“Did you hear what happened to Bonnie’s older sister?” Mary asked in a low voice, drawing the seven of us, 4th grade girls even closer together on the monkey bars at recess.
“A man with long fingernails attacked her in her house and ripped her shirt. I think she got cuts on her face as well”, Mary added.
Well if this didn’t change things forever.
Never again would we discuss jumping out of swings, bouncing on the teeter-totter, or Secret Santas with the same intensity.
This was 8th grade material at the least.
Bonnie’s sister was old, like 17.
“How long were his nails?”
”Who was he?”
”Where did he come from?”
”Why?” was the question we all wanted to ask but didn’t.
It was hard to image someone being attacked in a town where prank calls and minor shop lifting were the usual rites of criminal passage in the late 60’s.
But still, long fingernails on a man? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
We discussed the attack for days out on the playground, and it was agreed that the stranger was armed and dangerous. We didn’t discuss anything with our teachers or parents because it was too thrilling to share.
So thrilling that I had a hard time falling asleep that week.
My sister Dee and I shared a room above our parents. The windows above our beds opened up over the slate roof of the terrace below.
There were three pictures, out of Tiger Beat Magazine, pinned to the ceiling above my bed,
Bobby Sherman, the youngest brother on the logging series Here Come the Brides, and David Shelby and Jonathan Frid, of the spooky but exciting Dark Shadows.
One night Dee asked me what I was smiling at in the dark. I must have been having a conversation with Bobby’s character Jeremy. His stutter made me want glasses and a lisp.
“I’m not smiling, I’m yawning” I told Dee.
I was embarrassed.
I wouldn’t say I was caught having a sexual fantasy but then again, maybe I was.
She rolled over and fell asleep.
Jeremy was my favorite, but Quentin was quite attractive in a were wolf bad boy way. Barnabas wasn’t good looking at all and seemed ancient.
He was up there because I felt sorry for him.
That Thursday night, I lay there imagining Barnabas, the gothic vampire that he was, protecting our house, when I heard the sounds.
“Tick… tick… tick tick tick… tick…” Oh my gosh! Someone or something is tapping at the window! I pulled the covers over my head but left one ear free.
Wait. That’s got to be fingernails! No…it sounds more like high heels on slate shingles. It could be a man with long fingernails and high heeled boots, I’ll bet he has long hair too! And tight pants. Maybe a long leather jacket or a cape as well.
I was petrified.
This was the guy who wanted to slash and kill off all the girls in Dorset!
I did what anyone in their right mind would do. I slunk out of bed, left Dee, and went downstairs to my parent’s bedroom. I curled up in the oversized green corduroy chair and stared out the window as the pitch black sky stayed that way.
When Hopper finally rolled over in my direction I coughed loudly.
“What are you doing up so early?” he mumbled.
“There’s a man on the roof with high heels and long fingernails. He’s attaching people.” I blurted out.
“Okay, I’ll check it out later” he said and rolled back towards Mom.
With that, I jumped up and stayed in their bathroom with the light on until the birds and my parents woke up.
At school the next day, I told the enthralled group on the jungle gym what had happened.
This was huge.
“How did he get on the roof?”
”Do you think he’s checking out all of our houses?”
”How come your dog didn’t bark?”
These were all valid questions but none I could answer.
Later, after school, Hopper said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” He pointed to a maple tree next to the house.
“See the tree, and the branch? Go upstairs and see if you hear it tapping.”
Even at 3:30 in the afternoon, in broad daylight, I was afraid to look out the bedroom windows. I don’t need to prove that nightmares aren’t fake.
I could feel my heart in my throat as I peeked out through the glass at what would inevitably be a gruesome display of shattered shingles, fingernail clippings, and strands of oily hair.
But no… nothing but some branches tick-tick-ticking.
“Do you see and hear the branch?” Hopper yelled up to me.
“Sort of” I yelled back, though not entirely convinced.
A few weeks later the truth came out. Bonnie’s sister had made the whole thing up.
Once again the big question was why, but nobody asked.
I definitely heard more than a branch that night. It could have been something.
The image of a leather coated, caped man in high heeled stiletto boots, possibly on crutches, with wild hair, long dirty nails, who leapt on to porch rooftops as quietly as a cat, despite being 1/2 crippled, stayed with me until I switched out my ceiling photos for David Cassidy and poor short Davy Jones.
The fact that photos of gothic boogeymen were the last thing I saw before drifting off to sleep each night was lost on me until decades later.
Alexandra Langstaff 