"...He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake..." ~Santa Claus is Coming to Town
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The night was young when a shadow passed over little Jack Simmons's bedroom; quick as lightning, silent as snowfall. On that particular night, it would've been hard to spot the tall, hulking figure who lurked outside, saying not a word as he peered into the little boy's window. The night was a cloak of darkness, masking him from anyone who might happen to pass by. Had the moon come out and provided a bit more light, maybe someone would have seen what the owner of that shadow, and stopped to question them. But unfortunately there was no one, thanks to the horrid weather.
And so the shadow and the sinister man who owned it both pressed on in silence.
There were pounding waves of freezing rain raging outside, which were quickly morphing into a fierce blizzard. But the man outside? He didn't care. Or, rather, he tolerated the biting winds and pelting precipitation as if he wasn't bothered by them at all. He stood there, stock still, with the fury of Mother Nature roaring at his back.
Even she seemed to know that his intentions were pure evil.
The winds howled with anger as the lone man peered into the room, his eyes flitting this way and that until they eventually landed on their selected target: a small boy, curled up tight and tucked snugly under a large quilt. His eyes were closed, his long lashes providing him with a rather innocent look.
Then again, looks could be deceiving. After all, the man staring in from the outside had once been as little and as sweet as Jack Simmons. But now that man had grown up, and he certainly wasn't innocent.
No, dear reader, hewas anything but.
The wind outside screamed like an infuriated banshee, and the sleeping boy was startled awake. His eyes searched the room for the source of the noise, not seeing the source for what it was: a hidden phantom.
Meanwhile, he had found the visible one.
As soon as the little boy glimpsed the man outside through his bleary vision, he shot up in his bed like a rocket on its way to the moon. "W-who's there?" He asked, his voice shaking. Being only six years old and having just woken up to find a complete stranger staring him down from outside, he was extremely frightened.
The figure stood completely still, not moving. The wind whipped at his clothes, making him look like one of the villains from one of Jack's video games. The child blinked once, then twice, not believing what he was seeing. Then he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. When he looked back at the window, the man was gone.
Wondering if he had only been seeing things, Jack laid back down in his bed and closed his eyes. Had there really been a man outside his window? No, that couldn't be. Surely this was all some crazy dream, or maybe it had been a tree, blown in front of the window in the midst of the storm. If it were a dream, surely he would wake up soon. His father had always told him he had an overactive imagination. He tried to shake it off and pretend it was nothing.
Instead, he didn't go to sleep for the rest of the night.
