Clowns, Closets, Cars, and Dogs

I want to tell you a story, but I’m not sure what to tell you. It’s raining, finally. I love the rain, the sound of it dripping on the deck.

Mike went back downstairs to finish putting together the power-steering in Nick’s car, but he left the TV on. I hate when he does that. I hate coming into the room and getting interested in a movie, then having Mike say, “Back to work.” Then, I’m stuck watching a movie I wouldn’t have chosen on my own.

It.

You know, Stephen King’s It.

Remember the clown in the sewer? I had read that book back when I lived alone in an apartment in a hundred-year-old house. Once I started, I had to finish Stephen King’s big book. I had get to the end, the denouement.

Horror books and movies are that way for me. If I get stuck watching a horror movie, I have to watch to the very end and hope for a decent resolution even if everyone except for the prettiest girl and the strongest boy were killed in the process. I hate that horror movies these days often don’t end well and show a pulsing glob of live flesh hiding in the basement after the credits run.

Yes, I finished reading that book. IT. But, I spent the next year looking down into the uncorked hole in the bathroom sink. I could imagine a river of blood bubbling up and splashing all over the yellow porcelain and the black and white tiles of the floor. That apartment had been built, it seemed, to be occupied by a horror movie. I seldom paused outside at night when I drove under the wrap-around porch to the parking lot behind. I loved that old house, but the night view of it held ghosts and lives that were lived in agony instead of love. Before I was done reading It, I sat at home one night during a storm with the heavy book in my lap. Something suddenly clawed, it seemed, at my window screen. Fear held me to the chair, stopped me from reading.

It could have been my imagination. I went back to my book.

No. There it was, a scratching sound from my open window that was distinct over the rain and occasional thunder outside.

My heart raced but I couldn’t move. This couldn’t be a person trying to get in, could it? Maybe it was something else, something more sinister. I lived on the second floor. I looked out over the porch roof and rhododendrons gone wild.

Sometimes, all you need is to take one slow breath to think. I leaped up into the air, landed in front of the window screen, and looked out with the meanest face I could conjure.

Nothing was there.

Lightning flashed bright the night beyond the screen proving it.

I looked over at the book splayed on the floor. Nothing moved. No one from any of the other apartments made a sound. All I heard was the tap, tap, tap of the rain outside on the roof.

Creepy.

I went back to my chair and gingerly picked up the book. I needed to pee. I didn’t want to pee. I didn’t want to look down into that water before I sat down, wondering what lived, or died, just past the curve in the porcelain.

Right now, thunder is rumbling outside my window. Seriously? Does it all knit together, all that darkness and fear?

In that century room, thirty-three years ago, I tried to ignore my need to pee until I got to an easier place in the book, a lull. It wasn’t easy.

Then, I heard the scratching again, softly grating against the screen.

There’s a certain point in fear that action is required or paralysis takes place. My heart raced and I felt the same dread I’d felt standing at the top of the high dive for the first time hoping I’d have the courage to leap. I was going to die. It was inevitable. No matter what happened that night, I would eventually die and I could either reach out and face my killer or I could sit in my old chair until I peed myself.

Isn’t that the truth of it? You can face your death or you can sit in your old chair until you’re so infirm you pee yourself but either way, you are going to die . You might as well make it a good ending.

So, I stood up again. I forced myself not to leap in front of the window screen one more time. Really, I wanted to crawl over and lift my face slowly above the sill. I walked stiffly to the window and knelt down. There was no air in the room. Everything but the tapping rain went still. I couldn’t hear any of the browning leaves blowing outside. Even wet, fall’s leaves could have made a sound in the wind.

Nothing.

I stood up again, determined to use what bravery I had to use the toilet and to look down into that naked drain as I washed my hands afterward. When I turned my back to go, I heard it again, a scratching.

Oh, it was hard not to bolt out of the room.

I did not die in my bathroom that night. I did not hallucinate blood flowing over my hands. Nothing leaped up from the sewer to grab my face, or worse, my butt.

Feeling a little better, I went into my kitchen and dug around in my drawer, you know, that drawer full of junk, the one that’s most likely to have your weapon in it. My weapon of choice was an old one my dad used to use before he died. It had a heavy rubber handle and rubber around its lens, a four pound flashlight that could stand in for a night stick. I dragged a chair away from the dinette set I’d bought at the neighbor lady’s estate sale after she’d died. I wondered if she’d peed herself. The sound of that chair on the linoleum satisfied me. The night wasn’t the only thing that could make noise.

Walking across my living room floor should have been that scene, the one where the actress walks with determination and a flimsy weapon toward her killer and the camera zooms in on the dread in her face.

I set that chair right in front of the open window. I clicked on my flashlight and sat down, as silently as I could. If a wild animal, a raccoon or something, was trying to get into my apartment, I wanted to look at its rabid face, eye to eye, before I whacked it with my flashlight or was slashed across the face with its claws.

At the last second, I stood up and grabbed my book. Death might take a while. I didn’t want to just sit and stew. I sat upright with the lit flashlight in one hand and the big book on my lap and held open with the other. I pretended to be nonchalant. I wasn’t. But I read the next paragraph and the next.

Maybe I’d scared the poor creature off. Or, if someone experienced a psychotic break, climbed the roof of the porch and was trying to scratch his way into my apartment, I’d be ready with my heavy flashlight.

I reread a couple of paragraphs. The kids in the book had gone down into the sewer and were at their most vulnerable. Something was going to pop out at them at any moment. Pop goes the weasel. I had one of those damned things when I was a kid. I loved that thing and hated it at the same time.

Then, something scratched the screen, just one claw dragged across three or four strands of thin wire.

I aimed my light at it, holding the handle like it was a light saber, with authority. There was nothing there. I slipped off my chair and onto my knees. The book rolled onto its face. I leaned in toward the screen, too close for comfort.

It stopped.

I imagined a clown’s face appearing. Stephen King had ruined clowns for me forever, and sink drains too. He tried to ruin cars and dogs and your biggest fan, but clowns, drains, and closets were forever altered.

I could see the flashlight’s beam light up the rain and leaves outside my window. There was absolutely no one else there.

Then, I heard it again. I waved the light around a little wildly, to the right, down at the wet driveway, over to the weeping beech tree, then to the outside wall of my bedroom on the left, a turret room.

A black wire, shiny from the rain, caught in the wind, dragged a cut end across the screen in front of me, then settled back into oblivion against the gray siding.

A wire.

I was afraid of a fucking wire scratching across my window screen.

I blame Stephen King, even now.

Thank you for listening, jules