Monday, August 22, 2011

Pendulum

Ever since I was young, I remember hear the sound at Grandma's old farmhouse. Mom would put me to sleep in the upstairs room and slip downstairs to sleep with my father, leaving me and my brother alone in the upstairs room.

An hour or so after we'd been put to bed, a scratching noise could be heard above our heads in the attic every night. It was slow...like a pendulum. Back and forth, it'd sweep across the ceiling, at times skittering faster before fading back to a slow scratch. At first we were scared, as children are apt to do, but we learned to live with it and it comforted us in some strange way. It was kind of like "white noise," and it helped us sleep.

Well, I'm a grown man now. Grandma passed away some years ago. As we were cleaning out her house, Mom and I found ourselves in the attic. We were clearing out some old boxes and stuff when I came to the middle of the wooden floor. Although years of dust had covered them, there were still visible scratches in the wood.

I laughingly remarked to my mother about hearing a scratching noise when I used to sleep in the room below and my Mom's face drained of color. She gently took me by the shoulders and told me the story about how HER Grandpa, the father of MY Grandmother, had lost his job in the Great Depression and could barely afford to feed his family. He came home one night and hung himself in the attic with a horse bridle.

Apparently he regretted his decision, because he struggled to gain his footing near the end by flailing his feet. His heavy boots had gouged the wood where he had hung himself.

21 comments:

  1. I'm not that easily affected, but this one sent a small shiver through my spine

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  2. Interesting pasta, though a bit predictable.

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  3. Such a short entry, but it still manages to be creepy. Good stuff.

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  4. I felt a sinking feeling in my legs, nice little story.

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  5. Wait... what?

    So... the ghost of his great grandfather was still hanging himself? What?

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  6. It was rather predictable, which took away from the creepiness. 3/5

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  7. A nice tasty bowl of pasta. Much like other bowls of pasta but full of flavour all the same (farfalle arrabiata, perhaps?)! Bravo!

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  8. This was very creepy. But the end came almost TOO fast. very nice! :)

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  9. I liked this! It didn't scare me, but it was a good read.

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  10. meh. i don't think boots & scratching is a good association at all. 2/5

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  11. It would be more like "Clunk" and "Drag", rather that a scratching noise. a good read anyways :D

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  12. Let me start out by stating that I am a full-blown nerd. Knowing that we can now move on, I have a Nintendo game-boy advance and I have few games for it, but I have Mortal Kombat 2 and my version is a little bit different. I got it from a friend and he gave me all of the stuff to go with it, but he said he never played it and that he was glad to be rid of it. He also mentioned little of the Mortal Kombat game I did not think anything of it, but I had to go home, I had to sleep. So I hid in my room (with the lights on and decided to try to play a round or two. At the start up screen there was a flash of lightning and I noticed a slight red tint to the screen color. As I noticed this it loaded to the character selection I noticed a slight lack of color in the charecters except for one place, Liu Kangs eyes they were blood red. I got curios and tried to select him but the cursor would not move off of Jax with that notion I thought they were locked and proceeded to fight the first opponent. The first enemy happened to be scorpion as I tried to move forward to strike the opponent. Jax
    Would not move forward so I tried to move backwards
    And it worked, so I thought my front key was busted but I soon realized that there were worse things than breaking a key off of a small game system. After moving backwards I eventually reached the end of the battle mat and Liu Kang inched closer he got really close and
    Ripped off Jax’s head and threw it on the ground realistic brain matter covered the mat and wall he laughed and a title screen appeared it stated: AgaIn?
    It went back to the title screen and Jax’s eyes were missing! By this time my mother came into my room and asked why my lamp was on and why I wasn’t sleeping. I turned off my lights and slept. In the morning on the back of Mortal Kombat there was a tally mark etched inside of the plastic at this time I asked myself whether or not I should play this game but I wondered why not so I turned on my light and turned on the game. It flashed to the game boy start up screen then flashed to the Mortal Kombat screen and then back to the game boy startup and then back to the Mortal Kombat screen. The screen was divided in two parts it was green on top and blue on the bottom. It then reloaded to the game boy screen and then of course back to Mortal Kombat. I sat there a while, a little confused then the screen started to show history of fights and it was Scorpion Vs. Liu Kang. At this time the screen was a deeper shade of red then when I first played. Scorpion started moving backwards and Liu followed closely.
    I then (not wanting to see what was about to happen to scorpion) pressed a key to back out but the screen froze and there was a loud ringing sound coming from the game and the screen froze on a terrifying picture of me in a deep slumber. I turned off the game and went to tell my sister about it. She wasn’t there I figured she was at her friend’s house so I reluctantly went back into my room and retrieved the game from my desk I figured I might as well play in the Living room. I turned on the game and it loaded to the Mortal Kombat start-up screen and I preesed start. It loaded to the character selection and the only character I could choose this time was reptile so I selected him and I started the game. My first opponent this time was jax. He started backing up and I started moving forward. I realized that Jax’s eyes were still missing, And his mouth was twisted and open
    He backed into the wall and words appeared on the screen “finish him!”. Reptile automatically spit venom into his empty eye sockets and then dug his fingers in and pulled out some of his brains. At this moment I turned off the game and pulled out the game cartridge
    And there were two tally marks so I took the game and locked in my safe and I will probably never look at it again but I saw one word before I turned it off.
    CorUpTion

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  13. I am impressed that there is so much information about this subject that has been uncovered.

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  14. You make this information interesting and engaging.

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  15. You give readers a lot to think about and I appreciate that kind of writing.

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  16. All your hard work is much appreciated.

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