The house was located at the end of a dead end street in a town that was a little rougher then normal. Sometimes towns can be tough—that is they tend to be more working class as opposed to middle class. You see signs of this in little ways—more broken down cars or cars that don’t move a lot in driveways or perhaps a older camper parked next to the garage. In this particular case, the house had some automobile spare parts gathered around a garage door that didn’t look like it was being used to garage cars.
I rang the doorbell and listened to make sure I heard it ring. This is actually kind of important in this line of work as often doorbells don’t work. Sometimes I hear the doorbell, sometimes I hear something else that lets me know it rang—often it’s a dog that has been awakened by the doorbell hell bent on protecting the house from solicitors.
This time, though I didn’t hear a dog. I heard what sounded like a small child shouting a single word. The child shouted it once or twice. I opted to ring the doorbell again because the child was calling out to their grandmother in Spanish and I thought she might have not heard the doorbell the first time.
The second ringing brought a higher pitched calling of that name from the child. It was loud and grew more sorrowful each time the child called it. Clearly the child was worried, afraid. I then could hear the sounds of something moving towards the door, but it also sounded like it was blocked. I hears some furniture crashing along with this child calling out for their grandmother.
I left a letter indicating why I was there and went back to the car and cried.
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