I’ve lived here for two years and I haven’t seen my neighbors. That’s not terribly surprising given that we’re in the woods and a lot of these places started out as – and many remain – vacation houses. Not close enough to the river to have been snatched up by developers or out-of-towners looking to convert it into an Airbnb, but still far enough away from the city to serve as a suitably-remote getaway. Probably paid off generations ago, there’s no financial guilt associated with it if they don’t visit regularly. Still, you would think I would have seen them at some point In the last two years, right?
And I certainly would have noticed because their house sort of looms over me. Perched atop a steep hillside, concrete steps run up from the driveway pad below, switch-backing up and up to the narrow deck which follows beneath the two ever-curtained bay windows like a permanently droopy eyelid under never-opening eyes.
Ray had met the neighbors once, he said. He lives up the hill. Doesn’t get out much. I check in on him, put out and take in his garbage cans, nothing big. Sometimes I make dinner for the two of us. That’s when I asked him about the Palmers.
“The who?” he said.
“The Palmers. The place across from me. There’s a faded wooden sign that says ‘the Palmers’ hanging by the gate to the deck.”
“Palmers…” he thought. “Oh, right, right, right. The mother… Audrey, yes – oh, she was a nasty, ornery thing. She and her husband bought the place in… 66? 67? Oh, I don’t remember. They weren’t regulars, but… let’s see… one summer it was her and the kids – three of ‘em, if I remember right – the father wasn’t there… Don’t know if he died or split. Mother always yelling at the kids – you know at night it’s quiet? Lawd, not when they were here. She’d carry on like…” he drifted off. “Year on years, the kids get older, Audrey gets meaner, grumbles more than yells, grumbles at grandkids… and they come less and less… I don’t remember the last time they were here…”
“Yeah, they haven’t been there since I’ve lived here.”
“That so? Well, yeah, I suppose so…” he was quiet a few moments, then chuckled to himself. “I remember old Audrey up there on the deck in her rocking chair, rocking and bitching. Inside at the window, rocking and bitching…”
But last night I woke up and the window eyes of the house glowed; someone was there. The lights weren’t on when I went to bed – I would have had to put my blinds down to sleep as all the lights were on with the windows glaring down at me. I looked at the clock – 3:15am. When I used to live next to some rental places I was used to Bay Area vacationers badly misjudging the time it’d take them to get up here and not arriving until 9, but 3 in the morning? That’s odd. I followed the stairs down from the brightly lit deck to the parking area – there were no cars there.
I’ll admit it, for a moment the situation spooked me, but then I started to worry because this didn’t look like the Palmers came up. No, this looked like squatters might have broken in. Look, I’m not the plutonic ideal of neighbor – I may turn my guitar amp up a little loudly at times, and I’m one to let a loud Xbox session run a little late, but, hey, I live in the woods, right? But there’s one thing I won’t abide, it’s squatters. Because here’s the thing: they break into a place, invite friends, trash the place, stay up for all hours, and if they get busted they’ll look for another place in the neighborhood. Meanwhile things disappear out of your yard, cars get broken in to… it’s a bad scene. Which is why I hurriedly dressed, then grabbed the bat I keep by the front door (see: living in the woods), the heavy Mag-Lite 8-D-Cell flashlight, and set off across the street.
I thought I could see movement behind the curtains of the windows as I started up the stairs, but there was no noise. I climbed the remaining flight trying to be as quiet as possible as I reached the deck. Still no noise as I tried to stealthily heel-toe across the creaky deck. Staring at the opaque windows I did see something moving in there, but still everything remained perfectly silent. I moved cautiously to the door on the far side of the deck. The red door featured four small windows in the upper half, and frilly curtains mottled yellow with age obscured the view into the cabin. I took a firm grip on the head of the flashlight, club-like, in my left hand, and cocked the bat back over my shoulder with my right. I edged towards the middle of the door to see if I could see anything between the two curtains. Just a sliver separated the two frilly curtains, but it was enough to let me peer into the cabin. No movement… no, I angled myself to look in towards the windows. The rocking chair rolled smoothly forward and backwards, forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards. The rocking chair was empty.
All the lights in and around the house blinked out all at once. Pure black darkness descended on me. I stumbled backwards but managed to keep my footing, and awkwardly fumbling with the flashlight for the power button. Flicking it on, I ran across the deck for the stairs. I know I heard my footfalls on the creaky timbers, but I swear I heard a grumbling sound from in the cabin. As I hit the stairs all I could think of was Ray’s words, “Rocking and bitching, rocking and bitching…”
I missed the last step, twisted my ankle, but kept running down the driveway pad, across the narrow road to my house. I closed and locked the door and drew the shade in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep that night and didn’t lift the blinds for months.
A week later I was coming home from work when I saw a minivan and a Suburban parked on the pad. I crossed from my driveway as a tall man with a goatee retrieved the last duffel bag from the back of the Suburban and closed the doors, turning to start up the stairs.
“Hey!” I said introducing myself. We shook hands as he introduced himself as Corey Palmer. I explained I lived across the street and keep and try to keep an eye on the place.
“Thanks,” Corey said. “Yeah, we haven’t been up here in a couple years. Our grandmother has been sick for some time and we just couldn’t get up here without her – it just felt wrong.”
“Sure, that makes sense,” I said. “Is she upstairs already?”
“No,” Corey said with sadness in his voice. “In fact, she died a week ago. We decided to come up here in her honor. You know, to sort of say goodbye.”
“A week ago?”
“Yeah, last… Saturday night… well, Sunday morning… The home said she died in her sleep. They gave the time of death around 3 am.”
“You don’t say…”
