It’s warm tonight, warm and humid, but still it’s cooler than the day was. I’m leaning against my car staring at an old church graveyard that’s across from my house. It looks centuries old but the tombstones range from 1936 to 1940. What’s really depressing about it is that the birth years aren’t far from the death. They were all young children, the youngest was barely a year old. I suppose it was some epidemic, I don’t know, never really given it much thought until now.
I take out a cigarette and light it up, blow the smoke out towards the sky, it’s twelve thirty in the morning and once again I can’t sleep. I hear my wife coughing inside, a bad cough…they say she’s dying. The love of my life and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it, I’m surrounded by death. I wish I could just exhale all the problems in life as easily as I can this smoke from my lungs but I guess in the end the tar remains, the bad stuff remains. I look down at the ground now, hearing her coughing and moaning makes me feel like I’m not even a man. If only there was something I could do but there isn’t. You have no idea what it’s like to watch the only person you’ve ever loved, the only person who’s ever loved you, slowly die right before your eyes everyday. Everyday, every night, she’s dying of cancer and I’m out here smoking. God, I’m such an ass, a real great husband, stupid idiot.
A movement catches my attention from the corner of my eye but when I look there’s nothing there, stir of the trees I guess. I keep looking out over the graves, I keep thinking that there has to be something I can do, something I haven’t thought of yet or haven’t tried, but deep inside I know I’ve done everything I can. I flick what’s left of the cigarette into the yard and walk back inside with my head hanging down. I get myself a drink of water and stand by the kitchen window, still looking at those graves. There’s someone out there, I can see him now. He’s standing in front of a grave just staring at it but then he starts to kick the tombstone and knocks it over. He moves to another grave and does the same thing to it.
I set my drink down on the table and run outside. I shouldn’t do this, I should just forget about it and go to bed but I can’t. Somewhere between that asshole disrespecting the dead and the anger of having to watch my wife die, I’m in a rage.
“Hey!”
He turns and looks at me, what now? What else can I say? I thought he would just get scared and run off but…oh shit. He’s walking towards me. I walk backwards not knowing what else to do and all I see is a black figure walking to me and then the moonlight shines off the blade as he pulls the six inch knife out of his coat. I run. I run as hard as I can back up to my house but the ground is so wet from the humidity that I slip and fall.
“Aaah!”
The sharp pain cuts through my leg and runs all the way through it, I grit my teeth and dig my hands into the ground as the bastard cuts my leg from knee to ankle. He grabs me by the wrist and drags me into the house. Oh god, Katherine.
“No, please… don’t hurt her. I’ll kill you if you touch her you bastard. I swear I will.”
He leaves me lying in the living room while he walks back to where he can hear my wife coughing and moaning. I don’t know how but I find the strength to drag myself up and grit my way through pain as I struggle to reach my wife, she hasn’t screamed. As I reach the bedroom door, I push it the rest of the way open and at first I’m in complete shock. He’s sitting beside her on the bed and her chest is cut opened and pulled apart and he is…he’s reaching inside of her pulling out her insides and eating them. I want to throw up but in pure anger at what he’s doing to her I scream as loud as I can and throw myself on him. I no longer feel the pain in my leg as I desperately try to kill the monster that has not only destroyed my wife but is also now eating her.
He grabs me by the neck with his free hand and I see his face, it’s pale and stained with the bright red of my wife’s blood but he looks human. He looks like an ordinary man except for his eyes, they were so bright and so dark at the same time. The most beautiful shade of blue that I have ever seen and it actually makes me feel calm. Then he hurls me across the room and my head hits the wall and it goes dark. So dark and I pass out.
“Katherine.”
The next day I wake up to the sun in my face and the pain in my leg and I let out a scream. Then I start to cry when I remember what happened. Katherine…I’m so sorry. I feel hands upon me and I start to fight but I can’t see at what I’m trying to hit.
“John! John! It’s alright.”
“Katherine? But how? It’s not…it’s not possible.”
“It’s okay honey. I’m fine but we need to get you to the hospital, you’re leg is hurt badly.”
We get in the car and the entire way there I can’t take my eyes off of her. Once we get to the hospital, Katherine goes inside and brings me out a wheel chair. The doctor stitches my leg as my wife is being ex-rayed to see if the commotion has caused her cancer to flare up. I’m in the waiting room driving myself mad thinking whether or not what happened last night was real. It has to be real, doesn’t it? If it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t have the cut in my leg and we wouldn’t be here. The doctors come out with my wife as they sit us down to tell us the news… I cried.
It’s been a year since that night, we now live in New York, after what happened I just couldn’t stay there. It’s New Year’s and as the ball drops and shouts are made and confetti falls out of the sky, I pull my wife close to me and kiss her.
“Happy New Year baby.”
She smiles at me, oh god that gorgeous smile of hers. The love of my life. The doctors said it was a miracle, I agree. She’s been completely cancer free since that night. What I thought was a monster had to have been an angel, he ate away her cancer, I know he did. She doesn’t even have a scar on her chest from where he cut her open. I never told her what really happened to her, it’s not that I think she won’t believe me, but I just can’t bring myself to explain it to her or anyone for that matter. That warm, humid night that seems like so long ago. The night the miracle happened, the night the stealer of death came and found me…the night walker.
