One thing that any parent had to deal with was the inevitable nightmare that their kid refused to believe was just that.
"But there was a monster outside my window!" Charlotte cried from the doorway, refusing to come back into her room. "It looked like a pony with bat wings, like a vampire pony. A monster pony!"
Wendy suppressed a groan as she stepped away from the window. It wouldn't do anyone any good for her daughter to see her being dismissive. There wasn't anything to see out the window aside from the side of their neighbor's house. At least she could say her daughter had a creative imagination. It wasn't just a vampire outside her window; it was a vampire pony.
Her husband, Charles, opened the closet and made a show of looking inside before turning towards Charlotte. "Nothing in here either, hun. You just had a bad dream."
The six-year-old gave a defiant stomp of her foot. "No! It was outside the window, on top of the neighbor's house."
"And how did you see it?" Wendy asked, wanting to get this over with. She loved her children, but it was three in the morning, and she had to get up in less than three hours.
"I saw it out the window!" Charlotte repeated, missing the critical part of why the question was being asked.
Wendy looked at the layout of the room. The majority of space was taken up by the pair of mattresses stacked on top of one another—she regretted they didn't have a proper bed frame or even box spring, but they made due. There was just enough narrow path to walk beside the bed from the door to a second door that led into the two elder daughters' room. A second narrow path separated the bed from the dresser and closet; an old black and white television sat on top of the dresser. The window was situated so that the bed ran underneath it, but it was the foot of the bed, not the part of the bed that Charlotte would have been sleeping on. The location of her pillow confirmed this by being at the head of the bed with the blanket bundled together next to it.
"Were you up?" Wendy asked.
"No," Charlotte denied quickly, not even thinking about how it made her story impossible.
Wendy looked at the TV again. Letting Charlotte have that might have been a mistake. She'd no doubt been up, watching some late-night movie that children had no business watching and gotten herself spooked to the point she wanted company. Andrea and Kristin kept their adjoining door locked, so those two were out as options to run to—not that they'd be very sympathetic to their baby sister. This entire story was Charlotte's way to cover for herself while getting attention.
She wasn't going to fuss at her daughter about it right now. It was late, and everyone needed to sleep.
"Well, I guess we scared it away," Wendy announced. "It was probably just an owl or something you couldn't see well in the dark. It can't get in anyway; the window is shut. Even if it were a horse, a horse would never fit through your window."
"It wasn't a horse; it was a pony. It was little, like a baby horse," Charlotte protested, still refusing to come into the room.
"Go to sleep. We have school in the morning!" Andrea called out through the door to the other room.
Charles stepped through the mess of toys, nearly tripping over a robot, and put his head next to the other girls' door. "Hey! You two lay down and go to sleep. Your mother and I are dealing with Charlotte."
There was a muffled response that Wendy couldn't make out. It hadn't done a thing to budge her youngest from the doorway. She really should be firmer, especially since Charlotte was clearly lying, but then again, Charlotte was only six, and she couldn't bring herself to be harsh. Still, something needed to be done to settle Charlotte down.
"How about you sleep with us for the rest of the night?" Wendy suggested as she walked over and wrapped an arm around her daughter. "Just for tonight. You're getting to be a big girl and need to learn to be brave."
"But it was a vampire pony, Mommy," Charlotte continued to insist as she leaned into the hug.
Wendy took a deep breath. Just don't respond to it, and she would drop it. "How about you go potty and then head into Mommy and Daddy's bed? We'll be right there."
Charlotte hugged her tighter for a second. "Okay, Mommy. You promise to keep the vampire pony away?"
"I promise," Wendy assured her. She then gave her daughter a nudge. "Go on. We'll be there in a second."
Charlotte hurried over to the bathroom and closed the door. It wasn't a long trip. The hallway, if you wanted to call it that, consisted of just the door to Charlotte's room, their bedroom, the bathroom, and a closet, and opened straight out into the living room. The bathroom door frame was practically touching the ones for Charlotte's bedroom and the closet, and it was less than eight feet from Wendy and Charles's bedroom to the bathroom. It didn't just feel cramped; it was cramped.
"We really need to get on her about picking up these toys," Charles said as he navigated his way back beside her.
She gripped his hand as he reached her. "Where would she even put them? There's barely any room in her closet."
Charles sighed and squeezed her hand. "I'll work on the expansion in the back some more this weekend. Once I get those extra two rooms built, we'll have tons of space."
She nodded, saying nothing. He had been working on those back rooms since they moved into this place. The project had actually been started by the house's former residents and was now Charles's pet project. Over half their house had been additions to the original structure carried out by successive residents who had rooms too small and plenty of yard to expand into. Their house was not unique around here for being like that; the whole neighborhood was like that. The entire community had been built as too small cinder block homes with big yards, and every one of them had a hodgepodge of additions to them. If there were ever a homeowners association here, they would have all died of shock long ago from the lack of uniformity.
"You tuck her in. I'll be along in a few minutes. I'm going to have a quick drink and smoke to settle down," Wendy said, giving one last squeeze of her hand before releasing. "I stick my head in Andrea and Kristin's room while I'm at it, just to make sure they did go back to bed."
He kissed her. "Just don't fall asleep on the couch again. It's not good for your back."
She gave him a soft playful shove. "My back is fine. I'll be in bed soon. I promise."
Wendy heard the toilet flush as she walked out to the living room. A second later, the door opened, and Charles and Charlotte silently retreated into the bedroom.
It wasn't so dark that Wendy needed to turn on a light to make her way through the living room. The window blinds only partially blocked out the light, and there was a street lamp at the edge of their front yard. That left the living room dim, but still easily navigable. It curved around to a hallway that she did need to flip the light on for. This hallway was lined with cabinets, and as far as she and Charles could tell, had once been the kitchen before the remodeling had begun. Now it was just a strange narrow room in their oddly put-together house.
She crossed the hallway into the kitchen, flipping that light on as well. The kitchen was the largest room in the house, and Charles identified it as the second room to have been added to the house, after Charlotte's. There was plenty of counter space and cabinets, and there were two dining tables. Even rich people didn't get kitchens this big. It had four doors leading into it—the door she had just come from, a door leading into a laundry room, a door leading into the expansion in progress, and a door leading into the two elder daughters' room. It was this final door that Wendy made her way to.
She cracked open the door just wide enough to stick her head in, not wanting to wake her daughters if they were back to sleep. The room was large, the second largest in the house, and there was a clear division in it done by different types of carpeting. The carpeting had been that way when they first moved in, and Andrea and Kristin used it as their dividing line about who owned what part of the room. The two shared only a beat-up entertainment center near the dividing line with a small color television and an Intellivision game unit. Andrea's bed was on the far end of the room, sharing a wall and a door with Charlotte. Kristin's bed was closer to the kitchen door.
Wendy listened for a moment to confirm both were gently snoring before closing the door. She then went to the refrigerator and grabbed a can't Apple Slice soda. A short walk back through the house, she was back in the living room, sitting on the couch.
After opening the side and taking a quick dip, she fished out a cigarette and lit it up. One quick drag later, she let her eyes fall on the bills and yesterday's newspaper sitting out on the coffee table. The newspaper headlines were about President Reagan negotiating about nuclear arms with the Soviet Union, but there was also a story about the Mets winning their first World Series in seventeen years. There were also several small stories about how to check your kids' candy this Halloween.
Crap, she still needed to pick up some candy to hand out. Halloween was this Friday. The kids all had their costumes. Andrea was going to be a police officer...again—this would be four years in a row for that. If that girl didn't grow up to be in law enforcement, Wendy would eat her own hand. Kristin was going to be a vampire, and Charlotte was going to be a Care Bear. Unfortunately, there weren't going to be any decorations this year, aside from some the kids made in school; the budget was too tight, but they could manage to get some lollipops or candy corn. Her employee discount at K-Mart could be used on that, so it wouldn't be too bad.
She wondered if they would be the odd ones out by not decorating the house for Halloween. Wendy got up and walked to the window, taking a quick drag from her cigarette before peaking out the blinds.
The house directly across the street hadn't been one that she had been planning on looking at, but it was the one her eyes had instantly been drawn to. Its front porch light was on, and a middle-aged woman was sitting out on its porch with a shotgun resting across her lap. That house had been empty with a for sale sign just yesterday morning, and she hadn't seen any moving truck or anything to show anyone was moving in. Still, the sign was gone now, the house had power, and she doubted a squatter would sit so brazenly on the front porch. Wendy wasn't as disturbed by the gun as she might have been if she lived elsewhere, but this neighborhood was relatively poor, practically a ghetto, and it wasn't safe at night. Bloods and Crips gangs were usually out in force at night, and the next street back had a pack of Hell's Angels. If you were going to sit outside at night, it was advisable you have some protection of some kind.
Still, why was she even sitting out on her front porch at three in the morning? The woman didn't seem relaxed either. Her eyes were scanning around the street, even looking up on top of houses. Those eyes passed over where Wendy was spying from, and Wendy quickly closed the blind and retreated back from it before she could be seen spying on her new neighbor. She resolved to go across the street tomorrow after work and introduce herself. In a neighborhood like theirs, it was best to know everyone who lived immediately by you. If you looked out for your neighbors, they would look out for you.
She took a final drag of her cigarette before walking over to the ashtray and stamping it out. It was time to get back to sleep.
Her husband was still awake and waiting for her as she crawled back into bed. Charlotte was on the far side of the bed, next to the wall and window. Their room was just as cramped as hers, perhaps more so, since they had a queen-sized bed and she didn't.
"We have a new neighbor," Wendy whispered as she got into bed beside Charles. "Real charmer. She's sitting out on her porch with a shotgun."
"As long as she isn't prominently wearing blue or red, I don't care," Charles said with a yawn. "Plan on meeting her tomorrow?"
"Yeah, we can go over together after we are both off work," Wendy replied.
"Sounds like a plan," Charles said as he pulled her into a spooning position. "Clock is set. Get some sleep."
Wendy nuzzled into him. Her gaze drifted to the mirror adorning their wall that gave an excellent reflection of the window and the single large tree in the front yard. Was something moving in it? It was the wrong hour for squirrels, and she had never seen a raccoon in this area before; it was too close to the inner city. An owl, maybe?
A gunshot rang out, and one of the branches of the tree shook violently as whatever had been there quickly flew away. Luckily, the shot didn't seem to have woken Charlotte. Gunshots were sadly all too common an occurrence in the area, so common that no one even woke up at the sound of one.
What had been in the tree? Maybe Charlotte had seen something. Perhaps it was a larger bird, like a hawk or eagle. They passed through the area sometimes, and Denver wasn't far from the mountains.
One thing was for sure. It wasn't some fantasy vampire pony.