Sisters, for dVerse Poets

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Noises in the Night

She was six years old and alone in a room that had noises in the wall. She would curl up into a tight little ball under the covers and concentrate on the friendly sounds––the tapping of the pendulum of the clock which hung on the wall beside her bed and the water gurgling through the heating pipes. The muffled voices of her parents down below in the living room. She liked these noises. They made her think that she wasn’t alone.

But she could hear other sounds of the summer night–– the sudden loud popping noise that she thought was a gun until daddy told her that it was only houses settling, or the sound of the elm tree outside her window scraping against the brick on the chimney or the wind as it whined through her screens, making the venetian blinds scrape against their wooden window frames. She could hear things in the walls, too––noises that sounded like people walking and high shrieking noises that daddy said were just mice and not robbers.

The sheet felt muggy on her bare legs and she kicked it off and rolled over. She lay on her stomach and slipped her hand beneath the pillow, sliding it back-and-forth against the trapped coolness of the percale. She glanced at the noisy pendulum clock Santa had brought her for Christmas to help her learn to tell the time. It was her first real clock and it was in the shape of a Shmoo.  She could just make out where its hands were from the light of the streetlamp shining through her window. It wasn’t very late.

She flipped over and slid her legs over the side of the bed, feeling the slight stickiness of the linoleum on her feet as she walked to the window. The air had cooled a bit and it had started to rain. A slight breeze tickled the hairs on her arm and sifted the rain onto her nose as she pressed it close to the screen to smell the mustiness of the wet night grass.

She wondered when her older sisters would get home and come up to bed. It was lonely in a room all alone in the upstairs of a house that had robbers in the walls.

 

Most of you have probably seen this next post about my sisters, but I had forgotten it so perhaps you have, too: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2021/11/06/my-sisters-camera/
This pictorial post from two years ago actually prompted a book which I am doing the final editing on. Hopefully it will be published in the next few months.

For the dVerse Poets prompt: Siblings

And you can read what others wrote in their response HERE.

40 thoughts on “Sisters, for dVerse Poets”

  1. Miriam E.'s avatarMiriam E.

    This is absolutely gorgeous! What a beautiful, vivid, warm and interesting piece of writing. The sounds and images make it come alive… the fear of that little girl is so tangible… a stunning take on the prompt!

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        2. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          Wow. There are tons of them for sale online! https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=561214195&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS820US823&sxsrf=AB5stBgIVpFYegjF6KseYJ63sz3_hnZ8LQ:1693370059310&q=The+Schmoo+wall+clock&tbm=isch&source=univ&fir=-l7-Ewt2ri-gFM%252C12-A5v2egmkpfM%252C_%253BftKXe6GdnIDVtM%252CJcvQgU-xbkDVuM%252C_%253B9GdebwiY-09Y3M%252CbQ09MBgIA-5K2M%252C_%253BgmxnBgYuf4-dyM%252CGIO2bjo7B0eSkM%252C_%253B7jKekTSf3aWYmM%252CSPx6KgPDRe51-M%252C_%253BAMBFtEd1yR3KHM%252CrZ4aBGIrSIScNM%252C_%253Bnu4Z_Ec8zdQM-M%252CrQ9mNQUCPgzxNM%252C_%253BbRepFniX1DNppM%252CXz_GurIMwDfqvM%252C_%253BxFZRopJW2zTdlM%252CEjtx3I43XuCyMM%252C_%253Bd_7mTOVBdZAAYM%252CqCjhhTQbkJ_sKM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kSa3g7-xi-PH7s8ENJWLRSWraX16w&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY3e6Gx4OBAxXOSvEDHcZkCRQQjJkEegQIEBAC&biw=823&bih=402&dpr=1.75

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  7. kim881's avatarkim881

    I so enjoyed your ‘Noises in the Night’, Judy, and could visualise and hear it all. The clock and the noisy pipes play a big role; I think, as young children, our sense of sound is magnified, especially when there are no other siblings to banish those noises with familiar sounds of their own. I especially love the way you introduced the other senses in the description of the slight breeze tickling the hairs on her arm and sifting the rain onto her nose, and the mustiness of the wet night grass.

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      I had a deep games closet chosen to hide in when they came. It was set deep under the stairs but its entrance was in another room, halfway up between the floor and ceiling with lots of “stuff” to push aside and hide behind. I really did have this hiding place chosen for when the robbers came!!!!

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  11. slmret's avatarslmret

    I remember those noises in the wall — a magnet catching the cupboard door upstairs, a breeze outside a downstairs window — had me running up and down the stairs!

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Nothing like having those old fears stirred up again, huh? If you want to hear something really strange, there was this woman who used to come comfort me. She’d say, “Judy, Judy, Judy.” It wasn’t until I was in my twenties writing about it that I realized it was my voice as it was then going back to comfort myself as a child. I know. Weird. Perhaps just a writer’s imagination, but that is what I’ve remembered ever since.

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it. She (I) really was an only child during those lonely times before her sisters came to bed. The one who had the closest room to me was 11 years older and came to bed way later than me. Especially on Saturday nights when there was a dance!

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