Tag: summer

Goosebumps and tingles. Goosebumps ran up both my arms and tingled around my neck as I tried to see out the bedroom window. At first, all I could make out in the dark were raindrops trickling down the panes of glass.  It was summer, and the window was cracked open about an inch at the bottom.  I could hear the wind moving the limbs of the big elm a few feet away. During a lightning flash I saw the top of the tree swaying to and fro.

Beside me in the feather bed, Grandma was beginning to snore. She had just finished scaring me half witless with the story of the three “Billy Goats Gruff.”  I didn’t know exactly what a troll looked like, but I was fairly certain it would eat a skinny little redheaded boy alive. And so I lay awake, listening to the rain and imagining things out there in the rainy dark. Things that hid behind elm trees and grunted into the wind. Things just outside the window, with only glass between us. Continue reading “Under the Haystack, Fast Asleep”