Peeking Out

 

            Fred’s tail led the way back into the house. Straight up, it was like a pillar of gold.
            I stepped inside, then I carefully locked that door behind myself. I tried the doorknob, making sure it was locked.

           While we had been busy escaping the basement, clouds had covered the sun. It looked dark and somewhat foreboding in the house. I felt hesitant. I wasn't entirely happy to be re-entering the house.
            The air pressure had dropped, I could feel that we were in for a storm. I had a faint memory of other storms. Oddly, though, I couldn’t remember where that would have been. I was sure that it would come to me, this lack must be just a glitch in the memory banks.
            Fred turned and looked at me, then he paced into the kitchen. He hopped up onto the big table. I saw my keys lying there. “Ah, good idea, Fred.”
            I stuffed that key ring into my right hand jeans pocket. That felt good. Secure.
            The wind began to blow hard. It hurled big warm drops of rain at the kitchen window, which had been so sunny that morning, making noisy splats.
            Next thing, the lights went out, then I heard thunder, rolling and rolling again. I gasped! Was it thunder? It almost sounded like wheels on a wooden plank floor.
            “I’m hungry, Terry,” said Fred. In the dim light his green eyes glowed faintly.
            “I can’t cook now, Fred, the power is off,” I said. “We’ll have to eat something cold.”
            “I’m not picky,” said Fred. “One of those cans of tuna will work. You have more yogurt. I saw it in there.”
            “That’s true. I might have to round it out with a peanut butter sandwich. This day has been a bit over the top, makes a girl hungry,” I told him while opening the fridge and looking into its dark interior.
            So, I popped a can of some high-end olive oiled tuna, dumping it into a shallow bowl and putting it on the table for Fred. I also got him a mug of water.
            I gathered up my peach full fat yogurt, my bread and peanut butter, a spoon and a table knife, and another mug of water from the tap in that old sink, then I sat with Fred, and we had our lunch, or seeing how dark it was, maybe it was more like a sort of picnic dinner indoors.
            You will not be surprised to discover that I possessed not one candle. “Preparation is key!” I told Fred. “We better buy some candles tomorrow.”
            “Terry, I think we should go upstairs and check to see if there is a window in the attic,” said Fred. He had fishy breath too.
            “I’m not sure I want to do that,” I said, knowing darn well that I didn’t want to do that.
            But, Fred won as usual when it came to decision making, by sheer persistence. he wanted to take a look, so we were going to take a look.
            “We need to figure out why you bought this place, Terry,” said Fred. I had thought I bought it because it was just what I was looking for. That’s what I had thought. If I remembered correctly. I wasn’t sure to tell the truth.
            “Let’s go,” said Fred, as he hopped off the table and headed for the stairway to the second floor in the fading light. Thunder rolled again. The wind whacked the side of the house repeatedly. My knees felt wobbly, but I proceeded anyway, just as if I were very brave.
            Ghostlike, in my own house, following a yellow tomcat, I felt my way to the stairs, once again climbing to the bedroom floor. The bedrooms' doorways gaped at me darkly. Surely those rooms were quiet. Weren’t they? Thunder pealed out again.
            “Come on, Terry,” called Fred from the stairs to the attic, where he waited for me.
            Breathing shallowly, I followed Fred up those stairs too. I slowly opened the little door. Fred slipped inside ahead of me. Lightning flashed right overhead. The sky rumbled again, and I could see, across that wooden floor, on the front of the building a small window.
            “Oh, Fred! Is it there or not?” I cried out, not entirely trusting my own eyes.
            “Looks like a window,” he answered. He kept walking. “Let’s look out,” he said.
            I walked slowly as in a dream, across that smooth floor, arriving at last to the window. It was one of those attic windows sitting right over the surface of the floor. Fred parked himself to the right side. I parked myself right in front of the glass and looked down toward the street.
            “What do you see, Terry,” he said.
            “I’m not sure,” I said. I didn’t see a Ford pick up parked in front, for one thing. Maybe it just didn’t show somehow? But then lightning lit the street and sky again. Thunder hit like a physical punch. No, there was no pickup truck out there.
            “Where is my Ford,” I wondered aloud. Fred turned and gazed at me wordlessly.
            “There must be something out there,” said Fred, looking down at the street.
            The lay of the land was the same, but everything else was different. I couldn’t see pavement, or even that old cracked sidewalk. Across the dirt lane, there was only a rough field with a barbwire fence running along side of that road.
            I just shook my head, because such things don’t happen. Not on this planet.
            A farm wagon, pulled by two heavy horses, rolled past. A man dressed like an extra in a western movie, sat on a seat behind the horses. He wore a white western hat and a raincoat of some kind. I couldn’t see what he carried in his wagon, maybe just himself.
            The sky quieted down. The storm hustled off to the north. Those thick clouds moved aside, exposing a full round shining brilliant moon.
            An owl flew straight at our window, looking me right in the eye, before abruptly turning upward and vanishing. I heard a ringing sound. I heard voices downstairs in the children’s rooms. I didn’t feel so good.
            As we continued to look downward from our perch under the peak of the roof, a horse and rider approached. When he got closer to our spot on the road I saw that it was a grey and white speckled horse. The rider was a mature, but youngish looking man. Once again, this man appeared to be in the costume of another time. He seemed like he must be wearing his very best clothing. He also wore a western hat, and he carried a bundle in his arms wrapped in brown paper. He stopped right in front of my house.
            He dismounted in one smooth movement. Then he removed the brown paper from his bundle. He folded this paper up and tucked it somewhere around his horse’s saddle. In his arms he carried a great bouquet of white and pink roses.
            He walked his mare across the road, to tie her to the fence. Then he turned and walked up my walkway heading for the front door.
            I heard knocking. I froze. “No,” I said. “No!”