The Unwelcome Nightlight

Sophia Artichoke was terrified. It was her first night alone in her new house in a new city far from home, and for all she could remember, never in her life had she slept even a full hour in a house with no other person under the roof. Her best friend, Beatrice came with her for the long drive across so many flat and lifeless states, but had taken the most inexpensive flight home that morning. Now Sophia felt as though she could be in a Martian outpost.

She'd taken a job selling SpectraCom's new "Eel Slime Dish Detergent," which was not named for any component, but for its ability to wash all the slime off an eel. Sophia felt a little moral twinge at the thought of the soap being tested on animals, but she was assured that the soap was organic, biodegradable, non-caustic, and the eels were twice a day fed a fish that normally swam too quickly for the eel to catch in the wild. Also, SpectraCom was willing to pay more than anyone at home, and were willing to pick up the tab for her move, reimbursing for services already rendered, of course.

Sophia found a house in the country on a street with only one neighbor. The couple was cordial and old. The offered the use of their weed-whackers and hoses to help Sophia manage her yard without the strong hands of a man. Sophia was sure she was ready for this brand new adventure of living on her own with no support. The unwelcome nightlight was sure to change her mind.

At midnight, Sophia turned off the lights and dragged herself to bed. She noticed first a single flash, sharp and fast, and easily dismissed as her imagination. She may not have even noticed if not for the second flash. By the third flash, Sophia was wondering what was happening. The lights popped every few seconds, but without the precision of a timer. Five seconds apart one time, three the next.

Sophia pulled the curtain closed, got under the covers and lay tense with wide eyes. The right corner bunched around a chair piled high with possibly dirty clothes that had been shoved in a sack and squeezed between two chairs on the moving truck. Through the sliver of exposed glass the bluish flash continued every few seconds.

Was it unreasonable for Sophia to assume it was probably Swayze that found her, and he was lurking in her back yard popping camera flashes? When she last saw her not-so-distant ex-boyfriend, he had a twinge in his eyes she’d never seen when they were together, and in more than a year since she’d first moved, she could not escape him.

That night she'd invited some friends to her apartment for a small goodbye party and unplugged the phone. Swayze had been prank calling for hours, This had gone on for days. A few of her friends knew how far Swayze was going, but Sophia was humiliated to let this be public knowledge.

She’d let him prank as much as he liked, because that meant he was home. If Sophia ever felt nervous he may have left the phone off the hook to pay her a visit, she could answer and he’d be there, ready to screech obscenities.

The few friends she dared call hung out, drank beers, and watched a movie for more than two hours. When only a handful of people remained, they'd plugged in the phone to order a pizza and Swayze was there on the line shouting as soon as Sophia picked up. The phone rang almost immediately after she hung up, and again after the next few times she tried to hang up on her. After five or six attempts, Sophia unplugged the phone again. Swayze was so offended, he found someone to drive him to her apartment.

This was no small feat, as the two had so many mutual friends even before they started dating. The only friends willing to do such a thing were dudes that knew they'd get their ass kicked and have no one to talk to but each other for a few weeks. Dudes like that didn't mind. Such things blew over, and everyone knew Sophia was moving away.

Swayze was a little guy, and the only people he could find to help were little guys as well, but there were several of them, so time was needed to get the situation under control. Several things were broken, including a framed picture of Sophia's grandmother that had been displayed at her funeral. Swayze was also put through a glass table before he could be wrestled out the door. He was cut up pretty bad, but was on enough drugs that he didn't seem to mind. He'd only left when a neighbor announced the police were on their way. Sophia took a tally of the destruction, and consoled herself by thinking of everything else she'd need to throw away to make this move and have a career and be free of Swayze.

Sophia knew it was crazy, but she believed Swayze was in her back yard photographing her house for possible points of entry. Every so often, he was prone to brilliance, and even though he hadn’t previously figured a way to even cross the state line, let alone find physically reach Sophie, it would be in line to ride a bus for three days to have the revenge he swore he’d have.

Even with the blankets pulled over her head, Sophia could see the unmistakable razor-blue light of a camera flash on the frontier where sheet met bed. According to legend, a person can't tell time when they dream, so Sophia repeatedly checked the clock and watched the numbers counting down. Supposedly, turning on the light was another sure-fire method of determining if you are in the Dreamlands, but Sophia could not imagine what Swayze would do if he knew she was awake.

The flashes stopped at 1:30 with no catharsis. Sophia expected the windows to explode, or the house to catch fire. She clutched the blankets at her nose, staring at the window. She did not check the clock. Sophia was already convincing herself this was a dream.

The next day, Sophia woke to her cell phone in another room. Forgetting from fear to set her alarm, she’d slept through her first appointment. Sophia did not need to be told this was no way to endear herself to country-folk. She assumed the call was from a person demanding to know why she was not at their door with samples of dish soap as promised a few days before.

Instead, the call was from Beatrice saying that Swayze was dead. He'd eaten too much ScornFish, put nicotine patches all over his body, and went out for coffee. This time, there was not enough pot smoked or liquor drank to balance his heart rate down to a normal speed. He was left at home by a friend and dead on the couch a few hours later when his roommate came home from work.

Beatrice didn't know what time it happened, so Sophia called Janessa, who had dated Swayze a long time ago, before he started drugs. Janessa also quit straight edge too, and Swayze cared more about booze than their breakup, so he and Janessa had remained friends. Janessa was clearly upset to hear from Sophia at a time like this, but she plugged it up and told Sophia that Swayze had died just before midnight. He'd shit himself. The couch was ruined.

Sophia nearly screamed when she hung up the phone. In her mind, there could be no other explanation than Swayze's ghost having one last torture session in her back yard the night before. She cried and cried, but not because she was sad. Sophia's greatest fear had been that he'd go on and on and never die, and she would never be able to go home again. He was so smart and relentless that Sophia knew he'd fixate on her no matter where she lived, waiting patiently until she did try to return. He would find her then.

She wondered if Swayze had done this on purpose. His roommate was about to move because Swayze had not paid rent in months. He hadn't looked for work, but he had filled out a few papers for financial aid to go back to school. Anyone he could ask for money had stopped answering his calls long ago. With Sophia out of the picture for real, maybe Swayze had nowhere left to go. Sophia tried to decide if she was bothered by this.

Later that afternoon, she updated her online profiles with, "Woohoo! Swayze's dead!" She felt bad immediately, but could not deny the liberation. It felt good to release that chain and tell the world she was right and they were wrong.

The angry e-mails arrived in minutes, but these were people that let Swayze drive Sophia out of their circles and hangouts, and ultimately made her move across the country. She already knew she didn't need these friends, so their complacency had now cost those friends double. Sophia wanted to call each person back to say, "You backed the wrong horse."

She was pleased to receive a few more congratulations than she expected. Sophia wasn't the only one who saw Swayze's dark side. He was gone, truly gone, and Sophia was in a whole new world of endless possibilities. By the time she went to bed that night, Sophia wasn't even thinking about the flashing lights, and she was so exhausted she didn't think anything would keep her awake.

Sophia hadn't checked the exact time the flashing started the first night, but the second night they started again in the same time-frame, just as she'd turned off the lights and was climbing into bed. This time they came in rapid bursts, then waited a few seconds before firing again. Sophia collapsed by the night stand, and if she could find her voice, she would have screamed to no end.

This time, the lights lasted only a few minutes before they turned off for good, but Sophia was sure she heard a loud crash in the front yard. She stayed huddled by the bed a long time, and may have even slept a little before building up the nerve to climb into bed.

The next morning, Sophia called all of her appointments from the day before and apologized. She said there had been a death in the family, which was close enough to the truth, and she promised this would never happen again. A few elderly ladies needed to be placated with extra free samples, but most were willing to forgive and forget.

On her way home from work that night, Sophia bought a dog. She wasn’t picky. She just wanted a big dog. She never had a dog, and didn’t know very much about them, but she now knew she needed a canine presence in her life. Her only other qualification was the loyalty required to mercilessly mangle and maul any marauder or threat.

Sophia named the dog ‘Glenn Danzig,’ because it wasn’t very big, but could probably put any human invader in their proper place. Also, the dog was jet black, so the comparison was inevitable. A few hours at best was all that was needed for the dog to bond with Sophia and by ten that night, the two laid down beside each other. Sophia put out of her mind all her fears and worries for what she thought would be a restful evening.

Sophia had by now convinced herself there was a measure of hope that it might not be Swayze’s ghost returned from his early grave to torment her for Eternity. Sophia had known him long enough to know the raw spite in his blood and that he certainly blamed her for his death with his dying breath. Sophia didn’t want this to bother her, but it did.

It wasn’t like Sophia hadn’t given Swayze plenty of chances. She’d let him back in her home again and again because she did know he was brilliant and legitimately tortured, and that he never meant to be a villain. Sophia suspected he might even love, but more important to him was the drugs leading him to a warm bed and twenty bucks in the morning when she pretended she didn’t see him take it from her purse. After two or three days he’d be buying six packs and then twelves, and his friends would drop by to hang out for the evening. Most were her friends too, so it took Sophia a while to mind. She liked having the pad where everyone crashed.

She never let anyone shoot up, but she knew Swayze did it when she wasn’t home. She rarely kicked him out. He’d either get mad and leave, or someone else would have a couch he could crash on when she asked hm to pay rent. Every so often, Swayze would hold down an apartment for a few months, usually with student loan money, and Sophia tried not to get back together with him if he wasn’t in a productive mode. Swayze always backslid. He always let Sophia down.

She had come here to get away from him. Swayze had not followed her, and he had not come to haunt her, and it was ridiculous to even suggest he may have faked his own death and caught a bus across the country to find her, though it wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept 3 days on a Greyhound. Sophia talked herself into believing that whatever was in her backyard was entirely explainable, and certainly not Swayze.

Explainable, but no less terrible. It could have been a bear, or a bigger kind of bear escaped from the local zoo. It was probably a pervert making a habit of peering through windows, desperate to see Sophia in a state of undress. The threat of alien was ever-present, and whether the supposedly friendly or fearsome variety, Sophia did not want to meet them.

A loud crashing woke Sophia around 2am, but the dog did not pick up his head, so maybe it was a dream. She went to the bathroom, and when she returned, the dog had its front feet on a chair looking out the window. Sophia asked what the dog saw, and it responded looking nervously over its shoulder and whining. It took Sophia a few minutes to work up the courage, but she looked out as well. There was no moon and she could see nothing moving in her back yard. The dog had lost interest and returned to the bed, which assured Sophia whatever Sasquatch, werewolf, or Loch Ness Monster had returned to the woods. Sophia went to bed as well and fought her spot back from the dog, who had spread out. Despite this little fright, Sophia got a good night’s sleep.

The next day wasn’t too bad. She met some great clients, sold plenty of Eel Slime, and had a great conversation with her boss. Swayze was put in the ground thousands of miles away, though he once told her he wanted to be burned. Sophia had regained enough control to think about the good times. Swayze hadn’t always been that bad.

He was in college when she met him, going back and forth between a couple jobs, and writing to magazines. He had so much hope and energy that Sophia was drawn to him immediately. He told her that phrase was cliche. It had been almost two years before they even hung out more than a few minutes at a Rock & Mineral show. At that time, it was enough for Sophia to know that Swayze remembered her name.

Janessa started dating Swayze before Sophia and Janessa were friends, but Sophia didn’t think she was using Jan to get to Swayze, because Sophia didn’t think she had a chance with him to begin with. In fact, it wasn’t even for a couple years after Janessa and Swayze broke up that he even said anything more than ‘hello’ to Sophia. Jan said she was cool about it, but Sophia could tell Janessa was pissed. They didn’t talk or hang out like they used to, and when they did, the situation was always tense.

When Swayze broke up with Sophia, supposedly for another girl, and supposedly for another man, whatever happened didn’t work out very quickly, and Swayze wanted Sophia back within a couple weeks. Sophia on the other hand had made up her mind that things were done.

With a few notable exceptions near the beginning, she did not break down. This would be the first time he cheated on her. According to him, he’d never done it to anyone before, and Sophia wasn’t even convinced he had seen someone else. The sources were too unreliable and few of the details matched up. Swayze had gone pretty far into the deep end and was starting to look like he couldn’t make the swim back. Sophia thought she could help him when they were together, but if he wanted to treat their relationship so trivially, she was going to take the convenient opportunity to lop the problem off at the base.

This did not sit well with Swayze. If he couldn’t have her, no one would. He targeted first their mutual friends he knew were hanging out with Sophia. If they had cell phones he would call an increasing amount of times and leave long messages on voice mail after the phone was turned off. Swayze was a little guy, and didn’t take more than a couple knocking him around that he decided to turn his torments on Sophia instead.

Swayze preferred the phone calls because he could do it while sitting on the couch eating ScornFish. He called her, he called her job, he even called stores where she shopped and had her paged. Sometimes, if he had been drinking, he would go looking for her.

He would arrive unannounced with friends he knew would keep him from getting out of hand. They would come to eat at the pizzaria she worked in. Once, Swayze talked his way into a trip to Sophia’s father’s house. Sophia had been so embarrassed by Swayze’s actions that she hadn’t even told her parents about the breakup. She was tempted that night, knowing that her father would have pulled Swayze apart like soft bread. That’s what Swayze wanted. Then he could press some real charges.

When Sophia bested him there, his new plan took some work. After the fact, he’d been candid about his conspiracy, one-on-one, so he could deny everything later. First, he convinced a few doctors he was mentally ill. Then he convinced a mutual friend to admit Sophia had flipped Swayze the bird when she drove by in a car. Unfortunately, she had, but Sophia was unaware he’d become legally crazy, she simply thought Swayze was an asshole.

He pressed charges for harassment and arranged numerous meet-ups where he could throw a fit. While no one was proud, this was the final wedge between Sophia and all but a few of her friends. They boys still hung out with Swayze, and the girls all wanted to hang out with the boys.

Sophia probably could have beat the rap save for one fatal mistake, the night she ran into him at the bar the night after a lengthy and unproductive session with her court-appointed lawyer. Sophia felt helpless, and lost, and was starting to believe that no matter how wrong, Swayze was going to win. He managed to sway the hearts and minds of aides and advocates and convinced the courts Sophia had been a bad mother. If she was going down, she might as well have some fun.

Telling the bartender she’d made a bet, she requested the most noxious mixture he could mix from the sauces in the kitchen. Most of those sauces were hot, and some were considered suicidal, and there was also some vinegar, and plenty of caustic spices, and the cook mixed these in the same red plastic cups the bar was handing out to Rock & Mineral patrons. She knew he wouldn’t pass up the chance to speak with her if she walked too close. When Swayze took the bait and whispered, “I love you,” Sophia tossed he hot sauce in his eyes. Swayze fell on the ground screaming, and Sophia wrapped her legs around his waist and pummeled his face until the bouncers pulled her away.

Sophia barely escaped jail time, and was slapped with a restraining order that she didn’t care the least about. She bought a new phone and phone number and moved out of state with the boy she’d been dating over the Internet. Swayze was declared sane when the police told the doctors how Swayze behaved on Sophia’s last night.

Sophia didn’t move far at first, just a few hours from home. She knew Swayze didn’t have the ambition or ability any longer to come to her, even if he could find out where she lived. The fear never went away though.

The relations with the boy didn’t last long. He had only been a vehicle, and Sophia thought he understood that from the start. She went further south, and even settled down a while when she got to the warmth. That’s when the letters started. Somehow, Swayze had gotten her address. His letters were easy to rip up. They were words he’d written a thousand times in much cleaner handwriting. Enough time had passed that Sophia could dismiss the letters. She had a different life now.

Swayze too had made life-style changes. These were mainly new highs in his consumption levels, but also included regular access to the Internet. He must have spent hours signing her address to mailing lists. She received junk mail by the bucket full, until the Post Office stopped making deliveries. The Post Office doesn’t pick and choose important letters either, they ship everything back to the sender. Swayze must have known when his own letters came back. By then, he had the phone number to the Rock & Mineral shop she’d opened with her new boyfriend, the man she could see herself marrying. On opening day, Swayze gave the phone number to every call list he could find. By the end of the week, Sophia and her boyfriend had the line disconnected.

Sophia probably could have worked things out, but she was humiliated. Without even telling him, Sophia signed over the Rock & Mineral shop to her boyfriend, found a new career as an Eel Slime saleswoman and left town in the dead of night. She planned this move to rid herself of Swayze forever. She changed her name and changed her history, and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Now Sophia was convinced Swayze had pursed his only option to torment her from the afterlife.

When she came home from work every day, they would chase each other in the field across the street. The elderly couple came outside to watch. When the sun went down, both girl and dog were ready for bed. Glenn Danzig took his spot next to Sophia, and the dog was snoring in the first few minutes.

Sophia was not so easily at rest. Glenn Danzig didn’t know the horrors that waited just outside the window. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too tired to wake up and defend Sophia should one of those eldritch abominations decide to crawl through the back window.

Sophia stared outside for what felt like hours, but no flashing light came. Maybe she missed it. Maybe she had dreamed everything. Maybe the unwelcome nightlight was scared of the dog.

The next night, Sophia heard a bang. The dog heard it too and did a tour of the house, but found nothing. Sophia let Danzig walk around the back yard to be sure, but was terrified some monster force would loom from the darkness to devour Sophia and her pup in one gulp. The following night, there was nothing, and still nothing the night after that.

The next night, Sophia had convinced herself the threat was gone. If it was Swayze, he’d burned out his powers and moved on to haunt some corrupt doctor or drug dealer. Sophia laid down in her bed with the dog beside her. As soon as she turned off the light there was a flash, followed by a piercing scream. There was a few more flashes, and then silence. When Sophia was sure no more flashes were coming, she crawled across the floor to the window and slowly pulled herself up to the sill. Equally slow and groggy, Glenn Danzig did the same. At least Sophia wasn’t crazy.

Dog and girl stopped with their eyes slightly over the glass, peering out into the darkness. Sophia couldn’t see anything. If the dog could see anything, he didn’t let on. A long time passed before Sophia built up the courage to return to bed. Sleep was not so fast in coming.

Sophia was running ragged the next day. In her sales appointments, customers stared in confusion as she sputtered and spat out words that did not make any sense in the order she arranged them. Shortly after lunch, Sophia’s boss noticed there was a problem when two customers complained Sophia was on drugs. He found Sophia half-asleep at her desk between appointments and advised for her sake and the sake of the company she should take the afternoon off. Sophia apologized up and down, and her boss assured her that there would be no repercussions if the event did not repeat. Sophia thanked him and hoped she had enough gumption to get her butt home and in bed.

The sun was still blazing, but Sophia was confident she would be asleep before her head hit the pillow. As she pulled in her driveway, she noticed her neighbor, Mr. Jenkins was home, puttering in his garage with the door open. At first, Sophia thought she might prefer to think she was crazy than relate her crazy story to another person. Maybe she did imagine the whole thing, or extend a dream, believing she was awake when she wasn’t. Sophia almost went in her house and forgot the whole thing.

But she couldn’t . She’d seen the Jenkins television glowing at all hours of the night, along with the silhouettes of people walking around. She knew they were up late, and maybe they had seen the lights. If they hadn’t seen the lights, Sophia could go on wondering. Maybe it was a sign from Swayze. Maybe it was space aliens. That might even be preferable to some of the scenarios running through Sophia’s mind.

Sophia approached the house cautiouslyMr. Jenkins was big, like an oak barrel, with big tree trunk arms, and a bent Dick Tracy nose, like every Navy sailor she’d ever seen. His tiny eyes perched at the top. Mr. Jenkins face was not accustomed to smiling

“Mr. Jenkins?” she asked as she came up the driveway, waving so he would know she was friendly. “My name is Sophia Artichoke, I just moved in next door.”

“Good to meet you. My wife was going to bake you some cookies,” Mr. Jenkins said. “She’ll be disappointed I got to meet you first.”

“Yeah, good to meet you too.” Sophia smiled and wrung her hands. “I’ve got a question I wanted to ask you, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”

“Sure, anything. What’s going on?” Mr. Jenkins was big and intimidating, but he was friendly. Now he was even smiling, just a little bunched up around his cheekbones.

Sophia inhaled through her nose and licked at her lip on the inside, trying to find the best wording. “I’ve seen this light...”

“My wife is going to kill me!” Mr. Jenkins cried, throwing his big hands on his head and sobbing. “You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell her about this!” He was loud, but laughing. He shot questions at Sophia every time she nodded. “Middle of the night? Quick flashes of light? You must be talking about my raccoon pictures.”

“Raccoons?” Sophia asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what was knocking over my bird feeder. I ended up with 300 pictures of raccoons. Thirty years in this house and I’ve never seen a single coon!”

“You mean it was nothing?” Sophia asked.

“Nothing?” Mr. Jenkins sounded more shocked than angry. “It was something all right! You’ve got to see these pictures. There are dozens of them, all over our back yards. You don’t have garbage or anything out there, do you?”

“No,” Sophia lied. She’d brought three bags of half-decomposed melon rinds and coffee grounds that she’d brought from her last house.

Mr. Jenkins didn’t seem to hear. “They were right up on the camera, like they were trying to figure out what was flashing.” Mr. Jenkins slapped his forehead harder than Sophia would ever like to be smacked herself. “Oh, you can’t tell my wife, she’ll be whipping me around the back yard with a chain!”

“Last night I saw flashes and heard a yell.”

Mr. Jenkins nodded, hesitant. He didn’t want to tell. “My wife made me stop putting out the camera. She was afraid she would wake you up. Night after night, I didn’t see any movement in the back yard. I’d go out every so often to look around, but didn’t see any evidence. I thought maybe it was a migrating pack.” He paused and put a stubby finger to his lips. “I don’t know if racoons migrate or not. Anyway, I wanted to know for sure. I set up the camera without telling my wife, and would you believe that damn thing started flashing almost as soon as I closed the back door. Well, stupid me, I yank the door open and go running back out to turn the camera off before she saw anything. I tripped right over my ladder and fell flat on my face.” Mr. Jenkins sighed and put his hands on his hips, looked at his toes a few seconds before back to Sophia. “Do you know anyone that could use a slightly used trap camera, because I don’t want to know what’s in my back yard anymore.”