Closing Time...

It had been a really lovely day. She had enjoyed the breeze and the chance to air the house out a bit. Get the stale air smell from the winter a chance to blow away. It was great. That's what she kept telling herself while she went window to window closing them down and making sure the nail strips were back in place before sunset. It really had been worth it to fling them wide open this morning. Even if putting everything back to rights was time consuming. Really.

She was on her second pass through the house. She had found three plugs in the tracks that had prevented the windows from being completely secured the first time. Little tricks that she knew to look for now. She made a note to put a reminder in the home owner's newsletter. People sometimes got sloppy.

As she drew the iron shutters on the upstairs windows closed she lamented again how stupid she felt. She had seen it all happening. She just hadn't recognized it at the time. She should have known. Her husband had told her that was ridiculous, how could they have known? Even seeing it right in front of them, they didn't know. But it still felt like she should have.

The first day they questioned anything was a beautiful day like today had been. They were heading out for a hike and saw the construction starting on the development across the street. There were large concrete tubes laid out in the field. They talked about them. How massive they were. How much infrastructure was needed to turn those fields into a housing development. They weren't happy about the houses, of course, but only because they had purchased land on the very edge of town. It was supposed to be the urban growth boundary. Nothing but farmland after their house. Nothing but open fields all the way to the West Hills. But progress, payoffs, and development came anyway. They joked that they must feel now how their neighbors a half mile in felt when their house went up.

It wasn't as funny anymore.

The next thing they had puzzled about what how deep they were digging out the foundations for the houses. Who needed a basement like that in the Pacific Northwest? It's not like they got tornadoes here. Most likely you were just inviting flooding. But still it looked like all of those houses would have basements. Maybe the influx of people from out of state wanted houses with basements, people liked to get what they were used to after all.

Then the houses went in. Small houses for the size of the basements really. Which they actually thought was nice. So many overly large houses on tiny lots had been built lately it was nice to see a few smaller spaces. Maybe they would be reasonably priced. That would be a change as well. Their own house had almost tripled in value in the time they had lived there, of course that was before. But the last weird thing they noticed (during construction that is) was that there was never a notice put up about sales. No model home open for perusing. No contact number for purchase. Nothing. Just a new development going in with no option to buy.

Apparently there didn't need to be. As soon as the houses were complete the moving vans and trucks rolled in. A fully presold neighborhood. Even in their tight turn around market that seemed amazing. Times were really changing.

They didn't realize how much.

The coyotes were the first to send a warning. Of course she didn't realize it at the time. Like everything else she saw it but didn't really see it. Or in this case heard it. The coyotes were going crazy. She was used to hearing them at times but not so loud, or so close. She wrote it off to the new development pushing them off their land. But then that didn't really make sense because they hadn't howled like that during construction. Maybe it was that the houses were no longer empty. When they were empty maybe the coyotes felt like it was still their land. Either way they were going crazy now.

The second night of constant howling she went to her window seat in her bedroom and looked out to see if she could spot them. They were gathered in the grassy open space between her house and her neighbors. At least 40 of them. She had never seen more than one or two gathered together. Five would have been a large pack, but this was incredible. She ran downstairs to grab her camera, hoping there was enough light to get a clear shot. She went to the front window and opened the blinds wide. There seemed to be even more there. They howled and yipped and cried. Coyotes sounded a bit like a child screaming when they really started going. The hairs on her forearms raised and she felt a shiver down her spine. Purely primal reactions. Then the wild dogs gathered in a tight group and ran together. A pack on the move. It looked like a massive shadow racing across the grass, she lost site of them and was about to go outside for a better look when...

Well she wasn't sure what it was. Not at the time. Her head couldn't make sense of what she was seeing so it just wiped it fairly clean. Nothing here. Just a trick of the moonlight. The shapes hadn't made sense and so she disregarded them. Protection from the truth is rarely protection after all.

But the coyotes were gone. They never came back.

Smart animals really.

Then the reports of break ins started. It was all very odd and she didn't really know what to make of it. If she hadn't known her neighbors, and if it hadn't been multiple reports she would have thought someone just got confused. Because nothing was stolen. The houses were just opened. Things were moved around. Things obviously looked through, but nothing missing. Nothing gone. Just opened.

The police had no answers, and weren't really sure that a crime had been committed. Probably just mass hysteria. Since nothing was stolen, nothing taken it was much easier to believe that they were all being paranoid. Who would break into a house just to rifle the bookshelf? Or rearrange the junk drawer in the kitchen? Or when it finally happened to her turn a few pictures around? It didn't make any sense and so it was dismissed. And the police stopped responding to their calls. "Just those crazies again."

By the time they realized what had happened it was too late. The sheriff's office relocated. They didn't want to respond. There was nothing they felt they could do anyway. Not about the big things. And the daytime small things really didn't matter anymore. They were on their own. Those that stayed. Because where could they go? Nobody would buy now. And there were rumors that it wasn't just their neighborhood. It was spreading. Underground. Like roots taking hold.

So the neighborhood association got a little more involved. They added features to their houses like iron shutters on the inside. Window, nail bar, shutters. Lock it up tight. Some people kept it locked up day and night. She didn't. She knew she could take what came during the day. The helpers. She had torn one of them apart with her bare hands after all. They feared her as much as she feared the ones they helped. It had made her a favorite target but they started it after all. They hadn't realized she was out of town and they missed her when the came to her house. When they had rigged the window to not shut tight. She caught one out on its own when she got back. Now they knew.

She got the house secure for the night a full half hour before the alarm on her phone warned her of sunset. She got her crossbow and her rifle out of the closet and made herself comfortable in the overstuffed chair in the middle of the living room. The middle of her house. The farthest spot from any door or window. Ready for the darkness. Her husband's killers were coming. They always checked her house first. She was always ready.