Blame it on Frank Peretti, or Me.

Their was a chill in the air last night, in the house. And outside it was a cold, cold freeze. But we were snuggled together, flannel sheets and many wool blankets. Sometime around too early in the night Lucy woke up and joined us to snuggle down and she kept me even warmer.

Something woke me in the night. Probably her wriggling in the blankets. And as I lay in drowsing in bed I listened to the night noises.

Our house whispering with sleeping electricity. And wind beating on the walls outside. And then the unusually loud and hard to recognize sound that my mind vaugely labled "computer." And then the loud grinding rattle of a bedroom door knob that a small child is trying to open but can't seem to grasp.

I wrapped my arm around the baby and suggested to Daniel that he ought to take care of the Norah problem.

He slid out of bed. In a brief moment he was back, crawling under our blankets. Norah hadn't cried about having to go back to bed. In fact, Daniel hadn't whispered any comforting words to his sleepwalker either.

"Was she okay?" I asked, confused.

"She was sound asleep. I don't know what made that noise."

This was just last night and I can feel the tremors of terror on my spine as I write it. If Norah was safe in bed, who rattled the doorknob with such ferocity?

Around thirteen I harrowed my soul like so many other Christian youths by reading style="font-style:italic;">This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness.

Frank Peretti sent uncountable shivers down my spine over the last 17 years, because of those two books. These particular books fill that gap between Stephen King and Janet Oke. The world the way God sees it, but not from the perspective of innocent prairie girls falling in love. These tell of the ongoing battle between the army of the enemy, those angles of darkness, and the Lord's Army. We may know that the Lord's Army wins in the end, but Peretti's images of the battle and of casualty and war wounds is horrifying. The books were enthralling and leave me today looking twice into any shadowy corner. When everyone in our house had read them they were tucked up far into a corner closet and even mom and dad left the lights on around the house. For a little while.

And so something in the night, a monster of the darkness? A ghost child? Was rattling my doorknob, not able to get where he was going, getting frustrated, unhappy. There was no way I was sending Lucy back into her empty room alone.

Feeling like a child, and yet honestly scared I asked Daniel: "What do you think it was?"

"Sounded like the printer. Like it was falling off the desk of something." He responded phlegmatically.

"Yeah, I heard that. But what about the door knob noise?"

"Eh? It didn't really sound like a door knob to me." And then he rolled over and went to sleep.

I rolled the idea of printer noises around in my mind. Yes, I had been only half awake. It could have been printer noises. But...why was a demon ghost child trying to use the printer? I pictured the printer and the computer and thought hard about it. I thought, "The printer has buttons. What pushed the printer buttons?" And out of the dark terror of nights at my old house, the one we just left came another demon hoard. The Mice. Could it have been? Could the printer have been activated by two ounce mice scampering across my keyboard? Was that better than ghosts?

It was the first time in my life I hoped sincerely that we had mice.

This morning Daniel had a new report. He heard The Noises again around the time Norah joined us in our bed. He examined the printer and found it was falling off the desk. Funny the kinds of noises I am willing to agree that a falling printer makes.

I was sitting here at the computer checking my email and scanning things for mouse dropping when he told me. And I was resting my foot on the shelf. That shelf down at the bottom of the desk where the printer sits. Where, on many occasions I have had to rescue the printer because I kick it off the shelf as I mindlessly read blogs and tap my toes.

I feet better about it now, I think. Circumstantial evidence points to me as the mouse, or the ghost, or just the culprit if you will. The person who tapped the printer to the edge of its home so it could slowly slip off the shelf during the night and make unearthly noises.

Sure. It was the printer. I'll just keep telling myself that.