The Midnight Sounds
Written February 2003
UNFINISHED
It was a rainy, summer night.
My fellow writers and I were returning to our dorm from our evening
class session. I was soaking wet when I reached the pergola, the halfway
point between Tatum Arts Center and Meyran Hall. Those who had thought
to bring and umbrella to class had done so, so they were dry; for that
I was jealous.
I welcomed the shelter of the pergola’s roof. Though a bit of water
came through the vines that ran around and through the wooden structure
forming a closed roof, the rain was far less heavy than it was on the
path, though, and I shivered as I stepped back onto the path.
Eager to reach Meyran and the warmth, I started
running, ignoring the fact that we couldn’t go in until everyone had
arrived. The other girls seemed to take their cue from me, because they,
too, picked up the pace. We reached Meyran in less than a minute.
Twelve thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds met Donna, our RA, at the steps
leading to Meyran. We were wet, tired, and ready to go in and change
into dry clothes. We were the first group to arrive, and after Donna
made sure we were all together, she used her key-card and let us in.
We climbed the two flights of stairs wearily. I
reached room 36 first, and opened the door for April and me. April was
one of the girls with an umbrella, so she simply dumped her stuff and
went off to the room of one of her friends. I closed the door and
changed into the one non-summery outfit I had: long pants and a
sweatshirt.
I sat down to write. Since arriving at Hood College
to attend the Center for Talented Youth camp, I had kept a daily
journal. I was taking the Writing the Expository Essay course, so my
writing was getting better. For each day’s entry, I wrote about what we
had done in class, what I thought about what we did, and anything else
that went on that day. I had just finished when Donna called for a hall
meeting.
It was just an ordinary day at Hood’s CTY camp.
Ordinary class, ordinary weather—though it was the first rainy day of
that session, it was not all that unusual for the area—, and an ordinary
hall meeting.
It nine after ten by the time the hall meeting was
over, and all of us girls went to change for bed. I, as usual, changed
in the bathroom. When I got back to my room, it was time for lights off.
That night, I kept thinking. I often do that at
night, and it keeps me from sleeping. I think, and I fidget. The radio’s
too loud or too soft. It’s too hot or too cold. Did I forget to do
something? What will we do tomorrow? What’s going on at home? All of
these are common thoughts. That night, I was having more of them than
usual. It reached midnight and I was still awake.
“April, are you awake?” I asked. She, too, took awhile to
fall asleep.
“Uh huh,” I heard a murmured reply.
At that time, I heard something weird. It was coming
from my left, where the stairs were. The sound was soft, but loud enough
that we couldn’t possibly miss it. It sounded like—footsteps. Many
footsteps running down the stairs. And—screaming. The screaming of
children, around ten-years-old or so. What was this? Children that young
didn’t attend CTY, and there was no possible reason for anyone to
be up at this hour. The footsteps and the screaming continued. I was
wide-awake and alert. I had never heard anything that scary before—it
just didn’t happen to plain kids like me. I had heard ghost stories, of
course, but I had never believed them. I believed them at that point. I
believed in them full heartedly. What else could this sound—these
footsteps and screaming—be?
The sound stopped. “Rose? What was that?” April
asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“Do you think… do you think the story’s true?”
I knew what story she was talking about. All of us
did. There’s a story that Hood had once been a site for the younger CTY
students. One of the RAs was horrible to her kids, and in response, one
night the kids went crazy, running up and down the stairs screaming in
the middle of the night, waking all the others in Meyran Hall. They kept
it up the following night. Later, the kids in that RA group went on a
field trip for their course and got into a car accident and died. Since
then, at the same time as the kids had gone crazy, people who go to
CTY’s summer camp Hood campus could hear them faintly screaming.
“I had always thought it was just a story,” I said. “I’ve
never heard anyone say that she has heard it, though we are not usually
up at this hour of night. Maybe it is true. Maybe we just heard those
crazy kids.”
“Maybe… I wonder if the others heard it?” April’s voice
indicated that it was more of a question than a comment.
“We can ask tomorrow, I guess.”
“Night, Rose.”
“Night, April.”
The next day, we writers were all eating breakfast
at the same table in Coblentz Hall, for once. I interrupted their meal
of French toast by saying, “Did any of you hear anything strange last
night?”
“Like what?” Jessica asked.
“Like screaming and kids running down the stairs,” April
said. “Around midnight.”
“Why would any of us be up that late? Writing leaves me so
tired that I’m out within five minutes of hitting my pillow.”
“Some people don’t fall asleep that quickly, Cathy.”
April said. “Some people can stay awake. To some people
writing is not tiring.”
“Cool it, April,” Donna put in, stopping her. “What’s this
about screaming and running kids?”
“We couldn’t sleep last night. April and I couldn’t. At
midnight, we heard children screaming and running down the stairs.” I
explained.
“Sounds like… the ghost.” Donna said with an eerie tone in
her voice.
“Is the story really true?” April asked. “Did it really
happen?”
“That I know of, yes. That was seventeen years ago,
though. I wasn’t even going here yet.”
“So you are saying,” Jessica asked, “that we are really,truly
living in a haunted dorm?”
“I guess so, yes.”
“I don’t believe it,” Cathy said. “There are no such
things as ghosts.”
“I don’t believe in them, either,” said Ashley.
“I don’t know if I do or not,” I said. “I never have
before, but now I think I do. I didn’t believe it before because I had
never heard it before. I never believe it until I see or hear it myself.”
At that point, the conversation was cut short. We heard a
yelling of, “Per-gola!” That was the drama instructor’s way of saying it
was time for the students to go to their meeting places to head off to
their classrooms. We were late, and we hurried off to dump our trays
and headed off to the light post that was our meeting place.
The day was over. Classes were done with, the night’s hall
meeting was done with, visiting other rooms was done with. April and I
were in room 36, right before lights out.
“Rose?”
“What?”
“Do you think it really was ghosts?”
“I don’t know. I think we should find out.”
“But how?”
“Well, we heard them at midnight, right?”
“Right. So?”
“And they are said to do that every night, right?”
“Right. So?”
“What if we were to stay up again tonight? That would prove
whether or not it was ghosts, wouldn’t it?”
“Right! Let’s do it.”
That night, we tried to stay up. We tried, but we failed.
I guess the writing wore us out, just as it did the other girls. We
weren’t as resistant to it as we tried to act to be. The next night we
tried to stay up again, but we fell asleep.
The night after was Friday. That was traditional night for
sleepovers. Each Friday, the RAs allowed their girls, or boys, to sleep
in one—if they could fit—or two rooms. We could sleep in our own rooms,
but we prefer to take this privilege. It’s fun. We all gather in one
room, and light’s out is moved to eleven o’clock. We talk, eat, and do
various other things until lights out. The RAs think we go to sleep
then, but we really don’t. We stay up talking. We always seem to drop
before midnight, though. It’s an unofficial rule of CTY at Hood. You
fall asleep before midnight.
April and I had a sleepover in our room that night.
Jessica, Cathy, and Ashley all came to it.
“Anyone want to try something tonight?” I asked at a quarter to
eleven.
“What?” Jessica asked. “What’s there to try that hasn’t been
done?”
“Waiting for ghosts,” I said in a spooky voice.
“What?” Ashley said.
“It’s something we’ve been trying,” April put in. “We’ve been
trying to stay up until midnight, to see if it was really a ghost. We
keep falling asleep, though. We figure that if all of us try, we’ll
finally be able to do it.”
“You won’t hear anything,” Cathy said.
“It’s worth a try…” Jessica said. “Who knows? Maybe it is
something.”
“I don’t think so…” Ashley said.
“I’m not doing it.” Cathy refused.
“I will!” Jessica said.
“I’ll do it, but only because it gives us more time to talk,”
Ashley agreed.
“Please, Cathy?” I begged. “Please stay up with us?”
“No.”
“For me?” April said.
Cathy gave her a nasty look. “All right…”
We stayed up giggling and talking, keeping each
other awake. Twice we had to hush as Donna walked the halls to make sure
all was peaceful. When April’s clock changed to show that it was one
minute until midnight, we got quiet. A pin dropping would have been a
nuclear explosion to our ears. All we could hear was the clock as the
time ticked by. Eleven fifty-nine and fifty-five seconds. Eleven
fifty-nine and fifty-six seconds. Eleven fifty-nine and fifty-seven
seconds. Eleven fifty-nine and fifty-eight seconds. Eleven fifty-nine
and fifty-nine seconds. Midnight.
I heard it. The same hurried footsteps going down
the stairs. The same screaming children. It was exactly as it had been
on Tuesday night, only a little louder.
I looked at the girls seated on the floor around me.
April looked smug, almost as if she knew we would hear the sounds again.
Jessica seemed pleasantly surprised, judging by the smile on her face.
Ashley looked shocked, and Cathy stared at the wall through which the
sounds were coming from with a look of disbelief.
I don’t know how I felt. It was eerie, seemingly more so
than the last time. It had frozen me. Time had seemed to stop, the sound
all around me. It was downright creepy. Why didn’t I feel like this the
last time? I thought. The only reason I could come up with was the
radio. It had been playing on Tuesday night, and causing a sound to
distort the ghostly sounds, in a way.
“Well, now we know,” I said. “The ghost is real.”
THIS IS WHERE THE STORY STOPS. SORRY,
GUYS. I DON’T HAVE ANYWHERE FOR IT TO GO.