Houses resembled people, or at least people’s lives’ stages throughout their journeys on this earth. Ours was a reflection of how our lives had started to fall apart. It was the year 1971. I was fifteen years old. And my father had been missing for almost two years. Needless to say, money was tight. My mother, who up until this time had been a homemaker, had got a clerical job at the city hall in the town where she was born, and a second job at a travel agency.
The house we were living in was more than a hundred years old, and it had fallen into absolute disrepair way before our arrival there. The ancient parquet floors polished and shiny in times past had been completely neglected by the owner for decades now, so they had collapsed in different parts of the house. They had caved in revealing holes that traveled like tunnels throughout the old foundation. Holes we covered with still pretty but worn-out Persian rugs donated by family that commiserated with my mother’s bad luck. We covered the holes in the floor with rugs, and the holes in the walls with furniture.
No doubt we were ashamed of our dilapidated home. We were ashamed because, even though we didn’t have the maturity and insight yet to see it, our home was a metaphor for our lives.
Aside from holding two jobs, my mom tried to save money in any way she could. And one way was to toast left over bread in the oven which she would then cut into round biscuits; biscuits she would keep in a large glass jar, so we would always have crunchy toasted bread ready, with butter and jam, for breakfast.
The story that gave our old, neglected home its infamous name took place on a Friday night. I remember this very well because there was a TV series my sister Gaby and I liked to watch on that day late at night. The series was called Dark Shadows, a vampires’ tale. Mom had allowed us to watch it as long as we made sure our little brothers were fast asleep, so they would not be frightened by the cadaveric countenance of Barnabas Collins, the hideous vampire who was the main character in the series.
Gaby and I had warmed up some cocoa and sat together on the couch facing the black-and-white television set. Except for the lamp in the corner of the dining room next to the TV set, the house was in complete darkness; and besides the TV’s volume, which was kept to a minimum, per our mother’s instructions, the old house was become eerily quiet.
Meanwhile, outside, a different scenario was playing. A raging winter storm was gaining momentum while getting ready to come down in buckets. We could hear the feisty winds and thunder shaking the trees that surrounded the old house, and see the sinister shadows reflected on the walls each time lightning struck.
The house was probably over a hundred years old and in a state of utter disrepair. It was separated from the street by a six-foot chain link fence whose gate was locked at night for safety. On the left corner of the front yard you could see an eight-foot wooden fence, which was the only barrier before getting direct access to the open hallway where the three bedrooms and the dining room converged.
In hindsight, I see now that the old crumbling house didn’t provide much protection. But neither my siblings nor I paid much attention to it because there was nothing we could do about it. As there was nothing, either, that we could do about our father’s disappearance.
My sister and I were teenagers, so we continued doing the things kids our age were doing, such as watching a scary TV series late on a Friday night where the eerie stillness of the old house coupled with the fury of the storm outside seemed to create the perfect atmosphere for unusual, and spine-chilling, phenomena to occur. In fact, Gaby and I were glued to the TV screen and the evil doings of Barnabas Collins, the vampires’ patriarch, with total disregard for the not-so-safe conditions of our home and the raging storm outside.
Then, suddenly and out of the shadows of our kitchen, we started hearing a scratching sound. We looked at each other, our eyes open wide and about to burst out of its sockets, but we didn’t dare to move. Paralyzed by fear. It took us a few seconds to reach out to each other in search of a comforting hug.
We knew it would not have been difficult for anyone who wanted to break in to climb the chain-link fence and the wooden fence on the side of the yard, as I did once during an emergency, to get instant access to the bedrooms and the dining room. So after hearing that scratching noise, we were sure that either a stranger had jumped the fence and gotten in, or that a vampire from the series we were watching had materialized in our dark kitchen and was lying in wait ready to strike!
We muted the TV and realized that the scratching sound had intensified. Gaby and I were still sitting on the sofa trying to decide what to do next. We considered also the possibility that someone was already lurking around the back of the house trying to enter through the back door of the kitchen. And the distorted shadows cast by the lightning outside didn’t help to persuade us otherwise.
Once we were able to move, we tiptoed slowly into the kitchen. I was holding a flashlight that we kept handy in the TV’s set drawer ready for those stormy nights which, more often than not, caused a power outage.
The scratching sound became louder; and at that point, we noticed that the noise was coming from inside the oven! My thoughts were all over and firing in every direction, and I remember thinking, Was the noise coming from inside the oven itself or…? No! That was not possible! A hole in the wall behind the oven? A hole that connected to an intricate system of tunnels that extended down into the foundation and into a secret chamber where unearthly creatures lived?
Gaby was grabbing me by the arm, and when I turned around to try to give her some reassurance, her eyes, wide open and resembling those of an owl, scared me even more!
She was looking at me in disbelief, as if she knew what I was thinking. We tiptoed slowly getting closer to the oven and stopped right in front of it. We looked at each other trying to decide who was going to be the one opening the door. Seconds went by. Gaby, her arm extended, reached to grab the oven handle, but then quickly retrieved it as if she had touched a hot iron.
What happened next occurred in such quick fashion that I could hardly follow the sequence of events. I just remember that my hand reached the oven’s handle and grabbed it, but I didn’t pull! I tried with all my strength to try to move my hand to open it, but afraid of what I could find, afraid of what I could see, and more than anything, afraid of being sucked into the hole and its mysterious tunnels, I just stayed there without daring to move.
I could see in my mind’s eye the dark open mouth of the oven looking at us with its invisible menacing eyes. Gathering as much strength as I could muster, I finally dislodged my hand and since Gaby was holding on to me, the impulse I took landed us flat on our butts.
It was then that the squeaky door of the old oven suddenly opened. Our jaws dropped when from its pitch black belly we saw seven pairs of tiny, bright red eyes looking directly at us. Seven pair of tiny red eyes! Vampires! Seven little vampires! But where were the wings! Little dark rodent like bodies without wings!
For a brief moment we locked eyes with them. And when they realized that we didn’t pose any danger because we hadn’t moved, they continued munching on the tiny crumbs of toasted bread that had been left on the bottom tray of the oven.
Gaby and I looked at each other, smiling, without saying a word. Then, we tiptoed our way out of the kitchen to allow these tiny creatures to finish their dinner in peace.
Once back in the living room, we laughed, thinking about the reaction our little brothers would have once we told them about our little adventure. Once we told them about the little, red eye, wingless vampires that came at night, when the house was dark and quiet, to munch on the leftover breadcrumbs left in the oven earlier that day.
Suzanna is a published poet and writer. After the tragic death of her youngest son, she published, in 2021, a memoir, “This is your storygmail.com., Spin,” in English and Spanish. Suzanna can be contacted at [email protected].
