Why Ancient Peoples Believed in Spirits, Part two

We are trading stories over at A2K, here's mine from this morning:

This happened a dozen years ago.

It's a hot Sunday afternoon. I'm putting the aluminium storm windows back up after painting the house. I have a shirt pocket full of screws and a stack of windows. I get a window, climb the ladder, wiggle the frame into place, then reach in my pocket to get a few screws and one by one twist them into the holes in the frame and the corresponding holes in the wood. (Did I mention that I labeled the storm windows when I took them down? So that #8 bd is the eighth one from the left end of the bedroom, natch. Big house, lots of windows)

Things are going swimmingly. I am down to my last storm window. I check to see if I have enough screws in my pocket to secure it. There are two dozen screws per frame, five across the top, five on the bottom, and seven down each side. I count. "Yes, "I say out loud, "I have exactly twenty four." My Irish mother would have been horrified. Things are always listening to such human pronouncements and lay in wait to take advantage.

I secure the top and the left side, I press the right side in tightly and taking one screw out of my pocket at a time, continue to work my way down the frame to the bottom. Relieved that I am about to finish, I take the last five screws out of my pocket and hold them in my left hand. The right side edge suddenly pops out a little and, when I reach over to press it in, I open my left hand a little and the screws drop. I hear them bounce off the ladder steps and then nothing. I look down from the ladder and it's a miracle. They have not fallen into the Irises. I see them, glittering in the sunlight, right there on the sidewalk like a throw of jacks. "Whew," I say, " that was close." I climb down from the ladder.

They are gone.

They are not glittering on the sidewalk like a throw of jacks, they are not there. They are gone. I look for them carefully. They are gone. I climb back up the ladder to try and spot them where I saw them only moments before, they are gone. I get down on my hands and knees and go over the three slabs of sidewalk inch by inch. I paw through the edges of the Irises, I look on the steps of the ladder, I search my pocket just in case, I look on the narrow window sill edge.

Gone.

Shucks. I go to the garage and look for replacements in the six mason jars of screws, everything is too long or too fat. It's been a long day. I started putting up the windows at seven-thirty, thinking I might be done by three and now it's coming onto to five. Ohmigod, the hardware store closes at five on Sundays!!! I jump into the car and dash through the streets arriving just as the fellow flips the open/closed sign to CLOSED. He smiles, but gives me the 'cut across the throat sign' meaning tough luck. I sit in the car for a minute, "Okay, you got me." I say out loud. "That was a good one."

I put the car in gear and head back to the house. I pull into the drive, walk around to where the ladder is waiting and there on the sidewalk, of course, looking like a throw of jacks, are the five shiny screws.

I finish the work. I put the ladder away. I tell no one.