I'll Take My Holiday Weekends Boring and Uneventful, Thank You - Part 2B

(Part 1, Part 2A)

And then, after… I don’t know… five minutes? Ten? Out of the silence below, sudden movement and noise. The sounds that had so terrified me not long before now occurred again in reverse order. There was a similar“bang” of wood on wood, hurriedly followed by the sound of the window sliding shut, still steadily, but more quickly and purposefully this time.

I hoped that the sound meant that the intruder had left. But how could I be sure? When were the police coming? After several minutes, I went to the top of the stairs and debated going down to have a look. Was that the responsible, adult thing to do? (Or was that the kind of choice to which horror movie viewers respond, “Nooo! Don’t go in there!”) I decided instead to do the other responsible adult thing, and checked on my children sleeping in their beds. Then I returned to mine. After a long while of praying and listening, God mercifully lulled his child to sleep.

When morning came, I tread cautiously downstairs into the dining room, not sure what I would find. Everything appeared peaceful and untouched… except for the kids’ chair closest to the window, which was pulled out from the table instead of being pushed in like all the others. I went to the window and took hold of it. It was closed but, sure enough, it was unlocked. I shuddered as I slid it open myself and heard that sound again. No mistake: that was exactly what I had heard from my room. Or could I have imagined it? There was no real evidence that anyone had been there. Except perhaps the chair out of place. I knocked it over just to hear the sound it would make. “Bang!” Wood on wood, exactly as I’d heard the night before.

Questions abounded. If someone had been there, why? Who? And why had they left without disturbing anything? Did my noisemaking scare them off? Not likely: The fact that the person climbed in just 20 minutes after I went to bed and turned out the lights suggested that he already knew someone was there and had waited for me to go to sleep. Had there even been direct spiritual intervention? Stories abound of angels becoming visible and thwarting harm. I’ll never know this side of heaven what went on in the room below me that night. In any case, I had no doubt at all that the timing of my sudden, yet gentle awakening was not a coincidence.

Seeing my neighbor outside that morning, I went out to ask if he had also heard anything in the night.

“Yeah. The police were all over your yard,” he said.

Oh, so they had come! “And that was after 2am?” I pressed.

“No, no. That was around 9pm. There was another armed robbery at {the grocery store in the shopping center across the street.} The police were searching your yard with dogs and flashlights for quite a while when the dogs led them there.”

Yikes! I had been home, watching a movie, visible through that back window. How on earth did I miss all of that commotion? This was something else entirely. ARMED ROBBERY, and they thought the guy was in my yard! Was it related somehow to the intruder at 2am? Was it the same guy, returning to see what he could accomplish with the ladder he’d spotted when he was in my yard the first time? Or had he decided to return later after seeing… me? Or were the two events entirely unrelated, just a coincidence of criminal activity?

Absorbing the new information, I pressed my neighbor further regarding my original inquiry: “But did you hear anything around 2am, like the gate or ladder between our houses?”

“Well… yeah. Oh, yeah. My wife DID say that she thought she heard something...”

None of my questions have ever been answered beyond that.