The Scariest Night Ever

I was awakened at around 4 in the morning to Morgan and Leah crouching over my bed and whispering my name. "Gloria, wake up!" "What?.... What's going on?" "Just get up, come with us." "What's going on?" "We'll tell you in a minute. Just come into our room." A little freaked out, I followed them across the hall into their room. Morgan explained to me that they'd been awakened by loud music - they'd heard it earlier, but it was really far away. Now it was right outside our house, and they could also hear men's voices. I layed down on Morgan's bed and listened to the music blasting outside our house. It had gotten really loud about a half hour before, and Morgan and Leah were pretty freaked out. They'd called Rachel to find out if anything like that had happened when she was here, but it hadn't. She didn't know what it was. A little while later, we saw flashlights moving around and shining into the house next to us... We were sure that they would be coming to our house next.

Earlier that week, someone had stolen shoes from some of the students, and someone else had slashed a neighbor's cow. We didn't know if these were the same people that did those things or if they knew that 3 white girls were living in a house by themselves; we didn't know anything. We just knew that there were men outside our house shining flashlights into our neighbor's house and blasting music at 4:00 AM. We knew we were scared. We knew we'd protect ourselves if it came down to it. Morgan got out the knives that she had and also the hairspray. (I know, I know... what are you going to do with hairspray? Well... spray it in their eyes? Make a blowtorch out of it?) Morgan even told us where to aim with the knife if it came down to actually using it. I dreaded the thought of even thinking about using a knife on someone. I decided to not think about it unless we heard them at the door. It would be daylight soon enough, so I just lay there listening to the pulsating beat of the music, trying to block out the men's voices.

I think we eventually fell asleep, because soon enough we heard the generator turn on and children's voices outside. But the music was still there. We went back to sleep. A couple hours later when we woke up, the music was still there, but softer now, but it was also daylight. We were confused.

We didn't get up for a while yet, and when we finally did, we talked to some of the other teachers, asking questions about what was going on. We learned that there was a funeral that afternoon on the other side of the school property. It's customary that when a funeral takes place, people go to the house of the deceased and mourn with the family. The night before the funeral, because there are so many people at the deceased's house, men will sleep outside and play music to "keep watch". That explained most of it, except the fact that they were beside our house instead of the other house across the property. Most of the teachers didn't really believe us when we said how close it was, but when we insisted, they simply shrugged saying that they didn't know why they would be on the school property.

We still aren't to the point of laughing about it yet, but hopefully soon enough. I just know that I haven't been that scared in a long time.

- Gloria