Watching

“I’ll be right back,” I say to my sister as I leave her room.

Mom left for the store twenty minutes ago and Dad’s at work. Jana is almost seven but I’m ten and a half so I’m in charge. That makes me feel pretty cool and old. As I reach the top of the stairs, I hesitate. I’m still sort of nervous about being home alone so I don’t really like all the glass windows and doors downstairs. There aren’t other houses in sight and our yard is wide open along a busy country road. Walking through the first floor of our house can feel like being on a stage and everyone is watching you. I move a little more quickly when I’m down there and glance outside too many times. I’ve never told this to Mom, though. Then she would start bringing us to the store with her and that sounds worse. So I just try to stay upstairs where it feels safe and not think about it.

The wooden stairs complain as I go down to the main level to grab a cup of water. We live in an old farmhouse that looks newer but creaks, winter gusts, and the smell of old dried-out wood still squeeze through when they can find an opening. Halfway down the stairs, something black catches the corner of my eye. I turn right to look out the small window that overlooks the driveway.

An icy wave of shock rolls from the back of my head down to my ankles as I look at the tall man standing in our driveway. He knows I see him because he is looking into my eyes even as they round the window frame and come into his sight. He does not move and I wonder, how long has he been standing there? His jeans are black like the kind my friend Seth has. I think they are cool and have asked my mom for some. She refused. I don’t think they are that cool right now. His black t-shirt is tucked into his jeans and the sleeves seem too short, showing so much of his long pale arms. His wavy hair is brown, almost red.

Heart hammering in my chest, I back up a couple of steps. After a breath or two, I slowly peek back out, hoping he’s gone and that this is all just a trick being played by my already nervous brain.

And he is.

My shoulders sag and I breathe out heavily as I close my eyes. As soon as my breath is gone I suck it back in sharply and go stiff. He must be moving to the back door. The bare skin of my feet smacks against wood as I dash down the final few steps, double back for the door to the mudroom underneath them, fly down the few linoleum stairs, and smash into the outside door, which is already locked. The doorknob wiggles. Panting, I stand back and look out the window next to it.

There he is, looking me in the eye. Up close like this, I notice that his lips seem big and are shiny with too much chapstick. They look like slugs crawling across his face. 

We stand there for a minute, each waiting for the other to blink. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I turn and run back out of the mudroom and into the kitchen. As I reach the glass door to our enclosed front porch, I see he is already at the door that comes in off the driveway. He does not try to open it. He knows I will lock the door to the house before he can get there. I look down as I twist the lock and when I look back up, he’s not there.

As if the whistle had been blown in gym class, I launch left only to fall to the floor as the rug spins out from under me on the smooth wood boards. I swear under my breath and feel bad about it. I’ve never sworn before and my eyes burn with it. I get back up and rush to the last double glass door that leads from our living room onto the side porch. He is standing at the corner of the porch, looking through the slatted railing as I lock it and take a step back.

Breathing heavily, I stand still and watch him. He watches back, standing like a statue. 

Eventually, he begins to move. Somehow I haven’t seen him walk yet and his movements look stiff as if he really had been a statue and is just now learning how. His eyes never leave mine. He reaches the stairs directly in front of me and stops again. I flinch as if he had jumped there suddenly. 

My legs quiver as he climbs the steps and crosses the porch to stand in front of the door and look in. I begin to back up to the kitchen. Even with the locked door between us, I can’t stand being so near him. It feels like he could reach through the glass and grab me at any moment. His eyes look dead like they are out of one of Jana’s dolls. 

New tears are in my own eyes as I remember Jana alone upstairs. I don’t want to look at this man any longer but the thought of looking away and losing sight of him is almost harder. I have to go back upstairs, though. I do NOT want Jana to see him. She will only cry and make things way worse. 

I am stuck and cannot tear myself away, but then he raises a fist and slams it against the glass. The sound echoes around me like the boom of a big drum. His terrible lips split into a smile as I jump and back away quickly into the kitchen and out of his sight. I get my cup of water and fill another for Jana so she won’t need to come down. I grab a box of crackers just in case. Our house is open from one end to the other and when I step back into the man’s line of sight, he is still there, standing. Reluctantly, I turn and head to the stairs. When I reach the bottom I look back. 

He is gone.

Shaking, I begin to slowly climb the steps. I look out the stairs window out of habit. I know he couldn’t have gotten around the house that fast. At the top, I look out the window down to the backyard and there he stands. I freeze as if held by him and then strangely, for the first time, he releases me and looks at something to his left. He does not move or look back up at me. My fear turns to confusion as I realize he has never once looked away from me since I first saw him, at least when he was in sight. I move quickly to Jana’s room without him seeing, even though he knows where I’m heading. 

Outside her door, I stop to take a breath and awkwardly wipe my eyes on my shirt sleeves, spilling some water in the process. Jana can’t know something is wrong. However, I find myself calming down as I focus on the man’s sudden loss of interest in me. Why had he finally looked away and what had he seen? I try hard to put a smile on and turn into the room.

“Hey, I brought some water and crackers,” I say.

“Oh.”

“Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“No.”

I want so badly to tell her to stay away from windows but don’t want her to wonder why so I don’t. Luckily her room only has a skylight and a deep window seat that she will have no reason to climb into. I don’t know what to say, I just know I need to get out and find the man again. I need him in sight. Then she breaks the silence.

“Why were you running around downstairs?”

For some reason, this startles me. “Umm…”

“Did you fall over?”

I laugh stiffly. “Yeah, I did. I was trying to see how fast I could run across the house without Mom here to yell at me for it. I slipped on a rug.” The lie flows out of nowhere.

Jana laughs and looks up at me brightly, “That sounds fun!” She begins to rise and my panic rises with her. 

“Umm no, just um stay here for another few minutes. I want to try again and… don’t want to run into you.” This doesn’t make sense and I know it. She could easily stand out of my way just about anywhere, but somehow she agrees and seems to lose interest in the idea.

I step back out of her room and into my open, scary house. I creep to the back window and the man is no longer there. Peering around the edge, I scan the yard and the large field beyond. I look for signs of him like maybe a single path pressed down by his black hiking boots through the long grass. Maybe he left? I go to my bedroom on the other end of the house and look out several windows. The road stretching away from this side of the house is empty. I go back to the stair window on the other side of the house hoping to see him walking away down the road, defeated by my ability to quickly lock doors. I am not so lucky. 

He is nowhere. He is not in the driveway, he is not by the front porch, he is not on the side porch. I look out every single window and become more afraid every single time that I do not see him. Still, I wonder what he had seen when he looked away from me. Is that why I can’t find him?

For a moment, I stand here in the middle of this stage, unaware of the wide-open world around me, trying to figure out where he could be. The longer I think, the more scared I get and the harder it becomes to think. 

Hand shaking, I fumble the corded phone off of its receiver on the kitchen wall. I use speed dial “7” to call my Dad’s office. He’ll know what to do.

The phone rings and rings and rings and I get his answering machine. He must be out to lunch or in an important meeting. I sob and try again anyway. Still nothing. What am I supposed to do? I could get the phone book and try to find the number for the store Mom is at but that will take too long. I stand there shaking, tears running down my cheeks when the thought finally makes its way through the fog of fear in my head. 9-1-1! That’s what I should call! I can’t believe I’ve been so dumb.

I reach to grab the phone again when a new thought hits me like a basketball to the stomach. A vision that, like the man, I wanted so badly to see but was so scared of that my mind kept it away.

He had seen the shed door. The shed that leads to cement stairs that lead to an old door to our basement. Neither can be locked. There’s the door between the two sides of the basement which also has no lock. Then there are the doors at the top of the stairs and through the mudroom, both of which, again, cannot be locked.

As I stand there, mouth hanging open and leaning weakly against the wall, the sound of wood scraping against cement whispers through the floor below me.