Measure Twice

 

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

Thankfully it only came once a month, that much we had figured out. The first month had been a surprise. We were fast asleep in our little dilapidated ranch house. We’d moved in 19 days before, and had just barely started fixing the old place up. There was so much to do! I hadn’t even gotten around to admitting to myself how much there was to do (let alone to my dear spouse Anne, whose arm I had to twist into all sorts of unnatural shapes to get her to agree to going in on this place with me. Let me tell you, her “money pit” jokes never get old.) But I digress.

We closed on the house, which was more ruin than house, set squarely in the middle of 12 acres of gnarly apple orchard in the middle of Potter Valley. By early summer we were all moved in, and ready to start renovations. By the time we hit mid-June, we were well on our way. The wood floors and plaster walls on the main level had been stripped bare, and we were working our way up the stairs with the sledge hammer.

It had been another dusty day, just like the 18 before. The summer heat hadn’t quite set in, but with all the hard work during the day we welcomed the cool evening breeze that came in through he holes where the windows had been (before we ripped them out). We’d been soundly asleep when a strange noise woke us up. It was an unworldly cry, echoing though the acres of trees that surrounded us. We tried to ignore it, but the noise kept growing and growing until it was right outside our window. I leaped up from the bed and looked out, but all I could see was effervescent shapes looming about in the darkness and fog that had formed in the soggy bottom of the orchard grasses. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep well that night.

It was a month later, to the exact date, when it happened again. Another long day, this time spent stripping the tile from the upstairs bathroom, and another night were we tumbled exhaustedly into bed, only to be woken up at midnight by those forlorn cries and strange shapes looming in the dark, circling around our house.

The next morning Anne demanded I go to the hardware store and build shutters to close the still gaping windows. Although whatever it was didn’t seem to want to get into the house, Anne didn’t want to take any chances. I did as I was told, of course, but it seemed our haste was unnecessary, the next night was quiet. In fact, we didn’t have another visit from our strange little howling ghosts for another month. But then, just as we were starting to get comfortable again the noise returned. I ran to secure the shutters, only to find I had cut them too short. There was a perceptible gap between the wood. As Anne and I stared through at the strangely crying shadows beyond, a face emerged in the darkness.

“Why hello there,” a voice said, “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, I thought this place was empty. I turn my peacocks out here once a month as a little treat, to graze on the grubs. I’m Gary, by the way, I live at the ranch next door.

“Oh, hi,” I replied, opening the shutters a crack, “nice to meet you neighbor.”