At 10 AM on Sunday morning, I broke into my neighbor's house.
I know what you're thinking. Oh, I get it! YOU'RE the bad guy! No, I promise you, I'm not. Oh, okay. You're just crazy. Well, my wife certainly thinks so.
But let me explain.
It all started two weeks ago. I was drinking coffee, wasting time before work, when I saw my neighbor tending to his garden. In 40*F weather.
"Look at him," I laughed to Miranda. "Doesn't he know we're in Zone 4? It's all going to be frozen tomorrow."
She rolled her eyes at me. "Don't be a Peeping Tom."
Yeah, okay. I'll admit it – I like sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. So what? "Look, he's digging a hole. Didn't even start them inside first."
"Oh what, Harry, you have a PhD in gardening now?"
"It's just common sense!"
We saw him out there every morning after that. It became kind of a ritual – over bagels and coffee we'd joke about what he's planting, if he's figured out yet why nothing was sprouting. It was something to laugh about before returning to the drudgery of work.
But then things got really weird.
Around 2 AM on Tuesday night, I heard a rustling sound coming from the driveway. I was still up, wasting time on the internet as usual. "Must be the raccoons again," I grumbled to myself, getting up and swinging open the door.
It wasn't raccoons.
It was him.
Our neighbor. Standing there, hunched over our garbage can, rummaging through it. In one hand, he held a clump of dark hair – probably Miranda's, after cleaning the shower drain. In the other... he held one of our used condoms.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!" I shouted.
He immediately bolted towards his house – still holding the hair and the condom. Snap! – his front door slammed shut.
The whole thing disturbed me. And the worst part was – there wasn't much I could do. Stealing someone's garbage isn't illegal, and I didn't have any evidence, anyway.
So I decided to break into his house.
At 10:20, I finally picked the lock successfully. (YouTube made it look a lot easier than it actually was.) The house was dark and quiet, except for a light whirring noise from the kitchen.
"Hello?" I called, just in case.
No answer.
I walked into the family room. It looked normal, if a bit messy. Papers here, used tissues there, an overflowing garbage bin in the corner. Heh, maybe I should steal some of his garbage.
The desk in the corner was covered with papers. Messy notes, diagrams, equations. Curious, I shuffled through them, until I found one that was interesting.
GARDEN PLOT
A large rectangle was sketched over the surface with six dots inside, meticulously labeled. I let out a snicker. Only six plants? For that entire garden?
I read the label beside each.
Michael Lebb...
Claire McEvoy...
Andy Zheng...
"What? Names of people?" I muttered. "Weird."
But the smile was knocked off my face when I got to the last two names, in the lower-right-hand corner. In neat script, they read:
Harry Stein
Miranda Stein
The page fluttered to the ground.
And then I ran into the backyard, towards the garden.
The chilly wind bit at my neck, my cheeks; but I pawed away, into Andy Zheng's plot*,* looking for the body.
I never found it.
Instead, I found a long piece of dental floss.
I wiped the sweat from my brow. My heart started to slow. He's just some nutcase, I thought. Burying weird things... in a garden... I shook my head and thrust my hands into the corner patch of soil.
Miranda's and my corner.
I dug and dug until I found, a few inches underneath the soil, something plasticy and caked with dirt. I plucked it out, and as I did, it unraveled.
It was a condom.
The condom, probably, he'd stolen from our garbage.
"What the hell?!" I muttered to myself. An uneasy feeling settling into my stomach. This guy is really crazy. Like, Norman-Bates-crazy, Ted-Bundy-crazy.
But a powerful curiosity drove me. I dug further towards the corner, towards Miranda's plot. Pawing away at the dirt like a dog looking for its bone.
My hands fell on something small and rough.
I brushed away the specks of dirt and brought it to my face.
No.
It was a clump of dark hair.
That's when I pulled myself up, ran from the garden, and called the police.
***
The police didn't do anything. After all, they just saw a bunch of garbage buried in some dirt. "It's just a misunderstanding," Officer Davies said. "And don't worry, Harry – you won't be prosecuted for trespassing. We understand you were in a state of distress."
I opened my mouth to speak. Miranda squeezed my hand – hard – and gave me a warning glare.
I shut my mouth.
"If you have any other problems, here's my card." With that, the officers left.
Since then, Miranda has been my rock, keeping me from letting the garden drive me insane. And she would be succeeding, too.
Except for the fact that sometimes, late at night, I stare out at the garden.
And sometimes, in the moonlight, I see the dirt churning and roiling –
As if something were moving underneath it.
creds:blairdaniels
