By Joshua Crets



What I'm about to relay to you is something that happened to me years ago. I can't remember the exact year, but I do remember that I was twelve. If you really wanted to figure it out you could just subtract that from my current age of thirty-seven. Though I don't really see the point. It's best to just listen and not worry about the technicalities.

As I was saying this happened when I was twelve, an age of absolute confusion. I was not really a kid any more, but I wasn't a teenager. I was the strange and confusing being known as a "pre-teen."

At that age, it seemed like the kids (or pre-teens) were as cruel as could be. I would always think, when I'm a teenager, I'd love to see them mess with me. But really, they never get better. Some change, but most, as they get older, their mind stays that same age of twelve.

Also, to get a better taste of what happened to me, you have to understand the back-story. My father wrote for the newspaper in the city, where we had lived till I was ten. He had thought that if he could write newspaper columns, which he did very well, then writing books, possibly even fiction novels, should be as easy as walking the dog.

He had quit his job at the paper with high ambitions and moved us out to a suburb where he had hoped for quiet peace to do his writing. My sister, Becky and myself, Todd were against moving, we had friends there and we didn't want to leave them or what had been our home for ten years (my sister's home for even longer. Actually for 12, for she was older than I.)

My father wouldn't hear our argument. "It's the best thing for the family" he had said. Even now, especially now I know that moving was not the best thing to do. But until what had happened when I was twelve, I had only thought it was a bad idea because of the loss of all my friends. If I knew what would occur at that pre-teen age, I wouldn't have even left our old house. I would have stayed with the new people who moved in. No matter how they would act, they couldn't be as bad. As evil as what I was to see.

When we moved into our new house in the town of Dinstin, I brightened up. We had a beautiful pond behind our house. I thought that I may even be able to get my dad to teach me how to fish.

The house we lived in was supposed to be in the suburbs, but it wasn't really that. It was supposed to be a sub-division, but the company that had built the houses quit after they built the thirteenth house. Our house. The thirteen houses were actually in a straight row, all having their backs face the pond.

Most of our neighbors were old and there was only one kid around my age there, but he didn't come out much.

As usual when moving to a new town, there was a new school. I hated it. The kids (the pre-teens) there were not very nice to me. My sister Becky seemed to make friends, but even she didn't like it. Those years I lived in that town were very lonely, and I usually just stared out the window at that pond.

I saw him a month or so after my twelfth birthday.

I had been staring at the pond on a September afternoon. The light looked beautiful as it hit the pond, which really was the only good thing that came out of that dreadful day. The beautiful pond almost made it worth while.

I raised my eyes up for just a second and I saw a man on the other side of the pond just staring at it. I had thought nothing of it at the time, but the next day I saw him there again, and the next, and the next. It was like that for two straight weeks. He would appear at four and disappear at six. He stood looming like a tree over that pond for a straight two hours. He wouldn't get there a minute too early or too late, but exactly at four and leave exactly at six.

I thought it was strange, but instead of telling my mother or my father like I should have done, I decided to be adventurous and go talk to him myself. I approached him at five-forty. I got a good look at him before I tried to talk to him. He wore blue jeans, normal enough, but he also wore a black button-up shirt. It was very black, just looking at it felt like made me feel like I was looking into some deep dark void. One, that if I got lost in, I may not come back.

I stood next to him, and strangely enough, he seemed not to notice me. "Hey mister, not to be rude, but do you live around this area somewhere, because I always see you here," I said.

He turned and looked at me. His eyes were piercing: it felt like staring face to face with a living arrow. "Around here? No, I actually live quite a while away from here, little friend."

Hearing him talk made me actually feel bad, like you do when you hear a tornado warning siren. That feeling of dread that just eats inside you. His face though, that's what really scared me. He looked both young and old at the same time. No, not at the same time, almost alternating. I could never get an actual grip on how he looked or how old he was, because in all honesty, he kept changing. I was scared, even at my young age, I knew that wasn't right.

"You know, talking to strangers, that can be a bad habit, little friend" The man said.

I just looked at him, almost unable to say a thing and then I finally said "Who are you?"

He looked at me, that changing face of his. Staring at me, frightening me. "You don't want to know that, little friend. Even I wish I didn't know it." He then laughed, and it was a hard laughing, but it was also disturbing. Just hearing it made me want to scream.

"Uh sir, I really need to go," I said and the looked at my watch, it was five-fifty nine.

"You can't leave me. I'd like you to stay here with me," He said.

I looked at my watch again. Ten seconds till six. I then replied. " I'm sorry but I really need to-"

He then had a look of evil. I'd describe it if I could, but some things are just too difficult to do. That happens to be one of them. "STAY WITH ME!" he screamed. I thought my ears would burst. I then ran. I ran as fast as I could on my pre-teen legs. I ran to the house, which was only a few hundred feet away, then turned around to see if the man was behind me. He wasn't, he wasn't even at the spot where he was standing. I then looked at my watch. The hour was six. The minute was four.

I walked into the house, my face had a look like someone who had just stopped thinking and just acted on instinct. I walked into my room and slept.

For the rest of my time at that house, the changing faces man was in all my dreams. He would always tell me to come to him, repeating my name "Todd, Todd, Todd", saying that he just wanted someone to talk to, but I knew better. At first I yelled at him to leave me alone, but that wouldn't stop him, and my parents could actually hear me yelling in my sleep so I began to just shut him out. I still didn't tell my parents what had happened, and I never would. Thankfully they didn't suspect anything, even with the dreams. They thought it was because of those scary movies I liked to watch sometimes, and I let them continue thinking that.

In the daytime, he would always stare at me and my room instead of his old object, the pond. One day I asked my sister Becky to come look at him. Before she came to my room, I broke down and told her everything about the man. She came and looked out my window and told me she didn't see anyone out there, that even though having a good imagination is a great thing, I still shouldn't use it to lie. I apologized to her, but I knew what I saw, especially since he (or it) was still out there.

A few weeks and many dreams later, he struck. He still looked at me, and for the first time he used his hands to signal me to come to him. I tried to look away from him, but then I heard the back door open. My father had gone outside. The man across the pond stopped looking at me and looked directly at him. Next thing I saw was my father fall to the ground. I rushed out to him and he told me in a gasp that he had a heart attack. I looked at the man across the pond and he just smiled at me, a horrible grin it was. I ran inside and called 911.

My father was stabilized at the hospital. He told my mother that he thinks it came from the stress of writing a book, but I knew what it really was. My father decided that he wasn't book writing material and moved us back to the city where he was able to get his job of working at the newspaper back.

When we finally left there I was so happy, but I was also afraid that the man across the pond would still be in my dreams, or worse follow me to the city. I thanked God when after living in the city for two months, I didnt have one dream with him in it.

Even now, all these years later, I haven't had a single dream with him in it. Although to this day, I still don't know what he was, but really that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that I have not seen him since.

I hope that whoever bought old house number thirteen in that empty subdivision in Dinstin will never have to contend with that thing.

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