In The Land Of The Little People: Part 2

II – The Mystery Drummer

I haven't seen the Chaneques, but I might have been the victim of a couple of their pranks. One night I was staying at a friends’ house, in the countryside not far from our town. They have a workshop that consists of a lower floor, where they make drums, with wooden stairs leading to a wooden upper floor where they store the drums when they are finished and waiting to be sold. I slept there, alone, on the upper floor. I laid out my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, turned out the lights, and got in. My friend had already gone to bed inside the house, and everything was silent.

After lying in the dark for about fifteen minutes or so, I still hadn’t got to sleep, when suddenly I heard a loud noise, “Poom!” It was the sound of somebody hitting one of the drums hard. I froze and held my breath to listen carefully to see what would follow. Next I heard an extremely soft creaking sound, as if a very small person indeed were treading on the wooden steps, and then another, and that was all.

I lay quite still, listening intently, and trying to think of an explanation for this. When an adult human climbs the stairs, even if they try it barefoot and tread very gently, it is impossible for them not to cause every board to creak quite loudly on the way up and again on the way back down. What could it have been? A rat perhaps, falling off a shelf, and landing on one of the drums before scampering away? I hadn’t heard any sounds that resembled scampering though, just two very soft creaks. Maybe the cord that holds the skin tight on one of the drums had snapped, causing the sound – but then what about those creaks?

The next morning I examined the drums that were on the floor at the other end of where I’d been sleeping. Firstly I noticed that there were no shelves above them, nor anything overhanging form which a rat, or anything else, could have fallen onto them. I also found that none of them had a loose cord, all of them were quite tight just as they are supposed to be.

Over breakfast I told my friend what had happened. “Oh,” he said, “that must be the Chaneques. Another friend who slept in there saw one once! And my neighbours’ children sometimes play with them, they usually see them in the trees up on the hill over there.”

So that was that. There never was any ‘logical’ explanation for what I heard. Only the Chaneques!

NEXT: Little Girl Lost