Boarded Up House

Word Count: 2,671

I awoke lying on the damp ground and surrounded by hardwood trees. Smooth gray clouds covered the dim sky, and a slightly chilling drizzle made its way to me from between the leafy treetops. It was difficult to think. My mind was nothing but a haze.  

I am not sure what happened. The last thing I can recall was driving my lovely wife and two children through a high-end residential area. We were headed to the home of a long-time work friend. He was having a huge barbeque party and invited my family and me to join in on the food and festivities.  

I drove us into the large gated community, greeting the familiar guard as we entered. We were almost to my friend’s house, and then I recall seeing a blinding light. Sometime later I woke up lying in the woods with a pounding headache.  

Immediately my palms began to tremble with anxiety and my knees shook with terror. I could feel my legs buckling beneath me. My heart pounded rapidly in my chest, and I began to hyperventilate as I went into a full panic. My first thought was we were in a car accident. The accident must have thrown me free, and I landed here.  

When I saw a street light glowing in the night several hundred feet through the obscuring trees, I knew that could not be the case. It is not possible that a car accident could throw me this far through the woods. I would have hit a tree and stopped long before I could make here.  

The second thought to cross my mind was I must have hit my head and wondered away in a daze. Strenuously I raised myself to my feet and began to sprint toward the light. Either I was not injured, or I was too worried about my family to notice the pain.  

My head on the other hand beat like and African drum. My eyes blurred from the excruciating pain and I could hear the roaring rush of blood in my ears. Despite the hindrance, I struggled to run out of these woods as quickly as I could. 

I guess I reached my threshold because only twenty or thirty feet from the street light, my knees buckled under me. I plunged face first onto the ground again falling into unconsciousness. When I next awoke, the sun was out. By the looks of it, it was still early morning.  

Not far away at all I saw cars passing by. Forcing myself back to my feet, I staggered through the remainder of the forest. When I made it to the clearing and onto a sidewalk, I had no idea where I was. Frantically I looked around for something familiar.  

As I attempted to discern my location; I also looked for any signs of an accident. I saw no wreckage, no tire marks or any broken glass. If I was indeed in an accident, I must have wandered far away. Perhaps the road on which the accident occurred was on the other side of the forest.  

I staggered along the light-gray concrete sidewalk for ten minutes or so and finally I spotted my friend’s car. It was parked in the driveway of the ranch-style house next to his blue-gray Tudor, but I knew without a doubt the car was his. I thought perhaps his neighbors allowed him to park in their driveway so those attending the party last night could park on his property.  

I did not know why he parked there, and I did not care. As fast as I could force my weary body to move, I headed directly for his house. Two times I tripped and fell on his lawn before I made it to his front porch.  

In my frantic state, I beat hard on the door while simultaneously ringing the doorbell over and over. I allowed a few seconds to pass and resumed pounding on the door as I screamed for help. I heard someone call out from the house next door.  

“They’re out of town for a few days,” the man from the neighboring house yelled. “Is there something I can help you with?”  

Propping my exhausted body against the door frame, I turned to look at the man addressing me. It was my friend. He was wearing a bath robe and it appeared he was out getting his morning paper when he heard the commotion and observed me beating on the hardwood door.  

I was sure this was his house. I thought perhaps in my panicked state, I got the houses wrong. I never visited his home before, but I knew this area. It seemed like the directions he gave me on Friday sent me to this house, but obviously I was wrong. I did not care. I was relieved to at least know where I was.  

As I did my best to run toward my colleague, I yelled out, “Something happened. I think I was in and accident and I don’t know where Susan and the girls are.”  

He beaconed me with a repeated wave of his hand. When I reached him, he took me by the shoulders to help steady my trembling body. Looking at me with an unfamiliar gaze, he tried to calm me.  

“Slow down sir,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”  

I quickly explained to him the last thing I remembered was going to his house for the cookout, then the next thing I knew I woke up in a large patch of woods. He looked at me with a face filled with confusion. Right then his young wife came to the door and asked if everything was okay.  

“You’d better call the police,” he told her in a tone somehow sounding both calm and distressed.  

My friend helped me to the porch swing and instructed me to sit down. As I caught my breath, I explained to him Susan, the girls and I got ready and were headed for his house for the barbeque. I explained to him that we were driving, and were almost here, when I think we had an accident. I told him I did not know where my wife and daughters were, and I was terrified something happened to them.  

He looked at me like he was even more confused. I started to wonder if we did make it to the party and something happened on the way home. Perhaps that is what he found so confusing. I did not know what happened. All I cared about at the moment was where my family was and if they were alright.  

“I am sure the police will be able to help you sir,” my friend and longtime co-worker said.  

That was several times he used the word sir to address me. I did not know why. It was not like I was his boss or anything. I did not have the time to speculate on why he spoke to me in such a way, so I flatly asked him why he kept calling me sir.  

With a quizzical look on his face, he shook his head gently and said, “Well, I don’t know your name, and you did not introduce yourself.”  

I stood to face my good friend and angrily poked him several times hard in the chest. He backed away but did not look like he planned to strike back. He seemed to be trying hard to remain calm, but I could see fear growing in his eyes.  

“That is not funny,” I snapped at him as I jabbed his ribs with my finger. “Please, for the love of God, if you know where Susan and my girls are, tell me. This is no time to joke.”  

Now seemingly incredibly perplexed, the man in front of me tried to explain he had no party last night. He did not know me and he insisted he did not know my wife or our girls.  

“Come on,” I pleaded, growing close to shedding tears. “We’ve worked together at the same firm for ten years.”  

Again, softly shaking his head, the man with whom I was so familiar said to me, “Sir, I don’t work at any firm. I am an engineer at the railroad.”  

By this time I had enough. I was terrified. I did not need my friend pranking me. Shaking him by the shoulders, I demanded he stop this foolishness and tell me what happened. He tried to pull away from my grip, but his back was already against the wall.  

I began to shout and almost immediately heard someone call out from the street.  

“Sir, I need you to let go of that other gentleman and take a few steps back,” a uniformed police officer said.  

Some sense of relief washed over me when I saw the two officers and their patrol car. If anyone could help me figure out what happened and where my family was, it would be them. In my brief moment of zeal, I ran, or rather scrambled toward the officers.  

“Sir, you need to stop where you are right now,” the officer nearest me ordered in a stern tone. Both officers placed their hands on their sidearm. In my current frame of mind, I did not think of how the police would consider me charging toward them a threat.  

I froze in my tracks. Tears welled up in my eyes.  

“Please help me, you have to help me,” I begged. “I can’t remember last night, and now I have no idea what happened to my family.”  

“Please!” I cried.  

The officers approached me and asked me to explain the situation.  

As I tried to piece things together so I could explain it to the police, the second officer asked me if I had any identification. Not even thinking, I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and removed my driver’s license. Without interrupting my explanation to the first officer, I handed the second my ID.  

Once I told him everything, he instructed me to stay where I was and approached the scared and confused couple standing on the front porch of the smaller house. I could see by my friend’s demeanor as he told the policeman he did not know me. I almost ran over there to ask him why he was doing this to me, but I knew that would not be a smart thing to do.  

My friend and his wife went back into their house, and the officer headed over to me again. Before he reached me, the other law-enforcement officer beckoned him over with a nod of his head. The two stood closely. Their backs turned away from me just enough that I could not attempt to read their lips. It was probably only one or two minutes, but it felt like they talked for hours before finally coming back over to me.  

“Can you verify your name for me sir?” the first officer inquired.  

I answered the question, and then he had me verify my address and finally my driver’s license number. As I answered each question I grew more and more frustrated. We were wasting time that we could spend trying to find my family. I had enough and in an angered tone I asked them why they were not helping me.  

“It appears sir that this driver’s license is fake,” the second officer said. “Our system does not have your name, the DL number is not valid, and no one registered with the department of motor vehicles lives at that address.”  

My head spun as I listened to his words. I nearly passed out.  I could not remember last night. Could I have sustained a head injury bad enough to make me this delusional?  

I began to sob as my knees buckled underneath me. One of the officers grabbed a hold of me before I crumpled to the ground. Helping me remain erect, the two officers assisted me to the patrol car.  

“Let’s get you over here so you can sit down. Then we can try to figure out what is going on,” one of them said as they led me to be back seat of the patrol car.  

“Now, tell me again what happened,” the first officer instructed.  

“I already explained it,” I said quite loudly with an obvious tone of anger to my voice.  

“Sir please,” the second officer said. “You need to calm down.”  

“Look, I told you my wife, daughters and I were going to a barbeque,” I reiterated. I went through the details of what I could remember once again.  

“And you were going to this man’s house for the barbeque,” the second officer continued. “The problem sir is they said they had no barbeque yesterday and neither of them knows who you are.”  

“Okay,” I said. “I thought that was his house,” I explained as I pointed at the larger domicile. “Once I realized he lived in that smaller house, I wondered why he did not have this gathering at the pa-park over….”  

I did not finish my sentence. When I pointed to the park, I instead found myself looking at the forest I recently staggered out of. There was no park. I knew without a doubt a park once existed there. On more than one occasion Susan, the girls and I went there for a picnic, to fly kites and so forth.  

Was I going insane or was I insane already? How could so many of the details I remembered so well be so wrong. For a moment I thought I was dreaming, but I ruled that out quickly. This was too vivid.  

“Ok sir,” the first officer said. “We are going to bring you to the address on your license.”  

“If it is a fake, it is a very-very good one,” I heard the second officer whisper to the first.  

They did not handcuff me, but they did close me in the back seat of the car. I suppose they had to, but this enclosure almost sent me into a whole new level of panic. I tried not to think about being confined and focused my attention out the window.  

As we reached my neighborhood, it shocked me when I noticed the conditions of some of the lawns. They had brown spots, a major sign of grubs. The trees along the road on which I lived were mostly gone. The remaining trees appeared to be quite sickly.  

I recognized the houses, but they looked like no one performed any upkeep on them for years. Car parts and furniture littered some of the yards. Lawns were allowed to grow deep in some areas. I did not understand. The homeowners’ association would never allow these conditions to exist.  

Finally we reached my address. My head swirled and I became very disoriented. I did not panic this time. I believe I was in too much of a state of shock and felt little else.  

This could not be possible. My friend did not know me. My driver’s license number did not exist. The park my family and I frequented was gone as if it were never built. The finely manicured neighborhood in which I lived for twenty years was quite dilapidated and run down.  

Perhaps I could believe some of that, but what I saw at the moment made me question my existence. Looking at the beautiful home in which Susan and I raised our children I saw it was in serious disrepair. A small portion of the roof looked like it collapsed some time ago. I was looking at my home, my once beautiful home. Instead of seeing the house I remembered, I looked at an old, dilapidated building.  

In the front seat, one officer said, “Why are we wasting our time sitting here.”  

“I don’t know,” the other replied as he glanced at the empty back seat.  

“Well drive somewhere. I don’t know why we are sitting here in front of this boarded up house.”  

 Copyright 2019 ©