My grandparents used to live in an old, log-cabin-style house tucked into the mountains. Built in the 1850s, they bought the house after their retirement as an escape in the countryside.
In the summers, my parents would take my brother and me to visit our grandparents. We loved these trips, loved running around the old ranch with my grandparents’ German Shepard, exploring the outbuildings, collecting eggs from the chickens, and generally experiencing all the things that were foreign to kids growing up in a city.
We learned to watch out for rattlesnakes, how to get under a barbed wire fence without scratching ourselves, and not to wear Converse near a cactus. Though there were technically many dangerous things for kids to get into, we looked out for each other. During the day, we were given free rein to wander.
Nights, however, were another story. In the mountains, night fell quickly. Even before the sky began to darken, the temperature would fall. Outside, you’d begin to shiver without a jacket, as shadows of bats swooped low overhead as they left the barn for the night. The darkness there was complete, especially on nights with no moon. By dusk, my brother and I would be called inside and put to bed. Nights were not ours to explore.
I suppose I should acknowledge part of the reason we liked to spend so much time outside. Yes, we did enjoy playing the part of little ranchhands, but looking back, I think we also avoided spending too much time in that old house. It had a feeling about it. It never felt empty, if that makes sense. Sometimes, we would all be in the kitchen in the mornings, bleary-eyed and ready for breakfast, and in a lull in the conversation, I swear I could hear footsteps running down the upstairs hallway. My grandparents always dismissed me if I asked them about the noises, blaming the oldness of the house, the plumbing, the creaky wood, etc. So I learned to say nothing at all about the times I’d be in the bath, and the toothbrushes would spin slowly around in their holders, as if an invisible finger was twirling them around, just for my entertainment.
One night, my brother and I had gone to bed as usual. At our grandparents’ house, he slept in the top bunk, and I slept on the bottom, as I had a habit of falling out of bed. This meant that when our grandparents’ German Shepard, Lucy, burst into the room in the middle of the night, she leapt straight into bed with me. Lucy was an outdoor dog. She was supposed to protect the chickens. Only during the coldest nights in winter did my grandparents let her into the kitchen. Given that it was June, I figured she must have snuck inside somehow.
Rubbing my eyes, I tried to get Lucy out of the room and downstairs as quietly as I could. She ran down the stairs ahead of me, and I followed her into the kitchen. It was pitch black, inside and out. I started walking towards the sliding glass doors my grandparents had installed, and as I reached for the door, the kitchen lights turned on. The light switch was on the other side of the room, and I hadn’t touched it when I’d walked by. Now, every light in the kitchen was ablaze, and I blinked, then looked up. In front of me, framed by the sliding door, was the biggest black bear I’d ever seen. Lucy started barking, and I stepped quickly away from the door.
I’d been seconds away from opening the door and walking into the bear. I had always thought I should be afraid of whatever made the noises in my grandparents’ house, but I knew how to be safe when I was outside. But maybe I got that wrong.