It's the emptiness, the plainness of it that does it for you.
There was a night shortly after you moved to this neighborhood, shit, over a year ago, when you were walking your dog as you usually did. Up and down the street and around every cul-de-sac, until the entire expanse of your immediate sidewalk territory had been covered. And you had been on one of those cul-de-sacs, lost in the feeling of how nicely the wind was raking through your hair, right on that temperature edge between pleasant and cold that was exactly your favorite, when suddenly you had felt someone's eyes on you.
You can't explain it. There's no way to pinpoint exactly how you knew someone was watching. It was a dark night and most of the porch lights were on, but that just means you could see that the street was dead and silent.
Your head pivoted around to search for the source of that awareness and finally you saw it, that little red dot glowing in the darkness before it dropped out of sight. You were so irrationally embarrassed that you didn't note exactly which house it was, you just booked it and tried to pretend you didn't notice them smoking on their dark porch. You were new to the neighborhood and it felt like you were the one peeping with your not-from-here eyes, so you just walked home with your heart pumping a little faster than it should have.
And you never feel it again. You walk the street countless times, day and night with your aging pitbull and you are never certain exactly which house it had been. But you narrow it down to two, and that should tell you something important about how fucking pathetic you are. One night of seeing some poor sap having a smoke on their own porch and you're obsessing over it.
But the thing is, there are only two houses it could have been. One of them is exactly like all the other houses in the neighborhood. A family lives there, you've seen the toys in the yard and occasionally the mother carrying in groceries. They decorate for holidays and keep their yard nice.
And the other house is exactly unlike all of the other houses in the neighborhood. Sure, the grass stays cut and everything is in moderate repair, but Christ, nothing else is right about it. There are no cars in the driveway, for one thing, and never any cars on the street. Obviously they could park in the garage, but that would mean that it's cleared out enough to park cars in there and honestly, who lives like that? There's not a single ornament, decorative light or knick knack to speak of. It has only the barest of landscaping, and the fake ADT sign stands nervously in a corner of the lawn that just feels incorrect. There are never any lights on inside, and there isn't even a welcome mat on the porch. The only reason you believe it's occupied is because of the solitary furnishing, a wooden rocking chair on the porch.
In the daylight you pass and stare, taking in every unchanging detail and trying to work out exactly what intrigues you so much. At night you pass and stare, wondering if there's ever someone in there or if it's just some bizarre suburban summer house that remains empty most of the year.
And then, in the space of a couple of months, your dog passes away and the divorce happens. It's all so consuming and you feel like you're drowning and you don't think about that house, not even once. Nothing matters except the cycles of emotional pain and numbness that are just never ending, and you're so dissociated that you're barely aware which one is happening or for how long. You're coping hour by hour and desperately trying to distract yourself with work and Instagram reels and then one day… you surface.
You inhale deeply and it doesn't feel like panic. You look around and you are able to see more than what's strictly necessary, like all the peripheral details are no longer fuzzy. The air is clear and no longer shoving cotton down your throat.
The neighbor next door convinces you to attend an animal adoption event and fuck, you immediately fall in love. He's a little black pitbull and he's so sweet that you think your heart is cracking open. There's something about how unwanted he is, simply by existing in his breed and color of fur that makes you stubborn, makes you attach yourself to him like two unwanted people who decide to want each other.
You start walking again. The pibble is nervous at first but soon he's right there with you, looking forward to your long evening walk like it's the highlight of his day. It's yours. You love walking at night because it's the only time when alone feels good. It feels good to be the only one out here, looking into the lit windows and trying to imagine the people who live there. Where they eat, where they watch TV, where they fuck. You pass the plain house a few times in the daylight and it barely registers, just a silly little distraction that mattered to someone who no longer exists. You're more concerned with getting your pibble fully potty trained and less afraid of the car.
And then one night, the weather is absolutely perfect. It's been a warm day in February which means no bugs, but the air still smells like the cusp of spring and it's just alive. It's rare that the air feels like this when there's no storm on the way. You could walk for miles and miles tonight, and you would if you didn't worry about being a woman alone at night. Sure, you have a dog with you but he's on the small side and you don't want to put him in danger defending you. It's hardly fair.
So the sidewalk it is. You go about your longest routine, around every loop and straight, some more than once. The pibble is taking his precious time and smelling every little thing as if the air feels good to him, too. You're feeling simultaneously alone and content, and it's fucking incredible. Life feels tolerable right now. The wind is dancing across your cheeks and hair like it knows you're a sucker for that particular treatment, and you're so wrapped up in the happy little things that it's jarring when you feel someone watching.
You get your bearings in a split second. The street is well lit, unusually so because—
Because for the first time, the plain house has its porch light on. And there's a man sitting in the rocking chair, smoking.
Like a glutton you drink in every detail that you can absorb in the three seconds of polite onlooking that you've allotted yourself. He's fucking huge, like the most enormous man you've ever seen, and he's definitely watching you. With the light coming from over his shoulder his face is just darkness and you can't see anything else and it's infuriating that it's all you get before you have to turn your head away.
In a moment of madness you picture yourself stopping, turning around to call back to him, "Are you lonely?" You have no idea what on earth possesses you to conjure up that idea. It's the stupidest, least cool thing you can imagine saying. But for some reason it feels right to you. The way you can feel his eyes before his house even comes into your line of sight is… Disturbing? Exciting? Something in between? There's no scientific explanation for it, but it definitely just happened.
In your defense, you've always been like this. You'd read through your library system's entire Agatha Christie collection by the time you were sixteen. Every time you see something strange, or hear a scream, you look down at your phone and note the time. Northanger Abbey holds a special place in your heart because you are her. You romanticise the fuck out of every trivial thing that happens to you, you— you married an FBI agent, for fuck's sake. Yeah it turned out to be way less sexy than you thought it would be, but that's just life, and it has apparently not dimmed your sense of wonder whatsoever.
Why can't you just be normal? Why can't you walk by the Plain House and see it as off putting, or better yet don't notice it at all? What benefit can there possibly be in indulging these daydreams of walking up the porch steps and knocking on the door? It isn't normal to feel like speaking to him would be a relief. There is no reason to feel so compelled by this insignificant happening.
It doesn't take long for the feeling of his eyes to leave your back. Why wouldn't he look away? Even if you were outrageously good-looking, which you're not, he wouldn't be able to tell in the dark with the expanse of his yard separating the two of you. You're sure he sees plenty of people walking their dogs every day and you are an extremely unremarkable, freshly divorced thirty year old nobody. It's fucking embarrassing how undesirable you are.
Not that… not that this is some kind of sexual obsession. God, you are not a stalker. A little outrageous with your imagination maybe, but never bad enough to convince yourself that a complete stranger would be interested in you. You will never go out of your way to walk by his house, you decide. If anything you will avoid it.
But you still find yourself thinking about the Plain House man when you begin to drift off that night. It's hardly your fault that he lives so suspiciously. What right does he have to behave all Jason Statham with his stupid, unassuming house and his stupid lights he never has on? It's just screaming "moody assassin's safehouse" at anyone who passes by. It's absolutely slutty.
Therapy. You need therapy. Your pibble curls up into the curve of your spine and you put your imagination to good use for the first time that day, staring unseeing at the darkness until you can picture yourself walking by the Plain House without looking.
It's a full week before you give yourself permission to walk down that cul-de-sac again. You glance at the Plain House when you pass by, because you look at all the other houses you pass and it would be just weird if you only avoided looking at this one. It's completely dark as usual. No lights, no cars, no sign of life. Utterly, inexplicably fascinating.
You wish desperately to see that man again, just to convince yourself that he's real. Even better, you wish he would wave when you pass by. Just that smidgen of friendly normalcy which would crumble your insane fantasy straight into the dirt. It would be devastating and disappointing and you could finally move on.
But you don't see him. The house stays dark and empty the next day, and the next. Through the next week and the next month and you start to question if you ever really saw what you think you saw. It's so frustrating that you eventually give up and do something really stupid. You start walking outside the confines of your street.
You live in a town that's adjacent to a large Marine Corps base. If anything the the shops and restaurants were built in order to have some place for Marines to go on the weekends besides Marine Mart. But you're an hour from DC so a lot of people live here where the houses are cheaper and then commute to their cushy jobs up North. What you're trying to say is your city is relatively safe. The schools are good and everything is HOA and there isn't much crime that you know of.
You're bored of the same sidewalk and suddenly it doesn't seem like that much of a risk to venture out of your cocoon of safety, even at night. Sure, there are spots with no street lamps but you can just… walk fast. There's never anyone else out here at night and you're pretty sure that's a good thing. It feels safe enough, and your intuition has never led you astray before. Well, except for the marriage. And that guy you prematurely broke up with. And the time you drove home after the oil change guy accidentally drained your transmission fluid. Okay, your situational awareness type of intuition has never failed you. Could be luck, though. Maybe you'll find out.
The first walk, though it sends your heart into a frenzy and has you vigilant to the point of paranoia, is completely uneventful. You take it as confirmation and continue every night, getting further and further away from home as your stamina and confidence improve. You know you shouldn't walk the same way at the same time every day like this, but the thing about you is you're very selective in what you know, versus what you actually take to heart.
So that's where you are one night, trying to dodge gnat clouds and just enjoying the way the spring breeze is cooling your sweat, when you feel eyes on you. Your head instantly swivels backwards and you spot the lone jogger pretty far behind. It's so hard to tell at this distance but you swear he's like… like, abnormally large. Like Plain House Guy large. He's coming from the correct direction and holy shit he's heading right towards you. He's going to pass you and you, luckiest of ducks, you are going to be within arms reach of a guy who could quite possibly be the mystery guy that you've seen twice ever in your entire life!
Pathetic.
Still, you straighten your shoulders a little and make sure your dog is extra-behaving so that when the guy finally jogs by you'll be able to focus all of your attention on him. You step off to the right, over to the traffic edge of the sidewalk because, on the off chance that he was actually planning on assaulting you, you would rather throw yourself into the road than into the woods. Bad things happen in the woods.
Everything is going perfectly, and he's right about to pass you, and you take in one big breath right as he does so that you can creepily smell him and— Lord, he smells good. It's so distracting that it takes you a few seconds too long to realize your dog is taking off to run alongside the guy, abandoning you like you didn't just devote weeks to spoiling him rotten.
"No, baby," you protest, reining him back. And when you look up as quickly as you can to gawk at the retreating back of the runner, you think you see his head turn just slightly, as if he heard you call your dog, "baby" like the idiot you are.
You didn't see his face. You imagine you probably would if you keep walking long enough to pass him after his turn around point, but with your luck it would be in a dark spot of the sidewalk and you'd miss it again. It's bizarre the way you're just out walking your dog, minding your own business, and still feel like you are the lunatic stalker. As if you could have somehow predicted he'd be out running at this particular location and this particular time, as if you're not the one who has this routine already.
It doesn't take long for you to put together the sequence of events and realize that the original plan of seeing his face is deeply flawed. It would be fucking meaningless because you still have no proof that he is Plain House Guy. In order for this to work you need solid evidence. You need to see him coming back home.
It's impossible to know how long of a run he's taking, but you do know how far this sidewalk goes and it's not forever. He's traveling faster than you, and if you don't turn around in time he'll pass you from behind again, AND you won't see where he lives. With a soft click of your tongue you're turning your dog around and heading back home. You're relying on dumb luck now, because if you're a few minutes too early you'll have to wait around and it will be suspicious. If you're a few minutes too late he'll pass you, and, one, it would look very strange if you suddenly pick up into a run only when he's in front, and, two, you simply do not want to run. Even for a mysterious stranger.
Lady Luck is on your side. You hear quick footsteps slowing behind you right as you turn back onto your street. A cooldown, of course. Only you feel like he should be breathing heavier than he is. That observation only lasts a split second in your head though, because you finally realize what this means. He's heading home in the same direction. He is almost definitively the Plain House Guy.
The face. You can't lose this chance to see the face. It would be the most natural thing to glance over your shoulder right now. You're a woman, alone at night, and a man is trailing behind you. It's almost weirder if you don't look.
But this isn't any random stranger. He's your random stranger who you've mentally adopted, and you know in your heart that it would be an unacceptable breach in honor to steal his likeness now while he's unaware. But you're coming up on the offshoot street, and your house is straight ahead while he will have to turn right. And you'll look back and watch him do it. Five paces left. Two. One. Keeping your shoulders loose and natural, you look back, and…
He's not looking at you. He's not even looking in your fucking direction. The bastard is headed down the side street towards his house, with his head turned completely the other way.
