Once upon a time, some 30 or so years ago, the apartment right on top of ours was inhibited by a loving family. Then one day, the father decided he’d had enough of this blessed country and that it was time to try his luck elsewhere. So the family packed up their belongings and left.
They didn’t sell their apartment though. Nor did they rent it out. They decided it would be their summer home and they’d stay in it when visiting family… And so it was.
Fast forward a few decades. During the long cold winter nights of 2013/2014, I sat in the silence in my baby’s room, I rocked and begged her to sleep. I hushed and shushed and tried to be as quiet as a mouse. Eerily though, when night was black and dead, I would hear the faintest of sounds…almost as if someone were playing with one of my baby’s squeaky toys in a dark corner of the room. Thinking it were merely my imagination, I ignored the sounds and hushed us both to sleep. Yet, night after night, the sounds reoccurred. Sounds like the rolling of a small ball. The creaking of wooden floors. The squeaking of rubber toys…
As winter turned into spring, my imagination ran wild with ideas of the beings in the walls…Are there birds trapped somewhere? Are there mice running around on the floors above? Where oh where are those sounds coming from? Is the apartment above inhibited by some spiritual beings?
Summer will bring the answer as surely as dawn brings the sun, I thought to myself. And it did. To my utter no-surprise, there were a couple of mice in the abandoned apartment, which the owners discovered upon their arrival. They let us know that they managed to catch and get rid of said mice. Aha! I wasn't just another sleep-deprived mom - the squeaks were real! But at least now I'd have some quiet and some peace of mind!
Haha. right.
That same night I'd heard the news from my neighbors, I also heard -
Squeak squeak.
“Let’s play ball” they seemed to taunt me. "Let’s play ball in the ceiling."
I hushed my baby and rocked her to sleep and wished the mice away.
Squeak squeak.
Upon further investigation, and to my utter disbelief, we discovered that a couple of mice managed to eat their way through the above bathroom pipes, and into our suspended bathroom ceiling…
“Squeak” they teased me as I put the laundry up to dry in the wee hours of the night.
“Squeak”…”You can’t get us up here.”
"Squeak"...You won't put that baby to sleep.
“Squeak”…”What you gonna do? 🎶 What you gonna do when we come for you?🎶”
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