About halfway through the harrowing drive to the farm (my dad has a tendency to drive like we're behind in a rally race just to annoy me), we pulled into a rural gas station to get some last-minute snacks and drinks to tie us over for the night. As is habit for me, I put on a KN95.
"Y'know, it's against the law to wear that." Dad remarked.
"Huh?" I scowled in confusion.
"That mask," Dad clarified, "You can't wear that into this gas station."
"I'll do whatever the fuck I want," I rolled my eyes, "I have a civic duty to outrageously declare that I think covid might be a problem."
"Damn, that's radical!" Dad sneered, "Pretty soon you'll be advocating for free basic healthcare for everyone."
"You say that like I am not already basically a communist at this point." I snickered.
Inside the gas station, I stocked up on mostly junk food with a few Slim Jims and enough caffeine to kill a horse, while Dad got us a little pack of frosted doughnuts and a couple apples. Amazingly, we were able to purchase our stuff without being harassed by the fellow (maskless) customers, though we were stared at a little bit funny. Maybe, it was the camo I was wearing that saved us from harassment that night.
The rest of the drive was spent in silence. The closer we got to the farm, the higher the tension in the air rose. Fear made its presence known deep within me once again, though I swallowed it the best way I knew how. Still, I became jumpy and wide-eyed again, while a knot in my throat also began to form. The Country Oldies station was playing on the radio, and I had to change it to the comedy station to avoid bursting into tears. But, that hardly helped. I was already scared and depressed, unsure of what I'd find within the farmhouse.
Prior to the trip, my grandma Connie gave me a set of booklets she had as her mother died of cancer. Since I still had minimal information on my grandma's health, I read all through the booklets, which all had detailed, useful information regarding hospice care and the dying experience. Also, just by searching terms like "near death stories" and "hospice" on Youtube (which, by the way, is extremely risky), I came across lectures from a neuroscientist called Dr. Peter Fenwick, which further put me at ease about my grandma. She may be sick. She may be weak. She may be 100% dependent on others. But, she's at peace and in no pain.
Dad drifted onto grandma's driveway as I held onto my seat for dear life, and then skidded to a stop in front of the granary.
"You came in a little hot there!" I raised my eyebrows.
"A little?" Dad laughed.
"Yeah, just a little. Just a little..."
We stepped out into the cold country night. The smell of cattle permeated the still air. In the black skies above, the arm of the Milky Way was clearly visible through the breaks in the clouds. All was silent, except for the quiet hoofbeats of the cattle as they shuffled in the dark.
I grabbed my bags and cautiously made my way towards the old farmhouse. I let my old man go into the house before me, and I spent more time than I needed to take off my boots and coat. Dad made his way into the living room, where he was greeted by his oldest brother, my uncle Wade. I felt a little better knowing uncle Wade was there, and like usual, uncle Wade gave me a huge bear hug when I emerged into the living room.
"Gramma's sleepin'," Wade began to explain in his thick Minnesotan accent, "She doesn't have her hearin' aids in, so she can't hear shit. Don't be worried about making too much noise. Just get settled and sleep. Everythin's set up for y'all in the living room. Maya, the couch is yours. Brother, you get the air mattress."
The men continued to talk about grandma as I got set up on the living room couch. Everything within the house was exactly the same as it had always been, though it smelled very strongly of cinnamon thanks to the cinnamon candles that were lit in every room. The house was also much cleaner than I remember it being. The family had clearly been hard at work making the place as comfortable and homey as possible. However, they failed to rid the house of its eeriness. If anything, that aspect of the house was amplified. It was like the house was holding its breath, watching my every move.
I shook off the strange feelings as a mixture of grief and wacky EMFs from crossed wires within the walls, and finished unpacking and getting ready for bed. The whole time, the house was silent, besides the muffled conversation between the men in the kitchen. When my ears began to ring from the prolonged silence, I turned on the TV to break the silence. Reruns of my favorite show, Ridiculousness, were on MTV all night long.
"Oh hell ya..." I mumbled to myself as I got comfortable on the floor in front of the TV, excited to laugh my ass off at all the stupid shit people did on that show.
At some point, I fell asleep, though not totally. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night, and the guys were still up in the kitchen, talking about life. I decided to get up and join them there, not to talk or really even listen, but just to be present. As I sat there, eyes glazed over, the sound of footsteps above us interrupted the guys' conversation. We listened for a moment as the heavy, slow bootsteps paced the hallway above us. They were obviously human. Too loud for a wild animal, and too long and methodical to be the house settling.
"Uhhhh..." I whispered, "What is that?"
The men stared at me in silence with concern on their faces as the footsteps continued, then abruptly stopped above the main room. Seconds after the footsteps ended, the men wandered into the main room, with me trailing close behind them. However, I stopped in the main room, refusing to go any further. My dad checked on grandma to see if she was awake and needed anything, and Wade headed upstairs to find what could've caused the very distinct noise of adult footsteps above us.
I was the most useless. I just stood in the main room by the cast iron stove still and silent as a tree, ready to dive out a window if anything even remotely startling happened. Thankfully (or perhaps not), nothing was found. Not even a mouse.
We regrouped in the living room. Grandma was fast asleep, and nothing was upstairs. It was just us. I began to ponder in my mind if I really wanted to stay the night at that farmhouse, or if I wanted to just crash on my uncle Wes's couch instead. But, since I knew nobody was in the house who wasn't supposed to be there (as far as we knew), I figured I ought to stay. Hopefully, that's all we would hear that night.
Well. It wasn't. All throughout the night, my sleep was interrupted by all sorts of weird noises, from more footsteps upstairs to knocking noises like someone was tapping their fist on the walls and doors. There were also much more explainable noises, such as the sounds of coyotes yipping outside, and the creaking of the house as it settled. But, the human-like noises were very different from the noises the old farmhouse has always made, and it was clear that there were no animals or other people upstairs.
To be honest, as unsettling as some of those noises were (especially the footsteps pacing the rooms and halls upstairs), I knew having a possible haunting on our hands was a hell of a lot better than having a wild animal rummaging around the boxes in the upstairs bedrooms. An ethereal being can't really hurt living people or cause too much damage. However, an animal, especially one that was big enough to make so much noise, would be so much scarier.
I'm still not quite sure what we would've done had my uncle discovered a frightened, cornered raccoon perched on top of a mountain of antiques upstairs. What I can say is that it would've been a harrowing experience. Much worse than seeing my great-great-great-grandpa Johann reading a novel in an old rocking chair.
