I just wrote this short story. It came from a very simple image, a person standing outside another's house. It's rather simple, but I think people will like it. I suck when it comes to thinking up titles, thus the short and stupid-sounding, "The Man."
There's a man outside my house.
I live by myself, in a small house a few miles from the road, surrounded by trees. It's isolated, and I like it. I prefer to keep to myself. I've lived here for about four years now, and I've never missed having to say hello to my neighbors every morning or being mindful of the volume of the TV or stereo. But tonight, I do wish there was someone close by.
It started a little more than two hours ago. It was just after nine, and I was reading while listening to some instrumental music from a movie soundtrack. I heard strange sounds that I hadn't heard on the soundtrack before. It's hard to describe, but they reminded me of glass being scratched, or the sound a tape recorder makes when you fast forward or rewind.
I first replayed the last twenty seconds or so of the soundtrack, thinking that I had perhaps, somehow, missed the sounds when I had listened to it in the past. The sounds didn't show up, however, so I paused the music and paid close attention to the silence around me. I heard nothing and was about to give up when I heard the sounds again. There were three sounds, each one different, albeit only slightly. They were short, quick, and less than ten seconds passed between the first and third sound. This time, able to focus on nothing else, the sounds brought a different image to my mind. I thought of a dying person in a horror movie, trying to say something to a living person but choking on blood.
While never a superstitious person, I have always been a bit too scared of strange noises in the night, and especially of haunted houses. The sounds of unknown origins filled with so much fear that my sense of reason was completely overcome. Nevermind that I had never heard the sounds before, despite my being in the house for a rather long time, or that I had never come across an unexplained cold spot or seen anything move by itself. I was certain at that moment that there was a ghost, probably more than one, in my home. I was frozen, because how do you fight a ghost? What can you do except wait until sunrise and hope that it leaves with the darkness? What can you do against an invisible specter, or at most an illusory image that can move through things and be moved through? Thinking about it now, ghosts seem like a silly thing to be afraid of. If only that man outside were a ghost like you see in the movies or on television specials. But he's not. He's something far more sinister.
It took me a long time to move from my spot beside the stereo, and even then, my fear did not relax. I was scared witless and didn't know what to do. I sat in my chair, the book I was reading on the table beside me, telling myself that I should read some more. My sense was starting to come back to me, slowly but surely. Read, I told myself, because that's all you can do. Ghosts can't be hurt. And they can't suddenly hurt you. It takes time and power, and they let you know what they're doing. They'd move the furniture first, and the moment they do, you'll know to get the hell out of there. Nothing would hold you back.
I didn't open my book again, but as more time passed, I became more calm. I kept hearing the odd sounds, but the intervals between them increased. At first, only a few minutes had passed between the first batch and the second. But almost an hour later, there was over twenty minutes between the latest sounds and the ones before them. The ghosts were either getting weaker or bored with me. Or maybe, I was wrong, and there weren't any ghosts. I decided that I should look around and see what I could learn.
The idea of exploring the unknown rattled me, but I forced myself to do it. I started by carefully checking every room. It didn't take long since the house was small and really only had four rooms. There was the living room, which I had been in and was certain was empty; the kitchen, right beside the living room and so small that nothing could hide in it; my room, down a small hallway; and the bathroom, right across from my room. It took me longer to build up the courage to open the closet door in my bedroom than to search the rest of the house. As expected, I turned up nothing. That didn't mean anything though. The place I really needed to look was outside.
By that point, my fear of a supernatural presence had melted into a fear of something far more dangerous and hard to deal with, a human being. What if a burglar was waiting outside? What if a murderer running from the police had stumbled upon my tiny house in the woods? I dispelled these thoughts with rationale: A burglar wouldn't sit outside my house for hours, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn't whisper or do anything that would alert me to his existence. Same with a murderer running from the police. They'd charge in the moment they came across my house, if that was their intent. Furthermore, it was infinitely more likely that an animal was making these sounds, or maybe even an object stuck in the trees or hitting the side of my house. That was it! After so long, I had finally come to the only reasonable conclusion about this whole affair! Sure of myself, I started peering out all of the windows, looking out the window in my bedroom that faced the left side of my "yard" first. The lights I had installed near my roof gave me enough light to see to the trees, though I didn't see anything out of place. I moved to the bathroom and then the kitchen and saw nothing behind my house. Staring out the window in the living room that faced the right side of my yard, I found another plain sight. I hadn't heard any sounds in a while, so I was relaxed when I pulled apart the curtains in front of the only window that faced the front of my house. I knew I'd see nothing, that I could put the entire fiasco behind me, the result of animals and and overactive imagination. But then I saw the man.
He was parallel to my front door, as if he was planning to approach it and knock. He had a wide-brimmed hat on, and his head was tilted down. His clothes were black, and he had a long coat on. He was barely inside the light. If he had taken a single step backwards, he might have disappeared from my sight.
Again, I froze. I didn't know what to do, what to think even. Had he been making the sounds? What did he want? He was human. Or he at least wasn't a ghost. His intentions, his motives, his entire existence, perplexed me. But I couldn't simply open the door and call out to him. I had no gun, and I was not a fighter. I had no way to defend myself. Maybe if I left him alone, he'd just go away.
I sat in my chair and waited. After a few minutes, anxious about what was happening, I took another peek outside the window. The man was now moving, walking left and right. He moved slowly. He'd take six steps to the left, then stop. He would turn around, his back to the door, his face to the darkness, and take six steps to the right. Then he'd turn around, again facing the darkness, and take six steps to the left. I don't know how long I watched him, but he kept doing that, behaving exactly the same, for as long as I kept my eyes on him. I went back to my chair, afraid I was going to faint.
The next time I looked outside was right before I started writing this. I slowly parted the curtains, just a little so I could see, and the man was gone. I was elated, but I calmed myself, knowing that I had to look around, make sure he was no longer there. I could only see a small part of the yard with the tiny hole I had made between the curtains. My eyes scanned the area slowly, moving to the left, and finding no trace of the man. Then, they slowly moved to the right, seeing nothing. But then, near the edge of the light, barely visible, was the man. His head was no longer down. He was looking at the window. He was looking at me.
I want to get out of here. It's not safe. That man is dangerous, if it even is a man, and I don't think it is. I want to believe it's just another human, but ever since he spotted me, I've been hearing the sound again. It gets louder every time I hear it, and it comes quicker, too. Soon, it'll be constant, I know. A steady stream of illegibility, cries that have no meaning to the living. He's not a ghost. He's not a murderer. He's something worse.
