|
Got a new one for you. This also marks my foray into writing first-person.
The Visitor (Part 1)
Somebody was tapping at my window.
This wasn't the kind of thing that happened every night, for a number of very good reasons. For starters, my bedroom was on the third floor. The space had been an unfurnished attic when we moved in nine years ago. It was full of corners and hidden alcoves, and instantly it had become my favorite spot in the house. For as long as I can remember I have felt the need to have places to hide--not that anyone ever is looking for me.
The tapping started a few minutes ago. It scared the dickens out of me when I first heard it. I pulled the covers right up over my head and managed to scoot a pillow closer an inch at a time until it covered my ears. I suppose the idea was that if I couldn't see or hear whatever was out there, then the same rules would apply for it. It's utterly illogical, I know, but it's worked my whole life.
While in my cocoon of blankets, I held off full-blown panic mode by analyzing the situation to find a reasonable, logical explanation. There was a storm outside, a serious storm with incredible bursts of lightning and long, window-shaking rolls of thunder. Thunder and lightning have always set me on edge. It was windy, too. I could hear the wind screeching past the peak of the roof above my head. Maybe the tapping was just the wind blowing tree branches against the window. No, there were no trees close enough. But maybe something had fallen against it, or gotten caught somehow so that it was clacking against the glass when the wind blew. Really, all I had to do was stick my head out and look. When I saw nothing, I'd feel silly for being so scared. On three, ready?
Three!
I quickly sneaked a peek at where the window was across the room. Well, it was dark. I don't know what I was really expecting. If I turned on the light would I be able to see out the window, or would it just reflect the room back at me? I considered the properties of light. I also considered how far away the light switch was. Maybe it wasn't worth it. The tapping had stopped, anyway.
That's when a flash of lightning illuminated the sky, and against the back light I saw a silhouette.
My heart did something in my chest that hurt, like something sharp had gotten caught between my ribs, and my arms felt cold from the inside out. I wanted to crawl back under the covers, but my hands were paralyzed. I wanted to call out for my mother. I think I might have even parted my lips, but was too scared to make a sound. Making any move that might draw the attention of whomever or whatever was clinging to my window was an impossibility.
I stared at the window and began counting my heartbeats. It helped a little. An animal? It had looked startlingly human. But how could there be somebody outside my window? Were they hanging from the outside of it somehow? Whatever it was, there was still a pane of glass between us. I could make a dash for it. I could reach my door before it could get in. Without taking my eyes from the dark patch of window, I tested the muscles from my fingers to my toes. They told me they were ready to run. I'd count to five, then throw the blanket and lunge for the door, flipping on the light as I went. It wasn't far to my parents' room.
One ... two ... two-and-a-half ... three ...
Tap-tap!
I'd become so tense from the counting that the sound jolted me and I sprang into action. Every move was loud. It happened exactly as I'd pictured, except that the light wasn't as bright as I'd imagined. I banged my toe turning the corner into the hallway, and hopped my way down the hallway and through the setting room that had been converted to a laundry area. I hit the light in there, too. One more hallway, then I was in my parents' room.
My parents don't have a full bed in their room. Just a box spring and mattress on the floor. They've always slept that way. I knelt and shook my mom. "Mom. Mom."
She snuffled and woke. "Willow?" She blinked and looked completely disoriented. "What's going on?"
"I think somebody's looking in my window."
"In your window?" That was my dad. I must have woken him up, too. He sat up and touched the stand of a floor lamp beside their makeshift bed, and I squinted against the light. "You saw somebody?"
I nodded, and he got up. I looked down the hallway while he got up--to say that my dad's let himself go recently would assume he's ever been fit, and he sleeps in nothing but briefs, and sure he might be going to save me from whatever nightmarish creature might be clutching the wall outside my window, but that doesn't mean I'm thrilled to see his near-naked self waddling down the hallway.
"It's that window," I said when we got to my room. No face was apparent, and when he looked closer then peered dubiously at me, I insisted, "There was something there a minute ago. A face or something."
"A person's face?" He didn't look like he believed me. I nodded.
My mom hovered just outside the doorway. "Did you have a nightmare?"
"No, I wasn't asleep. There was something there. It was tapping against the window, too, and then I saw something right up against the glass. It looked like a face, but it was dark. I don't know if it was an animal or a person, or what." My parents shared a look. "I'm serious. I'm not making this up."
"Maybe a bird?" my mom offered, but I could tell they both thought I was just making a big deal out of nothing. My eyes had played tricks on me, and I had gotten scared, and made a fuss. I was a child.
"It wasn't a bird," I sighed. Feeling emboldened both by their presence and the light, I hobbled to the window and tapped it myself. It sounded exactly the same as I'd heard. I pushed my face against the side and checked various angles, but there wasn't anything out there. Great. I should have felt relieved, but by then I just wanted my parents to know I wasn't being childish. I wanted them to believe me. To believe that something utterly impossible had happened. Did I even believe me? "Never mind," I sighed. "Whatever it was, it's gone now."
They returned to bed, and I glowered at the window a good thirty seconds before shaking my head. Like I was going to be able to fall asleep now. I went to my bookshelf and scanned the titles for something that wouldn't require a lot of thinking, ultimately deciding on one of my old Cam Jansen mysteries.
Since it's written for kids less than half my age, I finished it in just a few minutes. Just like the other eighty times I'd read it, I enjoyed the story, and it helped clear the last half hour out of my system. I knew I'd need to try to go back to sleep at some point. After checking the window one last time and seeing nothing unusual, I flipped off the light and crawled back underneath the covers.
I was falling asleep and half-dreaming about the nutritional labels on various breakfast cereals--don't ask--when I experienced one of those body spasms as though I were falling. Hypnagogic jerk. I looked it up online a few months ago.
Tap-tap!
I jumped at the noise, but this time I didn't feel the same dread pressing down on me. Now it was a puzzle. The mystery book had put me in the right frame of mind. I could figure this out. On a stormy night, what can tap on a third floor window? Okay, Mom, I'll consider it: a bird? What's large enough to be mistaken for a person's head? A raccoon? They could climb well, right? I had in my closet a green plastic box that contained a whole stack of Wildlife Treasury cards with information on animals. I tried to remember what the raccoon card said. If only I had a photographic memory like Cam.
I peeked at the blackness outside the window and tried to picture various animals clinging to the sill. A waterlogged raccoon. That wasn't so scary. Now, to prove it. I sat up slowly and slid the blanket from my legs. I eased one foot out to the floor, then the other. I shifted my weight off the bed and inched closer to the light.
A brilliant flash of lightning outside flooded the room with light, and in the glow I could see it clearly: a face. A girl's face, pressed up against the glass. Her eyes were wide and wild, and she was looking at me. My heart pumped ice through my veins, and I felt lightheaded. My vision became unfocused, and a strange haze crept into the edges of it, like when I stood up too fast. I was about to black out. I crouched to lessen the impact.
The deep rumble of thunder that followed seconds after the flare shook me from my momentary lapse. I had gone straight backward and bumped the wall. From here I could see the window. I tried to pick shapes out of the blackness on the other side of the glass. My hand brushed something hard on the carpet, and I unconsciously palmed it. A pen cap. Without any brainwave activity whatsoever I hurled it in the direction of the window and heard it ping off of the pane.
Tap-tap-tap-tap! Urgently, this time.
There was a girl outside my window. In the dead of night, in a thunderstorm, three floors up on a house on a dead-end road in a dead-end town, a road that winded two miles into the woods.
I reached above my head and pushed up the light switch.
I half expected to see an empty window, same as before. Instead, I saw her. For a split second I saw her--wild eyes, strikingly white skin, lips that seemed too large for her narrow pockets of her cheeks, tangled hair plastered to her face and neck by the rain. She winced at the light and dropped out of sight. Oh, god, she'd let go of the sill!
I bolted again, this time to the window. Maybe some day I'll have an explanation for that one. Had she been hurt in the fall? What was down there? The patio. Plastic chairs. Some empty flower pots. Nothing landing-friendly. At first I saw nothing. Then clouds parted and I spotted her naked form flitting across the yard toward the treeline. Then she was gone.
~*~
When you're a teenager, there are certain things you hide from your parents. The universal descrambler you built so you could watch the fuzzy premium channels. The C-minus you got freshman year in phys ed for hiding in the locker room during dodgeball. The lists of extrapolated credit card numbers you've used to create innumerable fake accounts with all of your local ISPs. For example.
The fact that a feral girl visits your attic bedroom window in the dead of night.
I probably should have told them. It would have been the logical, intelligent thing to do. They're my parents. On the other hand, they're my parents. They'd think I was letting my imagination run wild. They'd say I was spending too many hours in online fantasy worlds. They'd say I was watching too many scary movies. What they wouldn't do is listen to me. They never listened.
I threw myself into my school day with as much enthusiasm as I could muster and tried not to think of the the prior night's events. That evening at dinner neither of my parents spoke of them. They didn't bring up their daughter having nightmares, or worse still being certifiably crazy. They spent a few minutes on work, asked about school, reminded me of mom's upcoming travel plans, and then read questions from Trivial Pursuit cards. Normally I enjoyed this; today, I simply wanted the meal to be over.
I finished my homework and went to bed early. And waited. I experienced a nervous excitement I hadn't felt since I realized the Tooth Fairy didn't exist. That's when I realized the real reason I didn't want to tell my parents. I had a secret. I had a mystery. Something interesting was happening in my life that I didn't fully understand, and I didn't want to share it with the grown-ups. Maybe there was a strange, wild, and quite possibly dangerous girl-creature living in the woods near my house, but darn it she was my girl-creature!
This time, I was prepared. I had a flashlight tucked under my pillow, the heavy foot-long Maglite my father kept on a shelf next to the stairs that led to the basement. I figured a solid swing of the weapon could be lethal, if it came to that. I had also printed out a series of pictures I thought might aid in communication--several types of local fauna, the sun and moon, a campfire, a river, and a few of people engaging in activities like eating, sleeping, and running.
All I had to do now was wait. The first hour was the hardest. My ears perked up at every nighttime sound and passed each to my brain, which eagerly translated them into tapping on glass and scraping on treated hardwood siding. I must have gone to check the window a dozen times in that first hour, each time shining the impressive beam of light in arcs across the lawn before shuffling back to bed.
After that, the hours kind of ran together as I grew numb to waiting. Around two in the morning the doubt began to sink in. Had it been real? Had my parents not brought it up at dinner because they had no memory of it--because it hadn't really happened? Had it been nothing but a startlingly vivid dream?
No, I had proof. My big toe was still sore from when I'd stubbed it turning the corner into the hallway; a section of the nail had bent, and I'd had to cut it shorter than usual and bandage it to prevent it from catching on my sock. And if that had happened, the rest of it must have as well.
It didn't seem like I was going to get a repeat performance. And that's my luck--an inexplicable event happens to me one night, there are no witnesses, I scare a wild girl-thing away by stupidly turning on a light, and never see her again. I take the secret to the grave because I know nobody would ever believe the story. It bothers me for my remaining days. Well, crap. The flashlight was getting uncomfortable, so I slid it from beneath the pillow and set it on the ground beside my bed. I flipped my pillow to the cooler side, pulled the covers up, and waited for sleep. It was just after three.
Sounds work themselves into your dreams in unusual ways. In my dream, I was riding in the back of a moving van. It was fully furnished--a pair of sofas, a throw rug, a coffee table with a huge book of waterfall phoptography that kept sliding toward the edge whenever the truck hit a bump. It was raining, and the drops hitting the metal roof were causing a racket. A leak in one of the corners was letting water through. It dribbled along the seam of wall and ceiling until it collided with a spot of caked dirt, then it dripped to the floor in a rhythmic pip, pip, pip. I wondered where we might be moving to. It was that thought which made me realize I was dreaming.
Moments later my conscious mind zoomed back to my bedroom, and I tensed when the sound didn't fade. A fingernail tapping at my window.
Another thought crept into my head. No--not crept, exactly. Simply appeared, as if my train of thought suddenly morphed into some other, wildly different vehicle. A hang glider. A powerboat. It didn't feel entirely mine. I imagined myself lifting the covers and standing. I walked over to the window and undid the latch. She was there, right on the other side of the glass, watching me. Her hands pressed against the pane as I slid it up ....
A sharp pain in my foot pulled me back to reality. That damned pen cap had stuck me right in the heel! It really hurt. It occured to me that I was standing in the middle of my room, now. What the hell? Had I made a conscious decision to get up and approach the window? God, was I really about to open it? Jesus, I needed to pay attention. I needed to wake up.
She was there. The night wasn't as dark and stormy as the last, and enough moonlight seeped through the clouds to highlight the lines of her face. I wish I could see her eyes. Somehow I knew they'd be staring, unblinking, directly at me. She was scared. How did I know that? She was scared and wanted to come in. My room would be a safe haven. I just needed to rotate the latch and lift. It was easy. I felt the cool metal on my fingertips. I jerked my hand away. "Stop it!" I hissed at the window--at her. I'd left the flashlight. Stupid.
My mental landscape shifted, and I felt loss. Sorrow. Guilt. Just for a moment, then I was released. My thoughts were once again my own. I scrambled back toward my bed and grabbed the light--the sane thing to do. I wielded the beam of light like a weapon, cutting across the panel of glass with it. She winced and fell. When I neared the window I could just see a sliver of her body, inexplicably attached to wall below the sill.
In my head I heard my own voice snapping, "Stop it!" but muted by the glass. A fresh wave of shame rolled in behind the thought. I blinked and shook my head, wanting to erase the feelings. Her feelings, not mine. How could she be doing that? It was impossible. Then again, impossible was becoming the standard. She was apologizing to me, or at least offering something close enough to be mistaken for an apology. I scrutinized what little of her I could see. The curve of her back--she had a bony spine--which rose and fell with each short breath she took. Well, at least she was breathing. The way things were going, this actually reassured me.
I hesitantly lowered the torch, leaning it up against the wall so that the majority of its light was absorbed, but enough was reflected for me to see clearly. Tap-tap on the window--me this time. She rose into view like it was effortless for her to climb three stories. Her eyes were were dark and peering at me through squinting lids. One of her hands reached for mine, and I unconsciously pulled my fingertip away from the glass an inch, on the off chance that she could further defy physics and that the material was not in fact a barrier for her.
She scooted up further and clacked her nail where the window's latch was positioned, unashamedly baring herself to me in the process--her skin was dirty and covered with lacerations of varying lengths. Some looked very old, long-healed scars. She touched the glass again and brought her face to it. She looked as frightened as I felt--maybe even more so, were that possible. She wanted me to ler her in, and this time she was asking. Pleading.
I watch a lot of television--too much, perhaps--and every time I came across one of those extreme sports competitions, I would wonder what the heck the athletes were thinking. Why would they risk life and limb to zoom down a mountain on a board, or leap out of an aircraft, or dive off of a cliff? Certainly the thrill alone couldn't justify the potential outcome? Maybe now, as I undid the lock on my bedroom window, I understood a little better. Maybe a safe, calculated existence without danger or risk-taking was overwhelmingly dull. Maybe they were tired of following all the rules, living in the box, looking out the window.
I shoved up on the window and invited the Outside in.
I took the flashlight with me and back up a few paces, making sure to keep it angled away from her. At first she stuck only her head through. She sniffed the air and darted her gaze anxiously around the room, ultimately coming back to rest on me. I felt her in my mind, again. A gentle nudge at the side of my own thoughts--she was offering me comfort. Warmth. My body responded to it; at once I felt flushed, like I was wearing too many layers.
That brought my attention back to her. I could see her clearly for the first time when she crawled through and crouched just inside the window. She certainly looked human--unkempt and malnourished, but human nonetheless. I couldn't count her injuries. Cuts and scrapes and bruises riddled her skin. Her nails were long, jagged and dirt-encrusted. She had grungy, tangled hair that might have been ash blonde in a former life, but which now gave earth tones a new meaning. Her eyes were maybe blue--it was hard to tell in the light--and clearly anxious. They fidgeted, never staying still for long, yet never straying from me for more than a few seconds.
So now my nighttime visitor was in my room, and I was certain I wasn't dreaming--a complete psychotic breakdown was still on the menu, however--and I realized I didn't know exactly what do to. "H-hi," I said. It was a start.
She tensed at my voice, shifted her weight to a more defensive posture, and her eyes locked onto mine.
"I'm, uh - " I pointed at myself with my free hand " - I'm Willow." She looked confused, so I tried again. Point. "Willow."
I heard my voice echoed back at me, although her lips didn't move. "Willow." It was different from how I'd said it. Rounder, somehow--the first 'i' almost lost in a rush of breath. I liked it a lot. Much better than how I'd said it.
And then she loaned me another thought that almost brought me to my knees. She was lying on her side in the woods, her breathing shallow and irregular. I could see her pulse under the skin stretched too tightly across her neck. It was slow. She was an animal who had eaten something bad, something poisonous, and crawled off to die alone. I knew that's what was happening. She was dying. And she was scared.
I took a step toward her and she shied away, so I lowered myself to my knees so that we were at the same level. I left the flashlight behind and crawled forward, inch by inch until we were almost touching. And then I did the only thing I could think of. I reached out to touch her. I wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to wrap her in the same warmth I'd seen in her own thoughts. Her eyes were fixed on my hand. Closer, closer .... I brushed her skin for the briefest moment, and felt a tiny static snap between our bodies. Then she bolted, and I was flooded with fright and panic. And then she was gone, out the window in a blur of movement, and I was alone in my bedroom once more.
Hope you liked it!
Last edited by jasmydae on Thu Oct 01, 2009 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
|
Login
FAQ
Search
and what a move she did 
