The Eyes of the Night

I am writing this because they said it would help. I am writing this because they said that if I write about what happened I would finally have closure. I am writing this because they said that I would stop seeing him. I see him everywhere I go. I go to the cafeteria and I can see him, in the corner, looking at me. When I wake up in the middle of the night and see a shadow staring at me through the window, I know that it is he. I have tried to tell the people here about him, but no one believes me, they all think it is part of my imagination. But I know it is not, I know he is real. And I know why he follows me.

It all started about seven years ago, when I was 23, when I had my perfect life. I had just graduated from college when I saw him for the first time. My friends and I decided to celebrate and went to have some drinks. We decided to go to this bar that was just opened around the corner of our apartments. It was a wild night and frankly I don’t remember much of what happened, just that there was a lot of tequila. It was 6 am when we decided to leave the bar, my best friend, and I started making our way to our apartments. As we walked, I could feel like someone was watching us from across the street, but I couldn’t make out who, since it was too dark to see anything. Right before I entered the apartment building, I turned around, and saw someone starring at me from across the street. That was my first encounter with him.

The next day I had woken up thinking about the person I had seen looking at me the other day. But I quickly shook off the idea, and decided that the tequila was making me see things.

The next week I didn’t see him and I concluded that my hypothesis was correct; it probably was just my imagination. But it wasn’t.
Today I woke up screaming. I had that dream again, the dream of the ally and the capped man. They came running to my room and gave me those horrible pills, which always made me feel woozy. I sat in a sofa and I kept on writing my story.

Two weeks had passed since the first time I had seen him. I had not seen him again, and the shadow was just a forgotten memory in the back of my mind. But that night I saw him again for the second time. I was going back home from dinner with my friends at the other side of town. It was 12 am and I decided to go for a walk through Central Park. It was a silent, isolated, dark, yet beautiful park, the few stars that were there were shining. I heard the typical sounds of a busy night of New York City: the cars honking and people talking. (That is how I remember Central Park was like, but I haven’t gone there in 7 years.) I closed my eyes, taking in all the sounds, but this beautiful moment lasted very little, since I heard a twig break near the bench where I was sitting. I opened my eyes, scared, yet curious. I looked around but no one was there. I stood up and as I started making my way back home, I felt chills down my back. As I walked back home I turned around to see if there was someone behind me. And there I saw a person with a blue cap it was him. I first just assumed that the guy with the cap lived close to me. But as I kept on walking, he was always right behind me. I could feel his eyes starring at me, but every time I turned around he looked away, making it seem like he wasn’t looking at me. After 30 minutes of this, I started freaking out. And felt as if every second that went by he would be a little bit closer to me. That was when I knew something was going on. I turned the last corner of my apartment and started running, I didn’t look back. All I wanted to do was get away from that man. It wasn’t until I was finally secure in my apartment with the door locked when I was finally able to breathe. I could feel my whole body shaking, I tried to calm down, I made myself a cup of hot tea and turned on the TV. I feel asleep on the sofa, since I was too scared to even go back to my room.

That night was the first time I had that nightmare, the nightmare that made me not want to sleep. All the nightmares were similar; it would start with me in a street, at night. I would start walking and turn once to the right and then to the left. Then I would hear some footsteps, footsteps that followed me wherever I went. I would turn around and see the man with the cap, following me, looking at me. I would start walking faster and faster trying to outrun him. But I couldn’t outrun him, every time he would be behind me, watching every move I made. Then, I would start running, trying to get as far from him as possible, but no matter how fast I would run, when I turned each new corner, he would be exactly 10 feet away from me. Towards the end of the dream I’d get really scared, so I’d go into a dark, gratified ally to try to get away. But the ally would be closed and I couldn’t go any further. I would try to find a way out, but there wasn’t any. The dream ended with me feeling someone grabbing my arm. That was when I would wake up screaming, shaking, paralyzed with fear.

Most of the nights I would see him following me through the busy streets of New York City. I started becoming scared of being outside in the nighttime, I would only go outside with someone, to make sure I was safe. Two months had passed since I had seen him for the first time, and by then, I had gotten used to spending most of my time home. One morning I went to get coffee at a coffee place across the street from my apartment. Since it was early in the morning, I assumed that I wouldn’t be seeing him there. I sat in a table in the corner of the room and waited for my coffee. I started looking at the tables, waiting for the time to go by. That was when I saw him, reading a newspaper, it was broad daylight, but I couldn’t make out his face. All I could see was that he had light skin, brownish hair and a blue cap. I couldn’t see much of his face because of the newspaper, but something about him seemed familiar, like someone I used to know when I was little. I stopped looking at him, for a second, to get my coffee, and when I looked back, he was gone.

You know that feeling you get when you don’t remember what you did during the last 10 hours? You know that feeling when you get when you wake up and feel like something horrible has happened? That was how I woke up that night in the middle August. I turned around to look at the alarm clock when I saw her. A dead woman, in my bed, with its eyes opened, looking at me. I yelled; I didn’t know what to do. I looked at my body, it was also covered in blood, my bed was covered in blood, and the floor was covered with blood. That was when I broke down, I sat on the floor and started crying, paralyzed, my face as white as the snow. I was traumatized, and I didn’t know what to do. I took a deep breath and starting thinking about what I had done last night. Thousands of questions were racing through my mind as I sat there on the blood-covered floor.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried to remember what had happened the other night, but it was all a blank. All I remembered was leaving my house. I started thinking about my options: I could call the police, but then what would I say? I would probably look like I killed her, which I didn’t, did I? I went to the bathroom and took a shower, to clean my body from all of the blood. I had always seen myself as a boring person, nothing interested had happened to me, it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how lucky I was for having a boring, average life. I got out of the shower, got dressed, and decided to search the body. I looked at the body to see if I knew her, I didn’t. The dead person was a woman, about 60 years of age and with some wrinkles of her face. I checked her body to see if she carried an ID or something that would help me know who she was. I found a nametag, it read “Jena Marshal, cleaning lady” and on top it said Hemerson Hotel. That was when a piece of my blank memory came back, last night I had gone to the Hemerson Hotel for some drinks and I meet someone there. I kept on searching her body for the keycard, which opens the hotel rooms, to search for more clues. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was out the door and on my way to the Hemerson Hotel. I had left the body of Jena on my bed, too scared to move it. I entered the hotel, made my way to the bar, and sat down. I looked around to see if anything seemed familiar to me. I asked the bar tender if I had come to this bar last night. He answered yes; I had been here last night, with a guy. I asked him if he knew who it was, and he replied that he didn’t, but he had his hotel room number since he put it to pay for the drinks. The room number was 223; I thanked him and went upstairs to the room to figure out what had happened last night. When I had finally reached the room, I grabbed the key from the cleaning lady and went inside. It seemed like a normal hotel room, it had the bed unmade, the just recently finished breakfast tray on the floor and the windows open. I decided to snoop around to see if I could find clues of the person I had meet last night. I opened the closet, but there were no clothes there, there were pictures of me. There were pictures of me in the street, pictures of me with my friends, pictures of me in the university. ‘This must be the stalker that has been following me around’, I thought. That’s when I felt someone put a towel with a weird smell in front of my face and everything went dark.

Today I saw him, in the cafeteria, with a grim face watching me write in my journal. It amused him watching me here, it amused him watching me suffer, it amused him getting his revenge.

I woke up in a dark room with a bright light shining on my face, my eyes adjusted to the light and I tried to see where I was. I was alone in a room, tied up to a chair and I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do; I just stood there waiting for something to happen. And it did, a few moments later I head some footsteps and a small devil-like laugh. I waited to see the person of the devil-like laugh; it was the guy with the blue cap. He took off his cap and I could see his hair, he had wavy brownish hair and brown eyes. ‘Yes, I definitely know him,’ I thought, but I still didn’t know from where “Do you remember me?” He asked with a crazed smile.
I swallowed, “No.” I replied. He laughed again and started walking around the small room, muttering some words. Suddenly he stopped and whispered in my ear: “I am Arnold, from high school.”

That was when it hit me that was when I finally understood. “What do you want from me?” I asked him, in a quiet voice.“Well see, I want revenge,” he said with a smile.

“You see, for years I have been thinking about what to do to you, for you to get what you deserve. I have followed you around, everywhere you went, thinking of a plan, for you to get what you deserve.” Everything he said, he said with a small smile on his face.
He carried on: “I didn’t plan on killing that lady, it all just kind of happened. Last night we were both pretty drunk, we went upstairs to my room to talk some more. That is when I saw that cleaning lady snooping around my room. I was outraged and so were you; I grabbed the bottle of champagne and hit her in the head with it. Not my best work. That is when I figured out a plan, I told you to stay in my room while I went to the nearest pharmacy to buy some pills for you to forget all of this. I managed to persuade you into helping me move the body from my hotel room, to your house, where she bleed out. Then I gave you a glass of water with the pills and I left. You see, you will go down for the murder of that lady and I will finally get my revenge.” He looked straight at me with a crazed look, that is when I felt a towel in front of my face and I blacked out.

I woke up in the afternoon, sleeping in my bloody bed next to Jena. I woke up not knowing what to do. I didn’t know whether to go to the police and tell them what had happened, escape, or hide the body. After an hour of thinking about what to do, I decided to go to the police and tell them everything that had happened. They didn’t believe me; they thought I was crazy and that I had made the story up, so they sent me to a mental asylum, where I have been leaving for 7 years and where Arnold has followed me. He follows me because it amuses him watching me suffer; it amuses him thinking that everyone here thinks I am crazy, but I am not.

Today I have gotten a letter from Arnold. Inside the letter is a photo of me writing in my diary. As I opened it, I smiled, thinking that this was the proof that I needed, the proof for people to know that I am not crazy! And for people to know that Arnold exists, I tucked the letter under my pillow for no one to take it. I ran out into the hallway and called the psychiatrist, the one that has been forcing me to write this journal. She came into the room and could tell that I was excited. “What is it Ashley?” She asked intrigued.

“I finally have proof that Arnold is still following me.” I replied with a crazed smile. I went to my bed and moved the pillow, but there was no letter there. The letter had disappeared. “But, but, there was a letter…” I said about to cry.

“Listen Ashley,” she said taking my hands. “Arnold is not here, he killed himself 7 years ago, a week after you got sent to the mental asylum.”