I have never been an easily frightened person.
My family’s a good size (local parish had a lot of ideas about the Evils of birth control) and not too well off, so by the time I left home I’d never really slept alone before. Growing up, I shared a room with my sister and one of my brothers- my sister’s little twin bed on one wall, and on our side, a bunk bed I managed to break pretty fantastically as a rowdy fifteen-year-old before being banished to a mattress in the middle of the floor.
Even when I woke up in the middle of the night and walked through a dark house for a glass of water, there were always at least two- though usually more- sets of snores less than a few dozen feet away.
Dad kept a shotgun in a safe next to his bed, and if so much as an errant raccoon walked past the house, the dogs would sound the alarm. Mom made sure they would never hurt a fly, but we never had less than two big, scary-sounding scary-lookin’ hounds at any one time.
Point is- As a kid, I never worried about unexplainable noises.
Despite living in nowhere, in the state with the second-worst response times in the US.
Not to say that the local cops would have been any help. We had a few run-ins in my late teens, when I was functionally homeless, and I can’t say I was under the impression the local sheriff wouldn’t like an excuse to get rid of me, one way or the other. It was the 80’s, and queers were a few rungs on the ladder below even women on birth control.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that my second point is- 911 was the absolute last ditch scenario for me. Some of the local cops had told me to my face that I was better off dead, and I was not about to test them on it. Whatever your views on the police, that was my experience and mindset at the time.
I was nineteen, washing dishes at an old truckstop diner- the owner would give me hot food and a couple buck in exchange, and it wasn’t even minimum wage, but what was I going to do, call the cops?- and I’d overheard one of the customers talking about how she’d been in town facilitating her mother’s move into a nursing home a couple of hours away.
The old lady would be gone, presumably for the rest of her days, and the house would have to stay empty for the next few months while they sorted out the logistics- something about wanting to rent it out or maybe use it as a vacation home. It was accessible by a gravel road, and only a few minutes out of town and into the woods, she’d said. Lucky they’d painted the gate a nice bright red, otherwise they’d miss the turn whenever they drove up, she’d said.
And, look.
I’m not proud of myself.
But it was getting cold. Dishwashing was the only time I’d gotten to feel my fingers for a good few weeks at that point. Only a few more and I’d fall asleep in my makeshift woodland tent, undisturbed until spring thaw freed me from a tomb of snow and ice.
So that night, I went to the house.
It sat at the end of a long dirt road; long enough that you couldn’t see the highway. From the driveway, I could see all the curtains were drawn shut. There weren’t any cars parked on the property.
I had planned to stay in the woods across the street for a few days and keep an eye on the place before breaking in, but by the time I’d made the walk to the edge of town, carrying everything I owned on my back, the cold had me so exhausted that I barely felt like a person.
The grass crunched like frozen glass as I made my way to the front door and knocked: shave-and-a-haircut, wait, then no-nonsense, wait, and then as loudly and aggressively as I could muster before concluding that there truly was nobody home.
I walked around back- the side facing the woods- and was surprised to find that one of the second floor windows had been unlatched.
As a catholic, I was no stranger to guilt. But when you’re deprived of your physical needs long enough- whether it’s adequate food, warmth, or a door to lock behind yourself- the part of your brain that’s meant to keep you alive overrides any concerns you might have about things like property law.
I climbed in through the window, clumsy with exhaustion, and found myself in what looked like a guest bedroom.
The heater had been left on. I was surprised at the time, thinking it would be wasteful, but now I know that when you leave a house to sit like that you need to keep the air dry enough to avoid moisture damage. Nonetheless, I was grateful.
The next morning, I was awoken by a chill breeze blowing in through the open window. I got up, shut it and latched it- at the time I’d assumed I’d forgotten to close it before dragging myself to the bed and falling into unconsciousness, nevermind that I’d slept comfortably all night.
First thing I did that day was take a hot shower- the first time in months I’d had anything but a gas station sink bath. I remember thinking it would have been worth it just for that, with my apologies to the nice lady and her mother.
I got out of the shower and found that the bathroom door had been left open. This time, I was absolutely certain I’d closed it.
All houses have their quirks. I thought that it must’ve had a loose latch and that the bathroom fan had caused enough of a pressure differential to swing the door open. Just a simple draft.
Overall, it was a quiet morning.
For the first week, I was very careful. I didn’t want to settle in, but it’s hard to exist in a space for any great length of time without making some kind of impact on it. Especially, unfortunately, if you’re a teenager. There wasn’t much- I just finally broke down and took my dishwashing money to the grocery store to stock up for the winter. I’d hauled back as many crackers and soup cans as I could fit in my bag. The pantry was full, and that felt good, despite it being irrefutable proof that someone had been living inside the house.
But there were little things that I kept noticing, to the point that I thought I might have gotten brain damage from the cold. Doors and windows left open, that sort of thing.
One morning I came downstairs and found that the front door had been left open all night, which damn near gave me a heart attack. I was worried all day, thinking about the rancher lady driving by her mother’s house to check on it and seeing that. With my luck, the ensuing manhunt wouldn’t have left me alive. I was still holding out hope that I’d be able to quietly slip out in the spring with no one the wiser.
I kept the blinds shut always, of course, and took care not to leave the lights on at night, which was as off-putting as you would expect.
Regardless of my feelings about my family at the time- I missed a busy house. The quiet unnerved me.
When a place is full of people, and you know it’s full of people, you don’t think of all the creaks and knocks.
I had no idea how much noise an empty house makes. I had no point of comparison. So when there was a creak or a thump that sounded impossibly loud, the slam of a door, the rattle of a window frame- I thought very much of it. Too much, to the point where I immediately overcorrected, I think- the wind, the house is just settling, the heater, a branch. This is normal, nothing is wrong.
But then, another early morning, after a night of fitful sleep, I opened the guest bedroom door to the hallway and found a dead rat at my feet.
It was just dead. Nothing too awful- you couldn’t even tell how it died, at first glance. It was just gross, more than anything else.
I went through all the rooms, checking for rat droppings, and didn’t find any. The pantry was undisturbed. Thank god, I’d thought. I was going to write it off as readily as everything else- a rat got in, couldn’t get back out, and ended up dying in an unfortunate place.
But then I walked back up the stairs, and looked again at where the rat had ended up. Right outside my door. Like it was intentional.
So I got a trash bag out of the pantry and used it as a barrier to pick the rat up- its neck had been bit open- and left it outside.
If there had been one other person there with me, I think I might’ve elected to stay. It would’ve been the rational thing to do. But I got a bad feeling. And when there’s no one but yourself you need to convince, a bad feeling is more than enough. So I packed up what I could, and opened the door-
-to a blizzard.
In the time since I’d woken up, with all the blinds and curtains tightly shut, I hadn’t noticed that the previous night’s light snowfall had turned into an eerily silent storm. Even once I’d gotten to the plowed road, my feet wouldn’t have made it. My shoes had holes and busted seams. By the time I’d have made it into town, I’d have lost half my toes for good, and that wasn’t an exaggeration.
So I sat with my bad feeling for a bit, then set my pack down.
I walked into the kitchen- far more calmly than I felt- and grabbed a steak knife. One of the good ones: sharp, with a solid blade. Without ceremony, I put it in my pocket.
That night, I did not sleep.
I stayed up in the closet of the guest bedroom, knife in hand.
The house was almost silent; there was only the gentle vibration of the old heater running. Outside, the snow absorbed all noise.
I’d almost started to nod off when I heard the window shake.
There was the slide of something sharp, then a crack: like a claw slowly separating a piece of wood from a frame. Then I heard the distinct sound of the window sliding up, and the creak of the old floorboards under the carpet as a weight shifted onto them.
I stopped breathing, my grip tight on the steak knife.
Through the crack in the closet, with the barest bit of refracted moonlight, I was able to see nothing but an imposingly large shape. The very air in the room seemed to change when it entered, as though it became somehow heavier, though it brought only a smell of faint wood-rot that I’d grown to associate with the house already.
There were slow, too-familiar, heavy-but-careful footfalls as the thing walked across the bedroom and towards the door to the hallway, moving with a controlled grace that was startling, given its size. It fiddled with the handle for a moment, making a soft metallic rattle that I also instantly recognised before opening the door and then closing it. I didn’t hear its footsteps leave.
I wondered if it noticed that the handle had been locked from the inside. I wondered if it understood what that meant.
It turned back into the room. For a moment, I thought it was going to go back out the window, and I almost cried with relief, but then it turned.
It started to approach the closet door.
My breathing grew quick and shallow. I was frozen, watching through the crack in the door as my death slipped towards me on long legs that were far too quiet.
But then it continued moving, as though the bed on the opposite wall had been its destination all along.
There was a creak as it ever-so-carefully climbed onto the bed, the mattress springs groaning under what sounded like something far heavier than a person. The thing exhaled, low and rattling, like the creature’s lungs were vast enough to hold an echo all by themselves.
And, well. Like I said, I didn’t sleep that night.
The monster stayed on the bed, and I sat crouched in the closet. For what must have been at least three hours, I didn’t dare move, beyond leaning slightly against the wall behind me to keep my knees from locking up.
Early in the morning- it was winter, so it was still dark out- the thing sighed again, then rose from the bed, the mattress decompressing underneath it.
Its shadow passed over the crack, and then it opened the door to the hallway, this time leaving through it. the floorboards groaned as it skulked down the hallway, and then I heard the squeak of one particular stair that I recognised immediately, having heard it from my room as I was falling asleep only a few days ago.
I heard it open up the pantry and rummage around- I thought I’d been running out of food more quickly than I should have, but hadn’t noticed anything like a wild animal chewing through packages; it obviously knew enough to take the food without making too obvious a mess- and then the pantry door closed, and the front door closed with nothing but the whine of hinges and the rattle of a doorframe.
I felt myself deflate, the exhaustion of a night without rest or reprieve hitting me all at once. Shaking, I took a deep breath, and stood up from my crouch, my knees creaking uncomfortably. Still quiet and careful, I opened the closet door-
And found, left directly in front of it, a dead fox, neck half-severed like the rat’s: the placement obviously intentional.
I covered my mouth with my hands, grimacing as the realisation that it’d known where I’d been all night hit me. A dead weight like a rock settled in my stomach, and my face grew cold.
Okay, I remember thinking, I might not be so lucky next time. Maybe I can survive without feet.
Almost everything was still packed up from my decision to leave the previous day. I ran downstairs and opened the pantry, eating what I could force down my throat and packing whatever else I could fit into my bag, preparing for my hike back into town.
My two-hour hike through the woods. The same woods the creature had presumably just ran off into.
There was a noise from upstairs.
But it had gone, hadn’t it? Had I imagined it?
More nerves than man, I crept over to the front window and drew the curtains apart, just enough for me to peek out. Yesterday’s blizzard had let up in the night, and sure enough, there was a set of footprints in the snow. I couldn’t really tell the size and shape from the distance I was, but I could see them lead away from the front door-
And then back around the side of the house. To the woods, surely? Or had it left for a moment, only to re-enter? Had it drawn me out intentionally? I was stuck to the spot, not daring to turn around for fear that I would find the thing behind me.
I couldn’t have been there for more than a minute, staring out the window, before my heart froze for an entirely different reason.
For the first time in almost a month, a car was coming up where the driveway had been, slowly navigating with its chained-up tires: Someone driving out to check on the house after the blizzard.
What would a person have thought when they saw me in here? Especially as I’d been- knife in hand, sunken eyes, half-crazed from lack of sleep? Trespassing, this far out of town?
Everybody was packing around there. They for sure had a gun in the car, if not on them.
I don’t think I’d ever moved so fast in my life.
By the time I’d set the kitchen to rights- everything stashed in the pantry, nothing (as far as I could tell) that would alert them to my presence- I heard a car door shut out front.
I ran up the stairs as quietly and quickly as I could with my pack. As I reached the top, I heard two voices:
“What’re these footprints?”
“D’you think someone else thought to check on the house? One of the cousins?”
The front door opened just as I turned the corner into the hallway, out of sight.
“Door’s unlocked.”
“What?”
Fuck.
I grit my teeth, trying to think of a place to hide.
“Hello?” Someone called.
Perfect, I thought, looking up at the panel on the hallway ceiling that I knew to be the entrance to the attic.
As quietly as I could, I reached up- I don’t know if I mentioned, I’m pretty tall, and this was an older house with low ceilings- and I opened the attic door, not bothering to pull down the stepladder before gently placing my pack up on the ridge and then pulling myself into the space, closing the hatch behind me.
‘Quietly as I could’ was evidently not as quiet as I’d hoped, because as the latch closed, I heard a muffled voice from below comment:
“What was that?”
And then the telltale squeak on what I knew to be exactly the second stair from the bottom.
It was only then, of course, that I noticed there was something off about the attic. Adrenaline sure does narrow your focus.
The first thing I felt was the air pressing in on all sides just a little too tightly- like the moment the cabin depressurizes as a plane lands, but neverending.
Something shifted, not six feet from me.
I looked up and met its eyes, and my stomach dropped out from under me.
The bright daylight from outside seeped through the vent on the wall just enough to reflect off the back of its retinas, like a mountain lion’s. It stared straight at me, not moving, watching me from the dark.
I opened my mouth to- scream? yell?- but was startled into silence by a voice directly underneath me.
“I guess it was just the heater.. Something or other.”
And then, from a little farther down the hallway, at the top of the stairs:
“Yeah. Pipes, something like that. You know what these old houses are like.”
The thing took a slow, careful step towards me. The floorboard creaked.
“See? The daylight warms up the boards a little, they start to shift and expand. S’all normal. I grew up here, I’d know.”
Impossibly slow, the creature looked down, its head cocked like a dog’s. Then it looked back up at me.
“I dunno. I have a weird feeling. Do you smell that?”
“It just smells like Mom’s house.” They were moving around down there, all calm and casual. “Should probably tear apart the walls and check for mold at some point.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah. I guess.”
In the cold of the attic I could feel heat radiating off of the creature- It was impossibly large for the space. It had long, sinewy dark limbs, with the shape of its head and torso obscured by thick, almost mink-like fur that stuck out in all directions, making it look like it had no neck.
It’s face was a pale gray, absolutely hairless- and that was the part I was concerned with at the time, frozen in fear as it leaned towards me, distributing its weight on its spindly knuckles while underneath I could hear the people chatting and rummaging around.
The thing felt all-encompassing, like a black hole that bent the very shape of space and light around itself.
It looked straight at me, and I at it.
Underneath us, a door creaked open, and I heard:
“Might as well pick up some stuff while we’re here.”
It took another step.
It’s limbs moved like a spider’s, though there were only four of them I could see.
Impressively large jaws opened. I felt its breath on my face, hot and putrid.
“No, I’m telling you, something feels off. The door was unlocked.”
“You can go get the rifle out the truck if it makes you feel better. Just don’t put any holes in the wallpaper.”
Despite it all, I dared not move, nor call out.
Five minutes must have passed without either of us moving, the people bellow busying about. At some point, one of the people downstairs dropped something with a thud, and the spell broke.
It moved even closer, inching far into my space. It inhaled, curious and hungry.
I reflexively tried to shift away.
It’s arms shot up like a pair of rattlesnakes.
I felt my trachea compress under surprisingly strong claws that pierced the skin on my neck. My hands Immediately shot up, scrambling at my neck and trying to pry the thing off. Its claws were in deep enough that I felt my sweater above my collar bone grow wet with what must’ve been my own blood.
I couldn’t have cried out even if I wanted to- not with the hold that it had on my neck- but the scuffle must have made enough noise, because I heard somebody yelling downstairs.
The floor was literally swept out from under me as I was dragged by my neck to the far wall of the attic. And, like I said, I’m not a small guy, even if I hadn’t been eating well at the time. The thing was strong.
The panel into the attic opened up, and suddenly the voices were much louder.
At the same time, the creature loosened its hold on me to only one hand as it opened up a grate on the wall. I was able to loosen it more, scrambling at it with my fingernails, before it regained its hold in full and forced me through the opening, tossing me off what was essentially the roof of a second-story house.
My head must’ve hit something- obviously not hard enough to do too much damage, and I think the bushes very luckily caught most of my fall- because after that point things got really fuzzy. I remember a lot of yelling, some screaming. Some gunshots.
Later on, the story that got told was this:
A local (the lady’s sister) and her husband went to check on their mother’s house, which stood empty for more than a month while she was making the transition to a nursing home. While there, they discovered that someone had been living in the house alongside their mother for several years. In the walls, basement, and attic, there were found several items that had gone missing as far back as thirty years ago, amongst old food wrappers of a similar date, and animal bones that had been picked clean and allowed to dry out.
The couple had found me on the way back, half frozen to death on the side of the highway- apparently my concussed self’d had the sense to head for the hills once the Thing had been sufficiently distracted by gunfire. Any suspicion that might’ve fallen on me was stopped by my alibi of being ten years old when the oldest wall-stuffing items had been discovered.
But, after a brief stint in the hospital, I told the lady everything; I was as honest as I could be and expected to get blamed for all of it. She was upset- very understandably so- but contacted me again soon after and told me she probably would have let me stay there if I had asked. She said that she would’ve preferred the house not been empty anyway- and was not going to press charges, as she felt I’d been through enough already.
I don’t know if she felt somehow responsible for my neck wounds, or if she was just an impossibly good person, because after all that she called me up one night and told me she’d called in a favor to get me a real job and had found me a place to stay.
Nowadays we’re still in contact, actually, and we’re pretty friendly. I actually house-sat for her and her husband last weekend. I fed her cats and watered her plants, and cleaned up the place a bit while I was there.
I still don’t know what the thing in the attic was, but they ended up selling her mom’s old place, and I’ve made sure not to be out in the woods alone without at least one other person or a few dogs ever since.