Shadows in the Night

Chapter 3

Chapter 3Running at this hour is unthinkable. My legs are stiff, wooden—my left knee cracks when I move it—a work injury from years ago.

Guys at work tease me. “You’re out of shape, dude.” And: “Lay off the Krispy Kremes.”

I do not consider myself out of shape. I am on the right side of thirty with a hearty appetite for good health. I may not be buff or have a six-pack. I am too introverted for that bullshit. I work out on my days off. Lift weights. Eat well.

Officer Ben Keller, the new rookie at Black Falls Police Department, may have a point when he tells me that I drink too much. “You won’t get a six-pack from drinking beer.” Guinness is my favorite drug of choice after a long shift. It is necessary for me like the proverbial eight glasses of water is for others. Drinking beer goes with the territory, I tell him. “You need to find time to unwind in this insane line of work.”

As I scramble toward the apartment door, I nearly trip over a pair of my boots lying on the kitchen floor. Pain shoots up my left leg. “Goddamn it!”

I yank the door open and hop out into the hallway, holding onto the threshold to keep from falling. Steve is about to turn the corner and head down the stairwell. I yell for him to come back.

I am not worried about waking other tenants on the floor. There is no one else but me. My elderly neighbor, Miles, across the hall died last month. Old age, if I remember. He died in his sleep—the best way to go.

At the end of the hall, the exit door slams shut, and I wait. There is no movement, footsteps, no sound of Steve. The long, dark corridor stretches like an endless labyrinth in a horror movie. As the camera pans back, the elongated image drags on forever.

Then there is shuffling—a cough. Steve slinks out of the dark, and my mind falls back into a dead zone of stalkerish memories from last year, when my ex-boyfriend, Sheridan, visited me after eight months of being separated from each other. His tall figure looms in the cracked fissures of my thoughts. A muscle in my face jerks. “No. No. No.”

I close my eyes.

Footsteps.

Shuffling.

Another cough, nasally.

Squirming. Seething. Scratching.

Icy breath on my face. My lips quiver. I clench my eyes tighter, fighting not to see what it is, the air coiling around me in a cold-war chill.

My chest tightens. A rancid smell I didn’t notice before pinches my nose.

A blackout. I am spiraling, plunging into nothingness.

In the dark, my vision is blurry. The woods creep in from all directions, enveloping me in its skin-crawling distantness.

In the clearing, something watches me.

It is tall, like the seven-foot birch tree from which it hangs. Lean. Bent. Unwavering.

I turn my gaze to the dark scrim of mountains in the distance. I am close to home. But yet it is too far to walk.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

I turn slowly to the clearing. The shadow is still there, staring in my direction, now perched on an outstretched limb.

I stay quiet, hide behind a big thick oak in front of me. Listening takes too much concentration. Fear drains my energy. I feel weak, my knees tremble. My heart strikes, thudding weakly, like a dying match that flickers, snuffs out, won’t light.

A breeze picks up, leaves fall from their branches, and pirouette past me in a warning. Something is brewing; it’s as if the forest breathes on its own.

A noise ricochets off the trees. A thud. Footsteps. Rushed. Then: Laughter. Giddy, childish.

Is someone there?

It is my inner voice. I am too scared to speak.

I crouch at the base of the tree like a child counting to ten, playing childhood games with invisible friends, their dead ghosts. I am barefoot, and my feet feel slippery, cakey.

I do not look. Cannot draw attention to myself.

I lean my face against the thick bark to steady the shakiness, to hide my fears.

Something moves in the darkness. Behind the tree. Near the clearing.

Whispering. Shifting. Clawing.

Skulking across the forest floor, raking through a blanket of leaves in its path.

I hold my breath.

One. Two. Three. Four.

The nocturnal sounds intensify, skitter across the monstrous map of my mind’s eye.

I try to move, but am stuck. What? Too afraid to open my eyes, to glimpse whatever is breathing and moving in the dark, I stay still. “No. No. No.” My whispers grow into barks, and I start yelling.

Angry at myself for coming out here at the dead hour.

Do not go into the woods alone. Do not go into the woods after dark.

I struggle to move a muscle: running feels like a trap. The forest is a maze after dark.

“Jack.”

I freeze.

Shit.

Teeth chatter, but they aren’t mine.

I hide my head in my hands, rocking and forth. My father’s face materializes from a darker window of my childhood. I shudder. He hisses, “Faggot!”

Tears prick my eyes; sweat glosses my palms. I taste salty traces of my past on my tongue, like tiny no-see-ums nibbling beneath the surface.

Someone or something is close, too close, whispering.

This isn’t a dream. I am going to die.

My father once said: In the dark, things grow teeth and bite.