The next few days were tense for me. I was walking within the day, but they held me for another day even after I said I felt fully recovered. The manhunt for the intruder was ongoing, but without any information the police seemed to be at a loss on catching them. I had seen the man from the hospital around, discussing things in a low voice, seemingly still concerned about the hospital security. The hospital was in chaos as they attempted to notify the people whose medical files had been deleted along with the security footage.

Two officers were stationed outside my door as guards against any further attempts to attack me. I was very bored in being confined to my bed as the doctors ran even more tests but by Wednesday afternoon they decided I was good to release. I thanked the officers at the door and walked through the hospital to the reception desk.

The receptionist walked through the massive bill from my stay at the hospital as I looked down in dismay. My insurance covered some of it but not nearly as much as I thought it would. After she was done, I shoved the bill in my left pocket and turned around only to stop as I saw a familiar face. There in the waiting room was the officer with the clipboard from when I gave my statement. Officer Nick. He was wearing casual clothes and was talking with two teenage guys, one who looked heavily concussed. As I walked past, the officer chuckled and took two cards from the stack he had on his clipboard. I frowned and slowed my pace as I walked by to try to listen in as the officer said something.

“...best skating park in the area. It’s all on the card there. And one for your friend too. Make sure he’s more careful this time haha”. He handed one to the concussed guy’s friend who looked at the card with interest. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the officer hold out the card to the concussed guy as well who dreamily took it and slipped it into his pocket without seeming to see anything around him at all.

The officer and I noticed that I had stopped walking and was just staring at them. I quickly shifted my gaze to the left as if just scanning the room. I looked back as I saw the officer walking straight toward me, a smile plastered on his face. I opened my mouth to say something only to notice him looking over my shoulder. I turned to look behind me but no one behind me seemed to be looking in our direction.

Oof. I fell forward a little as the officer bumped into my shoulder and brushed right passed me without sparing me a look. He glanced over his shoulder behind him, but his eyes skidded right past me before he turned back around. “Wha.. Hey!” The officer ignored me. I stared in disbelief as he focused on a woman in her thirties coughing into her cloth mask. The officer struck up conversation, and the woman perked up and seemed interested even as she coughed. I drifted a little closer, still in disbelief, he hadn’t taken just one step to the side to avoid me in the wide open room!

“...Best delivery in town I say! Used it last year when I was quarantining myself! Better than my wife’s cooking, but don’t tell her that!” The man said. The woman took the card and thanked him before releasing another hacking cough. He nodded at her before taking a decisive step back.

Officer Nick turned and walked to the other side of the room again, but I was smart enough to dodge him this time. I slow walked toward the exit and witnessed him hand out another three cards to people. It was strange. It was as if he had the exact card for whatever that person needed. The last one must have been a wild guess. He offered the information to a knitting society to an eighty year old man with a cane. The old man just accepted it and said he would tell his wife about it. How she had recently complained that she missed her old group.

Every person he approached accepted a card. It was like some kind of magic trick. I stood by the door for another moment and tried to catch the officer’s eye as he crossed the room again. But I was completely ignored again. How strange, I'm not sure what I ever did to him to deserve this. He seemed decent enough when he was questioning me last Sunday. I guess I didn’t imagine him as some kind of super salesman on his own time either. Well, whatever was going on there, I was just happy to finally be able to go home at last.

— — — O — o — O — — —

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

As I walked back into my house I could see the glass shards and dried blood covering the floor. Tiny red flakes had spread across the room in all the nooks and crannies of the floorboards. As I stood there, I could feel a cool breeze at my back through the broken window. I went into the garage and got a tarp and some duct tape that I put over the window to fix the hole as best I could.

I got a dustpan and started cleaning out the glass shards as best as I could. Eventually, I reached the caked mass of blood where my head had been when I passed out over a week ago. I got a bucket of water and a mop out but then just looked down. I paused and just stared at it for a while. Thinking about the attack. The sudden snap of the tarp behind me snapped me awake and brought me back into motion as I began to scrub.

As I cleaned, I realized that I hadn’t been prepared. After all these years, I had subconsciously viewed Serenity as some kind of safe space. Sure, things were strange. Red had definitely been frightening initially. But I had never been attacked in Serenity before. Even the pain from the telepathy was something I considered as little more than an inconvenience at this point. Something more like a splinter or a stubbed toe. But the hostile creature was still out there. And potentially humans too based on the stranger's fight with the police. So I needed to prepare so something like this didn’t catch me unaware again. It would only take one wrong glance out the window to initiate a psychic battle after all. So I had to be more prepared for the next time so I could protect myself properly.

— — — O — o — O — — —

After finishing fixing the damage as best I could, it was time to make an alarm system. As I cleaned I had considered what I could do based on the rules of the strange realm of Serenity. I had a basic idea of how I could set up the system, but it would require a lot of maintenance. One basic rule I discovered early on is that every object not touching a person on Earth froze in place. It was the influence of living things in the realm that whatever I or the Eldritch touched slowly returned to life and acted normally.

Everything directly touching a person like clothes or a wallet would disappear along with them, staying on Earth. So if I threw something that would make a loud sound into the air at exactly midnight then it would freeze in place midair until something interact with it.

That would be my perfect alarm system as it would make a sound if it unfroze. I needed something easier to use though, the timing would be too precise for even one object, let alone dropping a whole perimeter of objects at once. So I decided to myself that my best bet on short notice would be the use of wind chimes.

My eldritch only approached from the front path so I had to cover the other directions to give me a warning of the Enemy's approach. The alarm system couldn’t be too obvious either for the watching police and neighbors.

Police cars were uncommon in my suburban neighborhood yet there was one setting a speed trap on the main road suspiciously close to the street as I drove by. They were likely standing by in case I got attacked again. Maybe I was bait for whatever organization was after me? I'm not sure I liked that thought. Hopefully, they would keep me safe from attackers on earth at least.

I bought lots of twine, a few windchimes, and high visibility ribbons. I strung up the twine around the perimeter of the roof after getting my ladder out of the garage. Near each of the ground windows I had a dangling piece of twine attached to a windchime on the outside. I also dangled some high visibility ribbons on the bottom of the windchimes so I could see their movement if they unfroze as well as hear them.

Finally, I ran a line from the roof and looped it through the grass and over the edge of the tree line. I didn’t have a fence or anything so I just draped it over branches so it would end up at roughly knee height. I also snaked it through the grass for extra security.

Each window had one uninterrupted piece of twine for the whole setup so any contact would unfreeze the whole assembly. That should let me know what direction someone is coming from as well as the portions for each window would trigger independently. I also set up a similar system on the backdoor, making it a little awkward to open and close the door through the looping twine. I planned to use the front for Red’s visits, so I shouldn't have to go through the back in Serenity at least. I made sure the path to the front door would be clear for when Red came. I would have to rig something up after he left since Yellow had come later than Red every time so far.

As the sun began to set, I finally finished and walked around my house to inspect my work. The twine was visible to me, but thin enough to miss unless you were looking for it. The windchimes and high visibility ribbon hanging in front of every ground floor window definitely was a little stranger. I couldn't really explain the looping twine over the back door, but it wasn't visible from the street so I should be fine. But If I had to explain the windchimes, I could just say I liked the sound. No reason to think of some overcomplicated lie, sometimes people just do weird stuff because they want to.