Rick_Andrew

Not fiction, this happened in my house recently--

It was a dark and stormy night, in a great big house.  Thunderclouds had swirled down from the north and were dumping the rain.

On the phone I had just talked with Jenny--who, with our son, was out-of-state on their road trip to see a massive museum.

I was in my recliner sitting quietly a moment because I was ready to go to bed.  The dark filled every room, all but disregarding a few puny battery-powered candles:  Left the only soul in the house, I was downshifting for sleep.

Power briefly flashed out. The kitchen clock winked--otherwise I wouldn't have missed power, since I'd already had the lights out.

But over the din of the pounding storm, I made out some grating noises and then--footfalls.  In our bedroom, over my head.

In my mind I inventoried what had caused this big house to creak like that from time to time.  Creaking I could explain, yeah.

But there were also the little dull impacts.

Unmistakably, movement upstairs. It sounded exactly like Jenny getting out of bed and walking across the floor--a sound I knew well from repetition, having heard it here above my head-- sometimes every morning in a week--yes indeed: footfalls !

But with Jenny in Ohio, then: who?

The noise was, beyond my doubt now, a presence upstairs.  I froze to stone not wanting to be detected—trying to reassure myself thinking:  It’s the noise of the storm—that’s nothing upstairs  ! 

And when would that Nothing--responsible for what almost was starting to sound like distant angry bangs and thumps--descend the stairs, coming this way?

Starting to hear my heart in my ears, I mentally rejoined the presence by trying to reduce it to some mundane cause I knew--finding it nuts--

Because nobody--especially in a pounding storm--breaks into the TOP floor, while rain slides off the roof and sheets down windows.

Over the roar of the storm, I finally caught a distinctive sound: A plastic case, wheels on an axle jarring with an impact. 

Our vacuum 'droid was loose.

I'd been petrified by what I found to have been the noise of his slamming into furniture like a drunken bad actor who hadn't rehearsed his action scene.

The power spike had jolted his dumb plastic butt right off the battery charger.

And in the dark and fury of the storm, he was--

 VACUUMING.