Our Amityville Moment

I laughed out loud driving down the highway today thinking about one particular night with Cory and her father.

Cory had been sick for a little while by then- hearing voices and seeing some pretty creepy things.  One night while Jake was at Tim's, the two of us went to a scary movie and then let ourselves into a dark, empty creepy ass house.  It wasn't long before we both started to hear a mysterious groaning sound coming from the basement.  We both heard it.  I couldn't decide if I'd finally snapped under the stress of Cory's mental illness or what.

It really sounded like someone or something not quite human was in the basement.  My first thought was that teenage boys had broke into the house and were trying to scare us- you know, because that happens so often.  I was on the phone to Bob in less than two minutes, all, "Babe, I think someone's in the house!"

Calmly, from his non-creepy place across town, he says, "Then call the police."

"But I'm not sure.  Oh my God, what IS that sound?"  I was at that scalp-shrinking stage of fear and Cory was practically climbing on top of me in her fear.

"Oh my Gawd!!"  he said, exasperated.  "You girls are so silly!  I'm on my way over."

It may have been the longest twenty minutes ever.  Our hero burst in the door and cocked his head to listen.  Sure enough, that creepy howling drive-you-out-of-the-house, don't-take-a-thing-just-leave-this-very-moment piped up right on cue.  It was an Amityville Horror moment.

Bob froze to the spot.  "Oh my God!"

"SEE?!!"  we responded.  "What the hell IS that?"

"Nick, I don't know." he answered, moving farther into the house and well away from the stairwell.

The three of us stood in the living room, listening to the sounds coming up through the vents, no one making a move, and each of us fearing that something was on its way up the stairs to find us.

I jabbed him in the stomach.  "Babe, go down there!"

He looked at me nakedly.  "Uh...I'm not going down there."

Cory and I burst into nervous laughter.  Was this man for real?  Why did he come over, just to loan us the emotional support of being scared shitless with us?

I can still see his eyes, every bit as wide as Cory's and it just cracks me up.  This was the man I once slept in the hallway outside of an apartment with because he wouldn't kill a bat.

After much discussion, he went outside to take a manly look around the premises.  He returned a few minutes later, his chest all puffed out to have solved the mystery.

There was a beagle puppy loose in the neighborhood, and it had holed up next to our basement window, howling for its owners.  Somehow the sound had funneled through our drainage pipes or something and turned into the most inhuman utterances heard outside of a horror film.

He tried his best to just gloss over the fact that he wouldn't go downstairs and face the music, but Cory and I ribbed him to the dogs and back for like two weeks straight.

How this memory makes me smile.  There were good times.  Such good times.