***WARNING AGAIN!! Especially for you, Justine. Freaky-ass kids alert.**

Have your kids ever scared the crap outta you? Mine have. I don’t mean when they’re doing something dangerous and I’m fretting they’ll hurt themselves, or those times when they have hurt themselves and I’m terrified it’s serious – not that kind of scared. I mean that hackles-raising, cold-sweat-inducing, IS-THIS-MY-CHILD-OR-SOME-KIND-OF-DEMON-SPAWN kind of scared.

Finn sleeps like me. Tends to nightowlishness and loves a good sleep in. Once he’s asleep nothing much wakes him short of a bomb going off. He can be a messy sleeper too, pulling out the nicely tucked sheets and twisting himself in them like a crocodile doing the death roll, and kicking off his doona. When I unwrap him and heave him back to centre so he doesn’t fall off the mattress, he stays asleep. Usually he’ll sigh, roll over (especially if I’m tugging the sheet out from underneath him), maybe fart, then snuggle down and drift back to sleep. But sometimes, like when he’s super tired, his eyes stay slitted slightly open with a kind of glazed look which really freaks me out.

Another time he did something else.

Last September, in a hotel (of course) in Queenstown, New Zealand: I was up late -nothing strange there – watching Avatar when I heard a slow swish from the boys’ room, followed by a sleepy grizzle. Went in & Finn was lying on the floor tangled in the sheet, still asleep but muttering “ow.” …Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are your own blimmin’ kids. Heaved him back into bed. He mumbled sleepily, rolled over, sighed, and settled down again. Aw so cute, kids are adorable, etc etc.

Later: I was woken in the wee hours by loud running footsteps somewhere in our room. But… how? The floors were carpeted concrete. It sounded exactly like a possum running across the roof at home, which in turn sounds exactly like a demon running across the roof. But I thought, we’re between floors here, nowhere near the roof. Weird. Then, while I lay there listening and trying to figure it out, Finn made an upset noise. I went to check on him, slightly spooked from the possibly demonic mysterious footsteps, which had stopped. In the semi dark he sighed and moved restlessly. Then he stopped and seemed to look right at me; I half expected him to tell me he’d had a bad dream or something. He didn’t say anything. For a long moment he just lay there… and then he suddenly started singing. “Incy wincy spider, climbed up the water spout…”

My sphincter clenched. Surprisingly forcefully. Which I was thankful for at that point, because otherwise I’m sure I would’ve crapped my pants.

With some difficulty I suppressed my scaredy cat-ness as effing ridiculous. “Finny? You okay?” He didn’t answer – he must have been still asleep – but I swear he was still looking right at me.

Aw HELL NO.

Scenes from a dozen horror movies featuring frigging terrifying kids leaped unbidden into my brain. If he’d suddenly laughed at that point, I think I’d have screamed and run blindly into a wall. As it was for 10 minutes afterwards my fevered superstitious cavewoman brain tried to scare me shitless with vivid mental images of him…

… as he slowly opens eyes rolled back into his head…

… smiles malevolently like a junior Joker…

… then his head starts to slowly rotate…

… his mouth opens and a guttural, inhuman voice grates “THERE IS NO FINNY THERE IS ONLY ZUUL.”

GAH! STOP IT!

I watch too many scary movies. Or rather I used to; I can’t watch them any more – I get flashbacks.

I also REALLY HATE IT when their electronic toys randomly start up. Like in Close Encounters. It’s usually after everyone else is in bed; as you tiptoe quietly to check on the kids, one of their games suddenly comes to life. At top volume with flashing lights from the far side of a dark room and of course YOU SHIT YOURSELF. AGAIN. Finn’s baby table used to do it to me all the time. I gave it away to some good friends. We haven’t talked for a while but I’m sure nothing bad has happened to them.

The boys got a new racetrack toy a few months ago, and I think it is also possessed. In the middle of the night the music and lights start themselves, it blares “HOT WHEELS CARCADE! TWO PLAYER MODE!” at me and I hit the ceiling. Two player mode??? Er, I’m the only one here… I think??? Shit! Then I can’t get the bloody thing to shut up; one time I stuffed it in the laundry and covered it with pillows and blankets in an attempt to muffle the noise, which worked reasonably well. Too bad I didn’t get to exorcise the bastard with the sledgehammer.

Okay that’s it for Spooky Week 2014 – hope you enjoyed being grossed out and / or terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought and / or mildly disturbed and I look forward to doing it to you again next year. Sweet dreams…

– Michelle