t feels like I am finally getting into the swing of the week. I know it is Wednesday but I personally blame the fact that the first was a Monday. Monday holidays man, they get me off balance every time. Still balance is returning. So timers at the ready and let’s see what we come up with.
This feels like the start of something bad. Not sure what, but something. Bear attack maybe, possibly serial killer. I’ll have to think about it.
Wednesday, January 3rd: The clouds were heavy and gray.
The clouds were heavy and gray. A storm was approaching. He could feel it weighing down the air, threatening to press him flat. He picked up the logs from the sheltered wood pile and went back into the house. He added them to the top of the pile in the box beside the fireplace. Looking at the stack and thinking of the sky he decided a few more logs would not be a bad thing. He suspected that once the weather broke, he wouldn’t want to go outside.
While he knew he could use the heater in the house and not freeze, he preferred the crackle of the fire on bad nights. He returned to the wood pile outside and picked up another couple of logs before heading back in. This time he closed and locked the door behind him.
Out here, the locks were more meant to keep pout bears than people. There were several local cabins that had been broken into. Most of them were unoccupied during the winter and it seemed many of the local bears preferred to hibernate in the cabins than to claim a cave somewhere in the forest.
‘I suppose I can’t blame them,’ he thought.
Still he made sure that his trash was secured in a bear proof box and that his doors and windows were also bear proof. The first floor didn’t really have many windows. It was the upper floors that let in the light. The main floor was open with the bedrooms along the wall. The windows were on the second story and let in the light. He knew that some found it a little strange even though there was plenty of light in the first floor of the cabin. It was a traditional local design though and designed with keeping bears out in mind.
In the winter the heat rose so that the bedrooms were less cold than they might otherwise have been and in the summer, the windows in the upper floor could be opened to allow the rising heat to escape and thus cool the cabin.
The design worked for people as well as against bears.
With the door bolted and bear proof, He returned to the fireplace and got to work on the fire. He piled on the kindling in a tent pattern and then used a twist of paper to set the twigs ablaze. Slowly he added more and then larger pieces of wood. The fire grew. By the time the flames were licking at the larger log, the light faded.
He checked his watch. It was still early for daylight to be gone and he suspected the storm was rolling in. He turned on his lights and went to the front door. Unlike the back which looked out into a small cleared spot at the edge of the woods, the front door had the road running in front like a river. His truck was parked in the garage as there was little driveway to speak of and when he tried parking there the end of his truck stuck out into the road.
As he didn’t have enough extra belongings to fill a garage, he simply parked inside. Several of his neighbors complained about the lack of driveway, but many of them were summer folks who only stayed in the cabins during the warmer months and often arrived in long conga lines of vehicles like modern day wagon trains. They spilled family’s and coolers filled with a weekend’s worth of food into the neighborhood and complained loudly that things were not like wherever it was they journeyed from.
As he opened his door and looked out, he could see the houses locked up for the season. He could also see smoke rising from the chimneys of those still occupied and above all, like an umbrella of doom, the incoming storm.
Ten til Midnight 