The Hammering

Also, new people have moved in next door. There has been hammering in the walls. The first day, a moving truck. The next day a lot of hammering. Hours of it. The day after that, a black dog. I arrived home in the evening, just as their front door opened. I paused, ready to say hi, maybe offer to bring around some home-baked muffins to say welcome to the neighbourhood. A black dog emerged. The door quietly closed.

That was a week ago now. Since then, nothing. Sometimes, the strange, hollow barking of the dog.

The silence around that barking seems to me to be a kind of reeling. I believe that the people next door were once jubilant. That first night they hammered in their picture hooks. That first night, contrary to their lease, they covered their walls with picture hooks. Then they hopped into their beds, smiling around, happy with their new home and their pictures. Then the baby in my house woke up. I believe that the people next door had not realised, until that moment, that they had moved next door to a teething baby who wakes four or five times a night.
There is something hushed and shocked about the silence from the house next door.