Several weeks went by and Evelyn found more and more she was
staring at the house across the street.
She had never seen anyone there.
No lights were ever on in the house, except the foyer light. She had never seen anyone come to the house
or leave it. She might have simply
passed it off for an abandoned home or a bank owned home, except the lawn was
always mown and the bushes always trimmed.
What was odd, though, is that she had never actually seen anyone mow the
lawn or that the lawn grew at all.
Phillip had mown their own lawn every Saturday since they had moved in. Of course, she did go to work during the
day. Evelyn assumed that the owners had a
lawn service that came each week during the day to care for the home's
grounds. But she couldn't stop thinking
about the house. If anyone did come
during the week, no vehicle ever went up that driveway.
She shared her observations with Phillip. He was interested in her observations, but it
wasn't odd to him. He figured, as she
did, that a lawn service took care of the lawn each week while they were at
work. The house was probably a
foreclosure, owned by the bank and kept in nice condition in case anyone wanted
to see and buy the house.
But Evelyn noticed, there were no signs on or around the
house. Usually if a home was bank owned, there was a notice in
a window, but this home had none. If it
was bank owned, why hadn't their realtor told them about that house at the same
time she showed them this one. Perhaps
she figured it wouldn't fit their needs and so didn't even bother to tell them
about it. Still, it was odd that she
hadn't mentioned it, if it were available for purchase.
Why was the foyer light always on? Phillip said it was to keep burglars away,
but Evelyn didn't find that very convincing.
It was the same light. It never
went off or on. If there was a burglar
who had been watching the house for the perfect opportunity to break in, they
would have noticed that nothing ever changed at that house.
Evelyn decided she had had enough of the house across the street. It was silly to spend so much time and
thought on it. She would focus on
projects around the house. Her and
Phillips's sixth anniversary was come up.
Evelyn decided she needed to do something special.
A week before the anniversary, Evelyn was given a surprise
vacation from work. She wasn't happy
about it, but a small fire had broken out in one of the cubicles and had blown
a large number of circuits in the rest of the building. Everyone was cleared out and a team of
electricians were being brought in to re-wire the entire building. Evelyn was not happy to lose that income, but
decided it would be nice to have so much time at home to work on the various
projects she had going.
The days were nice and pleasant. Evelyn threw open all the windows in the
living room and kitchen to let in the fresh breeze. The sounds of birds and street traffic were
all she could hear from outside. Evelyn
liked the birds. She wished she knew how
to identify which birds made which sounds.
Phillip joked with her in the evening about how Evelyn was now the
perfect little housewife staying at home each day. That joke had earned him a punch in the
arm.
Saturday, Phillip mowed the lawn, like usual. She was rather annoyed that while Phillip was
out mowing, she had to shut the windows in the house to block out all that
noise. After he was done and taking a
shower, Evelyn opened the windows again.
She looked out at the house across the street. It looked exactly as it had since the day
they had moved in, two months ago. The
lawn the perfectly mowed and the bushes neat and trimmed. The light in the foyer shown its usual
orangy-yellow. Evelyn realized she had
been home every day that week and had never seen anyone go to the house nor
even had heard anyone using a lawn mower on its front yard. She had noticed when her neighbor on her
right had mowed his lawn, but as far as she could recall, she had never seen or
heard anyone across the street. Evelyn
shivered. What was going on across the
street?
She would ask the neighbors tomorrow.
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