Be Very Afraid

ALEXIA GORDON:  My cat brought me a mouse this evening. A live mouse. She held it in her mouth as gently as she holds her toys. I though it was one of her toys until it wiggled. Then I screamed like a girl. The cat dropped the mouse, the mouse ran toward me, the cat darted after the mouse,

I shrieked again, the cat ran away, afraid I’d lost my mind, the mouse hid behind my TBR pile. A scene straight out of a Howard Hawks screwball comedy. The mouse is still hiding in my office* and I’m cowering on my bed.

Before I took to my bed, I decided to do laundry. I hoped the drudgery would calm me after my rodent experience (and I’m low on underwear). After kicking the laundry basket a few times to make sure no small furry creature would scurry out, I carried the basket downstairs. I opened the basement door, flipped the light switch—and saw a garbage bag at the foot of the stairs. Which might not have been unsettling if I hadn’t left the garbage bag several feet away around a corner.

My reflexive horror (Ghosts? Demons? Intruders?) turned to dread. A flood. Two days of incessant precipitation had outmatched the two basement drains and water covered the entire basement floor to a depth of four or five inches. The garbage bag had floated until it hit a wall.

No soul-soothing laundry for me tonight. At least I knew why the mouse had ventured upstairs. After texting my landlord photos and securing promises of a plumber and professional exterminator, I put on my PJ’s, gathered pen, paper, and laptop, searched my bedroom for rodent intruders, and huddle in bed with the lights on, hoping the brightness would discourage the little beasts from paying me a nocturnal visit. As I cowered, in between entreaties to the Lord for mercy on the weather front, I started thinking about houses. I thought about how nice it would be to live on the upper, dry, mouse-free floor of a high-rise. My initial reaction to seeing the garbage bag someplace other than where I’d left it came back to me and I thought about haunted houses.

The literary kind.

Not houses where a ghost haunts an otherwise benign building (like my Eamon McCarthy at Carraigfaire). Literary haunted houses where the haunting is an integral part of the building’s structure. Houses that are bad actors. David Mitchell’s Slade House has a couple of spooky owners but the house itself does much of the dirty work. Poe’s House of Usher refers to the creepy domicile as it does to the doomed siblings who inhabit it. The story wouldn’t have the same impact if they shared a split-level in the ‘burbs. Shirley Jackson’s Hill House was “born bad” and Stephen King’s Room 1407 is an “evil f***ing room”. (Read that last bit in Samuel L. Jackson’s voice, like in the movie.)

The thought of the place where you’re supposed to be safe—your castle, your sanctuary—turning on you and becoming your worst danger is terrifying. If you’re not safe surrounded by your own four walls because those four walls are trying to kill you, where can you be safe? If you can’t trust your home not to turn on you, who can you trust? *Note: Since I started typing this, my cat tracked down the mouse invader, grabbed it much less gently than before, and ran off with it.

I shudder to think what I may find, and where I may find it, in the morning.

Have you ever been attacked by a haunted house? Or been in a house that betrayed you by non-supernatural means? Do you have any funny cat and mouse stories? Leave a comment (or join the conversation on FB), we’d love to hear.

Comments

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh, I had a great cat who, each night while I was sleeping, would take EVERY skein of yarn out of my knitting basket and place it at my bedside. Every morning I would pat him, and put it back. The next night, he'd do the same thing. I think he thought it was his job. And easier than mice, apparently.

[Mark]

Yikes! Sorry to hear about your evening. Hopefully, things get straightened out today, or at least on the road to back to normal.

[Vickie Fee]

Ooh, Alexia, you are braver than I when it comes to mice!I found one in the dishwasher years ago and wouldn't stay alone in the house with it! However, I think haunted houses, in general, are cool -- especially literary ones! Great post!!

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

A mouse in the dishwasher??? Ahhh....

[Cathy M]

As we only have had a cat since living in Florida, I have no cat and mouse stories. My stories involve cat and lizards and snakes. Think weird caterwauling in the middle of the night followed by disembodied lizard heads in the morning or crunching sounds from the kitchen followed by snake parts on the floor.

[Susan Neace]

We used to live in a very old house and when it got cold outside mice would find their way in. My husband woke one morning because the cat was playing between us and had tucked his toy into a fold of the covers next to him. When the toy moved he discovered the mouse Beauregard was so thoughtfully sharing. I kidded him about the cat liking him better than me. So Beau left me half a mouse in my new shoe a few days later