When I was a kid, I used to have these horrible nightmares about a man who would watch us through our window while we slept. At the time, I was living in a 2 bedroom apartment with my parents and two younger sisters. Our apartments were hacked out of this old house in Apache Junction, Arizona that was built in the late 60s. Each unit was just former rooms of this single-story estate that they quickly threw some brick walls between. Each of us had our own exits and “backyards” that were more like fenced off alleyways. Over the decades, other developments had sprung up around this weird house, some as tall as 3-stories with fully fitted attics that basically acted as fancy lofts or spare rooms. It cut this house off from the world completely, creating a barrier of houses with very few windows pointed at it because it was such an eyesore. 20+ years later and it’s the late 80s. Mom and Dad conceived me out of wedlock and were promptly disowned from their families. The only place that would accept two late-teenaged parents with shit credit was this weird Tetris house.
Our neighbors were cliches. There was Old Man Wilkins in the South unit. He smelled like mildew and sweat all the time and he kept this mangy, ugly, feral cat in his house that acted more like a vicious guard dog than the furry corpse I thought it looked like. Mrs. Moira, as we called her, was an old widow who lived in the East unit. She was nice and would always give us Oreos whenever we asked for them. Jacob and Tamara Kitter lived in the West unit and they were a shady couple. I just remember we were never to speak to them under any circumstances and that they hated kids. Apparently, they filed several complaints when my little sisters were born because they couldn’t stand the crying. Lastly, us. We lived in the North unit, which was the most inconvenient unit to get to. The covered parking was south of the building and the only walkway to it was around the West side of the house because the AC boxes for each apartment created a wall between the North and East units’ shared walkway.
Everything was supposedly fine for the first few years. Mom and Dad adjusted quickly to being cut off from their parents different forms of wealth and became dedicated workers. Our aunt, my mom’s youngest sister, who was only about 9 years older than me, became our regular babysitter while my parents worked. Mom got a job at a local diner as a waitress and my Dad wound up working as an auto mechanic.
One evening, dad was running late and mom had to go in for a night shift, so my then-13-year-old aunt had to watch us well into the evening on a Friday night. She wasn’t thrilled, but she loved us. I don’t remember anything about this night personally, but my aunt still talks to me about it because it traumatized her.
At 8:45, someone attempted to break into our apartment. When they couldn’t get through the deadbolt on the front door, they came to the kids’ room window. My window. My aunt screamed and closed our door, holding it shut because it didn’t have a lock. She heard glass break and someone tried to open the bedroom door from the inside. She had to put both her feet on the doorframe to keep it shut. She heard lots of terrified screams from Mrs. Moira, commands from Old Man Wilkins saying things like “Get outta there!” before whoever was tugging on the bedroom door let go. My aunt let Mrs. Moira in and Old Man Wilkins spoke to police and met my parents when they got home. It was nice to know that they all had our backs.
Except the Kitters, of course. Nope. They filed a complaint with the police for the noise we caused during the scene. That was the first time I had even seen them and I DO remember their faces. They were hollow-cheeked, wide-eyed, and withered beyond their years. Tamara had string for hair that was thin and pulled into a wispy ponytail. Jacob didn’t have hair, but had huge sacks under his eyes and most of his teeth were missing. They looked so angry and when they saw me standing in the doorway, they stopped talking to the police and rushed to me to yell at me for being loud; for disturbing them.
My mom refused to take a night shift after that and my dad surprised us with a rottweiler puppy called Samson. We called him Sammy. Sammy slept in the kids room on my bed, which is right under the window. The landlord was cheap and took forever to replace the window, so I slept with plywood nailed to the windowsill for about a year after the incident. My mom also had to put my sisters in daycare while I was in kindergarten because my grandmother accused us endangering my aunt. It was a weird year.
We got the new window the night before I started first grade. That night, I had the first nightmare. In the dream, I was in bed sleeping, but I wasn’t really in my body. More like I was observing myself. I could see Sammy asleep by my feet and I could see out the window into the alley. This was the side of the house nearest the wall of AC units, so I could vaguely make out their angular shadows stretching across the nearby walls of the surrounding buildings.
It felt like I was slowly approaching the window, like I was sinking sideways. I kept looking at myself in my bed, wondering why I wasn’t awake, but I couldn’t say anything. Then, I heard gravel shifting outside. Sammy’s head shot up, and twisted around to look at the window. I stared - helplessly outside my body - floating inch by inch towards the panes of glass.
Something I couldn’t hear what triggered Sammy next, but he jolted to his feet. He let out a soft huff. I looked at my body, asleep, but with a furrowed brow. I could see myself having the nightmare.
A loud bark from Sammy tore through the silence. Just one bark. It had been enough. A figure at the edge of the shadows darted away just as my gaze whirled around towards the window. I didn’t see who it was before I heard a voice that sounded like me, but somehow different. My gaze twisted back towards my body, which was now sitting upright, head hanging backwards away from me, mouth open, eyes shut, speaking in a voice too low for a five-year old.
“He’s going to hurt them.”
I was spun suddenly towards my sisters, who slept on the other side of the tiny room. Both of them were standing on their beds, eyes bulging, mouths bleeding, pointing at the window. A gurgling scream erupted from them.
The way I snapped awake felt like someone slammed a book shut and I fell backwards into the bed. I had actually been sitting up like in my dream. I heard thumps beside me and, across the room, the girls beds were rattling in place as if they had just jumped into bed. I lunged out of my bed and checked on them, but they were fast asleep. No blood, no bulging eyes. I thought it was just a dream, that it was just pre-school jitters or something. Then I climbed back into bed and realized I couldn’t draw the covers over me because Sammy was standing on them.
He was still staring out the window.