Things That Go Bump in the Neighbor's Blueberry Patch Past Midnight

A clear conscience is a great comfort. Especially, in the dark.

My best friend, Keith Clarkston*, often slept over with my brother and I in the tent we pitched in the back yard each summer. As Keith lived the next street over, it wasn't far to come. He would bring his sleeping bag, his pillow, his flashlight, his pajamas, and a candy bar or two to eat should he get the nibbles in the wee hours.

He would arrive early, a hardened, woods-tested, mountain man, a warrior of the wilds. His bravado and swagger assured us all that any past cowardice, such as being afraid of the dark, was a thing of his now-forgotten infancy. Tonight, for the first time ever, he would actually make it to morning without freaking and bolting for home.

The first night Keith chickened out, I thought it was a fluke. To humor him, I suggested we camp inside underneath my Mom's grand piano. He indicated this was an acceptable alternative, so we dragged our sleeping bags in and installed ourselves beneath the ivories. We should have stuck it out in the back yard. If I hadn't caved and come inside with him, perhaps the seeds of morbid horror would not have become planted so deeply in his quivering soul. Once there, however, they proved impossible to dislodge. Like nightshade, they bloomed in the dark.

I'm not sure why sleeping outdoors with my brother and I rattled Keith. We tried to keep him entertained with interesting stories to divert his mind, but it was of little use.

There was the story about THE GREEN RAT our older cousin had first told us in the dark behind our Grandparent's house at a family reunion a few years earlier. It was all about the haunted mansion, and the three kids that went inside it, and the door closing behind them and locking them in. As they wandered around inside exploring, they found the big painting of the Great Green Rat hidden in a closet, eyeing three pieces of cheese. That first night, when the flashlights turned off, there had been a terrible roaring snarl. When they turned on their flashlights again, ONE OF THE KIDS WAS GONE. The next morning, the other two went back to the closet and looked at that horrible, huge rat. ONE PIECE OF CHEESE WAS GONE, and ONE DROP OF BLOOD WAS DRIPPING FROM THE RAT’S FANG! The next night the same thing happened exactly, with the second kid disappearing. The second piece of cheese had disappeared from the picture, and a second drip of blood appearing on the fang of the painted rat. On the final night, THERE WAS ONLY ONE KID LEFT. The batteries of his flashlight were blinking and about to give out, and actually DID GIVE OUT! So that last kid lit a match, and made a torch, and went to look at the picture of the Green Rat again. It glared at him with glittering eyes, so he threw his torch at the picture. THE PICTURE VANISHED IN A BLINDING FLASH, and there was only a tiny squeaking green rat running about on the floor. The boy stomped on it. When he did, the locked door to the mansion flew open, and so he was safe and feeling so much better. Until he took off his coat when he was about to go to bed that night back in his bedroom at home, AND FOUND A PIECE OF CHEESE IN HIS POCKET, AND A DROP OF BLOOD ON HIS PILLOW!

There was also the terrible tale of the couple who had heard of the MURDERER WITH A METAL HOOK IN PLACE OF HIS MISSING HAND, who had been terrorizing the couples who parked to smooch on Lover's Lane. A couple were up in their car kissing and stuff and THEY HEARD A NOISE THAT SCARED THEM. So they tried to turn on the car and get away, but they found they had LOST THE KEYS IN THE DARK when they were fooling around. They frantically fumbled in the dark, and finally found the keys in the crack in the back seat. They roared away into the night, laughing at how scared they had been--only to discover the next morning A HOOKED HAND HANGING FROM THE CAR DOOR'S LATCH!

Then there was the gruesome account of the man who ran out of gas on a ghastly stretch of lonely road, who pulled over to wait until morning. He locked himself in because, of course, A CEREAL KILLER HAD BEEN SEEN IN THAT VICINITY RECENTLY. So the traveler knew IT WASN'T SAFE. He dozed off for a little while slumped over his steering wheel, then woke with a start. What was that he heard? The tiniest of sounds came from the car’s roof DIRECTLY OVER THE MAN’S HEAD. It scritched. And scratched. He held his breath and listened. The sound stopped. His heart finally quit pounding and he was about to nod off again, when it scritched, then scratched again. ALL NIGHT LONG, THIS CONTINUED, until in sheer exhaustion, the stranded traveler fell asleep. He was wakened the next morning by the police pounding on his window. “GET OUT! GET OUT!” THEY CRIED. When he unlocked the door, they dragged him out. Then the policeman pointed up. There over his car HUNG THE BUTCHERED BODY OF ANOTHER VICTIM, tied and hanging from the limb of the tree above. Its curled and cold fingers reached down just far enough so A SINGLE DEAD FINGERNAIL could scritch and scratch AS THE CORPSE SLOWLY TWISTED IN THE BREEZE.

That story alone set any small sound of the night in a darker shade of blackness. Crickets chirped horribly. A dog barking in the distance was an omen of evil. The mere rustle of grass in the breeze signified ghosts passing in search of things they had lost and we might have inadvertently found, and which they now wanted back. A stray moth's fluttering wings on the canvas overhead buzzed like a madman's chainsaw. Even dead silence was proof zombie cereal killers were creeping silently forward to pounce, carrying boxes of Lucky Charms in their crooked, bloody fingers.

My brother and I were veterans in the standard spook stuff, the updated versions of stories surely told in the shadow of the pyramids as they were being built along the Nile. Somehow these tales always came to mind when we were lying safe in our sleeping bags, and had helped eat Keith’s candy bars, and our flashlights had been turned off for the night. Then they seeped out of us like water drips from ice. We could no more trace the connection between these stories and Keith’s unaccountable fear of the dark than a tobacco company doctor can link lung cancer with smoking Pall Malls. We only observed that every time Keith came for an overnighter in the back yard, we could count on him beginning to sink down into the Edgar Allen Poe-ish regions of sheer horror and madness long before dawn, no matter now many stories we told to divert his attention and ease his troubled mind.

One would think after a dozen failed attempts, Keith would give up and declare himself a permanent indoors man. But he never did. He was a hardy and hopeful soul. A few nights later, he'd ask to come over and sleep outdoors with us all over again.

One night when Keith camped over with us, we were fresh out of ghost stories. Then someone remembered the blueberry patch in the back yard of the man at the end of the street. We'd spotted it when we rode our bikes down that way earlier that afternoon. The thought of those luscious tart berries waiting for us made our mouths water. Grandpa told us of raiding watermelon patches in the South as a boy and cutting the hearts out of the big melons with a jack knife to eat right in the field. But in Washington State, our Northern growing seasons were generally too short for melons to thrive. They did provide excellent blueberry climate, however. We determined to uphold the traditions of boyhood and do a bit of raiding of our own with what was available and near at hand.

We pulled on our shoes and tiptoed down the dark roadway, past the sleeping houses with an occasional glow of a T.V. through the window. We'd have to be quiet. As late as it was, not everyone was asleep quite yet. As we neared the blueberry patch, we slowed and slunk into the shadows. In fact, we got down on our bellies and crawled the last hundred feet or so, listening carefully. We didn't want to set a stray dog to barking. We feared the owner of the patch might flick on his back porch flood lights and come blasting out to capture our pirate-hearted thieving carcasses. We well knew what we were engaged in was wrong. We learned that at our church where my watermelon-stealing-Grandpa took us to be instructed in the ways of God. Example trumps precept any day. Besides, how could we know true forgiveness if we never actually sinned?

I found myself among the low shrubs in the black of night, fingering tender blueberry twigs.

Ten minutes later I whispered, “Keith, have you found any?”

“No,” he breathed.

“Me neither,” wafted my brother's voice from the shadows beyond.

“Keep looking.”

We spent nearly an hour slinking on our bellies and feeling for forbidden fruit, but without success. It seems God had seen our evil ways, and hidden those luscious jeweled berries from us plundering pirate-hearted scum. We were groping in darkness and sin, but without any appreciable pleasures resulting. Finally, we gave up and withdrew as stealthily as we had come.

We made it back to our backyard tent in safety.

Then our consciences began smiting us. This was a new kind of terror, and it quite outdid mere ghost stories. It occurred to us with great force that WE HAD DONE WRONG. We had intended to STEAL WHAT DID NOT BELONG TO US. That was AGAINST ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the one right after “Do not commit idolatry with your neighbor’s wife”, whatever that meant. IF YOU BROKE ONE, we knew, YOU HAD BROKEN THEM ALL. A blueberry might not be so large a fruit as the Snake offered to Eve, but we’d all heard HOW THAT TURNED OUT.

We were certainly goners. WE HADN'T A HOPE. The fact we had never actually found a single berry didn't matter. GOD COULD SEE IN THE DARK, and He knew what was in our hearts. And OUR HEARTS WERE VERY DARK INDEED. We sat shivering in horror at the enormity of our crime. Our remembrances of religion had taken us as far as the “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God…” part. But not quite so far as the “…being freely justified by faith in Jesus blood” remedy. We were SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, and it was ALL OUR OWN FAULT.

We sank down into blind, black, mutual misery.

Suddenly, Keith leaped to his feet with a horrible wail. He charged out the tent door, nearly taking out the center pole when the toe of his shoe caught on the zipper flap at the bottom that was supposed to keep out the rain. He plowed through my Mom's prize irises. He careened off the garbage can Dad had set out by the street, leaving a dent we found the next morning. He set off on a lope for home, leaping such obstacles as presented themselves, and wailing his confessions to the dark skies. The Devil was on his track. He dare not look back. The cruel, creeping, craven shivers had struck with a vengeance.

Once Keiths's cries had died away in the echoing darkness, my brother and I muttered our own trembling bedtime prayers, begging for forgiveness, promising reform, hoping for mercy. We had no immunity against this variety of night terror.

The forgiving sun woke me at daybreak. It was a comfort to open my eyes and see the familiar ceiling of my bedroom above, and the light shining in through the curtains. Ghosts were one thing. God was another.

Next day, I rode my bike at the end of the road. I glanced over at the blueberry patch we'd slithered and slunk through the night before. The man who owned them was out in his back yard, watering his roses. I rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and casually glanced over at the blueberry patch, a criminal drawn back to the scene of his crime. After gazing at the blank bushes for some time, I spoke up.

“Where are the blueberries?” I asked.

“This is only June,” he replied. “They don't come ripe for another two months.”

Sometimes still I remember Keith, and what we put him through telling ghost stories and raiding blueberries. On such nights, I lie awake and stare at the dark bedroom ceiling. And somewhere overhead, perhaps in the attic, I hear a faint scritch. Scratch. Scritch. Scratch. Scritch...

Is it a mouse gnawing a ceiling joist? Or could it be SOMETHING ELSE?

“The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” Proverbs 28:1 NIV

Note: * Name changed to preserve a long-time, and still-cherished friendship.