She shot up in her bed. Her heart hammered in her chest. The noises became louder with every intense breath she took. This was the third night she was awakened by them. She felt so helpless and afraid.
It almost sounded like fingers scraping across a chalk board, only it was coming from inside of the wall. She would get up and pound on it, but the sound became stronger. “Scratch… scratch… scratch”.
She crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over her head. She couldn’t sleep for fear that if she did whatever was in the wall would come and attack. Night time became dreadful. After weeks of little to no sleep she was aggravated.
Finally, one day she went and talked to her landlord about the problem. He didn’t seem too concerned about it. However, he did mention that a few years prior an elderly woman passed away in the house. With this news, she headed for home even more troubled than before.
That night the noises were unrelenting. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. Now it appeared that whatever it was decided that they were hungry and began to raid the kitchen. At this point she was convinced that there was a ghost or two wandering around at night time. She got out of bed and locked the bedroom door.
She woke her husband up to tell him about the unwanted guests. He didn’t seem to care about them and rolled back over and fell asleep. She was livid! “How could he sleep through this!” she thought to herself.
After everything seemed to calm down she decided that enough was enough and went to explore. She wearily grabbed a flashlight and headed out of the bedroom. As she walked through the darkened house everything seemed normal. So, she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She heard the familiar sound again. “Scratch… scratch… scratch”.
She inched slowly towards the cupboard. As she approached, the noise stopped. She slowly reached for the handle on the door and pulled it open. She shined the light around inside and saw nothing. Then she flashed it towards the back wall and saw a gigantic hole. Since there were no signs of anything she decided to give up for the night.
With an exhausted sigh she turned to walk away. Before she could make it out of the room she heard the cupboard burst open. She turned around. A raccoon was headed straight for her. She wanted to run, but she was frozen with fear. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t.
The raccoon stood a few feet away from her. He hissed and showed his teeth. After a few minutes he jumped on her and started biting at her as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.
She laid there helpless as the coon gnawed on her. As silent tears streamed down her cheeks she felt the flesh being wrenched from her body. She knew the end was near. All she saw was darkness.
12/17/04