NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
“Mom and I were between maids, and I was cleaning out the cat’s litterbox. It was in the morning, late morning I think. I heard someone knocking on a window. This was in our old house over on the Van Rijn Estate. Mom was out West visiting a friend, so I was alone. Anyway, I tried not to think about that, and went into the living room and saw a strange figure knocking from outside, on the bottom left window, over by the dining table. Whoever it is, knocks five or six times in rapid succession then pauses and knocks again. It has a bunch of ragged scarfs around its head, tied under the chin. The person is short but thick set, with a dirty rain coat on.
I beckoned … I mean, even with the scarves, I am not sure if it is a woman or not…I point towards the front door.
No one is there when I open the door. I walk outside and look around towards the dining room window and no one is there either. Just a lot of leaves blowing around. I mean it was at least a couple of weeks before Halloween. So, I don’t think it was a prank.
The next day I saw a man who looked like him, in the SanzE Super store, dressed in slacks and a t-shirt. I guess I was staring at him.
He said, “Hi, can I help you?”
He had a foreign accent.
I said something like, “Hi, I am Paula, remember?”
And then people were trying to get by and he moved on into the crowd. I lost track of him.
He was short, with a tweed cap and had the same big uneven bulbous nose with a wide thin mouth, prominent chin and pig eyes.
I kept trying to remember if I had seen this person before, but haven’t recalled any one so far.
Was it, ah…maybe it was an apparition?
Well, anyway, when I finished with the litter box, our cat Mamie, had disappeared. I looked everywhere. I don’t know how she got out. The back door was closed and she didn’t get out the front door while I had it open. The bedroom window was open but the screen is in intact, and no other windows are open …
I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking about Mamie outside alone, and who that person outside was and how did Mamie get out?
It was kind of scary…
Anyway, I was single back when this person came to the window. It was only a couple of years ago I guess. I was sort of seeing Chuck around that time, and that was great, but he was still married to Nadia, and they were away that week. So, I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up.
Later on … was it that day? Maybe the next day, like Sunday, I went out to get something from the shed. It is built into the backyard fence, right against the overgrown alley that runs between Stoffels, Street and our place on Lievens Avenue. It had been a while since I looked in there, and it wasn’t locked. It didn’t look right, when I opened the door. Stuff was rearranged. The lawn mower was half blocking the door. When I moved it out of the way I saw a sleeping bag rolled up in there, and a couple of shopping bags with clothes in them. Seemed like someone was sleeping in there. I was going to call the police as soon as I got back in the house to get my phone, but the ring tones were on when I picked it up, and I didn’t call right then.
A friend was waiting for me in the driveway, and we went shopping. We talked it over and she said she would help me find Maime, and you know what? Andrea del Sarto found her, and that’s how I got her back, like that Wednesday. They lived a few blocks away and she called me. Maime was in a crab apple tree in their back yard. I forget now, who it was, someone got a ladder out and brought her down for me. By then I decided it probably wasn’t anything, and so I forgot all about the window thing…
Okay, so a few months ago, when Chuck and I were looking around the shed and throwing some stuff out. He found an old blue tarp hanging from some nails in the back. When he pulled it down there was a back door. I never noticed it before. It was kind of hidden. Just a piece of the plywood cut out of the back wall and a couple of hinges put in at the top, so it opened from the bottom up, lifting out into the alley.
I just about screamed when I saw it. I remembered the whole incident again. There was nothing in there though. The sleeping bag and cloths had gone. We went out into the ally and you couldn’t see it from out there, because old pieces of tarpaper were tacked carefully over the whole back of the shed. It overlapped the edges of the door, and hid the cuts, but didn’t prevent it opening. There was even a piece hanging over the hinges at the top. Chuck looked carefully up there. He did a Sherlock, and saw some slight scrape marks where the tarpaper on top rubbed against the stuff below the hinges. Then he noticed there were lichens growing on some parts of the paper and then stopped in a long straight line, and there was a row of nail holes that didn’t make sense. He figured the tarpaper was taken from somewhere else.
So we called the police because there might have been illegals using it, you know, gang members, or something. When they came they couldn’t find any useful evidence, and said if it had happened two years ago, there wasn’t anything to do about it now.
So then we decided to buy a couple of pistols in case any one came around again. We got into a discussion with this guy in the SnazE gun department, about security, and self-defense, and stuff like that. He told us about his buddy, Frans Bankock, or something like that. Anyway, he said they were militia buddies, and gave us this Frans’s phone number. Chuck called him and he came over to the house a while later. I was outside. It was a sunny day and I saw them drive up, and as he got out of the car I saw another guy, behind the wheel, who started to get out too, but didn’t. He closed the door, and stayed in the car. What I did see looked like the guy I saw at SnazE with the bulbous nose, after the incident at our window. I felt really creeped out. If Chuck hadn’t come out at that moment, I would have got my pistol, and locked myself in the house. I mean he looked like the person who knocked on the window, but I wasn’t sure. He put on his sunglasses, and a tweed cap when he realized I was looking at him. He never got out of the car and never said anything. Frans did all the talking. He was real friendly and checked out Mom’s home security and then looked at the shed. That guy seemed to be Frans’s driver. Franz mentioned him by name at one point. Can’t remember what it was. It might have been French, like Jean Pierre or something. Anyway, Frans thought he might be able to help us, but wouldn’t say any more, at that time. He just said he would get back to us …
Oh, yeah, now I remember, he said he was a Militia organizer. That was it. He told us about the Fauxmont Milita and asked if we were interested in meeting some of our neighbors who were going to start a Van Rijn Militia to protect our neighborhood. You know, from creepy people in our sheds and stuff like that. Well we were getting ready to move down by the river, so we opted out.
Then the other day we were down there, by the river, talking to one of the builders. I think it was Tron Plank. He told us about this bankruptcy in Fauxmont. This guy who owned the SnazE franchise had lost everything. They were foreclosing on his property, a while back, and he disappeared. Well, he was a friend of Tron’s Dad, Werner. I mean the Planks had built this guy’s house, and you know, got to know him. I think it was a real big one too.
Well, Tron thinks that his dad helped this guy disappear for a while. He heard a story that this guy had spent some time on a friend’s boat, down at the marina in DC, and also spent one night in a shed. So that gave me the creeps. I asked him if he knew Frans, and he did. He was really surprised that we knew him too. Then he was even more surprised when I told him about our shed. He wouldn’t say any more after that, and said he had to go.”
Paula shrugged.
“That’s about it I guess.”
By the time Paula finished, the waiter had come by numerous times to get our order, which Lou had not placed in advance as he usually did.
Paula kept talking, pausing only for breath, telling Lou and me all this in the H Bar, over a glass of ice water, a paper placemat, and some menus. Lou had introduced me as his old friend, and Paula seemed so comfortable with Lou she didn’t hesitate after that.
“You know, I seem to remember talking to Liberty about someone visiting out in California.”
“Oh … Well, it could have been Mom.”
“Paula didn’t you know that your mother was visiting Gale Trip, when she went out West?”
“Oh yes, that sounds right!
“Okay, do you know Liberty then?”
“Ah, we might have met, I forget. Who are the Trips anyway? It was just a name, you know. Mom knows a lot of people.”
“Paula, Gale’s husband, Jake Trip, is the guy who went bankrupt in Fauxmont.”
“Oh, Wow! Was it him?”
“It was. Do you remember the name, Frans Banning Cocq, is that who came out to look at your shed?”
“Right, that’s it, really strange name.”
The waiter is looking at Paula, who has picked up a menu.
