We've been studying urban legends in creative writing since it's so close to halloween. he asked us to write about one that stood out to us, scared us... I was at sort of a loss...then I looked out my window..

See every time I go to use the bathroom I check to see if someone is hiding behind the shower curtain. When I come home from school I check every door in my house to make sure it’s locked. I sleep with a field hockey stick beside my bed. We have caller ID so I never have to answer the phone to strangers anymore. I never answer the door. Ever. I have a feeling it all has something to do with the man across the street.

The house looks like the kind every kid in the neighborhood runs by, or just crosses the street to avoid. I go around the block. You can’t really see anything from the street, except a statue of the Virgin Mary with outstretched arms; the rest of the yard is lined with bushes that block the house. The curtains are always drawn. Always.

Danny’s family had always been a little off. There was a time, before his mother died, when she, her lover, her husband and Danny all lived together in the same house. You could hear the yelling across the street. That might have been when Danny started to slip; of course I wasn’t alive yet. Most of this story is second-hand information. Come to think of it most of my stories start with, ”a friend of a friend …”

Danny is an imposing man. He stands as tall as my father but must be 100 pounds heavier, and strong. Frighteningly strong. When he kept his hair long he looked like a fat Charlie Manson. Or maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. I’ve never been close enough to him to give you any details beyond that. Like I told you, I go out of my way to keep my distance. Danny was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 20. He saw things. He heard things. The devil mostly. He was always afraid the devil would take him in the night. One year he came back from the hospital for a visit and he had a patch over one eye. He’d gouged it out. I suppose if you can’t see him he can’t see you.

He’s become the stuff of local lore. “Don’t stay out for long,” my mother would say, “ Danny’s back.” The stories have snowballed over the years—he’d eat dandelions, howl at the moon, pull the covers off large manholes one handed, he came up to a neighbor of mine who he always called Captain and try to shake his hand…only it was covered in blood, whose exactly I’ve never found out. His father kicked him out of the house for trying to anoint his feet. He broke into someone’s house and the owners found him in their living room naked.

Then Danny just went away. We’d receive letters from him. They were all addressed from Bellevue. I didn’t know why he was there, I was just glad he was gone. It wasn’t until years later that I found out what happened. Danny had been institutionalized after he killed two girls in New Jersey. He said he didn’t. He might have been fighting the devil.

He’s back now. He’ll leave again eventually. His father can’t handle him for long periods of time. He’s a slight man. I think he’s afraid of Danny.

Thing about it all is that I don’t need the Bunny man or Jason or Freddy. I have Danny. The things he’s done in my dreams, and I have a lot of them when he’s in town, made up characters can’t top.