Eyes Open

It took Troy nearly twenty-five minutes to explain to his parents everything that was going on – from the worsening insomnia to the first sightings of him, to the real story behind when he dropped the phone while talking to his mother, to Nate admitting he had seen him, too. He wasn’t going to admit it at first, but ended up telling them about the footage, anyway. He hadn’t brought it with him, but at least they knew it was there if they needed visual evidence.

"Anyway," Troy eventually concluded. "Nate told me he saw him when he was a lot younger. I was just wondering – because I can’t remember myself – if there’s anything I should know? Did I ever mention him when I was younger? I know you’re going to think I’m completely crazy, but I’m pretty convinced this guy is here for a reason, and that I really need to find it out."

His parents were both looking incredibly preoccupied. They were both pale and exchanging glances with one another, but Troy guessed that was because they were worried about him. He couldn’t really blame them – it was a far-fetched story at the best of times, without him pointing out the fact that his best friend had once seen him too and that he had footage of the strange creature on video.

"That’s actually what you saw?" Troy’s mother eventually asked softly. She sounded like she was going to cry, and Troy was suddenly gripped by the strongest sense of foreboding he had ever experienced.

"Yeah," Troy said, glancing from his mother to his father and back again, feeling his stomach clenching uncomfortably. It was the same kind of feeling he had gotten when he had been younger and knew he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have done – the sort of gut-wrenching dread a child felt when he or she saw his or her parents walking up the drive to the school.

Sandy could obviously sense the atmosphere, because she let out a soft whine and looked up at Troy. He scratched her golden ears to calm her down.

"You spoke about a man who looked the exact same when you were little," Mrs. DeLage said quietly. "We thought he was an imaginary friend, but gradually he turned sinister. He started to frighten you. You ... you called him the Tall Man. You said he would come to your room at night and ask if you could come out to play. We always told you to tell him no, and if he didn’t go away, to shout for us. Eventually, he stopped turning up. I can’t help but think he wanted to take you, as –"

"Aileen."

Troy jumped as his father cut his wife off. His voice sounded slightly angry, almost a warning tone.

"George, we –"

"No, Aileen. We said we wouldn’t go down that route again. You know as well as I do it couldn’t possibly have been that."

"Been what?" Troy asked, but his voice fell on deaf ears.

"How can you say that, George? How else would Troy have know what that thing looked like? What if it’s coming for him too? Would you want him to take both of them?"

"Shut up, Aileen," Mr. DeLage said, raising his voice now, and his wife fell silent and glared at him.

"If that’s you answer to everything," she muttered under her breath, though she knew her husband could hear her.

"Mom, Dad," Troy said loudly, waving his arms at them. "I am here, you know. What’s going on? You can’t say stuff like that and then expect me to forget it ever happened!"

"He’s right, George," Mrs, DeLage said, staring at her husband with brown eyes that told him she wasn’t going down without a fight. "We need to tell him. What if he remembers clues or something if we do? What if we can find her?"

"You can’t still think that some imaginary friend had something to do with her vanishing!" Mr. DeLage burst out, but he knew his wife wasn’t going to back down. "If you feel you really have to, then tell him. But I don’t see what good it will do."

"You know as well as I do that he had something to do with it," Mrs. DeLage hissed. "As much as you like to pretend that there are no other worlds apart from our own – no ghosts, no entities, no supernatural beings at all – you can’t deny the fact that the proof was shoved right in your face. If you still refuse to believe what happened, then you’re a disappointment."

There was a long and very much awkward pause, during which Troy was desperate to speak up and find out what his parents were going on about, but was also too frightened of being snapped at to interrupt the staring competition that his parents seemed to be engaged in. He had never seen them so tense with one another before, and judging by the way Sandy was pressing herself against Troy’s legs, looking up at him every so often, she wasn’t used to the atmosphere either.

"Tell him, then," Mr. DeLage eventually muttered. "If you really think it will do that much good, you can tell him."

"You want me to act like she never existed," Mrs. DeLage whispered, and her eyes sparkled briefly with unshed tears before she looked to her adult son. "Troy, I’m afraid we’ve kept a secret from you. A very large secret."

Troy’s father gave an awkward cough and his wife looked at him, but he no longer made any attempt to persuade her not to continue.

"What?" Troy asked hesitantly, his mouth suddenly dry.

"You’re not an only child, Troy," Mrs. DeLage sighed, and her eyes glistened with tears once more. "You had – you have – a sister. She’s three years older than you. She ... she went missing a couple of weeks before you were born."

Troy blinked, trying to take in what he had just been told. How could his parents have kept another child secret for twenty-three years?

"What ... what was her name?" was all Troy could think to ask.

"Her name is Rosie," his mother replied, her voice catching a little at the end. "Don’t speak of her in past tense, Troy. There’s no proof that she’s not alive somewhere else."

"But ..." Troy couldn’t think of anything that could sum up the shock he was feeling. "Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep her a secret?"

Mrs. DeLage looked down, and tears began to splash on her lap. She sniffed, and her husband’s face softened as he reached for her and held her against him.

"The ... circumstances surrounding Rosie’s disappearance were rather strange, son," Troy’s father told him. "We decided to hush it up. We both feel terrible for doing so, as it’s awful to have to pretend that our daughter doesn’t exist. But telling people the truth was just causing difficulties, and the last thing we wanted to do was burden you with it for your whole life. We were wrong, though. You can’t deny something like this, and we should have told you."

"It was something to do with the man I’ve been seeing, isn’t it?" Troy asked softly. "The tall guy."

"Yes," Troy’s father said softly. "Rosie spoke about him a lot, before she vanished."

"When you were really little," Mrs. DeLage sniffed. "You wrote this poem. You terrified us – you were the age Rosie was when she vanished, and you wrote something far beyond your years. It was then we thought you might have known something, but we still didn’t tell you, because I guess we were putting all our hope on the fact it was just a coincidence."

"What did I write?" Troy asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer. He expected his mother to have to get up and find what he had written, but to his surprise, she recited it from memory.

"'Rosie, Rosie, where’d you go? You left no footprints in the snow. In your eyes, there was no light when you said "The Tall Man visits at night"'," Mrs. DeLage said softly. "You didn’t know anything about Rosie then, of course. But you had started mentioning the tall man yourself. Me and your father ... we were terrified. We didn’t know what to do and we were frightened that the tall man was after you as well. After all, I for one am convinced that he had something to do with our Rosie vanishing."

"We don’t know that, Aileen," Mr. DeLage said quietly. "You know that there’s no sense in going down that road. Who’s going to believe that some paranormal entity stole our daughter from us?"

"They didn’t see it like we did though, George!" Aileen replied. "They didn’t see the way she looked at him, even though we couldn’t see him. Or the way she’d talk to him, or the leaves that used to appear in the house when none of us had been outside. How do you explain that? Or ... or the time there were the footprints! The footprints that Troy mentioned in his poem. Those footprints were twice the size of a normal man’s foot – and they only led away from the house. How can they say that something strange wasn’t going on? How does a normal man get into a house and snatch a little girl from her bedroom without leaving more traces?"

"You and I can see that, Aileen, but clearly they can’t," Mr. DeLage said, trying to keep a calm voice even though his wife was becoming more and more distressed. "That’s why we haven’t given up."

"Have you had any clues, Troy?" Mrs. DeLage asked her son desperately. "Any at all? There must be a reason why he’s watching you, too. Perhaps you could find her? He knows where she is!"

Troy was getting more than a little freaked out. It seemed this creature had driven his whole family insane, and he was simply next on the list.

"How can I know anything?" Troy asked softly. "I don’t even know what she looks like."

Troy said the words with regret – he had always wanted a sibling, and to learn that he had a big sister he’s never even met, who could still be out there somewhere, was killing him.

Mrs. DeLage sighed, and then she stood up, going to the cabinet next to the TV. She took out an old tape, and then gave Troy a thin smile.

"Did you ever wonder why we never got rid of the VCR?" she asked softly. "This was taken a few weeks before Rosie vanished. I was obviously heavily pregnant with you, Troy. She was so excited."

Troy could already feel a lump in his throat, and he didn’t know how he was going to cope with seeing his big sister for the first time, after not even knowing that she existed. His mother stayed on the floor by the TV, as though by doing so she could be somehow closer to her missing daughter.

The picture was grainy, as the tape was old and cameras hadn’t been as high-tech as they were now. Troy recognized a much younger version of his mother – her hair was longer and darker, her skin less wrinkled, and, as she had mentioned, she was indeed heavily pregnant. His father was behind the camera – Troy could hear him talking to none other than Rosie.

"Can you wait for your brother to be born, Rosie?" he asked the little girl, who then bounded onto the camera next to her mother.

"No!" she grinned. She had the same smile as Troy, the same little dimples that came up when she did so. Her hair was lighter, like their father’s, but her eyes were the same as Troy’s. The family resemblence was obvious. Troy watched as his little sister waved at the camera and giggled, and his mother laughed at her excitement.

"Do you know when your baby brother will get here, Rosie?" she asked her daughter, and Rosie nodded excitedly.

"Fourteen sleeps!" she said, holding up ten fingers to make up for the fact that she didn’t have fourteen.

"That’s right!" Troy’s mother smiled. "And what are we calling him?"

Rosie grinned and put her little hands on her mother’s bump.

"Troy!" she said, grinning even wider. "My baby brother’s name is Troy!"

Troy felt his heart skip a beat. There was something familiar in the way she said his name. He knew he had heard the exact same voice before ...but where?

Then he remembered. The little girl’s voice calling his name at night – the one he had caught on camera. She was Rosie. She was his little sister.

Troy felt anger rush through him. That tall creature knew where his sister was, and he was mocking him. He was standing there, staring, and mocking him.

Things were about to change. Troy knew that for a fact.