Cary spent the next few hours reading through the old testament. She took her time a little, trying to gleam just what her grandfather was trying to teach her by having her reread it again. Trying to see just what hidden message that she had missed the dozens of other times that she had read it. But so much of it was familiar to her, overanalyzed often enough in bible study and in church. From the dozens of debates that the family had had over the years, just sitting in the living room talking through the evening. As they didn't have a TV in the house, there wasn't much else to do but read and talk. The family did both often enough.

Cary was halfway through Exodus when her grandmother excused herself to head up to bed. Mrs. Simms had an early wakeup, needing to catch a train into the city, and usually went to bed before the others. It was a common enough occurrence that Cary knew it must be ten to nine, without needing to look at the clock in the corner of the room. It was already past Cary's usual bed time, but her grandparents already knew that she would be staying up in bed reading for another hour anyway. The tall floor lamp in the corner by the lounge chair was better than a flashlight tucked under her blanket. Cary just kept reading, barely grunting her acknowledgement of her grandmother's departure. So, it surprised Cary when she felt her grandmother coming up behind her.

"Muh," Mrs. Simms said, as she kissed the back of Cary's head, her arms wrapping around her as she pulled her into a backwards hug. "Don't stress too much about it," she said into her ear. "You already know the whole thing by heart, don't you." There was no question in her voice.

"Don't bother the boy," Mr. Simms said, his voice distorted as it came through the paper that he was reading. "He needs to learn."

"I'll look into that karate class for you," Mrs. Simms said. "It'll probably do you more good than reading that book for the umpteenth time. Not that there's not some very good lessons you can glean from it."

"You're darned right," Mr. Simms muttered.

"But you've probably learned them all already," Mrs. Simms said, ignoring the comment.

Cary looked up at her grandmother from below, smiling up at her. Cary's dog-eared and well-worn copy of the bible was perched on the arm of the lounge chair, facing the window next to her. She patted Mrs. Simms's hand twice before her grandmother broke the hug, heading off to bed without another word. Cary sat there for a moment, listening as the stairs creaked under Mrs. Simms's weight, until she disappeared into the room above them. Once she was gone, Cary turned back to the book in front of her.

Mr. Simms let out a deep sigh, and the newspaper in his hands crinkled loudly. Cary could picture him turning the page, though she didn't look back at him. She barely acknowledged that he was there at all as she focused on her assignment. But when she heard the paper hit the coffee table behind her, she glanced over there out of the corner of her eye, losing her place on the page.

"You know, I do know that you're a good kid," Mr. Simms said. "I know it. Your grandmother knows it. Your parents know it, looking down on you from Heaven. But sometimes... I don't know. Sometimes, I feel like there's something... missing. You know? I... I don't mean to... I just want you to learn how to be a man, before your grandmother and I go off to join your parents. I'd feel like I failed you somehow if you haven't learned to take care of yourself by that point."

"I know," Cary said, in a hushed voice. She didn't like it when her grandparents talked about themselves dying like that. With her parents dying while she was just a baby, they were the only parents that she ever had. She hated the thought of losing them, too. But she knew that they weren't young, certainly old enough to retire if they could afford to. "There's always Aunt Linda, though, right?" she said, glancing back towards her grandfather.

"Ha," Mr. Simms scoffed. "I'd be more afraid if you're relying on her to teach you to be a man. She's exactly the reason why I'm so hard on you at times. I feel like I failed her. Failed to teach her how to be a grown woman. Failed to protect your father. I don't want to go to my grave knowing that I failed you, too."

"You haven't, Grandpa," Cary said.

"Oh? Then what are you going to do when the bullies come at you tomorrow? Run? Hide? Or stand up to them?"

"And take a beating?" Cary muttered, more to herself than to her grandfather.

"If it comes to that," he said. "But I hope that you stand up to them, the right way, and it leads to them leaving you alone. This whole karate idea, though... I'm... Well, maybe it'll help, yeah?"

"Sure," Cary said, nodding. Though she wasn't sure if she agreed with that.

"Anyway, don't stay up too late," Mr. Simms said. "I'd yell at you and order you upstairs now, but, well, I know how you get. Just remember that you do still have school tomorrow, punishment or not. And make sure to pay attention to the teacher, and not just read through the bible behind their backs. School is important, you hear?"

"Sure," Cary said again.

She skimmed the page that she was on, trying to find where she had left off, as Mr. Simms followed behind Mrs. Simms. However, Cary had read that part of the book so often that she couldn't tell where it was that she had been before being interrupted. As the story was so familiar, she opted to start on the next page, picking up at the part where Moses was heading up the mountain to get the commandments. It wasn't until she started reading again that she noticed that the room had gotten darker. That the other reading light had been turned off as Mr. Simms left the room. The tall lamp next to her was the only one on in the room, and would soon be the only one on in the house.

But barely a sentence into the page, a yawn broke her focus. With all the excitement of the day, she really was getting tired. Leaving the light on, she just leaned back in the lounge chair for a moment, resting her eyes. The chair was comfortable enough, and Cary had fallen asleep right there often over the years. When the lights upstairs clicked off, dropping the front yard into a deeper darkness, she saw it through her eyelids as a deeper red. It was enough to start lulling her to sleep. So, when her head fell to the side, knocking into the side headrest, she gave a little sigh of reluctant surrender before reaching over to turn off the light next to her.

In the darkness surrounding her, she could see more of the world outside. There was a street lamp right outside her house, over by the corner, bathing the area in a low ethereal light. Shadows were thrown everywhere, making odd shapes that had scared her growing up. It was part of the reason why Cary had managed to get the back bedroom upstairs, the one overlooking the backyard, despite it being bigger. As Cary leaned back onto the chair, she looked out through the window, trying to make shapes in those shadows. She had long grown out of seeing monsters in them. Instead, she saw a giraffe, a rhinoceros, and a person standing in a cloak with the hood pulled up.

As Cary stared at the person, the shadow moved further up the street. Her eyes flicked around the front lawn, trying to find the source of the shadow. To figure out what odd collection of things could be throwing it. But when the person stood there in front of the house, their hands extending up to touch the sides of the hood, Cary thought she saw a pair of eyes looking back at her. The eyes caught the light from the lamp over them, showing to be a deep blue, echoing her own.

The person just stood there for a while, looking up at the house. Looking up at the window above Cary, to the bedroom above. The bedroom that had been hers just a few years ago. But then the person shook their head, the hood dropping lower on them, before they turned away from the house.

Howard Street had grown quiet in the night, so the cloaked figure didn't have to wait before making their way across it. They barely took the time to look both ways, the hood of the cloak slightly moving as they did so. The cloak fanned out behind them as they rushed forward, and Cary could see greens and blues underneath, marking the person to be very real and not just some shadow playing tricks on Cary's tired mind.

Cary watched through the window, hidden there in the dark corner of the living room, as the cloaked figure made their way over to the post office across the street. Cary wasn't one to read fantasy books, so she didn't think of elves or wizards when she watched them. Instead, she thought of Moses and the Israelites, and all the other people of history that she had read about often in the bible. She wondered if the cloaked person was some religious figure come back to save the human race. A second coming of Jesus or a new profit to lead the way into the next era of the church. For some reason, that scared her more than the thought of a wizard or witch.

The cloaked figure paused again when they got to the post office. They turned around, looking back to the house from over there. It was then that it seemed like the figure spotted Cary. They looked straight at her, sitting there in the chair, before reaching a single finger up in front of their lips, silently shushing her from across the distance. Cary thought that she could almost see the person smile over there, though she could see nothing of her face. Then the cloaked figure headed around the post office building, moving back where no one had a right to be that didn't work there. The old back lot where they parked the mail trucks.

The moment that the cloaked figure disappeared behind the building, Cary sat up in the chair. She leaned forwards, pressing her face against the glass, trying to see out through it and into the night. She could just make out the other side of the building from where she was, could see where the road continued on towards the school in the distance. Cary just sat there, staring into the night, watching, waiting, for the cloaked figure to return. To come back out and continue on their way.

But they never came. There was no sign of them coming out from either side of the post office. Cary just sat there for what felt like hours, expecting to see them pop out at any time. It felt like a game to her; this person that she never met before playing hide and seek with her, knowing that she was watching them all the time.

She didn't notice when her bible hit the floor next to her, or when she fell asleep, leaning against the armrest. But when she woke up the next morning, she wondered if the whole thing had just been a dream.