Hey y’all, I’m Jean-Baptiste. Everyone calls me JB. About two weeks ago, my parents moved me and my li’l bro into a fancier home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dad got a new, better-paying job. That’s the reason they gave us. I know they wanted to keep Sam out of trouble. He’s a good kid. He’s just got a lot of imagination. I tell him he should make comics. Anyway, we were only there for a day or two when Sam starts to notice our new next-door neighbor.
I’m like, “What’s the big deal?” because he’s telling me I have to come see the neighbor, quick, quick before she goes in. So I rush over to his bedroom window, ‘cause it looks down on the neighbor’s house. I’m thinking I’m gonna see a weirdo with a stuffed cat or something. But it’s just this older woman, maybe about 40. She looks pretty in like a Barbie-doll kinda way. It’s weird, though, ‘cause it’s really raining out and she just walking to the road to check her mailbox.
“You see the tiddies on that?” Sam asks. I slap the back of his head. Dad taught us to treat women with respect. He knows better. He's right, though. Damn, she’s stacked. And with her shirt getting all wet, we’re seeing a lot more than we should.
“Bet you wish you picked this room,” Sam said. I have to admit I was a little jealous. The neighbor on my side’s a fat guy who likes mowing shirtless. How's that fair?
So I said to him, “I think we’ll be spending a lot of quality time together.”
And that’s how and why we started paying so much attention to the neighbor. Sam swiped dad’s old Army surplus binoculars. I had a telescope from when I was twelve and thought I’d be able to see other planets and stuff. We started turning out the lights at night and hoped for a show.
DAY SIX
It didn’t take long before we notice some odd things about her. Like, she never sleeps. Her lights stay on all night. We see her walking around. Still in the same shirt. Like she didn’t change it in days.
“I don’t care if she don’t sleep,” Sam said. “Why the hell won’t she get naked?”
“Maybe she’s a meth-head,” I said. “That’s a big thing in Oklahoma.”
“She didn’t look like a meth-head.”
“How’d you know?”
“The internet.”
We moved in six days ago. That night was the first Saturday after we moved in. That’s when we saw the first really strange thing happen. We're peeking out the window like usual. Nothing's happened in a while and we're getting tired.
“Screw this,” I say. “She’s never gonna show the goods.”
“JB,” Sam said.
“No, I’m going to bed. I can see tits on the internet all I want.”
Sam grabbed my hand. Not my arm, my hand. He hadn’t done that since he was like 5. “JB, look,” he said with a swallow.
He was pointing to her backyard. I looked where he was pointing. He wasn’t sure what I was looking at at first. It’s 2am, there isn’t really any light in the backyard, except moonlight. And she has a big tree back there. So I use the telescope.
I’m a bit slow with it. Once I get it pointed and adjusted, I see. The white shape comes into focus. And I’m looking at a face. Her face. She’s in her backyard, peeking out from behind that tree. And she’s looking right up at our window. Our lights are off, so she shouldn’t be able to see us. Right? But she does. Y’know how you just know? We knew. I jump back from the window with a gasp.
“Oh crap,” I say. “How long she been there?”
He just shakes his head. We should be more embarrassed than scared. I’m a little of both. But Sam’s just scared.
“That’s weird, man,” he says. “That’s weird.”
I tell him not to worry. She’s probably just turning the tables on us. We were kinda invading her privacy, after all. So that’ll teach us.
Then he asks, “You think she’s still there?”
I don’t want to look. It’s just too freaky. So I take out my phone, turn on the camera, and take a video for about 30 seconds. I just hold it up to the window and wiggle it around a little. Then I pull the phone back in. When we play back the video, we’re relieved. Just the tree, no white face watching us from behind it. My wiggling somehow got the whole backyard. She ain’t there.
Sam sighed and threw himself back on his bed. I decided to watch the video over again, just to be sure. The backyard really was clear. It’s just, that wasn’t all. When I was pulling the camera back, it briefly pointed down. Directly below our window. And there she was, staring right up. Right there. Close enough she could probably hear us talking.
I shouted a curse word and dropped my phone. Sam sat right up. I showed him, just to be sure I wasn’t imagining things. He saw it too. We slept in my room that night and decided to tell dad what happened in the morning. We knew it wouldn’t go well. But at this point dad was less scary than the busty neighbor.
SUNDAY
Dad was pissed alright. He made us march over to her front door and apologize for peeping. Probably the most awkward thing we ever had to do. Get this. She answers the door in this loose, lacy lingerie deal that showed us everything. I look behind me to see if anyone else was witnessing this. But nope. When I got control of my jaw again, I say I’m sorry we watched her.
We were both hanging our heads in shame. When I looked up to see if she was mad or if she was trying to seduce us or something, it was weird. Like, have you ever seen someone with no expression at all? It’s like she was hypnotized.
“You should come in,” she said. She didn’t seem to feel it. She just said it. Sam looked to me. I think he was ready to take her up on the offer. I can’t say I blame him. She looked real good. But I told her we had to be getting back. Dad’s waiting. She closed to door without a word.
“And?” Dad asked when we got back. I told him she didn’t seem mad. And I told him what she was wearing. I felt if we were going to be in trouble, he should know she’s teasing us, too.
I can tell he doesn’t believe me. He says he’s going over there to apologize for us. “If I find you’re lying, you’ll be wearing your balls for earrings. Hear me?”
We stood in the kitchen waiting for him. When he got back, his face looked slack and pale. He didn’t seem mad at us anymore. He just looked like he’d seen something awful. Sam elbowed me, as if I didn’t notice myself.
“Sit down,” he told us. So we did and we all started eating breakfast. Mom was still asleep, by the way. She always stays up late catching up the DVR on Saturday nights.
“Don’t bother with that woman ever again,” he said between bites.
“K,” we agree. We didn’t dare question him when he was like this. I mean, I’ve never seen him like this before. And that’s what was so scary about it.
We kept eating our breakfasts in silence. Until he asked, “I ever tell you about Red Finney?”
He mentioned the name before. We knew Red was a kid in his neighborhood when dad was growing up. Somewhere in Baltimore. But we didn’t know anything really about him. We asked before, but he always changes the subject. So we shook our heads.
“Red was stupid. You hear me? Stupid kid. Always pokin’ his nose where it had no business.” He took a bite of his scrambled eggs. “There was this big, dark house on our street. Three storeys. No other house in the neighborhood like that. It was there before the neighborhood got built around it. Real old family, just held onto that land. We had all stories about this house. We’d all look when the lights came on at night. Never see anyone come or go all day. One time we’re watching, and we hear this scream. We know it’s from that house. And it didn’t sound good. From that day, Red got the notion in his head he was gonna get in there and see what was going on in that house.”
“What does that make Red?” Dad asked.
“Stupid,” we both said.
“Anyway, then one day Red was gone. You thought this was gonna be a heist? We go in there and find some ancient jewels and a ghost and solve a murder? If Red did what he said he was gonna do, he didn’t tell us. And we didn’t want anything to do with it. Breaking and entering was not a part of how we wanted to start life. He just went missing. Never found him. We thought all kinds. Maybe he ran away. Maybe he killed himself somewhere.”
“Dad,” I said. “You mentioned the house for a reason.”
“Oh yeah, that was another one. We thought maybe he went in there and maybe just never got out. But here’s the thing.”
He paused to take a long drink of coffee. Like he was steadying himself for something.
“When Red went missing, that came up. And we met the owner of the house.”
Dad finished off his breakfast after that. Took his plate to the kitchen sink to clean it off. Stuck it in the dishwasher. Me and Sam looked at each other.
“Well?”
“What I’m saying is,” he said, “that woman next door was on the same street as me when I was a boy.”
“Damn,” Sam said, “she aged better than you.”
“You’re not listening. Too busy wise-cracking. What I’m saying is, that woman next door was on the same street as me. Right? When I was a boy, she was a grown woman. Looked exactly the same. You don’t forget a woman looks like that.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“Dad, that’s not possible,” I said.
“It’s not for me to say what’s possible or not. I don’t need to know why or how. I’m just telling you like it is. And you’re not to bother with that woman. Now let’s get to church.”
I don’t think Sam and I had ever been so quiet and well-behaved in church. I don’t know what was going on in his head. Probably something like what was going on in mine. Who is that woman? Is she related to the woman Dad grew up near? That’s one hell of a coincidence. Not impossible. I mean, you hear of long-lost siblings working together in the same Taco Bell without knowing it. So who knows. It’s just, when you add her strange behavior to it, it’s just a big wtf.
Since then we’ve only casually looked out the window. She hasn’t been in the backyard staring at us anymore. And we’ve kept our word to Dad and left her alone. This other part of me just can’t get her out of my head. I don’t think Sam can either. He slept in my room twice since then. “I think she’s watching,” he said. I asked if he looked. And he says, “Not a chance.”
That’s where it’s at. I’ll let you know if anything else weird happens. Hopefully not. ‘cause we’re stuck in this house for a long time.
(PART 2)?