IN THE DARK

“What’s that noise?”

Beside me, the beloved sleeps on obliviously, but I definitely heard something…

Something moving in the darkness…

Of course, it is dark and it could be anything. I switch on the torch but it’s no help. It sounded like a kind of scurrying,  but I’m not aware of any infestation… There would be some kind of a smell, surely…? But then, I’ve watched all those programmes about the hoarders and how things can be living in places that you’d never expect them to, so you do never know…

But I’d’ve heard something before now, wouldn’t I…? If it was something alive… Most likely it was my watch strap settling from when I knocked it when I reset the alarm… Or maybe it was the cardboard and plastic unfolding itself in the bin after the beloved took those tablets in the night to try and shift the migraine that’s triggered this sudden extra hour in bed.

“Can I go for the later train…?” she murmured, and who was I to argue…?

This will mean a change to my routine and having to drive through the dubious delights of the “school run” which seems to imply that by simply parking a small person in the passenger seat of a car or bus, the driver suddenly completely forgets how to drive...

Ah, this is not the time for such chaotic thoughts to be allowed to be allowed to run through a “spin cycle” in my mind...

Instead, I lie there awake, listening to those sounds I’ve not heard before…

Out there…

In the darkness…

Waiting…

The imagination runs riot. From small furry creatures scuttling, to larger, furrier creatures nibbling and gnawing. When my mind finally manages to conjure up the largest of spiders, I decide that it’s time to get up and write about it instead. It might just make me feel better if I try to put the madness to bed just as I climb (or was that leap?) out of it.

Or is that cowardice in extremis…? Now I’ve left her alone with it, whatever it is, although whatever it is might just be a piece of unfurling cellophane there is always the slightest possibility that it’s actually something with teeth, whilst I’m safely in another room with the lights on and listening to other noises which may, or may not, be the dripping of rainwater through a hole in the roof and onto something precious and irreplaceable, no doubt.

Those tapping noises could be outside of course, but they sound much closer…

Or is it just the floorboards creaking and popping from their early morning exertions of having had me climbing the stairs, or my chair stressing under the strain of holding me off the ground…? Are they just relaxing again having done their job once more, and settling down for a nice relaxing day of simply being what they are with none of the sudden extra burdens of having me around give them…?

And, after all of this mystery, then the boiler kicks up to start its strange early morning routine of pumping water around the central heating system but at least, unusual sounding as those sounds usually are, at least I know precisely what they are…

Usually… although, is that a dripping I can hear…? Is something leaking that shouldn’t be…? Has one of those unseen creatures been nibbling where it shouldn’t have been…?

And what, precisely, could possibly explain the squeaking coming from a system that has no gears…?

At least it’s the right kind of squeaking.

At least it doesn’t sound alive…

Noises, noises everywhere, and not a source to find.