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.