The Dancer

I’ve never been too big a fan of spending the night at other people’s houses. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my friends, but the spending the night part is the problem most of the time. I don’t think I’ve ever actually slept well at one of my friend’s houses before, and that can be for a lot of different reasons. I’m only 15 years old and I’ve lived my entire life in a small town here in south Alabama. But despite living in a small town, my family actually lives on a regular suburban street. My parents’ neighborhood has streetlights that are always on, well-manicured front lawns, a busy two-lane street, and a neatly maintained sidewalk that people walk on at all hours of the day.

On top of that, I always sleep with the TV on. Not necessarily because I am scared of silence and darkness, I just have grown to sleep with some light and sound around. The problem is that nearly all my friends lived out in the woods somewhere, or at least lived around a small group of houses that is out in the woods. For some reason, every one of my friends also slept with no TV or radio on or nothing; it always bothered me. I could sleep a little, but every time I was about to fall asleep, I’d hear some sound that I didn’t know from somewhere. Then I’d be wide awake again. Maybe it was just something like a tree branch scrapping the side of the house or a cat fighting another cat outside, but I wasn’t used to dealing with any of it because any weird sound was always drowned out by the tv at my house.

It was also just the fact that I didn’t get to sleep in my usual bed too, that and sometimes other people’s houses just generally creep me out either because of the creepy decorations of the house, the age of the house, or sometimes just the parents were kinda weird. Since I was about eight years old my parents have let me spend the night. Up until now there’ve only been a couple of people that I’ve spent the night with. Both Jacob and Tyler were two of my friends who were in the same class as me, and they had both been my best friends since I was in kindergarten, mostly.

Jacob lived not far from me, and his house was a two-story house. So even though it was surrounded by trees, it still felt safe since I was always on the second floor. Tyler lived a little further out of town and in a one-story cottage-style house. His house was usually tough to spend the night at, especially if it was just me and Tyler and his parents staying over. There were a couple of houses near Tyler’s house, so there were a couple of yard lights on around his house at night. Whenever I’d be sleeping on the floor of his bedroom, I’d always be facing his bedroom window, and one of the yard lights would always shine through those flimsy thin curtains that were over his windows and cast this weird glare into his bedroom. Tyler would be fast asleep, but I’d spend the whole night staring at his window thinking that an axe murderer was about to burst into the room.

The house situation wasn’t too different when I started to become great friends with another one of my classmates, Herman. Despite his ancient name and terrible acne, he had become my very best friend since starting high school. We had first met each other because we played basketball together on the high school team, and I had gone to a birthday party at his house back when I was in eighth grade. He was a good bit taller than me at about 6’3 and had orange hair and was religiously clean-shaven though he was fun to hang out with. I had more friends other than him, Jacob, and Tyler of course but neither Jacob nor Tyler played basketball. So, during basketball season I didn’t really see them as much and since Herman played basketball then it was perfect for us to get to hang out with each other.

“You coming over tonight?” asked Herman as he was chucking back a bottle of lemon Gatorade standing up on the side of the basketball court at the Burton High School gym.

“Sure. Dad’s coming to pick me up, but I can have him take me down to your house whenever I get my stuff together,” I replied to Herman as the team was taking a break in practice from running drills. We were about to start running suicides, so practice would be over soon.

“Sounds good to me, don’t eat though. Mom will have dinner ready for us when we get back,” said Herman as we started making our way back onto the court, which was lined on the side with green and white along with the Burton Eagles logo in center court.

Dad picked me up and took me home, which was only a couple of minutes away from the high school. I told Mom and Dad about wanting to go to Herman’s house, and they agreed to take me even though they admitted that they did not really know Herman’s parents all that well. This made them hesitant to let me go. They realized though that I was nearly old enough to drive, so they didn’t worry as much about the friends I spent the night with. Herman lived in a little community called Tattnall. It was probably five miles southwest of Burton and was actually the oldest settlement in the entire Muscogee County. It apparently was an important fort on the river coming up from Pensacola in the Civil War, but now it was more like a large neighborhood with a bunch of really old houses where no more than about two hundred people lived.

Herman’s house was just a one-story house, but it was rather large. It had a strange shape to it, like an L. It was probably because the house was originally a normal shaped house that was added onto on one side. The house was surrounded by trees on one side and a small field on the other. We pulled off the road that ran through Tattnall from the main highway and onto Herman’s house’s concrete driveway. As soon as Dad stopped his truck, a blonde woman stepped out of the house.

“Hey y’all! I’m so glad you’re staying the night with Herman. He’s been talking about it since he got back from basketball practice,” said the woman.

“Hey Ethel, good to see you,” said my dad as I opened the passenger door to get out and got my duffel bag out of the back seat.

“Hey David, great to see you too; tell Heather that we’d love to have y’all over for dinner sometime,” said Ethel in an outrageously country accent. Like me and my family, of course, speak with a southern accent because we’re from Alabama, but it is nowhere near that strong. Herman didn’t talk this country, but his mom spoke almost like Billy Graham. Like a southern belle that pronounces their R’s like ‘ah.’

“Come on, Logan, let’s get inside. We’ve got the food waiting on us, and it’s Friday night, so it’s family game night,” said Ethel.

I was happy to come see Herman because he was my friend and he’s always cool to hang around, but did I really want to participate in board games? Other houses that I went to, I just kinda gave a wave to the parents and scooted back to either Jacob’s or Tyler’s room. Ethel seemed like a really nice lady, and she was good looking. Of course, some of that could have just been because she looked a lot younger than all my other friends’ parents. She was about 5’5 with piercing blue eyes and modernly styled blonde hair that fell past her shoulders. Again though, she looked really young. Like I wouldn’t think that anyone with a 15-year-old son should be less than in their late 30s, early 40s. But if I didn’t know better, I’d think that she was 25. I figure that maybe she had some nice face work done over the years.

“That sounds like a great time,” I said shyly, as I wasn’t sure what else to say. I walked into the house, and it was an average one. The floors were sleek grey vinyl, while the walls were all white drywall. I was really impressed with the windows of the house; there were a lot of big bay windows like the ones with the square patterns. What I first walked into was what I assumed was the living room, as it had a huge TV and couches aligned around it. Through a hallway and into the next room was the kitchen, and to the right was an eight-foot-long dinner table where both Herman and his dad were sitting.

“Hello Logan, it’s nice to get to see you again,” said Herman’s dad Ernest as he stood up and shook my hand before sitting back down. I sat down across from Ernest, as Herman was to my left. It’s November, so everyone was wearing jeans. Ernest was wearing a sweater and Herman was wearing a button-up shirt. This made me feel like a bum wearing gym shorts, a T-shirt, and my green Burton high school hoodie.

“I hope you love pot roast, Logan,” said Ethel as she had a large plate of a beef roast that had been cooked in a crock pot and had been neatly sliced up into ten pieces on a large serving plate.

“Yes, Mrs. Hollins, I love it. My mom usually only cooks it for holidays most of the time,” I replied, as I did love traditional southern food like this, but I really didn’t know too many people that regularly cooked this type of food.

“Thank you, we have it every Friday until basketball season starts, of course” said Ethel as she went back and forth from the kitchen, bringing dishes back to the dining room table while the rest of us three remained seated. These dishes included things like mashed potatoes along with a huge cup of brown beef gravy, fried okra, cornbread, and green beans. It was all looking too delicious to contain myself. My mom always tells me not to make a pig of myself while at other people’s houses but with as much food as Ethel was bringing out, I am not sure how it wouldn’t be required to be a pig.

“That’s right, y’all got the county tournament starting next week with Fleming High School. Y’all going to be ready? I hear they’re pretty tough,” asked Ernest.

I wouldn’t say that Ernest looked quite as youthful as Ethel did, but I’d honestly think that he was thirty if I didn’t know any better. I’m not sure what this couple did to stay looking like that, but they definitely had my parents beat that’s for sure.

“I sure hope so, I don’t play too much but Trey Washington from Fleming is insanely good. He may be going to Auburn or Alabama to play after high school so I just hope he don’t make an example of me by dunking on me in the game,” I replied as I began to realize that Herman’s family was really easy to get along with.

“Oh yeah, he’s a killer. But hey, he’s just one guy though. Maybe the rest of the team ain’t too good,” replied Ernest as he stood up and pulled out the chair for Ethel to sit down.

“Thank you, honey. Alright, Herman would you like to say the blessing?” asked Ethel. Herman stood up and bowed his head, and said the blessing.

“Thank you, Herman. So, what are you boy’s plans for tomorrow?” asked Ethel as all four of the people at the table started passing around plates of food after they had spread out their napkins over their laps like ‘proper’ people tended to do.

“We probably won’t do too much. I figure that we can drive down to the river, maybe play some ball. Things like that,” replied Herman as he looked over at me. I honestly didn’t have much to say, I figured we were just going to play video games tonight and just do whatever tomorrow.

“Sounds good with me. The Auburn game is tomorrow at 3 so Dad will probably come pick me up by then,” I replied as I took my first bite of pot roast, which was complete perfection.

“Uh oh, Herman didn’t tell us about that. Looks like you’ll have to leave the house then,” Ernest said sarcastically as he pointed to the hearth that was hanging on the wall behind him, which had a hounds tooth hat and a signed picture of the famous Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. I gave a short laugh at this, since being an Auburn fan usually meant that you had to be around arrogant Alabama fans all the time, but I really didn’t care too much about that since all my friends are Alabama fans anyway.

“Looks like it,” I replied as I was trying to show a nervous smile.

“That reminds me, honey, can you take me up to Burton tomorrow sometime to get the week’s groceries?” asked Ethel politely, in a way that was a lot more polite than my mom normally was to my dad. And why did she need a ride just up the road anyway?

“Sure, I’ll be hunting tomorrow morning, but I’ll come back a little before noon if that’s okay with you,” replied Ernest.

“That’s perfect. How do you like the food, Logan?” asked Ethel. Which was a question that had perhaps the world’s easiest answer.

“Mrs. Hollins, this is probably the best meal that I’ve had in years, like 100% legit,” I said as I had zero doubt in my mind that this really was the best meal I had had in years, perhaps my whole life.

“Thank you, I’ve had a lot of practice cooking this meal. With two healthy growing men in the house, I’ve always got to be at my best in the kitchen,” replied Ethel.

The rest of the meal was quite pleasant as we talked about school and our teachers, my dad’s job, and what I thought about the house. There really wasn’t anything that I found all that weird about Herman’s family other than how young his parents looked and how Herman was an only child since he was really the only kid that I knew that was an only child, but I suppose it really wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. I’m pretty sure if someone spent time around my parents, then they’d probably find some things to be weird about us too.

“That was amazing as always, Ethel,” said Ernest to his wife as he leaned over and kissed her.

“Thanks honey. Are y’all ready for some board games?” asked Ethel as she stood up and started collecting plates from around the table to take to the kitchen.

“Sure,” replied Herman, as it seemed as though he wasn’t quite as cheerful as his parents were. That was understandable since most early teenage boys like Herman were moody most of the time, including me for sure. Herman was a little bit younger than me, as I believe that his 15th birthday is sometime this month, while I turn 16 in March.

“Well let’s get to it then, do you like Monopoly Logan?” asked Ernest to me as we had all left the table and were making our way back into the living room.

“Sure, always takes forever to play it though,” I replied with a very truthful statement.

“Oh yeah, not the way we play it though,” replied Ernest as all four of us were now in the living room and Herman pulled up a chair to the coffee table that was in front of the TV. There was a loveseat and recliner that also surrounded the coffee table, and I sat down in the recliner while Herman was in the chair across from me and Ernest and Ethel were to my right in the loveseat. Ernest had come back from the other room with a United States Monopoly game. He pulled the game out of the box, and it was just like any Monopoly game with the Monopoly cash, chance cards, and game pieces. This version had the individual states as the buyable properties with Alabama, of course, being one of the cheaper ones on the board.

They had a cool way of playing as instead of just letting the game play out, they did it where we all stopped after 20 minutes and then we’d count all the money and property values that we had at the end of that and then that decided the winner.

“Nice job Logan, second place. Ethel here is queen of Monopoly; she’s tough to beat. I swear she practices this game here during the day,” said Ernest as Ethel won the first game with Ernest and Herman finishing third and fourth, respectively.

It was a lot of fun, but after two games it was about 9:30 and I was ready to transition to something that was more involved fun, like video games, of course. I’m honestly not a huge video game player but I only have a PS4, and Herman has a PS5 and had the new college football game. Playing against him on that was honestly the only thing I could think about since he told me that he had that game.

“You boys can stay up as late as you want but don’t be making any noise or anything cause I’ll be getting up around 4:30 to go hunting,” said Ernest as me and Herman had made our way past the kitchen and dining room back to Herman’s room which was the back side of the house and the opposite side of the L-shaped house from the living room.

“Sure thing, Dad, we’ll keep it down in here. Goodnight,” replied Herman.

“Goodnight, Mr. Hollins. Thank you for letting me stay over,” I said as Ernest was at Herman’s bedroom door.

“Sure, Logan, come back over any time,” replied Ernest before he walked out of Herman’s bedroom. On Herman’s bedroom side of the house was his bedroom and a spare bedroom next to his where I’d spend the night at. This was refreshing since this was the only one of my friends’ houses that I actually got to sleep on a bed as opposed to a cot or a sleeping bag on the floor. On the other side of the dining room from these bedrooms was the master bedroom and bathroom, which were technically on the other side of the house from where the living room was.

“How do you like my folks?” asked Herman after we had closed the door to his bedroom and had the PlayStation turned on, waiting for it to load. I had a mostly neutral view on all my friends’ parents, and that was also the case with Herman’s parents. I didn’t have too much of an opinion either way, but they were easily the nicest set of parents that I had ever come across and also seemed to be a lot more involved in Herman’s life than any other parents that I knew.

“They’re pretty cool. I had a lot of fun with Monopoly; it’s clear that you’re no better on the Monopoly boards than you are on the court,” I joked at Herman.

“Yeah yeah, I guess we’ll have to see how you do with video games too. Want to play a straight-up game against each other?” asked Herman, as he seemed to be just as excited to play me in the game as I was to play the game at all. It felt like Herman had a lot of friends on the basketball team, but I’m not sure there are too many friends of his that spent the night at his house.

“Better watch yourself with that type of talk. Wanna play as Alabama and me as Auburn? We can play a whole 15-minute quarter game,” I said, as I was so pumped to play the game, I didn’t care how long it would take to play it.

“Sure, but dude playing quarters that long will take over two hours,” said Herman.

“Sounds good to me, we ain’t got nowhere to be,” I replied.

“I guess you’re right about that then,” replied Herman as he sat on his bed, and I sat on his spider chair while we played against each other.

“I did have a question about your parents though,” I said as we were in the middle of the third quarter of our game where he was winning 56 to 50 as he kept making me have to kick field goals.

“What’s that?” asked Herman.

“Did I hear your mom ask your dad if he could give her a ride to Walmart tomorrow? Why wouldn’t she just go herself?” I asked, as I didn’t find it that strange; maybe her car was being worked on or something. I found myself not having a lot to talk to Herman with, as he was sort of shy. This made it great that we had the video game to entertain us.

“Yeah, he always takes her places. She don’t drive,” replied Herman, which shocked me, cause what person that lives out in the country like this doesn’t drive? I saw a couple of cars sitting in the driveway, so surely they had the money for her to have a car.

“What do you mean, like, does she just don’t like to drive?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She’s just never had a driver’s license. I’m pretty sure I remember her driving before, but just like around the yard or on a golf cart maybe,” replied Herman.

“Huh, that’s interesting; they gonna let you start driving next year then?” I asked as I found it insane that Herman’s mom had no interest in driving and was fine with relying on Ernest to take her everywhere.

“Oh yeah, that’s what that new blue Silverado out there is for. Dad bought it just last month for my birthday next week, and I’ll drive it full-time next November,” replied Herman as he had a smile on his face. I guess that answered my question about them having the money; it even made me feel a little bit jealous since the car that I was probably going to drive full-time was my parents’ 2014 Nissan Altima, not much to get excited about. Even though I still wanted to talk about how strange it was that his mom didn’t drive, I didn’t want to keep asking him questions about it given that I didn’t want to embarrass him talking about how weird it was.

“Lucky you then; your luck is gonna change though. How about that?” I said as my quarterback on the game I was playing ran in for a touchdown for me to take the lead, and I stood up with my hands raised in celebration. We played for another hour or so until the game we were playing was over, in which I won on a last-second field goal. If only the real Auburn football team would ever be so lucky.

“About time you finally took over, I’d been beating you the whole time,” said Herman as we had both stood up after I hit the game-winning field goal.

Herman’s bedroom was average for kids our age. He was huge into sports like me so he had posters and schedules on his wall of his favorite teams with a big 2025 Miami Dolphins schedule on the wall and even a picture on the wall near that had Herman and his dad with the Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagoviola. From the perspective of his door, his TV was directly to the right on the wall. It was on a large wood TV stand. On the wall across from the door was another one of those large bay windows. Except there were special wood blinds on it, like the ones that have pulleys that cover all the windows if you pull down on it. Along the left side of the wall was his bed, and on the back side was a large walk-in closet, which oddly stored a lot of clothes for a guy that didn’t seem to wear a lot of variety.

“You ready to go to bed? I’m actually pretty tired tonight,” asked Herman. Most of the time I wouldn’t go to bed until at least 2:30 at my other friend’s houses, but we had just had our first big basketball practice tonight and coach was taking it hard on us. So, I definitely wasn’t going to complain about going to sleep so early.

“Sounds good to me, anything I need to do before going to bed?” I asked as I walked into the guest bedroom and saw a bed perfectly made up already.

“No, it looks like you got everything you’ll need in there already,” said Herman as he turned on the light in the bedroom. The room was a good bit different from Herman’s room, as it was clear that this bedroom had never been regularly used as someone’s bedroom. The bed had a frilly white comforter on it that looked like it had been handsewn by someone, and the rest of the room looked like it had been decorated by an old lady. There was a long bookshelf on the right side of the room and there was no tv in the room but there was a chest of drawers with a huge mirror sitting on top of it which was likely the most creepy thing in the whole house cause I definitely didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and see my reflection in some huge mirror, it just didn’t sit right with me.

“Thanks man. Thank you for inviting me over. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said as I set my duffle bag down on the right side of the bed.

“No problem, see you in the morning,” said Herman as he turned and went back towards his bedroom and shortly after shut his bedroom door. I got my toothbrush out of my bag and brushed my teeth in the bathroom, which was between the kitchen and the guest bedroom that I was staying in.

The most dreadful part of any sleepover at a friend’s house was about to begin, and that was the sleeping. Like an idiot, I forgot to bring my headphones, so listening to music to put me to sleep was out. The house was as quiet as I’ve ever heard one, so I couldn’t watch anything on my phone with sound. So, I just got into bed and hoped for the best.

Herman was shy, but he and his family were probably the most normal-acting people I’d ran into so far, other than his mother and the not driving thing, but who knows. She didn’t have a job and seemed to cook a lot, so maybe she’s just one of those old-school wives. I had rarely seen a family go through the effort to cater their evening towards entertaining their son’s friend, and I really appreciated that. I barely knew these people, but they already almost felt just as much like family to me as my own parents and little sister.

The one setback of Herman’s house though was it was easily the spookiest sleeping setup of all my friend’s houses. I sleep on my back so I’m under the covers and looking around the room, for one thing there’s that huge mirror that shows me staring right back at myself as I just knew already that I was going to wake up in the middle of the night and scare myself by seeing myself in that mirror. Another was that the door was open and I could see all the way to the other side of the dining room, which wasn’t necessarily creepy other than the fact that it was dark in there. It was also a full moon, so it didn’t help that the moonlight was casting an eerie haze all over the house. Possibly the creepiest thing though about the sleeping setup here was the window that was to my right. It was another one of those huge bay windows, but this one didn’t have the solid wooden blinds on it that blocked out everything like the one in Herman’s room. No, this one had some extremely flimsy basic blinds on it, and it was almost as if there were no blinds at all. As soon as I turned the lights off in the room, the entire bedroom filled with bright moonlight.

Despite the dead silence and overall creepiness of the entire house, I went to sleep pretty fast and even thought later that maybe that really was the best way to sleep after all. I woke up at what couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours after I had fallen asleep, which was probably about at 1. I looked around at the rest of the room and saw that it was the same as it was when I had went to sleep, except that the moonlight was being cast through the window closer towards the door now compared to before. Whenever I’m spending the night in a house that I’ve never slept before I tend to wake up a lot in the night even though I go back to bed quick and this time it was no different so I was about to close my eyes whenever I could have sworn I spotted some random movement at the window.

It just looked like a shadow through the moonlight, like someone had walked fast past the window or something. This, of course, sent my heart racing as hard as it could go because that was the last thing that I wanted happening alone here in the dark. There was no way someone was out there; that window faced to the back of the house towards the woods. As scared as I was, the thought crossed my mind that maybe someone was trying to break into the house and I was the only one that had noticed. This triggered a fight-or-flight response. It felt stupid, but I got out of bed to the right of the bed and sauntered my bare feet over to the window and saw something that terrified me while puzzling me at the same time.

There was a man outside the window, probably about 30 yards away from the window, between the window and where the woods started. The man was facing the moon in the sky, and he was doing what looked to me like yoga poses or a slow dance. I couldn’t tell for sure, but the man looked to be old, but a fit old man, like maybe he was 70, but he was skinny and looked to be tall, maybe a little taller than me. If I had seen him anywhere else, I wouldn’t have been threatened by him at all with his thin body and bald head, except for some long strands of bright grey hair on the sides of his head like a clown. But with him doing strange poses in the middle of the Hollins’ backyard at 3 in the morning, it was the scariest thing that I’d ever seen.

I watched for maybe 10 whole minutes just waiting for the man to do anything different, but he didn’t. He just rotated through the same five poses over and over again, and he never turned around to where I was. So, I just walked back to bed and closed my eyes. I figured that I would chalk it up to a dream, even though I could still see the man’s movements reflected in the shadows coming through the window.