Home Alone

The trip home did not get off to the right start for my friend John. The entire way he was messaging me about the horror that we now call modern travel. From the nightmare of a seat-mate to a massive storm stranding them at a deserted station in the middle of nowhere, getting from one place to another just ain’t what it used to be.

John finally made it to Ottawa where he was helping to downsize his mother’s house and move her to an apartment. His mom had already made the move and the house was pretty much empty except for an old television and chair in the living room and a mattress upstairs in his old bedroom.

From what John told me, it all started on that first night. Just a feeling of a presence, like someone was in the room with him. When he went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, he thought he saw the reflection of a burly man in the window. But when he turned around, no one was there.

A house makes noise when it’s empty. It sways and creaks differently when there’s no furniture filling the rooms or people living their lives in the space. John walked through the house room by room one last time turning out all the lights. He grew up in that house and although the furniture was gone, the memories lingered. John fell asleep on the mattress without seeing the burly man again.

The next day John went about his business in taking care of the rest of the house duties and preparing to sell it: movers moving out some old appliances from the garage, people haggling over the price of a bedroom set, and a final clean-up.

On his last night in the empty house, I did a video call with John. As we were talking, I heard a loud noise, like something was dropped from a tall height. John said he’d be right back and put the phone down. There’s something unsettling about watching a screen pointing up to the ceiling, not knowing what’s happening. After a few beats, John returned but there was a distracting look in his eyes, like he saw something but didn’t want to tell me about it.

There was another noise. John stood up, this time he took the phone with him. He walked through the kitchen and stopped to survey the room. He turned the phone back to his face and when he did there was a large burly figure behind him. The phone got knocked out of his hands and fell to the ground with the camera facing the floor. After about half a minute, the phone went dead like someone had stomped on it.

Now what do I do?

I knew John’s mom’s address in Ottawa and called it into 9-1-1. What else could I do? I got in my car and drove non-stop to Ottawa. All the way dialling John’s number over and over and sending text message after text message.

I finally reached his house and pulled into the driveway. I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. A middle-aged man answered. I could hear a baby crying in the background and a woman call from the kitchen: “Who is at the door, honey?” I looked inside to the fully furnished house and the man looked at me through narrowed eyes: “Can I help you?” I double-checked the number on the front of the house and knew I had the right address. I backed away not knowing what to do.

If this was a movie, the camera would pull up and away into the sky, drift over top of the house to the backyard, and slowly dolly into the freshly dug flower garden in the backyard.