Things That Go...
By C. Vincent Pritt

hiirrr, chugga chugga brrrrrrr…

Eddie Reichert’s eyes popped open, the last tenants of the nightmare he’d been having fading as the world around him came into focus.

The sound of an un-muffled engine assaulted the silent sanctity of the night.

It sounded like a lawnmower.

Eddie glanced at his digital clock. Blurry red numbers taunted him, proclaiming it was just past two in the morning.

Who… lawnmower… this time…night?He tried to think, but the quickness with which he awoke, and the hour of the night, precluded coherent thoughts.

He rolled out of bed, bringing his legs down beneath him as his torso cleared the edge. Facing the rumpled blanket and disheveled pillows, he tried to remember why he was up.

Brrrrrrrr.

“Oh,” he muttered, letting his mouth hang open and his eyes stay closed.

By feel and memory, he navigated his bedroom, making his way to the window overlooking the front of the house.

His was a two story house, neighbored so close to the houses on either side of it that he was often disturbed by their owners; but never this early, nor this brazenly.

Twisting the plastic stick that hung from the top of the window, the mini blinds opened. Eddie peered through the slits, but couldn’t see anything across the street. He looked at the neighbor to his left:  Nothing. The neighbor on the right:  Nada.

Finally, he looked down, into his own yard.

A man was hunched over a lawnmower, cap pulled down low over his brow. He had already mowed around the edges, and was beginning his back and forth sweep across the small lawn. Light from the streetlamps made him look yellow, jaundiced.

Eddie wanted to run down the stairs, burst through the front door, and berate the man for what he was doing, but he stopped himself. Curiosity won out over anger. This was perhaps one of the strangest things he’d ever seen, and it had the added bonus of a well-mown yard.

It only took about five minutes for the man to finish mowing the yard. He wheeled the mower to the sidewalk, the heavy material of the grass catcher bulging from the night’s work.

Until now, Eddie hadn’t noticed the faded green box van waiting curbside. The midnight landscaper opened the back and pulled a ramp out. With little effort, he pushed the lawnmower up the ramp and out of site.

No longer angry, but wanting to know what a stranger was doing mowing his lawn in the middle of the night, Eddie turned to head down the stairs.

A flurry of movement at the back of the van halted him. The lawnmower man re-emerged, holding a weed-whacker. The nylon line glinted in the lamplight.

Eddie squinted, trying to see what the guy looked like, but the cap and the backlight of the streetlamps obscured his view.

Over the next two hours, as Eddie watched, the man edged his lawn, pruned his rosebushes, and pulled weeds. Finally, as the sky began to lighten, the man packed up his van, closed the back and headed to the driver’s side door.

Before climbing in, he turned to Eddie’s second floor window and waved.

He may have smiled, too, but Eddie couldn’t tell through the bloody mess of the man’s face. Blood dripped onto his dark work shirt from the torn flesh. There were no facial features, save for two dark pockets in the red ragged skin where eyes should have been. To Eddie, it looked as if somebody had set off a cherry bomb behind the guy’s face.

Instinctively, Eddie took a step back. Tripping over his laundry basket, he fell backward, striking his head on the edge of his dresser.

He slept again.

*     *     *     *     *

Eddie woke in what had to have been mid afternoon, his head aching with each beat of his heart. Slowly rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself to his feet, he fought to remember what had happened.

From down the road came the sound of a lawnmower, and he remembered.

Whining and wincing, he made his way to the window again, and glanced at his now meticulously manicured lawn.

“What the…?”

Dizziness swarmed over him and, though he knew the risks of a concussion, he made his way back to his bed, laid down on the cool sheets, and quickly returned to sleep.

*     *     *     *     *

The next morning was Monday, so he had to go back to work. He had awakened early that morning and spent two hours at his window sill. Finally, taking a cue from the now-rising sun that it was time to get moving, he took a shower and got ready.

Since he’d spent the majority of his weekend unconscious and in his bedroom, the rest of the house seemed alien to him.

Taking a deep breath, Eddie opened the front door and headed towards the garage. Once in his car, he relaxed.

The midnight mower returned again the following Saturday night. This time, Eddie stayed in bed, sandwiching his ears between the mattress and a pillow. Sounds of yard work went on for about an hour. He remained only half asleep through it all.

Thud! 

Eyes popping wide and heart leaping, Eddie started awake. He was about to get out of bed, but caught himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the aluminum edge of a ladder just outside his window. The rungs disappeared at the window’s edge.

Thumpa thumpa thumpa.

The gardener appeared at the glass, framed like a picture by the window box. Thankfully, he was looking down, and the bill of his hat covered his face. He kept going. When he stopped a couple of steps later, only his shins and feet were visible. The man’s feet shuffled from the left to the right, then back again.

A minute later, the chemical smell of paint wafted over to Eddie.

Slowly, he rolled off the bed, taking his pillow and blanket with him. Once on the floor, he rolled quickly to the bathroom door, where he stood and threw himself in. He closed the door, walked to the tub, and laid down inside it.

*     *     *     *     *

He awoke the next morning with another headache, but this one was from the paint fumes that permeated the house. With his eyes still closed, Eddie reached up and touched the wall above the bathroom. It wasn’t tacky from fresh paint. Sighing with relief, he opened his eyes.

After getting ready for the day, he headed out front to inspect the house. He expected something terrible, like orange Day-Glo or Satanic symbols. What he found instead was wonderful. The man had painted over the stark white with green trim, replacing it with a rich creamy color and dark brown trim. The shudders, which had always been the same white of the house, were now the same dark brown as the molding.

“Wow.”

*     *     *     *     *

The next Saturday night was a busy one for the midnight mower. Eddie had only heard slight sounds throughout the night, and nothing that awoke him for more than a few seconds, but when he went downstairs the next morning, he found his automatic sprinklers going.

Until last night, the only sprinklers he had were the kind that attached to a hose.

Every Saturday that passed for the next month resulted in more home improvements, and Eddie soon found himself anxiously waiting for the weekend.

On the sixth Saturday following the lawn mowing, Eddie awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of…nothing. In the aftermath of the past few weeks, the silence was deafening, and Eddie carefully got out of bed to investigate. He shuffled to the window and peered outside.

The faded green van was parked at the curb and the gardener, hat pulled low, shirt tucked in, walked slowly around it. He didn’t appear to be looking at anything but the sidewalk, and Eddie worried that maybe he’d run out of things to improve. Surely there was something the gardener could tweak--like the oil stain in his driveway, or the mailbox that needed painting. And God knew his roof needed to be re-shingled.

After circling the van three or four times, the gardener finally stopped and pulled his hands out of his pockets.

Mangled fingers protruded from the man’s meaty palms. He wiggled them in front of his face, as if inspecting them. Slowly, he made a fist with each and turned towards Eddie’s bedroom window.

The street lights caught the man’s face again, and the bloody remains caused Eddie to reel backward, away from the window, but not before seeing the middle fingers on each hand uncurl and wag at him.

A few seconds later, he was back in the tub.

He awoke the next morning to the smell of not paint, but of charred wood. He ran to the window in time to see a blackened branch break free of the large oak in his yard, and hit the ground with an ash-jarring crash. The whole tree was black, charred as if a fire had burned along its bark throughout the night.

Black tread marks led away from his curb and went on for about twenty feet before disappearing.

*     *     *     *     *

He slept through the night the following Saturday, and when he awoke he went to his window. The sidewalk in front of his house had been replaced with thick black mud.

A little girl on her bike, pink tassels streaming from the handlebars, and mud up to the chain, was stuck at the edge of his driveway, crying.

*     *     *     *     *

The next Saturday, Eddie stayed up. He sat at his window, watching through the blinds. Hedge clippers leaned against right leg, the blades digging lightly into the carpet. Moonlight glinted off their edges.

At about ten past two, the rumble of an engine brought Eddies attention to the end of the road, where a faded green box van was lumbering up the center line. It squealed to a halt in front of Eddie’s house. A moment later, the driver’s door opened, and out hopped the gardener.

Eddie could see his full face (or lack of), and he fought the urge to faint. Grabbing the hedge clippers, he turned and headed downstairs. The front door loomed over him a few feet from the bottom of the stairs.

Eddie stopped within reach of it and glanced down at the foot-long blades of the clippers. Taking a deep breath, he opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.

The gardener looked up at the sound of Eddie’s approach. His face was much worse in the light of the porch. Fresh blood dripped from the blast wound, as if it had happened just moments ago. Gurgling came from the gaping maw that had once been a mouth, and Eddie couldn’t tell if it was an angry gurgle, or a surprised gurgle.

He certainly didn’t think it was a happy gurgle. In fact, he hoped to God it wasn’t. Eddie grabbed the handles of the hedge clippers, and brought the huge blades in front of his face.

He couldn’t tell if the gardener was frightened or surprised, but he--it--took a step back, bumping against the side of the van.

Eddie snipped the air with the clippers a couple of times and stepped off his porch. Keeping an eye on the gardener, he skirted the yard and approached the van from behind.
The gardener watched, the movement of his pulp-glazed eyes sending the torn flesh around them rippling, as Eddie walked towards the passenger side door.

Glancing over the snub-nosed hood of the van, Eddie raised the clippers high, the points towards the safety glass of the windshield.

The gardener watched nervously, inching himself towards his door before throwing it open and jumping in.

Eddie opened the passenger door and slid in beside the gardener, who watched him apprehensively.

“What are you waiting for?” Eddie asked, pulling the seatbelt across his chest. “The Millers up the block have terrible crabgrass.”

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