I have never even seen most of my neighbors. For all I know they could be alien zombies who feed on nearby children. Before I go ringing doorbells, I need to decide what I’m going to say. I don’t think it’s a good idea to start off, “Hey, I’m your neighbor you’ve never met. I was just checking in because I’m bat-shit paranoid right now and I think my wife has disappeared!” Yeah, that approach probably wouldn’t go over well. Even though I’ve never met these people, I don’t want to make a bad first impression.
I tell myself to be as honest as possible, without giving away too many details. I’ll say that I’m their neighbor because there’s no reason to lie about that. Then, I’ll ask them if their power is out? Yeah, that would be a good opening line. It gives us something to complain about and make small talk. I’ll then tell them that I’ve been driving around town this morning and nobody seems to be out. Maybe they’ll know something about that. OK, that sounds like a good conversation plan.
Now that I have everything figured out, I know I better take action now. I’ve learned over the years that the more I think about something, the more I begin to procrastinate on it. I have no reason to wait any longer, so it’s go time.
I put on my jacket and make my way to the neighbor across from Dave’s house. This should be interesting.
Chapter 3
I ring the doorbell on the first mystery neighbor’s house. As I do, I think about whether I’ve ever seen this neighbor before. From what I can recall, I never have. A few of the neighbors I’ve seen grabbing their mail, or opening their garage door to leave their house, but with this house neither has happened. This makes me wonder why I picked this house to begin with.
I listen closely to try to hear footsteps. I’m honestly anticipating this to be the case but I hear nothing. I ring the doorbell again. I imagine what I would do if someone rang my doorbell at this time of day. One ring I definitely wouldn’t answer, two rings might get me off my chair. Again I’m shy, and I also assume nine times out of ten the person at the door is someone trying to sell me something. And ten out of ten times, it’s something I’m not going to buy.
If someone rings my doorbell three or four times, I’m off my chair ready to admire this person’s tenacity. Which is why I begin venting my frustrating on this neighbors doorbell when they don’t answer after a dozen rings. Unless this neighbor is deaf, they really must not be home.
OK, door number one is a bust so let’s try door number two. Again, this is a neighbor I’ve never seen or met before. I forget what I plan on saying if they do answer. Something about the power outage and being their neighbor and that I’m crazy. Got it. As I ring this doorbell, I’m now starting to notice I can’t actually hear the doorbell making a sound. It’s been a long time since I’ve rung a doorbell, but I’m almost positive you can hear the “ding dong” from the outside of the house.
Then it occurs to me again that the power is out! Do doorbells even use electricity to function? I imagine so. I resort to excessive pounding on the door. As hard as I’m hitting the door, I’m guessing it’s just as loud as the doorbell. If they are home, they should be able to hear this even upstairs.
I remind myself again that people do work at this time of day, but then remember nobody is out on the roads either!
I make my way to doors three, four, and five and get the same result. I go across the street, and knock on doors six through ten. Still nothing. This has to just be a coincidence. I persevere and knock on doors eleven through twenty-five. This covers my entire street so I make way to the next street over. Defeat is starting to creep in, not to mention a throbbing in my hands. I had to switch to using my left hand after door ten. I fight through the pain because, without any cars out, somebody has to be home. Somebody has to be sitting around in their pajamas waiting to answer their door. It’s now that my worry scale goes from a five to six range to an eight or nine and quickly making its way to a 10. This isn’t making any sense.
I hate to say it, because it sounds too ridiculous to think, but did everyone somehow disappear? I quickly dismiss the thought because there’s no way this could be true. There has to be a logical explanation for this, although it’s becoming graver and graver what that may be.
I make my way to the next street over to decide which house I’m going to try first. I decide on the nice two-story brick house with a tree in the front, perfectly mown and fertilized lawn, and a kid’s rubber ball still on the front porch. They also have a nice black SUV in the driveway. As I get ready to knock, I take a deep breath and think this is going to be it. The craziness ends now when this person opens the door and explains what is going on. I knock on the door, again with complete confidence that someone is going to answer. Even knocking two, three, and four times I know they’re going to answer. It’s not until knocking five and six times that I start having doubts. And then knocking seven and eight times is when I know nobody is going to answer that door. I shrug it off and make my way to the house next door. Somebody has to be home. It’s a numbers game, and that’s all. I knock on the door, waiting and hoping, but nobody answers.
Now I start adding a thorough check through each window to my inspection process. Most windows I find have the blinds closed and do me little good. Some windows though have blinds that are only half closed or even completely open. For each window that I can see through it’s more of the same.
The inside of the houses are, for the most part, clean and tidy with the occasional newspaper or shirt left out, but nobody is home. It’s as if they were there last night, but gone today. I don’t know if this realization makes me feel good or depresses me further. I suppose if every house was either in 100% spot-on condition, or if every house was completely empty of belongings, that would be a lot scarier — scary movie type stuff. No, there must be a plausible explanation for this. I just haven’t figured out what that is.
After I’ve knocked on around forty houses, I decide it’s no longer a coincidence. I’m now convinced that nobody is home anywhere in this neighborhood. I don’t know where they are or why they left, but I know they are no longer here. I try to calm myself down after coming to this conclusion. I keep telling myself there is a logical explanation for this and I can’t wait to laugh later when I find out what it is.
If there were ever a person who would remain oblivious to what’s going on, it would have to be me. After all, I haven’t watched a news program in my entire adult life. I never look at or read any online news sites. Occasionally, I’ll walk past a newsstand where I glimpse at the main headline. That’s about it for me as far as keeping up with the news. I overhear coworkers discussing current events so, in a way, you could say that’s how I keep up with the news. I just never found much interest in it — too depressing for me.
With that, I make my way back to my house. I’ve spent the last couple of hours knocking on doors in the middle of the day on a weekday. I laugh a little at how silly that sounds. I normally like to follow a very detailed and structured routine, so this day has been quite the experience for me.
Before I enter my house, I check the gas gauge in my car to help with my decision process of what I’m going to do next. It looks like I still have about a half tank but I think the first thing I should do is stop by a gas station anyway. I have a very good feeling that, without power, gas stations aren’t going to work. How could they? You do, after all, need electricity to display those dollars climbing higher and higher. Maybe by some miracle though the displays are battery operated and the gas gets filled into your car by a non-electric pump. Just thinking this makes me realize how far fetched it sounds. The gas station probably isn’t going to work, but I still want to check it out first hand just to be sure.