dreadcrumbs: My Night with Them

I came home last night to discover the house completely silent and dark. The sun had already set, so it was pitch black, and having a family which now consists of four wrigglers under the age of eight, silence is uncommon.

You might think that meant everyone was gone, but my wife's car was in the garage, and the twelve degree temperature outside would have prevented anyone from going on a family skulk outside.

It was a bit troubling. I definitely felt like something was in the house. That odd little twinge that you get when there is a *presence* nearby you can't readily see. If I trusted the twinge, it ruled out the possibility that an in-law (or slaver) took my family from me and fled.

That left two options. Either the entire family of adult (36), child (7), child (4), baby (0.3), and baby (0.3) were hiding in complete silence, or whatever had done away with them was still there, lying in wait.

One interesting thing I'm realizing as I recount the experience is that I didn't bother to turn on any lights as I walked through the house. Either I'm instinctually stupid, or way too comfortable on the sharp-toothed side of the predator/prey continuum. I didn't even have my new war club with me.

It did turn out to be the entire family hiding, of course. If they had been kidnapped by organ farmers or killed in retribution for some past offense to a criminal organization or ritual murder cult, I would not be blogging about it. Especially since I haven't blogged in like a year. What a loser. Hey, I'm tweeting now, okay. That's something, right?

In any case, those of my family with working legs leapt up suddenly from the living room, each yelling some variation of "Surprise!"

The creepy wasn't gone, though, because in the darkness it looked like all their faces had been erased and replaced with crude marker drawings of eyes and mouths.

The lights come on, though, and their faces still look like that.

They've decided to have a "papa party" for me, and each of them is wearing a mask of my face.

They sound excited, they sound happy, but the little crayon Dean-golems just stare.

Not the babies, though. They were deemed similar enough in feature and head-hairlessness to not require a costume. And they usually wear the same expression as the masks, regardless.

I am given a paper crown and told to sit for a play that the children have written and rehearsed by themselves. My wife is stage crew, in charge of background music.

My son disappears from stage and my daughter enters. "Here is a boat," she says. "This boat is going to the sea city of R'lyeh." She gets on the couch and mimes driving the boat and bouncing on the waves.

"Here is the city," she says, getting off the couch and looking around. She picks up what I think is a sweater and holds it in front of her like parchment.

She mimes reading, which she can't actually do yet, and says, haltingly, as if translating an ancient tongue, "It says…Cthulhu comes…at night…"

At this moment, a picture of a night sky is thrust up from behind the couch-boat, she shouts "Oh no! It's night!" and my son rises up from behind the couch bellowing "BLAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!"

He chases her around the couch as she shrieks in madness and terror. After a few laps, she jumps onto the boat and frantically drives away.

Cthulhu watches her go and shrugs.

"The End," says my wife.

Awesome. I'm not sure what this reveals about the damage I may have already done to the psyche of my children, but still. Awesome.