That sound was the last thing I wanted to hear at night. It was 10:30 PM and I was getting ready for bed. I wanted to get some fresh air, but it was too late for me to go for a walk through town, so I decided to settle on walking around in my backyard. I was out there for about twenty minutes, reflecting on the day’s events and the going ons in my life in general at the time. It was a chilly February night, but it was decent enough for me to spend as long as I wanted to out there.
I didn’t end up staying for long, however, as at some point, I heard that sound from my neighbor’s backyard. I didn’t recognize what it was at first, but I quickly realized it was a cat. There were a lot of stray cats in my hometown; I would occasionally see one walking around my backyard and saw them a lot whenever I went on walks. I rationalized that the sound I was hearing was from one of those stray cats, but the sound it was making…
It was clearly in some kind of trouble. The scream it made was almost alien. It was shriek and deafening. We had a picket fence with no spaces between the planks in my backyard, so whatever was happening to that cat, I couldn’t see it. As I froze there in fear, possibilities raced through my head of what could be happening. Was it getting into a fight with another stay? Did a racoon or fox catch it? All I knew for sure was that something bad happened to it.
I just stood there, staring at the fence separating my backyard from my neighbor’s, listening to that horrible whaling, left wondering what was happening. I wanted to run back inside, but I just stood there, glued to the grass. After what felt like an eternity, the sound stopped. All I could hear was the gentle breeze passing my ears. The urge to return back inside was still there, yet I did nothing.
After a few seconds, I heard shifting from my neighbor’s backyard. I thought it was the cat at first and I was relieved. Maybe the little guy got out of whatever predicament he was in. My hopes were crushed as soon as I saw a bloody hand grab the top of the fence. I watched as a short, naked man hauled himself over the fence and landed on the dirt below him.
He got up and crouched at the base of the fence. It was dark out, but that didn’t stop me from seeing the blood around his mouth and on his hands. He saw me and stared at me with wide eyes that were practically glowing. He was swaying left and right and he was wiggling his fingers and he smiled at me. I felt my blood freeze. The desire to run was stronger than ever before, but I still couldn’t bring myself to move. Suddenly he lunged at me.
I raised my arms up to shield myself. I thought I was going to die. I thought about all my loved ones, how I would never get to tell them goodbye. But suddenly, he ran past me. I turned my head to watch as he pulled himself over the other side of the fence and out into the street in front of my house, into the night.
That was the point where my body finally decided to let me go inside. I ran through the back door and ripped my coat off. I locked the front and back doors, turned off every single light in the house and ran up to my bedroom. I grabbed the pocket knife I got as a gift from my sister’s husband and flicked the blade out. I sat in the corner of my bedroom, gripping the knife tight in my hands and practically hyperventilating.
I tried to stay awake, but I eventually dozed off. When I woke up, I thought maybe the whole experience was just a dream. Maybe it was just some fucked up nightmare I had. It wasn’t until I saw the extended knife in my hand that I second guessed myself. I went downstairs and saw all the lights were off. I checked the doors and, sure enough, they were locked. I didn’t know what to think. Was that real or just a dream? I knew there was only one way to know for sure…
My neighbor usually went to work early in the morning, which meant that at the time I woke up, his house would have been empty. This gave me an opening to hop into his backyard and check to see if the stray cat was there. I felt a little guilty about trespassing on his property, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t bear not having a clear answer.
I hopped the fence and looked around my neighbor’s backyard. At first, nothing stood out to me, but I decided to look a little more thoroughly. It took me a while to realize I was looking in the wrong direction. For some reason, my first instinct was to go to the right. I would have found the blood trail sooner if I went left.
I turned around to check the other side of the yard. It was hidden by grass, but I did eventually make out a spec of blood. Then another, then another and another. They were gradually becoming bigger. I followed the blood splats until I saw it. A dead cat, ripped in half with blood and innards pouring from it. I felt sick to my stomach. I quickly leaped over the fence and ran back into my house just in time to reach the toilet.
My mind didn’t know how to rationalize it. Maybe I did dream about the naked man. Maybe I heard the cat in my backyard, went back inside and then just had a nightmare about him and thought it was real. But that didn’t explain why I had my knife drawn or why my doors were locked.
After I recovered, I went back to my backyard to check the place where the man was last night. Sure enough, there were two footprints in the dirt below the fence and a trail of blood leading to the other side of the yard. I didn’t know what to think. I still wanted to believe that it was all just a dream, but there were too many variables I couldn’t account for. The knife, the blood trail, the dead cat… Something killed that cat. I didn’t know why.
Later that day, my neighbor knocked on my door. He told me he found the dead cat in his yard and asked if I knew anything about it. All I told him was I heard a sound last night that made me think a stray cat got into some kind of trouble. A part of me wanted to tell him about the man, but it didn’t make sense for me to. I knew my neighbor, but we weren’t close. I had no real reason to confide in him.
Days had passed since that incident. I hadn’t heard any more cat screeching in that time. I still went on walks, though I carried my knife with me whenever I went out. I didn’t feel safe without it. I bumped into the occasional stray, all alive, thank God. I thought about telling someone about the man. I considered calling the police, but would they believe me? Would they think I was crazy? What if I was crazy?
I haven’t seen any sign of that man sense then. I want to believe he’s moved on and I’ll never see him again, but what if I’m wrong? I eventually made the decision to move out of town for my own sanity. I couldn’t take the stress of now knowing if that man was still around or not. Moving to a more populated area helped ease my anxieties a little, but to this day, I still have no idea who that man was, why he killed that cat or why he let me live.