Journal entries of the “experience”

11:21 PM – Nothing happened (This is reality, not The X-Files)

2:00 AM – My daughter comes into our room, she’s clearly upset and wants to sleep with us. What are the odds that she manages to come in an wake me at exactly 2:00AM?

3:00 AM – I awake, looking at the clock to the left side of my bed. Exactly 3:00AM. My daughter is crying for her mommy, who is not in bed. I assume she’s in feeding the baby. I tell my daughter she’s in the baby’s room and off she goes. Odd, usually my daughter chooses me when she’s upset or frightened. Still, this way I can go back to sleep.

3:14 AM – My daughter climbs back into bed, waking me again. She starts asking for her mommy again. I ask her if she didn’t find her mother, she says “no”. Is that “no, I didn’t find her” or “no, I did find her”? Well, ask a badly phrased question to a 3-year old and that’s what you get. Reluctantly, I get out of bed and take her with me to find mommy. My wife is in with the baby and sends us back to bed.

4:00 AM – Am I going to wake up every hour on the hour? This time, I’m awake. Normally, I wake at 4:45, so I could get up now, but I don’t want to, I want to go back to sleep. I lay there, staring at the clock definitely blinking away the seconds of 4:00AM, looking past the clock to my closet, which I note has been left open about 6 inches. The air conditioning is off, the room is silent. “POP” comes a sound like a plastic tupperware container having the lid popped on. The sound came from the closet. Has my daughter gotten into the closet? I turn and look. Both my wife and daughter are asleep on my other side. I continue to stare at the closet. There are plastic boxes in the closet. I know that. What could have caused one to pop? Is it going to happen again? Could there be a mouse – or worse, the dreaded roof rat – in there? Was I really just half asleep and imagined it? I watch silently… 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6…

4:06 AM – The closet door starts to slowly open. Panic! I fling my pillows at the door and shut it, then I put a ladder in front of it. My wife’s awake now, and flips on the light, my daughter is still sound asleep despite all the lights and noises.

First, I reconnoiter the house. Everything is normal. All doors and windows secure, nothing obviously out of place. I get a flexible head flashlight and feed it under the closet door, looking under the crack. To my relief, nothing grabs the light and yanks it under. Also, nothing is visible.

Finally, I open the door. Nothing. We search the clothes, the plastic boxes, everything. Nothing.

My daughter sleeps soundly through it all.