---
title: "Letters from the Night Docket: A Clerk and a Creature | The Hollow Gazette"
description: Two correspondents on the overnight shift at the county courthouse, and the Albert Brooks films that brought them together.
image: https://www.sleepyhollowsecurity.com/hubfs/Rattles%2c%20Compliance%20%26%20Audits.jpeg
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# Letters from the Night Docket: A Clerk and a Creature

Two correspondents on the overnight shift at the county courthouse, and the Albert Brooks films that brought them together.

 By [The Headless Horseman](https://www.sleepyhollowsecurity.com/blog/author/headless-horseman) · Oct 3, 2026, 3:29:20 PM

![Rattles the skeleton with a clipboard in a file room](https://www.sleepyhollowsecurity.com/hubfs/Rattles%2c%20Compliance%20%26%20Audits.jpeg)

Rattles the skeleton with a clipboard in a file room

*Found in the Night Docket Office of the Harmon County Courthouse, between the 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. shifts. The correspondents are the overnight clerk, Mr. Everett Roark, and the courthouse night guard, a creature assembled long ago from several honorable parts. Both gave permission for publication.*

## From the Clerk

Dear Friend, — I confess I was afraid on my first night. I had been told that Sleepy Hollow Security had assigned someone to the east corridor, and I pictured a shadow. Instead I found you in the break room, politely holding a paper cup, and saying, with the gravest courtesy, that you had been informed I preferred the heat turned down. You had adjusted it yourself. I have not been so welcomed anywhere in thirty years of public service.

## From the Creature

Dear Clerk, — I was made, as you know, in a thunderstorm, by a person who did not wait to see what I would become. I have spent many years thinking about that. It is very strange, then, to be asked what I would like to watch. You asked on the second night, holding out the little screen as though it were an offering. The film was an Albert Brooks picture, one of those gentle, anxious comedies in which a man talks himself out of a perfectly good day. I laughed so hard I frightened the lamp.

## From the Clerk

You did, and I laughed harder at the lamp. We have now watched eleven of his films. You have opinions about the second act of every one, which I find I share. Last Tuesday, at 3 a.m., a man in a dark jacket came into the records room with a screwdriver and a plan. You stood up from behind the cabinets. You said nothing. You were seven feet tall, and you were holding my thermos. He left through the window and has not been seen since, and I have rarely felt so safe or so entertained.

## From the Creature

I did not frighten him on purpose. I merely stood. It is, I have come to believe, a gift: that a person who intends harm sees in me what he fears most in himself, and goes. I do not understand it. I only know that you, who intend no harm, see only someone who also likes the second act.

Until Thursday, then. I have kept the good chair.

### Outcome

Records stolen: none. Intruders departed: one, by window. Films watched together: twelve and counting. The Clerk has asked that the courthouse extend the Creature’s contract indefinitely. The county has agreed. The thermos has been returned.

**Corrections.** The Clerk has asked us to correct the number of films watched together. It is thirteen. They watched another last night, and the second act was very good.

**Filed under:** [Tall tales](https://www.sleepyhollowsecurity.com/blog/tag/tall-tales)

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