III.
It took us a few weeks to get everything unpacked and settled. We didn’t really talk about the incident with Eli. I felt like it was a bad omen, and had a hard time getting comfortable in the house. I kept thinking about how Micah wasn’t going to be able to play in the yard with that weirdo in the house behind us.
We bought curtains for the kitchen window and a shade for the back door so that we couldn’t see Eli’s house – and so that he couldn’t see in. I checked the locks more carefully than I had done in past homes, and we kept all of the blinds and curtains closed most of the time.
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I could hear the Eli’s dogs fighting nearly every day. I called animal control three times, but each time I was told that they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.
The last time I called, I was told to not call again, the neighbor had threatened harassment charges.
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Gradually, the moving incident became less prominent in my mind. I focused on trying to get a handle on my new job, while Micah got used to his new daycare and Adam became busier and busier at work.
In October, Adam got the news that he was going to be promoted, and that he would have to start traveling about 25% of his time. I wasn’t happy about it, but kept telling myself that it was important to make sacrifices in order to get to our ultimate goal, which was to be debt free and back in Colorado. I was hoping we would be at a place to do that within the following two years, and the promotion and travel pay would make it that much easier to get there.
In November, Adam started his new position. He was gone for two weeks to promote his company’s software package. If the firm to which he was promoting it chose his company’s package, it could mean even bigger things for him, and us. But, I hated him being gone. I missed him, and I felt even more trapped in the house because I didn’t feel safe going out after dark. Which, being November meant Micah and I only left the house to go to work and daycare, and on weekends.
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Right as Adam’s work started ramping up, I began having intense nightmares. They were so frequent and vivid that I became petrified of even taking a nap in the middle of the day. Every nightmare revolved around the same thing – the dog with the glowing eyes. I was being chased, or attacked, or watched. The same thing, over and over and over.
I was up at all hours of the night, with no sleep during the day.
Micah began getting more and more restless with me. I could tell that he could sense my fear. I tried to put on a serene façade, but the dreams were constantly over-riding all other thoughts. I was at the back window peering through the curtains constantly.
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One night in early December, I was sitting in the living room watching TV after Micah had gone down for the night. The blinds were closed most of the way, with just a small slit to try and lessen the closed-in feeling that was starting to make me feel claustrophobic; but not enough of a gap for those outside to be able to see in.
I kept getting the tingling feeling on the back of my neck as if I were being watched from the street.
Finally giving in to the intense feeling of not being alone, I crouched on the couch and opened a small gap in the blinds to look out onto the street.
Eli waved at me from his leaning pose underneath the street light. His dog with the green eyes just stared at me.
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Panicking, I called Adam.
“Eli is sitting outside under our streetlamp! He just waved at me when I peeked, and I mean peeked out of the blinds! His dog is with him, too! I don’t even know how he saw the blinds move! I barely touched them!” I felt like I was going to vomit. “Oh my God! I have to make sure all the doors are locked!” Even though I knew in my mind that I had already double and triple-checked all of the locks, front and back.
“Honey? Honey, hon - just calm down, ok? Can you call the police?”
“What are they going to do? It’s a public street!”
“Maybe call them to come by so you can file a report? At least, even if they can’t do anything, he will see that the police have come by and that you are talking to them.”
“Ok. Ok. I will do that.”
“Call me after you talk to them.”
“I will. Bye.”
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The police came about forty-five minutes after I called. They told me there was nothing they could do about Eli. He wasn’t breaking any laws, nor was he technically harassing me since he didn’t make any contact.
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After that night, I bought motion sensing lights and a nanny cam that I put in the front window.
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