The other night, I heard banging. Someone was banging at my house, but not on the door; They were banging at the frame of the front window, maybe, or on the neighbor’s metal furniture, which is chained to their house so no one will steal it.

I peered through the peephole in the door, and couldn’t see anything. 

I opened the door and looked out. 

A tall, slender, balding man was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, facing away from me.

He was clean and had a dignified posture, but he clearly wasn’t my normal type of visitor (my neighbors sometimes knock, and so do Jehovah’s Witnesses and people selling alternate electricity providers, plus my mail carrier Linnea, and that’s about it).

After a long pause, he spoke, and it was immediately clear he was a Dignified Mutterer. He was not the other Mutterer who sometimes sits on my front step to clean his feet; that Mutterer is very grubby and not dignified at all, more irritated and grumbly. This man was speaking nonsense, but it was detached nonsense.

Then he turned and looked at me. I looked back at him, my face blank. I did not say anything. Just stared, and waited. He spoke again, but not to me. Then he strode away from my house, crossing the street and going down the side street. He disappeared into the night. 

I closed the door and went back inside, thinking that perhaps my visitor had been Santa Claus a couple weeks early, or an alien visitor. Maybe he was the personification of Death. You never know.