I Heard Humming in the Walls

I am haunted by my grandmother. Or at least, I thought her spirit was lingering on in her house. I suppose it didn’t frighten me, seeing as she was the woman who raised my older sister and I. My father skipped out on us after I was born, and my mom died when I was ten. So grandma took us in, with her wrinkled hands and gentle smiles, and she raised us in the house that my mother had been raised in. I loved her with all of my heart, and shortly after my graduation from college, she passed away quietly in her sleep, her beloved cat on her feet.
The house and the cat were left to Natalie and I, but Nattie had moved to the city and gotten a job at a big law firm, one that paid extravagantly. So she had smiled at me, kissed my forehead with the same gentleness as grandma, and told me that the house would be mine. And I had promptly moved there, got a job as a science teacher at the local high school, and began fixing up the bungalow that had been slowly decaying. At first I thought my renovations awoke something else, something beyond the grave. I thought my grandma was annoyed at me for changing her house. Although her cat, Jingles, didn’t seem to mind my renovations.
It started with small things, like water running in the bathroom while I wasn’t there, cabinets being opened in the middle of the night. My books were flipped to random pages, Jingles would disappear for days, and occasionally I heard humming from inside the walls. My grandma always loved to hum. But Jingles always came back and wasn’t perturbed, so I decided that if my grandma wanted to haunt me, then so be it. I wouldn’t accept a haunting from anyone else, although perhaps I make an exception to being haunted by my mother. Either way, I decided to ignore it and go about my life. Some days I would even greet my grandma out loud when I heard a strange noise or felt a chill go over me.
Nattie told me that I was being ridiculous, that hauntings weren’t real and that I should start paying more attention to the local news, seeing as there had been a rash of crimes going through the small town I called home. She sent me a gift wrapped Taser in the mail, along with a canister of pepper spray, all sealed with the markings of a lipstick kiss. I had rolled my eyes at her theatrics, but I kept the stun gun in my waistband at all times and double checked all of the locks before bed. And instead of being comfortable with the creaking ceilings or the moved objects, I began to grow more paranoid.
In late September, there was something off about the entire day. The air tasted cold, but not like the cold of changing weather, more like the cold of death. I shivered in spite of my multiple layers of shirts, and I was nervous as I prepared for bed. The comforting echo of my grandmother’s favorite humming tune that I had heard earlier that day only made me want nothing but the warm embrace of sleep. So I took three sleeping pill tablets and curled up in bed so I could forget the discomfort I was feeling. After all, I had six classes to teach the next day.
Around three in the morning (the devil’s hour, my grandma called it), I jerked awake with a horrible feeling that someone was in the room with me. Through the darkness, I squinted, not moving my head, and saw a black figure standing in my doorway. My heart thudded in my chest as the floor creaked – they were stepping forwards into the room. I refrained from moving and thought that perhaps if I stayed silent and still, they would just leave me alone. I thought that maybe if they believed I was asleep, they would simply rob my house and be on their way. I would rather be robbed than murdered, that much was known.
But they did not turn around, instead they took two steps closer, and through the slits of my eyelids, I could see their skinny face, could smell their unclean body; from the low lighting I could vaguely see their rotting teeth. I wondered if my grandma’s ghost would save me from this thieving meth addict, and I wondered if I would need saving. He seemed to be looking around the room, his head swiveling to see if there was anything worth stealing. I tried to keep my breathing calm as I slowly tried to move my hand from the prone spot on my stomach to the stun gun on my bedside table. I froze when he turned his eyes back to me.
“Oh you live alone, don’t you sweetie?†he crooned quietly, as if to himself. I felt my entire body tense painfully. In an instant, he had leaned over me, a shaky hand pressing a revolver to my head. I couldn’t control myself and my eyes snapped open fully as I sucked in a gulp of air. His face was hovering over mine, too close for comfort. His other hand was pulling the blankets down. I screamed for only a moment before he hit my skull with his gun. I had to accept that something awful would happen to me. I wanted to live, I wanted so badly to live. So I didn’t move, and decided he would do what he would with me.
He had just touched my shoulder when strong, pale hands grabbed him by the torso and threw him off of me. I sat up hurriedly, finally stunned out of my frozen state, I grabbed my Taser and flipped on my lamp. What I saw for a moment I couldn’t comprehend. Standing over my would-be assailant was a pale and worn man with his hands in fists. He was kicking the man, over and over again, a manic look in his eyes. From the hallway, I heard Jingles hissing. When my savior saw that I was up and moving, he did a final violent kick, before he nodded at me and threw the unconscious man over his shoulder. He went out into the hallway, his heavy footfalls echoing through the house. I heard my front door open and then close.
The police said they didn’t know who my savior was, but that I was lucky. There had been several robberies and rapes throughout town; always single women who lived alone. One of the women had died. But there was something that neither of us had taken into account. Apparently I wasn’t being haunted by my grandma’s ghost, no, apparently there had been a man squatting in her attic for what looked like at least two years. They found his nest when they investigated further. It seemed that he was rather fond of my grandma and I, and it also looked like Jingles the cat sometimes went up there to sleep next to him. He also saved my life.
They found the criminal dead a few days later. They did not find the man, but I hope he knows that he always has a place in my house. There are far scarier things in this world than homeless people looking for a place to hide.


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