The sun was just beginning to set as Kate got back to the house after work. As she came up the walkway with her arms full of bags, she heard the phone begin to ring inside. She shifted her load, trying to maneuver her keys into a free hand to unlock the door, and managed to drop her can of Diet Coke onto the pavement, spraying her legs with soda in the process. Cursing, she fumbled with the keys, and managed to get the door open just as the ringing stopped.
She dropped the bags onto the kitchen table, sighed, and grabbed a paper towel from the counter to mop the Diet Coke off her legs. It had been a very long day of work and classes, and she was ready to relax for a while. It was a Friday night, and by some sheer stroke of luck, all six of her roommates were out of town or gone for the night. She would have the house completely to herself for the first time in nearly a year, and the peace and quiet would be welcome after a day of listening to college students bitch about the price of their books. \"As if I personally set the prices,\" she muttered darkly. \"I have to pay for the same damn books.\"
The setting sun was beginning to throw long shadows across the house, and Kate flipped on the light as she started to put away the groceries. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she said a silent prayer for a storm-- it would be a welcome relief from the heat of the last week. The phone rang again; not wanting to spend the evening taking messages for absent roomies, Kate debated for a moment, and then picked it up.
\"Hi, sweetie!\"
\"Oh, hi, Mom. What’s up?\"
\"Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your evening,\" said her mother. \"I just wanted to make sure you were still coming up for your sister’s birthday on Sunday. You know how much she wants you to be there.\"
\"Yes, I know,\" Kate replied. \"I’m kind of tired tonight, so I’m staying home, but I’ll be up tomorrow afternoon and I’ll stay over the rest of the weekend. I wanted to see everyone, too.\"
As they chatted, Kate put away the rest of her food. Finally, impatient to get on to the important business of doing nothing, she wrapped up the conversation by promising to be in by dinner on Saturday, and hung up the phone. She grabbed her stack of movies and magazines, and headed into the living room. This was one of her favorite ways to unwind-- cheesy horror movies, trashy tabloids, and some microwave popcorn washed down with Diet Coke. She popped Piranha into the VCR, and went back into the kitchen to make the popcorn while the previews played.
As the popcorn popped, Kate gazed out the kitchen window into the deepening gloom of the evening and the approaching storm. For a cheap college place, the house had a nice location. It was the lone building nestled at the back of a narrow dead-end valley, cutting between two streets of a hilly river town. The house was set far below the other homes on their street; Kate had always supposed it had originally been a carriage house or something like that. To get to their place from the street, they had to use a steep staircase that came down the hill from the main house, where even the basement was set above the level of their roof. Behind and beside their house, the hills shot up sharply to the next level of streets, which weren’t even visible from below, and the untamed trees and scrub brush gave the impression of living in a dense forest. Other than a small patch of lawn next to the kitchen, and a paved area for cars reached by a long driveway from the mouth of the valley, the house was totally enclosed by greenery and steep slopes. It was a quiet and peaceful place to live, Kate thought; best of all, the police couldn’t seem to find it when someone complained about their keg parties.
She smiled as she remembered the stories the previous renters told them about it being haunted. Curious, Kate and her roommate Jo had done a little research at the local historical society, and had discovered that many years ago the main building used to be a funeral home, with their house being used as the morgue. This little fact unnerved them so much that they briefly considered not renting the place, but in the end decided they could deal with a few ghosties if necessary.
Here we are, she thought, nearly a year later, and no one has had any experiences with the other side, even when we got drunk on Halloween and brought out the Ouija board. I’m glad we didn’t get scared and run away from this place like a bunch of ninnies! Admittedly, it could be a little spooky at night, but it was a great house. The soft beep of the microwave brought her back to earth, and as she pulled the bag of popcorn out, she heard the first raindrops hit the windows. She poured the popcorn into a bowl, added some salt, and grabbed a Diet Coke on her way back to the living room. She sat down on the couch and opened People as the movie started.
As the evening wore on, Piranha gave way to The Legend of Hell House, and People was swapped for Star. The storm picked up strength, with intermittent flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. Finally, Kate began to yawn, and decided to watch the last movie upstairs in her room. She got up and switched off the VCR, and headed up with The Fog, In Touch Weekly, and one last Diet Coke, turning off lights and locking the doors as she went.
She got to her room and closed the door. After a moment’s hesitation, she locked it as well, smiling while she did it. She liked to consider herself immune to being scared, but that locked door would help her sleep a little more soundly, especially if the power went out from the storm and she found herself in the dark.
Although it was still raining pretty hard, she cracked her window a few inches; the house was old, and the fresh air always felt good. She got into her pajamas and cued up the last movie on her small TV, flopping on her bed with the magazine and soda. It must have been around the time that Mrs. Kobritz was biting the dust that she first felt the odd sensation--
Someone is watching me.
She looked up and frowned. Now where had that come from? Maybe the movies and the storm were getting to her more than she thought. She raised the blind on her window, cupped her hands to the glass, and peered out into the yard below. It would be just like some drunken pervert to get lost on his way home from the bars and decide to start peeking in windows, although admittedly her second-story window was a challenge for peeping Toms. The next flash of lightning showed her that the yard was empty, as she expected. Chuckling at herself, she lowered the blind and settled back down. But that feeling persisted as the minutes ticked by and Jamie Lee Curtis screamed--
Someone is watching me.
All right, she thought, I’ve had enough of this. I am going to shut off the movies for tonight, and try to stop shivering like a little girl. She turned off the TV, and then the light. She closed the window but raised the blind, and looked outside again. Maybe without the light shining behind her, she would see something she hadn’t before. The rain was now pouring down, and the wind was whipping it around in sheets; surely no one would be out in this, she thought. Watching for a couple of minutes, her eyes occasionally detected movement that seemed unrelated to the storm, movement that seemed almost stealthy, but she immediately dismissed this as her imagination. She wanted to laugh; now the movies had her practically seeing the bogeyman in the yard! In truth, she could see no one outside as the violent strobe flashes of lightning illuminated the small patch of grass below. But the feeling of being watched was now stronger than ever, giving her goose bumps all over her arms, and after a few minutes it became too strong to tolerate. She felt exposed, standing there in the window for all to see. Someone could be hiding in the trees and bushes covering the hillside, observing her every move.
Kate backed away from the window, heart beating furiously, and sat down on her bed. She tried not to panic, to tell herself she was just being silly and childish, and there couldn’t be anyone hiding outside, certainly not anyone to be afraid of. She didn’t want to call any of her friends at 1:30 AM and beg them to come out in a storm just because she had scared herself. How embarrassed would she be in the morning? Besides, she had no phone upstairs, and she was reluctant to unlock her bedroom door and brave the trek downstairs in the dark. She wanted very badly to turn a light on, but if some weirdo was out there, she didn’t want to advertise her location in the house. And there was someone out there, she was sure of it, even if she couldn’t see him-- she could feel him watching! The hair on the back of her neck was standing up from the intensity of the unseen observer’s gaze. Miserably, she crawled under the covers, pulling them over her head, and shook with helpless terror as the fierce storm raged on. The rain beat a furious pattern on the roof; if someone did break into the house, Kate doubted she would even hear him. But she had remembered to lock her bedroom door, and she had closed her window....
The blind! The blind was still up! He could see in! She leaped out of bed, ran over to the window--
--and screamed in horror at the thing on the other side of the glass. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tear her eyes away from that face....
\"Hey! I’m home!\" called Jo as she came into the house in the early morning sunshine. It looked like she had missed one hell of a storm; there were leaves and branches down all over the yard and driveway. She looked into the living room and smiled at the empty popcorn bowl on a stack of tabloids. It must have been another wild Friday night for her roommate Kate. But the house was quiet and still, with no signs of life.
\"Are you sleeping one off, bitch?\" she hollered up the stairs. \"We’re supposed to meet Paul for breakfast, remember? Get up and get dressed!\" When no one answered, she went up the stairs, and frowned at Kate’s closed door. She knocked, and called Kate again. When she again got no answer, she tried the door, and her frown deepened as she found it locked.
\"Kate! Answer me! Seriously, this isn’t funny!\"
Jo retrieved the extra key to Kate’s door from her own room. She unlocked and opened the door-- and stared in confusion at the empty room: the bedding in disarray, the spilled Diet Coke mingling with a dark pool on the carpet, and the sopping curtains, spattered with red, flapping in the breeze coming through the broken window.