Drip Drip

  Drip…drip….drip…The incessant noise that wakes me this evening, so loud it sounds as if it is in my ear. It has a tinny sound as it repeats itself every three Mississippis. I refuse to open my eyes, almost as if doing so will make this nightmare true. I can’t even entertain looking at my phone for the time either, because I know that once I do that, I will never go back to sleep.

  Drip…drip….drip… I throw my pillow over my head, drowning out the sound this dripping is making. Making a growling sound, I violently push off my covers and get out of bed. Standing there, looking up at the ceiling to see if the sound was coming from the upstairs apartment. Nothing. No sound. I listen again. Nothing. Okay maybe I was dreaming? 

  I climb back into bed and pull the covers up to my chin and settle back in. Moonlight was coming in from the cracks where the shade doesn’t meet the window frame. I try everything to not think about anything but relaxing into my soft mattress and pillow and allowing my body to relax.

  Drip…drip….drip… What the hell? Well, now, I’m awake. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and trudge toward the bathroom. Still refusing to turn on the light, I feel for the toilet, drop my underwear and sit. Head in my hands, urine leaves me as I still listen for the offensive dripping sound which started my quest. Nothing but the stream of my pee leaving my body to hear. I finish cleaning up and go back towards the bed, waiting for sleep to claim me once more. Still no dripping sound. 

  I stretch out in bed, pulling my covers back up to my chin, and concentrate on making my body still. I take a deep breath in and blow a deep breath out, as my eyes flutter closed.

  Drip…drip….drip… That’s it! I said, commanding my body awake. I march out of the bedroom and into the living room and look at the ceiling once again to find nothing. Maybe I’ll go upstairs and knock on the door and wake them up and see how they like it?  They need to get a plumber, and it better be done by the time I wake tomorrow. I grabbed a robe and wrapped it around me, opened my door and marched into the hallway. 

  The worn red carpet that was laying down on the floor leading to the stairs had a weird brown stain on it. Small, but …new? 

  I disregarded it and went upstairs to give my neighbors a piece of my mind. Rounding the landing and heading up the next level of stairs, I ran out of steam this late in the evening or early in the morning and wished I had taken the elevator. 

  I approached the black door with the number 42 in big gold numbers. There was a door knocker in the center of the door, which I found strange as we live in an apartment building. Why would someone place a door knocker on the door if there was a bell? 

  I approached the door and placed my finger on the buzzer. Instead of the bell going off, the door knocker moved. Bang Bang! The door knocker boomed through the hallway, jarring me and sending me back to the wall opposite the door.

  I waited. Silence. Still, I waited. Glancing at my nails, thinking about needing a manicure, when the door opened. A senior aged balding man, clad in a striped bathrobe and pajamas, complemented by matching slippers, opened the door. 

“Yes?” He said, through squinted eyes. I clearly had woken him up. "Well, well,"I thought, "you should be awake too since it's your dripping."

Instead I said, "Hi. Um, I am your neighbor living on the floor below." He is just staring at me. The peculiar lady wearing bunny slippers, a robe, and striped pajamas, with hostility. I started twirling my hair. “Umm, you seem to have a drip of some sort, in some part of your apartment that is keeping me up.”

“Oh, I am sorry, Miss…uh…” he asked me, turning his head slightly in an almost owl-like fashion.

“Miranda. Miranda Brown.” Placing my hand out to shake seemed ridiculous, so I just stood there after announcing my name at this God forsaken hour.

“Well Miss. Brown, I am very sorry. I don’t have a …what did you call it? A dripping sound in my apartment. It must be someone else's. Good evening.” As he closed the door, and I placed my foot between the door jamb and the door.

“Well, you do. I heard it and it woke me up. Can you please just check in your bathroom, and see? You must call a plumber. I can’t keep waking up in the middle of the night.” Jutting my chin upward. “It is simply not acceptable.” 

“I assure you, Miss Brown, there is no dripping coming from this apartment.” He was indignant, and that pissed me off. 

“May I come in and take a listen?” I know it was pushy of me, but I was not letting him off that easy. 

“How about you come back when it’s a proper time for visiting, and we can look together?” He tried closing the door again, and once again, I added my foot to the bottom of the jam. He looked down at it, “Miss Brown, Please take your foot out of the door jamb. We can do this another time. I assure you, it would be better well received.”

“Better well received? What does that mean?” I was not backing down. I got up in the middle of the night with a mission. If he could allow a drip drip sound, I could insist on this.

“Miss, you don’t want to find out. Please go back downstairs and come back tomorrow”

  Wanting to see now, I pushed harder, and the door opened into the apartment. Velvet 1800s style furnishings adorned the entire living room. Old antique chairs and claw legged tables. There was a huge crystal ball in the middle of an elongated cocktail table next to a grand French Victorian sofa. 

  Every vacant spot was filed with furniture. Old mirrors with streaks hung on the walls, and old paintings depicting children dressed in sailor suits and dresses with flowering bloomers. The room had foreign but almost familiar smell that I couldn’t place. The odor brought me back to the memory of visiting my Aunt Doras’ funeral when I was a little girl in Ohio. Holding my mother’s hand and seeing the big coffin in front of me, gave me nightmares for years. Lillys! That was it. It smells like a funeral home to me. Getting goose flesh up and down my arms, I closed my eyes, drew a huge breath, and calmed my nerves. The steadiness of that moment brought me back to the goal of my trek during the night. To find the drip and make sure this old man fixes it before tomorrow night. 

  Turning on the old man, I said, “Listen clearly, you don’t” I waved my hands around gesturing at the living room. “Upkeep this place.” I swiped my finger down a dusty chest of drawers. There was even an old victrola in the corner. “So, I want to see the bathroom where the leak is most likely from.” I jutted my hip out and folded my arms, insisting at this point I was not leaving without an answer. 

  The old man walked over and shifting his eyes back and forth, looked almost nervous. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Miss, I beg of you. Please. Leave now, while you still can.” His eyes were darting around the apartment as if there might be someone there who would see him giving me his caution. “It would be better to come back in the morning.” 

  I leaned in closer to him. So close, I could smell his rotting teeth and see the yellow in his eyes. His iris’ were cloudy with age and so muddy I couldn’t describe their color. “I said, show me now.” 

  He grabbed my arm, firmly for an old man. His fingers gripped me and his yellow, black nails dug into my skin, creating half-moon indents. “Miss, I am warning you. Do not pursue this.”

“I want you to listen to me, someone robbed me of my precious sleep,” I growled. “I don’t sleep that often, and when I do, it’s worth more than gold. So, show me.” He felt my intensity as he locked eyes with me. He let go of my arm and took a step back. 

  Looking down and letting out a breath which smelled like it belonged to a dragon, “Ok. But you can’t fix this with a plumber.” He let go of my arm and made way for the back of the apartment. I could hear a crinkle of sorts coming from his pajama pants when he walked. Diaper? I shuddered, not wanting to think about it.

His feet barely left the floor as he placed a hand for balance along the wall, dragging a finger down the center. It made a soft scraping sound as he moved, leaving an echo that was almost too late. 

  Stripes of yellowed, beige, and brown adorned the wallpaper, which also bore tiny brown flecks that seemed almost as if they were splatter marks. I couldn’t tell the exact color, as the hallway was not well lit. 

  At the end of the hall was a dirty, brown door that was closed. As, Mr. old man lumbered towards it, I noticed a reddish light trickling through the crack between the threshold and the door bottom. The old man stopped and turned around. “You still have time to go back. You don’t have to find out …now.”  Now? What did he mean by that? 

“Yes. Yes I do. I want to know what has been keeping me up all night. This incessant dripping. Drip…drip…drip. It drives me crazy!” grabbing my hair and slightly pulling at the thought of this going on any longer than it should. 

“Miss Brown.” He took a breath and slowly placed his wrinkled hand on my arm, “What you will find out may not be the answer to the question you seek.”  This man was nuts. I yanked my hand free from his grasp, the tension sharp in the air, then pushed past him and strode toward the door. My hand closed around the cool doorknob, which rotated with a gentle click. 

  I gradually nudged the door open, the faint scent of iron and salt filling the air. The light was red and illuminated the space inside with an eerie glow. There was a sink directly in front of me as I entered and a toilet just to the right. Drip…drip…drip. There it was! That damn sound. “A HA! I found it.” I proclaimed wildly as I looked to my right. There was a clawfoot bathtub with a white shower curtain pulled completely around it. There were shadows cast inside the encased area from the red light illuminating the room and what looked like a window. One shadow was moving. Drip…drip…drip.

  I slowly walked over to the tub. Pacing myself as to not disturb whatever was happening behind that curtain. Dread covered me like a blanket as I stepped in something squishy and tackey. A wet substance, which looks almost black, pooled out of the curtain. Drip…drip…drip. Was that blood? Oh my God, what was this? 

   I reached up to open the opaque whit-ish curtain and see who was behind it. The old man, making one last effort to stop me, rested his trembling arm gently on my shoulder. “Miss Brown, please try to …not be afraid. It is hard when people find out so …quickly. Normally it takes time to …adjust.” I looked at him and his bottom lip was almost trembling. I should run. My instinct told me to run. Something more that dripping was happening here. The old man’s words came back to me, “you can’t fix this with a plumber”. 

I took in a deep breath and pulled. The curtain rolled back with a clang of balls on a metal track and came off the rail. It fell on top of me, forcing me onto the bathroom floor and shielding my view. I desperately scrambled to get the curtain off of me, clawing at the slippery vinyl surface, as I heard yelling from the old man and a deep growl. “What is this, Manual? Why is she here? It’s too soon!” Too soon? What? 

  I got the curtain off of me. The sound of large swallows and gulping hit me at once. The back of a dark haired head bobbing up and down. There was a gold flash as a chalice was being moved. 

  “Who are you?” My eyes open wide and my hear was pounding against my ribcage.

A large man lifted his head and his solid red eyes moved to mine. “Go!” he snarled. “You’re too early.”  His face was evil and darkness. His skin was pale, and he looked beautiful in the way a porcelain doll looked a hundred years later. 

“What are you doing?” I asked as I drew unsteadily to a standing position. I walked slowly to the edge of the tub. Tilting my head, I saw striped pajama pants and bunny slippers covered in blood. “What is this? Who…..?” Oh My God. It’s me!  I couldn’t breathe as my chest was not filling up with air. I could feel bile coming up as I dropped to my knees to throw up. 

  “There, there, girl. It’s alright. Sometimes we find out things the hard way.” The old man said. 

Drip…drip…drip. As blood went down the bathroom central drain, the Vampire was emptying it out of my body into a cup and drinking it.  That was the dripping that woke me up. My blood being drained from me. Was I dead? Is that my body in the tub? Oh my God, I was dead!

I staggered over to the sink, still listening to the gulps and swallows and the dripping of my blood, my bloodgoing down the drain. I looked over to the only thing that seemed to tether me to sanity. The old man. 

  “What now?” I asked him. I was dead. I was looking at my body in a tub, and my blood draining down the pipe was the source of the dripping that woke me up. Or was it my death that did? 

  “Now we sleep, Miss Brown.” He said as he led me back down the hallway into a room and laid me on a red velvet couch. “We sleep and we sleep, and nothing will disturb you again.” 

Drip…drip…drip…somewhere downstairs a woman wakes up.