Eliza awoke in the semidarkness, a thin ray of white light peering through from the hallway beyond her bedroom door. She had left the door slightly open so she could hear Janie.
“Janie?”
No reply.
What she heard instead was a rhythmic tapping noise and a rustling sound. She lay still in her bed, actually feeling the beating of her heart as instinctive-danger adrenaline coursed through her. Something or someone was in her room.
The soft knocking sound continued as Eliza tried to get a fix on its source. It seemed to be coming from the left side of the room.
She lay there a few minutes more, listening to the sound, trying to figure out what she should do. She considered running down the hall to wake Paul. No, she should face whatever it was herself. Knowing that Janie was asleep nearby galvanized her to reach over and turn on the lamp on the table next to the bed.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the full light as they strained in the direction of the noise. She saw no one. But the sound continued and as she stared she noticed that the shade on the window was moving almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t a breeze that was making the shade flutter. There was a small lump beneath the fabric.
Summoning up her courage, Eliza slowly rose from her bed, grabbed a shoe from the floor and walked deliberately toward the window. She took a deep breath as she lifted the shade and looked underneath.
For a split second she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The dark, furry pulsating animal stared at her with beady dark eyes. It had pointy ears and a snout that looked a little bit like a fox.
She dropped the shade and ran from the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.
It was a bat.
On the first night in her new home, there was a brown, furry bat in her bedroom.