Terror in the Night

TERROR IN THE NIGHT

It was January 1975 and we would be celebrating our first born's first birthday the next day. We lived in an apartment in a farmhouse in which our bedrooms actually had doors to the hallway of the other side of the house. So there wasn't a lot of noise privacy!

I was SUDDENLY awakened by Marlin's voice (the young farmer who lived on the other side) yelling loudly, "HEY! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" followed by the sound of men's feet pounding down the open stairway, more angry yelling, more running around the circle of their downstairs rooms, then a deafening silence. I lay there beside Dick, frozen in terror. My mind imagined the worst. What was that burglar doing to Marlin right now? Killing him? Was there more than one burglar? Was there another one still upstairs? Was he doing something to Phyllis, Marlin's wife? I very quietly woke Dick up and told him what I had heard. What should we do? I considered opening the door to their hallway and calling over to ask Phyllis if she was alright. But if there were a burglar sneaking around in the house, then he would know we had heard what had happened, and he'd try to do something to us as well. We crept downstairs to look if anything was happening outside, but we could see nothing. Neither could we hear anything. How very puzzling.

As we waited we heard their radio alarm clock. They were dairy farmers and very early risers. My suspicion that something was very wrong was confirmed when nobody seemed to be responding to that radio alarm clock. It just played and played and there was no sound of anyone moving anywhere. I just knew that Marlin was probably bound up or dead outside and Phyllis was probably bound up or dead in their bedroom. What EVER were we supposed to do? Call 911? We waited until 5:45 AM, long past the time they would normally be in the barn. We finally decided that before calling 911 we would be brave and call their phone number. If they didn't answer the phone, we would know it was time to call 911.

I anxiously waited in the darkness of our living room while Dick made the phone call in the darkness of our kitchen (it's hard to imagine, but we did not have a phone in our bedroom back then!) The phone rang and rang, and then I could hear the sound of pounding feet running down their open stairway, just on the other side of our living room wall. On the other end of the line Dick heard a very sleepy-sounding Marlin say, "Hello?" Dick asked, "Are you alright?" Marlin assured him that he was. Dick, beginning to feel pretty stupid, told him what I had heard and what we were afraid of, especially when we noticed that they were not getting up and out to the barn at their regular time. Marlin knew nothing of what I had heard, and confessed that they had gone to bed late and were just being lazy about getting up at their regular time. Dick apologized for bothering them.

Now I was the one feeling REALLY, REALLY stupid!! Apparently I had just had a very dramatic dream! We stopped over at their place that afternoon so I could give them my apology and explanation. Wow, to this day I can still hear the whole thing. And I still can't help laughing when I imagine Marlin chasing down those stairs to answer the phone, only to hear Dick ask, "Are you alright?" It's a good thing we were their relatives, or they may have decided to evict such crazy tenants!