About a week after I moved into the tiny little house I bought way back in 1989, I began to experience strange occurrences. Noises, voices. Most concentrated in the single bedroom. One night I was woken from a sound sleep by the distinctive noise of the window sash going up. Anyone who has ever owned an old house with wooden double hung windows and their clanky window weights knows that raising them is never a quiet affair. The wood on wood blats like a bugle playing Reveille and the weights clank against one another in their pocket. All that to say, that the windows being raised or lowered is not a sleep-through event. Awake, but eyes still shut, I waited holding my breath.
I lay facing away from the window in question, the one facing Mrs. Prinz' drive and the street. The one easily accessible from ground level. I heard the sound of someone climbing in the window, walking across the floor, and the sag of the mattress at my back. Terrified, I tried to remember to breathe evenly so I would seem asleep and this person would leave me alone. I felt the weight distributed along the mattress as he spooned up behind me, could feel his breath on my neck. I wanted to scream. But my throat closed. I knew I was about to die and I could not move or cry out for help. The evil breathy chuckle I heard next will haunt both my dreams and my waking for the rest of my life. Sometimes a friend or a lover will jokingly make a noise like that and I loose my mind. It's just that sticky of a memory and draws me irrevocably back to this exact moment of terror.
I lay there with that person curled at my back for over an hour. I could not summon the nerve impulses to move. When I finally did, I rolled over to find the space behind me empty, the window, not only shut, but locked. What the hell. Scared as shit, I chalked it up to that 'imagination' my mom had yammered about through my childhood. Until it happened again the next night and the next and at regular intervals thereafter. I began sleeping on the couch. I began fixing the most miniscule cracks in the bedroom, then mudding and sanding creating such a mess that I moved the bed to the dining room and slept there.
A dog had been part of the vision of my dream house. Even though I was working 2 jobs and could barely afford my house, I began looking for a dog. Less than a week later I found a couple in Alexandria who had a golden retriever that had given birth to a mixed litter of puppies. The culprit the lab daddy next door. There were 3 puppies left - a male and two females. I knew I wanted a female. So I went out to look and see. One of the females was bright and interactive, came right up to me and exhibited all the behaviour they look for in choosing guide dogs. The perfect dog......for someone else.
I am not really drawn to perfection, but prefer things that are beautifully broken. The other little female skulked around the edges of the pen and seemed afraid of her own shadow. Just like that I lost my heart to this little dog who comfortably fit in my hand. I took her home with me where she seemed to fade. We went to the vet and found that she was riddled with worms. What followed after that could only be bourn in love because it is so dis-gus-ting! I sat on the kitchen floor and hand fed her, droppered water and medicine into her mouth, cleaned up the spaghetti she passed (to this day, I am not a fan). She got better, stronger, began to romp and terrorize the cat the way a puppy should and life felt righted.
I moved the bed back into the bedroom around this time. But the dog slept on the floor on her own bed in the corner of the bedroom. Part of discipline according to the puppy books. I slept better with her there. She soon began sleeping on the bed and I started sleeping through the night. The training manual got thrown in the trash. Whatever those events had been seemed to stop. Or at least they became less intrusive. Many nights I would wake at 3AM to Nara standing on the foot of the bed staring at a place on the wall just to the left of the cursed window. Growling low in her throat. Hackles raised. Attention fixed on that one spot. Guarding her turf. Protecting her pack.
Whatever that was never came through again as long as she was there. Even when she was old and frail and couldn't sleep on the bed, she maintained a presence in the bedroom keeping my dreams safe. Keeping me safe. She is well missed on this side of the veil and well loved on the other where she remains busy still working as my protector among other things she is charged to do.
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