I used to be someone who smoked cigarettes.
It’s a nasty habit, I know, but I grew up in the 2000s, in the final decade in which it was sort of deemed cool and rebellious to smoke cigs. When it still held the last remnants of that James Dean badassness to it. Wanting to fit in with my wrong-side-of-the-tracks friends, I picked up the habit when I was sixteen years old, and smoked all through my twenties. Up until just before my thirtieth birthday.
You see, I was not only someone who smoked, but I was also more than a little bit of a night owl. I would stay up until three or four in the morning, either writing stories on my laptop, or occasionally my typewriter if I felt like being a little old school, playing video games, or just watching random movies or late night TV channels. As I worked from home, and worked my own hours as well, I was able to sleep in for most of the day, before waking up in the late afternoon or evening to do my work, and then lounge around afterwards. And, since I didn’t exactly have what you’d call a healthy social life, it seemed to work.
That was, until that late night, in the summer of 2019.
I had already finished my work for the night, and as two AM approached, I was ankle deep into an online multiplayer session of Forza Horizon 4 with some fellow night owl acquaintances I’d made over Xbox Live. I’d just finished winning my third race of the night when Jerry’s voice came through my headset. “Hey guys, I’m going to take a little break for a while. Maybe grab some pizza rolls and a beer before coming back” I heard the audible groans of the others spill out from their ends. “I’ll just be twenty or thirty minutes or so, aight?” he said a bit defensively, “Don’t lose your minds just yet, I’ll be back to whoop your asses once I pull out my Lancia for the off-road races!” I laughed. “Yeah, like your Bugatti was supposed to wipe the floor with my Cadillac?”
The laughs of everyone echoed in my head. “Very funny, smartass” Jerry said, before the sound of his headset being put down came through mine. I pushed back and stretched, feeling a little antsy. Ah, the hell with it. Might as well quickly pop outside for a smoke break myself, I thought, and tapped the microphone. “Hey guys, I’m gonna quickly hop off for a few minutes myself while he’s gone. I’ll be back in about ten or fifteen, okay?” There was another groan from the remaining three before Mac’s annoyed voice grumbled through. “Fine, but hurry back. I wanna make sure Jerry doesn’t win another race tonight, and so far, you’ve been the best countermeasure” I laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t be long” And with that, I pulled my own headset off my head, dropped it and my controller on the couch, and stood up. Moving to my living room closet, I opened it and pulled out my black jacket. Slipping it on, I zipped the front up, and after making sure my pack of smokes was in the pocket, stepped into my work boots and unlocked the front door.
The somewhat cool night air hit me in the face as I stepped outside, feeling more than a little relieving after the sauna that my apartment had become from the rather hot day. I should probably open a window when I go back in. The thought, however, was interrupted as I noticed something. I live on the second floor of my apartment complex, which forms a bit of a U shape, similar to how some motels look. From my vantage point at the top of the steps leading down to the parking lot, and in the yellow glow of the outside lights, I could see it clearly.
Well, looks like the fog has come back in again. I live on the Oregon coast, less than a block from an estuary which leads out to the Pacific Ocean. Because of my proximity to it, when a fog bank rolls in, it covers my neighborhood in thick white mist, sometimes making it so you can’t even see forty or fifty feet in front of you. Tonight it was particularly bad, as I could barely see down to the end of the next block. “Good thing I’m not driving anywhere” I muttered to myself, then began down the steps. Halfway down, the light which sits on the stairwell, one which is motion activated, flashed on, nearly blinding me and causing me to stumble a bit on the stairs. Why the actual hell did they have to change out the regular light for a motion sensor one? I thought irritably.
Stepping onto the concrete, I headed for a spot in the middle of the parking lot where one of those black, plastic cigarette butt bins had been set up. “I hate that stupid, must smoke a certain distance away from the building rule” I grumbled, pulling out the pack and removing a smoke from it. Crooking it into the corner of my mouth, I replaced the pack in my pocket and pulled out a Zippo. Flipping open the metal top, I thumbed the wheel, the orange flame lighting up the area around me and seeming to banish away the closest hanging white layers of fog.
As soon as I lit the tip and inhaled, all of the evening’s stresses seemed to melt away like snow in spring. I snapped the lighter closed, pulling the Marlboro from my lips and exhaling a cloud of smoke. That’s better. For a few minutes I simply stood there, puffing away slowly and listening to the nighttime sounds of my neighborhood. Once in a great while, the sound of a car or logging truck passing by on the main road would whoosh by behind the complex. Crickets, cicadas and frogs chirped and croaked away from a particularly swampy area a few blocks away, continuously filling the night air. A dog began barking from a backyard a block up, and an owl hooted from a tree across the street.
It’s so damn peaceful at night, when barely anyone else is awake, I thought with a slight feeling of happiness as I finished my first smoke and lit a second, final one of the night before heading back inside. It was a short lived feeling, though, as a rather odd sensation began to creep over me. It was one I’d never felt before while outside. It was….a feeling which was uncomfortable, almost the same kind you get when you’re standing in a crowd somewhere, and turn to find someone staring at you for one reason or another. But as I turned and looked around, I couldn’t see anything. Not a living soul. The streets remained empty; the muted lights of the street lamps just barely visible down the road in either direction not showing anything. “Huh” I murmured under my breath. Maybe it’s the owl I was hearing. I turned back to face the front of my building, puffing away and attempting to push the odd feeling out of my mind by concentrating on what car or truck I’d use in the next race.
For a few minutes, the feeling seemed to dwindle and die away, and I felt calm again. As I came down to the last little bit of my smoke, though, the feeling returned, seemingly with a vengeance. This time it washed over me like a wave, and as much as I tried to ignore it, it only seemed to amplify more and more, until it felt like I not only was being watched, but as if whoever was doing the watching were attempting to bore holes into the back of my head. I turned around and looked again, for the first time in a while hating how the block my apartment building sat on had no streetlamps on it. I squinted into the gloom and mist, attempting to see if anything stood out among the darkened shapes of the houses and bushes across the street. But, just like the last time, I saw nothing.
That was when I noticed something. All the sounds of my neighborhood I’d grown used to hearing over the last five years I’d lived for, were gone. I could no longer hear the occasional sound of cars going by. Neither could I hear the insects or owl. Even the dog, which for the entire time I’d lived here, never seemed to shut up during the night, had stopped barking. Everything was completely silent. A shiver rolled up my spine as I realized it, and I felt the hairs on my arms stand up underneath the sleeves of my jacket. “Oh-kay, this is…this is kind of eerie” I whispered to myself, hoping that the sound of my own voice would help me relax. Instead, it sounded almost muted in the sudden quiet. As if the sound were being sucked out of the air itself.
Okay, this ain’t kosher anymore, man, I thought. Scraping the butt on the ground to extinguish the embers, I dropped both butts into the bin and began walking back towards the stairs. As I reached the halfway point, something caught my eye, which made me look up and back down the street. Diagonally across from me was the darkened shape of Banner Bank, only barely illuminated by the dim lights from inside, and a single lamp over the parking lot. The dim orange glow of the high pressure sodium lamp barely lit the area by the sign, but it was enough to clearly see what I thought I had.
It looked like the outline of a human figure, though I couldn’t tell from this distance whether it was a man or a woman. All I could see was the vague shape, the swirling white mist surrounding it. Almost as soon as my eyes met it, the figure raised one of its arms and began waving. Seemingly, at me. “The hell?” I muttered. I couldn’t figure who’d be out this late who I’d know. I wonder if it’s Tasha. Tasha was a girl I’d known since I’d moved to town, someone who floated from couch to couch, not having a home of her own. Sometimes it meant she’d end up on the street for the night, and as I watched the figure continue to wave at me, I wondered if she’d been kicked out of her latest crash pad again. I’d let her stay at my place before, and if it indeed was her, I’d let her stay the night again. My thoughts were interrupted as the figure stopped waving. It didn’t go still, though; instead, it began to gesture for me to come over. A part of me felt, no, almost screamed at me to just turn around and head inside. But the part of me that, no matter what, always told me to do the right thing, said I should at least move a little closer to know whether it was my friend or not.
So, trying to ignore the feeling of still being watched as well as the voice inside my head, I sighed, and stepped out of the range of my building’s lights. I moved to the curb, hoping that the short amount of distance I’d moved would make the figure more visible. But they were still muted and indistinguishable in the fog. I let out a small mixture of a groan and a sigh, and reluctantly stepped off the curb and down onto the street. Looking around on instinct for cars, even though I knew I wouldn’t see any, I took a few steps until I was almost in the middle of the four way intersection, less than a hundred feet from the bank’s parking lot. Looking up into the almost blinding glare of the overhead street light, I blinked my eyes a few times to fight away the spots which appeared in my vision and focused my vision on the figure.
As I did, though, a wave of confusion crashed over me. The figure had gone back to waving at me, as if it were trying to snag my attention again. For some reason, I couldn’t put my finger on it, something about it just seemed…wrong. Trying to place what it was, I absentmindedly took a few steps forward. Now I was directly in the middle of the intersection, and I stopped. Something strong inside myself told me to go no further than this, and this time, I listened to it. I stopped, then looked back at the figure. It was now gesturing for me to join it again. A lightning bolt seemed to flash up my spine, and I let out an audible gasp as I finally realized what had felt off about the figure.
They were doing the exact same gestures they had the first time. And I don’t mean that they were just repeating the pattern of waving, then gesturing, though that in itself was eerie enough. No, they were repeating the gestures exactly as they had before. No person can perfectly replicate the exact same gesture twice, as each time, something new happens, whether it’s the shake of the fingers, movement of clothing, or amount the arm is extended. But this figure was doing it as perfectly as if it were an animatronic on a theme park ride. Another shiver zapped up my spine, and I instinctively took a step backwards, away from it.
Two things happened simultaneously in that moment. The first was, the figure almost instantly stopped waving and gesturing, its arm dropping to its side, making it look like more of the a vague outline of a person, than a person itself. The second was, the feeling of being watched crescendoed, seeming to feel as though it were coming from every direction. I froze, suddenly feeling like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Or the exact type of dumbass in a horror flick which you spend most of the movie yelling at, for being stupid enough to walk straight into their death. I swallowed, hard. I didn’t want to look away from the figure in front of me. I even more didn’t want to look in the direction the new explosive feeling of being watched had come from. But, I forced myself to.
And I let out a sharp exhalation of breath at what I saw. About a block to my right, off in the mist, I saw a figure standing in the middle of the street. One which looked almost identical to the one ahead of me. I twisted around, looking behind me towards the main road. There was another identical figure, just out of sight in the fog. A feeling of fear and dread rolled through me, and I shot a look to my left. Another figure stood there, also about a block away. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. The two words kept repeating over and over in my head, and the feeling of dread intensified in my gut. “Okay, t-time to go back inside, Zach” I stammered out, and looked back one final time at the figure in the bank parking lot.
I almost screamed, clamping a hand over my mouth. I’d only taken my eyes off it for less than two or three seconds. And, in that time, it had somehow moved forward silently, to stand in the middle of the street ahead of me. I felt my heart pound furiously in my chest, and could hear the blood pumping through my ears in the silence, one which had taken on a threatening and deadly atmosphere. Fuck this, man! I turned and booked it, sprinting across the pavement. In my peripheral vision, I saw the two figures to either side of me had moved forwards as well. Even though I couldn’t see the fourth, I knew it had to be doing the same thing. I almost tripped over the curb and launched myself onto the walking path to the stairs. As I reached the bottom, the motion sensor light flashed on, and I spun around one final time before dashing up them to see how close the figures had been.
The street was completely empty. I looked around frantically, half expecting to see the figures suddenly appear out of nowhere, directly in front of me. But there was no sign of anyone. Or anything. I suddenly became aware that the sounds of the night had returned. I could hear the crickets chirping away, the cars passing by, and the dog barking in the backyard across the street. Every single noise suddenly felt extremely loud after the unnatural silence. After a few tense moments of looking around, I felt my shoulders slump and let out a huge breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in. I pulled my glasses off my face with one hand, rubbing my face with the other. “I’m seeing things, man” I muttered to myself. You’ve been staying up too late, Zach, I thought. You’re not getting any younger, and staying up all night is finally starting to take it out of you and affect you.
Vowing silently to myself that I’d not only head upstairs and say goodnight to the guys waiting for me on Xbox, but I’d also try curbing staying up all night, or at least make it a once or twice only thing from now on, I began climbing the steps to the second floor balcony. The first two wooden steps let out a soft creak of protest, and I climbed up, my thoughts moving away from the eerie experience to how I’d shift myself back into a daytime routine. As I passed the light, it went out as the motion sensor could no longer detect me on the last few steps.
Creak.
I froze on the second to last step as the sound almost seemed to lash out of the darkness behind me. The feelings of dread and fear sloshed back over me like they’d been an icy wave, along with the feeling of being watched. My heart began to beat so hard, it felt as though it were trying to break out of my chest. Slowly, I forced myself to turn around and look back down the stairs. And my heart almost stopped.
All four figures stood at the bottom of the stairwell. I knew I would’ve heard them if they’d simply ducked out of view, then moved for the stairs when I had my back turned. They had literally appeared out of nowhere. Out of thin air. Even in the dark, from this distance I should have been able to make out distinguishing features of them if they’d been people. I should’ve been able to see the outlines of clothing and shoes. But I saw nothing. Only the outlines of the figures themselves. Another wave of horror cascaded through me as I realized the entire world had gone silent again. Silent as a tomb. I looked down at the perfectly still figures crowding around the bottom of my steps, and with a voice that shook, I spoke. “What the hell do you want?” There were a few moments of nothing. Perfect stillness and silence.
Then they came for me.
I can’t explain what I saw. Not really. All I know is, one moment, the four figures were at the bottom of the steps, the outline of their heads cocked back to look up at me. The next, they were a blur of motion rushing up the steps. But the stairs didn’t creak as they would if someone were ascending them. If a human were there. They never made a sound. It was as if they weren’t touching the steps themselves. Even more poignant, was the fact the light never flicked on with their movement. As if they couldn’t be detected.
To this day, I feel that if my apartment hadn’t been the very first one at the top of the landing, I wouldn’t have made it. I couldn’t help but let out a scream as I turned and dashed for my door as fast as I could; slamming my shoulder into the metal door as I desperately turned the handle. I swear I felt something try and grab me as I almost fell into the entryway and slammed the door shut behind me, locking both the chain as well as the lock in the handle. Breathing raggedly and feeling like I was about to scream again from the fear still coursing through my veins, I slid down the door, pulling my knees up against my chest and burying my head into them.
I was only stopped by the sound which came from behind me. From the other side of the door. The sound of soft scratching. I knew what it was, and I leapt away from the door to collapse in a heap on my living room couch. I could faintly hear the voices of my friends calling for me from my discarded headset, but I couldn’t bring myself to grab it and answer them. Instead, I curled into a ball on the leather couch, shaking. Somewhere behind me, the wall mounted clock in the kitchen chimed three times. As soon as the final chime sounded, the scratching sound stopped.
I stayed like that, curled up in a ball on the couch the rest of the night.
That horrific night was four years ago. It was the very last night I stayed up late. After that, I made sure to be asleep before midnight. It seemed to change my life for the better, too. My physical health seemed to improve, and I was able to do my job so much better that I got a promotion. I also ended up quitting smoking after that night. The very next day, I crumpled the remaining pack of cigarettes I had, and threw it and my lighter in the trash. After so many years of smoking, I ended up going cold turkey. And to this day, I’ve never had the urge to light up another one, not even when the most stressful moments of my day hits me. Who honestly would have guessed that it wasn’t the threat of dying of cancer or anything that got me to quit, but a supernatural, near death experience? I honestly don’t know what those…things were. Or why they decided to focus on me that night. And honestly, I don’t want to. I’ve only just managed to be able to sleep without dreaming of those shapes anymore. Without waking up wearing a sheen of sweat on every exposed inch of my skin.
I still play with my online acquaintances in the evenings, and it’s still fun to beat their asses at Forza and Doom. And I’m still living in the same apartment building. Even with my promotion, this is still the only place in town I can realistically afford, as everywhere else is over $1000 a month in rent. Besides, inside here I feel safe.
But I don’t go outside after the sun goes down. Not anymore. As soon as I see the last remnants of daylight disappearing over the horizon in my kitchen window, the red glare almost seeming like a warning to me now, I make sure my front door is securely locked, and close all of my blinds up tight. And even more so when I know a night time fog bank is rolling in.
Because I know they’re still out there.