THE MONSTER THAT SNORED

Rick and I were sitting in our living room watching our favorite television show, “Ghost Stories”. We both liked being scared. Being scared made my stomach do flip, flops and my imagination race with the glorious images of monsters. Green and red monsters with rotting, lumpy frog skin and arms that dragged the floor with giant claws. Monsters with sharp, disgustingly yellow fangs jutting out from their row of upper teeth like a saber tooth tiger, only bigger! The drool dripping, creeping down the fangs slowly to land with a “SPLAT” at their feet, and yellow and green lizard eyes staring at you, as if sizing you up for a tasty snack.

This particular evening was pretty special for me. It was the night before Halloween when all sorts of weird things were supposed to happen. At least, that’s what Rick’s friend told me.

This morning Rick and I were playing in our tree house, built by our own hands and I was darned proud of what we had both accomplished together. Anyway, we were reading comic books when all of a sudden Hawk-eyes shows up and joins us. We are all talking about Halloween and all the candy we were going to haul in when Hawk-eyes leans over and whispers in my ear. Well, it was more like spit some really scary stuff into my ears. Hawk-eyes always spit at you when he talked if he was real excited about something.

Anyways, he whispers to me about it being Halloween and all tomorrow, and how he figures he should tell me what to expect, and all. He was always adding “and all” to everything he said too. He was trying to be Mr. Cool and make you believe he really did know it all, but it was hard to take him seriously when spit flew off his lips every time he pronounced the f-f-f or sh-sh-sh sound. I turned and gave him my serious look so he’d know I could handle what he had to say. After all I was a big guy now, invited into the tree house with them! I couldn’t act scared.

Then Hawk-eyes tells me that really weird things happen on Halloween night. He tells me I was probably too small to remember last year, and all. I may be one year older but my memory is not that bad. He tells me there are these certain monsters that like to hide in the dark shadows of street corners, or crouch down low behind trash cans, or crawl up under stairs. They only come out on Halloween and they are just waiting in the dark for a chance to get their slimy claws on me and my candy! He said all of this so seriously it was eerie. When I glanced over at Rick he had that serious look on his face that said “believe him brother this is really real”. So I figured Hawk-eyes must be playing it straight with me. I didn’t remember being scared last year but really happy with all the candy I scored, but then I was really little then. So, I decided if they were brave enough then so was I even though I had goose bumps and not from getting spit wet either. I didn’t get to hear anymore, not that I wanted to, cause mom called us in for dinner, thank goodness.

Later I got really perturbed and shouted “oh RATS” cause the show I’d wanted to see was almost over and I’d been so busy thinking about what Hawk-eyes had said earlier that I missed the ending. Thirty minutes can sure go by fast. Rick suddenly shoved his nose up against mine, hard enough to put a wrinkle in it. He made his eyes get real big, scratching the air with bent claw-fingers. Then he grins real big and says we should turn out the lights and tell ghost stories, making his ghoulish face go from side to side, his nose still touching mine.

“Okay!” I shouted, jumping up so fast I made Rick fall backwards onto the coffee table. He landed with a kind of soft grunt. I thought I was dead for sure. Before he could say anything, or take a swing at me, I ran up the stairs yelling back over my shoulder that I would grab a blanket and flashlight. My brother calls back to me that he’ll catch the lights.

We each ran off to complete our assigned tasks. A few minutes later, huddled under the blanket, with only the flashlight, Rick starts telling one of his famous “scare the pants off you” ghost stories.

Right in the middle of one of the scariest parts of the story, I heard something. It’s sort of hard to explain. It sounded kinda like a growling, buzzing sound. I managed to squeak out a “Shhhh,” between my chattering teeth and asked Rick if he’d heard it too.

Rick frowned at me. I could see he was gearing up to chew on me for interrupting him. Then suddenly, the sound came again. A long growling, buzzing noise that made the hair on my arms stand on end. This time, Rick heard it too. We both listened while huddling close to each other under the blanket. I didn’t feel too bad about being scared cause Rick was too. The noise seemed to fill the room and grow louder and louder. Then, it would cease and become a soft whisper, then grow louder and louder again!

I tried not to, but I couldn’t help shaking. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I was really scared. I just knew it was a MONSTER! There was a MONSTER in the house! I shouted for mom or dad hoping they would hear and come running. Of course, they didn’t. They thought we were still telling ghost stories to each other.

Rick “frog knuckled” me in the arm. I squealed rubbing my arm. Well it really did hurt. Big brothers were good at frog knuckles, I knew I was learning from the best.

Rick told me to quit being such a baby. He was so confident while I was shaking in my shoes. He got all puffed up in the chest you know, and boasts to me that we would find any monster hiding in our house. I just had to follow behind him. He liked to call me little brother instead of my name. Made me kinda feel better that he was taking the lead, but not real good. I had no choice. I had to follow him. I couldn’t let big brother think I was whimpy when it came to monsters. Even if it meant being eaten by a green, lumpy frog-skinned monster with saber tooth tiger size teeth! I had to do it. I just had to. For all the “little brothers” out there.

Legs shaking, I followed Rick through the house. We looked in our bedroom closet upstairs. No monsters. We looked in mom and dad’s closet. Nope, no monsters. We looked in the kitchen pantry. Nope, there weren’t any in there. Although at this point I was wishing we had found him there cause then maybe he’d be too full of cereal and stuff to eat me and Rick. No monsters were to be found lurking in any of the closets.

Next, we checked under the stairs in the living room. We could still hear the growling, buzzing noise and it seemed closer. I figured we’d for sure find the monster crouching down low, tucked back in the far corner where the stairs met the floor, waiting to JUMP out at us. I could feel the sweat trickle down my cheek. It was dark and filled with cobwebs. Just the sort of place a monster would like. Rick was in front of me, so I gave him a little nudge. I must have pushed harder then I meant to cause next thing I know, Rick’s sprawled on the floor under the stairs. I was ready to scream as loud as my little lungs would cause I thought at any moment a big green claw was going to reach down and get my big brother! But, nope….no monster was there either.

Rick turned and glared at me and I thought he was going to punch me again. He didn’t though. He probably didn’t want to let on that he was a little spooked too.

Then he tells me in a stern big brother voice there is one other place we have to check before we call it quits. Frightened by the look on my big brothers face, I could barely whisper the big question, “w-wh-ere?”

Well guess where that some place was? Under the house! Of course he tells me not to worry, he won’t let anything happen to me. Oh yeah, like that made me feel better….a big green monster against my brother. I didn’t think he’d come out the winner. Grabbing me by the hand, Rick pulls my protesting, shaking body out the front door.

Rick whispers that he can still hear it but now it’s softer and I whisper back agreeing. Then, like all little brothers, I pleaded with Rick to go get mom and dad looking up at him with real big scared looking eyes and stretching out the word pleeeease. It didn’t work.

Nope it didn’t. Rick says we have to be the ones to look under the porch. Of course I want to know why and he comes right back in my face and explains how me and him are small and can fit under the porch easily. My knees are knocking so bad but then he tells me something that would really make me scared. He says how mom and dad couldn’t squeeze under if they tried and if they did, they might get stuck! Then what would we do? By the time we got someone to help us, and who by the way would even believe us, mom and dad would be gonners! Now who could argue that logic.

So here we are taking deep breaths like we were going to dive under water, then we squatted down by the stairs and tried to see under them. But it was no use. Rick wants me to follow him and crawl under the stairs so we can get a good look at what’s under the house. Biting my lip hard to keep it from quivering, I followed Rick underneath the graying, weather-worn stairs.

The growling, buzzing noise was really loud now. I could barely bring myself to follow the beam of the flashlight as Rick ran it back and forth under the house. Rick’s hand was shaking so badly it was kinda hard to see anything except a glimpse here of cobwebs, a pile of something in one of the corners, a shredded piece of material.

Upon seeing the shredded material, my thoughts immediately turned to images of kids being dragged, arms flying and legs kicking under the house for a monster’s snack.

Grabbing Rick’s arm, I barely managed to squeak out three words, “no monster here!” But Rick wasn’t ready to give up yet. We could both still hear the growling, buzzing noise. He keeps right on stabbing with his flashlight into the dark, the light beam lands on Scout, our beagle. Scout is sleeping, snoozing and snoring really loud. His body shoved up against the air duct that leads into the living room of our house.

We both yell simultaneously that it’s not a monster, our stomachs heaving gusty sighs of relief. It was Scout snoring in front of the vent! I was so relieved I almost wet my pants.

We both laughed, frogging each other in the arms. Then racing each other into the house, we called to mom and dad, yelling at the top of our lungs about the snoring “monster” living under our house. And I figured, I’d never as long as I lived forget this night before Halloween, and the adventure I had with my big brother hunting the snoring monster we found under our house.

THE END