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{Faces in the Windows}
It was one in the morning when there was a thud outside. Not your ordinary thud, like someone falling, but the thud of something or someone walking on the roof. I woke up and reached for the lamp, and rolling onto my side, confused and cold. Lately, there had been tons of thuds in the past week. It was the dead of winter, so I couldn't quite place why there would be something outside in the cold this late at night. But, we had just moved to a small island in Norway, where so many stories about Nessie in the Loch Ness, Thor, and some random Headless Horseman were all the rage.
Another thud. Another, louder than the last one.
BANG! I nearly jumped out of my pants. Was that a gunshot? I stumbled over to the window and pushed the edge of the curtain to the side. There was someone, standing in the garden, hitting someone else with a stick. The person getting hit had white hair, like the color had been completely sucked out of it.
"Dad!" I whispered. The figure on the far side of the room in the third bed rolled over sleepily. "DAD!"
"Eh, what?" Dad mumbled.
"There's someone in the backyard!" I whispered, not taking my eyes off the strange pair of people. The other one didn't look quite human. It was too tall and wore clothes similar to those of Victorian times.
Dad stumbled to the window, and I opened the curtain all the way. "There's nothing there Hiccup, go back to bed."
"What?" I practically yelped, staring straight at the figures. The one in black stared back at me. From all the way upstairs, I could see the redness of his eyes.
"I think that you're gettin' your annual winter fever." Dad muttered, his huge hand brushing away my hair and resting across my forehead. Frowning, he headed back to his bed across the room from mine. I climbed back into my own, shuddering and pulling the covers up. Gobber's bed lay vacant, as he was still coming on the boat.
Toothless crawled up next to my bed and licked my face. "Goodnight bud." I whispered.
Toothless snored loudly, and soon I fell asleep, but there had been someone, or something in the backyard, and I was going to find out what it was.
"Hiccup! Get out of bed, you lazy sack o' potatoes!" Gobber yelled loudly.
"Gobber, do I have to go to school?" I asked, feeling ill. The sky outside reflected my mood: a deep gray with buckets of water pouring from the sky. Toothless jumped up onto my bed and tackled me with a wakeup call that involved too much licking.
I pushed Toothless back. "Ok, bud, enough, yeah, good morning to you too."
A loud rumbling snore came from the right side of the room, where Dad was still sleeping. Toothless's huge dog bed lay in a heap at the foot of my bed.
I sleepily staggered into the bathroom and took my shower.
I heard the thud as soon as I got out of the shower. I grabbed a towel and looked out the window. It was too high, so I stood on the very tip of my toes. I saw blue eyes and white hair, right outside, staring right back at me. I screamed in shock and fear and fell back into a heap in the tub.