A Brush With the Supernatural

Earlier in the week as we were making a commissary delivery Michael and I saw a little dust storm rolling toward us, and it reminded me of something that happened when I was around ten or so.

It was a dark and stormy night . . .

Actually, it wasn't really stormy.  My sisters and I had all turned in for the night.  Denise (three years younger than me) and I shared a room, and Melanie (five years older than me) slept in the bedroom across the hall from us.  Denise often had a difficult time sleeping—she would get scared—and obviously Melanie was more sympathetic and nicer than I was.  I probably thought things like, "Denise is such a baby!"  (Hey, I was ten-ish and she was the pesty little seven-year-old sister.) And I probably said things like, "Just be quiet and go to sleep."  Just oozing empathy.

Anyway, Denise went and quietly knocked on Melanie's door and pretty soon Melanie came into our room and settled into the bottom bunk with Denise.  Just as we were quieting down to sleep we heard a shriek of wind, and Melanie's bedroom door slammed shut with a huge bang! The wind howled for a bit, and then it stopped as suddenly as it had started.  We sat up in our beds, wide-eyed and jittery, every nerve on edge, in the dark, and with  the glowing eyes of our dolls staring at us from every corner of the room.

And then we heard it . . .

. . . A steady tap, tap, tapping on Melanie's bedroom door.

In just a moment Mom came up to see us.  "Did you hear that little devil?" she asked.

That what?!

"A little devil came through the house." she said, as calm as calm could be.  Then she bade us good night and went back to bed.

And the tap, tap, tapping was still beating a staccato on Melanie's bedroom door.

We girls nervously sat there, whispering, and wondering what could be in that bedroom, tapping for us to let it out.  Finally we got up the nerve—all three of us together—to go look.  We opened the bedroom door to be greeted by several more pairs of gleaming eyes, looked around and saw . . .

. . . a Hawaiian shell necklace hanging from the doorstop of Melanie's closet and steadily tapping on the door.

My Brazilian mother meant a little dust devil, but my ten-year-old self had never heard of such a thing before then.  :-)

What Michael and I saw the other day was not a dust devil, but it did remind me of my encounter with a little devil.