Life in Lizzy's Eyes

The farm, while the best place on earth to be during the day, took on a foreboding and scary feel at night. You could literally hear the walls whispering evil things...footsteps and small shuffles wafted through the air into our little ears while we lay shivering under the covers.

Winters were the worst because it would get dark so early (even earlier than in the city) and stay dark much longer. I remember one never ventured upstairs alone, it was always done in pairs. And then one poor soul had to reach way up high into the darkened stairwell to pull the string for the hall light to come on. What nerves of steel that took each and every time. If you ever woke up in the middle of the night, may God have mercy on your soul.

It was so bone chillingly dark that you could put your hand in front of your face and not see anything more than an inky blackness that seems to breathe and waver as if alive. It didn’t help at all that the room between the two bedrooms (ours and my parents) was a dark, dank, spooky attic. It was a Jumanji type of attic with shadowy what-nots and unexplained shadows that seemed to quiver and shake as if taunting us. There was one window in this room that was always cobwebby and grimy from years of neglect, giving little light to the spooky attic, but rather making things seem even more scary and treacherous.

There was a single step up to the attic with an old skeleton key that always stayed in the keyhole, but in the locked position on this painted white door. The room was always locked, and I never ever had the courage to ask why. Upon entering this gloomy, spiderwebby room, the floorboards would creak with every footfall, warning whatever monster was deep in the shadowy recesses that you had now entered no-man's land and thus considered "fair game." Even in broad daylight, one never went into the attic alone. It just wasn’t done.

I don’t remember any one particular event that evoked such fear in our hearts and minds, but we were always afraid of that farmhouse at night. Even in adulthood, when the farmhouse was discussed between my brother and me, it was always done in a low voice with deep respect and awe.

My mom claims it’s the stories my Dad told, but I really don’t remember any particular stories at all, until we were much older and already had our fears embedded into our psyche. To this day, I can still feel the sheer terror of spending time alone there. During the summer my cousin was dying, I spent well over a month there alone and refused to sleep upstairs. I just used the pullout couch in the living room, which held a whole new host of "scary" because there was a floor vent pass through that looked directly into the upstairs bedroom. I usually slept with the light on each night.