I can recall the night of August 15th, 1999 with near perfect precision. It is a memory I have played out consistently for the last 25 years. I can still smell the air that night, cool and calming. My cousin was staying over, and I had thusly been kicked from my room so that she could have a bed to sleep on. I didn’t mind because it gave me an excuse to watch TV later into the night than my parents normally would’ve let me. My room upstairs was hot in the summer months anyway, and the living room was always so much cooler.
Back then we used to leave the windows open at night to bring the cool air in, we didn’t have AC yet. Though ultimately the reason we stopped doing this habit was far more sinister. That night the air was especially cool, so much so that I actually needed an extra blanket. All around me a stillness hung, wrapping me in an embrace. Sleep should have come easy that night.
It should have.
I know that this story might not be as interesting as some you may have read, but it was a defining moment in my life. As well I recall it with much hesitation, it’s a particularly troubling part of my past that I only write down now after much encouragement from a therapist. While this part may not offer the same fear to you as it did to me, I can assure you that it was merely the beginning, as much that follows is not for the faint of heart. I offer this as my only warning before I continue.
The first thing was the light. My eyes flickered open as luminance penetrated my slumber, slowly blinking I sat up. Reaching beside me I picked up my glasses from the coffee table and got up to investigate the source of the light. Once I realized it was emanating from the porch however, I assumed some critter had activated the motion sensor. With a deep sigh I walked towards the screen door bordering our kitchen and the great black empty of the night, realizing I’d have to scare away whatever mammal was most likely digging through our trash.
Opening the door, I stepped out into the cool air of our porch. Looking around, it was clear that whatever had triggered the light had left the porch. I would’ve most likely left it there and crawled back into the makeshift bed on the couch if it hadn’t been for my youthful curiosity. Stepping back inside, I reached for the flashlight we always had squirreled away in our junk drawer. Retrieving it, I stepped back out onto the porch and turned it on.
So much could’ve been avoided if it had remained dark.
There, right in front of my eyes, illuminated by the flashlight, was a terrible beast. Though its visage is forever burned into my mind, to describe it would seem a fool’s errand. But merely for the sake of the story, I will try. It had a matted fur haphazardly spread across its body breaking up bald patches of oily, grey skin. It’s terrible eyes pierced mine, not that you call those eyes, more like mishappen pearls as black as the night itself reflecting deep into your soul. It crawled viciously on all four appendages; I struggle to call them legs or arms but surely they were limbs. It’s long, rodent like tail coiled like a sickly anaconda, and it bared it’s jagged and chipped teeth at me between scaly lips.
No, it didn’t just bare them at me, it was smiling. A wicked smile that seemed to take all joy from my present mind. It was a sickly, cruel, predatory smile. Its grimace was such that it felt as if it burrowed deep into my very soul and expelled it. I felt in that moment like I would never experience happiness again.
After what felt like an eternity my animal mind kicked in and I began to scream for my mother, for comfort. I heard the rapid footsteps of someone coming down the stairs. Apparently, so too did the creature. It hissed something through its rotten, jagged teeth and scurried quickly into the underbrush beyond our yard. My mother arrived just in time to see its tail disappear into the night.
According to my mother, I was pale as the moonlight itself and had immediately gone to the bathroom to be sick. After almost an hour of panicked ramblings, my parents managed to get the basic story out of me.
My father, a rough man who wasn’t good with his emotions and ran on logic, had convinced himself that I saw an opossum and was overreacting. My mother wasn’t entirely convinced, wondering how a possum could illicit such a reaction from a 12-year-old boy.
But I knew what I saw. It was a demon, in the simplest terms possible. I was never raised religiously, nor do I ascribe myself to any faith currently, but there is no other way to describe what that thing was.
Its eyes will always haunt me.