The sun was still blazing, but Sophia was confident she would be asleep before her head hit the pillow. As she pulled in her driveway, she noticed her neighbor, Mr. Jenkins was home, puttering in his garage with the door open.
At first, Sophia thought she might prefer to think she was crazy than relate her crazy story to another person. Maybe she did imagine the whole thing, or extend a dream, believing she was awake when she wasn’t. Sophia almost went in her house and forgot the whole thing.
But she couldn’t. She’d seen the Jenkins television glowing at all hours of the night, along with the silhouettes of people walking around. She knew they were up late, and maybe they had seen the lights.
Sophia approached the house cautiously.Mr. Jenkins was big, like an oak barrel, with tree trunk arms, and a bent Dick Tracy nose, and tiny eyes perched at the top, like every Navy sailor she ever saw on TV. Mr. Jenkins was not accustomed to smiling.
“Mr. Jenkins?” she asked, waving so he would know she was friendly. “My name is Sophia Artichoke, I just moved in next door.”
“Good to meet you. My wife was going to bake you some cookies,” Mr. Jenkins said. “She’ll be disappointed I got to meet you first.”
“Yeah, good to meet you too.” Sophia smiled and wrung her hands. “I’ve got a question I wanted to ask you, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”
“Sure, anything. What’s going on?” Mr. Jenkins was big and intimidating, but he was friendly. Now he was even smiling, just a little bunched up around his cheekbones.
Sophia inhaled through her nose and licked at her lip on the inside, trying to find the best wording. “I’ve seen this light...”
“My wife is going to kill me!” Mr. Jenkins cried, throwing his big hands on his head and sobbing. “You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell her about this!”
He was loud, but laughing. He shot questions at Sophia every time she nodded. “Middle of the night?” Nod. “Quick flashes of light?” Nod. “You must be talking about my raccoon pictures.”
“Raccoons?” Sophia asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what was knocking over my bird feeder. I ended up with 300 pictures of raccoons. Thirty years in this house and I’ve never seen a single coon!”
“You mean it was nothing?” Sophia asked.
“Nothing?” Mr. Jenkins sounded more shocked than angry. “It was something all right! You’ve got to see these pictures. There are dozens of them, all over our back yards. You don’t have garbage or anything out there, do you?”
“No,” Sophia lied. She’d brought three bags of half-decomposed melon rinds and coffee grounds from her last house.
Mr. Jenkins didn’t seem to hear. “They were right up on the camera, like they were trying to figure out what was flashing.” Mr. Jenkins slapped his forehead harder than Sophia would ever like to be smacked herself. “Oh, you can’t tell my wife, she’ll be whipping me around the back yard with a chain!”
“Last night I saw flashes and heard a yell.”
Mr. Jenkins nodded, hesitant. He didn’t want to tell. “My wife made me stop putting out the camera. She was afraid she would wake you up. Night after night, I didn’t see any movement in the back yard. I’d go out every so often to look around, but didn’t see any evidence. I thought maybe it was a migrating pack.”
He paused and put a stubby finger to his lips. “I don’t know if racoons migrate or not. Anyway, I wanted to know for sure. I set up the camera without telling my wife, and would you believe that damn thing started flashing almost as soon as I closed the back door. Well, stupid me, I yank the door open and go running back out to turn the camera off before she saw anything. I tripped right over my ladder and fell flat on my face.”
Mr. Jenkins sighed and put his hands on his hips, looked at his toes a few seconds before back to Sophia. “Do you know anyone that could use a slightly used trap camera, because I don’t want to know what’s in my back yard anymore.”
The End
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