My Wing of the House
My mom was in the hospital fifty miles away. I was 19. We were pretty sure this was it. I was home alone. My parents’ house is big. It’s off the beaten path on a small lagoon. My dad had been staying up at the hospital.
That night, I went to bed about 1am. I was playing on my laptop. My room was in a separate wing of the house. It can be sealed off with a single locking door. The door was shut but not locked. I have always been scared of the dark, so I had the lights in my wing on. So was the closet light. As I was messing around on Gamefaqs, I saw the lights in my wing turn off. All of them. The band of light under the door, went black. I hopped up in bed and stared at it.
My bedroom door was unlocked and I was debating getting up to lock it, when the shut door slammed. As in, it sounded like someone straight up kicked the bottom of the door with all their strength. I remember squeaking in shock. It took me about six seconds to be up on both feet with a blade about four paces back and just right of the door. I remember thinking if the door opened, I could be on whoever it was almost instantly. I was also silently cursing that there was no light under the door anymore. No way to see the shadow of whoever was out there.
Nothing happened. I was fighting off the fear of the situation and stupidly decided that going on offense was all that was left. I didn’t have a phone in my room, and my Nokia was in another wing or the house charging. I threw the door open with my knife low and my left hand in a guarded position. There was no one there. I tossed the hallway light switch on. There was no one in my wing. There was no one in the house. The burglar alarm was still on. Confused, I turned on the main house lights and sealed the wing off, and locking the door. I went back to my room and just sat there with my laptop open. My bedroom door now had a slight bow in it.
A couple hours passed with me warily laying in bed. Around 3 am, the lights under the door went dark. Now I was terrified. My knife seemed pretty insignificant and my previous dumb courage had ran out. I scooted my bed (no easy task) against my bedroom door, grateful the door opened inward. It all felt so wrong. Like something was angry with me. I retreated to my closet and waited for the sun to come up.
When the skylight in my room got bright, my courage returned and I moved the bed and exited my room. The wing door had been unlocked, which required a key from the other side. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the main house and realized my dad was home. I felt a little foolish as obviously he had been responsible for turning the lights off the second time. I lead my greeting with “oh, so it was you who turned all the lights off.” He looked at me and replied, “What? I got home about ten minutes ago.”
I have zero clue what happened that night but it never happened before that night or after. Whatever it was, it seemed to like the dark and wasn’t a fan of doors. And it seemed to be in my wing of the house... My parents built the house and nothing untoward had ever taken place there. My bedroom door at my parents house still has a bow in it to this day (this was almost twenty years ago). My mom is still alive, and for that, I’m extremely grateful.
#Building/House #Building/aa/Bedroom #Person/Intruder