The Weekly Howling

A group of disgruntled employees find camaraderie in singing along to their city's weekly tornado siren. 

Transcript

You built your house when you were working the night shift. A time when you couldn’t ever picture yourself being awake during the day. And so you’d had the builders do something unusual. You’d had them leave your bedroom completely windowless. Because blackout curtains might stop the light, but they didn’t stop the noise of the day. 

And now ten years later, you’re living a life where you’re awake during the day. And you couldn’t be more grateful that you never got windows put in, because over these years you’ve noticed something peculiar about your house. You’ve noticed that when it’s raining outside, you never hear the rain in your room. Which was the point of no windows, so all good there. But you’ve also noticed that you’ll hear rain when there is none outside. You’ll hear entire storms raging outside that are only audible from your room, and not visible from any of the windows in the rest of the house. 

Over the years, you’ve gotten used to it. And though you could afford to renovate, to adapt to a day shift life, you’ve always been too scared to put in any windows. Because you feel certain that they would not look out into the same world that the rest of the windows in your house look out into. You’ve never told anyone about this of course. And though your parents have pushed you to normalize your house for the resale value, or just to appeal to any potential girlfriends, you always brush them off, making up different excuses. 

It never even occurred to you that they might do it for you. Not until you come home from vacation and find the smell of sawdust and fresh paint. Not until you walk into a bedroom that is much brighter than the one you left. They’ve put up blackout curtains for you, so you could keep pretending. But when night falls, and you hear a storm raging that you knew hadn’t had time to build in this world, you can’t resist the urge to look out. So you part the curtains, and you gaze out at; The Podcast Inside Your House. 

When you process an insurance claim, you get the unique pleasure of seeing pictures taken just for you. 

There’s nothing too interesting about the pictures themselves. They show mostly small scratches and dings on cars. Occasionally, you’ll get a real wreck, burned and twisted metal. But that’s rare. 

No, what I’ve always found fascinating about these images is that they exist solely for me, and maybe a few other cogs in the machine to look at. And that makes them special. 

As my work entered the busy season, I found myself appreciating the pictures more and more. In the dead of winter, layoffs began outpacing labor, and we found ourselves entering overtime that was voluntary in name only. 

With the sun not rising until hours after I got to work, and setting hours before I got out, sometimes those little pictures of cars in parking lots were the only window I saw of the outside world. I especially appreciated the reflection of trees on the car windows, which gave fleeting glimpses of spring, of summer, of anything other than gray, and beige, and white. I always took a moment to savor those lovely pictures anytime they came my way. 

As winter receded, I started joining the smokers outside for breaks. It wasn’t worth it to walk all the way to my car, but I couldn't stomach the breakroom now that the temperatures were climbing above the negatives. 

Our building was near where the city dropped off into the country, right on the edge of civilization. The forest encroached dangerously close to our back wall. And spending just a few minutes watching the fields and trees outside helped soothe the monotony of the day. 

Those little breaks became my lifeline. Exactly seven and a half minutes of human connection and secondhand smoke in the morning and the evening. Breaks were supposed to be ten minutes, but of course, one had to factor in the walk to and from one's desk. 

When it became clear that longer hours might be the norm, our schedules shifted. One of our breaks moved from 11:15 to exactly noon. And that was when we first heard The Howling. 

Every Wednesday at noon, our city tested its tornado sirens. That was nothing new, but hearing them outside the office brought a new set of strange sounds alongside them. 

Listening very carefully, we could hear noises in the lulls. They sounded almost like people laughing and chattering in the woods. Which was decidedly unsettling. The next week, however, the sounds were louder, and we were able to make them out more clearly. 

From a distance, they’d blended together, but the noises were closer to us now, and the homogeny was broken. And we realized the noises came from two different sources. Emanating from the forest were both the howls of coyotes and the chattering and honking of geese. 

I’d heard from the night shift that the coyotes ventured close to our building, sometimes even sniffing around the picnic tables. They were blissfully unaware that there would never be crumbs or scraps there because no one here had the time or will to use the picnic area. But hearing them so close to us in the daytime was chilling. 

The coyotes kept howling even after the sirens stopped and the geese quieted. And I marvelled at the thickness of the office walls. The lack of widows kept us so insulated from the outside world that we’d never heard this phenomenon before. 

It was nearing the end of break, when each of us had anywhere from thirty seconds to two minutes before we had to get going, when a girl whose name I didn’t know let out a small howl. Just as the tornado sirens had only moments ago. 

The next week, we all did it, just for a bit. Some of us imitated the sirens, some the coyotes, some the geese. But we settled down to let the geese and the coyotes have their spotlight too. That week, they were further away, their sounds melding together into the strange chattering laughter far off in the trees. 

Though I knew it was only the unusual acoustics of the distance, the forest, I was jealous of how much fun it sounded like they were having. 

We kept up our ritual every Wednesday. And as winter came to a close, and the busy season slowed, our herd, our flock, whatever you want to call us, only thinned further. The lay-offs kept us busy enough that we couldn't catch our breath, but not so busy that we felt like we were drowning. Not so busy as to put the company into any danger, of course. 

Overtime tapered off, but we kept the new break schedule. And before long, some of the other non-smokers joined us, wanting in on The Howling. On Wednesdays, our numbers grew, and The Howling turned into a cathartic yelling for some, our screams loud enough to drown out the geese, the birds, and the coyotes that all joined into the siren's song. 

Every week, I expected a passive-aggressive email about “disruptive behavior” or “not being team players.” But it never came, the cement walls of the building created such an effective sound barrier that the noises that carried for miles over the forest were stopped mere feet in the other direction. 

I’d never understood the lack of windows, as our work wasn’t terribly secretive or anything. But for once, I was grateful for it because it kept us thoroughly walled off when we needed to scream together. 

On a rainy Wednesday, when our numbers were decimated by the weather, we heard the wildlife clearly once again. Clear enough to notice something missing from the cacophony. The sounds of the geese were still there and even a few other birds. But the coyotes were absent. 

It was the same the next week, the geese chattering close to us, closer than they’d been in a long time. But the coyotes were nowhere to be found. I wondered if they migrated in the spring, if perhaps they’d left us for the season. 

After the sirens stopped, and after our yelling stopped, we heard a brand new noise take over the silence. The chatter of the geese was replaced by their own version of yelling. Of screaming, even. 

Loud, desperate chirps and honks filled the air, louder than they ever had before. And in the lulls of the geese’s screaming, of what I can only describe as the sounds of death, we heard other sounds. We heard low snarls, and growls, and yelps. The muted sounds of whatever was bringing the death to those poor birds. 

But just as the sounds leveled off, our own flock began to thin. Breaktime was coming to a close. And though the noises in the forest were close. Though they presented a possible danger, we all waited until our appointed time to leave.

When lunch time rolled around, I left my food in the fridge. And rather than heading to the front exit, to my car, I went to the back. To the never-used picnic tables at the edge of the woods. Not caring about my shoes getting muddy, not caring what was waiting for me, I stepped across the threshold and into the wilderness. 

I followed a game path and made headway with minimal snags to my jacket from the underbrush. I was walking for just a few minutes when I came upon the sight of the carnage we’d heard only a few short hours before. 

The smell hit me first. Not yet the smell of decay. But the smell of iron and entrails, just beginning to bake in the warm spring sun. 

There were no sounds to indicate danger, so I pressed on. I parted the curtains of underbrush to find a small clearing. And I soon found the answer as to why the geese hadn’t simply flown away from whatever danger had befallen them. 

They’d been trying to guard their nests. Strewn around on the ground were freshly cracked eggs and fragments of fresh hatchlings. There were pieces of adults lying around as well, torn apart, but some were barely even nibbled on. Whatever had killed the geese had bigger eyes than its stomach, evidently. 

I walked among the carcasses, silently paying my respects. And in the muddy, bloody earth, I spotted clues left by the killers. There were small paw prints all over the clearing. The coyotes hadn’t left after all. 

They’d simply learned to be silent during the weekly howling. 

The next week, we watched with bated breath as the surviving geese began to settle into the little clearing behind our building. The picnic tables we never had time to use were soon covered in feathers, goose droppings, and occasionally the geese themselves, sunning on the worn wood. 

Even with the bounty the coyotes had taken the week prior, there were still dozens of goslings in varying states of growth. From fresh yellow to gangly gray. 

Our little flock had dwindled to just four people by then. And we knew each other well enough that our chatter had its own rhythm. A comfortable catch-up that was quiet enough not to disturb the nature around us. 

But on Tuesday, a stranger came into our midst. Though I supposed we knew her in theory. She was, in large part, the one who’d steered the decisions that had led to our numbers dwindling so severely. And she’d seen fit to grace our branch with her presence. Perhaps feeling some responsibility to oversee the layoffs, the carnage, herself. 

She joined us on our break, talking loudly, intent on pretending to be oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t wanted. And when we all started trickling back in, the stranger stayed until I left, and even had the audacity to ask me why I was going back in early. I wasn’t about to explain to her the nuances of having every minute of every day recorded, as I doubted that was something she’d ever had to worry about. 

“Just eager to get back to work,” I told her. 

She joined us again on Wednesday, on the day of The Howling. And we all silently agreed to abstain from our ritual. We didn’t need to do anything that might drive us to extinction any sooner. Our little pack knew to be silent.

As the sirens started, so too did her saccharine chatter. But when the geese began their own loud sing-along to the sirens, she stopped. 

Perhaps in response to our silence, perhaps in an attempt to seem more human, more relatable, she stepped away from our little circle and she ventured into the geese’s flock. 

“Well, aren't these little guys just precious?” She practically yelled over the sirens, the chittering. The Stranger walked up to a family with fresh yellow babies. The parents hissed, and the babies fell over themselves trying to get away. Oblivious to their fear, she practically chased them around the clearing to get a closer look. 

The sirens stopped, and in the lulls between honks and chatter, we heard another noise. We heard leaves rustling, and we heard sticks breaking. I looked over to my fellow workers, just two others now, our pack critically endangered. And I saw they were also scanning the forest.

Together we watched the woods. The coyotes had appeared, they’d snuck up on all of us. And as we watched them creeping up on the edge of the clearing, they watched their prey. We saw only glimpses of snouts and eyes. But I knew the danger lurking in the woods. The coyotes near us crossbred with wolves, with dogs, and they could reach truly monstrous sizes. 

After five minutes, our numbers dropped to just two as the first of us had to return to her desk. Then it was just one of the IT guys and me watching as this woman, who was a predator in her own way, continued to mingle with the geese. Blissfully unaware of both the fact that she was scaring them and the fact that there was something far worse than even her lurking in the brush.

After a minute and a half, my companion went to go clock back in, and I was the lone remainder of our pack. The stranger was sitting on one of the picnic tables now, taking pictures of frightened babies. And when my seven and a half minutes were up, I left her out there alone. If she had a desk to get back to, she would have come back inside with me. 

But she didn’t, and so, she didn’t. 

We heard nothing. Just as our heavy cement walls blocked out our howling, they too blocked out what happened out there after we left. 

At 12:47, I went out the front door. A time not approved for any types of breaks or lunch, so I was out there all alone. And I went around the back, the lack of windows ensuring no wandering eyes could see what I was up to. 

When I saw what had happened, just feet away from civilization, from the illusion of safety, I was fascinated. I walked through the carnage, the blood, the entrails just beginning to bake in the sun. And I took out my phone to document this sight that I had never seen before. 

I knew by the end of the day, someone else would be doing the same, taking pictures for police officers who did what I did. Whose job it was to look over photos taken just for them. Only what they didn’t know was that someone else would have photographed the sight before they could. Those pictures wouldn't be special.  

When I went back around the front, I pretended I’d forgotten my badge, that I’d had an urgent phone call. They buzzed me in, and I knew the unauthorized break would cost me a point and a half on my attendance. But it was well worth it. 

Because now, when the days grow long again, I have a little something special to get me through them. In the dead of winter, when all I see is gray, and beige, and white. When I’m typing in strings of numbers over and over and over again for 8 to 12 hours. I’ve got my own little pictures to give me a glimpse of the outside world. 

And now, instead of reflected trees on car windows, I’ve got pictures of bones and blood and matted hair. Sights that I’d never known could be just as beautiful as the grass below and the trees above. 

Now, when I find myself driven to the brink of isolation. When I find myself forgetting what the outside world looks like. I’ve got these beautiful little reminders on my phone to look through. 

I’ve got so many precious pictures. Ones that were taken just for me. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Podcast inside your House! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Instagram, Tumblr and Bluesky.Until next time, remember that when one door closes, you can always just pry that door back open; it’s still a door after all.