Scary Night

My Grandpa and Grandma Brown live in a wonderful town called Prescott, Arizona. You get there by driving for hours and hours, up a steep, twisting road that always makes me carsick. The best thing to do for this, my mother says, is to eat lemon drops. Lemon drops are candy, but they're not very good candy. I eat them, but they don't make me feel much better. All they do is make me hate lemon drops, because they remind me of being carsick.

Grandpa and Grandma live outside of town. There are pine trees and big rocks with moss on them, around their house. You can go out any time and find horny toads and lizards to play with, and at night, there are animals yipping, and Grandpa says they're foxes.

Grandpa and Grandma's house is very beautiful. It has a woody smell, that reminds me of the pine trees outside. There are shelves and shelves and shelves on the walls. Some of them hold dishes and pieces of pottery. Others hold statues of birds that Grandpa and Grandma carved out of wood. If you turn the statues upside-down, they have what kinds of birds they are, and what kind of wood they're made of, written on the underneath. I'm not allowed to do that myself, but sometimes my Grandpa will take one down and show me.

Grandpa and Grandma must like brown, I think, because there's a lot of it in their house. Their furniture is made of brown wood, with brown cushions, and there are brown rugs on the floor, as well as all the brown shelves, with the brown wood birds on them. Grandpa and Grandma sit on the brown sofa, and my Mama and Daddy sit on brown chairs, and they talk grown-up talk, about people they know, and things that happened a long time ago.

I sit on the brown carpet in back of the sofa, with my sisters. We open the closet doors, and take out the baskets of toys that Grandpa and Grandma keep there for us. There are carved wooden people that my Grandma made for us, and rag dolls that come from Peru, and little plastic things like totem poles, that my Grandpa says are kachina dolls, and a brown plastic bear on a keychain, that says Behr on it. It's not like the toys we have at home. None of it looks realistic, and you can't change the clothes on any of the dolls. I think that's because only little kids are supposed to play with toys. Grandpa and Grandma want us to grow up fast, and sit on the sofa and listen to grown-up stories, instead.

Down the hall, is a bathroom that's very beautiful. It's pink and white, and it's decorated with lots of shells. I save up having to go to the bathroom so I can go in there. I shut the door and take as long as possible about what I'm doing. I look at how the shells are different from each other. I make up stories about them. Sometimes I run my finger across the shiny parts on one of the big ones. I don't pick it up though, because I'm not supposed to.

Down the other hall, is the room with the TV in it. It's got a squashy, old-looking plaid sofa, and bookshelves, and a cabinet, which is where the TV is. I wonder why my Grandpa and Grandma don't keep it out where they can use it, instead of behind a door. Instead of pictures, there are masks hanging on the walls. These were made by Indians. They're made of wood, and bark, and animal hide, and they have scary, mean looks on their faces. One of them has real carved bones for its teeth.

One time when we visit my Grandpa and Grandma, I bring along the book I just got from the Scholastic Book Club. It's a collection of Twilight Zone stories, and it's very interesting. I go through and I find all the scariest stories and I read them first. We don't watch TV when we're visiting my Grandpa and Grandma. When we get tired of playing with the toys from the closet, we go on the sofa and listen to the grown-ups talk for a while. I take out my book and read. When it's time for bed, my Mama takes us down the hall to the TV room. That's where we sleep when we're visiting. The plaid sofa's been folded out to make a bed for us. I get into it with my two sisters, and my Mama turns off the light. The door is open. Just enough light comes in from the hallway so I can still see the masks on the walls. I close my eyes and try not to think about them.

It's still dark outside when I wake up. I'm used to that. I always get up very early, and that's okay as long as I just get a book and read until everyone else gets up. I get my Twilight Zone book. I go into my Grandma and Grandpa's living room and turn on a lamp. I sit down on the sofa in front of the fireplace and read. I'm reading a story about a haunted castle. The guests hear things, and some of them see dead people in armor, from the Middle Ages. I start thinking about those dead people coming down my Grandpa and Grandma's chimney.

I turn to another story. This one is about a guy who sees a ghost that's so scary that he dies with fright. I've read it before, and it's really interesting. But it's not what I want to read right now. I page through the book. I look for the stories that aren't scary at all, the ones where there aren't any ghosts, or where the ghosts are really boring. I read some of those, but I keep thinking about ghosts in armor, coming down the chimney.

It's not getting light outside. I go to the kitchen window, which is where you can see the sunrise first, but there's not even any light in the sky yet. I sit in the kitchen and watch, and after a while I decide it must not be morning yet. I go back to the TV room and get into bed with my sisters. Now, it's very dark, and I still know the masks are in there. I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep, but I can't stop thinking about them. .

I get up and go into the bedroom where my Mama and Daddy are. I wake Mama up. I ask her if I can sleep in bed with her tonight. She says no. I tell her how scared I am, but she just gets mad, and tells me to go back to bed. I lie down on the floor next to the bed. That's less scary than being in the TV room with the masks, or in the living room where ghosts can come down the chimney.

The floor is very hard. After a while, I decide I'm not going to be able to to sleep there. I go back and get in bed with my sisters, and after a while I wake up and it really is morning. I know what went wrong, I think. It's because I read my Twilight Zone book too late at night, that's why I was so scared. I make a rule never to read scary books after dark again, and I don't, not even really exciting ones like The Shining.