10.
 A while later, a pair of policemen on patrol on the Low Road received a call to check out a report of two children banging on someone's door. The long, dark car glided quickly uptown toward Devil's Hill. "What else is new?" said the cop driving to the cop riding along. "Some kids playing pranks."
"Midnight's the limit," said the other.
"We'll give them a talking to and drive them home if they need a ride."
The patrol car pulled up quietly in a neighborhood of dark, shuttered houses. There was one light on, at a porch door. The two patrolmen got out and sauntered over holding their flashlights. They met a young red-haired woman who was tying her housecoat around her waist. "Hello," she said, "I'm sorry to bother you, but my husband and I were awakened by these kids."
"What were they doing, Ma'am?"
She pointed across the street to a very old house. "The old place over there. A boy and a girl, couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old. They kept running around that house, banging on the doors and windows, calling for a Mrs. Meyers to come out and give them cake and ice cream."
"Were they trick-or-treaters?"
The woman's husband came to the door in his bathrobe. "No, that's what's odd. They just kept laughing and banging on the doors and windows calling Mrs. Meyer, Mrs. Meyer and asking for cake. There's no Mrs. Meyer living there. The house has been sold and is in escrow, empty at the moment."
The young woman said to him. "I think there was a faded sign on the mailbox years ago when we first moved here. I think it did say Meyers, but that must be generations ago. Back around the Great Depression or World War II or something."
"Okay, we'll check it out," the two patrolmen said. They walked slowly across the street. Behind them, the young couple closed their doors and turned the light out.
The patrolmen carefully walked up and down the block. They shone their flashlights here and there, looking for signs of vandalism or toilet papering. "Nothing," the one said.
"Nada," said the other as they walked back to circle around the old house one more time.
"Hmm, look at that."
"What is it?"
The other had his flashlight trained on the concrete side stoop. A girl's tartan hair ribbon lay abandoned on the stone, whose silica twinkled in the moonlight. The first man picked it up. It was an exceptionally pretty, crisp little tartan in red and two shades of green. His eyebrows rose. "It's still warm." He sniffed it. "Sweaty."
The other laughed. "Those kids are probably a mile away by now and still running."
"Yeah," his partner said, putting the ribbon in his pocket with thoughts of giving it to his little daughter.
They heard the radio squelching as they approached the car. The call was about an open door on Mary Lane. An elderly neighbor walking his dog for a quick 1:00 a.m. relief stop at a sidewalk tree had noticed a door wide open. The elderly couple who lived there always kept the place securely locked at night.
The patrolmen drove down to Mary Lane, parked their cruiser, and approached the open door. The fire had gone out in the living room, and it was cold inside. It was freezing cold, a deep chill. The house was still as a tomb.
"Hello?" the two policemen called out, cautiously looking this way and that. One held a hand on his gun. The other shone a flashlight around.
Hearing no answer, they stepped deeper into the house. Climbing the creaky stairs, with their shadows rising high and black above them, the patrolmen searched upstairs. It was a small house, and it did not take long until they found the elderly couple side by side in bed.
"Look like they're asleep," said the first. "Peaceful, almost happy."
The other, holding a finger to the cold, still neck-flesh of each, shook his head grimly. "No pulse. They're gone. They look so peaceful."
"Now that's odd," said his partner.
"What's that?" said the other, taking out his cell phone to call the coroner's office.
"How odd. How is this possible?" The patrolman took the green tartan hair ribbon from his pocket and held it next to the ribbon in the woman's thin, white hair. "Except that hers is faded with age, and that other one is like new—the two bits of ribbon are an exact match."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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