One Night

A door slammed, echoing down the long hallway, to a bedroom on the back of the house! Startled, Phoebe awakens quickly from a deep sleep. What was that?! A door slammed – someone is in her house! Quietly, she climbs out of bed and walks down the long hallway toward the front of the house, knowing it like the back of her hand, she easily moves through the inky darkness. An odd clinking sound and several short light flashes greet her, as she rounds the corner into the Dining room/Living room area. The outside dust-to-dawn light shines through the dining room windows illuminating the dark silhouette of a man standing there!

A bit freaked out and yet suddenly angry, Phoebe turns on the Dining room light and demands, “What the hell are you doing in my house?!”

Fully illuminated the man is white, of medium build, dressed in a black and red flannel shirt with tan bibbed overalls, workman’s boots and with red hair, slightly balding on top. He stands there quietly blinking his eyes for a few minutes, then says, “A girl at the bar up the road says that this house is empty, so I can come and get whatever I want!”

In a way, the girl is right for about six months the house was empty, but now it is neither empty nor fair game! Phoebe says, “It’s not empty anymore, so pass the word!” She blusters the man out of the front door, which is how he got in, and watches as he fades into the darkness of the tree-lined driveway. With her heart racing, she checks the rest of the house, turning on every light in the place, for more uninvited guests while calling 9-1-1.

She waits – all thoughts of sleep gone! While searching the house, she identifies the clinking sound as the handle on a brass cricket box, that was on a shelf. The handle fell over hitting the side of it, making the sound as the man took it down from the shelf. As for the short light flashes – before she surprised him by turning on the Dining room light, she recalls that he was holding a cigar and a pocket lighter – the light flashes were his attempts to light the cigar. All this passed through her mind as well as the details of the encounter while waiting for the police to arrive.

Twenty minutes later, though it felt longer, a police car pulls up the hill to her house. From the front porch, she tells him what happened and includes the description of the man. The police officer leaves to check the neighborhood for any signs of him. The officer returns fifteen minutes later, opens the back door of his car, illuminating the inside. The man in question is sitting in the back seat. The officer asks, “Is this the man who broke into your house?”

Looking closely from the safety of her front porch, Phoebe says, “Yes.”

The officer asks the man, “Do you know this lady?”

“Yes,” the man says quickly. “She’s my girlfriend, we had a fight.”

“Is this true, Ma’am?” the officer asks.

“No! I’ve never seen him before in my life - before finding him in my house, that is,” Phoebe says sharply.

“Ma’am, did you know he was carrying a weapon?” the officer asks.

“No,” she says as cold chills sweeps through her body at her narrow escape. “What happens now?” she asks.

“Don’t leave town, there may be more questions after I file my report,” the officer says calmly. He closes the back door of his squad car, climbs in and leaves. Phoebe turns off most of the lights in the house, braces both the front door and the back door with chairs, just in case. Tomorrow, she will buy and install two new dead bolts just in case! Going to work the next day, she tells her employer, Becky, about the break in.

“You’re welcome to sleep at my house until you’re ready to go home,” Becky offers.

“Thank you, I’d like that,” Phoebe replies. In the meantime, she goes to the hardware store on her lunchbreak and decides to stay a couple of nights with Becky before returning home. Afterwards, she installs the deadbolts and is able to sleep a lot safer.

The End.