The Watcher Ch. 04

She saw the brothers fall. Danny landed hard on his back, trying to wrestle his hand free to aim the huge pistol at the monster on top of him. There was a flash of grinning teeth and tongues, and the screeches were enough to deafen anyone. Her eye caught Danny's, and she saw his stretched lips form a word, though she could not have heard it.

Ethan's monstrous body squatted atop his smaller brother with his legs sprawled out like an insect. His hunkered torso loomed over Danny and his long bent arms pinned him to the floor. She watched in pure awe and terror, witnessing the twisted creature that was Ethan toss back its head, with its jaw impossibly wide, and let loose a primal ear shattering screech. Its entire body shook, the loose folds of its skin flapping and its huge chest shuddering. She could smell the sulfuric fumes just before she saw them escape from the knots of its skin that dotted its body.

Jenna's eyes burned and she coughed from the stinging film that formed in her throat. Panic seized her. She caught the look of terror on Danny's twisted face. He was still screaming at her, his bulging eyes rolling in their sockets. Jenna could bear no more. Her feet slid beneath her when she tried to run, but she found her footing and fled into the dark living room. The open door was a welcome sight to her eyes.

She burst from the house and into the drizzling rain of the early morning. Her feet never seemed to touch the ground as she flew down the steps. Darkness still enveloped the world her vision was once again a blur of confusion. The huge looming shape of her house became her focus. For just a moment she stumbled, but she never stopped clawing her way forward.

Screaming and crying, she fell against the brick surface of her porch steps. Jenna collapsed and could not find the strength nor the will to rise. She was home. Her bare breasts heaved as she wept. Her nudity was a thing far removed from her mind. She felt the tiny drops of rain on her face. It felt soothing and freeing. Jenna pleaded with herself in her mind to get up, to find a phone, to call for help, yet she lay on her porch naked, bruised, and sore.

From the horrible house next door, a single gunshot rang out, silencing Jenna's sobs. Her heart froze in her chest. She listened against the constant drizzle of rain, as though she might have heard any other sounds from the neighboring house. She blinked her eyes and wiped the hair from her face. It seemed like minutes before she realized that she was waiting for nothing.

Tears welled in her eyes nonetheless. She could not be sure of why for there was not simply a single reason. The horrifying night weighed on her broken mind, and she still couldn't believe that she was free. She thought of the bodies of the young men in the house and the terrible lifeless expressions on their faces. She worried for the poor warped soul that was Danny, whom she never met until she had been taken.

The thing that troubled her most, perhaps, was the insane conflicted feelings she retained for the worst horror of all, the eldest brother, the creature with which she had been so intimately entwined. She sobbed anew, wondering what had happened in the house after her escape. Jenna turned her face to the sky and watched its colors change and brighten for what seemed like hours. She prayed silently for an end to the confusion, hurt, and insanity.

Naked and weeping in the twilight of the morning, her world slid away.

****

****

She worked carefully, being sure to remove the crust entirely. She set the slim pieces of bread aside. Beauty would eat them, she knew. After cutting the sandwich in half, she placed the sandwich on the small saucer, and then glanced around and fetched a small glass from the counter. As she crossed the kitchen, she made sure to take a reassuring look through the living room window into the front yard. After pouring the glass of apple juice, she placed it beside the saucer on the dinner table. She wiped her hands on her shorts, adjusted her glasses, then hurriedly made her way toward the front door.

Jenna pulled open her door and stepped out into the warmth of the brilliant summer afternoon. She glanced around. The neighborhood was calm. She spotted a neighbor washing her car, and a young teen racing up the suburban street on his bicycle. She saw the woman named Tonya sitting on her porch down the road wearing only a bikini top and shorts. The most commotion came from her very front yard.

A smile spread on her face as she watched the two children charging across her front lawn. It made Jenna giggle when she noticed that the little boy was being chased by the smaller girl. The two were laughing and screaming at one another, running in wide circles. They collided and crashed to the ground, wrestling in the grass as they fought over the object in the boy's hand. Jenna rolled her eyes when she realized what the item was as a chocolate Labrador bounded on top of the kids.

"Ariel!" Jenna called from the porch. "Give Beauty her bone back!"

She shook her head at the futility of it all. The huge puppy wallowed on top of the kids, the three of them becoming a tangle of giggles, fur, and slobber. Jenna couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the scene.

It was then that she heard another woman's voice calling from the distance. Jenna looked up toward the house across the street. She spotted her neighbor, Carol, standing in her front door. The young woman was calling for her son. Derrick immediately turned toward his mother. Jenna watched her motion to the boy, her hands waving him toward her as she glared from the door. Jenna also noted the scowl on her face, and the disappointed look that Derrick gave her daughter before he headed home.

"Ariel, come on, honey!" Jenna called. "You need to eat something!"

The little girl rose from her dirty knees and skipped toward the front porch, her black hair bouncing behind her. Beauty was close at her heels, her tongue flapping wildly from her jowls. Jenna beamed as she watched her beautiful daughter ascend the steps of the porch, her hair a mess and her cheeks flushed with color.

"Derrick had to go home," Ariel informed her.

"I know, sweetie," Jenna said. "He's probably eating lunch, too."

She stared across the road, watching her neighbor Carol as she scolded her son and pulled him into the house. Before closing her front door, Carol looked in Jenna's direction. Jenna felt her lips become a tight line as she glared toward the woman, making a point to watch her until her neighbor retreated into her house. Looking down at her painted toenails, Jenna took a moment to calm her nerves and let out a long sigh. She shook her arms and craned her neck, loosening her taught muscles before heading inside.

Jenna entered the kitchen to find her daughter drying her hands at the sink. She felt relieved that the lesson of washing hands had stuck with Ariel. The young girl headed toward the table, and bent her leg beneath her to sit on in the chair. Jenna started to find herself a bite to eat, but frowned when she peeked over Ariel's shoulder at the plate in front of her.

"Baby, you have to eat the bread, too," Jenna said with a sigh.

Ariel did not look up at her mother, but did placed the slices of smoked turkey back in their place on the halves of bread.

"I only like the meat," her daughter told her. "The meat tastes the best. It's really juicy."

Jenna swallowed hard as her heart skipped, trying again to pass off Ariel's habit as picky eating.

"I know, but you gotta eat your bread," Jenna instructed. "It's good for you, and you can't go back outside unless you eat it."

"I can eat it, I just don't like it," Ariel replied absently.

Jenna turned and opened the refrigerator. She reached into the bottom drawer, looking to see that she had enough ingredients to fix herself a salad. She collected enough items, ignoring the dressing that called to her from the door, and began to prepare her food on the only clear counter space in the kitchen. Glancing over, Beauty sat attentively at her feet, gazing up at her with hungry brown eyes.

"You won't eat this stuff, girl," Jenna said.

"Beauty likes meat, too," Ariel informed her. "She can have some of mine."

Jenna grinned at her daughter. "No, you eat your sandwich. If Beauty wants something, she'll have to look in her bowl."

Ariel made a face and looked down at the Labrador. "Sorry, Beauty. We can't be picky."

Her daughter's words brought a smile to Jenna's face. She finished preparing her salad and pulled out a chair at the table beside Ariel, who was humming to herself as she took small bites of her sandwich. Jenna took note of the stains on the girl's shirt and was glad that she'd dressed her in old clothes that morning. It warmed her inside that her daughter was so active, but she sometimes wished she would ask her for dolls or stuffed animals instead of wanting to tromp through the woods with the boys in the neighborhood.

"Mommy?"

Jenna glanced up from her salad.

"When can I see Daddy?" Ariel asked with a dimple between her little brow.

A cold rush of surprise hit Jenna in the chest. She stared back into the bluish green eyes of the little girl beside her, and she began to remember things she had tried to erase from her mind for seven years. She was dumbfounded, even though it was not the first time Ariel had broached the subject. Jenna licked her lips, cursing silently that she still had no explanation for her young daughter.

Ariel studied her innocently, toying with a strand of her black hair and awaiting her answer. Jenna wondered how she had come to mother such a beautiful child. She shared her mother's face, and the same full head of jet black hair, but she always shivered somewhere deep inside when she saw her tiny shining eyes. They were breathtaking, like the clear waters of a tropical beach. Their light blue tint was blended around a small starburst of green around the pupils, yet there was no hint of Jenna's darker color.

Jenna took a breath and gave her daughter a weak smile.

"You'll see your Daddy again, baby," she assured her. "When the time is right, he'll be there for you. But you have to be with me for now."

Ariel's eyes fell to the remnants of her sandwich. Jenna fought the lump in her throat and swallowed it down, gathering her resolve.

"In the meantime, I want you to keep your window closed," Jenna said. "You hear me?"

"Okay."

****

Jenna lay awake in her bed, alone and troubled. She worried about her coming mortgage payment, and how she could possibly fit her grocery shopping into her schedule for the coming week. The dryer was beginning to wear down at last. She figured it was on its last leg.

Most of all, she could not shake away the concern for her daughter. She thanked God again silently that she had been blessed with such a smart and beautiful child. To her, it did not seem very long since she had wept every single night, praying for the right answer to come to her. She was thankful that she was given the strength during that time, for no one had been there to comfort her. No one could. The sickness and the discomfort were bad enough without her moral fiber being challenged daily.

In the end, Jenna was sure she had made the right choice, though the future was now uncertain. She remembered a time when she would look upon the swell in her belly and despair. She vowed that she could not be that woman any longer, but she wondered what sort of woman she would have be now and forever.

The Moon was out that night, casting the full brilliance of its light upon her back yard. Jenna had not slept with her blinds open and her curtains drawn aside in several years. She would not find sleep easily. Instead, she gazed out of her bedroom window in the dark. Without her glasses, she could make out no more than the Moon's rays upon the grass. She chewed at her lip and thought of a night from her past, which now seemed as a faded dream.

Jenna could see the pair of glowing green eyes peering in through her window. The spidery black fingers clawed at the air in her mind. Fear came back to find her, though she had long learned to bear its chill. The watcher at her window was forever there in her head, peering in at her greedily, teasing her from the borders of her periphery.

She rubbed her eyes. Though drowsiness hadn't claimed her yet, mental fatigue was wearing on her. Closing her eyes, Jenna propped herself up on her elbow and stretched her neck. She rubbed at her muscles, leaning her head from side to side. Glancing toward the window, the haunting green eyes remained at the glass.

Jenna blinked. Still the eyes were there. Her bottom lip fell open and her breath escaped. She rolled around and snatched her glasses from the end table. When she put them on, she scanned the window and found nothing there. Her heart fluttered in her chest. Everything was silent, and the sound was deafening.

In a matter of seconds, Jenna had flung open her back door and was standing on her deck. Her head snapped around to find no one standing by her window. The wind blew calmly and brought just a touch of chill to her skin. She held her long hair away from her face and looked out across her back yard. All that she could see was Ariel's swing set and a few toys scattered across the lawn. Just beyond, the trees danced in the woods behind the neighborhood. There, at the edge of the inky black darkness beneath their limbs, Jenna saw a defined shape slip from sight.

She descended the steps and jogged out across the lawn. Her breasts bounced freely beneath her tank top, a reminder to her of how much they had grown with the weight she had put on since having Ariel. Jenna slowed her pace when she neared the woods' edge. Panting slightly, she stared into the dark depths beyond the trees.

She saw nothing. Part of her believed that she had only imagined seeing something. Goosebumps spread up her bare legs and down her arms. A chill slithered down her spine. Jenna glanced across the stretch of trees and undergrowth. Something intangible enveloped her skin. She felt feeble and powerful in the same moment. Her head turned as she thought she heard something on the wind. A salty smell flirted with her nose. It was indistinguishable. Nevertheless, she did not need her senses to feel the nearby prescience. She had felt that familiar thrill of vulnerable before.

Jenna stood up straight, jutting her breasts forward and holding her chin high. Ripples of anger and defiance traveled through her body.

"Your daughter wants to see you!" She called to the trees.

She paused and listened to the wind.

"She wants to know who you are!" Jenna continued. "And... and so do I!"

The tall trees rustled and waved in the breeze. She felt the kiss of summer on her cheeks. Still she saw nothing, but the feeling did not go away. Her mind was pulled back in time. It was as though her heart was bleeding inside of her, filling her chest with a feverish sorrow. She nearly wept at the futility of it all.

"I... I... Jesus, I can't... do this," Jenna said to the trees. "I can't explain anything to her! And... and there's going to be a day when that will be a big fucking problem!"

The only response from the woods was a calm rustle of leaves. A dog barked in the distance. Jenna turned and glanced around at the neighboring houses to see if she had upset anyone. She realized how ridiculous she must have sounded standing in her back yard and screaming at the trees. She shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck. Her eyes wandered across the vacant house that had stood empty for nearly a decade. She shuddered and looked away.

Just before she turned to walk back to her house, she stopped short. She gave a final look toward the trees.

"If you're there," she began slowly, "she needs you... I need you. I don't care what happens. I just need you...."

Her voice trailed away as a shadow moved in the dark. Her breath caught in her throat. The moonlight caught a flash of reflectivity. Jenna saw a large silhouette, and the set of horns that crowned the head. What held her gaze was the pair of eerie teal eyes that stared back at her. She felt the wheezing rumble of its breath more that she heard it. Her heart was frozen with fear, but lifted like a bird on the wind. The watcher had come home. She breathed a word.

"Ethan."