Work Text:
It wasn’t like you planned for this kind of thing to happen.
The first incident you could recall was walking home from work one night, glancing around the area as you did so. The neighborhood you had to traverse through wasn’t the best one possible, but neither was it the worst. A beautiful, ordinary sort of community, or so you thought it was.
The nights were starting to get stiflingly hot, as mid-summer was approaching, and the air was at a constant temperature of “muggy,” even as the time neared one in the morning. Sometimes you hated working the nightshift as a cook at a restaurant that closed at eleven-thirty, but it wasn’t too bad on the pay. You needed all the money you could get so that you can pay bills, after all.
‘At least the sun isn’t beating down on my shoulders in addition to the hot weather when I leave,’ you thought to yourself, shrugging your bag higher on your shoulder as you set your walk to a brisker pace. You tried to catch a glimpse of the stars, but unfortunately, the light pollution from the streetlights you passed ended up making that task reasonably tricky.
Regardless, the night wasn’t too bad, and you found a small smile on your face as you continued your journey back home. The night had gone well enough at the restaurant, and you dusted your uniform off. Plenty of people were satisfied, and there was the temptation to whistle, but most people would be sleeping at this hour.
Most, being the key term.
As you walked, your spine prickled a little bit, warning you of something behind you. Despite that sensation, you didn’t turn around immediately but instead changed your footsteps to be quieter so you could listen. There was another set, no, two, or more that seemed to be tailing after your own.
A cold chill went down your spine at the thought that there were people following you, so you did your best to subtly speed up, though you didn’t look back yet. The people behind you started to pick up the pace as well, and you could almost hear someone snickering like it was all a great prank.
The danger you felt in the initial moments of knowing that someone was trying to follow you with the potential to hurt or rob you spiked higher than before. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you hoped that someone would come to your aid. As you were thinking about it, you could hear someone from the group behind you make some kind of comment.
“Yoooo, what the hell is that??” He sounded distressed, and the next thing you knew, the footsteps behind you retreated away. You let out a soft sigh of relief, then allowed your pace to slow down. However, you did wonder what made the group decide that you weren’t a target anymore, and what made him react so violently to it. A look around you didn’t seem to have any sort of result, and you couldn’t see anything immediately close to you. You kept walking to your home, though you were periodically checking the area to see if there was anything specifically nearby.
As soon as you got to your front door, you took a look back at the street you just came down. Just behind the light of one of the nearby streetlights, you spotted a shadowy figure with two glowing eyes, watching you. For a moment, your heart rate spiked considerably, just looking at the creature you could barely make out.
The arms were long and gangly, thin as twigs, based on the distance you could see it from, and the eyes glowed from two pools of darkness. The figure appeared skeletal, as you could just barely see some spaces around the chest area of the creature that looked like ribs and a spine. The whole body was spindly, taller than the streetlight itself, and you could just make out some crooked, jagged teeth. The hands looked decently proportional, but they probably took up more space than your torso.
As you watched, the creature lifted one hand to you, waving faintly, then it turned and moved away, vanishing into the darkness. You stood there and watched it move, surprisingly graceful for its massive size, waiting for it to disappear from view. It didn’t take too long, and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.
‘What in the world was that thing..?’ you wondered briefly, but you hurried into your home. After all that had happened, you wanted to make sure that you ended up within the safety of your home so that there was far less likelihood of someone or something ending up with you in your house.
For the next few nights that you walked home, no one bothered you on your walk, and there were no shadowy, skeletal figures tailing you either. While you were on edge about it, nothing seemed to transpire for at least a week after that one incident. Still, you didn’t let your guard down as you went to and from work.
About two weeks after the first incident of someone following you after work, it happened again, making you all the more paranoid. Just as the first time, you could hear the second set of footsteps behind you, though this time, they started to come after you a lot faster than before. You almost broke into a sprint, but then, out of the blue, the person let out a curse and hightailed it the other way, their steps fading rapidly away from you.
This time, as you glanced around, watching for the shadowy figure, you could catch glimpses of the skeleton creature. Arms were moving through light here, the gait of the legs there, and a few glimmering eyes looking at you once or twice. You’re not as scared as you were before, knowing that this creature probably wasn’t meaning you any harm.
If this creature was the one thing causing the people who followed you before to run away, he was welcome in your book at any time. Just like the past, though, when you got home and turned around, the skeleton was standing behind the streetlight. Before he got a chance to leave, though, you smiled at them and lifted your hand to wave at them.
“Hey, um, thank you for saving me twice, I suppose,” you called softly, looking into the creature’s glowing lights. There wasn’t a response, but the hunched figure seemed to straighten up a bit, and the glow seemed to brighten a little more. It raised a hand to wave at you again before it starts moving to the shadows once more, vanishing into the night. You lingered a few more moments, watching it go, then returned to the safety of your home again.
Was it wrong to want someone to follow you home so that you could see them again and get them something that showed your appreciation?
For the next several months, there was nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. You had no idea where the skeletal creature vanished to, and when you could see them again. For all you knew, the cryptid didn’t even have a name; he was just a watcher of the night, a protector of sorts, making sure that people walking home were safe during the night.
It made you smile, knowing that if he was protecting you, there were probably others who were getting the same protection. The gesture was both incredibly sweet and comforting, to know that the creature, as scary as he looked, was just trying to keep people safe. You still got pretty sad that this is a necessary measure to dissuade people from being predators of unsuspecting passersby in the night.
In one attempt to make contact with the creature again, you stayed outside on your porch a little later at night than you usually would. It didn’t have any effect, as far as you could tell, and the skeleton never showed up to see you in the night. You concluded that the walking home and the stalking from people with malicious intent was what prompted the appearance of the creature.
Any lore searches on wayward protective creatures near the area didn’t bring anything to the table in terms of new knowledge. You even checked through the internet for any more extensive area things, but nothing surfaced for a few days. Finally, you ended up finding a single article that appeared to fit your nightly skeletal companion.
The article called him “The Watchman,” which felt like an apt title. Whoever had written the report had had some similar experiences with this creature, but couldn’t get more than a small description of what he looked like to others. You soaked in the information, most of which you had learned by experience, but there was also a new tidbit you didn’t know before taking the time to dig it up.
The Watchman only appears on nights where someone requires protecting, following them home to ensure their safety. As they walk, this entity sticks to the shadows but will remain close to the person in question to ward off any potential threats. Should the person be capable of defending themselves, such as with a weapon, they will not see the creature near them. The Watchman seems to favor small gifts of personal touches, namely things made for it, though it does not seem capable of eating.
Armed with the newest tidbit of how to thank your strange companion, you broke out a few books on crafting and trying to figure out what you could make for them. After some deliberation and several failed attempts at what you wanted to do, there was a suitable gift for your skeletal cryptid. You kept it in your bag with you at all times so that you would be sure to have it on hand, should you ever meet the creature again in the night.
As the months started to turn to the colder weather, you noticed that people didn’t seem to be more active. However, you did find someone coming after you in the colder weather, their footsteps trailing after yours. It wasn’t too long before the would-be assailant decided to leave. You walked in silence for a little while, deciding it would be best to not talk to your cryptid companion before you got home.
Once your house was in sight, you stopped and turned to the creature, surprised that it wasn’t leaving when you looked directly at them. You were standing under the streetlight you had seen them directly behind multiple times, and he stopped outside of the beam of light. Just out of view, but closer than you’d ever seen them before. The skeleton, as you could see a lot better now, was much taller than you, standing well above the streetlight’s height.
“I wanted to make you something as a thank you for helping protect me the past few times,” you remarked quietly, starting to rummage through your bag for the item in question. You pulled out the soft red fabric of the knitted scarf you made, the dimensions being far too large for any human, but what you hoped would be a decent fit for your companion.
You held out the scarf to the skeleton, smiling softly up at them as you waited anxiously to see if he would take it from your hands. For a moment, the cryptid didn’t move, merely looking at you and the scarf in your hands. After a few more seconds, the creature bent down, reaching for the scarf and his hand appearing into the beam of light.
The bones were almost as thick as your forearm, but you held still as the giant hand came down and gently plucked it from your much smaller hands. There was another tiny pause, then the creature straightened up and placed the scarf around the creature’s neck. You smiled at him, still watching and waiting for any kind of reaction to the gift you presented your companion.
A smile broke out on the creature’s face, the jagged teeth shifting out of their original place into the new formation. Your grin mirrored the creature’s, and you nodded quietly in happiness. It was great that your companion was satisfied with what you gave him in exchange for the small protections he gave.
There was no verbal response from the creature, but you walked the small distance to your home and turned around. The skeleton was still there, holding one hand on the fabric of the scarf, smiling fondly at you. You raised a hand to wave at him, watching him gesture back at you as he vanished into the darkness of the night as usual. It was odd, watching a giant skeleton body with just a scarf going off into the shadows, but something was oddly endearing.
The next morning, you found a small collection of pretty rocks on your porch, with things ranging from agate to amethyst, to what could be considered something similar to gold. Your heart thumped a little harder in your chest, and you smiled as you collected the rocks and brought them in.
You definitely wouldn’t be opposed to seeing your skeleton cryptid friend again, and hopefully sometime soon.