Did You Know the People Who Lived Here Before?
It was a year ago Sunday actually that the Ralfsons didn’t show at our weekly block party, and even though we thought it odd, we weren’t too concerned until late the following Tuesday, when we were all woken by the Ralfsons’ dogs, two hounds with tree-stump legs, weighted down with folds and jowls, howling sadly even though there was no moon, which we know because we all stuck our heads out our front doors—to what use really we don’t know because none of us knocked on the Ralfsons’ door, not then anyway. We raised our eyebrows at one another in a sort of smug way I guess, shrugged like what can you do, but the next morning, Wednesday, the hounds were still howling, and so, finally, we decided to go check.
We knocked on the Ralfsons’ door then, and while we waited, we noticed that everything looked ok, the children’s toys still lay in the yard and Mrs. Ralfson’s marigolds and zinnias on the front stoop weren’t drooping from lack of care, and their car, a station wagon with its back windows covered in stickers by the children, was parked in the driveway, but no one ever came to the door. Still, the dogs howled, so we took it a step further and some of us went left and the others right and we met in the back beneath the frosted glass of the downstairs bathroom window and we reported to each other that we saw no one, not even the stumpy dogs, no overturned furniture, no broken glass, nothing like that.
The home seemed to be intact, except for its people which were simply not there, and the dogs too, even though their howling persisted, had grown louder although we could not tell where the noise was coming from. Some of us thought it was time to call the police, but others, a larger group, said not yet. The nearest neighbor in distance and friendship to the Ralfsons, Jean Halby, you know Jean, brought over the key they’d given her so that she could water their houseplants when they’d gone on that camping trip up in the mountains the summer before last. They had such a good time up there, showed us the pictures of the blooms on the mountain laurels, bigger than the oldest kid’s head. And the lightning bugs too, they’d circled their tent, and it sounded just like a fairytale, and the youngest wanted to catch one but was too afraid he’d crush it. Well, Jean unlocked the door, and we followed her in, and we were quiet, we didn’t call out hello, which is strange now, as if we knew then it wouldn’t make any difference, and some of us went up the stairs and some of us went down the stairs. Those who went down the stairs later reported that it was when they opened the door to the basement that the howling stopped, but the dogs were not down there, and the Ralfsons were not down there. Everything looked pretty neat, the carpet in the front rooms still held fresh vacuum lines that compelled us to step carefully, and the air smelled like lemons, and those who went upstairs commented on the Jack and Jill bathrooms the kids shared done up in yellow and green, and that there were two large linen closets while the rest of our block only has one, but still no Ralfsons.
Their clothes were still there, their toothbrushes, toothpaste spittle in the sink, the towel on the edge of the bathtub was damp, and their covers were pulled back from their beds as though they’d just left them. In the downstairs bathroom the toilet seat was up and stuck to it were curly, blonde hairs, certainly blonder than the Ralfsons. Mrs. Ralfson’s hair was a dear auburn. A raisin cake missing two slices stood on the kitchen counter, the dome to the side of it, and one of us replaced it to keep the crumb. An empty coffee cup sat unrinsed by the sink, and the coffee pot was mostly empty, but still warm. On our way out the door, I spotted the little milkglass shell dish Mrs. Ralfson bought from me at the neighborhood yard sale in the springtime on the side table in the den, beneath the lamp with the fringed shade. I felt then that I would miss her. We left with nothing, and back out in the backyard a breeze kicked up, and the clothes hanging on the Ralfsons’ line caught the wind, and the wind filled the sleeves and legs and the effect of it all really gave us the shivers. Jean said she called and filed a report, but the man she talked to was largely uninterested. The rest of that afternoon was quiet enough to hear the figs fall from the trees to gore the sidewalk, the flies buzzing on their rot.
So, the weekend came again quick, and the Ralfsons were still gone. We decided to go through with the block party for the children in the neighborhood even if it felt a little gruesome and the children were playing games, and we were playing music. We were dishing out pie and potato salad when Jean Halby runs over and she’s flushed a boiled-pink and she tells us death is coming from the Ralfsons’ yard, the smell, and she can see through the boards of her fence a lump of someone curled over. She was too frightened to go alone so a bunch of us went with her but Laura, Diane, and I stayed with the children, my knees are bad you see, and the heat devils them, and I didn’t have it in me to run over. Our hair was sweat-damp and sticking to our foreheads, and flies were landing on us and our potato salad. We kept our smiles for each other and the kids because they were frightened quiet. We couldn’t smell anything from where we sat in the street but the roses heated too sweet by the sun. An arrow of geese flew over our heads pointing over the mountains. Summer afternoons can go on like a country road when you’re very curious to see what’s at the end of it.
From what they told me that evening after the lighting bugs came out, and all the kids were taken home and put into bed with pie in their stomachs, and the police had been here with their lights and their noise and their tracking dogs, there was so much blood by the fence, just over there behind the poplars, that it had thickened over and if it wasn’t for the smell you could’ve mistaken it for raspberry jam. They found a finger with a gold signet ring on it a few feet away from the blood, also one dog collar, and an ax with a broken handle. What silly Jean had figured for a small body was just an old potato sack snagged in the fence.
It could’ve been that the person who brought the finger and the ax and so forth to the corner of the yard had left footprints but for the bunch of us who tracked over the yard, we’ll never know, and that made the police a little testy. It took them some time, but they located a Canadian cousin to Mr. Ralfson, her blood didn’t match the backyard blood or the finger, and she couldn’t place the ring. Come to find out a little later, that finger belonged to a man from a family that’d turned up missing in Beulah, Arkansas. I assume he also has a cousin.
To be really truthful with you we didn’t leave with nothing exactly, I slid the little shell dish into the pocket of my sweater, it seemed a real shame to leave it. I can’t imagine the Canadian cousin would’ve wanted it and anyhow she had the house cleaned out lickety, just as soon as whoever told her she could. Laura picked the lamp with the fringe shade out of the garbage, Diane found a pale blue wool blanket, probably belonged to the little boy.
Used to be the thing to do was to tear a house down when something awful had happened inside, set fire to it even. We’d go out as a community and take care of it. We’re glad you’re here though. I keep candies in it, the shell dish, on the table by my reading chair, and now I think about Mrs. Ralfson whenever I have a caramel. When you’re settled in, you’ll have to come over, I’ll show it to you. I wonder a lot about things, like why we didn’t come over here that night, and if Mr. Ralfson’s finger will show up soon in someone else’s back yard. My grandmother had a way of predicting things, knowing stuff she shouldn’t. I, myself, only know what I know, and I don’t know if the Ralfsons ever really left. You have to wonder what happens when the plump of a person is stolen, presumably in a vicious manner. It makes some sense that part of them would remain here, don’t you think? Sometimes I think I see something like them, shapes that start small and waver bigger, like shadows thrown by advancing headlights. But it’s likely just a trick. Still. Maybe if we sit and wait long enough, we’ll see something. Let’s sit right here, together, and see.
- Did You Know the People Who Lived Here Before? - July 2, 2026
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
