Henry could see the desperation in the eyes of his would-be attackers, at this point, he had come to the decision that these men wanted to hurt him. He wasn't sure how he'd known this, but he could not shake the feeling.
Henry began to back out of the spare room, never letting the reaching hands and growling faces out of his sight.
He stuck his arms out behind him feeling his way out of the room and towards the door. He felt sure that if he could get to the door and close it, then those things might forget that he is in the house and might leave him alone.
The further that Henry gets from the window the more urgently the men began to move.
By the time that he had made it all the way to the door the man on the other side of the fence began to howl. The hair on the back of Henry's neck began to stand up as the noise continued for what seemed to be an eternity.
As the sound of the howl tapered off, Henry realised he needed to do something quickly.
"I gotta get some help for Jacob. I don't want to go anywhere near that guy."
He quickly turned to leave the room, forgetting he had just put a basket of folded sheets and towels in the doorway to make up the bed for any unexpected visits from his mother. As he was turning, Henry put his foot squarely in the middle of the towels, catching his running shoes on the side of the basket and flying face first into the midst of the den.
Henry braced himself for the fall and managed not to injure himself as his arms began to cartwheel trying to find something to grab.
He hit the floor with a thud, taking the brunt of the impact on his right shoulder.
Instinctively, Henry opened his eyes and began to look around to see where he was. His nose was mere centimetres from the sharp metal corner of the wood fireplace.
"Phew! That was close." Henry said as he let out a little nervous laughter.
Henry began to lift himself off the floor, wincing in pain as he lifted himself off the ground.
"That's going to be sore later." he said to himself as he rotated his arm in slow circles, trying to work out the pain in his arm.
While he was rotating his arm, he slowly walked across the room towards the phone resting on the cradle. He reached for the phone and just before his fingers touched it he stopped and cocked his head back towards the room he just left listening if he could hear the stranger making any more racket.
Satisfied that he could no longer hear anything seriously threatening, Henry reached for the phone and dialled 9-1-1.
Henry stood with his back to the front of the house and looked towards the spare room window, but he could no longer see the man who was scaring him so much.
After a couple of dozen rings, an operator finally answered the phone.
"Thank you for calling Merton Police, what's your emergency?" The dispatcher responded.
"Hello, my name is Henry, and I think something horrible has happened to my neighbour. I was just looking out in the backyard, and I believe that there was an attack. I cannot see him, but there appears to be blood splashed on the side of his house." Henry spoke quickly, trying to get as much detail out as he could.
"You said your neighbour was hurt? Does it look as though anyone was bit?" The dispatcher asked.
"That's a strange question to be asking." Henry thought to himself.
"No, I didn't notice anything like that. It was hard to see any detail over the fence, but there is a strange man in the back yard, and he did appear to have blood on his hands and face when he saw me trying to look in the garden." He responded back to the dispatcher.
"Sir, I have your address as 16 Sycamore Road, is that correct?" The operator asked.
"Yes, it is."
"Thank you, there have been a large number of reports of violent outbursts in the area that the police are currently responding to." The operator continued to speak to Henry. "The best thing for you to do in this situation is to stay away from all windows and doors. Try to remain in a basement or cellar to make as little noise as possible."
Henry thought this was a weird request to make.
He began to turn around in the den, trying to take in everything.
He glanced into the back yard through the reinforced sliding door. He could see nothing but his fence and trees. The delusional visitor in the next yard was no longer visible.
He continued turning in the den with his eyes resting on the same front window where he saw the legs a little earlier.
"Why do I need to keep away from the windows?" He asked the operator. "What aren't you telling me?"
The operator began to speak, "We're not exactly sure what is happening, but it appears as though these people are attracted to sounds, and does not seem to stop until they've found what they're looking for."
Those words echoed in Henry's head as he looked back towards the spare room window. He desperately wanted to see a hand or something there to know exactly where the stranger was now.
Henry's attention quickly returned to the front of the house.
"That's strange, when did it cloud over?" he said out loud.
"Excuse me, sir. I'm on the other side of the river, and it's bright and sunny outside" The operator responded.
Henry spun around quickly and looked into the back yard. The sun was shining in the backyard casting some shadows of the fence into the back yard.
"What the hell is going on outside?" Henry said as he turned back to the front of the house.
Henry took a few steps closer to the front window.
He knew he didn't have any trees in the front yard. The previous owners had chopped them all down after a hurricane rolled through the province a few years ago and decimated the neighbourhood.
Henry reached his hand toward the curtain.
"I don't have any trees out front. Why is it so dark out there?" Henry said.
Henry lowered the phone down from his ear, missing a message from the 911 operator that could have saved his life.
"Sir!" the dispatcher yelled into the phone. "Don't open the curtain! It's only going to encourage the violence."
He heard none of those words; Henry was too focused on figuring out the problem that was before him. He stuck his hand out and touched the curtains, moving them ever so slightly to see outside.
Henry dropped the phone.
"Oh my god!" He yelled.
Henry tried to throw the curtain back into place, hoping that he could forget what he had seen.
He could try to forget what he had seen out the window, but the throng of men and women pressed against the window would not forget about him seeing them.
Standing and kneeling outside of Henry's basement window was a group of a dozen or more people with their face pressed up against the glass trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside of the house.
When the person who used to be Billy Hayes first noticed the movement of the curtain, it let out an excited and almost gleeful noise. Picking up on this new sound, the rest of the group began to focus on the window.
Almost in unison, the group began to press forward, using all of their instincts to gain entrance into the house.
Henry did not know what to do. When he moved in, he upgraded all the windows to a thick double pane to reduce the noise of the school and busy street, but would it keep out that many people?
He knew he had to leave the house. There weren't many supplies in the basement that he could take with him on the road.
Next to the treadmill was his gym bag with a few protein and energy bars from his last training session for the Fall Classic marathon in a couple of months.
The keys to the car and garage were upstairs on the bedside table. There was no way that Henry was going to make it up and down two floors before that window caved.
SNAP! The window began to fracture under the enormous weight of the group of people pressed against it.
Henry quickly scooped up his running bag, tossed in his spare jacket and grabbed a bottle of water from on top of the cabinet next to the treadmill.
He
ran for the sliding door to the backyard.
As he reached for the handle, he heard the terrifying sound of the glass collapsing onto the hardwood floor of his den.
Henry took one glance over his shoulder as he twisted and yanked on the door. All Henry could see was a pile of bodies laying in a heap on the floor by the television.
A little growl snapped Henry out of his trance.
Looking in the window from the front lawn was the stranger from his neighbour's backyard. The man, or what used to be a man, took a step forward. The man was fixated on Henry, never taking his eyes from him as he slowly ducked into the window and then fell to the floor.
The man slowly started to lift his head, looked directly into Henry's eyes and bared his teeth while letting out a growl.
All at once bodies in a pile on the floor begin to writhe and come alive. Limbs that were twisted backwards, broken and had large pieces of glass stuck in them began to move as the people started to get back up.
The stranger from Jacob's backyard continued to take very slow, methodical steps.
He was so focused on Henry that he did not bother to move or step around furniture that was on the floor. The man stepped into the leather sofa and stood there baring his teeth at Henry.
Sweat began to slide down the side of Henry's face. He swiped it away with his free hand as the fear in his body was starting to take over.
"How can I get away from these people? Nothing seems to stop them." Henry said.
He looked at the rest of the group and noticed some of the physical damage that many of them were sporting. There was a lady with a missing arm in back, a teenager to his right had a large piece of glass wedged in its face. Seeing all of this was starting to make Henry queasy.
As the last of the group of people got back to their feet in Henry's den, there were a dozen eyes fixated on him.
The man furthest to the right began to step forward, with each slow, lumbering step the man took, the sofa started to move somewhat so that there was no longer anything between himself and Henry. The pace of the man's step quickened.
Henry was still in a daze when the man tripped over a bowl that had fallen off the counter when Henry had initially grabbed his bag.
The man had come crashing down within a few feet of Henry and began to snarl as he crawled towards him. Henry could do nothing but stare as the man came closer and closer; dragging itself across the floor like a haunted man.
The man's hands touched Henry's' shoes, and he finally snapped back to reality. Henry kicked out at the man as he was going to try to take a bite out his foot.
Henry connected square to the man's face, snapping his head back with a loud cracking sound.
The man slumped forward and released his grip on Henry's shoe.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Henry said while covering his mouth with his hand and bracing himself against the door frame with the other.
Henry glanced over and saw the rest of the gang begin to walk around the sofa towards Henry, all of them snarling with a primal urge.
He turned and grabbed hold of the handle to the door yanking it to the side.
The door didn't budge.
Henry took another glance over his shoulder, the first of them were only 6 feet or so from him now.
He fumbled with the handle for the door and tried to find the lock mechanism, all the while watching the group of people get closer and closer to him.
Henry couldn't find where the lock was on the handle and returned his attention to the door in front of him. He looked all around the handle and remembered that Jacob broke the lock within the first few weeks of moving in, after an evening of drinking. Henry had to resort to putting a wooden stick in the track of the door to keep it closed and locked. He was pretty sure that the insurance company would be pissed if they ever found out about it.
A smile crept over Henry's face as he remembered this and bent down to grab the small piece of cedar that was hindering his escape.
As he stood up with the wood, a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
The first of the men was finally on him and was trying to pull him closer to his open mouth.
Henry took the piece of cedar and put it in the mouth of the man, who immediately bit down on it. Henry could hear the board beginning to crack under pressure from the man's bite.
Henry started to smell the breath of the man and almost threw up. He could not find words to describe how terrible it was. It seemed to be a combination of dirty feet, leftover pork chops and the smell of methane from the landfill.
The rest of the group began to encircle Henry as he backed up towards the door, using his free hand to feel along the edge of the door for the handle to his escape.
His fingers touched the handle and immediately began to pull it open.
Henry quickly turned to his left and began to sprint through the screen door and into the backyard.
He was halfway across the yard even before the first of the strangers was close to the screen.
Henry took a running jump and scampered up the wooden planks of the fence. He looked over his shoulder towards the house. The strangers began to pour out of his house towards him, all fixated on him.
Henry said goodbye to his house. With the damage to the house and the strangers that had now laid claim to his backyard, he doubted he would be able to return anytime soon.
Henry jumped down from the fence and began to run away from his house and into the woods.
He did not take another look over his shoulder, or he would know that there were almost a dozen sets of eyes looking for him.
Chapter Five