It was my hungry and grumbling stomach that wakened me. I told my mind to ignore it, to resist acknowledging that I was awake, but it was useless. Sleep slipped away from me like grains of (sugar) sand through my fingertips, and I opened my eyes with tired reluctance.
It was 5:30 in the morning. Enough light was penetrating the blinds for me to see the silhouettes of the bedroom furniture. Melody was a nearly still and silent lump in the bed beside me. I could hear her soft, steady breath as her sleep continued.
I slid from under the covers and stood, stretched. My walking clothes, laid out methodically the night before, waited on a bench beside the wall: a white sleeveless t-shirt, gray shorts, white athletic socks, and a pair of dirty shoes that were showing the wear of many miles. I slipped everything on in the semi-darkness. As I exited the room, turning the knob on the door slowly as to keep it silent, I looked back at Melody.
She didn’t stir.
The trail is only a quarter of a mile from our house at most, a small sliver of it visible from our kitchen windows that overlook the valley and the mountains beyond. Although close, reaching it on foot is inconvenient. I have to walk through one of our neighbor’s yards and down a steep embankment in order to access it. So even though walking to the trail is feasible, most mornings I take the car. It’s just easier that way. Reaching the small rest area that sit just a few yards shy of the four mile marker takes me less than a minute.
The parking lot, which has room for eight vehicles, was empty, but this was not surprising given that it was still before 6:00 in the morning. Most mornings I don’t reach the trail until 7:00 at the earliest, at which point I would typically encounter at least four or five other cars parked there by bikers, runners, or walkers like me. Beside the parking lot is a pavilion with four large picnic tables and two large trash receptacles, and at the back of the lot are two porta-johns standing like dark blue sentinels.
I got out of the car and took a deep breath, stretching my back. It had rained during the night, and the air was damp and thick with the smell of moisture. Petrichor, Melody called it. She loved that smell. I drank it in, trying to wake up a body that was still laden with the weight of sleep.
I shut the car door, its slamming sound piercing the quiet of the morning, and I felt a fleeting regretful feeling, as if I owed an apology to the world around me for breaking a sacred silence. I dropped my keys into the left pocket of my shorts. My cellphone went into the right pocket, which was just deep enough to hold it.
I turned left onto the trail, heading west. Over the course of my many, many walks, I had tried both directions. The trail is ten miles long from end to end, flat and almost completely straight, created several years ago where once there had been a train track. My preference is to walk west, as that stretch of the trail provides more variety – more trees, more farmland, and more pleasant views of the mountains to the north. The path east just isn’t as nice for some reason; the views are less picturesque for one thing, and that stretch of trail is largely devoid of trees, which means that on the warmer summer mornings, there is no shade to break the miserable heat.
The fine gravel crunched under my shoes as I walked, the only sound to be heard with the exception of sporadic bird song and chattering insects. Distantly, a cow mooed. A rooster crowed a response. I focused on my breathing and keeping my mind clear. I adopted a slow pace to start, allowing my legs to warm up.
My stomach grumbled. I cursed silently.
Six months ago, I had had a scare. Melody and I had gone out on a Friday night. We had shared a delicious steak dinner. The meat was tender and rare and had dissolved in rich flavor on the tongue. It was accompanied by piping hot baked potatoes with crisp skins dripping with real butter and tremendous golden sweet rolls that were steaming with the aroma of yeast.
By the end of the meal, I had crossed the line from satisfied to full and bloated, yet Melody insisted that we go dancing. By the second song, I felt winded. By the third, there was a strange and foreign fluttering in my chest, and I found that I could no longer take a full breath. I panicked. Melody told me later that she knew something was wrong when all the color fell from my face like a sheet being pulled from a statue.
We had gone home, and the next morning I had phoned my doctor. My cholesterol levels were alarming, and my blood pressure was through the roof. Dr. Steiner told me, in no uncertain terms, that I had come to a crossroads with my health, and it was time to change direction. And if that new direction had an arrow-shaped sign above it, it read, “Diet and Exercise.”
It took me only a few steps to pass the first half-mile marker. It was a straight wooden post, maybe five feet tall, with a reflective green sign at the top reading, “Mile 4.0.” Continuing west for four miles would take me to the beginning of the trail at a playground in the neighboring town (I had never ventured that far); going east for six miles would take me to the end. My goal each morning was the 1.5 mile marker; there, I would turn around and head back. By the time I reached my car again, I would have walked five miles, slightly over the daily 10,000 steps that Dr. Steiner had recommended. If I could keep a decent pace, the round trip usually took me about 80 minutes or less. I would return to my car tired and, depending on the temperature, soaking wet with sweat.
When Dr. Steiner had first mentioned the 10,000 step goal, I had balked. The number was daunting. He encouraged me to start slowly, with the first week goal being less than a third of that total. And it was a good thing too, because my initial walks of only 3,000 steps had ended with shin splints, burning thigh muscles, and painfully sore feet. It was shameful how out of shape I had become.
But then it was also surprising how quickly my body adapted. By the second week I was walking 6,000 steps per day. I still had shin splints and burning leg muscles, but the intensity of the discomfort was decreasing. The pain in my feet vanished altogether, either because I had finally broken in my new walking shoes or because I had broken in my feet.
By the middle of the fourth week, I was hitting 10,000 steps per day with relative ease. I discovered that the worst part of the daily walk wasn’t the physical exertion so much as the tedium of it. On some mornings I turned on an audiobook or music to help pass the time. But often I didn’t listen to anything at all except the sounds of nature around me: singing birds, chirping frogs, mooing cows, the rustling of leaves caused by the breeze or some hidden critter. Boredom be darned, sometimes it was nice to unplug, walk, breathe, and listen.
Just beyond the four-mile marker was a farm that straddled the trail. To the left was a field sowed with soy beans; to the right was a white farmhouse surrounded by several barns, outbuildings, and silos, as well as a field filled with cornstalks maybe knee-high. Large fans on the outside of one of the barns roared and blew warm air across my path, air that smelled heavily of fresh manure, and I held my breath until I was past it.
The trail proceeded over a tiny bridge suspended above a narrow creek that then continued its course alongside the trail for the next mile or so. I often saw a couple of mallard ducks lazily swimming in its murky waters, but they were absent on this morning.
Beyond the bridge, the trail made a slight turn and became thick with trees and brush on both sides. The ground dipped precipitously down to the creek below on my right. The left side remained flat. It was among this foliage that three or four farm cats and their kittens made their beds. Depending on what time I passed by each day, I would find them sound asleep at the bases of the trees, masses of orange, black, white, and gray fur in tight bunches. Other mornings they would be out on the trail, some of them scurrying as I approached, others watching calmly from the green until I walked by. Occasionally I would smile as a longsuffering mama cat endured the gently ferocious attacks of her offspring.
A single kitten sat upright by the side of the trail. Its fur was fine and orange with brownish stripes, its tail thin and pointed. It was so still that I might have walked by without seeing it, but it mewed quietly as I approached. Its face was turned up toward me, its eyes wide and milky white. The poor thing is blind, I thought, remembering that this wasn’t the first sickly farm cat I had encountered. Basically wild and living off the land – and likely drinking solely from the brown waters of the creek below – the cats often looked bedraggled and borderline malnourished. But as I passed this one by, it turned its head, tracking my progress. Then it got up with a wobbly jerk and began to follow, unsteady on its short legs.
I picked up my pace. After a few yards I looked back, and the kitten was gone.
The next stretch was straight, flat, and unobstructed on both sides. Boring. There was nothing to look at here except vast stretches of field and blue sky. Tall weeds with circular white tops like frosted sugar cookies bowed from the edges, some of them brushing against my legs. Because there was no shade here to speak of, on hotter days this part of my journey could be nearly unbearable. Today, it wasn’t so bad. The sun was still low, having barely peeked over the horizon behind me. The air was humid, but the temperature hadn’t quite reached into the 70s yet.
I closed my eyes lazily and continued on, only opening them again when I heard a bird cry in the distance. I looked skyward, stretching my neck, turning it side to side and hearing it pop. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, nothing above me except untouched blue.
Distantly, above the tree line, I spied a large bird, a dark silhouette against the sky. I could decipher nothing of its color, but it had an impressively large wingspan. Its movements were slow and graceful as it glided aimlessly. A smaller bird, its flight pattern more jagged, almost agitated, followed the larger one closely. It was a dance I had witnessed many times before. I guessed – or perhaps I had read somewhere – that a bigger bird such as this was a threat to the smaller bird’s eggs or young, prompting the smaller bird to pursue. As the larger bird swooped and glided, the smaller one would dart down, not colliding with the larger one but coming close. It was doubtful that the small bird could do much more than irritate the larger one until it gave up and flew away.
I watched the two birds continue their antagonistic ballet when a third, also small, darted up from the tree line like a tiny rocket, colliding with the left wing of the larger one, unbalancing it. I barely had time to register its presence when a fourth, then a fifth, and then a sixth tiny bird appeared, firing skyward until they too collided with the big one. It let out a cry loud enough to reach my ears. More small birds appeared, more than I could count from this distance, and swarmed it, ramming into it forcefully, latching onto it until the entire company of birds, in one black mass, plummeted below the tree line and disappeared from view. I had never seen anything like it, and I realized that I had completely stopped walking. I found myself standing still and slack-jawed in the middle of the trail.
* * *
Several minutes later, as I neared the 3.5 mile marker, the trail crossed Miller’s Dam Road. I stopped and looked both directions before crossing, knowing it would be more likely that I would need to yield to a tractor than a car, but having heard no sound of an engine I barely paused before continuing.
My stomach grumbled.
Darn Dr. Steiner.
“Don’t waste those miles burning the calories you ate for breakfast,” he had told me. “Make your body get its fuel from your fat stores. So take your walks on an empty stomach.” His advice sounded informed enough, but on some mornings, like this one, my hunger was nearly unbearable. And the hungrier I got, the more tempted I was to break the diet the doctor had recommended to me: Carnivore. While I was allowed a limited number of vegetables and fruit – particularly berries – Steiner wanted my meals to consist mostly of beef, poultry, pork, fish, and eggs. Assuming Melody was awake by the time I got home – and she usually was – I could expect a heaping, steaming plate of eggs and bacon to be waiting for me on the kitchen table. The very thought of it made my mouth water.
The diet was working. Between the restricted food choices and my daily 10,000 steps, pounds were melting off. But that didn’t mean that on my hungrier mornings I wouldn’t have preferred to come home to a stack of Melody’s signature blueberry buttermilk pancakes oozing with butter and warm maple. With a small side of bacon to please the doctor.
My stomach didn’t just grumble. It summersaulted.
Darn Dr. Steiner two times over. And the house he lives in.
Beyond the 3.5 mile marker and to the left, just as the trees started to thicken again, there was a nicely manicured lawn belonging to a quaint little house. Perfectly trimmed bushes like giant gumdrops lined a white sidewalk that led to a burgundy front door. The lawn could not have been more precisely cut had it been shorn by a straight razor. All was quiet. I imagined that the people who lived there still slept. I knew from my past walks that the residents consisted of a husband and wife, two boys and one girl all under the age of seven-ish, and a poodle. I wondered what they might be having for breakfast once they got up. Cereal, perhaps? Waffles? Raisin bagels thick with cream cheese?
Shoot me now.
A cardinal, red as a cherry, darted from one side of the trail to the other.
I detected a faint aroma, and by the time I recognized what it was, I knew I had been smelling it long before my brain ever registered it: skunk. I had in the past encountered a large number of animals on the trail: mostly squirrels, but also rabbits, chipmunks, groundhogs, field mice, possums and raccoons (if I was out early enough for either of those), and even a beaver or two. But I had never encountered a skunk.
I scanned the path ahead of me. From where I was, I could see ahead probably a quarter of a mile, but then the trail disappeared into the shadows of a growth of trees on both sides so large and thick that it completely overshadowed everything under it. It formed a dark opening like a cave, with nothing to see beyond it except a few scattered beams of light that managed to penetrate the thick foliage.
Ahead of me I noticed what appeared to be a string, bright red like cherry licorice rope, running from one side of the trail to the other. I guessed it was a shoe string, perhaps, or the drawstring from a backpack or a pair of running shorts. There was never much litter to be found on my morning walks. People who were looking after their health typically weren’t the type to drop their trash on the ground, nor would they likely be carrying anything to discard in the first place. It was only on a very rare occasion that I would spot an empty beer can, a cigarette pack, or a Little Debbie snack wrapper.
I kept my eye on the crimson thread, and as I approached it, the pong of skunk became stronger, enough to sting my nose and make my eyes water. I continued with caution, scanning the brush on either side of the trail for signs of wildlife, smelly or otherwise. It was only once I was three or four feet away that I realized what the string — thick, shiny and wet — actually was. On one side it ended abruptly in a small, jagged curl; on the other it ceased at the opened stomach of a dead skunk, lying flat and shredded in the tall grass.
What’s black and white and red all over?
My grumbling stomach lurched. I stepped over the entrails, wondering what predator had not only been brave enough to attack a skunk, but also clever enough to fell it while, I assumed, avoiding its natural defenses. I held my breath and picked up my pace, desiring to be free of the fumes, glad to finally be upwind of it.
I soon entered what I had long considered to be my favorite stretch of the trail, where the trees grew tall and thick and completely overhung the path, creating a canopy that shrouded everything in shadows. The air was also considerably cooler. Some days, I would experience a chill as my sweat-soaked shirt became suddenly cool. With its giant looming trees, this section of the trail always reminded me of something out of a fantasy story, like a passage through the woods that a Hobbit or Dorothy might have taken. Entering this relative darkness and its accompanying near-silence, I inhaled deeply, allowing the smell of moist leaves to cleanse my olfactory palette of the lingering stench of skunk.
A thin web tickled my face, and I picked it away with my fingertips. Spider webs were the only downside to this particular stretch of path. Unseen arachnids liked to leave invisible strands that stretched from one tree to another, and there was many a morning that I found myself growing irritated as I pinched their tiny threads away from my sweaty arms, neck, and face. And on an early morning like this, there were no passing bikers to clear the webs for me. What always amazed me was that no matter how many of these webs I broke, by the time I circled back, the industrious arachnids had already replaced them with new ones for me to run into.
As I picked a fresh strand from one eyebrow, a strange sound ahead, a chittering, drew my attention. I looked through the shadows. There, several feet ahead and to my right, was a thick-trunked oak tree, its muscular branches extending overhead. I became still when it appeared to me that every surface of the tree was moving, swirling, as if the bark had become skin that was literally crawling.
My own skin broke out in goosebumps. Surely I was not seeing what my brain was telling me it saw. I blinked, wondering if my eyes, accustomed to the light of the sun, were playing a trick on me as they adjusted to the relative darkness, making it appear that the bark of the tree was swirling and pinching. I allowed myself to approach slowly, my feet walking the tightrope line to the left of the trail where the gravel met grass. There was nothing but a steep incline covered by impenetrable brush there, nowhere further for me to go to give the writhing, throbbing tree plenty of berth.
It was only when I was within a few feet of the oak that I realized the tree itself was in fact perfectly still. Instead its entire surface was covered by squirrels, dozens of them, their fur a deep brown that perfectly matched the bark. These squirrels, the source of the chittering sound that had first drawn my attention, were engaged in a rapid chase around the tree’s trunk and branches, each one in pursuit of another. It was their uniform motion that had created the illusion, convincing only from afar, that the tree itself was moving.
I exhaled with relief but was at the same time dumfounded as to why so many of these fluffy-tailed rodents had decided to give chase here on this particular oak. It was the sound of that relieved breath, or the sound of one scuffing sneaker on gravel, that alerted them. But in an instant every single squirrel, all thirty or more, stopped moving in unison and fixed their eyes on me. They froze like a still life. Sixty-plus milky white eyes peered at me as I stood only barely concealed in the shadows. A feeling of being studied washed over me.
I sipped in a quick, involuntary breath and held it. Backing away slowly, I collided with the 3-mile marker behind me. I skirted around it and continued to walk backwards, making my way to the other end of the natural canopy, my eyes never leaving the oak nor its furry hangers-on, and their eyes never leaving mine.
It was with small relief that I stepped out from under the trees and into the sunshine again. The moment the sun touched my skin, I heard the squirrels resume their chittering. I turned around, leaving them behind me. Immediately to my left was another field of corn. To my right was a vast clearing of nothing but a field of grass ending in a distant tree line that stood below blue mountains that were probably three or more miles in the distance. Somewhere in those trees, cicadas produced the sound of heat.
The trail curved again, but only slightly. My time in the sun would once again be brief, as up ahead another growth of trees on both sides, not as thick as before, would cover the trail in shadow. Left of this approaching tree line, just beyond where the cornfield ended, was another farm. In the tall grass of the field I could see the shapes of several cows, black and white lumps reclining on the ground, all of them very still.
Sleeping.
Cows. Beef. Burgers. Burgers with juicy tomatoes, ice cold lettuce, crisp onions, sour pickle chips, ketchup and mustard on a soft potato roll. With a side of fries. And a thick strawberry milkshake. My hunger audibly announced itself again.
A breeze picked up, causing the grass to wave lazily in unison, and I once again focused on my breathing and enjoying the cooling effect of the air on my skin, which was warming again in the morning sun. As I strolled forward, I kept my eyes focused on the sleeping cows. They lay so very still in the grass. So very still. I denied myself the small and inexplicable feeling of foreboding.
As I got closer to them, I slowed my pace, looking for the slightest movement, even just the small rising and falling of their ribs as they breathed. But they were too far away from me, nothing but big lumps in the middle of the field. Lumps of black and white…
(and red all over)
…and then the trees cut off my view and I was once again covered in shadow. I increased my speed as I saw the 2.5 mile marker several yards in the distance. Once I passed it, I would only be one mile from my usual turning around point. The halfway point. But it was best not to think too much about that. The more I focused on the distance remaining, the slower the time passed. I learned that lesson months ago.
As I proceeded, I found myself looking to my left for any breaks in the trees, any sliver where the sunlight passed through, allowing me to catch a glimpse of the farm on the other side and the reclining cows in the field. I knew that at any point I could stop walking in order to get a better look, but I forced myself to move forward, denying myself anything more than a furtive glance. My roaming eyes could decipher nothing of much detail.
Up ahead on my left, perhaps a dozen feet away, a bush began to tremble, then shake violently. I once again stopped moving, and my heart, already on high alert even though I had convinced myself that there was nothing at all to be concerned about, sank deep into my stomach, a sickly feeling replacing the hunger there.
I was curious. It was stupid, perhaps, stepping forward to investigate. But I told myself that, as bizarre as my morning walk had been so far, I had seen nothing at all dangerous or even all that alarming. Just a sick kitten, a dead skunk, and some oddly-behaving birds and squirrels. At most, I had something interesting to tell Melody over breakfast when I got home. Animals be trippin’ today, I might say over a plate of greasy sausage. Except I would never say anything like that.
The bush ceased moving as I neared it. I approached slowly, studying it, when the foliage parted suddenly, like curtains being drawn back from a stage, and through it erupted the head of a cow. Its face was enormous, and I realized I had never been this close to one, close enough to feel its warm breath on my skin, never knew just how big of a beast a cow actually was. I let out a yell, stumbling, and fell onto my backside, my butt hitting the gravel painfully, and I kicked with my heels in order to scoot away from the bovine.
It bellowed, a loud and unpleasant and strangely wild sound. Its hide, what I could see of it from the neck and beyond, was black, but its face was a dirty white. Long black eyelashes framed its huge and starkly white eyes, eyes that looked like huge shining pearls, eyes that look angry. Its muzzle was soaked and dripping red with blood.
It pushed forward, its movement hindered by the thick growth of trees and bushes between it and me. Against these obstacles it strained. There was a loud pop-pop-popping sound, and I realized the cow was pushing against an electric fence, unseen by me, but the animal was either ignoring the pain it was experiencing or was totally unaware of it. It was focused solely on me, and its eyes looked not only angry to me now, but also… hungry.
I found my feet and ran, not forward, but back, retracing my steps, returning in the direction of my car which I knew, with a sinking feeling, was parked a mile and a half away. But there was no way I was continuing onward; I had seen enough.
I glanced over my shoulder as I ran, back at the farmer’s field dotted by the bodies of inert cows. But it wasn’t the immobile ones I was looking for now. I was worried about the other one, the hungry and bloody one, and whether it had given up on accessing the trail in favor of paralleling it, pursuing me indirectly until it found a way in.
I was plunged into shadow again as I reentered the thick copse of trees I had only exited minutes before. I continued to run, knowing as I did so that I was approaching that giant oak, the one crawling with squirrels, but as I got closer to it, I heard no chittering sound, and I found the oak bare. I wondered where all of those white-eyed squirrels might have gone.
Already my pace was slowing. I was quickly becoming winded, not used to running. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had run. Thin strands of web tickled my face and I picked fruitlessly at them as forced myself onward. No sooner had I plucked one from my face that another would stick to my shin or my arm. True to form, the spiders had already replaced every thread that I had broken not that long before.
I turned my head, willing my ears to listen for any sounds behind me, any indication that I was being pursued. But everything was silent. Birds no longer sang, insects no longer chirped. There was nothing to be heard but my running footfalls and labored breathing. It was an unnatural silence.
It was then that I became aware, with terrific brilliance, of a terrible sharp pain on the back of my right hand, as if the skin was being broken by a sharp needle, sending jolts of intense discomfort down my index and middle fingers.
With the pain came sudden memory. I was standing in the middle of my parents’ above-ground pool, a skimmer net in hand, clearing the water of floating leaves and dead beetles. Once full, I would turn the net over and smack its handle on the edge of the pool, sending the net’s contents to the grass below. A large wasp nest had been built on the opposite side of the pool’s rim, but I, not having heeded my mother’s warning to look for any before getting into the water, was unaware of it. Unaware, that is, until my hand flared with pain and I looked down to see two wasps perched perfectly still on the back of my hand, stingers sunk into my tan skin.
But this wasn’t a wasp causing pain. It was a spider. A black spider with a thin body and long legs made of an obscene number of joints. I looked at it with horror as it appeared not just to be biting me, but to be chewing, half of its face burrowed deep into my skin.
I cried out and slapped at it, turning it into a bloody red pulp. I had stopped running, and my face contorted in disgust as I wiped the back of my hand on the side of my shorts. When I looked at my hand again, I saw nothing but a streak of red that ended in a raised welt, at the center of which was a bloody red crater that looked like a tiny volcano.
I looked up and ahead to the path before me, to the opening in the trees probably three quarters of a mile away. My breath caught in my throat at what I saw. Draped across the trail, connecting nearly every tree on either side, were webs. Dozens of them. They looked like silver discs in the low sunlight, silver discs hung from spun sugar, some of them overhead, many of them directly in my way.
As if on cue, dozens, maybe hundreds of black spiders began to descend from their webs on thin silk strings. I recoiled, my instinct to run in the other direction. I took one step backwards. But the other direction was wrong. The other direction was away from my car, away from home. The other direction was cow.
Eyes on the spiders, I slowly peeled off my shirt, which was sweat-soaked. I let it dangle from my right hand, which was now throbbing dully. I had remembered a method I had utilized in the past when the webs along the trail had become too prevalent and annoying. Shirt in hand, I sprinted forward, spinning the wet tee ahead of me, letting it break the webs before I my body reached them. And as I ran I was yelling, like a soldier on the battlefield racing toward his enemy, the sound involuntary and almost ridiculous to my ears as I launched myself forward. There was a sharp pain on the left side of my neck and I slapped at it reflexively, feeling a sensation against my palm like a blueberry being squished, and I wiped my hand on my shorts without looking at it.
Emerging from the trees, blinded me and I stopped running. I looked down at the shirt that dangled limply in my hand. It was thickly coated in white web and teeming with spiders. I threw it to the side of the trail with a disgusted sound and then rubbed my hands frantically over every surface of my body with a shudder.
Satisfied that I had rid my skin of webs and spiders, I bent over, out of breath, hands on my bare knees. I looked up to see what might lie before me. The stretch ahead was completely straight, the view unbroken. The next mile and a half looked clear. I sighed with relief and dropped my head back down again for a moment, catching my breath.
I stood and began to walk, more slowly than I usually did, still winded. All around me was unnervingly quiet. Even the breeze had gone still. My footfalls were incredibly loud in the surrounding silence, and I felt uncomfortably conscious of every sound I was making. In the distance, achingly far away, was the 3.5 mile marker.
I lumbered on.
Up ahead, nearly concealed in the tall grass, something was reflecting sunlight. As I got closer, I could see that it was silver and white. Only when I stood over it could I finally identify it.
A bicycle. I bent over and set it upright, tipping it from side to side so that I could observe its condition. It was undamaged. I checked the tires to see if they were flat, but they were fine. So why had it been —
I heard a gasping breath behind me, and I felt my nerves light up with adrenaline. I spun around, one hand still holding loosely to the handlebars of the bike, barely keeping it upright.
Nearly hidden in the bushes on the other side of the trail was a woman. She was crouched down, staring intently at me, her brown eyes the color of chocolate, wide and unblinking. She wore a white tank top and blue shorts, and on her head was a bicycle helmet as pink as cotton candy. She held something bright red in one hand, a plastic tube of some sort. After a moment I recognized it to be pepper spray. Her index finger was perched on top of it. It was aimed at me.
I raised my free hand up, palm outwards, in gentle protest.
“Hey, lady,” I said. “Please don’t—”
“Stay away from me,” she said in a harsh whisper. The hand holding the spray was shaking.
“Okay,” I said in a tone I hoped was reassuring even though my voice was shaking. “Is this your bike?”
There was a noise, the sound of an unidentifiable animal, somewhere to my right – the woman’s left – and her head jerked in that direction. Her breath came to her in frightened gasps.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
She looked back at me. Tears that had welled up and balanced precariously on her lower lids now spilled down. “Don’t kill me,” she pleaded.
Without thinking, I took a step toward her, my left arm extending behind me as it held the bike up. “I’m not going to—”
She raised the pepper spray. “Don’t!” she yelled. With her free hand she rubbed violently at one eye, as if it itched her terribly. She then blinked hard. Her eyes, I now saw, were actually a light brown, not dark as I had initially thought.
I stepped back. Bending over slowly, I placed her bike back on the ground where I’d found it, then stood up again.
“I’m just going to walk away,” I said. “It’s okay.”
Both hands up, I walked backwards, the woman’s huge eyes never leaving mine, and I continued slowly in this fashion until the brush hid her completely from my view once more. There was no rustling sound, and I could only assume she remained hidden where I had found her.
When I turned and regarded the trail once again, I froze.
Ahead of me, probably about a quarter of a mile away, was a man. He was standing completely still in the center of the trail. The sun behind him, he was nothing but a black silhouette. In fact, I could not tell for sure if he was facing toward me or away from me, but every nerve in my body told me he was looking at me. I felt the thrill of fear travel up through my legs and settle like a rock in my stomach.
He remained still. As did I.
Suddenly, he began to run, and the fear that had settled in my stomach lurched up into my heart, making my chest pound. Once again I considered retreating, but it took only a second to realize that the man was not running toward me, but away from me. I could only ascertain this by the fact that his shape was getting smaller, not larger. He continued in a straight line until the trail curved slightly and he disappeared from my view.
I took a breath, not knowing that I had been holding it or for how long.
I stepped forward, but slowly. The 3.5 mile marker came and went. I was only half a mile from the parking lot. At the pace I was going, I would be opening the driver’s side door of my car in ten minutes or so. Most of the rest of my walk would take place on a wide open stretch of path, nothing but a cornfield on one side, a soy bean field on the other. I felt exposed, half naked and vulnerable out in the open like that, and wished that instead I was hidden by the thick shade of the trees again. But then I remembered that with the darkness came other dangers. Hidden dangers.
There was a sound to my left and I stopped walking, my fear so constant at this point that I was almost numb. I scanned the cornfield and its gently waving stalks. And then I found the source of the sound: something was running through the rows, not following them but tearing through them at an angle, felling the stalks in its path. I could not see what it was, but I could see its rapid progress. And I could see that it was making a straight line toward me.
I willed my tired body to run, propelling myself forward with a speed born of panic. Looking to my left, I saw that whatever was running through the cornfield had turned slightly, altering its course in order to intercept me further down the trail. My fear gave birth to terror, fueling my pace. My lungs began to burn as I pushed myself forward as hard as I could.
I dared to look back. Whatever was pursuing me was getting closer.
The rustling sound increased. A second trail was being cut through the corn, and soon the two paths intercepted, and there was a horrendous growling sound. Whatever the two animals were, they had come together, and both were snarling and ripping and tearing at each other with a wild ferocity.
I slowed my pace to a jog and then to a brisk walk, my lungs begging for breath as the sound of the animals fighting continued on behind me. It eventually faded with a whimper. I stopped in front of the barn with the large fans, and let the warm and putrid wind from the spinning blades brush over me as I caught my breath.
There was a mewing sound, and I looked around with reluctance for its source, bracing myself for what I might see.
Just besides the trail was a gray mama cat. She was lying on her side as four kittens nursed hungrily at her teats, the four of them tripping over each other as they sought to latch on. One of them, also gray, pulled away and turned toward me. Its eyes were white. It meowed: the cutest of sounds from the bloodiest of mouths.
The kittens weren’t nursing. They were eating. Mama was dead.
And somewhere, maybe a mile or so behind me on the trail, a woman screamed.
I found the strength to run the length of the path that remained between me and the car. I fumbled for the keys in my pocket as I approached, never more happy to see the gray metal of the sedan. It looked like nothing less than salvation. I pushed a button on the keyring and heard a click as the doors unlocked.
This sound was immediately followed by a low growling coming from my left.
I looked only long enough to see a dog, a very large, very black dog, its shiny fur standing in points along its back, as it ran at speed toward the parking lot, its white eyes locked on me. There was no time for fear to immobilize me. I opened the door, slid into the driver’s seat, and slammed it shut again before the animal careened loudly into the side of the car, hitting it with enough force to rock the entire body.
I didn’t look through the window, didn’t look to see if the dog had retreated or had knocked itself out cold or had backed up in order to charge again. Instead I started the engine, backed up rapidly, and peeled away.
Less than a minute later, I was parked in my garage again. I sat there, hands on top of the steering wheel, my head on my forearms, eyes closed, catching my breath.
I got out, my bare legs and back peeling away from the seat. There was a large dent in the driver’s side door, and in the dent was black fur and blood. I stared at it dumbly for a few seconds.
Back in our bedroom, I found Melody still asleep. She was peacefully still, unaware of everything I had just endured, her shape like a loaf of bread under a cloth. I looked at the clock on her bedside table. Only 45 minutes had passed since I had left. How was that possible? How had so much happened in such a short amount of time?
I stepped quietly into our bathroom and shut the door behind me. Turned on the shower. I regarded myself in the mirror. My bare torso was slick with sweat. Thin white threads of webbing clung to my sweaty skin, giving me the appearance of a glazed doughnut. I had an angry red welt on the left side of my neck, identical to the one on my right hand. I kicked off my shoes and socks and dropped my shorts to the floor.
I stepped into the shower, turning the water as hot as I could stand it. I stood still under the scalding spray. It stung. I let it sting. I raised my chin and let it pelt my face and the lids covering my burning eyes. Slowly it washed away the sweat and the webs and the growling and the screaming and the…
I wondered then what I should do. Should I call the police? And if I did, what would I tell them, exactly? That the animals up and down the trail were behaving strangely today? Should I call animal control? What did I expect them to do? And would anyone even believe what I had to tell them?
I began to wonder if I believed it myself.
Animals be trippin’ today.
I rubbed my eyes.
My stomach grumbled loudly.
Melody would know what to do. Once I told her everything, she would know exactly what to do. She always did.
I should wake her up.
Wake her up.
Wake her up and tell her.
Wake her up and tell her…
…just how very, very hungry I am.