The Shadows Between Houses

Last night at around 1am, my wife and small child walked to my car after a night at my bro-in-law’s house. He lives in a sketchy suburban neighborhood so we are always conscious of our surroundings. As I was getting ready to sit in the driver’s seat I noticed a young black man staring at me with determined eyes. I stared back and nodded but he just stood there staring back at me.

It made me uncomfortable but my fatherly instincts kicked in and I squared my shoulders up to the man to give off my best fake, “You wanna go at me bro?” bravado. As I did, the man raised his hand and pointed at me as though to threaten me, then took off running faster than I had ever seen another person run. Having felt like my penis grew a couple inches instantly as reward for being a bad ass, I felt it was safe to sit in the car and proceeded to drive home, but not before nicking the damn metal mailbox a bit. I took off anyway, thinking I’d tell them I hit it when I got home.

We had to make a stop at the store for some milk, Slim-Jims (of course) and other stuff. My wife went into the store while I stayed with my young daughter in the SUV. When she came back I popped the rear trunk door so she could load the groceries. After closing it, she got back into the truck and I started to back out of the parking spot. I noticed that there were hand prints on the back window. I asked her, agitatedly, why she would close the trunk door by touching the windows. She snapped back that she didn’t. We both turned around and noticed that the prints looked like someone with long, thin fingers tried looking through the back window of the car and dragged their hands across the window. We inspected the other windows and noticed that the rear driver’s side windows had the same dragging hand-print.

I called my bro-in-law immediately and let him know that the douche bag I saw across the street must have been looking into my car. I figured that would explain why he was staring at me so intensely. My bro-in-law said he would take a look out of the window and give the cops a call to patrol the area. My wife, kid and I were all pretty exhausted so we shut off our phones and went straight to bed.

This morning, both my wife and I had over 30 missed calls, all from my bro-in-law’s wife. I called her back and she was in hysterics. I figured that their cars must have gotten broken into or vandalized. Guilt immediately filled my chest. Instantly, I knew I shouldn’t have stared down that guy like I did. Must have been payback, I thought to myself. Then she started rambling about something being torn to pieces.

Apparently it was her neighbor’s teenage daughter. Her “body” was found right on the side of my bro-in-law’s house, in between his house and the victim’s home. The poor girl apparently snuck out of her house to go out and was trying to re-enter when someone, or something, grabbed her and mauled her to death. She was disemboweled and had two of her limbs ripped from her body. As of now, they still have not recovered her right hand.

My stomach dropped at the news. That black man was not staring me down. He was looking past me, petrified, into the shadows at whatever was killing that young lady. He wasn’t pointing at me, he was pointing at someone behind us, pointing at it.

The cops just left my house. They were trying to get information on the man I saw. Apparently they think he is a possible witness/suspect. I assured them that I didn’t think he was the killer based on my experience with him but they still wanted to do their due diligence. The detectives also decided to get prints and measurements of the hand-prints off my vehicle windows. Due to the long, slender length of the finger marks they do not believe it was the killer’s since they appeared feminine.

If the fact that this maniac, this THING, dragged that dead girl’s hand across my vehicle as he was stalking up behind me isn’t enough to fuck my world up, I’ve also just been informed that my license plate was ripped off my bumper. Looks like I didn’t hit that mailbox after all.