Bump in the Night

I think I’m dreaming when I hear someone screaming for help in the dark. Strident, desperate, truly panicked. Once I know I’m awake, my next thought is that the girl downstairs is in trouble. She’s pregnant and her filmmaker husband is out of town; they moved in two days earlier and if something is wrong with the baby …

The screaming gets louder. Someone starts hammering on our door. “She’s going to die! Help me; help me; why won’t you help me?”

Oh, God, it is the baby!

Ter is awake by now; I’m already dressed and flipping on the lights. Still confused, I blurt that it’s the girl downstairs and what the—

A shuddering sound: wood splintering as if a door is being kicked in, glass breaking, and the screaming in a voice gone hoarse. Ter beside me at the top of the stairs. “What is going on?”

I’m thinking, Great, the new neighbour is bipolar and having a seizure. I’m shaking with adrenaline, my mind racing in circles: call 911, go downstairs, see what the hell is happening in our building fo—

There’s an almighty BANG! and the voice receding as the owner takes her screaming back out to the street. Still shaking and moving by instinct rather than common sense, I take my phone and descend the stairs to our front door. There’s a jagged hole in the stained glass at eye level. “Oh, my God,” I say, “the window is broken.” I open the door and find that the foyer has been trashed. Glass shards are strewn across the carpet. The floor lamp that stood in the corner is bent in half and the shade lies in pieces. The building’s front door has been flung wide open and one of the porch chairs blocks the exit. The SOS sounds like she’s heading toward the point.

The door on my left opens cautiously and standing there in her jammies is our new neighbour. “Was that you?” I ask, stupidly.

She shakes her head, half-numb.

To help with the picture, our building is a five unit strata – two suites on the main floor, two on the second and the penthouse up top. The foyer is square, the main floor doors across from each other, the second floor doors side by side. This night, the folks in the other main floor suite are in Toronto, and the fellow who lives above them only emerges when our voices wake him. He’s as gobsmacked as the rest of us.

The screaming outside continues toward the water. Ter is on the porch, listening. “Ruthie,” she says, “time to call 911.”

So I make my first ever 911 call. I describe the events and give directions as best I can. Within seconds of me disconnecting, the cops arrive, a fleet of them, lights and sirens galore, accompanied by two ambulances, a fire truck, and what appears to be a marine rescue boat offshore. Whatever it is, its lights are aimed at the beach. By now I’ve called the folks in the penthouse and they have joined the rest of us on the porch. “Welcome to the neighbourhood,” someone says to the new girl. “This never happens here,” someone else says, but she is adding security to the top of the agenda for the strata’s annual general meeting this weekend. (She proves to be a force of nature herself; when all is said and done, she and hubby are likely to be a super addition to the community.)

Eventually, half of the vehicles depart and an officer makes her way over to the house. Turns out that a mother and daughter have gone on a drinking bender and something went wrong. The cops found them in the water, and if they can get a confession, does anyone want to press charges? A conviction is unlikely, we’re told, given that there are no eyewitnesses or video surveillance to support any action taken. Names and phone numbers are exchanged, the officer leaves, Ter helps to clean up the lobby while I stand with the men and ponder the insurance portent. None of us gets back to sleep before four that morning, but we retire as a group more strongly bonded than we were before the incident occurred.

Since then, we’ve heard that the malcontents apologized to the police but they have no priors so no charges are recommended (to which I reply, how does one go about getting a prior unless charges are pressed?). The broken glass in three of the four doors is presently being repaired, and I presume the strata’s insurance is covering the bulk of the cost. Ter and I have an advantage here: being renters, we just comply with whatever work must be done and don’t worry about the finances.

This does not spare us the slings and arrows suffered by the owners, however. Since we moved in, we’ve been embraced as members of the family and have weathered the same storms as everyone else—everything from an upstairs water leak soaking our carpet to street parking wars to disgruntled neighbours foiling our recycling collection, not to mention the summer of constructing the Trump Tower out back. There is no dissention among the residents, I’m relieved to say, and now that the kids have moved in downstairs, we’re hoping for a warm and peaceful winter.

There’s no place like home.