The Old House

The candle flame flickers from a draft on a dark and stormy night, the floorboards creak with every step as I move about the old house. There is a chill in the air, that seems to be everywhere, and the clock’s tick sounds louder as time passes hour to hour. I hear the thunder rumble in the night and see lightning illuminate the sky and I stop and listen intently to the yawns and groans that echo in my ears. The old house’s settling graces that are always heard in the quiet of the night. My heart beats against my chest as my imagination begins to fly. I breath in the musty air within the room where I am about to sleep. Everywhere the shadows move under the light of my flickering candle. I know the old house is not haunted, but my mind tells me other wise. My imagination creates noises where the dancing shadows fall. I gaze about suspiciously knowing that there is nothing there as a branch outside taps my window wanting to come in out of the storm. The curtains move from a draft as if something is sheltering behind them. All of which make my mind thinks of ghost stories I have been told. In bed, I slip under the cover, and then blow the candle out as something gets on the bed resting across my legs for the night. My ears detect the slightest sound in the blackness that surrounds me and I am blind to everything on this stormy moonless night. The streaks of dawn break through the window and the terrors of the night have fled. I smile at my imagination as I lay there with the cat upon the bed. The old house is reputed to be haunted, but take it from one who lives there that the only ghosts are our imagination and on dark and stormy nights it grows. 5 June 2010