watcher

The windows were still open like flags waving him down. Frost spiderwebbed the glass panes of the windows he passed -- the seasons had changed quickly. Perhaps Jack had been too busy to notice, but the first snow had fallen the night before and stuck to everything in a fine white powder. Sophie had complained of the frigid draft and wrapped herself tighter in her blankets, and Jack had thought of how she still insisted on keeping the window open for him.

He knew the routine now; visit the girl, and when she rested prepare the man. It was a quick amble up the imposing walls of the house.  A few precise lopes of his body and he sunk inside the shadowy stomach of the attic room, landed with barely a sound, and waited.

Too quiet. There weren't any sounds coming from the bed - no movements either, no presence he discovered when he turned his attention from the dust disturbed on the cardboard boxes to where the girl should be. She wasn't there, yes, that was obvious enough, but why? Sophie (that was her name, yes) was ill, couldn't move across the room, much less out of it. Why all of her things were located within arm's reach. Why she was defenseless and helpless. He remembered. So how? It was a few more moments before he paced the round shape of the rug, cutting in and out of moonlight. It was not often she simply disappeared on him -- in fact not at all. He kneeled to search under the bed, letting the curtains hide the mattress, pulling them back again as if she could appear by magic.

Jack gave up on his hunt shortly after. It was easy to assume she was just downstairs at her parents' bidding, or a million other causes that didn't need his energy spent on them. After the few minutes he spent in the empty room he climbed out and back into the breezeless starlit night.

The next night she was still missing. Even less time was spent there before a quick and stilted exit was made.

The next night was the same. Impatience broiled in him and underneath it were the first curdles of worry. He perched on the windowsill, balancing. Looked in. Saw nothing. Fell away into the dark.

The final night was the last straw. Legs thundered down on the old wood; shoes creaked along the floorboards in a confused pursuit of something (someone) that just wasn't there. A quick pore over of the wardrobe, details he had disregarded for and now honed in on fruitlessly, revealed the drawers had been emptied out, all of them. No medicines in the side table. The lamp was missing, a handful of books from the shelf. The thought occured to him that perhaps her illness had finally overtaken her, and he quietly pushed it aside.

Voices, far away and foggy, cut into his thoughts. Jack slowed to a stop near the fold-out stairs to the lower level and listened. It was a conversation.

"-- bottle of pain meds she forgot, bottom shelf, she said, so, ya know, gotta check." A deep voice, thundering out.

"Those are important. Make sure you actually /look/." Light and sharp.

"I'll look, I'll look! Good thing we moved 'er when we did or this cold woulda only made it worse, eh?"

"...Steven."

"You don't have to worry."

A soft laugh. "I know."

A loud click-thunk-clack of a locking mechanism. Light poured into the attic room, invited in by her father. Jack backed into the blackest corner, staying very still. Steven entered moments after. The man was short, thin, bearded; he squinted like a blind kitten and pawed for the shelf, got on his hands and knees. He scratched his bald scalp, perplexed, and finally after a long minute found what he was looking for - a detail Jack had overlooked in his earnest. A palmed orange bottle of pills later, and the stooped figure was gone.

As was he.

So that was it.

The open lit window wasn't hard to find after a few minutes of searching around the old home; had she insisted on one to let the breeze in? She must have. It was on the second story, nearly touched by the crooked, dark arms of an enormous tree.

There was a clear view of Sophie's bed from the window, being perpendicular to it on the opposite wall. She was reading, so engrossed in a novel she didn't bother to look up. Jack, cloaked by the tree's leaves, thought of the neglected ones still resting in the attic.

Steven entered, set the requested bottle of pills and a glass of water by her on a table. He asked in a low voice if there was anything else she needed. Sophie shook her head, said goodnight, struggling to contain a wince and a whimper.

Sophie was weak. She wouldn't be particularly good company. This night, contentment was found in simply watching.

Once, she looked up and through the open window, staring at him but not seeing him. Her face was flushed and shone with sweat. He stared back, watching her hands play with the leaves of the book idly.

She reached over to the lamp and cast herself in darkness.