There's a Monster Pony Outside My Window

by Halira

Chapter 5: Andrea and Kristin

Andrea was not typically a disobedient kid, but she was not used to having what she said dismissed by her parents. So as soon as she was sure they'd both gone back to their room, she got out of bed, even though the order from her parents had been to go to sleep.

She wasn't the only one who had decided to get up as soon as their parents were in their room; Kristin got up at the same time. Their beds were across the room from each other, and neither felt brave enough to try to speak with enough volume to be heard across the room, lest their parents overhear them. So the two girls decided with a mere look at one another to come together in the middle.

"What do we do? Mom and Dad don't believe us," Kristin fretted, fearfully glancing over her shoulder at her window.

Andrea couldn't help looking out the window as well, with another look given to the window on her side of the room just to be safe. "I don't know. Didn't Charlotte see one yesterday?"

Kristin hung her head. "Yeah, and we made fun of her. I feel bad."

"Me too," Andrea said as she looked at the door that joined their room with their baby sister's. "I don't think those things were ponies. Ponies don't have wings, and that one with the feathers was purple. Ponies aren't purple."

"Why did one have feathers and the other one didn't?" Kristin asked as if Andrea would was more informed about the monsters than she was.

Andrea just shook her head. "Don't know, but those weren't birds." She made a decision. "We need to find out if they're still out there."

"Mom and Dad just looked. The monsters were gone," Kristin said, inching a little further away from the wall with the windows.

"Maybe grown-ups can't see them. We should check," Andrea asserted, but she didn't move to go do so.

"You first," Kristin insisted, moving even farther away from the windows.

Andrea forced herself to take a few steps toward her sister's window. Andrea was always the bravest of the three sisters. Kristin and Charlotte were practically chickens, but not Andrea. She wanted to be a police officer when she grew up, and police officers had to be brave. Right now, she wasn't feeling courageous, but it would be impossible to convince Kristin to go first.

She looked out the window, first towards the roof of their neighbor's house, where they had seen the monsters. The Myers' house was smaller and had a bigger backyard. The Myers' backyard was what each of their bedroom windows overlooked, but they could easily see the Myers' roof off to the side from their windows. She scrutinized the Myers' house and saw nothing. To be safe, she checked the neighbor's backyard too and looked past it to the Westoffs' yard—although that one was harder to see the details of in the dark.

After standing there for an eerily quiet minute, she hurried back to her sister. "There's nothing out that way. We need to check the other sides of the house."

"We can't check the backyard; Mom and Dad will hear that door for sure! It's too squeaky!" Kristin whispered frantically.

Her sister wasn't wrong, and going outside when those things could be out there still sounded like a very bad idea. "We can still check the other windows," Andrea said with more confidence than she felt.

"You check them," Kristin said, crossing her arms and making it clear she wasn't leaving the safety of the bedroom.

Andrea scowled at her sister. "What are you going to do then?"

Kristin blinked in surprise that she was expected to do something. "I'll… I'll talk to Charlotte."

"Why?" Andrea demanded in a harsh whisper. "What's Charlotte going to do? She's six and a bigger chicken than you!"

"But she saw one yesterday, and the monsters were looking at her window, not ours. That has to be important," Kristin defensively asserted. Her eyes narrowed. "And I'm not a chicken. You're a chicken! Maybe they want to hurt her. We can't let them get our little sister."

"Maybe they think she is the easiest prey since she is so little," Andrea pondered.

"Which is why she should be in here with us, where she's safer," Kristin said, pointing at Charlotte's door. Andrea wasn't sure if that made Charlotte safer or just put all three of them in more danger, but if their parents weren't going to believe them…

"Fine," Andrea conceded. "You get her, and I'll check the windows. Be quiet! We don't want Mom and Dad getting mad at us."

Andrea carefully tiptoed out of their room into the kitchen. The only light in the room was the light over the stove, which their mom usually left on, knowing that she and Kristin would sometimes get up to get something to drink and not wanting them to have to stumble to the fridge or the opposite side of the room where the light switch was.

She went over to one of the kitchen windows and peeked out the blinds. Beyond was the street they walked down to go to school, and on the other side was the house where Misses Brown and her great-grandson lived. She'd been over to Misses Brown's house just once, and it was with a class field trip. Misses Brown was old, like really-really old, a hundred and ten, and her parents had been slaves during the Civil War. Her great-grandson was even older than their parents. Her teacher took their class to sit in Misses Brown's yard and listen to her tell stories that her parents had told her. It felt weird, going on a field trip to the house across the street, but a field trip was a field trip, and she wasn't going to complain.

A stray thought made her wonder how old Miss Newman was since she had great-grandkids. She didn't look as old as Misses Brown. Then again, she was sure Misses Brown had great-great-grandkids. That would explain why Misses Brown looked so much older.

The street was quiet, as was Misses Brown's house. The only light was from the street light in front of the house and the one on the next street over. She tried to see if anything was in the alley behind Misses Brown's house, but the street lights were too far away from it for her to make out anything past the entrance into the alley. It didn't seem like there were any signs of the monsters.

Moving on, she crept through the pantry, which was always creepy at night since it had no windows, and on into the living room. She skipped the window that looked out at the station wagon because it would mostly give her the same view she just had from the kitchen, and it was also too close to Pretty's cage, and she didn't want the bird to wake up and start singing. That would get her caught for sure. She instead went to the big window that looked out on the other street in front of the house. She used her fingers to open up the blinds just a little.

Standing on the porch of the house across the street was Miss Newman. She was holding a shotgun in one hand and staring up at the sky in the distance. The direction the old woman was staring made it impossible for Andrea to tell what Miss Newman was looking at, but the old woman didn't seem happy. Why was Miss Newman even out at this hour? Didn't old people need lots of sleep, like babies? Why did she have a shotgun? Had she seen the monsters?

The woman moved and raised her free hand to the sky with her middle finger extended. What the heck? Did the old lady just flip the sky off? No… there was something up there. The monsters had wings. Miss Newman was flipping off the monsters. Miss Newman knew about the minsters.

This new information was both exhilarating and terrifying. On the one hand, there was an adult out there who would believe them. On the other hand, if Miss Newman was flipping off the monsters, then that meant the monsters were still close enough for Miss Newman could see them. They hadn't left yet.

Time seemed frozen as Andrea sat there, watching the woman across the street and waiting to see what happened. Miss Newman lowered her one-finger salute and kept staring off in the distance, and it seemed to last forever. Eventually, the old woman seemed to relax and take a deep breath. Then she turned and looked directly at their house.

Andrea immediately let go of the blinds and ducked down. Had Miss Newman seen her? Was she going to tell their parents that she was up? Andrea didn't want to find out. She decided that it was time to go back to her room and report what she had seen to her sisters.

She made her way back as quickly as she dared while avoiding making noise. When she entered her room, she found Kristin in front of their TV, playing Burgertime on their Intellivision with the sound all the way down. Charlotte was sitting close by, watching the game.

Andrea hurried over to Kristin. "There are monsters outside, and you're playing video games!?"

Kristin glared at her as Peter Pepper got eaten by an egg on the screen. "I'm trying to pretend that everything is okay. Charly was scared." Kristin turned her attention back to the game as her next life started. "Do you think Mom and Dad will get us a Nintendo for Christmas? James got one for his birthday last week. It's super-cool, way better than this."

Andrea screwed up her face in outrage. "No, it costs too much money, and we shouldn't be thinking about that right now. Miss Newman saw the monsters too."

Kristin forgot her game, and a sausage promptly ate her chef. "How do you know?"

"I saw her flicking them off," Andrea whispered.

Kristin's mouth dropped. "What?! She can't flick off a monster!"

"I saw her!" Andrea defensively insisted.

"They'd attack her!" Kristin countered.

"She had a gun," Andrea countered back.

Kristin sat and considered that last bit. Andrea did as well. If the monsters were afraid of a gun, that meant they could be hurt. The fact they could be hurt was somehow a small reassurance.

"So… what do we do?" Kristin asked after a minute of silence.

Andrea thought about it. Their parents didn't believe them, but what if another adult said there were monsters?

"We go to Miss Newman and get her to tell our parents about the monsters," Andrea decided. "We can ask her when we go out trick or treating."

Kristin didn't seem so sure. "What if she's friends with the monsters and they just had a fight? She showed up at the same time they did."

That was something Andrea hadn't considered. She also didn't have a good answer.

"We just have to risk it," Andrea replied. "She didn't hurt us when she was here. Even if she and the monsters are friends, we can find out more about them by asking her."

"I hope you don't get us into trouble," Kristin muttered. Andrea knew the trouble her sister was talking about wasn't the kind with her parents.

"I hope so too."

Author's Note:

Comments

[Charlie_K]

Well the map sure makes it easier to envision what we're seeing. I'm no good with text explanations of the layout of something, I have to actually see it to understand it.

The story is certainly getting interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop. Especially if Twilight is somehow involved.

One question though. Something specific stuck out to me in the following paragraph:

She looked out the window, first towards the roof of their neighbor's house, where they had seen the monsters. The Myers' house was smaller and had a bigger backyard. The Myers' backyard was what each of their bedroom windows overlooked, but they could easily see the Myers' roof off to the side from their windows. She scrutinized the Myers' house and saw nothing. To be safe, she checked the neighbor's backyard too and looked past it to the Westoffs' yard—although that one was harder to see the details of in the dark.

Isn't that an excessive number of times to specify that she's looking at the Myer's property in a single paragraph, with it being specifically pointed out in every single sentence?