Visitation

After a comfortable, lazy night at home, I’m in bed, drifting off to sleep.

I hear two loud thuds.

This is not unusual. We have cats. I listen intently for two or three minutes before I relax and doze again.

And then I hear the voices.

At first, I think this is a sort of auditory hallucination. Years ago, a friend of mine demonstrated a spooky trick with an ordinary oscillating fan: turn it on, settle down, listen … and, with a little concentration, you can hear what sound like whispering voices embedded in the white noise. We have an air filter in our bedroom; I’ve heard “voices” issue from it before.

I start to relax again.

Then, much louder, right outside the bedroom window: a man and woman arguing. They scuffle. Someone hushes them.

Clyde is already sound asleep. Whispering his name startles him; he jerks awake. “There’s someone outside our window,” I explain. I want to turn on the light, but stop myself. “People fighting. Call the police.”

There are many more voices now: a group of five or six people. They begin banging on our door. “Get up!” one of them shouts. “Wake up!”

We start a frenzied search for the phone. Clyde seizes his cell phone; dialing 911 on it gets us the Ridgeland — not the Jackson — police. Useless.

The pounding on our front door continues: forcefully, insistently. Now the group starts singing, drawing out vowels and banging on the door in time to the music: “RuDOLPH the RED nosed REINdeeeeer … HAD a very SHINY nooooose.”

I make my way to the office to the speakerphone and dial 911. “There’s a group of people outside my door,” I say. “They’re pounding on it. Please send officers right away.”

Clyde, who has been looking for the wireless phone handsets, calls from the hallway: “They just drove off.”

And, just like that, they’re gone. We turn on all the exterior lights and peer out the windows. After all the noise, the silence and stillness seem almost sinister.

Ten minutes later, a police officer calls. “Are they still there?”

“No.”

In ten more minutes, a polite patrolman comes to our door. “Were they black or white?”

The first comment that comes to my mind: They sounded white. I decide that’s prejudiced. “We didn’t see them.”

“Okay,” the officer says. “Probably drunk kids. I expect we’ll get more calls like this tonight. Thanks for calling us.”

Now, an hour later, the whole incident seems unreal. We sit at our computers, lights on, no longer sleepy at all.