It Haunted Me With The Constant Tapping On The Bedroom Wall
But I wasn’t the one in trouble…
“Mum, something is moving inside the bedside table,” my son shouted in panic one evening.
I lifted my head from the book I was reading before falling asleep and rushed into his bedroom. Soon enough, I heard it too. Something was shuffling around in the cabinet.
“Impeccable timing,” I thought. It was 11.30 pm.
Who wouldn’t want to spend the night staring at a piece of furniture they’re scared to touch?
“We have a mouse,” I stated and started to wreck my knackered brain to come up with ideas, which was a bad idea. It was well past my bedtime, and I felt as perky as a middle-aged should after 8:00 pm.
The first point of call was Rupert, a long-term family friend. Surely, he’ll excuse the bother -he always did-, so I texted him and repeated “sorry” eighteen times.
Apologies, my friend, I thought. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was as desperate as one could get.
After a nerve-wracking five seconds, my phone pinged.
“I’d help, but I’m in Spain,” he replied. My heart instantly sank. That’s far from England right now.
We stared at the nightstand, my son waiting for me to make a move. Fair expectation — I’m the adult, after all. So, I weighed my options.
I could open the drawer and stand by with a bin bag — ready to catch the beast when it jumped out.
Or I could push something in front of the furniture and seal it airtight with whatever was inside.
The latter sounded more attractive and didn’t require room rearrangement.
Bingo!
I checked the drawers were shut tight and told my son to get his pillow.
“Where are we going?”- he asked, curious.
“Don’t get too excited” I nodded toward our destination. Next door.
My son slept in my room that night. Quite well, in fact. The upcoming rodent invasion did not seem to disturb his rest. Unlike him, I tossed and turned all night, listening out for squeaks, picturing the furniture being demolished overnight.
The next morning, I called the landlord and asked him to come over. “There’s something in the nightstand,” I told him and used the word “rodent” to make my message more impactful.
I’ll do the same when my shower needs fixing. He turned up on my doorstep pronto, with some reinforcement.
“Hey, thanks so much for coming,” I said and plastered a meek smile on my face as if I were throwing a party instead of carrying out pre-pest control.
I didn’t impress them.
Before long the two of them dragged my nightstand down the stairs, through the living room, straight out on the patio, and dumped it on the floor, looking temporarily relieved.
Temporarily.
Jasper -my landlord- took a deep breath, and pulled the top drawer open, while simultaneously jumping out of the way.
We jumped with him, as though a mouse could threaten our lives.
Nothing moved.
“Come on, I know you’re in there” he encouraged the intruder, and we held our breath. The suspenseful music of Jaws played in my head.
The mouse didn’t come forward.
At this point, he poked the old Nokia phone box on top of my decade-old bank statements, his fingers barely touching the papers, like they were plagued.
They were plagued.
But there was not a soul amidst the mess, apart from a tiny spider that started to slowly climb out of its nook
We watched in silence as it wove its web to help it descend from the heights and land on the ground safely.
He wasn’t our guy, so the search continued.
Jasper carried out the same procedure on all drawers.
Open and jump. Open and jump. We did the exercise with him. We were in this together.
However, after a thorough search through my bank statements, coloured pencils, and spare masks from 2020, we failed to find the mouse. The rat. The shark. Or anything at all capable of causing all that noise.
But the exercise did make me realize one thing. My child’s bedside table was full of my rubbish.
Jasper shook his head and established that there was nothing to fear.
It wasn’t his bedside table.
However, I did feel more confident and was hoping that whatever had made the sound wasn’t located inside the property.
Until the rumble started again. This time it was tapping, and shuffling. Constant, and angrier than before.
We listened out. It felt like Deja Vu. The knocking was coming from the wall behind the cabinet.
“Could it be a ghost mum?” my son whispered, as if he’d read my mind.
He wasn’t joking. We had our fair share of weird “happenings” in this house.
“Maybe it’s the man with the hat in the corner. You know, the one you saw when you were a toddler” I whispered back and squinted my eyes for increased effect.
It did work. He chucked a book at me.
The next morning, I phoned the landlord again and requested that a hole be made in the wall. Or an extortionist is called, whichever they saw fit.
We can’t sleep with the constant fluttering and whatever it is in there must come out.
The reinforcement, called Hugo from the previous day turned up three days later, with a hammer in his hand.
He did look a bit scary, but sleep deprivation had dampened my senses. I left him to dismantle the room.
It seemed like he knew what he was doing. If he didn’t, he was good at pretending. The house echoed from banging and after what sounded like a wrecking ball just swung into the bedroom, he called me to show his handiwork.
I was speechless.
Not because Hugo impressed me with his work, but because the air was filled with black dust that gradually settled on every surface in the room.
And in my lungs.
Trying not to breathe while choking at the same time, I walked through the sooty fog to inspect the gap Hugo had pounded in the wall. It was the moment of truth.
As I kneeled down, I glared at an eye peeping out from the wall cavity.
“Are you the ghost that was haunting me?” I asked casually.
It kept staring at me, without blinking. Like, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for five days. Where have you been?”
“A pigeon,” said Hugo, refreshing my memory in case I was suffering from temporary amnesia.
It wouldn’t have surprised me. I was ready to kill in exchange for some sleep.
How did the bird even get in there in the first place? I wondered. There was only one path leading to this point. The chimney.
We heard a knock on the door. It was Jasper, the landlord. And Hugo, — familiar with the place by now- went downstairs to let him in.
He was on his way to being promoted to butler.
When I looked up, Jasper stood in the doorway, holding a black bin bag, his sleeves rolled up.
Ready for extermination.
“Careful,” I said (unhelpfully) as he approached the hole, not quite sure who I addressed my warning to. Jasper or the pigeon.
He put one hand in the bag, dove into the hole, and grabbed the bird gently, folding the rest of the bag over and coaxing the scared soul inside.
With all the flapping and tug-o-war, I wasn’t sure who scored, but I heard a victorious growl.
I suspected Jasper, unless pigeons can make a baritone sound.
Turned out, our bird was safely captured, squirming in protest in the bin bag.
We hoorayed and clapped at his bravery. Well…I clapped.
He rushed downstairs into the garden to let the animal out, which I thought might need medical attention.
But no. Our casualty was not up for a doctor’s visit.
As soon as the bag flung open, it took off. He flew towards freedom, away from the sooty wall cavity.
And the chimney that should’ve been covered a long time ago.
We sighed in relief, especially me. We didn’t have to live with a ghost, after all. And peace was finally reinstated.
The only thing left to do was rebuild the wall in the bedroom.
