Slowing things down a bit tonight with another installment of this month’s serial. There are some strange things going on around here. It’s about all I can say right now.

If you need a refresher or need to catch up, I will post links to the rest of this story as it progresses. The first piece “She Who Watches.”
There will be Flood
Will you do the Fandango
Awake in Dreams
Trip to the Doctor
Night Sweats
Visions of Breakfast
After the Fire
Sweet Dreams are made of These

There will be flood

“You’re not going to believe this,” Lisa said into the phone. “They turned the water on today. Yep, the power too.” She held the phone between her ear and shoulder as she opened boxes in the living room. “Do you remember what boxes we packed the towels in? Or maybe the shop vac?” Her eyes lit up and she lost her hold on the phone when she found the box she was looking for. “Sorry, I dropped you for a sec there. I found them.”

“Oh, ya, the bad news. I told you they turned the water on didn’t I? One of our pipes in the basement burst. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I didn’t know they turned the water on. We were about to take some boxes downstairs when I saw the water in the landing. Ya, the moving truck showed up today.” She stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at the lake that had grown in her basement. “Listen, I am going to take care of this. I’ll see you when you get home.”

Lisa went to the garage and grabbed the squeegee leaning against the wall. She knew they had bought it for something. This wasn’t in the plan though. She counted herself lucky that they noticed the leak before they took too much stuff downstairs. The amount of stuff they might have lost to the flood would have been awful.

She discovered the mess in the morning when the movers called to say they were close. She had gone down the stairs to double check the storage area they would be placing some of the boxes and found herself ankle deep in mucky water. She found the leak in the pipe just past the main. With a quick turn she cut the flow, now only had the mess to contend with.

It wasn’t much but there was a floor drain to push the extraneous water to. Slow going, she could spend the day in the basement with the squeegee and still have plenty to push around. She needed the shop vac but it was on the moving truck.

Lisa squeegeed the excess water toward the drainage hole as best she could. Slow and boring but at least there was progress to be made in water removal.

She lost track of time in the mindless task, jumped when the doorbell rang. “Apparently we have power now too,” she said. “They always show up when you are least ready for it.” Lisa left the squeegee at the base of the stairs, then went to the front door to let the movers in.

A small man in brown coveralls met her at the door. “Mrs. Lancaster?” he asked. “Where would you like us to start dropping off boxes?”

“They should be marked with their final destination,” she said. “But some of them might have to go to the garage till I have the basement ready.”

He left her at the doorway to talk to his partner still in the moving truck. The men exchanged glances between her and the garage. The first went to the back of the truck and opened it up. As they began to unload Lisa joined them at the truck.

“If you happen to find the shop vac at some point can you let me know?” she said. “We had some trouble in the basement this morning.”

“Sure thing.”

She went back into the house and the basement. If nothing else she might get more of the water on the floor down the floor drain and be that much closer to having a dry basement again. As she reached for the squeegee a spark of an idea hit her. With the lights on and the flash of the camera on her phone she should be able to get a decent shot of the broken pipe.

She sent it to Shan with the message to check it out at a hardware store before he came home from work.

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I found out recently that this isn’t the only place celebrating the fun of Halloween all month long. Take a trip over to Hastywords and check out what’s going on over there for more Halloween fun.