Howling In The Night.

I have a vivid memory from my youth that I revisit from time to time, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. I don’t recall the exact time frame in question, but I think that I was around ten or eleven My step-brother and I were left home alone, (or so we thought) to fend for ourselves for the night. But unknown to us, my mom had left instructions with my older brother that he was supposed to keep an eye on us. Information that he neglected to share with us. (No Doubt on purpose.) seems as though he and one of his friends were outside waiting to hatch a scare plot on my step-brother and I. they waited until dark and slowly moved around the outside of the house making loud thumping noises, no doubt trying to scare us. Unknown to them, we were sitting on the sofa watching an old Frankenstein movie, and we were too involved in the intricate plot works to even notice.

My step-brother didn’t like the dark much, in fact he hated it with a passion, which made us exact opposites, it didn’t bother me in the least to go out with a baseball bat and patrol the area for varmint, but you couldn’t get him past the porch light. Knowing this, I think they were counting on us to be crying little babies at the thought of something being outside the window trying to get in at us. So, it was about an hour or so into the movie when Michael first heard the thumping noises coming from outside. At first, we were a little put off, that is until we caught them in the act. We saw Isley Blackwell, (The accomplice) hiding in the bushes outside the living room window, and it didn’t take a couple of eleven years olds long to figure out what was going on. So we hatched a plan of our own, knowing that my mother was the only one that had a key to any door in the house, we locked down everything including the windows and doors and wouldn’t let them back in.

Living in the country, we had a lot of Coyotes. My older brother hated coyotes. The way they would yelp and howl, in the pitch black it sounded eerie, and when they showed up that night in the backyard it couldn’t have been more perfect. They were howling and moaning and yelping, and my brother and his buddy were banging on the back door to get us to let them in. they threatened… They screamed… They called us dirty names… They were scared shitless. And the two eleven-year-olds that they were trying to pull a school boy prank on were safely tucked away inside a warm house laughing their asses off. Mom came home around ten thirty or eleven, and they were still out there. She let them in, and I think they only thing that saved us from getting our butts kicked by my bro was that we would tell everybody that they knew who the real chicken shits were. I don’t know what made me think about that tonight… Maybe I’m just bored… Maybe I was just missing my bro tonight. (God rest his Soul.) maybe It's just because it's dark outside…