”So she just sits there?” I asked. “And you’re just staring at her, like a creep?”
“Nonono, it’s not like that. It’s like she wants you to look, you know,” grinned Reggie. “She shows off her legs, her white little panties, she throws her red hair around… “
“That doesn’t make you any less creepy.”
“She knows I’m there. Hell, last time she smiled at me.”
“She smiled at you” I scoffed. “A human woman actually smiled at you. You, Reggie.”
“I get a hell of a lot more smiles than you” he teased. “And I swear, she smiled at me. I’m telling you, I’m in love.”
“Tinder not working out for you? Super likes not getting you anywhere?”
“If I had to choose between a random woman smiling at me from a window once every two weeks, or getting a match that isn’t a bot on the Tinder Meat Market, I’d choose window girl ten times out of ten.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
And so we did. Six shots of tequila and a game of pool later, we said our goodbyes.
Then he disappeared.
One day, he was just gone. No messages, no logins, no goodbyes. No witnesses, no indication of him going anywhere. There were rumors of him being attacked. There’d been news of an up-and-coming masked gang harassing a neighboring town, but nothing was confirmed. The police did a decent job bringing in the usual suspects, but nothing came of it. They even had search parties looking around the old campgrounds. There was talk of having a diver check the lake, but I don’t think they ever did.
Of course, they were following all leads. All leads but that one thing Reggie’d rambled about on that last night when I saw him. The pretty girl who’d smiled at him from a window.
It was a struggle to find out anything about her. This is a big town, and Reggie traveled pretty far from work to home. I must’ve traveled that same road a hundred times, back and forth, looking for whatever window he could’ve seen her in. But he wasn’t very specific. There were apartments, houses, rentals, motels… hundreds of windows, all along the road. How would I know which one he’d been looking at?
I started taking Reggie’s road home every day from work, just to see if I could see what he saw. It was a hassle, but it gave me a pretty good idea about where he’d look and what he’d do. It wasn’t a long way out of my ordinary route, and I wasn’t planning on doing it forever, so I told myself I had to at least try.
Six weeks after his disappearance, I was ready to give up. The police already had. The case had gone cold, and there were no more leads to follow. One night, as I followed that same damn road, I stopped at a corner shop to get a coke. Standing with a cold can in the evening breeze, a thought struck me.
Maybe the woman wasn’t just someone he happened to see randomly. Maybe it was someone he went out of his way to see. Someone slightly off his usual route.
Like, someone you might see when you step out to get a coke.
Right across the street from the corner store, just above a bookstore, was a small apartment. It had this wide window alcove that overlooked the street.
There was someone sitting in the window.
She wasn’t at all what Reggie had described. She wasn’t flaunting her underwear or flipping her hair around. She was this twenty-something young woman, cuddled up in the alcove, reading. She had these big dorky glasses and long, brown hair. Not red, like Reggie had said. Striking green eyes, just like my first crush’d had back in middle school.
Still, I couldn’t help but to stare. This had to be her. This was the woman Reggie had talked about, and I could see why he’d fallen in love. It was damn near impossible not to.
I must’ve stood there for the better part of five minutes. I had every intention to check the address, see who lived there, and try to find out all I could about her. And yet, all I did was stand there and gawk as she gently turned the pages. Then, as soon as her head moved in my direction, I looked away and hurried back to my car. It was embarrassing, to say the least.
I could still see her in the rear-view mirror as I got back out on the road. I’d talk to her the next day. Or maybe the day after that. Whenever I could work up the courage, and maybe find out a bit more about her.
I did find out a few things. That corner apartment wasn’t a rental, so someone owned it. It hadn’t been sold in the past twenty-or-so years, so whoever owned it had lived there for a while. It was one of the older houses in town, and there were pictures of it from all the way back in the 60’s; even the same bricks, only slightly paled by the sun.
The following weekend, I went back during the day. This time, the window was empty. I took the time to just walk around and check the place out; see if I could get a name.
I took the time to check out the bookstore under the apartment. It was this old dusty place that I’d seen for years but never actually bought anything from. It was run by these two older men, bickering about some nonsense in one of the back rooms. As soon as I entered, and that bell rang, I saw their two heads peeking out.
“Hey!” I called out. “You, uh… you the owners?”
They looked at each other, paused, and sighed in unison. One of them, the one without a lengthy beard, approached me.
“You looking for something?” he asked.
“It’s about the, uh… the apartment. I don’t know if you-“
They both rolled their eyes. The man in the back shook his head and went back to his computer.
“Of course you are,” the beardless old man sighed. “I’m sorry, we can’t help you.”
“I’d appreciate whatever you know. You’ve never talked to her?”
“I haven’t even seen her, sorry. My partner told me he’s seen her brother once.”
I could hear a jubilant “I have!” from the back room. I got the feeling that they’d had this discussion a few times already.
“I’m sorry, they keep to themselves. We don’t want to bother them.”
“Have they never been down here? Bought anything? I saw her reading.”
“Might have,” he nodded. “But I wouldn’t know. I don’t ask every customer where they live. Maybe we ought to start.”
He gave me an apologetic shrug and returned to the counter. I thanked them, waved, and left.
I asked around the neighborhood. Random people on the street, passers-by who seemed familiar with the area. At one point, I called out to a half-naked woman sunbathing in her yard. I talked to a dozen or so people, and no one had anything clear to say about the woman who lived above the bookstore.
Some claimed she lived alone, others said she lived with her brother. Some thought it was her father, or her husband, but it was clear she wasn’t living alone. One man claimed he’d seen an older woman walking around up there, so maybe it was a whole family. Then again, they didn’t seem to have a car, and no one’d seen them leave.
I was getting a funny feeling about the girl living there. It wasn’t a large apartment, so I couldn’t imagine so many people living there. One or two, sure, but three? Four? No way.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. It took me a lot of stomping around to build up the courage, but I made my way up the stairs to the apartment door. The name on the door just said “Moray”. Strange family name.
I stood outside her door for a solid minute before I knocked. Had I known she wasn’t home, I wouldn’t have bothered. I knocked two more times, but there was no one to answer. Instead I just stood there like an idiot. If I’d had any paper, I’d left a note.
I did take a mental note of the other two apartments on the same floor being empty though. Strange.
I started going by that street regularly, once a day, waiting for her to show up in the window again. Every day, sometimes more than once, I passed that street. I was starting to wonder if I was still doing this to find out what happened to Reggie, or if I was genuinely interested in that woman I’d seen in the window. Maybe it wasn’t even the same person? After all, she looked nothing like the woman Reggie had described.
It took me two weeks of diligent watching to finally see her again, but when I did, I nearly got in an accident.
I slammed on my brake, shocking the driver behind me. I parked outside the corner store, and I just stood in the middle of the dark street; gawking at her.
It was the same woman. Same brown hair. Another book, it looked like, and she’d cuddled up with a blanket. There was a cup of something warm next to her, fogging up the inside of the window. I could see those emerald eyes all the way down the street. She was magnificent.
In a moment of onset stupidity, I waved at her. I couldn’t help myself.
To my surprise, she turned to me. She put down her book, tilted her head, and met my gaze. She looked bored; frustrated even. There I was, some random man on the street, waving at a young woman in the privacy of her home. I was being an idiot.
Then she smiled at me, and I fell in love.
This warm, genuine emotion. She was so happy to see me. She was eager to meet me; I could tell.
I had to go see her.
I ran across the parking lot, crossed the street, and went around the back of the building. But as I put my hand on the door to the apartment complex, I felt a tiny drop of water on the back of my hand. For a moment, it made me stop. Just long enough to think.
As one drop turned into a hundred, I snapped out of it. This was too strange. I’m not a bad looking man, but finding myself running across the street to knock on a stranger’s door… that ain’t me. I wasn’t being myself. Maybe the same thing’d happened to Reggie.
I wiped the rain from my face and went inside. I hadn’t even noticed the strange blue mesh bags used for garbage, piled in a corner of the hallway. This time, I felt a bit more observant.
But I still walked up those stairs, and I still knocked on that door. Not just to see a pretty face, but to ask questions. This time, she was home.
I knocked three times, firmly.
“Come in,” a soft voice spoke.
“I just want to ask a few questions,” I said. “About a friend of mine.”
“Come in,” the voice repeated.
I took a deep breath and felt the handle. It was open.
This wasn’t right. A lone woman, letting a strange man into her apartment, at this hour? Sure, this wasn’t a big town, but this was just… odd. Shouldn’t she at least meet me at the door? I could see a shine from the peephole, she was nowhere near the door. She wasn’t even looking out.
“Do you mind coming out for a sec?” I asked. “It won’t take long.”
“Come in.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just-“
“Come in.”
My stomach slowly turned, as a chill crept up my spine. I let go of the handle and backed away.
“I’m sorry, can you hear me alright? I think the door-“
“Come in.”
Oh, she heard me. No way she didn’t. Was she mocking me?
“I need to talk to you. I’m not coming in.”
No response.
A shadow suddenly blocked the light from the peephole.
Someone was looking out at me, and I hadn’t even heard her move.
I took a step back, leaning against the wall across from the door.
“I should leave,” I said. “I-I’m not…”
“Come in.”
This time, the voice was harsher. Insistent. It wasn’t an invitation anymore; it was a request. I felt my heart skip a beat, and I just kept backing further and further away from the door. As I reached the stairs, I heard a mechanical sound. A click. A lock. I peeked down the stairs.
I could see someone by the exit. A shadow, locking the door from the outside.
Reggie?
I didn’t get time to think, as I heard a creaking noise. The front door was opening.
She was coming out, and whoever’d been downstairs disappeared into the night
“COME. IN.”
This time, the voice was dark, bubbling. Like someone speaking underwater.
All I got was a short glimpse. Her gorgeous brown hair, hiding a strange face. Scaly skin that changed tint as I looked at it. Too many eyes. Some blue, some brown, some striking green. The components of the beautiful woman I’d seen, scattered about something… wrong.
I would’ve stared at her forever, had I not been instinctively backing away. I lost all balance as I reached the edge of the stairs, and I tumbled backwards.
It felt like an instant, like no time passed at all. I was suddenly on the ground floor looking up the stairs. I was bruised, my leg twisted. Behind me, I could feel the front door – locked.
“COME IN,” I heard from the top of the stairs. “COMEINCOMEINCOMEIN.”
A face peeked around the corner. It was rearranging, making itself pretty. Discarding old teeth to regrow new ones. Little white molars danced their way down the stairs, only to turn to dust. She was changing hair color to black, and her skin to a Mediterranean tan. She was starting to resemble my first girlfriend.
I closed my eyes and turned to the front door. I heard clumsy footsteps slowly make their way down the stairs behind me, as I pounded on the door. I screamed for help, forcing myself to my feet.
Another footstep.
“COMEIN.”
I kept screaming for help. Pounding on the thick glass.
“COMEIN.”
There was a sudden heat near me. Someone warm and inviting. The smell of exotic fruit shampoo. Something resembling a hand, reaching out to me. Brushing against my jacket.
Then, someone stepped out. One of the old men from the bookstore, the beardless one. Instantly, I heard the footsteps behind me turn hurry back up the stairs. The old man unlocked the door, as I scrambled out of the complex. My twisted leg couldn’t support me, so I fell flat onto the pavement, crawling backwards. Away from the thing I’d seen and smelled. The old man looked confused.
“C-call… call the police!” I stammered. “Call them! Do… oh my God!”
The old man brought out his phone and dialed the emergency number. He kneeled down next to me, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did that man do something to you?”
“W-what?”
“The… the man! That… that young man, by the stairs! Did he hurt you?!”
I just sat there on the pavement. I barely even moved until the police came. I told them I’d been attacked, I told them there was something wrong with the one living in the “Moray” apartment. I told them about Reggie, about the girl in the window… I must’ve just kept babbling on and on and on as they took me back to their squad car. The owner of the bookstore just looked at me apologetically and waved goodbye, giving a short statement to one of the officers.
I don’t think they did a damn thing to whoever, or whatever, lives in that apartment. I think they did nothing, found nothing, and just chalked it up to me being hysterical. I’m getting mixed messages depending on the officer I ask about it. One says no one lives there, another says they’re out of town. One claimed it was some sort of storage. No one is giving me a straight answer.
I think Reggie is still out there. I think something was done to him, but I don’t know what. I think he lost himself to whatever lives in that apartment.
And sometimes, to this day, I stop by that corner store to see if there’s someone in that window.
And sometimes…
… there is.