Outside My Window: The Second Part

The guest bedroom was empty. It always was. Very few people wanted to spend the night in a ‘haunted’ town. The only reason Steve wanted to was because the house prices were so cheap. As he stood in the empty guest bedroom of his house, he smoke a cigarette. He did not do this very often, for he knew it was a bad habit. He also did not want his son to grow up to become a smoker. So Steve only smoked when he was alone in the house.

His wife had died a few months before he had moved into the house that he was smoking in. That was the reason as to why he had moved out of the big city and into this small town. He sure knew his son liked it there a lot better than the city. The air was fresher and tasted better. Steve enjoyed his job there much more than his dead end city job as an accountant. 

As to the fact of the town being haunted, well, Steve had only heard the rumors. Apparently everyone had been murdered there back in the late 70s. Everyone except for the sheriff. Nobody knew how the sheriff had managed to survive the supposed ‘blood bath’ he always talked about. Some believed that the sheriff had done it, but there was no evidence to convict him. Steve did not believe that it had been the sheriff. In fact, he believed that the stories were just stories. He did not believe in the Tape-Faced Boogeyman. 

Steve then remembered that he was having lunch with the retired sheriff. He checked his watched and walked out of the empty guest bedroom. He stepped outside and crushed out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot. He got in his car and drove in the direction of the diner. 

“It’s been thirty years since the first house burned down,” the old sheriff said as he and Steve ate their lunch. “In fact, today’s the anniversary. I was a young sheriff of thirty-five years. I had thought my job would all fun and games. Catch a drunk here, arrest a thief there, et cetera. But when the Mallard house burned down... well, I wish I had known what I’d be up against.”

“Mallard? As in James Mallard?” Steve asked after he had swallowed a fry.

“Yeah, that’s one of ‘em,” the old sheriff responded. “James was heartbroken when he found out the rest of his family had died. He never did come back after that. Probably for the best. Anyways, how do you James Mallard?” The sheriff asked.

“His name was mentioned a couple of times in an old documentary I watched the other night,” Steve responded as he ate another fry. “Something about monsters or demons.” 

The old sheriff shrugged. “Well that’s nice,” he said as he continued eating. They ate in silence for a few minutes before the old sheriff finally asked, “Why do you keep insisting on hearing my account of the murders?”

Steve shrugged and said, “You’re a good storyteller, Mr. Atkins. And besides, it’s a beautiful Saturday and neither of us have anything better to do.” 

“Storyteller, eh?’ Mr. Atkins said. “So you don’t believe in the Tape-Faced Boogeyman?”

“Well...” Steve began.

“We’ll believe if you can show us some evidence,” said a voice behind Steve. He looked up behind him to see the face of Sheriff Williams, who was the current sheriff of the town.

“You want evidence, eh? Well, it turns out that I’ve got evidence for ya,” Mr. Atkins responded. “Just let me finish my meal, and we can go over to my house so you can lay your eyes on the evidence.”

And that is exactly what happened. Mr. Atkins had a house big enough for an entire to live in. He explained that he had divorced his wife the year before the first burning and that she would not let the kids stay with him after the fires became frequent. He led us to a room on the second floor of the house. In it was a desk and an old television. Steve assumed that this was Mr. Atkins’s office. 

Mr. Atkins walked up to his desk, unlocked a drawer, then opened it. He pulled out an old video cassette. “I haven’t watched or shown this to anyone since when it was first discovered,” he said as he put it in a DVR that was hooked up to the old television set. When he turned on the TV, Steve was surprised to find that he was watching old security footage. After about a minute of nothing, it happened. Somebody was murdered. After the killer had finished murdering his victim, he turned his face toward the camera. Instead of seeing a man’s face, there was only a mask made out of silver duct tape with glistening, red blood on it. 

When the security footage stopped, Mr. Atkins was standing behind Steve and Sheriff Williams with a box. “The last victims were killed when the killer left this behind,” he said.

Steve and Sheriff Williams turned around and peered inside as the box was opened. Inside was the tape mask itself. Steve noticed that in the eyeholes were glasses lenses. He almost became sick when he saw that there was indeed blood on the mask. Sheriff Williams gulped and said, “If this is real... then why did you never turn it in?”

“I was the person you turned things in to back then,” Mr. Atkins replied. “And besides, I was the only one still alive at the time. When this town was starting to become populated again,, no one cared about the murders anymore. They were history by that time. Mr. Johnson, open the leftmost drawer of my desk, please.”

Steve went and did as he was told. When he opened the drawer, he found a revolver with a single bullet loaded in the barrel. “What is this?” he asked.

“It was in the hand of the last murder victim, Anthony West. We all knew the boy as ‘Tony.’” Mr. Atkins responded. “From what I observed, something must’ve scared him so bad he couldn’t pull the trigger.”

“Well, facing a known killer that wears a mask made out of tape outta do the trick,” Sheriff Williams commented.

Mr. Atkins shook his head. “The mask was lying next to poor Tony when I found his body,” he said. “Something tells me that it was what was under the mask that scared Tony so bad.”

They would have continued their conversation had an officer not burst in the door downstairs and yelled, “Sheriff Williams! A kid has been killed, sir!” 

Time seemed to slow down for Steve as he and Mr. Atkins quickly followed Sheriff Williams out of the house and onto the street. Not my Nick. Please don’t let it be my boy, Lord! was the repeated thought that went through Steve’s mind until they reached the scene of the crime.

When they had arrived, there was a stretcher with a white cloth covering the body. Sheriff Williams pushed his way past the crowd to the stretcher. Steve and Mr. Atkins followed him. When he reached the stretcher, Sheriff Williams pulled up the white cloth. What Steve saw brought him too his knees as he sobbed bitterly. “Any witnesses?” the sheriff asked. 

“No,” the other officer responded, “but the kid who found the body is right here if you want to ask him a few questions.”

And that’s what the sheriff did. Steve did not hear the all the questions. His mind could not seem to work properly. The only question he heard the sheriff ask the boy was the last one. “And where did you find the body of Nickolas Johnson?” the sheriff asked.

“I-I found h-him d-d-dead on the g-ground,” the boy responded tearily, “o-outside my window.”