I want to preface this story by stating that I don’t know for a fact that my son brought this back with him, but considering everything started the same evening he arrived home, I think it’s safe to assume.
So last week, my son came home from a camping trip with his friends family. They’ve made this camping trip about twice a year and my wife and I get an invite to join, but neither of us are very outdoorsy, so we normally hard pass. My son loves the trips and the wife and I enjoy the breaks. When my son got back, he was bouncing off the walls as per usual for him after a weekend of s’mores and campfire stories with his friend, so nothing was out of the ordinary.
That same evening, all three of us in the living room and I’m getting distracted by two little white lights coming through the window. At first, I’m thinking these are just some neighborhood kids fucking with us after hours and I leave it alone, assuming they’ll leave soon enough.
A few hours pass and I can hear a faint groaning from the opposite end of the house. It’s a wonder I could even hear it at all, but in between the dramatic pause for effect in one of my wife’s favorite shows, I could hear it, muffled and low, but I was sure it was there. I excuse myself from the room to follow the sound toward the bathroom at the end of the hall.
As I approach, the noise becomes a bit more clear. It sounds like a man writhing in pain as though he had broken a leg or sliced his hand open. It was at this point, I realize the sound is coming from the backyard. We live inside a small suburb and our backyard is fenced in. It’s a relatively small yard, featuring a patio set, swing and slide and a tree at the far end of the property. At first I thought someone may have gotten into our yard, climbed our tree and fell off.
As I reached the back door, I considered walking out blindly, but last minute I decided to cut the porch light on. The noise was clear by this point and I could tell you, without a doubt, it was a man in pain. I scanned the property left to right. I couldn’t tell exactly where the voice was coming from but I was sure it was close enough to know whether it was in my yard or not.
I don’t know what it was about this night, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was at play. I just knew I shouldn’t leave the house.
My suspicions all came to a head when we settled in that night. For context, we live in a relatively large, single story home. My wife and I had just turned over to get comfortable, and once again, the two small lights are peering into our bedroom window. At this point, I think someone is casing the house and waiting for us to go to sleep.
I should have sprang out of bed immediately. I should have jump to action, checking doors and windows, grabbing a weapon to defend myself and my family, but… I just… watched. The lights never swayed, never moved… just hovered in one spot. I actually felt myself becoming slightly entranced as my eye lids got heavy. I forced myself to stay awake. It wasn’t until a few minutes in, they faded and reappeared almost immediately. I could feel myself drifting and my mind was foggy.
I woke up the next morning and sprang out of bed. What the hell was wrong with me? Why would I just lie there and do nothing? Needless to say, I was furious with myself. I checked every window, every door. I searched the house taking account of all of our valuables but nothing was astray. My wife was more than a bit confused and concerned, but I told her I had a bad dream and left it at that. I was too ashamed to tell her about it.
I spent the rest of that morning on my own. My wife took our son to her mothers for the day. I kept finding myself returning to our bedroom window, trying to make sense of what I was looking at. Our bedroom faces the our street so I could only assume maybe a reflection from the street lights, but nothing made sense.
It got even more bizarre as the day went on. I wanted to get some fresh air, so I went out back to pull some weeds. As I was making my way from one end to the other, I begin finding clumps of hair. Now I’m no zoologist and as I mentioned previously, I’m not much for outdoors, so it was safe for me to say, I had no idea where or what this hair came from. We have no pets and we never have. I continued combing the yard for more clumps of hair. I followed a bread crumb trail to the tree in the yard. I start scanning from the bottom up until I reach a point that would have been far beyond the reach of any animal.
I’m about to give up when I look down, and beneath my feet, I find a tiny red dot. Next to it is another, and a third one on the root of the tree. I follow a pattern up the side until I come across another clump of hair about 8 feet up. I leave and return with my ladder for a better inspection. As I reach the clump, I realize it’s lodged in there really well. I pull at it, but small bits of dried, flaky hair crumble in my hand and are picked up by the breeze. I decide to grab at the bark, to pull from the base. As my fingers wrap around the bark, I feel the squish of spoiled meat against my skin. I pulled back immediately, check my fingers to find red on them. I decide to just go for it and rip the chunk of bark from the tree. Lodged into the bark was another clump of hair, attached to flesh. It smelled putrid.
When I got inside, I wasn’t given any more relief when I realized I had missed a call from my wife. She left me a message telling me that her and my son were going out for dinner with her parents and she would bring me something back. Her parents are late and I knew I was going to be on my own for the next few hours and the sun was already setting.