Canes

My mother invited me to dinner tonight. She’s a good cook. I was surprised to find my old aunt sitting in the living room when I arrived. She’s pushing ninety. She’s lucid, but she’s missing some marbles. She uses a cane to walk, but when I opened the front door she was sitting erect on a recliner.

After dinner I went into the bedroom to check some scores on the television, My mom and my aunt were watching a Jean Harlow movie in the living room. I was on the bed watching the highlights, when I heard a clop, clop, sound coming from the hallway. I figured it was my aunt walking with her cane down the hallway to the bathroom. The sound was moving closer and closer and even though I knew for certain it was my aunt walking with her cane, for a moment there as the sound neared I was scared. It was such a haunting sound. The rhythm of it as she approached me made me think there’s nothing scarier.

I’ve never seen a horror movie with old ladies walking with canes as the villains. But try to imagine for a moment, you’re in an old house with wood floors and you hear this sound clop, clop, clop, as you lay in bed. The sound is coming toward you ever so slowly. It’s repetitive and persistent. Clop, clop. You have no idea what it is. The sound grows with intensity and then suddenly stops. Your bedroom door swings open. You look from under your covers to see who it is. There’s an old lady with a cane standing in the shadows.

“Where’s the bathroom?”