Horace the Hero

Maeve was startled awake by a loud bang. The red numbers on the clock on the nightstand told her it was three o’clock in the morning. She sat up in bed, heart pounding, until she summoned up the courage to look outside. Silver slivers of rain glittered in the pale-yellow light of the streetlamp outside her window, and the trees were bowing and twisting in the wind. Bleary and shivering, she remembered something being said on the news about an impending storm but had not paid much attention. With relief, she realized that the noise was coming from the garden gate which was unlatched and swinging back and forth. She turned to nudge Geoff awake and then remembered he was not there. He was attending yet another scientific conference. Thank goodness he had promised to retire next year.

“Aren’t you worried about him meeting other women at all these conferences?” her friend Carol had asked.

Maeve had laughed out loud.

“Honey, Geoff is my knight in shining armor, but he’s also short, tubby and fond of knitted cardigans. His mind is usually miles away on whatever the latest scientific research is. He’d run a mile if a femme fatale made moves on him.”

 Sighing, she fumbled on her glasses. slipped out of bed and donned her robe. Felix, their large rescue tabby, meowed in displeasure at being disturbed from his favored position in the crook of her knees, his green eyes glowing in the semi-darkness.

“You are a useless, spoiled animal,” Maeve said.

Felix yawned and stretched.

Maeve affectionately tweaked his tail, glad to have another living being in the house. Putting her coat on over her pajamas, she opened the front door, gasping as a blast of cold rain hit her face. Leaning into the wind, almost blinded by the water streaming off her glasses, she hurried down the path and secured the gate. She could have sworn she had latched it earlier when she returned home. She had just turned back towards the house when the streetlamp and the porch light went out, and the street was plunged into darkness.

“Great,” she muttered to herself. “The power’s out.”

Floundering back up the path, she tried to shield herself from flying leaves and twigs with one hand, extending the other hand until she touched the front door. Her relief evaporated as she realized that the front door had slammed shut behind her. She was locked out and her phone was inside. Huddling inside the porch, she felt sick with panic. There were only three houses in the cul-de-sac. The neighbors on one side were away on vacation and old Mrs. Thompson on the other side was in hospital. She suddenly heard Geoff’s voice in her ear.

“Use your brains, girl. You’re a smart cookie.’

“Hah,” she said. “If I was all that smart, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and thought. With excitement, she suddenly remembered that she had hidden a spare key under the garden gnome beside the back door. Geoff had shaken his head when she’d brought the gnome home.

“Good grief, that thing is tacky. He only stays on condition that he’s out of sight.”

“His name is Horace, and you’ve hurt his feelings now,” Maeve had said, laughing as she positioned him in the flower bed under the kitchen window. Horace had been a running joke between them ever since.

Maeve plunged back into the rain. It was hard to believe how different everything was in the blackness. Her hair was plastered to her head and her fluffy slippers squelched as she stumbled around the house into the back garden. Cursing as she stubbed her toe, she carefully felt her way along the path, trying to remember exactly where she’d put the gnome. He wasn’t very big, which Geoff said was his only redeeming feature. The moon suddenly came out from behind the clouds and the rain momentarily lessened. Maeve tried drying her glasses on her sleeve, but her robe was so wet that it made little difference. She peered around in the pale light, gasping with delight as she saw Horace. Picking him up, she scrabbled around in the dirt where he had been standing. With a cry of triumph, she pocketed the key and put Horace down back in his spot. The wind suddenly picked up again. Maeve ducked as a stack of flowerpots toppled over and a garden chair cartwheeled past. Preoccupied with dodging the debris, she did not see the figure trying to open the kitchen window until she straightened up.

“Hey, you!” she yelled, too angry to be scared.

Her voice was lost in the scream of the wind, but her movement must have attracted attention because the figure turned to run. Without thinking, Maeve stooped, grabbed Horace and threw him in the direction of the fleeing figure as hard as she could. There was a yelp and a thud. Maeve gasped in horror as she saw a dark shape on the ground.

“I hope I haven’t killed you,” she muttered under her breath as she scurried back to the front door.

She was fumbling to insert the key with her chilled fingers when a police car pulled up. She blinked, dazzled by the lights.

“Don’t move,” a voice barked as two police officers emerged from the vehicle. One was tall and skinny and the other was short and stocky.

“Hands where I can see them,” said Skinny, shining a flashlight at her.

Trembling, Maeve put her hands on her head.

“What are you doing?”  he said. “We’ve had reports of an intruder trying to get into various houses.”

“I live here,” said Maeve, squinting in the glare of his flashlight. “I locked myself out by mistake and I went to get the spare key and I think I hit the person you’re looking for with Horace because he was trying to open my kitchen window, the person, that is, not Horace… he’s a garden gnome…and I hope I didn’t kill him because Horace is heavy … not one of those plastic gnome ornaments, you know… he’s made of concrete…”

Realizing that she was babbling, she fell silent.

“Ma’am, have you been drinking?”

“No, sir, really. Look round at the back of the house. Someone was trying to get in the kitchen window. I threw Horace at him, and I think I heard him fall.”

The police officer nodded at his stocky colleague who shrugged, pulled out his flashlight and cautiously went around the house.

He returned a moment later, calling on his radio for an ambulance.

“Seems like she’s telling the truth,” he said, grinning. “There’s a fellow on the ground there, with a garden gnome beside him.”

“I didn’t kill him, did I?” said Maeve anxiously.

The police officer grinned.

“No, Ma’am. You missed him, but he tripped and fell. Looks like he’s broken his ankle.”

“Thank goodness I’m a terrible shot,” said Maeve.

She and the police officers turned as a car pulled up and a short, tubby man got out of the driver’s seat.

“Maeve? What on earth’s going on?”

“Geoff!” said Maeve, sobbing in relief. “That’s my husband. Can I put my hands down?”

“Sure,” said the tall police officer.

As Maeve shakily unlocked the front door, the ambulance pulled up. She lit candles and she and Geoff watched from the living room window as the suspect was loaded into the ambulance. After she had given a statement, and the police officers left. Maeve hugged Geoff fervently.

“I have never been so glad to see you,” she said.

“I left the conference early because I was worried about you with this storm coming,” Geoff said. “Looks like I wasn’t needed. You and Horace had everything under control.”

Maeve laughed.

“You should never have doubted old Horace or my taste in garden ornaments.”