1:12 am

Startled awake fast by a rapid pounding on my front door, again. I’d dozed off on the couch under the front window around midnight and I awoke groggy, unsure at first of where I was, what time it was, and what brought me from sleep. Outside the window the rain poured down in torrents, hail coming down in little pebbles here and there along the walk.

At first I thought the pounding was inside, coming in fact, from my bedroom door, as if something desperately wanted out but could not. The nightmare crawled back to mind as I made the mental switch to my front door, where the knocking continued, as if a real emergency. Heart racing, I ran for the door. Who could be hurt? Who could need my help so badly at this hour of the morning? Was someone -

My stream of thought and the pounding both stopped the moment I twisted the deadbolt and yanked open the door.

There was no one standing in the narrow opening of the covered apartment patio. One other apartment door rested closed on the first floor, another two above, at the top of the rickety stairs leading to the doors. I slipped out the door and along the concrete, first checking along the front of the complexes, and then out to the back, where the cars sprayed past on the road. Nothing. Empty.

My heartbeat slowed, but to an irregular, nervous rhythm. Sure, any prankster or drunk college student could have pulled the same fast one on me. Maybe thinking twice would be even funnier, slipping away into the downpour around some back fence or bush.

But it was the abruptness. Not two seconds after the pounding ceased did I have that door open. It would have been timed to a ‘t,’ and the perp would have had to be fast as the lighting that flickered in the west.

I stood at the edge of the covered opening, leaning on the corner of my building, just out of the rain that fell, the mist blowing across my flushed face and neck, feeling good. I stood there for a while. The parking lot glistening, a spray of rain rising off the roofs of the cars like a protective bubble, gliding to the ground in the downpour. Sometimes the rain came hard, pounding and coming down, popping off the rooftops, at other time quieting to little more than a drizzle before quitting completely.

Eventually I moved back inside, making sure to deadbolt the door, trembling as I did so in part because of the cool rain. If just a part. Locking the door seemed to suggest that I’d only have to unlock it again when the pounding came again. It seemed to suggest that I was being locked inside more so than locking the outside out. It felt as if in standing on the porch, running about in search of the culprit, something had slipped through the open door, unseen, now locked inside with me.

The feeling took hold on my chest, gripping tight even as I curled beneath the fleece blanket on the couch again, searching for that comfortable spot that did such wonders nearly two hours ago. But I couldn’t shake it. The feeling from days ago, that the shadows between me and the kitchen, between me and my bedroom, that the deepest were hiding something. Maybe not my monster this time, nor the Stranger, whether still around at all. This time felt like something.

I felt watched.

Turning to the window, I tucked the blanket under my chin and stared outside, studying the way the light fell on the glistening cars, the monochrome orange that layered the parking lot and complex fronts, reaching even as far as the low hanging cloud bank that had moved in above, now breaking up slowly, revealing the darker hints of purple and night above the soft layer. The mist blew in against my face on a cool breeze. I forced my eyes closed, my head still propped on the back of the couch, determined not to pay heed to whatever may be behind me, whatever might have stepped closer while I wasn’t looking.

Better to look outside. Better to be lost in the outside world, feeling a part, reaching, a fingertip from grasping, than to turn and stare into the abyss, worried about what may be staring back. It doesn’t matter how small the monster that hides in the dark, it’s enough to hide, to be anywhere in the darkness. To be anywhere is to be everywhere at once, a furtive gaze, searching for a hint or a suggestion, any indicator that something just may be amiss, that if I were to pinpoint it, just locate the -

No.

This is why I stare out the window; to not look behind me, to not go searching for a presence in the dark that isn’t there, to not make eye contact with the monster.