By Rick Kennett

Earlier that week and in the wee hours there’d been a burst of hellish noise from next door, just noise embedded with a hollow howling, so brief, so suddenly cut off and so strange I thought I’d dreamt it … and perhaps I had.

The following Friday afternoon my neighbour, Carl, knocked on the door. When I answered he flinched in surprise as if he hadn’t expected to see me. The thought occurred to me then that he was going to apologise or at least explain the explosive racket of a few mornings ago. Instead, in something of a fluster he said, “You’re all right then?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I said.

“Your bin’s been out on the kerb the last few days. I thought …”

“I may be seventy, Carl, but I’m not dead yet.” Still, it was nice of him to check up on this old codger. Behind him I could see the green plastic wheelie bin standing on the kerb at the edge of our two properties. “Besides, that’s not my bin. It’s yours.”

He stared at me a long moment as if uncomprehending what I’d said. Then he turned half around to stare out into the street in a hesitant, almost frightened way. When he turned back I saw no flush of embarrassment, but rather a lack of colour. He’d gone pale. In a curious monotone he said, “Close today, isn’t it.”

I should’ve found his sudden change of subject funny. But I didn’t. I said, “How do you mean ‘close’?”

“Confined.  You know, close.”

“Muggy?”

“Y …yes,” he said uncertainly as if humidity really wasn’t what he meant.

 I agreed that it did feel close though it didn’t at all. In fact the day was pleasant and warm. But who was I to start an argument over the weather.

“Well, I better get back,” he said and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, not sidewise at his house next door.

He walked off down the front path. As he reached the gate dark stains abruptly formed on the back of his shirt, like ink blots as if his back was weeping black blood.  He dropped on all fours in a way that must’ve hurt his knees. Crawling like a baby a moment he fell forward on his belly and wriggled like a worm through the gate and disappeared behind my brick fence. I stood at the door, not knowing what to make of this peculiar behaviour, wondering in a confused way whether he’d taken ill … and all the while fully expecting to see him stand up into sight again. But the seconds passed and he did not reappear. Cautiously I edged to the gate and glanced along the footpath, finding nothing, though catching a sharp smell that gagged in my throat an instant and was gone.

Carl’s driveway was empty. The blinds were drawn on his front windows. It occurred to me then that his driveway had been empty and the blinds drawn and for several days. Knocking on his front door got no answer.

The bin was still there, green plastic on the kerb. Well, if we were being neighbourly I might as well wheel it into his yard, particularly as it would’ve been emptied days ago. But tilting it on its wheels to roll it back I felt how unexpectedly weighty it was and how something softly heavy bumped inside. Alarmed, I let the bin thump back onto its base, its contents, heavy and soft, making it wobble. But it was a long time before I held my breath and opened the lid.

About the Author