The Creeps (Dirty Windows)

I guess with recent writings about the sublime (and now the creeps), I must be mentally preparing to teach an honors freshman comp course focused on the gothic. Anyway, here's the creeps idea.

One morning recently I was exercising in our "sun room." The day outside was nice, in spite of the bad panes in the double doors that lead to the patio. I was jumping up and down or running in place or some such sweaty nonsense when I found myself looking at the second window down from the top in the left-hand door.

A face. A strange-looking face was there on the pane. I could see where the tip of the nose pressed against the glass. The lips and chin were visible. The creepy part of the image was the part that looked like whiskers growing out on each side of the mouth. The appearance first suggested that a whiskered man had pressed a wet face up against our window to look in.

A shiver ran up and down my spine.

But the creepiest part--at least momentarily--came when I went over to the window to inspect the image more closely. I discovered that the impression was on the inside of the glass, not the outside!

We have decided that, given this is not in the highest window, our boy must've made the impression. He's not whiskered yet, but he used to like to make faces at the window, pressing his features up against the glass, sometimes blowing his cheeks out for a very funny look. So maybe this was something he did a long time ago, and because almost all the double panes in the door have developed this sort of milky flaw we, for one thing, didn't notice this image and, for another, it stayed there because we don't clean those windows, always thinking that we'll replace those doors soon. (Of course, we've been thinking that for several years now.)

Then again, I would think that if this were my son, some of his features should be recognizable. They're not. The look of whiskers could be--and probably is--the result of little streaks of saliva that shot from the corners of his mouth when he puffed his cheeks out. The whiskers don't have to be on the original maker of the image. But it seems as if the rather prominent cleft in his chin ought to be visible.

Anyway, for a few moments it was a creepy discovery.

It reminded me of something that took place at the house where we used to live in Asheville. Standing on the front stoop facing the door, you would find to your left a part of the front of the house and some neglected flower beds beneath the picture window. To your right was a wall with a window looking into a bedroom/office. The line of sight from this window also took in the room's door and, if the door was open, the hall bathroom and mirror.

One Sunday morning, I stepped out the front door to get the newspaper. I happened to look down at the stoop and noticed there a single print of a left shoe. It was narrow with a heel and wet from the grass. My impression was that it was the print of a woman. And it was angled toward the window looking into the bedroom/office. While the face in our door pane here in Jonesborough might be that of our son performing for us or a friend outside on the patio, I'm certain in regards to the footprint in Asheville that somebody that morning stood--right foot on the ground, left up on the stoop--and looked in our window. For what purpose and for how long, I don't know, but nobody was around when I went out to get the paper. And no other prints were on the stoop, so this was definitely somebody who didn't continue onto the stoop to ring the doorbell.

The hall bathroom visible from that window was mine, and I can almost picture myself turning from the mirror where I was shaving or fixing my hair, turning with that sense that I was being watched, and seeing a face in the window looking back at me and then quickly withdrawing. Or not.

It still gives me the creeps