Knock on any door

What was startling was—there had been no knock on the door but someone was in the house. Someone was definitely in the house.

I had made a quick run to a nearby drug store and left the front door unlocked. When I returned I noticed a figure in my husband’s study.

“What are you doing home?” I asked, assuming it was my husband who had an out-of-town commitment for the day.

Without answering the figure turned to face me and I noticed the mask that covered his face; the shinny, pointed object in his raised hand.

My first thought was that it was one of the youth from our church playing a trick on me.

A frightening pantomime followed. The figure, dressed completely in black: turtleneck tee shirt, pants, gloves, came nose-to-nose to me as I stood in the front hall, still startled and uncomprehending. In the swiftness of a moment, he jerked my pocketbook off my shoulder and sped out the front door.

“Hey Wait!” I shouted and grabbed the back of his tee shirt, exposing young, black skin. I held on as tight as I could and we tussled together for a few minutes. I was screaming “Help” now as it finally dawned on me what was happening.

When we reached the road our grotesque dance, him running, me hanging on to his shirt tail ended. I realized the neighbors on both sides of me were at work. I was all alone, my cries for help echoing into a silent neighborhood. I let go of his shirt and he sprinted into the woods across from our house.

Shaking now, I forced myself to reenter the empty house and call 911.

The police arrived surprisingly quick. I learned there had been a number of day-time robberies in the homes surrounding Matoka Woods. The thief always disappeared into this thickness.

Scouring the woods the police soon found my pocketbook. Money had been taken from my billfold but everything else, credit cards, pictures of grandchildren, untouched; the pocketbook tossed aside.

With a special light the policemen carried, they flashed on my carpet and there, clearly outlined were the footprints of the thief climbing the stairs and entering our bedroom.

Probably disappointed that there was no jewelry, he had descended to my husband’s office and was ripping open boxes there when I appeared.

Next time I hope he knocks.