IT'S WINDY IN HERE, AND SO COLD

IT’S WINDY IN HERE, AND SO COLD

Did the curtain just move?

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I had the innate feeling that something wasn’t right. Yet, I couldn’t put my finger on what that “thing” was.

Our house was always on the cool side but, to be perfectly honest, that was my fault. My ex had left home two years earlier, and to save money, I had a wood stove put in my home.

The house was small, and I had the company place the stove in the center room and situated at the wall not too far from the front door. This way the heat would be evenly distributed throughout the house. Even the slight wind that blew in from the weather-beaten caulking would blow the heat in and not out.

While my sons weren’t too thrilled about the chill, I reminded them that they had jeans, sweatshirts, and heavy shoes they could wear. “We’ll be fine,” I reminded them. “Winter doesn’t last forever.”

“Right mom, it doesn’t – unless we freeze to death first.”

My older son. So dramatic! I made sure the inside temperature didn’t get lower than 68-degrees. Warm enough when the temperature outside was in the 30’s.

No, I didn’t cook on the wood stove. I only used it in the winter months to cut down on the heating fuel consumption. It worked. My heating bills dropped from $350.00 a month to $175.00 a month. Gave me the much-needed wriggle room to put money away for the mortgage. It also afforded me the opportunity to treat my sons to pizza every month. Maybe, we weren’t thriving, but we sure as heck were surviving. I was fine with that.

The only problem I had was that the house began to take on a chill in the summer. It wasn’t as cold as the winter months, but still, the colder atmosphere was unusual.

Every now and then, I would think I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shadow move across the room. But when I turned my head, whatever I thought I saw, wasn’t there.

Ok, I thought. Take a deep breath. You’re working too hard to make things too perfect. I made a cup of tea and decided to relax while I waited for my sons to get ready for their Little League baseball game, which would begin in about ninety minutes. The field was only ten minutes away, so there wasn’t any rush. Not yet anyway.

After the water boiled, I poured it in a cup where I’d placed my teabag. Once the tea was steeped, I brought it into the living room. I didn’t turn on the TV or the stereo. All I wanted was to sit in the quiet room for a while and relax. It had been a hectic week. Whatever housework there was to do could wait until my sons were finished with their baseball games. I was comfortable with that.

CRASH!! My body jerked at the sudden loud noise. “What the heck?” I said aloud. Whatever happened sounded like it happened in the kitchen. My boys came running from their rooms at the same time as I stood from where I’d been sitting.

“Mom, what was that?” they asked nervously and at the same time.

“Don’t know, but we’ll soon find out.”

The three of us walked into the kitchen and saw – nothing! Absolutely nothing wrong. Not one damn thing out of place.

My boys looked at me hoping for some kind of explanation. None came to mind.

“Maybe the noise came from outside,” I said, not really believing my own words. My boys looked skeptical.

“Uh, Mom,” my young and much-to-logical-for-his-age said, “I think we should call the police. We shouldn’t go out there since we don’t know what happened.”

“You’re right,” I agreed and walked to where the phone hung on the wall.

Less than five minutes later, two police cars were outside my house. Four policemen were investigating every inch of my property. They found nothing.

“Do you mind if we check the inside? You know, each room, the basement, the attic?” one of them asked. His name was Officer Jack Tillman. I told him to go ahead. He could see the trepidation on the faces of my sons and the struggle to hide that emotion from my sons on mine.

As I said earlier, my house was small, therefore, it didn’t take them long to inspect every inch and still, they found nothing that looked odd. Officer Tillman and one of his fellow officers decided to take the basement area, while the other two, pulled down the fold-up ladder that led to the attic.

When they walked back into the living room, Officer Tillman said, “Ma’am, we saw nothing out of place but we’re calling your furnace company. It’s colder than a commercial freezer down there. That’s not healthy for you and your boys. Considering this is July, it’s extremely too cold down there.”

I thanked them and as they were walking out the door, we heard a large squeak – the kind of sound you’d hear when someone tried to open a metal door that had rusted shut decades ago.

The policemen stopped! Officers Tilllman and Jablonski raced down the stairs, gun drawn while the other officers stood stiffly at the front and back doors.

Coming back into the kitchen, instinctively, I knew they had found nothing. They looked at each other, then at me with a very bewildered look on their faces.

“Ma’am, that sounded like your main support beam was sliding but we sill found nothing wrong. If you don’t mind, I’d like to send my friend, Steve Marino here tomorrow. He’s a building inspector. Let him see if he can find out where the noises are coming from.”

I agreed and the policemen left.

We didn’t hear any more strange noises for the rest of the night.

When Officer Tillman’s friend inspected the house, he said the only problem he found was that the window caulking in each room needed replacement.

To save me a bit of money, he told me what I needed and explained how to do the job I needed to do. Which, I should add, wasn’t really necessary. When I’d first gotten divorced, my dad taught me so much about home maintenance that I already knew what to do but I thanked Mr. Marino anyway and as he was leaving, he said, “Other than the caulking, I can’t find anything else that needs to be done. For the age of your house, it's in pretty good condition.”

After Mr. Marino left, my boys and I drove to the hardware store and purchased our supplies. Now would be a great time to teach my sons how to caulk windows and door frames. I bought three caulking guns and more caulking than I probably needed but I knew it wouldn’t go bad so the purchase, in my mind, was a good one.

We pulled into the driveway and as I exited the car, I thought I saw our living room curtain move. Ah! I thought, I know the first area we’ll caulk first.

Then in a fear that gripped my throat, I saw the window fog with steam and in that steam, we watched as lettering appeared.

It spelled out: W E L C O M E H O M E!