Duct Work

I snapped awake.

It took a moment to get my bearings.

The room smelled like mothballs and mold.

What the--? Oh, right.

Something woke me up.

I took a quick inventory of my surroundings.

First and foremost, the dog. Was he okay?

I poked my head out, into the larger closet and, sure enough, he was still there. He was sleeping and yet, somehow, he still managed to look pissed. I'd disrupted his routine and it was going to be hard for him to forgive me.

I slid past him on my belly and toward the first window that overlooked the driveway.

Empty.

Continuing to crawl just like they taught us in Basic, pulling myself along with my elbows, I made it through the master bedroom and into the bay window that had a commanding view of the street.

It was free of work cars for as far as I could see in either direction.

To the back of the house next.

Nothing.

My heart was pounding: this was not part of my typical exercise routine.

Perimeter secure.

Another round of room-to-room reassured me that the inside was as I had left it; that there had been no breaches while I slept.

And then I heard it.

I'm not sure anyone outside of my former line of work would have paid any attention. It was just one of those sounds that disappear into the white noise of domestic life. Kind of like the refrigerator kicking on and off throughout the day, or the wobbling table, or the creaking floors.

That reminded me, I still hadn't been all the way through the third floor. Didn't want to give myself away, but I also could not be completely secure until I could clear it.

But that was a problem for another time, right now, I had to figure out about this noise.

Sheet metal flexing: it's very distinctive and a noise that haunts your dreams if you spend anytime in the sneak and peak game.

I always laugh at the shows where the hero is able to do whatever by crawling through some impossibly large and ridiculously complex system of duct work.

Don't get me wrong, we did tons of jobs where we moved stuff through the ducts, but only as a last resort do you put your people in there. They're not designed for it: neither the ducts, nor the people. It's like trying to hide inside a bell wearing tap shoes: almost impossible not to give yourself away.

It's like a giant sound system with speakers in every room.

There was no reason for the ducts to be flexing. At best, the realtor would have set the thermostat for a minimum amount of cooling and only during the middle of the day. There was no reason for there to be movement of any kind in the duct work.

And yet, there had been that noise.

Unmistakable.

Perhaps there was an intruder.

House of this age, no way it's not on the rodent tour of homes.

Those were always nice times on the job when you'd be crawling through from A to B and come across the last remains of one, or more, of God's creatures. You expect the mice and the rats, but life offers so many more possibilities. Like an elaborate ship in a bottle, you wonder how some of these animals get into where you find them, you don't necessarily like the end product, but you have respect the accomplishment.

Something was in the ducts.

Could be an animal, could be something else.

Being careful to avoid the largely uncovered windows, I made another circuit through the house closing all of the vents. It might not stop whatever it was, but it would slow it down.

Before I closed the vent in our room, I called the dog over to have a sniff.

He couldn't have been less interested.

There was an exasperated sigh, then a pause, and then he very reluctantly pulled himself to his feet and wandered over to where I was, crouched under the window.

He had the kind of a blank face that you could read absolutely anything into. We'd been together long enough by then that I thought I had a handle on what he liked and didn't like and the difference in his reactions between the two was almost imperceptible.

Taking his own sweet time, he eventually arrived at my position and gave me the kind of long-suffering look that is reserved for low-level bureaucrats. He seemed to be saying that whatever it was that I thought was so important was something he had seen a thousand different times before and from much more interesting people.

I gestured toward the vent.

He couldn't have cared less.

I patted the carpeting around the vent to focus his attention.

He actually turned his head to look nostalgically toward the closet where he had been sleeping.

I slipped the fingers of one hand under his color while I snapped the fingers of the other.

He directed his attention and his massive snout in the direction of the vent.

He became even less interested. At that point, it was as though he was embarrassed for me. He would not meet my look and instead turned tail and headed back to the closet.

I hadn't proven anything and now both the dog and I knew it.

Another round of room-to-room.

This time I was listening.

I was listening for scratches, for breathing, for squeaking, for purring, for whirring.

Nothing.

I even went to the third floor.

This time, I brought my bedding with me. I used the old heavy drapes to dampen the creaking and groaning.

It didn't work as well as I had hoped.

The creaking was worse in the middle of the hallways and so I clung to the walls like I was inching along the narrow ledge of a high building.

It was a long process, but I was finally able to make it from room to room, closing vents as I went.

Slowly, I pushed open the door to the final room and let the beam of my flashlight play across the space.

It was the largest room on the floor, perhaps in the whole house. Having long been used as some sort of storage or work room, its original purpose was no longer clear. The pitched roof and the dormer-style windows gave the space a very dramatic feel. The narrow window allowed a narrow beam of light from the alley at the back of the property which heightened the room's theatricality.

There were still some random, forgotten personal property around the room and that made getting to the vent very difficult.

Where I could, I tried to go over some of the tables and other forgotten furniture. When I couldn't, I had to move away from the wall and toward the center of the room which raised the stakes for every foot fall.

Here the drapes helped some, but the room was a natural echo chamber and any noise was too much.

At one point, the drapes snagged on a projecting piece of flooring and, instead of a creak or a groan, there was a pronounced ripping sound.

I stood stalk-still for the longest time after that, straining my ears for any sign that I had triggered some sort of response.

My heart was pounding again and I was aware that I was leaving a Morse Code pattern of sweat drops on the floor in my wake.

At long last, I was in the dormer at the final vent under the window.

Stop.

Hold your breath.

Listen.

Very carefully.

Nothing.

I closed the vent and just as I was about to begin the exhausting process of retracing my steps, the window over my head drifted slowly open.

Somebody forgot to lock the window.

Somebody had been in this room and forgotten to lock the window.

Some unknown person had been in this room and left the window unlocked.

A person came to the house, to this room, unlocked the window and, before leaving, had forgotten to lock it.

Some unknown person had been in the house.

Somebody was in the house.

Something Didn't Smell Right

Something didn't smell right.

The dog was very suspicious as he followed me around the different rooms and floors of the house he had been guarding for most of the night.

We started in the basement and went right through the whole thing.

It was a great old house, built by a first generation of a middle class that had now largely fled. For its time, it was a decadent expression of new money. It had high ceilings, hardwoods and plaster decorations: all of which had been largely neglected by subsequent owners.

There was a grand, sweeping staircase that seemed to have been purpose-built for photos of the bride from a particular era. The detail in its railings and newel post spoke to patient, careful, painstaking craftsmanship that now has to be purchased overseas.

Like a Russian matryoshka, the second floor had a series of ever-smaller bedrooms. They were like precious time capsules capturing a very specific aesthetic from a very particular time. It was clear that many of these rooms had gone unused long before the house became unoccupied. Paint colors and and paper patterns told the story of the most recent owners and a house that got bigger as their world got smaller.

The third floor was largely undecorated. There were a series of bedrooms here too, but they were utilitarian in nature. I started to explore them, but one foot on the dried out wooden floor set off a groan that I was certain would bring down the delicate tracery of paint layers that had separated from the ceiling around the skylight.

I would confine myself to the lower, carpeted floors.

From the basement, I found an old black and yellow Chock Full o'Nuts coffee can and a Tupperware salad bowl—treasures that must have gone overlooked in a yard sale—so it was breakfast for me and the dog. Ramen and Ralston-Purina: it wasn't how I had planned to start today, but, absent additional intel, it would have to do.

The dog sniffed the air around the unfamiliar bowl and looked at me in that same, disappointed way that people do when they realize they are out of choices. He took what I can only describe as a courtesy lick, sighed and then went over to lie in front of the sliding glass door.

Next order of business: rack time. Until I knew what I was up against, the daylight was not going to be my friend.

In one of the bedrooms on the second floor, I found a surprisingly spacious closet. In the back of it was a smaller door, that opened into what I think must have been a seasonal closet where warm weather clothes spent the winter and where heavy coats went on summer vacation.

In the back of the closet, I found some ratty old drapes that had long ago returned from a visit to the dry cleaner, but had never made it off the hanger.

This was ideal. I had a place to sleep and something to sleep on. This would be our base of operations, our nest in which to hatch our plans.

I brought the dog up to check it out. He was not impressed.

Try as I might, he would not come into our panic room.

We compromised which is to say I let him have his way: he stayed in the outer closet.

The sun was not long up and it was already getting warm in this uninsulated space. I stripped down, curled up and tried to get some sleep.

That was much more easily said than done.

It was a new space to the dog and me and full of unfamiliar sounds and every time there was a new click, or pop, or whir, or creak, the dog startled and that startled me.

There were outside noises to learn as well: heavy trucks, light trucks, cars, lawnmowers and leaf blowers. And there were even a surprising number of cars the drivers of which were so self-important that they had to announce their presence by leaning on their horns.

There was only one sound that really mattered and that was if a car pulled into the shared driveway that separated this house from the neighbors. Just because the place hadn't sold, didn't mean it couldn't and we had to be ready.

No, sleep was not going to be deep, or restful.

And, as if reading my mind, the dog took in a deep chest full of air and let out a long, mournful sigh.

Crossing Main St.

It didn't make any sense.

You start a project with someone, you keep on them until it's done. It's not Whack-A-Mole: you just don't hit the targets you can see. You get assigned to take out a mole, you can be damned sure, one way or another, you're going to get dirty. You dig out the mole, or you can be certain someone else will dig the hole for you.

That's the way we did things.

Whoever was coming for me had to be playing by a very different set of rules.

Immediately I left the hospital, my next stop was at the nearby all-night drug store.

I burned through the last of my emergency cash to pick up some necessities to keep me and the dog going while I sorted out this shit: a couple of disposable cell phones, half-a-dozen cans of dog food and all the Ramen noodles I could carry.

I had promised myself that I was going to live my entire post sheet cake life without ever tasting that shit again. Each time we would go out, they told us that it had everything we needed to keep going: all the nutrition and more than enough calories, blah, blah, blah. It did the trick; it nourished the body, but spend enough time eating that and it will kill your soul.

I waited impatiently for the light to change so I could cross the street.

South below Main Street and then back to the east before turning north close to the alley and the house where I had left my dog.

As I walked through the residential streets, I quickly set up one of the phones so I could scan for news of the night's events.

Nothing.

I checked the website of the local paper and the radio stations; I checked the sites in the surrounding communities.

One site had the car crash, another the “mischief” call at the hospital.

Nowhere did I see any mention of a gunshot.

Why wouldn't they mention that? How could they have left that...?

The cast of this little drama just got bigger.

A little more clicking and scrolling and I found a phone app that monitored police and fire frequencies. It wasn't real-time, but it would be close enough for my purposes.

It was too light now for me to still be on the streets. If they were looking for me, they would be looking for me.

And besides, my dog would be looking for me too.

Traffic was beginning to pick up as I attempted to re-cross Main Street. Each short block was becoming its own race course as drivers readily put themselves, and others, at risk in order to arrive at the next light a few seconds ahead of everybody else. Doesn't matter what it looks like in your driveway, every car is a Formula One racer during rush hour.

I was forced to stop in the middle of the street for a few seconds while one beat-up pick-up traded lanes and advantage with what we used to call an “economy car.” I didn't like my odds of getting across before they picked me off, so I decided to wait for them to pass.

So, I stood there—in the middle of the street--watching these vehicles bobbing and weaving through traffic, with only a yellow paint strip to protect me. The drivers had some skill. I was impressed that they avoided hitting one another, or any other drivers.

They were getting closer.

I wasn't thinking.

And then I was. What was my problem?

I turned around only to narrowly avoid being clipped by a car traveling in opposite direction.

I had to get out of the street.

The discordant sound of multiple car horns seemed to make a bad situation worse.

Couldn't go forward. Couldn't go back.

I felt like everyone was staring at me.

And then there was a small break in east-bound traffic.

I stepped into it waving my white plastic bags back and forth and daring the minivan that was bearing down on me not to stop.

After it stopped, I stepped into the curb lane and dared another vehicle not to kill me.

More car horns.

Some words were exchanged.

The two west-bound racing cars passed behind me.

I decided to walk another four blocks before again attempting to cross to the north side of Main Street.

This time, I used the crosswalk.

And as I crossed, I could feel the beady eye of the traffic camera measuring my every step.