Footsteps

Last Thursday evening, around 8pm, I was slumped at my desk browsing the Web when there was a knock on my door. It was my housemate Tummy, with a furrowed brow.

“I can hear people at the side of the house.” he said. "It sounds like footsteps and twigs snapping.”

A week earlier our cars had been broken into on the property, and it had left us on edge.

“Let’s take a look.” I said.

I wheeled my chair out from my desk, stood and collected my phone. Noticing the cold night air, I hastily scanned my room for a jacket to wear but decided a baseball cap would do.

I followed Tummy out of my room and down the hallway. We exited the back door and cut a right to the east side of the house. As we stepped through the garden spider webs stretched across my face, snapping hideously in the darkness.

“Listen!” Tummy said. “Can you hear it?”

I stopped and listened but heard nothing out of the ordinary. I switched on my phone torch; a giant arachnid shadow sprang on the wall, engulfing the garden. Shaken, I stepped back and the shadow diminished. A garden orb spider floating at the centre of its web came into focus, inches from my face. I gave it a wide berth and met Tummy at the asbestos fence that lines our property. We peered over into the property next door.

Our neighbour’s vacant block is approximately the same size as ours — roughly 2,000 square meters. A double-storey mansion had once stood at the centre but it burned down eight years ago. Nine tenants had fled the house; an accident with candles apparently. Now the property was a forest of lupins and wild oats.

“Hello!” I called out. “Anyone there?”

Nothing. I panned my torch but the immense field seemed to swallow the light. The lot formed a hump where the mansion had stood and then sloped down to the sidewalk framing an open view of the Swan river, glimmering in the night.

“I called the police. They’re on the way.” I professed crisply.

Still no response. We turned and walked back to the house.

“I think I will call the police.” I said quietly to Tummy.

“Yeah, do it.” he responded

I punched in the general help number and got through to a male officer. I told him about the recent break ins and the sounds from the vacant lot.

“Did you actually see anyone?” he asked.

“Well, no.” I replied, as I passed through the kitchen. “But my housemate heard people.”

I entered Tummy’s room. He was sitting on his windowsill, leaning backwards out the window the way a barrelman spots pirates from a crow’s nest.

“I can see people!” Tummy announced. “There’s a torch moving!”

“We can see people. There’s a torch moving.” I echoed to the officer.

“It’s moving toward the neighbour’s house.” Tummy said, leaping down from the sill.

“We’ll send a patrol car to have a look when it’s available.” the officer said.

I hung up the phone and decided to investigate. As I walked out the front door I saw a single white sedan car parked directly out front of our property, its headlights on. Then I noticed Tummy descending the steps from our front path onto the road and making his way toward the car.

“Who’s car is that Tummy!?”

“It’s my Uber Eats!” Tummy called back.

I made my way down to the street as the Uber drove away.

“I ordered ice cream!” Tummy said, holding up a brown paper bag.

“Great. Did you see anyone coming from the lot?” I asked.

“Na, nobody. But the lights were heading that way, sort of.” Tummy pointed to the opposite side of the vacant lot where an old mansion overlooks a hill on the corner.

“I think I’ll ask them if they saw anything.” I said. I walked down the footpath past the lot and Tummy followed.

The house on the hill was fortress-like, built of giant limestone rocks, four stories high with a large tall balcony. A window at the front had been smashed some years ago. Ruined pieces of plastic pipe scattered the ground below. A steep decline of crabgrass stopped at a hedge of cypress trees and dead cotton palms.

The entrance was up the adjacent hill. As we approached the corner I began to hear voices from the bushes above a stone wall at the front of the property. The conversation was too soft to hear but I could see the movement of figures in the bushes.

“Excuse me?” I called out.

A short man with calm eyes emerged from the bushes. He looked to be in his forties and wore shorts and a plain black polo shirt. A lean teenage boy with thick glasses, shorts and a green jacket emerged and stood beside him. They both looked down at us.

“Sorry to bother you.” I said, “do you live here?”

“Yeah, we live back there.” the man said, sweeping his hand casually behind him.

“We live on the other side there.” I pointed at our place. “We heard some sounds in the lot next door. Did you happen to see anybody in there?”

The man looked over toward the lot. “We were moving a bees’ nest.” he said.

The man turned back to face us, his eyes soft and still. The boy shuddered and shuffled on his feet.

“We probably heard you.” Tummy said.

The boy suddenly shrieked and spun, his arms flailing in the air. His green polyester jacket made a swishing sound.

“The bloody fucking bees are in my jacket! They’re on my fucking neck!” he yelled, slapping himself loudly on the back of his neck.

The man smiled and looked back at us. “This area is going to be demolished in a few days so we’re clearing things.”

“Well, we’ll leave you to it.” I said.

The boy screamed again, jumped down from the wall and shot past Tummy and I. We turned and watched in wonder as the boy ran down to the stop sign at the bottom of the road and then circled it frantically, all the while screaming and cursing the bees.

“So you live in this big house.” I said, turning back to face the man. “I’ve always wondered who lived here.”

“We’ve lived here seven years.” the man said.

“I’m Tim and this is Tummy. We live next door."

“I’m Haa. And this is my son Will.”

We stepped forward and shook his hand wishing them a good night before walking back to the house. I called the police to cancel the patrol car.

“I suppose it makes sense to move the nest at night when the bees are asleep.” Tummy said, “They’ll attack if you move them too far though.”

Monday morning I woke to the sound of trucks and by the end of the day most of the area had been demolished.