Exercise 3: Settle

Exercise 3: Listening to the house settle.

Johnny traced a pattern in the ceiling with his eyes, letting them draw slowly along the cracking plaster, out from the wall, about half way to the burned out bare bulb, and then arcing south where it spidered and split the aging white chalk into a thousand triangles.
The crack scarred Johnny. Something about the way it seemed to pulse as he stared at it, like his brain couldn’t quite work out the pattern he knew in his heart was supposed to be there.
His mother’s giggles wafted up the stairs and through his door. Sometimes he felt bad for his mother, she didn’t know that the house was haunted. She went about her day, getting him out of bed in the morning, sipping coffee on the front porch, making dinner for he and father in a red apron with puffy sleeves that had belonged to her own mother, and finally settling down to laugh with a glass of wine and the love of her life on the big leather couch Aunt Celeste had given them when she moved to Hollywood.
The moon was bright and Johnny had committed his eyes to the long highway of the crack a three count more when he heard the lock on the front door click into place, the sink run for a glass of water, and two pairs of feet, one heavier than the other, creeping slowly up the stairs and into the room down the hall. With the metallic thunk of the bedroom door, everyone in the house now purported to be asleep. A perfect time for ghosts.
Coyotes. Two pair. About a mile out in the woods and perhaps two miles apart. Their call drew Johnny’s gaze out the window with a start and he lost count. Curses. The moon was full and its silver light spilled across his bedroom floor like so much milk over lego cookies.
The legos. Johnny cursed again. This was it. The moon and the quiet and the carnivores calling. His eyes traced the crack again. He was pretty sure it was 64.
Johnny glanced back to the floor, straining to see if there were enough legos within arm’s reach to build a weapon. A cross, a spear, a magic gun that shoots anti-ghost rays. Anything. But no, he had been just a little too good at cleaning up, and now his soul would burn for an eternity.
65.
The crack seemed to get longer. One of the small triangles fell to the ground with a thud as a diesel engine rumbled down the hill on old Route 3 and let off the thunder of its engine breaking to save wear and tear on the pads. His eyes grew wide and he pulled the covers up comically far, covering his nose and ducking his scalp under his pillow to protect his precious skin. He prayed that the power stored up in the finely quilted Star Wars comforter would be enough to ward off the evil that lurked just behind the crack in the ceiling, but he sweat with nerves and questions.
He started the trace again. These might mark his last moments, and Johnny let a few silent words of prayer escape his lips and filter out into the universe so that his mother, father, brother, sister, and Skittles the hamster might make it out alive, that the evil in the crack would only claim him.
Another truck, and another tiny triangle of plaster on the floor. Johnny watched it for blood, and became convinced as his eyes moved slowly out form the wall to the arc and spider that the crack was now not only pulsing, but glowing blood red. He got down to the last few inches and his heart skipped a beat. When his eyes came to the terminus of the last crack, Armageddon would come to his bedroom and all would be lost. He truly wished he had told his mother about the burned out light bulb.
There it was. The end. 66. The crack pulsed. The moon shone. The coyotes wailed. And the next thing young Johnny knew, his mother’s smiling face was hovering over him.
“Am I… am I taken by the evil?”
“No, silly! It’s Saturday! Here, pancakes! But you’ve got to get out of bed, the repair man is here to fix the water damage in your room. No more crack after today, so let’s go! Up and at ‘em!”
“No more crack?” He picked up the fork and stuffed the fluffy sweet disc into his mouth.
“No more crack.” Johnny smiled and let his mother ruffle his hair.