The Stranger Outside My House

A Short Story

My name is Alan Billington.

It was a Thursday morning, the first of April, 1999. My wife and kids were on a mini-vacation at a beach house in Florida. I would have loved to have gone with them, but it was tax time, and I was a tax accountant. I didn’t mind the work so much since it was really only for a couple of months out of the year that I had to put in such long hours. On this particular day I had gone from early to late working on an account. I went to bed exhausted, but couldn’t quite sleep through the night. I looked at the clock. 3:00am. Much too early to get up. I tried to go back to sleep.

Photo by Sergiu Baica on Unsplash

I might have succeeded if not for the sound of branches against my bedroom window. The wind was picking up outside. It slapped the branches against the windowpane and then dragged them off in an irregular rhythm. I’d been meaning to trim that tree ever since the leaves returned. I tried blocking out the sound but couldn’t.

I got up and walked downstairs to the kitchen. To avoid blinding myself with the overhead light, I opted for the stove light. I put the kettle on to make some coffee. If you’re not going to sleep, you might as well make it official. Besides, I figured since I was up I could get an early jump on the day’s work.  

While I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I ground some coffee and glanced toward the kitchen window. I couldn’t see my backyard due to the inside lighting. I heard a low rumble, and then a spatter of light rain. In the black window pane, I only saw my own reflection staring back at me. It wasn’t a flattering picture: tired, balding, looking like I needed a few more hours of sleep. It’s funny. I remember looking at the bags under my eyes and thinking, just for a moment, about a commercial for some moisturizer I had seen on TV the week before. Strange that I remember that. 

As I looked disapprovingly at myself, the backyard security light flickered on and off, giving me a glimpse of the yard and of the weather. This didn’t concern me at first because the security light would often go on and off with the passage of a deer or some other forest creature. We lived on fifteen acres of land back then, right at the edge of a national forest.

I finished making the coffee and poured myself a cup. That’s when the backyard security light came on again. This time it stayed on. I looked lazily out the window, which was spotty now with raindrops. That’s when I saw her for the first time. My chest tightened at the view. She was old, with long gray hair that hung wetly over her shoulders and onto her lap. She was wearing a dull coloured shirt with no sleeves, and a long skirt that billowed in the wind. She herself sat perfectly still on my children’s swing set – on the right-hand swing – her arms held high, fingers wrapped around the chains. I had no idea who she was or where she had come from, or why she was in my backyard. My eyes were drawn to her arms. There was something off about them. They were much too long, stretching a good five feet from where she sat. For an instant, I had the impression of two boa constrictors wrapping themselves around the plastic-coated chains as they moved upward.  

I jumped, and my coffee mug hit the floor, breaking into two large pieces, gushing hot liquid across my bare feet. In pain, I looked down quickly and then back up as the security lights in the backyard went off. Darkness and my dim reflection stared back at me. It all happened so fast. I remember thinking, Okay, three options here. Number one, it wasn’t real. I only thought I saw her. She was just a figment of my imagination or something. Maybe I’m sleep-walking or dreaming. Number two, there really was an old woman out there, but her arms were not that long - they just looked unnaturally long because of the water dripping down the window pane. Maybe the rain streaming down the window made some kind of optical illusion. And three . . . there was an old woman out there with impossibly long arms.

I stepped over the broken pieces of the mug towards a sliding outer door, cupped my hands against the glass, and peered out into the darkness. Nothing. I could hear the wind and the rain falling lightly on my wooden deck. I made sure the door was locked and then threw the switch on the backyard lighting. I walked back to the kitchen window and peered out again, closer this time. No one. The swing where the old woman had been sitting was moving, but so was the other one. The wind, I thought. I must have stood at the window for five, maybe ten minutes. I was utterly still – barely breathing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a moment so still in my life. Eventually I turned away, cleaned up the coffee mess on the floor and headed back to my bedroom. As I showered and dressed for work, I kept an eye on the windows facing the back of the house. But there was nothing there.