Howard was trying to choose between knocking on the door or walking along the stream when he heard a weird noise. He couldn't decide if it was an animal or a machine. It was high pitched and it was hard to tell what direction it was coming from. It was fading in and out. Was it coming from the house?
Soon after it started, it stopped. Howard decided to knock on the door. No answer. He knocked again. Nothing.
Then, the sound started up again. Howard was pretty sure it was inside the house. Howard tried to figure out what it was. Was it an animal? Was it some kind of saw?
It seemed to be coming from around the back. Howard decided to investigate. Part of this was force of habit: if you were going to make a sale in a rural area like this, you had to be persistent. But Howard was also feeling a weird curiosity.
He walked around the back. It wasn't a big a building as he thought. The barn was built next to a small hill (which is why he couldn't see it at first, and why he went downhill to get there).
As Howard walked, the sound got a bit louder, then stopped. It had do be machinery. It stopped and started fairly regularly. Maybe it was one of those tools for cleaning horse hooves? It had that high whiney sound that Howard associated with drills or saws.
When he got around the back of the house (or whatever it was) Howard found that the house was built almost flush against the hill. There wasn't a back door, only a door going down into the ground. It was at an angle that you couldn't tell if it went under the house, under the hill, or maybe connected the two.
Howard called out "Hello? Anyone home?"
Still no answer. There were no windows on this side. Maybe nobody was here. And what was this structure for anyway? Was it an oversized storage barn? It didn't look like there was a place for a garage door. And there were no windows on this side.
Then the sound started up again. It was definitely coming from below, and whatever it was, it was on the other side of that door. Howard tried to decide what to do.
Wed Mar 30 00:10:52 2011