A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (24 page)

That first night I was lying in bed on my way to sleep. There was no one else in the house; my son was not with me that night, and I had no guests staying at the time. But just as I was drifting away, I clearly heard footsteps running across the hardwoods on the first floor. At first I was sure I was dreaming. There was no way this house could have spirits, and the chances that I had found another haunted house after the fiasco on Foster Drive were as remote as the Chicago Cubs winning back-to-back World Series titles. I mean, the house itself was built in the mid-eighties, and the neighborhood was practically a baby: when I was a teenager, this area was nothing more than a flicker of life in a land developer’s lonely penis; the only thing for miles had been a Casey’s General Store, where I had occasionally gone to steal, I mean, “buy” cigarettes. I just could not allow myself to think that this had anything to do with the paranormal. So I listened again for a second and let it go, sure that I had imagined it.

Then it happened again, but this time louder.

I shot up in bed and made ready to investigate. I was still certain there was no otherworldly connection. What I was not sure about was if I had remembered to lock all the doors. Just for a little background here, around this time there was a criminal in the area known only as “the WDM Rapist” stalking the “mean” West Des Moines streets and assaulting women. Not knowing his modus operandi, I was not going to take a chance that someone was not wandering around my new home up to no good. I grabbed my Louisville Slugger nicknamed “The Widow Maker” and began a steady descent to the first floor. I checked every nook and cranny, pretending I knew something about police procedure for clearing corners in unexplored rooms, but really I just watch too much Law and Order: SVU. I got to my kitchen at the heart of the house and leaned against the “Uba Tuba” countertop (sorry—I just love saying “Uba Tuba”) on the cooking island at its center, nudging myself for being a tool bag. I was turning toward the hallway to the stairs when I clearly heard the running behind me, coming up fast. I flew around, high on adrenaline. Of course, when your imagination is fueled by that much crazy gasoline, there is nothing that will really surprise you. So I was at least expecting to see some dumpy, hairy douche bag, dressed all in black with a woolly balaclava pulled over his greasy hair in an attempt to be incognito. When I found no one there, the shock was almost too much to bear.

And so that is how it has gone for the entire time I have lived here. It happens while I am home. It happens while I am gone. It happens whether my son is here or not. It has continued to happen after I met The Boss. She eventually moved in, and we have made it our home together, even before we were married. It always seems to happen when we just space it off and forget about it, as though the spirits who play chaos with the house do not really want to show themselves too often, but they lose their minds if we seem like we are ignoring them. At times we have been sitting on the couch watching TV with friends and family alike, completely undisturbed, and we all abruptly hear running in the upstairs bedrooms. But you have to love the resignation of the previously initiated. Being used to it, my wife and I just yell, “KNOCK IT OFF UP THERE!” and go back to watching our program. Our guests, however, go ashen and look at us like we are crazy. Our response is always the same: “What, you have never yelled at children before?”

Yes, our extraspecial housemates are indeed children. We know that for a few reasons: one, my wife and I have seen them with our own eyes; two, we can hear them laughing while they play, and they almost always play in either my son’s room or the spare bedroom next to it; three, they mock people’s speech in tiny voices; and four, they fuck with people in very childlike ways. Trust me: I will get to all the stories in a second. But let me council you against freaking out like some people who have stayed at or lived in my house. They are also very harmless. Sure, they are mischievous and do things that drive me crazy sometimes. But there is nothing malevolent about these children. If there was, we would not still live here. With the exception of a few physical confrontations, the kids on the circle have really just been extra children fucking around in this midwestern suburban household. However, I do not care how tough you are—ghost children can be exceedingly creepy.

I was upstairs in the master bathroom taking a shower one day. Griffin had a friend over and was playing somewhere loudly, as you will have with kids his age. I was not too worried about his whereabouts because there were people downstairs having lunch who could keep an eye on the young wrecking crew. I excused myself to bathe because I came to the startling conclusion that I smelled like the groin of a bull dipped in poop. I decided to do something about that, so I bathed and was just drying off as I stepped into the outer part of the bathroom. There are double doors that open into the bedroom; if you go out of those doors and turn to the right, you will see the bed and the door to the upstairs hallway and the stairs that lead you down to the living room and so on. There is not a lot of room to play, so as I looked up and saw children in the bedroom, streaking by the doors, I thought little of it. I was wearing a towel, and it was a quick dash to get out of the room, which was the direction they were heading. I stepped into the bedroom, thinking I would see the kids. They were nowhere around. I threw on some pants and ran down to chastise my son and his friends for playing in there while I was taking a shower. But my friends let me know they were all outside—in fact, they had not been inside the whole time I was up there. I stood there, knowing I had chased children out of the room. In that moment I knew they were not the kids I had thought they were.

As I have said, stuff like this happens all the time. It is especially annoying when it happens in the morning, when I am busy getting Griffin up for school while simultaneously trying to prepare his breakfast and school lunch, functioning on little or no sleep. There have been mornings when I have been standing in my kitchen, waiting for my blessed coffee to brew, and suddenly I hear little footsteps running up from behind. I turn around, expecting to see Griff, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for school. Instead I am presented with an empty kitchen. One time I was making my son some Pop-Tarts while also cooking something in the microwave. My back was to the counter closest to the sink, and he had not made it downstairs yet. So imagine my surprise when an invisible presence sent Griffin’s aluminum thermos flying across that same countertop, landing with a loud “CLANK” in the sink. It scared me so badly that I had to check my pajama bottoms for brown Bingo dots. Note to ghosts: please refrain from this sort of mischief before I have had my morning java. Sometimes they just run about, which makes sense, seeing as the floor plan is wide open and made for games of tag. Other times they can be so damn confounding, like hiding Griffin’s lunch bag in a place so remote that I end up sending him to school with a brown bag full of food. Then the next day it magically appears again. I do not have time to go on some scavenger hunt sent from the other side for stuff that I bought in the first fucking place.

Griffin is no stranger to these unseen high jinks as well. There was an instance a while back that happened during a period when his Aunt Christine was watching him. She had just gotten him up for school and was enjoying the ritual of it all. They were sitting at the kitchen table during breakfast, joshing with each other and poking fun like kids and adults are prone to do—pushing buttons playfully and giggling like crazy people. Griff was mimicking Christine, and she was doing likewise, eventually turning the situation into a whole lot of “meh meh MEH meh meh,” using a sort of baby voice and crinkling their faces at each other. They were the only ones in the house.

From the formal living room, halfway across the house, a tiny voice said, “Meh meh MEH meh meh.”

According to Christine, she went ashen. Griffin immediately asked, “What was that?” She played it off like it was an echo of some kind or a noise from outside. As soon as she got home from taking him to school, though, she frantically called a friend to come over and hang out with her because she did not want to be in the house by herself for a while. Now, she did not feel threatened or anything; it was just a little unsettling. And rightly so: had I been in the same situation, I would have done the same thing—not because I felt danger but because that shit just makes your fucking skin crawl. I get that feeling when I am alone in the house, on the couch watching TV, and suddenly someone runs across the kitchen and up behind me. It is disturbing. It also pisses me off. Thank god for DVR so I can rewind what I missed while I was busy pissing myself.

Oh fuck yeah, that is another thing—they end up creating a lot of goddamn housework for the rest of the troupe and me. Sometimes it is casual little stuff like showing off the ability to move things, and other times I damn near have to call FEMA to come in and help me with the recovery process. The shit is annoying at times and excruciating at others. For instance, I was in the basement with a friend playing Tiger Woods Golf (if I hear one person judge me . . .) when we heard a monstrous crash come from the Vault. Upon inspection, the little shits had knocked an entire row of my DVDs off of a shelf and onto the floor. It took me a half hour to get them back up and alphabetized. We returned to the game . . . only to have it happen again minutes later. I gave up and left them on the floor for days. It seems like they love to fuck with us while we are in the basement. They turn the lights on and off. They close doors. They run up the stairs. My friend Asian Robby stopped going into the basement entirely after all three of these events happened one night while he was down there spending “quality time” with a special lady friend. I do not feel bad for him; serves him right for hooking up on my couch without asking—or at least without providing video. Besides, it leaves him more time to spend on his hair.

Roy Mayorga was crashing in my basement one time while we were having rehearsals during the making of Audio Secrecy. I had offered him the guest bedroom, but he said he was fine with the couch in the basement. Besides, the basement had the fifty-five-inch TV with surround sound, so I could see the appeal. He woke up the next day with scratches all over his neck. Next to him, lying on the floor, was a tiny toy gun made for an action figure, with skin sticking on the end of it. We were all so freaked out we took pictures of it. But upon inspection, we realized that the scratches were actually a heart—they had carved a little heart on his neck, perhaps as a sign of affection. Even so, Roy had a hard time crashing at my house after that—so much for making friends through chivalry and acts of kindness. Then again, I cannot say that I blame him. After being pushed down the stairs by an invisible assailant in the Foster house, if tiny hands wielding G.I. Joe props assaulted me, even with love on their minds, I would probably bail and get a hotel room myself.

The “Kids” on the Circle have a habit of running from room to room like psychotic sugar junkies, as I have mentioned before. One time some friends stopped by the house to see if we were home. We were out running errands, but the upstairs lights were on, giving the appearance that we were indeed home. From the vantage point of the two windows by the front door, you can see the stairs leading to the second floor and the top of the stairs, but then your view is cut off, and if you do see someone, you only see their feet. Our friends were fairly freaked out when they saw three sets of tiny legs running through the hallway at the top of the stairs clad in dresses, black pants, and shiny dress shoes, especially after they learned we were not even home at the time. When they described the shoes, I knew they were our “other” children: I had seen and heard them in all my encounters over the years. Those shoes are not distinct, but the noises they make are for sure—that clackety-clack of hard soles on hardwood is definitely hard to forget.

I wish I could say that the nonsense stops there, but the Kids do shit like that all the time. There was an instance when they knocked the books off of Griff’s shelves while he was at his mother’s house. It was really no big deal because it had happened before, but for some reason I was in a mood and did not feel like picking up all those damn books. So I tried to beat the system: we decided to lean his bookshelf on the floor so instead of standing up, it was lying on its side. I then shoved the books back on it at an angle, so if they were pushed off, it did not matter seeing as they were literally centimeters from being on the floor to begin with. Yeah, I felt pretty proud—I had successfully outwitted invisible miscreants no older than my son. Go ahead and crown me a genius on the same wavelength as Isaac Newton and Alexander Pope. I was confident nothing could happen after that. So imagine my chagrin when I walked into Griffin’s room and all of his books—and I do mean all of them—were stacked up in the middle of his room, one on top of the other, creating some sort of Leaning Tower of Books. It was crazy and cool and totally defiant. I deflated. I actually left them like that for a whole day out of spite, just because I knew I would have to put them away in the end. After that I just went back to the regular schedule of cleaning up after them—it was less pride lost on my part.

They change the channels on the TV in the living room, so when you wake up, it is always on Nickelodeon or Disney. You know how unsettling it is to turn on the telly, expecting to see ESPN, and you get Dora the Explorer, set at a deafening volume? That triggered my only really angry outburst at them. I just let out a loud “Oh, COME ON!” and scared the absolute fuck out of myself in the process. It was in that moment of pure humanity that I realized the absurdity of that exclamation: a grown man in the wee hours of the morning, yelling at things in his house he would never be able to explain to normal folks, because they had inconveniently changed the channel on him, therefore causing him to have to physically pick up the remote control and put it back on the channel he had been hoping for in the first place. I have to be honest: I really felt like a Craftsman’s tool bag in that space and time. But those innocent little fuckers are not as innocent as my wife would lead you to believe. They also constantly “terrorize” anyone who stays at the house by him or herself. Our friend Lady watched our house for a while and would report running in the kitchen while her back was turned and things being knocked over in the office at the end of the house when no one else was with her. As she detailed it, she would sit resigned on the couch, close her eyes, and say aloud, “Oh good . . .” That statement alone was enough to give me fits. Remember, this is the same Lady we do everything in our power to scare on a daily basis because when she panics, it is hysterical. So I cannot fault the Kids for trying to have a little fun at her expense.