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“What!?!”
“Turn that down; I have a test in Particle Creation tomorrow. Just a few decibels, please, I can hear it all the way downstairs!”
“OK. OK.” The music lowers and the door opens. “Hey Tanner, I’m sorry. I thought you were at the library tonight.”
Tanner pushes his glasses back against his nose. “No, they were closing early for some sort of meeting tonight. Thank you, this is going to be a tough one.”
“Yeah, no problem. I took that class last year; you are going to have to stay on your toes in order to keep that grade point average of yours. Professor Bonner is a tough old coot.”
“I know,” Tanner agrees. “He gives a test every week, sometimes two, and all the reading! He’s wearing me out.”
Lendal rubs his shaved head and lets out a sigh, “What a bastard. Sorry, I’ll keep the volume low. Hey, did you mail the bills off?”
“Oh!” He throws his hands up in the air. “Slipped my mind. I’ll get that together after my test tomorrow, swear.”
“Make sure you do. A couple of them are already past due.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Well I have to get back to studying.”
“Right. Good night Tanner, see you tomorrow.” He closes his bedroom door.
“Night, Lendal.”
Scrape. Scrape. Shook! Shook! Waaa-woooom! Waaa-woooom!
“Wha…?” Tanner opens his tired eyes as he comes to consciousness. “What the hell is that? Digging?” He lifts the book off his stomach, sits up on the couch, and reaches for his glasses from off of the coffee table. The unmistakable sound of earth being physically manipulated is coming from the front yard. Tanner looks at the DVD clock, it’s roughly two a.m. He feels very uneasy, even a little scared. It’s not like anyone is trying to break in, but there is heaviness in the air and the sounds coming from the front yard are so very loud.
Standing up, he thinks about peeking out through the drapes of the large front casement window, but decides that he had better wake Lendal to back him up. He bounces up the stairs, skipping steps, and is before Lendal’s door within seconds. Knocking upon the cherry wood, he calls out in a hushed voice, “Lendal. Lendal, get up!” He does not answer, Tanner opens the door half way and leans in. “Lendal, get up! Something’s going on in the front yard. Get up!”
Lendal sits up quickly and removes the covers from over him. “OK. OK. I’m up!”
“There are weird sounds coming from the front yard, come with me while I check it out.”
“Sure, sure. Hold on a sec.” He gets out of his bed, kneels down and reaches underneath it, feeling around for something. After a few seconds he pulls out a 12-guage pump action shotgun.
“Whoa, I didn’t know you had that! Wow.”
“Oh yeah, you know it. It’s not anything you advertise, you just introduce it when you find yourself in predicaments”
Tanner nervously brushes his wavy blonde hair back upon his head. “I’m sure it’s nothing too serious. I’m just a little uneasy.”
“Well, my dad taught me that you can never be too cautious, and he taught me how to use one of these.” He positions the fore-end of the gun in his left hand, elbow bent and tight against his left side; his right hand releases the safety and then rests against the receiver with his finger on the trigger guard, the stock is tightly pressed up against his right side. He moves his arms straight out and holds the shotgun uniform to his body and then brings it back to its prior position. “So it’s coming with us.”
As they hurry from the bedroom to the staircase, rumbling and whooshing sounds fill their ears. Tanner quickens his pace and begins hopping down the stairs.
“Tanner!”
Tanner pauses midway and looks back to see Lendal has paused by the hall railing. “Come on!”
“I need to put some shoes on, I’ll be right there.”
Tanner turns and finishes his jaunt down the steps, he then slows his pace and tip toes to pause before the front window. A few moments pass and he can hear his roommate coming down the stairs. When he feels his presence a few paces behind him, he moves to stand at the right side of the window. Slowly, with deliberate movements, he moves the curtains with his left hand and looks outside.
“Well?” Lendal is getting anxious.
“I don’t know. I don’t see anything; of course I can’t see the whole front yard from here. There might be some movement in the distance, not sure. Is that a dust cloud?”
“Alright, this is what we are going to do. You are going to open the door slowly, but keep behind it while you do. I’ll stand at the ready, just in case.”
“OK, let’s do it.”
Tanner did as he was instructed. The rumbling and whooshing is loud enough now that Lendal can feel it in his chest. He stands in the door opening with his shotgun at the ready, and peers out. The house has a large porch that runs across its entire front side, with a balustrade along the bottom and ornament brackets against newel posts at the top. The porch light illuminates a portion of the large front yard as it stretches out and vanishes into the black of the night. He can see some movement at the edge of this, in the gray, and it would seem that there is a large amount of dust swirling around in that vicinity. He believes he can make out what is there if he will just step a few feet forward, and so does. He pauses a foot or so before the porch stairs and now clearly sees what is going on in his front yard.
“Holy shit!”
...TO BE CONTINUED.
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