It was a cold winter’s night in Freeport. My husband and I were seated watching TV, he in his chair and I on the couch. Across the room (the length of our single-story ranch house), there is a lone window looking directly into the living room from the yard. I noticed the figure approaching slowly before subsequently ducking down so that only his eyes were visible. He knelt down and began to watch us. And watch and watch and watch. The room was mostly dark, and the pale moonlight blanched him dimly - either his eyes were enormous, or they were sunken into deep, hollow sockets. He looked like a lunatic. A chill crawled up and down my flesh.
My heart began to race, and my blood pressure had catapulted so quickly that my head began to throb and pound, and, despite the internal hurricane taking place, I at first pretended not to notice. I kept my eyes fixed on my husband, chatting and laughing as if nothing horrifying was taking place. I kept the intruder in birds eye view for several minutes, hoping he’d just up and leave, taking no interest in our ordinary, sedate state of affairs. Let me also mention that it was six degrees outside.
I continued on with just the same frame of attitude as the time I was robbed at gunpoint years before. I learned that I have a unique ability to remain externally calm despite the fire in my veins and the quaking of my being. Outside, I’m ice, but inside, I’m a tree shaken of all its leaves. Verily, after about ten minutes (I swear that every time I looked at the blank face and noticed it was still there, peeping in a polar vortex, I nearly screamed) I made a decision. Inside, I was absolutely breaking. Each moment that I turned to the TV and then shifted back, my heart skipped several beats.
Finally, with my face turned away, I said to my husband through my teeth, “honey, do NOT look and do NOT react, but there is a man looking at us through the window right now. Don’t look!”. Despite my urging, his impulse got the better of him. The moment he rose from the chair and turned, the peeper had leaped from view. I told him we needed to call 911. However, before I could even turn on my screen, the knob to the front door began to tremble and shake convulsively.
My husband commanded me to run to our room, a command which he followed as well, which, in such a tumultuous moment, was our only defense - because by then, the intruder was throwing himself against the front door. The jamb and hinged were audibly cracking, all of the items on the glass living room refectory table had begun to tremble and clatter, and the walls all reverberated thunderously.
With all of my strength (my husband had fused disks in his back, so he was totally incapable of assisting), I grasped the bureau by the legs and with all my puny might dragged the son of a bitch across the floor and finally, in one final throe of desperation, pushed it against the door. In the midst of this midnight whirlwind, the front door had been kicked opened and the footsteps, incredibly heavy ones, had tramped down the hallway as if his legs were leaden with 200 pound blocks of ice, though it hadnt sunk in until I, fresh out of breath and flushed in icy hot sweat, had tumbled backwards onto the bed.
“I have a gun!”, my husband shouted repeatedly as the intruder began throwing his weight against the door. Assuming he might also be armed, we slunk to the far side of the bed and ducked down. I phoned 911, and they assured me the police were currently in pursuit. It’s an incredibly small, derelict steel town in Western Pennsylvania, hollowed out by the terminus of the steel boom. The police arrived imminently, but in between the call, the threats, and the arrival of PD, I noticed something strange. Something that truly chilled me to the bone.
At some point, the intruder halted, and in a shrill, gravelly tone that sounded devilishly feminine, shouted a few simple words, which had been repeated several times - “this isn’t yyyyyourrrrr house! This is NOT YOURRRR HOUSE!”. He pounded furiously on the door as he shouted (if you could even call it ‘shouting’) these words with an almost compendious conviction. My husband, who at the time had been battling bronchitis, was gasping for elusive gulps of air with such severity, I was afraid he might faint or, worse, succumb to asphyxiation.
In a flash, the police had arrived. The thousand pound footsteps retreated, but not before a throng of screams rang out from the front doorway. Shots were fired, and voices had gone frenetic. I removed the dresser and ran out. An officer was splayed out on his back half in and half out of the house and was screaming, screaming with every fiber of his soul. All I could see was blood everywhere. Smeared on the walls, even.
“Don’t come out here!”, shouted an officer as he called for a medic. But the image was burned in. The first-responding officer had been slashed from temple to chin, left to right, and was screaming and rolling chaotically, as if he was being immolated and had desperately taken to putting himself out. That haunting vision has only grown stronger and with greater clarity since. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see the flashing terror in his eyes and the gaping of his mouth as he cried out, “I’m blind! Gary, I’m fucking blind! I’ll never see her again! Diane! Diane!”
We watched out the window of the bedroom as flashlights played upon the black, frozen woods like strobes. Seeing them spread so broadly only made my heart sink, and soon after, an officer came calling.
“Do you have a friend or relative you could stay with tonight?”.
This being a most disheartening sign, we went and stayed with our son and daughter - in - law for two nights until we could fortify the house with new doors, triple paned windows and a full alarm system. For weeks, months, even, we walked around on our toes while continuously throwing glances over our shoulders everywhere we went, but what was most disconcerting was that we felt more vulnerable locked behind closed doors.
To this day, the intruder hasn’t been found. I looked into previous owners of our house. We had been living there 18 years by then, and the scent on the trail of discovery was nonexistent. I still don’t know what about our house “isn’t” ours, and I’m not sure I want to know. This occurred in 2020, just as COVID had begun to scorch the earth. One thing I know intuitively, however, is that no matter how much time passes, unless I grow a third eye on the back of my head, I will never be comfortable again.