Where I grew up, we were surrounded by the woods. Not isolated for sure, my neighbors were all within walking distance, or yelling distance. A couple hundred feet from the main road and the highway, but you’d have to walk the woods for that.
At night, there’s always strange sounds, nothing to look into too hard. A sound like a screaming child is just the mountain lion that my neighbor 3 doors down shot while it was attacking his chickens. The ominous low rumbles were just the bucks shedding the itchy coverings from their antlers, they always used the trees close to my house.
There are also plenty of raccoons and oppossums roaming about, so when I started hearing rustling outside at night I didn’t really question it.
We lived in a two story ranch style house, living on the bottom floor and bedrooms on the top floor. My parents got the room to the right of the stairs with a view of the road, and I got the room with the view of the backyard and treeline. The way my house was built, it featured a staircase that led into the backyard, accessible from inside by a door in my room.
Under these stairs is where we kept our trashbin and recycling. That’s also incidentally, where the rustling began.
The first time I actually looked out the window in the door to check it was when my friends, lets call them H and J, were over. We were young then, ranging from J’s 5 years to My 7 years. Having a late night playdate because H and J were going to their grandmothers for two weeks with their parents soon and I wanted to see them before that.
We had been setting up a tower of books to be a barbie house, we didn’t have enough money to afford one of those fancy ones so we made due. The rustling began halfway through, book stack nearly over my head, and being used to it, I paid it no mind. H however, crept to the door and opened the curtains, presumably just for a peek—and immediately gasped, then dropped to the ground.
Startled, J knocked over the tower of books, sending them crashing to the floor. I remember skittering away to avoid being crushed by my dinosaur encyclopedia, the first book holding up the stack, when H said “He’s out there,”
Frustrated by the books falling over, I had turned on H and stood to go to the door, “Who?” I asked, about to pull the curtain aside, but H stopped me, and that was the first time I noticed how scared they really were.
“There’s a tall scary man at the bottom of the steps,”
I remember the fear spiking down my spine, exactly how it felt. At this time, my father worked late night shifts, and my mother was watching us, but she was in the kitchen making food, I could hear her.
I wanted H to be pranking me so bad that I peeled back the curtain despite their pleas.
I wish I hadn’t.
There was a man, and he was tall, probably 6’5, I would know because that’s how tall my uncle was, and I’d seen him stand where the man was. He stood at the very foot of the steps, wearing a tophat and all dark clothing. I couldn’t see his eyes because of the brim, but I could see his mouth. He was smiling, but he looked like he had no lips, and his smile was eerie, it stretched too far towards his ears, and I could see all too many of his teeth and gums.
I slammed the curtain shut and screamed for my mother.
By the time she got upstairs the man was gone, and she told us to come have dinner before bed, that clearly we must be overtired.
We barely slept that night, all three of us huddled under my bed with blankets packed under the edges to seal it. I remember hearing dawn approach and then the overtiredness took me.
The second time I saw him, my curtains weren’t on my door. I was 8 years old then and had almost forgotten him. My dog had chewed my curtains so they needed to be replaced, so I’d let my mom take them for the night.
I’d been getting ready for bed when I’d heard the rustling, and peeked out my window for the heck of it, hoping to see the cute fat raccoon that had been hanging around.
I did see the raccoon, except he was hanging limply from the smiling man’s mouth. Blood surrounded his smile, and this time I could see his eyes. They were open and crazed, like cruella de vil’s from 101 dalmations when she’s driving her car really fast. I couldn’t help it, this time I screamed for my mom first thing, nearly hyperventilating as I watched him start to step up my stairs.
One stair, two stairs, three stairs-
My mother burst into my room and I whipped my head around, hysterically trying to tell her what I saw. The man was gone, however. My mother for sure thought I was crazy. I had her put up my curtains right then and there, torn or not.
The next morning my dad found the dead raccoon and blamed my dog for it. I knew better.
The third and final time I had seen him had been two nights before we moved. I was 11 years old. I hadn’t forgotten about him, but with no sightings in the recent years, I’d gotten bold with leaving my curtains open.
This time I had been sat on my bed reading, Percy Jackson I think it was, the fifth book. I heard rustling, but assumed it was the wind as this night we had high wind speeds, a storm rolling in from somewhere. I’d lifted my head because something suddenly didn’t feel right, and there he was, standing at my window. He looked all shadow, but that smile, that face was pressed to my window. I hadn’t screamed, too shocked to even move. He had always been at the bottom of my steps.
When the door handle rattled, I’d finally sprung into action, and leaving my book, I ran downstairs to get my father. He’d ran back up with me, but the man was gone, once again. I supposed because he had done something different this time, he’d still be there.
We moved shortly after, and though I miss it sometimes, I will never miss seeing him. The man at the bottom of my stairs.