The Window

Two weeks after we moved into our new home, I saw him for the first time. I was sixteen years old, bored out of my head, stuck in a new town with just my parents for company. And then I saw him.
It was late one Saturday night and I'd been watching TV in that absent way that teenagers do, flicking idly up and down the four channels, until two went off air. Prisoner Cell Block H then. A repeat of the Chart Show.
Then I dragged myself up to bed, not because I was tired, but because there was nothing else to do. And I stood for a moment in the dark, staring out of my bedroom window as I had taken to doing, looking at the barren back faces of a row of Victorian houses that backed onto our estate, listening to my parents sleep through the paper thin walls of this newly built Barrett rabbit hutch.
His house was directly opposite ours. Only our small gardens and a tall panelled fence separated us. So, when his light came on for the first time that night, sometime around midnight, I noticed it immediately, like someone had turned on a television screen right there in front of me, it shone out from the otherwise dead facades of the crumbling terrace.
There was no one in the room. White walls, a plain wooden wardrobe, a black duvet spread tidily across a double bed. The bedroom door, open slightly. I went to the window, stood there and stared for a moment into this empty cell, hands on the curtain. Then I leapt back as his door swung open and he walked in for that first time.
He was shirtless, dressed in black jeans. Short, dark hair, dark stubble, dark shadows around his eyes. There was a line of thick hair running from the top of his jeans, across his flat stomach and up to the swell of his chest. In the briefest of seconds as he came in and sat on the bed I absorbed every detail I could about him before his light went out suddenly and I was staring at a dark window again.

At dawn I woke up screaming. Wrapped up in damp sheets, my arms and legs pulled tightly against my body. The vague remnants of a dream began fade away immediately. But there was something under the bed. Something very old, with hateful rage burning in its eyes.

Dad had relocated in his job and dragged me and mum along with him. So here we were in this southern commuter town where there was nothing to do but walk around the nearby lake, the one patch of green which remained when every other field or playing area was quickly vanishing under the ever spreading virus of small regular brick boxes ' mum's rabbit hutches. There was nothing to do that long summer but think about him.
After that first night I noticed men everywhere. In adverts in magazines, in my mother's Great Universal catalogue, pages 571 to 577 (men's underwear ' my first porn), out on the street where shirtless lads in football shorts hung around in packs at the shop at the end of the road smoking cigarettes.
Back at the window the following night there was nothing to see when I came to my room. His light was off. It was just after midnight as I climbed into bed and curled myself up into a ball to sleep. But my eyes sprang open as soon as I squeezed them shut and I stared at the curtains. Half an hour or more of daring myself to step out of bed again followed, my ears playing tricks on me, I could hear heavy rasping breaths from the darkness, but it was just dad snoring, nothing to be scared of. No way.
At last, with a sigh as I told myself to get it over with so that I could sleep, I leapt out of bed and pulled back the curtains, took two steps back into the darkness and clenched my fists. His light was on and he was there again. Sitting on his bed, staring out into the darkness. Still no shirt on. He was just sitting there. There was no way he could see me, I told myself, retreating further back into the depths of my room. And there I stayed, watching him do nothing but sit on his bed and look out with vacant eyes. And after ten minutes or so, his light went off again.

It was there! I woke up, my body damp in sweat, sure I had just felt something sharp rip across the skin around my ankle. But no. No of course not. Dad was using the toilet. There was no privacy in this house, you could hear everything through these walls. I pulled the pillow over my head and closed my eyes again as my breathing slowed and the cry that had almost ripped from my throat died away.

A week later he had company. He had become something of a routine in those seven days, every night I waited for his light to come on; at midnight it did and he would walk into the room and sit on the bed, alone. But tonight, a woman in black dress with long black hair followed him in. He was in a suit with a white shirt and black tie. Fucking handsome as hell.
The woman stood in the doorway, regarding the window with a tightly lipped expression. Then he said something that enticed her into the room. She smiled, laughed. He sat on the bed and bowed his head, and the woman sat next to him and with a tentative hand began stroking his hair. Then they began to kiss. I went to the window, grabbed the curtains and wanted to pull them shut but couldn't as I watched them slowly manoeuvre one another's clothes off: his jacket, her dress, his trousers, their hands everywhere. And then his light went out and left me alone in the darkness.

Something had caught hold of my foot. I woke up with a start and pulled it quickly back under the covers and gripped the edge of the bed in case it reared up and tried again. Tried to drag me down there. Under the bed where the dust lay. Under the bed where it now lived, waiting for me to sleep again.

When I was at school we never talked about sex. All around me it was happening; he was going out with her, she had just left him and so on. But it never touched my life, and I never wanted it to. Lucy, my best friend, and I used to wander around the playground together, suffering the taunts of other children who said we were going out together. But we didn't care what they said. She wasn't interested in boys, and I wasn't interested in girls.
By the time we'd moved away though, there was something different about Lucy and me. She had started seeing someone, a guy called Mark who bullied me in the changing rooms when we were younger. And now I wanted to tell her about the man in the window, about the thing that was lurking under my bed, but when I spoke to her, she talked about Mark, how they were going on holiday together and how great things were for her. And I didn't say a thing.

I didn't open the curtains for five nights in a row. I didn't sleep soundly either, every time waking up with a scream in throat, my stomach in knots as it lingered on the edge of my memory, whispering to me from the darkness beneath my bed. Waiting.

Sundays were the worst. There was nowhere to go to escape the house but circle the lake for endless hours listening to music. Once I walked to the edge of the housing estate, hoping to find some as yet undiscovered corner of town that was exciting, or beautiful, or¦ anything. But when the houses ran out the industrial estates kicked in and after a couple of hours of following desolate roads between corrugated factory walls I gave up and turned back.
My parents were always at home on Sundays, half watching hours on end of TV. Today it was a western, and every ten minutes or so my mum would raise her head from a doze and ask if the character currently on screen was either a "goody or a "baddy and my dad would admit that he didn't really know. I went out into the back garden and lay on the grass where I watched far-away aeroplanes criss-cross one another's path, leaving trails of white to melt slowly under the harsh glare of the sun. I imagined looking down from the air-conditioned coolness of the cabin at this rolling landscape below. From up there, it probably seemed very small, this estate. When we flew to Ibiza the year before, I demanded the window seat and watched the land roll on beneath us: the patchwork fields and huge stretches of forest. From up there, the housing estates all seemed so neatly laid out, with interconnecting crescents and criss-crossing avenues. From up there, escape was easy to imagine.
When I raised my head from a half sleep my skin had began to redden and my eyes ached with the brightness of the day. Irritated, I stood with a sigh and wondered what I would do next. Perhaps go and see if mum and dad had figured out the plot of the western yet. Perhaps go and eat something else from the fridge. Perhaps go and lie on my bed and have a wank. I risked a quick glance toward the window. He was there. Staring right down at me, I was sure of it. I turned quickly away and raced into the house, went straight upstairs and peered around my bedroom door, my breath catching in my throat. Just an empty window, no sign of him.

I waited by the window that night. Midnight passed, it was nearly one. I was about to give up and close the curtains, when the light came on and he walked into the room. I stepped back into the darkness. He was wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans and was followed into the room by another man, who was about the same age but shorter and thinner in build. They seemed to be fighting about something. The thinner man kept pointing out of the bedroom door. Then in one swift movement they embraced, fell onto the bed and the light went out. I continued to stare at the dark square of his window. My mouth open. My heart slamming against my chest.

For two weeks I watched. The man came some nights, the woman others. I went to bed in turmoil every night, desperate for the next. And I always awoke a few hours later, screaming, pulling every limb under the covers and dragging myself into a tight ball. And there I would stay, weeping and wishing, until dawn came.

A hot and sultry night late August. Watching them had become a habit, the only routine in this otherwise barren life of mine. The two of them walked in and wasted no time undressing. After five minutes they were naked and I was standing with my hands clasped together, my mouth dry. They were kissing, roughly, his head bent over his shoulder, his hands running up his lover's back. But tonight his bedroom door opened, and the two men looked around as she stormed in.
She was screaming, her head in her hands. His lover moved quickly, grabbed his jeans from the floor and pulled them on. The woman turned away, left the room. And for a moment the two men looked one another in the face. And then his lover turned, walked out without saying a word it.
I took a few steps forward, my hands clawing at one another. And then the man was at the window, his face twisted with anger. I panicked - he could see me! I darted into the shadows of my room, turned and looked back. His curtains were closed.

Thunder rolled in the distance, crept closer, lightening flickered and then flashed into my room. And I lay paralysed with fear under lead sheets, not daring to move. I could hear it, there under the bed, breathing in rasping breaths, I could smell the stench of its rancid air. At any moment it would reach up a scaly, clawed hand and take me, screaming into the shadows, into the dusty underworld where no one else went. And then, and then¦

A flash of lightening froze the room and only seconds later thunder shook the windows of the house. Then rain began to fall, in big heavy drops that slammed against the window pane. I wanted to look again. I had to look again. I stared up from my bed towards the closed curtains. Another flash of lighting. I had to look. Another crack of thunder right above the house, it rumbled on for a few minutes, and I lay very still until it melted away into the distance and a delicate silence settled back into the room. Then I gently lifted up the covers and tentatively stepped onto the carpet. Any second, I thought, any second and I will feel its claws around my ankle. I stood shakily, made it to the window, breathless.
His light was on. He was standing, framed in the window, naked. He was staring out into the rain, out over the garden, right at me. Another flash of lightening, we were both frozen, as if someone had taken a photograph, him and I both naked, staring out. Then, between the lightening and the thunderclap he lifted something to his head. I could barely make it out, something black, heavy looking. The thunder came. I realised what it was. I screamed. The gunshot was lost in the thunder. His light went out once more.
Cold, clammy hands with nails like needles wrapped around my ankle and tightened. Its foul stench filled my room, its hot breath scorched my legs, made every hair stand on end. I screamed, bolted back to bed and pulled the covers up over me as a clap of thunder ripped through the room and someone started banging on the bedroom door.
"Are you alright? Mum's face, drawn and white in the light of the landing, peering around the bedroom door.
"I'm fine, I stuttered.
"You scared the life out of us.
"I'm fine all right! I snapped.
"What are your curtains doing open? she asked.
"I forgot to close them.
She tutted, went to the window.
"No! Just leave it all right?
She stopped. Turned around and shook her head. "What's got in to you these days? Then she turned around and slammed the door behind her.
I heard them, mum and dad, in muffled conversation through the bedroom wall as I tried to bring my breathing back under control. And then after a while, when they'd stopped talking and the thunder seemed further off, I stepped out of bed again, slipped from my room and ran downstairs to use the telephone.
Back in bed, I wanted to close my eyes and forget it all until morning, but couldn't. I just lay there. Staring up at the ceiling and hearing distant sirens draw closer until blue lights flickered around the room as they pulled up outside his house. The rain beat harder against the window.

In the morning I opened the curtains but there was nothing to see in his window but the reflection of the grey sky. Rain was still falling, filling up the paddling pool next-door, spilling over the sides and gushing across the patio.
I walked over to the college that day, which was just down the road from our house and across the main road. The rain slowed as I approached, stopped by the time I'd climbed the steps up past the neatly tended gardens which surrounded the place. The gates were open. A few cars were outside, their bonnets gleaming in the weak sunshine that was just breaking above. I walked up to the fence and gripped the flaking blue painted railings as I stared at the jigsaw of brick and concrete buildings where, in a couple of weeks, I'd start the long slow road out of that town. Then, wishing the last few weeks of the holidays away, I turned back for home, but cut up through the alley which linked our road to his.
As I turned the corner onto his street, I tried to picture myself going up to his front door and knocking. Perhaps asking a neighbour if they'd heard anything. There was nothing in that day's local paper about it, and nothing on the local news. Surely gunshots weren't that common round here that a suicide wasn't even reported on? Perhaps then, he hadn't succeeded.
I could see our house directly behind his. This was it. There was no mistake. The garden was overgrown with weeds, the gate broken, the wooden fence rotten. The front door and windows were boarded up, and on these boards were years of graffiti. In letters three feet high, in faded red letters, something had been written right across the door and half the window beside of this long-abandoned house: FAGGOT. And around these letters clawed hands were reaching up from the foundations of the house, gripping the bricks and pulling them into the ground.