I was warming up for my pool league in the pool room yesterday evening and Chico the dog was scratching at the door because he wanted to go out. It was darkish outside but in the moonlight I saw a shadowy figure move across the neighbour's back yard and into the back corner of the fence. I knew it wasn't Leon (my neighbour) or his son, because the person was tall and lightly built. Oh, my... a burgler or a fleeing felon perhaps?
Remembering another blogger's (Neon John) scary experience the other day, I thought perhaps he might be armed, so I picked up the nearest weapon I could find... which was the butt end of a very expensive pool cue... and dashed out into the garden.
"Hey, you... " I yelled, waving my butt (no jokes please). "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The intruder had a flashlight and turned it in my direction briefly before hopping over the fence and making his escape.
Now that he'd gone, I turned my attention to Leon's house. Everything seemed to be in order - no sign of a forced entry or anything else. Satisfied, I came back inside and wondered if I should call the police - after all it was probably just some local kid taking a short cut through the garden as they were in the habit of doing.
I did call Leon, however, and oddly enough, his 'phone didn't dial - it made a strange noise, not like a busy signal but an intermittent beeping sound. Shoot, maybe the son of a bitch had cut their phone lines before killing everybody in the house... I went out to the front of the house but there didn't seem to be anyone home. Not that anyone would respond if they were all lying dead in a pool of blood inside. My wife said not to worry about it. I mean it's not exactly a high crime neigborhood and we should just wait until they got home and phone again. I reluctantly agreed but continued to fret about it. I had this ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach and I just knew something bad had happened...
Later that evening I went to get a snack... and saw a light go on in their kitchen... for sure somebody was home. I picked up the 'phone again, and this time it rang normally. It was Leon - I explained to him that I had seen an intruder in his garden earlier on and wanted to make sure everything was okay.
"Oh, you saw him too, did you?" he said, "I was having problems with my phone line all day so I called the phone repair guy from Bell Telephone. He came a couple of hours ago and went out into the garden to trace the phone line and try and find out what was wrong with the line...
He said while he was out there he was attacked by a thug with a baseball bat and he had to jump over the fence to get away."
