The howling woke me. A terrifying mournful howl. Like the ghosts in a horror movie. Over and over. Somehow I had to get from my room to my Dad’s without confronting the specter. The power was out, which wasn’t unusual. No light existed to reach in through the windows. Living on the edge of a swamp in a rural area of Iran made the nights without power very very dark.
Why wasn’t Dad coming to get me? He wouldn’t sleep through this. My heart raced. I felt my way along the walls. What if Dad is hurt or worse?
I was sweating. My legs were ready to give out on me. Every step I took was an eternity. The howling got louder, scarier. Where’s Dad? I couldn’t get help. We didn’t have a phone. Nobody was close by except the jackals in the swamp and the creature that raced in the attic at night. We pretended it was a squirrel because we didn’t know what to do about it. A cute squirrel that weighed at least 30 pounds from the sound of the thudding little feet but, sure, it was a squirrel.
At Dad’s doorway, I reached down for the flashlight we kept there. The howling was deafening, inhuman, horrifying. I don’t know how long it took for me to switch the flashlight on – I was paralyzed with fear of what I would see. If Dad wasn’t awake and helping me, what happened to him?
Preparing to die, I turned on the light and shone it in my Dad’s room. He was sitting up in bed. He was howling, a horrific deep inhuman howl.
“Dad! Dad!” I yelled, “Dad, what are you doing?”
He shook his head a bit and looked at me a bit dazed. Then he started to laugh.
“I was scaring away the ghosts in the chimney,” he said.
Holy f-cking hell, I did not say, because back then I never said the f-ck word in front of my Dad. I didn’t reveal the f-ck word from his daughter until I was travelling alone through Yugoslavia and things were going badly and every day the letters I wrote him included f-ck words.
“Dad. Are you okay?” I rushed over to him. I switched from worrying about us dying to worrying about what the hell was wrong with my Dad that he could make such a noise.
“I was dreaming there were ghosts in the chimney. I was scaring them away.” He laughed and his eyes sparkled like they always did when something was funny.
“It wasn’t funny! It was awful!”
“Sure, but if it didn’t scare you away, I wonder if the ghosts are still in the chimney,” he teased.
He had a way of lightening up any situation, turning it into an adventure. He never did know how frightful the noise was – he just thought it was a dream. We both started laughing. I can still picture the image that formed in my head of Casper the Friendly Ghost peeking out from our fireplace.
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I miss him. Today, Halloween, is 15 years since he left this world. I wish he were still here with his twinkly eyes, and a sense of humour that made me feel all was right with the world. I love you Dad.
Musings of Janet L Whitehead 