They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!!

Holidays just aren't the same without the Francises.

In any ordinary suburban neighborhood New Year's Eve is celebrated by watching the ball drop on TV, making nugatory promises for the coming year, and toasting memories. These quiet, conventional, and thoroughly American customs have been tossed aside by the former residents of a certain dark and rather foreboding dead end street where I happen to live.
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There were five boys in the Francis family. Each one was taller and crazier than the next, with long lanky legs and ashen complexions from drinking too much alcohol and staying up late every night. They dropped dummies on passing cars, swam in the putrid canal, vandalized fence posts, and stole Ron Lewis's freshly killed bloody sheep head out of his barn and mounted it for all to see on a pole in their front yard. They were hooligans and hellions in every respect. Every time a dog was poisoned or a shed caught fire the residents of my road pointed their fingers at the infamous Francis Five.
They were the bane of 10755, the annual hosts of the New Year's Insanity, and they lived across the street from me.

Every New Year I recall as a child was ushered in by the raucous parties they would throw. Sleeping on this special night was difficult when Beastie Boys kept pervading my dreams and every time I looked out my window I could see my neighbors chain smoking and drinking beer on their front lawn. Often illegal fireworks were added to the mess of drugs and music and dancing, but if they were unattainable there would surely be an added bonus show of colored lights from homemade rockets and various explosive chemicals.

Life with untrustworthy neighbors is not easy. Young and innocent children are easily impressed upon. Because of this I was absolutely forbidden to associate with the Francises; I was not allowed to approach, speak, or even so much as to look at them. Because I was sheltered-- or perhaps to spite that fact-- I could not deny a lurid fascination with them. I enjoyed analyzing them because it was like gazing into bent glass: the reflection was completely contorted and twisted and crazy, but I could still see a bit of the original shape in the image.

The Francises moved away years ago. They simply packed up and left unexpectedly, taking only what they could fit in the bed of a pick-up truck and returning for the rest later.
After they left, the neighborhood gossips congregated in my kitchen and surmised the cause of this sudden departure. They ended the discussion with the assumption that Donna had gotten pregnant, or Tex had been expelled from high school, or the boys had started making a bomb in the basement and the toxic fumes had forced the whole family to leave.
I suppose we will never know the truth.
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Today is New Year's Eve once again. All is still and peaceful-- a completely different greeting for the New Year than what the residents of my neighborhood have come to expect. There are no fires, no rowdy boys riding goats, no fireworks, and no boom boxes blasting Duran Duran.
Even so, on nights like this I hear in my head the faint beat of a drum and the elusive whine of a synthesizer a little way down the road. The Francises are gone, but their obstreperous ways will forever haunt 10755 every New Year's Eve until the city inevitably decides to take a steamroller to this hill-- causing my quirky neighborhood to be evened out and average once again.