Martin tried the door again, then checked his keys. No, his house key was still with Mom. He tried the handle again, despite knowing full well that it wouldn’t budge. He opened the mail slot and put his face right in front of it.

“Hellooo! Helll-oooo?” he yelled through the thin opening.

Martin turned around, surveying the neighborhood. Now he hoped his mom would get home sooner. He didn’t want to wait right in front of his house for an hour, unable to get in. The clouds above him were a bit of a lighter gray, and Martin doubted now that rain was coming. He sighed, walked to the curb, and sat, waiting, for a few bored minutes.

He decided to take a walk. His mom would take a while to get here, and it beat sitting in the car listening to bad radio. It was good exercise, too. Martin looked up again, smoothing his brown hair, and got up.

Maybe I’ll go down near my old house, he decided. Before they build some high-rise on top of it. There had been lots of construction activity in this suburb lately, and Martin guessed that the land here was finally getting valuble. It was annoying, watching giant bulldozers driving down the road and seeing giant holes in the ground where houses used to be. At least he didn’t live near much of it. His friend Allen lived near one of the construction sites, and had to put up with pile-driver noises for three weeks.

The walk was relaxing. The clouds and fear of rain had forced most of the suburb’s citizens indoors, and the only sounds were the whoosh of passing cars and the sporadic chirping of birds. There were more cars than usual on the residential roads today. Mostly blue ones, he noticed. A slight wind kicked up.

As he walked, however, his feeling of relaxation faded, or changed somewhat. He began to feel distinctly uncomfortable after about fifteen minutes, but he knew he had no reason to. The weather was the same, there still wasn’t anybody else on the roads, the birds still chirped. Maybe it was still some residual frustration from the rest of the day. Maybe it was something else…

He kept walking, spotting the fencing and dirt of a construction site up ahead. He started jogging, trying to take his mind off of the unease. The construction site was on most of the block that his house used to be on - they were building something on top of it, he thought - and, for the moment, it was abandoned.

Martin walked up to the fence and looked down into the giant hole that had been dug. Apparantly it would eventually become something with a basement, possibly an apartmant building. Backhoes and a few bulldozers and dump trucks sat at the bottom. Martin stared at the scene, imagining what it had been, and what it would be. His old house had been where he was standing.

He turned away, glancing at his watch. His mom would be home in half an hour. Time to head back. He half-looked back at the construction site, and just before he started on his way home, a blue flash caught at the corner of his eye.

Martin’s head jerked towards it instinctively, seraching for the source of the flash. It looked like what might have been one of those cars, but there were no vehicles anywhere he could see. No moving ones, anyway. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard any of those birds in a while, either.

Martin narrowed his eyes, thinking. That strange, uneasy feeling was back again, this time much stronger. This time there was at least a bit of a reason for it, though.

He glanced at his surroundings. Same old houses, some brick, some with plastic faux-wood siding. A few American flags. Many parked cars. Nothing that would all of a sudden decide to send out a faint pulse of blue light, at least not on this overcast day. Then, the construction site - chain-link fences, yellow vehicles, dirt. A cluster of pipes sticking out of the ground, presumably what would become part of the building’s plumbing. Martin thought again about returning home; the skies were getting rapidly dark.

Those pipes, though. They were at just about the angle the flash had come from - maybe there was something in there? Before he knew it, Martin was walking towards the gate.

The fence screeched aside, but the sound failed to reach anybody’s ears but Martin’s. He wandered down the dirt ramp to the construction site’s ground leve. The bulldozers were much more intimidating up close. He was tempted to clamber up on one of them, just to see what it was like. Curiosity drove him on, despite his growing unease. The sky was getting still darker, a part of him thought. He ignored it.

The pipes were right in front of him, and his unease was at its greatet. He peered into the largest pipe, its terminus lost in darkness. Martin squinted, looking deeper. Was there something in there? It seemed to him, almost as if the darkness itself was moving, swirling…

A door nearby opened and shut, shattering the silence. Martin’s heart did a backflip, and he almost jumped away from the pipe, running to a good hiding spot behind the wheel of a backhoe. Some lady was looking at the sky, no doubt worrying about rain or something. It was really getting dark.

Martin resisted the urge to go back to the pipe, waiting until the woman went back inside and closed the door. Then he sprinted back to the gate, dragging it halfway closed. Fear gripped his heart like a black hand - who might have seen him? He could be arrested for trespassing, or some kind of official charge. It had been stupid of him to assume that just because nobody yelled when he opened the gate that nobody was there.

That’s not the only reason you’re scared.

Martin ignored the thought as he ran home, not noticing the light blue SUV that pulled out of a side street and followed him there.