The Watcher on the Bed

The old farmhouse sagged under the weight of years, its timbers groaning a constant lament. It stood on land that had once been a sprawling vineyard, a place where the earth itself seemed to retain the echoes of something ancient and disturbed. Our family had bought it for a song, drawn by its isolation and the promise of quiet, but the quiet here was a brittle thing, easily shattered. My brother, Leo, was a latecomer to our family, a sunbeam born after a long, dark winter, and he was nearly a decade younger than my second brother. The age gap between Leo and me was a chasm, twenty years and more.

Leo had taken a liking to the master bedroom, a cavernous space at the end of the creaking upstairs hall. He’d perch on the very edge of the enormous four-poster bed, his small frame dwarfed by the antique furniture, his attention fixed on the flickering images on the television. He liked the proximity to the stairs, he’d told his mother, so he could make quick trips to the bathroom without venturing too far.

One sweltering afternoon, I returned from a night shift, the dawn light still clinging to my eyes. The house was steeped in a midday stillness, save for the distant buzz of cicadas. As I ascended the stairs, the door to the master bedroom stood ajar, revealing Leo on the bed’s precipice, bathed in the television’s blue light. I didn’t call out, simply retreated to my own room, the cool air a balm against my tired skin. I changed, the scent of old linen and dust filling my nostrils. Descending the stairs, I expected the clatter of lunch preparation, the usual bustle, but the kitchen was silent, the table bare.