Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“That was quick,” Clark said. “Did you really brush your teeth?”

Mary nodded seriously.

“Really?” he repeated.

She folded her arms tightly and nodded again, her whole body quivering like gelatin.

“Okay,” he said.

Clark turned off the overhead light but left the lamp lit by her bed. Mary liked the room bright throughout the night. He checked her windows and locked them, because otherwise, Mary had been known to climb outside and run through the backyards of the neighborhood. She didn’t sleep well. She might close her eyes for an hour, and then she would get up, and Clark would hear her bouncing an inflated ball against the bedroom wall. If he wasn’t too tired himself, he would get up and play with her, until finally she grew drowsy again. Sometimes she simply curled up on the floor, and he would pull the blankets off the bed and cover her.

He tucked her into bed. Her eyes were bright. “Good night, Mary.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

The ache in his stomach at the thought of her leaving in the morning was so great that he couldn’t say anything more. He kissed her forehead, and as he closed the door, he saw her waving her hands at the ceiling in bed, as if she could see the stars and conduct them like an orchestra.

Clark returned to the sofa and finished his beer and opened another one. He thought about seeing Donna in the morning when she came to collect Mary. Donna lived across the bridge in Superior and worked as a legal secretary. Clark was in Gary, living in the white concrete block house that had once belonged to his parents. For five years, he had shared Mary with Donna from a distance, and for five years, he had hated the arrangement so much that it felt like a disease inside him.

It wasn’t Donna’s fault. The bitterness between them had long ago died into loneliness. They had married young and tried to make a go of it, but the pressure of raising Mary together had destroyed them. They each loved their daughter, but Mary demanded so much that they had run out of energy to love each other. Donna thought they should try again. She had made noises about making a fresh start. Two weeks earlier, when she had come to his house to drop Mary off, she had stayed there all evening, the three of them together like in the old days. After Mary went to bed, they had drunk wine, and laughed, and wound up sleeping together. They were kids again, the way it was before Mary, before the divorce. The sex felt warm and familiar. But when he awoke, he was alone. Donna couldn’t face him. That told him all he needed to know.

He knew he should go to bed, but he didn’t get up from the sofa. He watched television until his eyes began to blink shut and his head fell forward on his chest. He slept heavily, as if he had been drugged by exhaustion and alcohol, and had no sense of time passing.

Clark woke up to Mary screaming.

A terrible, wailing, nightmare scream.

He was instantly awake, but he was disoriented, unsure what was real. At the end of the hall, in shadows, Mary’s door flew open and banged against the wall. His daughter was silhouetted against the pale light in her room.

“Him him him him him!” she shouted.

Clark dove over the back edge of the sofa and pushed himself off his knees, shaking his head to drive the sleep from his brain. He spread his arms wide. Mary bolted for him and grabbed his body so hard he nearly spilled over onto the carpet. Her skin was wet with sweat and fear. Her blue eyes bulged, and her nose flared as she sucked air into her lungs. Clark felt her fingernails digging like knives into his back. She held him with such fierce strength he could hardly breathe.

“Mary, what is it? What’s wrong, baby?”

“Him him him him him him him him!”

“Oh, Mary, it’s okay, it’s okay, there’s no one there.”

“NO NO NO NO NO.”

Clark stroked her hair and sang to her under his breath. She trembled like a bird. This had happened the previous weekend, too. She had had a bad dream and imagined there was someone in her room and refused to go back in there for the rest of the night. Mary didn’t know what was real and what was not. When she imagined something, it was the same as if it were really there.

“Shhh,” he murmured over and over.

She cried into his shoulder. He grabbed a fleece blanket from the sofa and wrapped it around her skin, covering her. Her tears were damp on his neck.

“Come on, I’ll show you it’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll show you that no one’s there.”

“No, Daddy, no, him him him him.”

“Oh, I know, I know, but it was just a dream, honey, that’s all it was.”

Mary shook her head while it was buried against his chest, and then she looked up with a panicked face, put her mouth against his ear, and whispered so clearly it made him shiver: “Window.”

Clark felt chilled.

His fists clenched, and adrenaline made him alert. Clark’s eyes streaked to the living room windows, which he had left open. They looked out on dark squares of night. The curtains breathed with the wind. He smelled pine and rain. He didn’t understand what had happened, but Mary wouldn’t use a word like that unless it meant something important.

Clark lifted Mary off her feet. She was heavy, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and let herself be carried to the sofa. He laid her down among the cushions and kissed her and looked deeply into her eyes, trying to understand her, trying to make her communicate with him. He always cherished the idea that there was a place somewhere in both of their minds where they could come together and erase the canyon that her disability put between them. He just wished he could find it.

“I’m going to close the windows now, Mary. I’ll still be in the room.”

She pulled the blanket over her head. He went to the four windows that looked out on the front yard and slammed them shut and locked them. He saw spatters of rain on the glass. He went back and slowly peeled the fleece down from half of his daughter’s face.

“Did you dream that someone was in your room, honey?”

She said again: “Window.”

“Did you see something outside?”

“Him him him him him.” She pulled the blanket up again, hiding.

“You stay right here, honey. Daddy will take a look.”

Clark returned down the dark hallway to Mary’s room. It was past midnight. He turned off the lamp by her bed, and with the room black, he went to the window and looked out at the back lawn and the woods a few feet away. He didn’t see anything. He stayed there for several minutes, watching, but nothing moved outside.

When he returned to the living room, he found that Mary was asleep again, with her blond hair messily sticking out of the blanket. He could see half her face, which looked peaceful and angelic. His own heart was racing, and he knew he would be up into the early hours. He sat down beside her, caressed her cheek with one calloused finger, and was rewarded with a sigh. She made little noises of happiness.

Clark eased himself off the sofa again without disturbing her. He was nervous, and he wasn’t sure why. Children had bad dreams, and that was that. Even so, Mary rarely used such a specific word. Window.

He retrieved a heavy flashlight from the kitchen and went to the front door and let himself outside. He locked the door behind him. When he stepped down off the porch, drizzle spit on his face. The leaves murmured with the night breeze. He switched on the yellow beam and waved it around the yard, seeing everything that should be there and nothing else-the weeping willow, the swing tied to the branch, the three old cars he scavenged for parts, the long grass that needed to be mowed. He stepped silently and carefully toward the rear of the house. He held the flashlight in a tight grip and led the way around the corner with the light.