The minutes crawled by and still I stood in silence. I began to wonder where the other 2 could have gone, like I said, I’ve been through this house more than once and knew it wasn’t large enough for them to be gone this long. “Guys!” I half whispered, half yelled, “guys, what’s taking so long?” I was met with more silence. I then keyed up my shoulder mic “276, you code 4?” More silence.
I turned my head slightly to the right to try to get a good look down the hallway but I wasn’t far enough forward. I took a half a step forward and scanned the dark mouth of the hallway, but still couldn’t see. I took another half a step.
WHAM
The front door of the house slammed shut behind me, causing me to yelp with fear. Thoroughly embarrassed at the sound that had just escaped my throat, I looked around sheepishly, fully expecting to see Wilson and Smith doubled over with laughter, instead there was nothing but the thick dust and heavy silence.
Eyes still trained on the stairs, I slowly backed up to the door and reached with my non-shooting hand for the door knob. I fumbled around for a few seconds, unable to locate the knob, before turning to look at the door. It was gone, not just the knob, the entire door. My gun hand slowly sank until I had both hands at my sides as I stared at the blank section of wall where the door should have been. “Guys!” I yelled out, all sense of tactics gone. “Guys what the hell is going on here?”
Above me I heard heavy footsteps thundering down the hall towards the top of the stairs. I’ve always heard that your body goes into autopilot during high stress situations, but I’ve never really experienced it until that moment, before I realized what had happened, my gun was trained back on the stairs and I had shifted to a more advantageous position that offered some cover.
The footsteps sounded like they had come to a stop at the top of the stairs. There was a brief pause and then I heard the top stair creak. “Police, show me your hands!” I screamed into the darkness. “Show me your hands right now!”
Creak
My gun light just barely reached the second step on the stairs, I knew I should have changed the batteries but I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.
Creak
One gigantic bare foot came into view and shortly after the other followed it. I felt my breath catch in my throat. Fear completely gripped me and I couldn’t figure out why. A barefoot meth head is par for the course in this town, but something about this particular set of feet coming down the stairs felt ominous and evil. “GUYS!!” I yelled again into the darkness.
The moment I yelled, I watched in horror as the toes of the feet set into the ancient stairs and then launched whoever or whatever this was, down the stairs toward me.
THUD THUD THUD THUD
I instinctively started running away to the right and down the hallway towards my friends. I took maybe 3 rapid steps before I felt my toe make contact with something solid. I tried to catch myself, I really did, but I had ran too quickly for my own good and came crashing down on top of the object.
I looked down for a moment and felt a scream start to form in my throat. That solid object was Smith. I rolled over and snapped my eyes back toward the stairs and watched as a man, easily 7 feet tall, leapt off the stairs and into the wall.
I thought he’d hit the wall and fall but instead he latched on. The scream that had been forming finally escaped as the man turned his head around 180 degrees and smiled so large that the corners of his mouth looked like they’d rip. There was a dark greasy looking stain around his mouth and on his chest.
I scrambled back to me feet and sprinted down the hallway. I knew the kitchen was at the end and that there was a door leading out onto the wrap around porch.
I ran and ran, but the hallway felt like it extended forever. My lungs began to burn from the exertion. I looked back once and wish I hadn’t, the man was crawling on the ceiling with his head turned in such a way that it appeared upright instead of upside down. I turned back around and ran harder.
Eventually I could make out moonlight filtering through the dirty kitchen windows and skidded into the kitchen, spinning on my heel and facing my attacker. He stopped just short of the kitchen and slowly began detaching himself from the ceiling and onto the floor.
His impossibly wide smile was still on his face, his teeth illuminated by the faint moonlight. I raised my shaking hand to point my gun light at him and saw that the greasy looking stains on him were blood. He took one step into the kitchen and I pulled the trigger. I remember firing 4 rounds before my vision went black.
I woke up screaming in the back of an ambulance. Confused and terrified, I tried reaching for my gun, but it wasn’t there. None of my gear was. Apparently my Sergeant had had the foresight to strip me of my gear before EMS had loaded me up. It took time for me to calm down but eventually my Sergeant came to speak with me.
“Are Wilson and Smith ok? Did you find the other guy!?” I screamed the second I saw his bald head come up the steps into the ambulance.
“What man?” He asked, “never mind that. Listen, Smith didn’t make it and we can’t find Wilson. There’s no one else in there.”
The official report says that Wilson turned on Smith the second they went down the hallway and that Wilson escaped out the kitchen door after slashing Smith’s throat. Somewhere in that time frame, the claim is that Wilson and I exchanged fire as they located 16 shell casings in the kitchen.
Between you and me, that’s bullshit. I don’t think Wilson ever left Buckhead. As for me, I’ll never go back.