Late Upon a Cold Clear Night

My multi-talented husband DJ-ed a dance for the local Legion hall, we were able to leave The Goblin Child with the mother-in-law and enjoy it as a date night. Not that we danced or anything, OK once, but it was fun to sit and watch the very talented couples who can really dance and the music was good. Old country mostly, Don Williams, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Alabama and George Straight,  with some requests for interesting seventies stuff. It was a lot more fun than listening to the horrible hip hop stuff the teenagers like.

It was an incredibly late night for us, we didn’t get home until almost midnight. Hey, we’re old and pregnant and have a child who is guaranteed to wake us by seven thirty at the latest, that’s way late.

We got home, picked up the child and transferred her to her own bed without waking her. Got ourselves ready for bed and I settled in first. I laid there alone waiting and playing on my phone when I heard a noise. Like a Jack in the Box with its crank turned once, the noise is very unique and distinct from all others. Stilling I waited listening for more, nothing else came and I resumed my game only for it to come once more. A single turn of the handle.

Staring at the baby monitor I listened again. Sometimes it will pick up interference, surely it was some distant noise being carried to us over the air waves. Nothing.

I resumed the game my senses on alert, concerned but telling myself it was silly. As I carefully matched three on my complected and mind enhancing game I noticed the faint ding ding as the matched pieces came together. And the pieces dinged together in my mind as I decided that I had found the answer.

When my husband came to bed I told him about the weird noise and the source I had found for it. I explained how much scarier it would be if someone went into the child’s room and started winding a jack in the box than if someone was just in the child’s room. I think he saw my point. We then fell into an exhausted sleep.

I was awoken from said sleep bright and early the next morning by my husbands urgent query as to whether I had heard the jack in the box noise. I did awaken in time to hear one winding of the crank. My phone sat next to the bed plugged into its charger, untouched. So much for that theory. I was too tired to care if some maniac was in her room winding a jack in the box, I went back to sleep.

The Goblin Child was still alive when she wandered into our room shortly after seven so we assume the noise wasn’t coming from a psychopathic mass murderer with an obsession for jack in the boxes that was hanging out in her room. We will have to assume that one of her incredibly obnoxious noisy toys was playing games with us. She doesn’t even have a jack in the box.