Things that go bump in the night - or crinkle and crunch

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I can hear it clearly, very clearly, a kind of crinkling, crunching like cellophane or a taffeta dress being eagerly devoured. The sound is coming from the bedroom.

I get up and turn on the air conditioner and the radio. I cover up the noise with other noise. I don't want to go into the bedroom. I don’t want to look under the bed or behind the bureau.

It's probably just a mouse, I told my daughter days ago, trying to assuage her fears as well as mine, trying to convince both of us that there is no Stephen King monster in the bedroom. Vampires are not coming to get us. Demons are not real. This is not a place full of lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

We know there's a mouse in the kitchen. We caught it one night, startled it, as it made its way across the floor. We looked at it, and it looked at us and we screamed and it froze. A cartoon moment, followed by the mouse running east and the two of us running west, smack into a wall. "You have to get a trap," my daughter cried. "Or poison, or something. You have to get rid of it tomorrow!"

But I couldn't. We couldn't. We've seen too many Disney movies to murder a mouse. And so we have chosen mututal coexistence. We leave for home in a few days anyway. We'll pack up and the mouse will have the place all to itself. In the meantime, we clap twice and yell, "Mouse, Mouse, get out of my house," before entering the kitchen, and the creature, understanding if not our words, then surely our intent, has thoughtfully obliged.

We don't leave food on the counter, and it doesn't leave droppings around. We are getting along. The thing gnawing its way through the bedroom, however, the thing that munches day and night, night and day like a giant caterpillar, is a whole other story.

I heard it for the first time early Monday morning. It was past midnight. I was reading. There was a solitary click, and I looked up from my book and thought: It's the venetian blind. But then there was another, louder click and the blind didn't move, not at all. There was no wind that night, not even a breeze; the room seemed suddenly airless. Click. Crinkle. Crunch. "What is that?" I said aloud.

The clicking stopped. Silence. A siren wailed and filled the void. It's nothing, I thought. Something outside, on the ledge - a pigeon maybe. Just a pigeon pecking - a stupid, harmless bird. I fell asleep and woke up, bolted up, a possum on my chest. But it was nothing, just a dream. Only the munching was real.

The munching continued all night. My daughter heard it in the morning. "There's something in your bedroom," she said. "Listen." "It's probably just a mouse," I told her, lying to protect her. Later that evening the place was still. The air conditioner off. No sirens. No noise. My daughter was on the couch writing letters. I was in a chair reading about serial killers. That's when the desperate scraping sounds began, like fingernails in a coffin, like something trying to escape. "There's something trapped in there, Mom. Listen," my daughter said. Trapped. That's what were. Doomed. The thing was going to get out and devour us in a single gulp. "It's probably just mice in the wall," she continued. "I was talking to some of the kids at school today and that's what they said. It happens all the time, I guess. Not to worry. They can't hurt you."

What? Where did this calm, reasonable human being come from? Why wasn't she overreacting? Something was feasting on the walls of our apartment, something that might very soon be feasting on us, and she could sit there and be calm? Click. Chomp. Crunch. These are monster sounds, not mouse sounds, I tell my daughter. Can't you hear how the monster is getting bigger?

She shakes her head and tells me I read too much Stephen King. I shake my head and tell her she hasn’t read enough.