear and confusion on their young faces. He turned to Tracy’s door at the top of the landing, which was still closed, and laid his shoulder into it. He was going through that door whether his hand was able to work fast enough to turn the handle, or he broke it down. Tracy needed her daddy, and he was there.
The door flung open, and in a single motion, Robert hit the light switch and crossed her bedroom to the far side of the room where her bed was. Kathy was right behind him, and Bud and Ricky followed her. The entire family had come to her aid. As soon as the light came on and Tracy saw her daddy, she sat up on the side of her bed. They could all see that she was hysterical and crying. Her face was red, and tears streamed down her face. Her chest heaved, and she could hardly breathe. The family could also see that she was alone in the room. Robert stopped short of the bed and let Kathy overtake him. This looked like a job for a comforting mama bear and not a snarling and vicious papa bear coming to the defense of his cub. He stepped back to where the boys were standing, and they watched as Kathy sat beside Tracy and comforted her by holding her close and rubbing her sweat-soaked hair. Some women just take to being a mother seamlessly, and Kathy had been one of those women. Robert knew that she would make it all better.
As Kathy sat with her on the bed consoling her, Bud noticed something odd. Tracy’s bed had no blanket or sheet on it. He stared at the bare bed where Tracy and his mother sat and then looked at his dad. Robert had an odd look on his face also as he had noticed the same thing. He scanned the room, and Bud followed his gaze. Behind them, near the door and across the room from Tracy’s bed, was an old Victorian modeled dollhouse that Robert had made for her. They had run right past it as they came into the room but now Robert, Bud, and Ricky were staring back at it as Kathy calmed Tracy down. The dollhouse was there but over the top of it were the blanket and sheet from Tracy’s bed. It was draped perfectly over the dollhouse as if it had been held over the top of it by two people and dropped. It was such an odd sight that they just stood transfixed on it until they were jolted out of their trance by Kathy.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked. Robert and the boys turned back to Kathy and Tracy as she sniffled once more and began her story.
She said that she had been woken up and realized that she was cold. Still half asleep and with closed eyes, she reached out for her covers but could not find them. She thought she must have kicked them to the bottom of her bed or even off the side of the bed, so she opened her eyes and sat up to find them. Her blinds were opened, and the moonlight illuminated her room enough for her to see a woman sitting on the side of her bed in a white nightgown. Tracy rubbed her eyes and said, “Mama.” When Tracy spoke, the woman turned her head, and her eyes and Tracy’s met. There in the moonlight, Tracy could see that this woman was not her mama at all. She peered into the eyes of a total stranger, and the woman looked back at her, totally expressionless. Tracy put her hands over her eyes, curled up, and began to scream until she heard her door burst open.
Robert made a walk over to the closet and looked inside and then under the bed, more to make Tracy feel safe than to find an intruder.
“There is nobody here, baby,” he said to Tracy to beguile her.
He looked at Kathy, whose eyes were fixed on the dollhouse. She pulled Tracy closer, and she began to sob again. Kathy looked over at Robert with a knowing gaze. She knew that no physical woman could have been in the room with her. The boys met them at the top of the stairs, and they would have seen her pass them going down the stairs, or the woman would have had to go into their room to miss Robert and her on the stairs. The blanket and sheet over the dollhouse told her it was not just a dream. Tracy would have had to pull the blanket and sheet off and then tossed them over the large dollhouse and spent the time adjusting and pulling it straight to make it look like it was now.
“Everything is alright,” Kathy said, “You boys get back to bed.”
“Listen to your mama,” Robert said as he walked behind the boys and shut the door. Kathy laid Tracy down, and she and Robert got the sheet and blanket off of the dollhouse and draped it over her. Kathy tucked it in and made sure Tracy was snuggled in the warm blanket. Robert walked around the dollhouse, looking at it as if some clue would be found, or there may be some ghost fingerprints visible.
“You go on back to bed, daddy,” Kathy said as she lay down beside Tracy and pulled her close. “I am going to lay with her awhile.” Robert went to Tracy’s bed and kissed both of them on the head. Then he peeked into the boys’ room, where they were in bed with the lights off but were talking through the crack between the top bunk and the wall. He told them to go on to sleep, and he went back down the stairs. Never really able to sleep without Kathy in bed with him, he lay awake the rest of the night looking at the ceiling in the pale light of the moon. Kathy lay awake too beside Tracy as she cried herself to sleep in her mama’s arms.
Rick Jackson 