My “friend” Miranda and I were having a sleepover at my grandmother’s house.
She lived in rural NC on 3 acres with a mountain on one side and miles and miles of woods on the other. The only road in her neighborhood was on the backside of her house. Where the wrap-around porch hugged the formal living room and a converted bedroom where guests stayed the night.
The lot in front of her house that spanned over 4 miles was undeveloped and wild. We started off the night watching tv and reading teen magazines, but it was a truly abysmal time. We didn’t know it but we were just about to outgrow each other. Childhood friends by proximity alone. She was socially eclipsing me. At around 10 something my grandmother went to sleep we watched her take a sleeping pill and out on nick at night, her small old dog Lolita slept beside her already. She couldn’t sleep without my grandfather and after he died the pills knocked her out.
Maranda decided after not paying attention to the show she put on that we should go outside. It was rainy and windy, and it had finally stopped. We tiptoed through the long hallway and closed the door to the mudroom and put on boots and raincoats. She flopped around in my grandmother’s and I put on my own shoes.
We walked for a bit past the patio furniture, past the empty chicken coupe, and past my grandfather’s shed. The property was well kept to the perimeter fence and we hopped over and made our way into the woods.
We walked for a few seconds and I look back towards the house. It disappears quickly and we hop in puddles and shine our flashlights at the trees talking quietly and looking around hoping to see an owl or a deer.
I can’t help but feel uneasy. I’m acting brave to save face, Miranda is almost 12 and I’m barely 10. I’ve never been out here without an adult before. The woods become thicker and we lose the path completely. I know I’ve never been this deep in these woods and she just wants to go farther and farther our lights illuminating less and less as the forest becomes denser, the rain picks back up a bit and the wind moves the trees around us, we see them sway but hear nothing. It’s scary when you’re out in the woods alone in the middle of the night, it’s even scarier when between steps you hear leaves crunching and branches snapping. Miranda looks back at me and whispers “was that you?” I shake my head and we listen intently the rain and the now audible wind make it so hard to zero in on the movement in the distance. I’m so scared my heart is beating in my chest and we’re both frozen. I want to be back at the house playing in the back bedroom watching law and order and eating snacks.
I turn off my light as the sound gets closer. And I back up slowly. I don’t feel Miranda behind me anymore and I turn around and she’s gone. The branches are breaking and the crunching and squelching of the wet ground is so loud, I want to cry, I want to scream. I see her a few feet back she looks at me her light still on she shines it to the side of us and she takes off running leaving me alone in the woods. I sink to my knees the cold water soaks my pajamas under the raincoat and cry silently. I hear something run somewhere past me to my left and I hold my breath and sink deeper into the ground. The crunching sounds move farther the way we came and eventually I stop hearing it all together.
I sit on the floor for a while and I feel the rain starting again, the wind knocks my hood down and the rain is so cold on my face, cold water drops down my back and I shiver. I walk back the way I think I came and look around the entire time feeling eyes all over me.
I don’t turn on my light, my eyes have finally adjusted to the dark. It had to have been almost an hour since Miranda and I got separated and I was so upset that she left me.
There’s a huge tree that was struck by lightning a few years back and a big chunk of it toppled over, it’s a landmark I remember seeing when I venture back here with my cousin, a few hundred meters from their house. I see the white fence behind the trees and run the last few feet out of the woods. I run as fast as I can and get to the house. I try the knob and the door is locked.
Miranda locked me out of the house.
I knock on the door and nothing, no lights on in my grandma’s room or my great grandmother’s room. I hope Miranda will hear me but the rain is pounding so hard, I’m sure I just sound like a whisper in the darkness.
I suddenly feel sick to my stomach, I feel eyes on my back and I turn around and don’t see anything but the normal yard stuff the sheds, chicken coop and the white fence, and the wall of trees. I’m so thankful for the visibility but I’m so scared that I’m outside alone with whatever ran by after Miranda.
After a few mins. I see a light come on in my great grandmother’s room, I’m so relieved, she wears a hearing aid so chances are she didn’t hear me knocking, and Lolita was so afraid of the storm she was probably shaking in the tub, not worried about me.
I see her little old face hair in rollers and I wave my hands, desperate to get her attention, looking back towards the fence line every few seconds. I feel the hair on the back of my neck raise and I feel the invisible danger, I feel so scared. She finally looks up and walks old people quickly to the door. She unlocks it and lets me take a step in before standing in front of me asking what happened? why was I outside in the rain in the middle of the night?
She’s fumbling with her hearing aid waiting for an answer, and I scoot past her. Tell her I wanted to get something I left out earlier and the door must have closed and locked. Walking down the hallway quickly I grabbed towels from the closet and took off my clothes. I walked to the end of the hall looking out the windows, there was almost no visibility just the thick trees and condensation on the windows, the whole time feeling so exposed. Miranda is sitting on the bed, watching tv, soaking the sheets, and not a bit concerned about me.
I throw her a towel and she takes off her raincoat finally. We get clean dry sheets and we lie in bed beside each other. Neither of us talking. She faces the road and the porch and I face the wall. We lie like that for a while, until I hear her gasp and push back against me, not knowing what was going on I whisper what her problem is.
She points to the window which is illuminated every time the thunder strikes in the sky. We see something on all 4’s walking on the porch stopping in front of the window. Then we see the vague silhouette behind the curtain. I’ve never thought about the opacity of these curtains so hiding in the dark room I’m hoping it can’t see in. We stare where it last stands or crouches as to moves in flashes the sky is bright one second and dark the next it moved somewhere else. Still trying to look in. We are frozen in bed, not moving not talking, not even breathing, but it just stayed there for a while. Then a lightning strike clapped hard in the sky and it was gone. We stayed up for hours and waited for whatever it was to come back. It never did. In the morning Miranda got ready early, she brushed her teeth and got dressed all before my grandmother even woke up to make us breakfast which it seemed she had no intention of waiting for. She told me her mom was on the way to pick her up and that she had dance practice, but I knew she didn’t want to have to be here any longer than she needed to. I asked her why she ran away, why she just left me by myself and then locked the door. She kind of just stared at me for a moment and then kept packing up. She said she heard something moving in front of us and she saw something moving when she shone her light over there, so she ran and when she finally found the house, she didn’t think it made sense to keep the door unlocked so whoever or whatever would just come in and take her.
I was taken aback by her callousness, her selfishness She didn’t even think of me, of my life or my fear, not even that it was her idea to go out there.
We didn’t talk anymore and her mom came before too long.
We never hung out again.
She moved on to cooler friends and eventually my family left the state, but every time I’m in the woods. I can’t help but think about what was out there with us. How close it seems we could have come to ending up dead.