The Watcher
I remember from an early age my mother pointing out faces in the clouds to me. She swore there shouldn’t be a cloud on earth which lacked at least one face. I always thought it was because her belief in a higher power was so devout. That was before I met him; The Watcher.
Growing up, I loved to hide. My parents grew accustomed to moments of sheer panic, thinking they’d lost me, only to have their lovely daughter returned unharmed. Gruesome tales of kidnapping and the morbid capabilities of strangers didn’t work. I still hid from everyone and relished in my moment of glee when found.
Hide and seek was a popular game with my friends. When I had them over, my mother pointed to the clouds, “Girls, do you see him? He loves hide and seek too.”
We couldn’t miss it. Starkly recognizable as a face, it looked out of the clouds and peered at the earth with a purpose. When asked who the face was, she smiled softly, “They are the watchers over our energy. Storms allow them to cross over so you must stay indoors during storms.”
This type of suspicion became my bit of normalcy. As birthdays flew by, this same process would be repeated until one year brought a thunderstorm that changed it all. The year was a rough one, pounding our region with floods and chaos.
I had just turned fifteen. We were heading home because a wall of storm clouds was building. Try as she might, my mother couldn’t find a face in her clouds this time. When I looked, I saw plenty but the storm relentlessly shifted and reformed them. Every time she looked, the clouds would change before we had a chance to verify.
All through the day, my mother was jumpy because of this. At one point she insisted we were being followed by a shadowy stalker. It was then that she told me of a legend. If The Watcher couldn’t be found in the clouds, he would appear as a dark shadow to steal your energy.
With nervous glances at my father, she explained the importance of the faces in the clouds. When an individual was struck blind to the faces, their Watcher would appear. Later in the day, she rediscovered her faces. But…I lost mine.
She grew more nervous, appearing as if she believed it all without doubt. Knowing my mother to be highly superstitious, I could see that she was approaching a state of panic. Glancing over her shoulder, she repeatedly asked me if I saw anyone. When I told her that I didn’t, she grew pale and nodded.
Later that day, the storm hit our house. When the electricity failed, we lit our candles and switched on our freshly maintained flashlights. Since the year had brought violent storms, we knew electricity could be down for days.
My mother stuck close to my father who softly consoled her. She was from Romania where they are superstitious about many things. My dog huddled next to me, whining as the wind gusted against the house. Thunder crashed in the distance as my mother pulled at my father, “I have to use the bathroom. Come with me.”
They slowly made their way toward the back of the house. I heard them talking in the quiet between booms of thunder. While counting seconds after the lightning strikes, I lay my head on my dog’s stomach and waited. By the time my parents arrived back into the room, lightening was frequently exposing everything in the room in bright flashes.
When I sat back, I was surprised to see a figure to my left. As if a ninja had appeared, it was silently waiting for a specific moment to leap. I jumped and fisted my hands in my dog’s pelt as I asked in panic, “Who’s that?”
My mother stopped in the middle of the room, “Me and your father. Katia, you’re scaring me.”
“No. Who’s sitting there?”
My mother’s flashlight beam swept frantically about. The minute it flooded the figure’s location with light, the ninja vanished. I frowned before the snap of nearby lightning bolt made everyone jump. My mother shut her flashlight off to conceal battery power as she asked me in a shaky voice, “What did he look like, Katia?”
I tried to play it off as a figment of my imagination. I could tell that she wasn’t buying my bluster. Shaking her head, she urged, “Tell me what the figure looked like, Katia.”
I finally told her it was a black shadow in the form of a male. My father looked nervously on in the background. She insisted it was a Watcher sent to us from the clouds. I seriously wondered if my mother wasn’t breaking under the stress.
Still believing it was a figment of my imagination even though my own eyes had seen it, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe her reasoning. Lightning ripped through the atmosphere, flooding our room with bright light. My gaze flew to my father in time to see movement behind him.
Shrieking and completely spooked now, I frantically pointed at him. He rushed forward protectively, chastising my mother for scaring us, “Ruth, please stop. Nothing good will come from speaking of such.”
Shaking, my mother stared at him as her arms circled me in a protective cocoon. The flickering candlelight fought with darkness, teasing my imagination as I searched the room. I finally panicked, “Dad, do you think they’re real!?! You didn’t deny it.”
Another flash showed me the shadowy figure closing in on him, reaching out to us. Without thinking, I scrambled between him and the figure. My mother grabbed for me, “Never offer yourself to them!”
Too late…
Lightning threw the room into stark relief as the hands of the watcher reached for me. Its touch brought coldness which no human should ever endure. I screamed as its fiery orbs opened right in front of my face. A swarm of confusion tore my thinking apart as the hellish orbs neared my face. Then I passed out.
My mother told me when I awakened days later that my father had saved us. Lightning struck the house, causing my mother to faint from fright. If my father, the only one conscious at the time, hadn’t been there; we would have perished.
Regarding my Watcher, my mother never said a word about what happened. But I knew. Even though my mind had shut down, an all-seeing energy had fled my body. Tethered to me and out of danger, it watched from the ceiling as it hovered in the corner of the room. To humanity, I had an out of body experience.
I saw the shadow which my mother called The Watcher stretch out over my body to wait for my energy’s return as the storm died down. Being a malignant force, it began to toy with my fears. My mind slipped into the protective arms of a coma. The Watcher’s only defense to my protective cocoon was nightmares.
I was stronger than it thought. Watching my body from the corner and invisible to all around me, my energy saw my parents beg me to wake up, give them a sign that I heard them, or simply come back to them in some small way. When I didn’t, my mother stepped away from my body as they assured me that they would see me again.
Even though my mother and father spoke to me, I was locked in The Watcher’s playland of horrors. My tethered energy clung to the nearest surface as we transferred from house to vehicle before settling into hospital bed. After cataloging my fears, the manipulative entity captured my attention to lure my energy back. The nightmares began.
Spiders scraped inside the walls, always lurking but never seen. Their shadows fed off my cocooned form, horrifically displayed on the wall and ceiling of the bed to terrorize my open eyes. Teasing my fight or flight instinct, The Watcher transformed the wall to a mirror to grant view of the snakes in my bed.
The Watcher needed to feed.
My mother knew I was playing the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. Out of earshot, she told my father about my inner battle. When they returned, the conversation tone changed to encouragement. They spoke in code, urging me to make my way back to their voice. They knew The Watcher couldn’t stay within my body for long. With a two-day period, it needed energy that only someone of my age could grant.
Hours passed as my mother and father slept and kept guard over me but never came too close to my body. Upon transportation to the hospital, we realized the storm had left a path of damage.
The Watcher had formed perfectly to my body, mimicking my every movement and always waiting. While under my coma, I was shown what my future would hold if I would only give The Watcher what it wanted. In The Watcher’s lying playland, I would be spared without condition and allowed to live.
My mother secretly informed me not to listen to the entity’s lies. I suspected that I would require constant care if I lived through this ordeal. I knew that I would not make it if The Watcher consumed my energy. We were reduced to a waiting game.
Knowing The Watcher could only hold out for so long, I watched my mother direct the doctors to only allow her and my father access to my room. Her strict orders—especially no friends—assured that The Watcher would not flee to another unknowing teenager. When desperate enough, it would return to its original when and where.
The next day stretched on as the nightmares grew stronger. I was chased through homes by spiders, ever searching for some form of relief. And finding that it was never there.
I was IT and always would be. The ever-present Watcher was always stalking me from room to room. I ran through the house, finding rooms black with shadows while others were full of clouds. By the end of the dreams, I permanently owned a small cloud of my own.
The following morning, a thunderstorm struck with violent force. The electricity was knocked out so backup generators kicked on at the hospital. In the gloom, I could tell The Watcher was having issues remaining within my inert body. As the storm escalated, the entity grew more and more restless.
In a moment of clarity, I understood its thoughts. Its time with me was up. This storm was nature calling it back but it wanted to remain. Knowing my chance at freedom was upon me, my energy plastered itself to the ceiling and impatiently waited. A nearby snap made everyone jump as the room was flooded with light.
The entity had stood and was peering down at my still body as thunder shook the air around us. Its fiery orbs shifted from face to body before they darted to the side, directly gazing at my ethereal connection joining life force to body. In the electrical display of the storm, my energy force was now visible to it.
As the storm reached its crest, The Watcher grabbed the trailing tether that connected my energy force. Nausea spread through my stomach as it started leeching my energy. It had discovered me. Now, it would devour.
As my weakening energy slowly approached my body for The Watcher’s taking, frigid claws sank into my mind. After a painful taste which I thought I’d never forget, the shadowy figure known as The Watcher shimmered before my eyes.
To my relief, it was too late for him. The storm raged behind us as he glared down at me before winking out of existence. Now hovering in mid air, my stunned energy force scanned the room for any hint or remnant. There was none.
Merging back inside me brought me out of the coma. I now have trouble remembering things but, other than that, I am glad to be alive. I explained what happened to my parents. I could tell there was more information, some truth that would change my life, which they were holding back.
My mother finally told me, “Katia, that Watcher will always be connected to you. It thinks you owe it something now and will be back to collect. You must always be careful.”
At the time, I was simply happy to be awake and interacting without the presence of The Watcher. Her words would be forgotten anyway, ripped from my mind by the new disability, until the next thunderstorm. My mother was there to remind me of the possibility but nothing happened.
Years of this went by. My mother’s protective stance grew stronger throughout each year. By the time each birthday arrived, she was a nervous wreck. If thunderstorms hit on the twelfth of May, everyone was required to calm her. As for The Watcher, nothing ever happened…for three years.
I met someone named Paul at my eighteenth birthday party. My mother acted funny when I introduced him to her. His arm was slung over a little boy’s shoulders. At twenty-three, he already had a five-year old child. His ex-wife had died in a car crash. My mother took the boy, Marc, under her wing from that moment onward, giving us time to get to know each other.
After exploring similarities and dislikes, he asked if I would join them for a walk later on the beach. I couldn’t think of a better way to end a birthday so I eagerly agreed. The party continued with my mother incorporating Marc, his son, smoothly into the event. Looking back, I can easily say that I hadn’t seen her happier in years.
At the time, I was too busy savoring the joyful moment to detect any trouble on the horizon. We ate too much cake before sailing the remainder through the air in a cake fight. I am proud to admit that I launched the first piece.
After everyone worked in harmony to clean the back yard up, I fell into step beside Paul and his son, Marc. While his son ran ahead and played, Paul and I got to know each other better. We lost track of the time as we walked along the water’s edge.
Thunder in the distance drew my attention back to the present. Looking around, I didn’t see his son at first. Paul spotted him and called out, waving a hand in the air, “We need to head back.”
Marc ran ahead of us, dancing along the water’s edge in childish glee. Frowning, I tried to shove a feeling of foreboding down. It had been so long since I’d thought of the coma or felt The Watcher’s nearness that, at first, I didn’t detect the problem.
When the storm rushed in, catching us in a downpour and sending everyone scrambling for shelter, déjà vu swept over me. I frantically looked around, expecting the black shadowy figure to be approaching fast. Gazing up at the sky, I saw faces in the clouds.
Faces…but that’s not possible. Where is my Watcher?
Confusion had me frozen to the spot before Marc’s five-year old voice broke the spell from behind me, “Hi Mister Watcher. My daddy said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
~~ The End ~~
