He likes to stay a while. Not too long, but just enough to take it. What he wants. What he covets. What he craves. Watching them sleep from the shadows, his cloak is the curtain of night, and he uses it well.
Locked doors, windows and the bricks and mortar of buildings are simple trivialities to him and he learned soon after his taking, that they offer little resistance. He is not of this place any more, but the rage from his distant life within it still burns. Oh, how it burns.
Sometimes, he just stands over them, watching. He has an affinity for the young. Their vitality a drug he cannot consume enough of. It’s his pleasure, his opiate of choice. Some of the ones he visits have animals. Cats and dogs that see him, sense him. Especially cats. Even one or two of them seem to sense him too. They wake as he’s taking it from them, their eyes wide and terrified, little hands reaching out into the darkness to try and stop what they cannot see, wondering if they are really awake or just dreaming. Are they dreaming of a shadow sucking the life out of them with great greedy gulps as it leans over their bed?
He’s getting stronger, he can feel it. Soon, he’ll be able to do more. He knows he must be patient, but he has time. All the time in the world. Sensation is slowly beginning to return to his hands and fingers. It feels like pins and needles. He can almost move objects now when he tries to touch them and it feels good. Very good. He knows that soon he’ll be able to touch them too and he simply can’t wait for that.
Because he has ideas. Bad men always have lots of ideas…. even the dead ones.
Jonathan Wood 