Time for some much needed comic relief after an emotionally grueling week. In light of recent events, many childhood memories have been whirling around my head and this is one story Punky will surely hear. It was one of my favorites to tell as a kid. I hope I can remember all the details now; I haven't thought about it in years.
Many summers, my sister and I would go with my grandmother to stay at my aunt's house for a week or two. Due to my asthma-inducing allergy to dogs, we would sleep out in a pop-up camper they had in their carport alongside the garage. Overnight was too long a span for me to sleep in the house with the pet dander.
This particular summer I was nine. My cousin closest in age was eleven. One night we had the bright idea to watch a scary movie with her older teenage brother in the basement before bed. The Thing. I think it may be a classic now...you know, for people who like that horror movie crap.
Anyway, he warned us not to watch, he said it was too scary, we were too young, blah blah blah... We watched it. All of it. And then out to the camper we went.
My aunt was already asleep in there with my little sister. All was fine and we fell asleep right away without a problem. See? What did her brother know?
I'm not sure how long we were sleeping when my cousin woke me. "Do you feel that?" she whispered. She said the camper kept shaking, like someone was trying to get inside. I felt nothing and told her to go back to sleep.
A few minutes later, she woke me again...and that time I felt it. It was rocking. The door latch was rattling. We wanted out but were too scared to move.
We looked across the camper to my aunt's bunk. She had the canvas closed on her window and the porch light from the house illuminated it. We saw an arm go past the window. Someone was out there. The Thing.
Turning to our own window facing the woods, a scary shadow appeared. Oddly shaped, with little limbs that seemed to be clinging to the screen. We practically killed each other to get down to the bunk below. We were going to die. We just knew it.
My aunt and sister slept peacefully while the camper started shaking even more wildly. How the hell didn't they feel it? Maybe it already got them. Maybe we were the only two left.
Prepared for the worst, my cousin made her way across the rocking camper to my aunt's bunk. We were so relieved when she sat up...I mean, she was the adult and we needed her to get us out of there. Immediately.
By this time my cousin and I were in hysterics. She could barely understand us; we were talking a mile a minute. She felt the violent rocking and agreed we needed to head for the house. She devised a plan.
She was going to carry my sister rather than wake her. She said we would all go out together and calmly walk towards the house. We needed to stick together. Don't get separated. Crazy plan...
To me, this was a life or death moment. Something was out there trying to eat me. It would catch me quicker if I walked. And I certainly didn't want to be the last in line, i.e. the first to get eaten. I was fully prepared to sacrifice my sister. She was asleep; she wouldn't even know what happened.
We lined up in front of the door and my cousin reached down to unlock it. "Stay together," my aunt reminded us. We barely heard the second word.
The second my cousin's foot hit the blacktop, she took off running. Oh, no you don't...I'm not ending up as some Thing's dinner. I was half a step behind her in a desperate sprint for the back door of the house. My aunt and sister were on their own.
My cousin reached the porch first and tripped and fell over the dog's chain on the second step. I had no time to stop...nor did I even try, the thing was behind me eating my relatives...and I ended up on top of her. We scrambled to get up and in the door. Arms and legs flailing every which way to get on our feet.
We made it to the kitchen and kept on running...right down the basement to her brother's room. My cousin thought it might have been him outside pulling a horrible practical joke on us. We were mortified to see him sound asleep in bed. I wish someone was able to capture our faces on film.
We headed back to the kitchen and heard my aunt outside screaming. She was yelling our names. Telling us to get out there right away. Yeah, that just wasn't happening. No way, no how.
We cowered under the kitchen window and listened. We knew we had to look. We had to know what was coming for us next. Slowly we lifted our heads high enough to just peek over the window sill. Gulp.
My aunt was standing in the driveway with my sister beside her now fully awake after all the yelling. My aunt was holding a flashlight and shining it toward the top of the camper. It wasn't one Thing; there were several. About eight or nine in fact.
Cats. The neighbor had a ton of them, and they apparently decided it would be fun to play on top of the camper in the middle of the night. They were wrestling around, shaking the hell out of the camper as they romped on the top. The crazy shadows we saw were the cats climbing up the canvas sides of the camper.
Nobody got eaten, but my cousin and I refused to go back out there and spent the rest of the night on a pull-out sofa in the living room. My breathing sucked come morning, but it was a risk I was willing to take.
We got picked on for years about the night we were terrified of ordinary housecats, but it made an everlasting impression on me. I have no desire to see any horror movies of any kind. Never. Ever. And my fear that night was so real that simply retelling this story now, close to midnight with him at work and me home alone with the baby, means I'm not getting much sleep tonight at all.
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