N is for NIGHT WATCHER
He’d been there every night for
several weeks now. Some nights she didn’t even go to the window, but she knew
if she did, the shape would be there under the streetlight. After she’d been
grabbed outside her apartment a few nights back, by that—that thing, she’d made
a point to always have Jason, the building’s night door man, wait for her
outside the front door, where she could be within his eyesight after stepping
off the bus at the corner. If anyone, or thing as it may be, tried to gamble a
grab, Jason could be there to intervene.
Every night. Under the streetlight.
Staring up at her window from the corner across the street. She’d called the
cops, given a report. Of course they thought she was bonkers. At least she thought they thought that. The
sergeant who filled out the report came to the conclusion it was some nut in a
monster mask, trying to get a fright out of her for a gag, working up the goony
voice.
Millie wasn’t so sure.
That face…the face that had been
burned into memory and the darkness that waited for when she closed her
eyelids…there was something familiar about it. The eyes. She couldn’t place it,
but she felt that it might not have been a mask, and maybe, perhaps, even not
an attempted attack but a cry for help.
If Jeremy were here, he’d know what
to do.
Where was he?
She edged to the window slowly,
trying to stay out of the glow from the streetlights and shop signs below. She
didn’t want the monster to know if she was home, and if he saw her, who knows?
Would it—or he?—come up and try to get in?
And the memory of that hand on her
shoulder—those clawed fingers! She had a hunch that maybe Jason wouldn’t be
much of an obstacle to contend with. Not for someone like that.
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