The Watcher

This is my favorite time of day. The sun has just slipped over the horizon, sending tendrils of golden light over the breaking day. The town is asleep below me as I step out onto my front porch with my first cup of coffee.

I run through my to-do list for the day. Watch. That’s it. Watch over all of the sleepers below me. Maybe slip in a load of laundry in the afternoon.

This is the strangest job I’ve ever had, possibly the strangest job anyone’s ever had. Sometimes strange is what you have to accept when you need to disappear. Lucky for me, no one here asked why I wanted this life in a sort of ghost town.

I linger, enjoying the peace and coffee until the last sip is gone before getting dressed and heading out for the day.

As always, the streets are empty. Silent. I am the only person walking, the only person awake. Not even a dog barks to break the peace. They don’t care for dogs. Something about their scent probably irritates their noses. Whose scent and whose nose? Honestly, likely both.

Today as I walk a twisting path through the streets, I read the names painted on the sides of mailboxes. Weird that they have mailboxes. Certainly no one delivers mail house to house here. I would have seen a mailman, been forced to chase them down and follow them until they left town. It would have my job to make sure they didn’t see something they shouldn’t see, touch something they shouldn’t touch.

The name Parker in black on a bright red metal box jumps at me. Parker. I knew a Parker. A Parker is why I’m here. I stop on the sidewalk and look up the driveway to the small house tucked between two towering pine trees. I can’t help but be curious about what or who waits inside the house.

I turn to scan the street, look as far as I can toward the horizon to make sure no one is afoot, other than me. Still alone, I tap the wooden post twice with my palm before opening the latch and swinging the gate open.

I climb the three wide white steps of the porch then freeze at the door. I can’t knock, can’t ring the bell. Anyone inside is sound asleep, literally unwakeable.

Technically, going inside would be part of my job of watching. It would just be a closer point of view than the job as it was described to me. It would be me going above and beyond, not breaking the rules. I almost convince myself this is the truth.

I decide to let the door decide for me. If it’s unlocked, that is permission for me to go in. If not, I’ll turn around and walk away.

The knob turns easily under my hand, the door slipping free of the frame and drifting silently away from me.

Inside, the house is cool and silent, the only noise the soft whir of a fan turning in a distant room. I follow the sound down the hall, peeking through cased openings into a kitchen, a fantastically formal sitting room, a dining room with a fancy table covered in messy stacks of papers, a bathroom with a massive claw foot tub.

Past all of these, two doors sit open on either side of the hall. Probably both bedrooms. I stop in the hall, unsure I’m ready to see anything or anyone that might be inside.

I’m not sure what I expected. Probably what everyone does. A coffin, maybe piles of night-dark soil from a foreign country, certainly black-out curtains on the windows.

I force myself to step forward, look to the left. It’s a very normal bedroom. A full size bed with a quilt spread evenly across the top, two wooden bedside tables, with white shaded lamps. A three drawer wooden dresser. No one is in the room.

I take a deep breath and turn, move to the door directly across the hall. This door is pushed so that it is only half open, forcing me to step close to see inside.

Another painfully normal bedroom, only larger. This one has a king size bed pressed up against the far wall, between two tall windows. Sheer drapes hang over the glass, filtering the light, but not darkening the room. A ceiling fan turns on the ceiling, moving the air gently around and past me.

This room is not empty. Soft sighs of breath reach me, a different pitch, a different rhythm, than the turning blades.

I step closer so that I can see more clearly in the softened light. A person lies on the bed, curved into a comma on their side, no covers over them. Dark hair spills behind them on the pillow. From this side, I see mostly their back, with no clear view of their face, so I move into the room, inching around to the far side of the bed.

The face that finally appears is so familiar. A high brow with a subtle widow’s peak. Strong dark brows etched above a thin nose with a slight flare of flesh at the tip.

It’s him. But it can’t be him. He is really, most sincerely, dead. Not the undead that fills this town.

I stare for a long moment, dissecting the features, watching the rise and fall of his chest to confirm that he does indeed breathe. How can he be here? I came here to get away from the consequences of him being dead.

My intense stare is rewarded with a faint line bisecting his left brow. A scar, bone white against the black hairs. The Parker I knew did not have a scar. Scars can’t develop in the undead. This scar has existed for longer than I knew a Parker.

Twins. This has to be a twin of the Parker I knew.

Jonathan Parker.

I whisper the name into the quiet house. The house does not answer. The body on the bed does not flinch or shift. I’m mostly sure this body is not Jonathan.

I turn and leave before I do something stupid like reach out and gently shake the shoulder of the sleeping man. I want to know for sure who he is, know for sure that he is not the Parker I left for dead.

With the way this town works, I will likely never know.

I retrace my steps, closing the front door behind me, making sure the latch of the gate catches. Security is my job, after all.

The rest of the day is uneventful, the streets empty as always. No more mailboxes catch my attention, etched with names from my past. When the sun threatens to tip over the horizon and send the day into darkness, I head for home.

At this time of day, I don’t linger on my porch, watching the last rays of sunlight spill over the town. I move quickly inside, bolting the door behind me. I check the garland draped over the door frame. Thirteen heads of garlic threaded on fishing line that has been bathed in holy water.

I move through the house, checking each window and the back door, ensuring that each garland is intact. As I go, I close the blinds, pull the curtains tight over the window, clarifying the division between my safe space and the town below me.

I eat dinner with the radio for company, then read for a bit. I don’t look out the window. I don’t want to know what the sleepers do at night, don’t want to know where they might go.

When I’m tired, I check my neck. The simple silver cross still rests against my breastbone. In my room, my hand slides under my pillow to find the slim spike of wood.

I leave the bathroom light on. I have no interest in waking to the darkness. Not here.

I drift to sleep, Jonathan’s beautifully dangerous smile the last thing I see before I am gone for the night.

In my dreams I am back in the bar, lights pulsing around me in time with the beat of the music pounding through my flesh. My eyes lock on the dark boy in the corner, the sight of him enough to draw me in his direction. The music grows, the pounding so intense that it force me back to reality.

The pounding follows me out of the dream and into the dim room. I roll over, seeking the source of the sound.

The window. The pounding is the flat slap of a palm on glass, muffled by blinds and curtains. My heart picks up the beat, the pace rising to match the insistent hand outside.

I want to ignore it, roll over and go back to sleep. But they have never come for me before. If they are here now, I doubt they will give up and go away.

I slide back the covers and move slowly to the window, push back the curtain, tip a single wooden slat with my finger.

My boss stands outside. Alone. I catch Alex mid-slap, the palm of his hand pressed flat against the glass. The tiny bit of light that reaches here from the bathroom is enough to catch his eye, make the deep brown glow rust-red.

He pulls his hand back from the glass and waves it up once, the gesture sharp and clear. It is a clear command.

I look up, confirm the garland is still draped over the window. Reach up, check the cross at my neck, before I inch the pane up a slim two inches.

“We have a problem.” His voice is smooth, deep, warm silk rolling over my skin. Exactly like it was over the video call when I “interviewed” for this job.

“What’s the problem?”

“I need to show you.”

I narrow my eyes. “How?”

“You’ll have to come into town with me.”

I shake my head, a crisp and firm no.

“This is your responsibility,” he says. “You don’t have a choice.”

I take a deep breath and slide the window shut, pull on another necklace, a second cross to protect me from the town, a hoodie to protect me from the chill of the night air.

At the front door, I grab a spike, slip into my pocket before I turn the bolts and open the front door.

Alex waits at the foot of the stairs. “You’ll have to leave the spike. You may keep the crosses.”

I glare at him, then carefully set the spike on the porch rail before stepping down the stairs. He backs away as I do, keeping a careful buffer between us, as if I might be infectious. I resist the urge to tell him he’s the one who’s infectious.

He turns and begins the walk back into town. I follow.

It’s not unlike my walk earlier today. The streets are empty, quiet. Is it always like this or did Alex tell everyone to stay inside and out of sight so that I would be comfortable walking at night? The only difference is the sky is dark, interrupted by dim light filtering out from household windows.

Without knowing, Alex follows my previous path, twisting through town in exactly my path from the morning. He stops at the same red mailbox that stopped me, as if it is a stop sign, then opens the gate and steps through.

Why are we at Parker’s house? I wipe my palms against my sweat pants, and wish I could do the same with the sweat that is beading under my arms. Can Alex smell my nerves?

I set my shoulders and follow through the gate, through the same front door, down the same hall, to the same bedroom. The house is almost as silent as it was earlier, broken only by the additional breath from Alex.

Alex stops just before the bedroom doorway and gestures me through. It feels like stepping into a trap. I expect the door to slam behind me, a monster to rise from the bed in front of me. The Parker still sleeps, only no longer curved into a comma. He is stretched out flat on his back, his hands turned palm up at his sides. His chest continues to rise and fall, still out of sink with the swish of the fan over our heads. That subtle movement, and the lack of dark blood on his chest, is the only difference between this Parker and the one I left behind.

“He will not wake.”

I had forgotten about the monster at my back. I turn to look at Alex. I lift my brows, holding my shoulders down from the shrug that wants to ask how this is my problem.

What should I say here? Should I say that I was here this morning and that this Parker seemed to be sleeping normally? Should I ask what is wrong with him? Should I try to push past Alex and flee this job, this town, this relatively safe space that I have found to escape my past?

Unable to speak, I stare at Alex, waiting for him to decide what comes next.

“This happens. Occasionally. We can be lost to sleep, and a maiden important to our past or our future is nearby. We remain in sleep.”

My mouth opens, almost blurting an apology for entering this house.

“Apparently you are important to Nathan. And being in town is close enough.”

Oh. Off the hook, not being forced to spill my transgression, my trespass, snaps my jaw shut.

“Have you meet Nathan?”

I shake my head.

“Hm. Well. You are somehow important to him.”

“So,” I finally find my voice. “What do we do? Will he wake up on his own eventually?”

“He requires a maiden’s kiss.”

“I’m no maiden.” I can’t suppress the smile that spreads across my face.

“For us, a maiden is merely untasted. They are pure only in that sense.”

“Oh.” Untasted. I know what he means, but the continued avoidance of saying what he is is fascinating.

“You are untasted, yes?”

I nod.

Again, Alex gestures, this time waving me toward the Parker waiting to be rescued.

Nathan. This is Nathan. Not Jonathan.

I take a breath and step closer, focus on the scar that separates this man from the one I knew before.

I wish I had watched more princess movies. How do you approach a sleeping body to kiss it? To be honest, this is incredibly awkward, trying to get close enough to reach his lips without just climbing on top of his sleeping body.

I end up sitting on the bed, reaching across his waist with my right arm to prop my body up as I lean over him.

His face flickers as I lean close, my eyes struggling to focus as my memory overlays a face from the past. The scar pops in and out of view, his eyes flash open and closed, switching between pale lids and brown eyes.

I close my eyes as my lips touch his. Partly because this is just what you do when you kiss, and partly to stop the flickering. I am left with only Jonathan’s brown eyes approaching my own, the irises melting to lava red at the center as his smile widens. The glint of teeth the last warning that the man I am about to kiss is no man at all.

The lips I am touching now gasp open and I flinch back, aware of the teeth so close to me. My eyes are open. So are Nathan’s, finally drowning out the image of Jonathan.

Nathan’s eyes are solid brown. For now, at least. In that moment, I see it, his realization that the only reason I am here to save him now is because I spiked his brother then.