Would YOU Come A-Dumpin' If This Room Was A-Thumpin'?

Things unknown have been pretty calm here lately, since the Christmas holiday and CasinoPalooza 3. However...they ramped up again a couple weeks ago.

Not every night, but more often than not, I've been hearing things upstairs. It's generally around 1:30 to 2:00. Not exactly footsteps this time, or someone turning over in Genius's bed. Heavy thumps. One a night. Not every night. A couple of times, it came from the boys' bathroom. That area is directly over my head as I sit in my OPC (Old People Chair). It's hard to pretend this one is just the ductwork popping when the furnace kicks on or off. Because it's a single thump. More of a clang. Like a metal foot locker dropping into a cast-iron bathtub. Which we don't have in there. It's fiberglass.

I've also heard a couple of thumps in The Pony's room. It's carpeted. And so the thump is muffled. Like maybe if a toddler jumped off a bed, or somebody dropped a cast-iron cookpot that cowboys hang over a campfire full of beans. We don't have a toddler or a cookpot. There's also been a couple of thumps in Genius's room. The same sound. On different nights. There's not a pattern, except I heard the bathroom sound three nights in a row.

There has been some walking in the kitchen, but Hick only admitted to going in there one night, for a drink, since he had a cold.

Wednesday night, when I went upstairs to bed around 3:30 a.m., I went to the hall closet that's by the boys' bedrooms and bathroom, to get a roll of toilet paper. I felt kind of self-conscious after hearing stuff in this area lately. Not the kind of feeling like your hair is standing on end, like something is fixing to happen. This was just a general sense of unease. I told myself (not out loud) that I was being stupid. I figured I'd fetch that roll of toilet paper, and get to my end of the house.

I SWEAR I HEARD SOMETHING SCURRY IN GENIUS'S ROOM!

Like somebody hustling from the middle of the room, or behind the door, over to the bed. I didn't hear the bed creak, though. That might have caused me a mental breakdown! Weird, hearing something in there while I was right outside, and not all the way downstairs.

Let the record show that we keep the doors to the boys' rooms closed. No reason, really. I don't think it saves on our heating bill. They've both cleaned most of their stuff out, so the rooms aren't really an eyesore. And besides, we rarely have visitors. Of the human kind.

Thursday evening, I went out to bring the dumpster back down the driveway. I took my CPO jacket off the post of the wooden rail that runs around the rectangular opening where the steps lead down to the basement. It runs from that hall closet, makes a 90 degree turn, and runs to the front door area. There's a wood box there where the boys kept their play shoes. I hang jackets and coats on the corner post at the 90 degree angle.

When I came in from retrieving the dumpster, and went to hang my CPO jacket back on that post, I saw that my purple heavy Berber coat with a hood, that I'd used for bus duty days at school, to patrol the parking lot, had fallen to the floor. Weird. I'm sure the coat just fell because it was unbalanced. But it HAD been hanging there since I retired a year and a half ago, and we cleaned out the back of T-Hoe. Yes, I'm sure it was just a coincidence. I probably jostled it while getting my CPO jacket off the post. My heather sage green baseball-style jacket was hanging on the rail in between them, though. And only the purple heavy Berber coat with a hood had fallen. They weren't even touching.

I looked at that purple heavy Berber coat with a hood, laying there on the floor. And then at the heather sage green baseball-style jacket still hanging over the rail. I snatched up that purple heavy Berber coat with a hood and took it straight to Genius's room and tossed it on the bed, then hurried out and closed the door.

TAKE THAT!

...was the thought in my mind.

I didn't dare say it out loud.