My family moved into a new house situated away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I was sixteen at the time, my brother was fourteen. We got along as well as two teenagers could. That is we’d fight and make up on a nearly daily basis.
My dad had gotten a new job as a contractor which required us to move. Honestly, I really wasn’t for the idea. I’d be leaving my friends (plus my girlfriend Beth) as well as starting at a new school. I wasn’t nearly social at the best of times, and most times I could be damn well reserved. My brother was the spirited one in the family.
The best way to describe our new place was it was off the main town road and half a mile through the woods on a dusty weather-beaten road. The house was located on half an acre of prime woodland in the middle of a clearing, with trees all around us. Our nearest neighbor was about 100 metres away from our house. Not too far but far enough that we felt we had the place to ourselves.
Coming from living in a small, cramped apartment, our new place was the complete opposite. A two storey stone building with three bedrooms and a lot of space to go wild in. Not to mention the aforementioned huge plot of land and you can imagine the difference from staying in an apartment in the city, especially to two teenage boys who didn’t know better. However, that also brought an intense sense of isolation. And as you’ll see, that poses its own set of problems.
Our first week went as well as it could. My mum adored the place, and said it felt like we were living in a fairy tale setup, what with us being in the middle of the woods and having wildlife around us (we’d spot deer prancing about in the trees at the edge of our property). My brother and I were indifferent, though I suspect he liked it more than I did. We’d started at a new school and were slowly getting acclimatized to the new environment. Things were mundane but okay. That is before our lives became a living hell.
About one week after we’d settled in, I woke up startled in the middle of the night. I don’t know what woke me up. Disoriented I sat up in bed. My room was dark to the point that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I realized that my shirt was drenched in sweat and that my throat was parched. I must have had a bad dream and just couldn’t remember it. Clearly, it must have been bad to wake me up in a fright.
I decided to get out of bed and go get a glass of water from the kitchen. I stumbled around to the door and opened it, stepping out into the hallway. I turned on the hallway light and walked to the kitchen and got some water from the tap. This being the middle of the night, in a clearing in the woods, it was deathly silent. You could literally hear each groan and moan of the house settling, each chirp of crickets and each hoot of an owl as it went about looking for food. Which is when I realized something.
There was no sound outside the house.
Ever since we had moved to our new place, it had taken some getting used to the incessant sounds made by the critters we called our neighbors. Be it frogs croaking or the aforementioned night time birds. But that night, there were no critters singing their joyful melodies. It was silent. Apart from another sound that petrified me to the bone.
Footsteps.
Someone was pacing outside our house. I could hear as the dirt crunched under his feet. He was circling around the house, slowly and methodically. Each footstep amplified in the quiet woodland air. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
I held my breath and turned off the kitchen light and sneaked to the window and slowly parted the curtain a crack. The footsteps were on the other side of the house but I could hear them coming around and towards the kitchen. Towards the parted curtain. Towards me.
I swallowed as they got closer, and closer and closer, till finally they were there. At the window. My throat caught as I anticipated to see somebody, but..nothing. The footsteps passed my window and continued. That is when it hit me that whoever was out there was crouching as he walked, just below the window and below my eye level.
That terrified me more than the fact that there was someone outside the window. Had he known I was there and crouched just as he got to the window, or was he walking around in that position like our prehistoric ancestors. Neither thought appealed to me.
I was the only one who stayed on the ground floor as my parents and brother all stayed upstairs. I slinked up the stairs like a ghoul and rushed to my parent’s bedroom. I shook my dad awake. He opened his eyes groggily and started at me like he didn’t know who I was. I explained to him what had happened and his eyes slowly grew into focus as he started realizing what I was saying.
He got out of bed and picked a flashlight by his bed and hightailed it down the stairs. He flung open the front door, me behind him peeing anxiously over his shoulder. “Hello!” he yelled shining his torch out into the darkness. There was nothing there and of course nobody yelled back. He looked at me incredulously.
“I’m not making it up dad,” I said, panic raising in my voice. “I know what I heard!”
He grumbled and told me to go to bed.
I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, my mind racing 100 miles per hour.
There was a knock on my door, and it quietly opened. My brother Todd walked in and sat on the edge of my bed.
I turned on my bedside light and looked at him. His eyes were large and panicked. My brother was the easy going, and passive member of the family. So this look he was wearing was not him. And I did not care for it.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He stared at me like he wasn’t looking at me but past me.
“I heard them too,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.
Almost on cue the footsteps started somewhere outside the house. Slow and methodical. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
End of Part 1