The town I live in is nice enough.

It’s quiet. A little quaint. My dream is to move to the city once I graduate from college. I want a life where things are busier. More exciting. More alive.

I live at home with my parents and my twin sister. Both of my parents are underpaid teachers, so our upbringing has been relatively modest. We’ve never been spoiled, we’ve always been told to work hard for every dollar, and gratitude for everything we have has been instilled in us since childhood.

My parents must have worked really hard to save money throughout these years, because the house that we’ve lived in since I was a teen is pretty darn huge. Our tiny little town in general is relatively prestigious (I went online to search up the prices of houses in our neighborhood and wow). So, I do my part to extract wisdom from my parents whenever possible. Clearly, they know a thing or two about how to “win” at life.

Of all of the things my parents ask of me and my sister, the rule they are the most stern about is:

“If you’re going downstairs after midnight, you have to bring someone with you.”

Ever since we first moved to this house, they would remind us of this rule every chance they got. They’d randomly bring it up at the dinner table, or before we’d go off to school. Sometimes, if they heard footsteps in the hallway at night, one of them would get up from bed and walk with us to wherever in the house we were going.

The strangest thing about it was that me and my sister never really had any reason to go downstairs at night anyways. Our rooms, the living room, the kitchen, and pretty much everything else we use was upstairs. Sure, downstairs had a games room and some stuff we maybe needed to pull out from storage from time to time, but overall, I couldn’t really think of a scenario where we’d need to go downstairs after midnight.

My sister and I would ask my parents about it sometimes. “Why do we have this rule? What happens if we break it?” They would usually deflect, change the subject, or say “We’ll tell you when you’re older, dear.”

As I got older and older, the fact that my whole family slept upstairs (in a large two-story house, mind you) became increasingly weird to me. I was curious about what exactly was going on. So, fresh off my twentieth birthday, I decided to conjure up a situation where I’d absolutely need to head downstairs after 12AM.

“Mom! I left my laptop in the games room and I need to polish up a paper that I’m submitting tomorrow!”

Lame excuse, I know. She was skeptical and pushed back a little bit - can’t I get up early tomorrow and finish up the essay in the morning? Why did I leave this assignment until the last minute?

I was able to assuage these questions pretty easily - I thought it was due two days from now, I thought my laptop was in my room, I’m a little bit stressed and I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t finish it, etc. etc., so she ultimately obliged.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

We made our way down the small staircase and arrived at the door leading to the downstairs area. Before my mother opened it, she turned to me.

“Okay. He’s likely going to latch onto me. Make sure I don’t open the door to the backyard, okay? Make sure I’m with you at all times. You can pull me if you need to.”

I thought she was kidding.

She opened the door. Our downstairs area has another small living room, a small kitchen, and a hallway that leads to our games room and our storage area. I’d “accidentally left” my laptop in the games room, so as we entered, I immediately turned towards the hallway.

I thought my mom would follow me.

Instead, I saw her… just standing there. Shivering. Jittery. Her gaze was fixed on the window in the kitchen. It’s a big window, with the blinds usually pulled up. The window was a peek into our large, mostly empty backyard.

I looked at my mom confusedly, as she continued her uninterrupted stare. Slowly, she started walking to the door to our backyard.

“Mom! What are you -”

That’s when I saw him. Pressed against the window from the outside. His face was obscured by the darkness, but I could see his eyes. Wide open. Wider than eyes should go. Otherworldly. He looked focused. Excited.

My mom continued walking to the door. I grabbed her, as hard as I could, and pulled her away, back to the staircase leading upstairs. I closed the door behind us.

It took my mom a moment to snap out of it. She spent another minute staring at the door to the downstairs area, meekly trying to open it and go back to where she was previously walking to. When she finally pulled herself together -

“What the fuck was that?!”

“Did you get your laptop hun?”

“MOM! What the fuck was that outside the window?!”

Mom’s reaction was weird. A mix of annoyance, concern, and fear. She finally responded.

“Terrible things happen when we talk about him too much. As long as we go downstairs in pairs of two, we’re always okay. No one’s let him in yet.”

And that was that. I continued asking her as we made our way upstairs but she just flat out ignored me at this point.

I had no idea what to do. I wanted to tell my sister (who was generally super carefree), but part of me thought that it’d only freak the hell out of her and achieve nothing. I tried bugging my dad about it, but he also deflected. At most, sometimes he’d say something like “We just wanted to make sure we could give you and your sister a comfortable upbringing,” and then walk away. What the fuck?

It’s been two years since me and my mom went downstairs together after midnight. Since then, we’ve continued to follow the rule, and we'd thankfully never run into any problems. I’ve tried to convince my parents that we should think about downsizing and moving somewhere else, but they’d always say stuff like “that isn’t how this works dear” and “as long as we play it safe after midnight, we’ll be okay.”

That brings me to why I’m writing this today. My parents have been gone for the week, visiting family in another state. My sister left earlier this evening to go to a sleepover with her best friend. I’m home alone, for the first time in forever.

I don’t usually have my phone on me. It takes me a couple of hours, at least, to read and respond to text messages. I’ve always been lazy about it. I recently took a look at my phone to see a missed text message from my sister.

“Hey! I might’ve accidentally left the downstairs door open. Just an FYI - please close it whenever you get a sec.”

She sent this text message four hours ago.

I read it at ten minutes past midnight.

I’m writing this from the closet in my room. So far, I think I’m okay. Maybe she’s misremembering and she kept the door shut.

The only thing I’m worried about is that I’m starting to shiver a little bit. And I have this inexplicable urge to get out from my hiding spot so that he can find me.