Read They're Watching (2010) for Free Online

Through patches of shadow, images loomed--here a solar-powered garden light, there a patch of grass caught in the cone-throw of a porch lamp. Moving up on the house, the angle stayed low, approaching the windowsill, then creeping north to take in the family-room ceiling, dimly lit by the flickering of the TV.
    My back was slick with sweat. My eyes moved involuntarily to the window. Through the semi-sheer sage green curtains, the black square of glass stared back, giving up nothing. Until that moment I'd never grasped the stale phrase "knotted stomach." But I felt my fear sitting there, deep in the pit of my gut, dense and unyielding. Every second my eyes were off the screen caused a rise in my panic. Surreally, the TV seemed to contain the present threat, and the window itself--outside which someone could be lurking at that very minute--seemed fictitious. The screen reclaimed my absolute attention.
    Growing bolder, the perspective rose above the sill. Brazenly sweeping the interior through the window, it settled on a form slumbering beneath a blanket on the couch.
    As the camera pulled back, I heard the low rush of my heart shoving adrenaline through my veins.
    The image bounced along, moving parallel to the wall, toward the kitchen. A rapid swing to our rear door, autofocusing from the blur. My breath stopped.
    A hand gloved in latex reached out and twisted the knob. It turned. Despite Ariana's reminders, I often forgot to relock that door after running trash out to the cans. A gentle push and the intruder was inside, next to our refrigerator.
    My eyes pulled frantically to the kitchen, back to the screen.
    The point of view floated farther into the kitchen, not hurried but not cautious either. Crossing the threshold to the family room, it angled toward the couch, the couch on which I lay sleeping, the couch where I now sat, stupidly willing myself not to look over my left shoulder for a camera on its way, grasped by a gloved hand.
    I couldn't move my eyes from the screen. The angle dipped. The intruder was standing over me. I slept on. My cheek was white. My eyelids flickered. I stirred, rolled over, curling an edge of blanket around a fist. The camcorder zoomed in. Closer. Closer. A blur of REM-shifting eyelid. Closer still, until the flesh was no longer distinguishable, until all bearings were lost, until only the twitching remained, as detached as lines of static across the bleached screen.
    Then darkness.
    My hand was curled in the blanket, just as in the clip. I swiped a palm across the back of my neck, wiped the sweat on my jeans, leaving a dark smudge.
    I ran upstairs, heedless of waking Ariana, and pushed open the door of the darkened master bedroom. She was there asleep, oblivious. Safe. Her mouth was slightly open, and her hair fell forward over her eyes. Relieved, I felt the rush of adrenaline drain from me, and I sagged against the doorway. On the TV, Clair Huxtable was riding Theo about his schoolwork. I had an urge to go over and wake Ari, just to check, but I contented myself with the rise and fall of her bare shoulders. The new bed, an oak sleigh with hand-carved scrolls, looked solid. Protective, even. She'd replaced our old bed last month. The mattress, too. I hadn't slept on either.
    I stepped back into the hall, eased the door closed, and put my shoulders to the wall, exhaling hard. It made no sense that she'd have been harmed, of course; the footage was shot last night at the latest, and I'd seen Ariana less than an hour ago. But rationality was about as helpful right now as it had been when I'd braved my first post-Psycho shower.
    I went back downstairs. To the couch where the intruder had pointedly shown me sleeping apart from my wife. The foldout couch that I'd steadfastly refused to fold out for fear that would add a level of permanency to the current arrangement. In the clip, the blanket covered whichever boxers I'd been sleeping in, so more laundry forensics wouldn't help me deduce when it had been