Shadow Man (Part 4)

“You believe me, now?” Jesse refused to take his eyes off of the large shadow creature.

            “Yup,” Olivia responded, her voice coming out higher pitched than it usually was.

            Jesse turned to his brother, “Not. A fucking. Word about this to Mom and Dad.”

            Izzy nodded his head, still looking shocked. He was initially going to run downstairs to tell someone, but Jesse made him rethink that idea. No one would believe a large shadow…thing was looking in through his older brother’s window. He’d sound like a little kid making up stories during playtime. On top of that, when Jesse told Izzy not to tell their parents, he looked a bit angry. The last time Izzy made Jesse mad, he cried himself to sleep two nights in a row because Jesse had convinced him he was adopted.

            “Okay, but Mom said we need to go downstairs…” Izzy said quietly, Olivia walking passed him to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

            “Alright, then,” Jesse said calmly. “You go downstairs. I’ll wait for Olivia, we’ll be down in a minute. And remember: don’t tell anybody what you just saw.”
            Izzy looked back at the window and began to panic all over again. When Jesse saw the look on his face he turned to face the window, himself.

“What?” He asked.

The shadow man was gone. Jesse and Izzy shared looks of concern.

 “Where did it go?” Izzy started to shake the way he did when he got nervous.

“I don’t know. I kind of just does that sometimes.”

The younger boy stood quietly, taking in the new information, but having trouble processing it. “I’m…gonna go downstairs, now. I think it’d be best to be around more people.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot Mom invited a crap-ton of people.” Jesse sighed at the thought of having to socialize with his extended family. He didn’t like most of them. He didn’t even care much for his parents. If he didn’t have Izzy and Olivia, Jesse would have been sure he was a sociopath.

“Well, not a crap-ton. Only Aunt Isabella, and Minzy are downstairs, and…” Izzy trailed off.

For just a moment, Jesse remembered his younger cousin, Minzy, and how she didn’t look like either of her parents. But he sensed Izzy’s awkwardness, and stared at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. When Izzy showed no signs of talking, Jesse responded with, “And, who else?”

“U-uncle Nick.” Izzy was beginning to lose his composure. It had been a long time since he gotten over his stutter, that Jesse’s heart broke realizing how scared his little brother was.

Jesse crosses the room toward Izzy. “Why don’t you hang out in your room for a while. You’ve already seen them, so I’ll just tell them you’re not feeling alright, and that you’re gonna take a nap.

Nodding, Izzy thanked his older brother, and walked back into his room. When he closed the door, Olivia opened the bathroom door with a blank stare on her face.

“You alright?” Jesse asked his friend. She had become a little pale.

“Yeah. Um, I’m gonna go home, if that’s alright.”

“Sure. Sorry you had to see that.”
            “Nah, it’s fine. Let me know if anything happens.”

Jesse nodded his head, hoping the shadow man didn’t follow her home. “Will do.” He smiled in an attempt to convince his best friend that things would be alright. Olivia smiled back at him, walked down the stairs with a cheery “Good bye!” to Jesse’s family as she left.

‘My turn, I guess,’ Jesse thought to himself as he descended the stairs and turned into the living room.

“It’s about time!” Jesse’s mother chastised him for taking so long to come down to greet his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. “You almost missed your chance to see your baby cousin!”

Inwardly, Jesse chuckled. ‘She’s 4 months old. I’m sure she’ll be okay if I don’t say hi.’

“Sorry. Izzy was feeling kinda sick, so I told him to go to his room.”

“Really?” Jesse’s Dad asked. He was always the most concerned when it came to the kids being sick. “What’s wrong?”

“He just had a headache and was feeling nauseous. He’ll probably be fine, though.”

By this point, Jesse had become very used to paying attention to things in his peripheral vision. Because of this, he felt a nervous anger rise in him when he saw his Uncle Nick’s smirk stretch across his “annoying face”, as Izzy like to call it. ‘You always liked the young ones, didn’t you, pervy bastard?’ he laughed silently as he sat down on the couch furthest away from his Uncle.

“I’ll go check on him,” Jesse’s father placed his can of Coors Lite on the coffee table and stood up.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick offered. “I’ll go see if he’s alright, and then I’ll be heading out. I’ve gotta get to work early, tomorrow.”