Henry first knew that something was wrong when he was in his basement going for his morning run on the treadmill. He had forgone his usual plan of running 10 kilometres deciding to stay close to home today in case his mother called with news about his grandfather. There was fear that his grandfather had taken a turn for the worse in his battle with cancer. That was a phone call he did not want to miss.
That decision saved his life.
While Henry ran on his treadmill, he usually turned music on his phone to drown out the monotonous noises of the neighbourhood. Nothing distracted Henry more than hearing a door close nearby or a group children screaming down the sidewalk.
Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw some movement in the window of his basement spare room.
He turned his head to look but did not see anything.
"Must have been the neighbour's cat walking on the fence again." he said out loud trying to catch his breathe and keep his pace steady.
Henry saw movement again, only this time on the other side of the house out of his den at the front of the house.
He had not opened the blinds when he had gotten on the treadmill; Henry found the movements of cars, people and even the wind blowing the leaves distracting and would throw his pace off as he was continually trying to watch everything that was happening outside.
He pressed the stop button on the treadmill and stood at the base of it, looking at the shadow cast on the window.
Now that the shadow had stopped moving, Henry was able to make out what appeared to be legs. Someone was standing on his lawn and trying to look in Henry's living room window.
There has never been much of a problem with crime in Merton, but the last factory had closed down a few weeks ago, leaving a large number of people without work. It could have made someone desperate enough to enter a house in the middle of the day.
Henry took a few steps forward and was now standing at the front of the treadmill. He could not tell if his pulse slowed down since he stopped running or if adrenaline had kicked in from the fear that was driving him now.
The shadow of the legs stood motionless against the early morning sun. There was a faint glimmer of sunlight shining on the wall to the left of Henry, and he thought that it was going to be a warm and peaceful day.
For the next few seconds, Henry could do nothing but stare at the shadows of the legs, waiting to see what they were going to do.
As quickly as the legs showed up, they were gone. Apparently, Henry's house had nothing of interest for this suspected burglar.
Henry stood in the middle of his basement for a minute and tried to process what he had just seen.
"Who the hell could that have been?" he said to himself.
He began to wonder if he should go upstairs and take a peek outside to see what was happening rather than just speculate from the basement.
Henry took a quick survey of the room, making sure that everything was turned off and unplugged. He did not want the blame for burning down his house. In light of what was on his employment record, he would lose any insurance money and face jail time.
Henry glanced into the spare room to look out the window where he had previously seen the movement.
As he was about to turn away, he saw something move again, only this time he knew what it was.
Bobbing up and down along the fence was the bright orange hat of his neighbour, Jacob. He was the real reason that Henry put up the fence between the houses. Sure it was another barrier of protection to keep the rabbits and deer out of his garden, but it was also to keep Jacob from talking to him.
Once Jacob entered your yard to talk, it was next to impossible to get him to stop. Even entering the house only caused Jacob to stop telling his story long enough to wait for you to come out again, and in most cases, he continued to tell his story loud enough for you to hear while you were inside.
Judging by the movement that Henry could see on the other side of the fence, it appeared as though Jacob was trying to climb the hill and go around to the front of the house.
Henry began to walk toward the spare room window if Jacob was hurt over in the backyard; he should offer to help him in some way.
As he approached the window, Henry could tell there was something different about him.
The closer Henry got to the spare room window, the more concerned he grew with the situation.
"He has never had much trouble walking before." Henry thought to himself, "Maybe he's had a stroke."
At this point, Henry quickened his pace as he rushed over to see what was the matter with his neighbour. Everything else that happened just a few minutes ago was now a distant memory.
When he made it across the room, he gazed out at his neighbour's house and took in what he saw.
He noticed first was that Jacob was not alone in the yard, there appeared to be someone else there with him. From what Henry could tell by looking at the man he was probably homeless, Jacob had been known to take in a few travellers over the years and give them a place to sleep for the night.
"What that hell has happened out there?" Henry said to himself.
In the far corner of Jacob's yard, Henry could see another person laying down in the most uncomfortable position he could ever imagine. The person was laying on their back, with their feet up on the shed, while their head lay crooked and bent at a hard angle against a tree.
To Henry it looked as though the man decided to climb the tree while in the middle of a drunken binge, only to fall from the tree and pass out. That would be odd behaviour for Jacob and his friends since he is a recovering alcoholic.
"Maybe he's fallen off the waggon?" he thought. "Happens to lots of people."
He returned his attention to his neighbour, who had just taken a hard tumble down the hill.
Henry reached for the clasp that held the window closed. He slid the window open in enough time to hear the snap of a bone as Jacob had landed on the ground.
"Jacob!" Henry yelled out of the window, "Are you alright?"
The silence that followed sent shivers up his spine.
It was at that moment that Henry noticed the splash of thick red paint on the side of Jacob's house at the bottom of the stairs.
"What the hell is going on over there Jacob? Talk to me." Henry questioned with worry in his voice.
The silence continued causing Henry to grow more concerned.
The growl that followed made Henry's blood freeze as if he had stepped outside in the middle of an Arctic snowstorm.
A pair of eyes quickly popped up to look over the fence. The eyes belonged to Jacob's new friend, and they locked onto Henry.
The hands of the vagrant grabbed hold of the fence, and he pulled himself up. His arms, covered in old scars, fresh cuts and the same paint that was smeared all over Jacob's house.
It was about that time Henry had made the connection, that what he was seeing was not paint, but blood. That is when Henry knew he was in trouble and began to fear for his safety.
The vagrant was no longer just covered in dirt from a life on the street; Henry noticed that a layer of fresh blood covered the man's face and was beginning to thicken in the early morning air. He could see the pain and suffering that he must have endured living on the street as most of his teeth were missing or chipped, there was a fresh slash across his cheek from his eye to his lips that left part of his mouth exposed.
Henry heard another growl from somewhere else in the yard and looked over to see the body that was laying at the base of the shed was now walking towards him with a noticeable limp. It looked as though the entire bone in his shin had been snapped in half when he fell.
With every step the stranger took, Henry winced in anticipation of the scream that he was expecting he would make. A scream that never crossed their lips. There was no pain on his face. Just determination.
He could see the stranger on the fence beginning to reach out to him and growl showing his teeth in a carnal display.
There was still 6 feet between
Henry and the stranger's hands, but he did not want to be any closer.
"Oh god!" Henry groaned as he turned and began to run from the room.
He realised that he was leaving the window open as an invitation for the strangers to enter his house. He turned back to slam it closed and throw across the lock.
Henry just hoped that the fence was high enough to keep Jacob's friends from successfully climbing over.
He had no idea what was going on, but he felt that he should at least let the police know that something terrible had happened next door.