denim man

Pearl felt that there was someone watching her. Every night before bed for the past two weeks, she asked her mother to check under her bed. Every night her mother said that Pearl was nearly ten years old, that it was time for her to grow up. Then she would shut off the light and close the door, leaving Pearl in the darkness with someone. 

Pearl first saw the man when she was playing on the trampoline at her best friend Deirdre’s house. Deirdre’s trampoline was in the back of her yard, right in front of a thick line of pine trees. While Pearl was up in the air, she saw something moving, a flash of white and blue. When she landed, it was gone. But she figured out that it was a man because when it was time to go home, Pearl got into her mother’s car and slumped against the window. It was then that she saw someone peeking, just slightly, out at her from behind Deirdre’s shed. From what Pearl could see he was older with a potbelly and long white hair. He wore a denim shirt with blue jeans. 

Pearl didn’t tell anyone about him at first because she thought he was a crazy neighbor or maybe Deirdre had a secret grandpa that she was embarrassed of. Maybe he was sick and got loose. But then Pearl saw him in her own yard a few days later. She was laying on the kitchen floor when she turned over and, all of a sudden, there he was standing right in front of the window. Pearl didn’t run or move or breathe. She just froze there on the floor and stared at him. He was so frightening, his face pulled back into a blank expression as if he was a made up corpse. Then the man raised one hand and gently pressed it against the glass. Pearl jumped up and ran crying through the house, begging her mother to come look, warning her that there was an ugly man outside. But by the time Pearl’s mother stepped foot in the kitchen, the man was gone. 

Pearl didn’t see him again, but she didn’t need to. She could feel him all around her. He started to affect her ability to do daily tasks, she was so scared that she would look up and he would be at the window or maybe even right behind her. Pearl wet her mattress for the first time in years, having had a nightmare that he was laying in wait beneath her bed and had suddenly reached out to grab her with his gnarled fingers. Her mother insisted, pleaded, scolded, but none of it did any good. Pearl was convinced that there was someone out to get her and nothing could change her mind. 

The situation became so dire that Pearl’s mother took her down to the police station. Pearl told the police officer, an older woman with little patience for frivolity, that she saw a white haired man put a hand on her window and that she felt very afraid. The police officer told Pearl and her mother that she had checked the criminal records of their town, as well as the two neighboring towns, and that nobody matched that description. She promised Pearl that they would keep an eye out for this character, just in case. It did not do Pearl any good. 

The next time Pearl saw the man would be one week after her meeting with the police officer. Pearl was at home by herself, her mother had stepped out to go to the neighbor’s house. Pearl was afraid but her mother insisted that it was alright, that she would soon return home and that they would be able to see each other through their windows. Pearl sat beside her bedroom window and looked out across the yard, she could see her mother talking to the neighbor in their front doorway. She sat and waited and watched, feeling increasingly terrified. After about five minutes, Pearl saw her mother wave goodbye and start heading back towards their house. 

Pearl let out a sigh of relief and turned away from the window, facing her bed. She froze, her body going stiff. There, beneath the bed frame, was a figure, just barely illuminated by the setting sun. Pearl did not dare move a muscle as the figure slowly inched forward, closer and closer until the man was in front of her on all fours. He looked Pearl in her eyes and smiled, reaching a hand out to touch her cheek just as her mother shouted I’m home from down the stairs.