Chapter Five
As a matter of fact, nothing happened next.
Brandon stood with his back to the door for a full two minutes, breathing hard. But there was no further knock, no other sound from the far side of the door.
At that point, Brandon began to wonder very uncomfortably if he had remembered to lock the back door when he got home. That was another family rule: When You Are Home Alone, Always Check Immediately to Make Sure All the Doors Are Locked.
“I should do it,” he thought. But at the moment, he was too scared to move. Especially when he began to wonder if that little man might not be peeking in through one of the windows.
But a kid can only stay in one place for so long. Brandon began to get bored.
The house was completely silent. He was absolutely almost sure that little guy had given up. Maybe gone next door.
Finally, he turned around and re-stuck his eye against the peep hole. He held his breath, and narrowed his eye against the light outside. But there was nothing there. No dark fuzziness—just the usual fish-eye view of the front stoop, railings, bushes and welcome mat. All of it completely unpopulated.
Brandon took a relieved breath.
He turned around, gritted his teeth and began to walk—very casually, taking his time—down the hall to the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway, the hair on his neck rising just a little, and peered around carefully. Nobody in the kitchen. No faces at the window. Then he made a mad dash across the room to the door—which actually had been left unlocked—and locked it in a hurry.
“Okay,” Brandon panted when he’d finally gotten the chain fastened. “Okay.” He stood there for another minute, listening. Then he went over and locked the basement door, too, just in case.
By the time he walked back to the front door, curiosity was beginning to gnaw at him. He took one more thoughtful look through the hole, but how much could that really show him? What if somebody were hiding in the bushes beside the front stoop, for instance? Looking through the peep hole could never show him that. He ran over and climbed up onto the back of the couch, pressing his face against the windows, trying to see down into the bushes. He couldn’t see very well that way, either. On an impulse, he unlocked the window, then slid it slowly, silently open, just till he could get his head out. With his head sticking outside like that, he could see the ground. And there was nobody down there.
He drew his head in again and pulled the window back down. Then he went to the door, undid the deadbolt and turned the knob silently, carefully. He pulled the heavy front door open, just about an inch.
Nothing out there moved. Nothing stirred.
He pulled it open wider. Nobody there.
He opened it all the way and stuck his head outside.
He was hoping to see that little man somewhere down the street—maybe standing on somebody else’s front stoop, acting like a normal salesman. There’d just been something so weird about the guy, something so personal about the way he’d tried to stick his foot in the door. As if he’d known Brandon was home alone. As though he could read Brandon’s mind.
But the man was nowhere to be seen. Where was the guy? Nobody at the neighbors’, nobody on the sidewalk—Brandon stared as hard as he could, up and down the block. No little man in a black suit.
“Of course not,” Brandon said out loud. “He’s probably inside one of the houses, selling something to somebody.” Then he laughed. This wasn’t a real laugh. It was more like a laugh to let anybody listening know that Brandon was feeling very confident and completely light-hearted.
He was turning around to go back into his house, when he looked down. And that’s when he saw it.
There, at his feet, was a most interesting object.
A braided leather wrist band. A dark green one with little star designs pressed all along it. Very cool. In fact, way cooler than Jason Mason’s.
Brandon bent over and picked it up.
A little voice in the back of head, one that sounded a lot like his father’s, was whispering, Finders Are NOT Keepers. If You Can’t Find The Rightful Owner, Leave it Where You Found It. So, of course, Brandon did his best to be obedient; he took another look up and down the street. Still nobody in sight.
He tossed the little band up in the air and caught it again with one hand, feeling very lucky. Then he really did laugh. “That’s what you get,” he said as he went back inside and closed and locked the door, “for scaring me.”
And he slipped the band on over his left wrist.