I managed to get out of the city just before everything shut down. I went to this place that’s been in our family for generations. It’s been repaired over the years, but not much. When I rolled up the dirt path toward it, my heart sank a bit. My apartment wasn’t large and I shared it with three other people, but it was cozy and comfortable. Something told me that until the spring weather arrived in a couple months, I’d be wearing my winter coat inside.
Ironically, the WiFi was excellent thanks to a nearby tower, which had gone up under protest from most of the locals. They’d lost out to the influential few, so up it went, a shoddy false tree like an exaggerated prop in a high school theater department.
I opened my laptop to catch up on emails at a window overlooking a gloomy field. It was melancholy for sure, but not unpleasant. My bedroom in the city doesn’t even have a window, and there are no nice views from any in the living room, so I was content even with this somewhat depressing scene.
I’d been at it for a couple hours when a knock at the door caused me to jump. I yanked off my headphones and sat, listening to confirm that’s what I heard. It sounded distinctly like a human knock-knock-knock, but it could’ve been debris falling from the roof.
I sat a full minute before shrugging it off. Still, I thought to get up and look out the door, see if I’d missed someone, but I saw no one and nothing to indicate anyone had been there.
I took the opportunity to stroll around the entire cabin-like building. It was such a patchwork of original eroded material with recent fixes, and was charming in a similar way to an old pair of jeans with patches. The sun was thoroughly muted behind a blanket of gray clouds, and it was so dark despite it being the early afternoon that I nearly needed my phone light to navigate my steps.
A rustling wind more fitting for autumn was a constant. No bird song, which was odd considering how removed the area was from anything that ought to disturb them. Maybe installing the signal towers had scared them off.
When I was fully behind the cabin, I heard that three-knock cadence again. I jogged around to the front and this time I did see someone. She was an older woman in a dark gray hoodie and was staring intently at the door, almost like a trick-or-treater.
I called out and she turned slowly toward me.
“Sorry, I was just reading the note on your door.”
“Note?”
“Yeah, this one. I’m Mabel Clark. I live at the nearest home. Your aunt told me just to stop by and say hello, give you my number incase there’s an emergency.”
“Oh, appreciate. David, nice to meet you. What’s this note?”
She pulled it off the door as I got closer and handed it to me. It was just a standard yellow sticky note, a little wrinkled. Written on it in pen was the message:
PLEASE DON’T BE TOO LOUD IN THE MORNING
“What the hell?”
“Yeah, weird. You don’t know anything about it?”
“I heard a knock earlier but didn’t see this when I opened the door.”
“Must’ve missed it.”
“Yeah.”
“Not an inside joke or something?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Could be someone passing through. We get all types hiking on the trail back there. Some of them more eccentric than others. I wouldn’t worry though.”
“Welcome to the neighborhood, I guess.”
“How long will you be staying?”
“A few months. Just until things calm down in the city.”
“Yeah, seems scary there. Who knows how this thing will go. I hope it’s all over in a few weeks. At least you don’t have to wear a mask all the way out here.”
“Yeah, that’s good. Well, I actually have some work to get back to. It was nice meeting you. Appreciate this.”
“Oh yeah, no problem. Reach out any time. I live up the road with my husband and our three kids. They’re basset hounds. I mean, they’re literally dogs. That’s not a nickname or anything.”
“Aw, that sounds nice. Get home safe!”
“Thanks, enjoy your stay, or visit.”
She walked right off into the woods from there with the kind of confidence that told me she’d walked that path many times. It was comforting to know someone was close-ish. I had worried about an emergency situation coming up here. My parents just told me I’d be fine. They hadn’t mentioned a neighbor. But I guess they’d reached out at some point.
The note was odd for sure, but what was worse was knowing someone had been so close and I hadn’t detected them. Unless Mabel had left it. It’s plausible I just missed it though.
I went back in and got some work done. All the signs were there that any day now we’d all be let go. It took the enthusiasm I was once able to conjure up for these menial tasks. It was easier in the office too with my coworkers who’d become genuine friends. I missed them. I shut my laptop and puttered around, had some takeout I brought with me, and went to bed early.
….
….
….
My name is Mabel Clark-Mallard and I’m 72 years old. I’ll take over the story from here. Just real quick about me, I’m technically a senior citizen but I don’t feel like one. I think that’s because I live a very active lifestyle. Every single day, I take a long walk through the Carroll Woods that run behind all the houses. They go much deeper than anyone thinks. It’s easy to get lost there if you go past the trails. I don’t even go past them too often.
I got a note just like the one left on his door, once. I didn’t say anything because it never amounted to much. Well, there was one day where it got uncomfortable, then it’s been fine ever since. I’ve since spoken to one other old timer in the area and he said he got that note too, decades ago. So it feels like a bit of a hazing ritual or something. Someone in the woods, who’s got to be very old by now, leaves them, and then it’s mostly fine, so who am I to interfere with that?
What happened to me was, I saw the note and thought my husband was playing a trick on me. He used to play these goofy pranks a lot when we first were dating, but hadn’t done one in a while. I got excited because I thought he was tapping back into that mischievous energy. But he says, no I didn’t leave it.
We don’t think much about it, because we know weird types hike on the trails. They run all the way to a train station. It’s ten miles from here but people walk it. So we figured at the time it was some drifter, to use an old fashioned expression.
The next morning, my husband gets up to turn on the TV. He likes the TV on when he makes breakfast. He was making pancakes for us that day, a kind of tradition on Saturdays, so it must’ve been a Saturday. When the pans start sizzling, he turns the TV up.
Well, I guess it was too loud. Like the note said, don’t be too loud in the morning. Suddenly we hear all these noises on the roof. It sounds like foot steps stomping on the roof, like when you have upstairs neighbors and they think you’re being too loud.
I jump out of bed and I’m like, what the hell’s going on? He says, I don’t know, but it sounds like a bunch of gremlins hopping in the roof. Or like a bunch of deer got up there accidentally and they’re panicking. Neither of which really seemed likely.
I go and turn the TV off because I’m scared and it’s just what I think to do. As soon as the TV goes off, the sounds from the roof disappear. I mean, they really did vanish exactly with the TV going off, almost like I turned them off too. That’s how I remember it anyway. Just shzzoooomp, and it’s quiet. Except for the sizzling.
A couple pancakes were burning and started filling the place with smoke, so we had to toss the pan into the sink and open the windows. I was a little afraid to open the windows, because at that point we didn’t know if something was out there. But nothing happened. The smoke cleared out and then finally my husband goes out and checks the roof. I see him through the window walk way back so he can get a full view, and I can tell there’s nothing going on up there by the way he just squints and doesn’t react. He circled the whole house and didn’t see a thing. No sign anything had been up there or fell on it or anything.
I don’t know what happened to the young man. Nothing happened to me and Jakey. We just heard some stomping on the roof and then nothing ever again. Maybe we turned the TV off in time. Maybe David didn’t. But maybe he did it to himself and it has nothing to do with the note.
They say they found him with his head buried in the ground like an ostrich. People can do that to themselves, can’t they? Or maybe someone did it to him, but they didn’t find any evidence of that. Has nothing to do with the note, or does. The note said don’t be too loud. Maybe he was too loud?
I got the note when I went to check up on him. I burned it. I didn’t know what happened to him then. I didn’t know he’d been down to his shoulders in the dirt like that. But no one looking after him would’ve made any sense of the note anyway. And they’d say it looked like I wrote it, maybe. They’d say it looks like the stickies Jakey and I always use.
The message is the important part, and being sure to listen to it. City people have a harder time not being too loud. Not their fault. It’s so loud where they come from. Their ears maybe can’t recognize it.
It doesn’t make a difference if I wrote it or it came from the woods. It’s the same thing. Around here, where messages come from isn’t important, it’s the message itself that matters. It’s a matter of respect. You don’t show up some place and disrespect what’s living there.
How hard is it to not be too loud in the morning?