Fright Night

On a weekend in the early fall or, more accurately, at the end of summer, David was already at Syracuse, and Dave had driven Marilyn to Binghamton. He had borrowed a truck from Colony Liquor because Marilyn had decided that year to move off campus into her first apartment, and had taken everything she owned with her in the huge truck. (What happened to her belongings is another story.) From Dave's traveling to get the truck to packing all of Marilyn's earthly possessions, and then settling everything into the new apartment, it had been a very long day and Dave was not expected to be back in Valley Falls until after midnight or so. Since the trip was by truck, Danny and I did not go with them, but were HOME ALONE. We'd had a quiet day as I recall, and later that night around 10:30 or so, Danny was in his room watching TV, and I was in the living room reading a book when we were both startled by a loud noise, sounded like metal on metal. We both looked out the front window, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I'd thought it sounded like the time someone crashed into the back bumper of our car, and told Danny that maybe someone had smashed the metal garbage cans against our car. So I took a flashlight outside and walked around the back of the car, shining its light against the back bumper and the sides of the car. Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and what's more, the garbage cans were in the back of the house, right where they belonged. I went back into the house to report no cause of the mystery sound. So Danny and I both went back to what we were doing when we heard another sound. This time I thought it sounded like a car door slamming, hard. Again we both looked out the window, and this time we saw something different. The brake lights of my car were on! Danny and I looked at each other and I remember asking, "What would make the brake lights of a car go on if nobody was in it?" I think the obvious answer occurred to us both at the same time, because Danny didn't say a word, but ran into his room and came out with a raquetbll raquet. (Lord knows where that came from,) I just looked out the window and tried to plan our escape. I just knew I didn't want to stay in the house. I figured the first sound we'd heard was somebody slamming the hood of the car closed, and the second sound WAS the slamming of the car door, so if someone had been trying to steal the car, he would have been inside the car while I was walking around it shining the flashlight. Our escape strategy was this: Danny stood by the door with the raquet while I ran to the car and started it. I think our plan was that if someone appeared, I was to lock myself in the car, and Danny was to lock himself in the house. I can't quite recall where the raquet was to come into play, as Danny probably lacked the expertise or brute strength to wield it in any effective manner anyway: fortunately we didn't have to implement that part of our strategy, as we made it safely down to the Madigan house, and waited there for Dave to get home. Of course we had to keep calling our house at intervals to find when that might be, as it was in the pre-cell phone era. Those good old days.