The story I’m about to tell requires a bit of context. My family was made up of four people- my mom, my dad, and my older brother, who was born two years prior. We lived in a quiet town in the UK- I won’t mention which due to legal reasons- where I assumed I would be living my entire life. Homelife was perfectly fine- my parents both had jobs, but not the kinds that kept them out for days at a time, nor were they neglectful nor overbearing. My brother, Simon, was not a bully, and he wasn’t mean or rude or arrogant; in fact, in time, he would become my best friend, always being there for me when I needed him or giving me the space when I didn’t.
I tell you this now to show you that, outside of what I say here, my life was once a perfectly normal one. There was no trauma, no constant tears or fighting; my family were happy, and so was I.
But, then, I was five. And it was the day I saw it for the first time that things stopped being so normal.
I was laying in bed, sleeping peacefully, when I heard something beyond the window. My bedroom was on the second floor of my family home, tucked away at the back of the house to overlook the garden from a large window. That night, the blinds hadn’t been pulled, giving me a full look out at the shadowscape of the midnight beyond the glass.
That night, for the first time, I saw the face of the creature who watched over me.
I remember it in vivid detail- Even in the dark, my eyes spared no expense registered every detail. The head was wide enough that the ears- where they should’ve been- were hanging off either side of the visible space. The skin was the same shade as the rest of the night- a ebony, charcoalish hue, with the texture somewhere between worn leather and tree bark. They had no nose, just two deep slits that flared in and out; Its mouth hung agape, large sharp teeth sitting in three rows along the gums, some broken, most yellowed from lack of attention.
But it was the eyes that still scar me to think about. Giant, bulbous eyes, like the bulbs of streetlamps- glossy and white, illuminating from the dark, pupiless and milky. Clear veins ran in the corners, bloodshot and thumping- the hair of the monster billowing in the wind like the branches of a tree, exploding from the back of its head with reckless abandon.
I was petrified of it. My window was closed, and even then, I could hear it breathe- those heavy, ragged breaths, blowing thick condensation onto the only protection between me and the giant’s grasp. I spent the entire night watching it in utter terror, curled tightly in my blankets as a defensive shield, though I knew even the impenetrable might of the covers couldn’t stop whatever that thing was.
I remember, at the first speck of light, the being suddenly shifting, uncomfortable as though the sun hurt its body- it lumbered away, moving silently despite its massive form, vanishing into the treeline as it stepped over the garage in one giant stretch.
The next morning, I could barely stay awake as I looked into my bowl of sugary cereal, trying to determine if what I’d seen was even real. My father must’ve clocked that I wasn’t feeling alright, so he approached me with the question I knew he’d ask- ‘How’d you sleep?’
I mentioned in retort that I hadn’t, and explained why. I mentioned the giant monster that had watched me, explaining how it stood outside my window all night until the sun came up.
I had expected them to give me the usual spiel- the ‘You were having a nightmare’ or the ‘it wasn’t real’. Perhaps even a reprimand in the form of ‘why didn’t you come get us’, out of parental concern. However, what they instead told me was far more unnerving than if they’d blown it off.
What they said was, simply;
“The Sentinel? Yes, he’s been around. Did he scare you?”
I look up from my bowl, my tiny child mind trying to make any sense of what had just been said. Even at my age, when your parents confirming something you felt you knew was like being awarded with highest honour, I felt as though they had just told me something they should NOT have said.
And yet, here they were, spilling everything about what had been outside my window- though, to them, it seems that it was a ‘Who’. My parents sat me down, explaining that, during the night, a very large gentleman by the name of The Sentinel came to someone’s house and watched them while they slept. Though it wasn’t picky, it would often choose someone without their blinds pulled- hence why I had been the unlucky participant in its visitation- and, to the best of their knowledge, that was all it did. It just watched people, and seemed to enjoy doing so, so they had never investigated any further.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I wasn’t sure what to believe- that my parents were telling the truth, or this was some sort of disturbing lie to get me to stop being afraid of my nightmares.
That very same day, I was playing in the sandpit at preschool, trying to stay awake, when I decided to bring it up with my friends instead- I told them about what I’d seen, and hoped that they would be able to tell me something else- we were all five. It would be easy for a group of like-minded individuals to come up with a solution to a problem that may not even have existed.
And yet, I received an answer that, yet again, caused me to debate everything I’d ever known.
“You saw him too?”
The Sentinel, as it turns out, wasn’t just our home’s issue. Some of my friends had seen it, too, and in some cases, earlier in life than I had. When they confronted their parents about it, they’d all received the exact same explanation that my parents had given me, and told not to worry about it.
My final stop was to ask the only other person I knew would tell me the absolute truth, and that was the teacher. I hurried over, pulling on her skirt to get her attention, before asking her if she’d ever heard of The Sentinel- and, like the others, she was able to recall information about a giant that I’d never seen before last night. She crouched down, telling me about how The Sentinel protects those it watches over, and prevents them from getting hurt during the night. If The Sentinel showed up at my window, then I was a very lucky boy.
I didn’t feel lucky. I felt lied to, in all honesty- however, unless the entire town decided to come together to gaslight me about this in some elaborate plan to get me to sleep better.
The years began to rush by as I started to come to terms with the creature outside of my window. My parents began to pull the blinds every night past that point, further adding to my suspicion about how real The Sentinel actually was, but I never stopped thinking about him. At the age of seven, when I was starting to get into a bedtime rhythm of my own, I decided one night to test the information provided to me earlier in life- I left the blinds open, settling into bed and watching out of the window, ready to spy whoever came up to it.
I must’ve waited for hours on end as I studied the window, every tiny shift in movement out in the garden alerting me like I was a sniper on watch for the enemy. Eventually, though, my body gave in, and I was going under- sleep had me in its clutches, and was trying to force my eyes shut.
And then, in a single long blink, The Sentinel had been summoned.
They looked just as disturbing as last time- a horrible shadow monster, with wild hair and bloodshot eyes, giant snorting breaths as it watched me. It stared at me, unblinking, trying to study me with its hollow, pupiless orbs- the mouth hung open just enough so I could see the teeth once more, somehow even worse looking than before.
It was then I would make the worst decision of my entire life.
Slipping out of bed, I approached the window as quietly and as slowly as I could, like I was approaching a deer in the forest. The eyes followed me ever still, curious to what I appeared to be doing as I got closer and closer to the window, stopping just shy of the windowsill as I looked up at the enormous face. From this distance, I could smell it- the smell of dead fish, mixed in with rotting leaves. It made me sick to my stomach.
The Sentinel then did something very strange. Almost comically, it began to stick its tongue out- this large, dinner-plate width tongue- and licked my window with a sound like a fork on ceramic. It left behind a smear of thick, gooey saliva, little flecks of whatever its last meal was upon the glass, which began to drizzle down in chunks onto the outside. It then did this three more times, each time leaving behind even more of the phlegmy, bubbling spit, until it seemed to realise I wasn’t going to respond to its action and- to my surprise- lumbered away, leaving the same way it had in the sun two years ago.
I kept watch of it this time; instead of going off into the forest, it took a right, walking over to a neighbouring house within view and beginning to look into the windows.
It had taken two years, but I now believed what my parents had told me.
The very next day, I tried to show them what The Sentinel had done to my window, but they laughed it off. ‘He must’ve been happy to see you’, they told me. It didn’t matter- when I came home from school that day, the window had been cleared of any bodily fluid, so they must’ve had someone come over and get rid of it.
That wouldn’t be my last interaction with The Sentinel- hell, that wouldn’t even be my last interaction with it that very same year. My curiosity got the better of me one late night in December, and I ended up leaving my blinds open once more for it, awaiting its return.
It took the bait almost immediately. One power nap later, and The Sentinel had returned, standing outside my window with that same glass-eyed gaze. The problem was, even though I had invited it to watch over me, I never actually intended to let it stay, and so another sleepless night overtook me.
On Christmas Eve, that very same year, I also witnessed something I hadn’t seen my parents done before- they took a wrapped present and placed it on the backdoor’s doorstep, locking the door behind them. They must’ve seen me watching, because they had an explanation at the ready.
“We’re just giving The Sentinel a thank you present. Santa doesn’t deliver to him, so we do it instead.”
I thought it was ridiculous. More fool me, because the next day, the present was gone, the only remains of it being the ribbon my mother had tied it with.
Interactions between me and The Sentinel started to become closer together, as I became more and more obsessed with it. Now that my fear of The Sentinel was out of the window, I was growing more confident in what I did; the blinds stayed open for more nights in a row, and though it didn’t always come to see me, I never had to worry about it being gone for long.
It wasn’t like it was just visiting me, either. Other people were still seeing it, too; my friends were always ready to talk about how they saw it, just before they fell asleep, or how someone else would eventually have their first interaction with the beast, excitedly sharing that information with everyone else.
Drawings began to litter a sketchbook, then my walls- drawings of The Sentinel looking through my window, or through my neighbours as I tried to draw what I imagined I was seeing in the pitch black. I tried to draw him without the darkness surrounding him, drawings of if he was just a normal-looking human or some sort of tree monster, maybe a giant, snaking beast- I drew his eyes, and his mouth, and his lack of a nose. I drew his hair, both as wavy strands of unkept mess and little tiny hands, grabbing at the air with small, gnarled fingers.
I even drew him with what I imagined to be his hair down in a mullet, and in an afro. I was making light of the monster beyond the glass.
Unfortunately, my obsession began to lead to some… less than favourable side effects. At the age of twelve, after my parents found me passed out in the middle of the kitchen, I woke up in the hospital; the doctors had an official diagnosis for me the same day I was released.
Insomnia is a hell of a thing. I’d go days at a time without getting a wink of sleep, but that was fine- it just gave me more time to study The Sentinel.
It was like I was tracking a wild animal- The Sentinel was my case study, and I was taking information down about it at a speed unrivalled. For my birthday, I asked for a diary- not to write my feelings away, but to kept track of The Sentinel, both through personal encounter and the interactions of others- something that, to my surprise, people were starting to fall out of favour talking about. Sure, when I asked them, they would tell me about how they ‘maybe saw it a few nights ago’ or ‘my friend told me about this one time’, but it seemed like they were starting to just grow accustomed to the massive, hulking monstrosity that visited them off and on.
My parents, too, were growing concerned with my obsession. I’m not sure why- my studies were still as good as ever, and I was still doing good in school. Sure, maybe I passed out in class a few times- maybe they’d find me in a position which would imply I’d spent the entire night writing about The Sentinel and the things he done. Maybe the bags under my eyes were getting too deep, and the sleeping pills hadn’t work in a while, but I wasn’t worried- my Insomnia wasn’t a condition, it was assisting me in getting more information on The Sentinel.
… I was thirteen when it finally happened.
I had come home that day from school, another day of trudging through the seven hours of hell, to a parking lot of police cars. At first, I had assumed someone had been arrested, but when I found that it was outside of my house, I realised something was very, very wrong.
My mother was in shambles. My father, too upset to speak. I had to get the information from an officer, who told me the basic information to what was wrong- any additional information came from my mother during the same night in a drunken stupor.
Simon and my mom had gotten into an argument the previous night. Simon had never been a bad kid- but that night, he’d wanted to go out with his friends to go see a movie on its opening day. Naturally, my mother had disagreed- not only due to the fact it was a school night, but due to the curfew in place. They’d gotten into a yelling match, he’d stormed up to his room, and mom had tried to give him space.
The next day, Simon wasn’t in his room. The only evidence as to where he was, was an open window and a note saying he was going to the movies, and he would take whatever punishment came to him when he came back.
Simon never came back. Not that day, not the following night- three days passed before any form of Search and Rescue began. All we had was a vague idea of where he’d gone, who it was with, and what he’d done.
Dad went out every day searching for him. The forest in our backyard was vast and expansive, and it covered miles between here and the next city over; no one could go missing for THAT long, not without showing any sign of evidence towards where they might’ve vanished.
It would take me a while before I recognised a certain pattern in my father’s ‘search’. He’d go out early in the morning, mostly when I was still asleep, and begin his trek to wherever he felt that Simon could’ve ended up. For the next 10 or so hours, we wouldn’t see him again- only for him to return almost exactly at 7, on the dot, without Simon and, soon, without hope. I didn’t understand why; after all, if people searched at night, then it would come up with some other clue.
I don’t know when my father finally gave up, because the date didn’t seem to matter past a certain point. The day of Simon’s disappearance and what constituted as ‘today’ became the same time- each day, I’d get a false flash of relief thinking that Simon would be in his bed, only to be met with the same toppling realisation that he was still gone.
But it was on one of those many, many nights, as I was laying in my bed with tears in place of sleep, The Sentinel returned to my window.
On the very same night, I learnt the truth about my brother’s disappearance.
The Sentinel was different this time- the terrifying atmosphere had returned, something I hadn’t felt since I was five years old. As I slipped out of bed, approaching my window meekly, I felt a pit in my stomach begin to build, soon heavy enough to root me in place. The eyes stared down at me, absent in nature; the gaping mouth had twisted up into a satisfied grin, like a toddler who’d been given their favourite meal, the front rows of teeth matted with a shining scarlet. Like he had done so many years before, he licked the glass, this time leaving a bloody smear along it, complete with chunks of hair and muscle.
It would take an idiot not to figure out who the blood belonged to. What was more difficult to figure out was which of his friend’s blood it was mixed with.
The next day, I screamed my lungs out at anyone who’d listen- I pointed to my window, still filthy with the trauma-inducing smear that painted the glass on the second story of our home, trying to get them to see what The Sentinel had done. Police, firefighters, teachers, parents, children- I showed them what their precious ‘Sentinel’ had done to my brother, and the friends my brother had known since he was five.
I had expected a riot. Maybe, some sort of campaign to take down the beast that lived on my neighbourhood’s doorstep, a bristle of empathy towards the situation they’d gone through.
What I instead received was a look of pity, and my parents grounding me for ‘spreading lies’.
In an instant, the town shifted into silence. Just 24 hours before, parents were crying out for their children, begging the authorities to bring them back safe, or at least in one piece so they could bury them with dignity. The same day I let everyone in town know the truth, those same parents were shunning me like I was a cancer on their lives, going about their lives like I hadn’t exposed anything to them.
It didn’t hit me until later that night, sitting alone in my bedroom, looking at the scrawny drawings of The Sentinel that covered my room, that it really did come crashing in on me. How dare they?! I’d told them the truth! I told them who had done it- I TOLD them who was responsible, and they’d pretended they hadn’t heard me! Why was The Sentinel being protected, even when they knew that he was the one who had taken the lives of people that were cared about?
Over the coming days, the town progressed into a hushed whisper. Coincidentally, the very next day I had told them this truth did they find the bodies of the five who’d died- Though, ‘bodies’ would be a gross overstatement. They barely found enough of each to make up a single full human- a bloody smoothie of guts and organs, of skulls and ribs. Anything The Sentinel hadn’t wanted to digest, or hadn’t used to pick his teeth.
They covered that up, too. The News reported on it- whoever had been forced to tell them such an egregious lie had chosen to go with the even more unlikely story that it had been some random psycho from the next town over, having escaped from a Halfway House the same night, kidnapped the kids and hurt them in such a gruesome way. They didn’t explain how the bodies were found near a hotspot of ‘DO NOT ENTER’ signs, or how the only hint they had ever had that the bodies were there was a bloody trail leading them to the mouth of an open mining cave- to them, it had been some fun exploration, where they’d met an unfortunate end.
How cruel it was that the same Halfway House just so happened to have a patient go missing. How confusing it happened to be a patient who seemed to have just gotten well enough to be released, too, as if they’d been willingly released back into the wild.
The town WANTED this. The people within it WANTED to pull the wool over the eyes of whoever was looking in- not due to the story being insane, but just because they didn’t want to believe that a monster they’d grown up around would ever hurt them.
I tried hard to remain angry at what The Sentinel had done. I tried so hard to make him the bad guy in the story, to make the brother-eating monster the one who deserved the hate. But the more I was left to my own devices, my growing up, my evidence of who he really was- it was like a switch being forced into the middle of on and off.
The Sentinel wasn’t some smart, chaotic manipulator. It wasn’t a puppeteer or a king in some greater scheme- to my knowledge, it wasn’t even actively trying to do anything that would anger or upset me. The Sentinel was just some wild animal, roaming around a neighbourhood like any other deer or raccoon as it scrounged for its next meal.
The people who allowed such a thing, nay, encouraged it… THEY were the ones who were in the wrong in my eyes.
Things fell apart soon after. No longer able to trust my parents like I had originally thought I was capable of doing, I soon moved out of my own accord, heading across the country just so I’d never have to stay in contact with them. I still receive the occasional letter from one of them, asking me if I would be willing to come back to the town someday, to ‘patch things up’ or to ‘just talk it out’.
Frankly, I’ve never been happier now that I’ve been away. My insomnia has improved, perhaps thanks to the constant fear of being watched while I slept having been removed from the equation. I soon settled down with my own family, a wife that I’m lucky to have ever met, two children that I would give the world for. A stable job, a stable household, away from the terror that had been wrought in those painful memories of my life.
Some nights, though, I still get those nightmares. Those moments where my eyes pry open in the middle of the night, and the moon is in just the right position to look like an eyeball staring at me through the blinds. The smell of rotting fish lingering on the air, a shadow too wavy to be a branch in my subconscious- there’s always still a moment where I think, just for a second, The Sentinel has moved on and has come to find me, so it may watch me for that little while longer.
I pray to God, whichever one might be watching, that The Sentinel is happy where it is. I doubt any predator is as spoiled for choice as one whose invited to eat from the mistakes of the living.