It was a late Thursday night in September- or rather, it was early Friday morning. I had been working at this bar all summer, located at the other end of town from my place, an hour’s ride on my bicycle. It paid well, but not well enough to waste on a taxi home every night. So each night we’d close up, have a couple of drinks with the staff, and I’d jump on my bike for the long ride home.
This night had been exceptionally busy and by the time we finally closed and cleaned up it was past two in the morning. I stayed for another hour or so, trying to unwind with a couple of beers and joking with my colleagues about the annoying patrons we had to deal with that evening. Finally somewhere past three o’ clock I felt exhaustion catching up with me, so I jumped on my bicycle for the long ride home.
The first stretch of my ride took me through an old industrial area, along mostly abandoned warehouses and long silent factories surrounded by disused parking lots. Few people came here during the day; at this hour in the morning it was just me and my shadow, shifting from behind me to slowly overtake me as I moved from the reach of one sparse streetlight to the next.
I had been riding for maybe ten minutes when the rain started to fall. Within seconds it unleashed into a full-on torrent, the sound of it hitting the concrete becoming a roar. I quickly headed for the first shelter I saw: an old, disused bus stop at the side of the road, its glass sides and narrow roof mercifully intact. I jumped off my bike and into its meager cover as the rain intensified, whipped along by erratic winds. My jeans were already drenched and the rain had started leaking through my jacket. I felt miserable, the warmth of my flat still a 40 minute ride away.
The streetlight nearby illuminated the road in front of me. Beyond that the wall of rain faded into a black void, a parking lot I guessed, and beyond that in the distance the darker shapes of an old factory, smokestacks barely visible as a deeper black against the dark sky. Behind me a chainlink fence surrounded a squat brick warehouse, just barely visible through the sheets of rain.
The storm showed no signs of letting up. I wondered if I should just accept getting drenched and continue my journey. I took out my phone to see what time it was, but the rain had seeped into the cracks in the screen and it came up blank, ruined. As I looked up from my phone I noticed something shifting in the darkness ahead of me. A wave of fear hit me for a moment, but I pushed it away, laughing at myself for jumping at shadows. But there in the pitch black, obscured by the rain, a figure was slowly materializing. Someone was moving across the dark parking lot towards me.
Fear hit me again, starting as a hollow feeling in my chest and spreading across my limbs as my skin crawled and my muscles tensed. Don’t be a child, I told myself, it’s just someone else caught in the rain. But I was in the middle of nowhere. I had passed by this route dozens of times and I had never seen anyone else. Maybe a drifter then, someone using one of these buildings as shelter. Maybe he saw me standing here and thought he could bum a smoke. Maybe he thought he could rob me. I rationalized away the fear- I could deal with a hobo, I had been kickboxing since I was twelve and had to deal with plenty of belligerents working in various bars. Let him come, I told myself, even as my heart refused to slow down.
The figure was closer now, slowly moving into the reach of the streetlight. I started to make out details: a dark gray, completely soaked suit, black hair flat against a pale head. He moved strangely, and I thought he must be high on something. Just at the edge of the light he stopped and stared at me. The weak light cloaked his face in hard shadows and the torrential rain obscured his features, but I saw his mouth moving and I thought he was saying something to me, drowned out by the noise of the storm.
I realized I was shaking, and I told myself it was just the cold. It’s just some junkie. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like he was trying to bite the air. A scent drifted through the rain, overtaking the smell of wet dust and concrete, faint at first but then intensified by the shifting wind. A putrid, animal scent that made me gasp. And then the realization hit me.
There are different types of fear. There is the primal, lizard part of our brain that remembers living in cold, dark forests where predators roamed. It’s that part of you that screams: you’re in danger, you need to run now. It’s that part of you that remembers seeing movement in the brush and then locking eyes with a tiger or a wolf, and realizing just how helpless you are.
But there is another type of fear, one that runs even deeper. It’s the fear you feel in nightmares. When I was younger, my parents had this creepy doll in their room that I sometimes dreamed of. In my nightmares, I would be in their room, and the doll would turn its head and look at me and a paralyzing, maddening fear would engulf me until I woke up shaking, still afraid to move or make a sound. It was not the doll that was frightening. A doll is harmless, even animated you could just pick it up and fling it away. No, the thing that was so unbearably terrifying was the knowledge in that moment when the doll moved, that this should not be happening. This should be impossible. It was the breaking down of reality, of the natural order of things. It wasn’t instinct reminding you that you’re prey, it was the sudden realization that there are actual monsters, that the nightmare is real.
As I watched the thing open and close its mouth, I suddenly realized it wasn’t human. It looked just like a man, but it was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. Every cell in my body, every synapse firing in my brain told me that this should not be happening, this is unnatural, this is impossible. A mad panic overtook me, every inch of my skin started crawling, my mind went blank apart from one word repeated over and over: no.
For a long moment I was paralyzed, too afraid to move or even breathe. A part of me wanted to close my eyes and just pray, or cry. I was terrified that if I moved, it would move. I was no longer the self-assured 26 year old man, confident in my physical capabilities. I was a child again, a terrified, helpless child. Then it took another step into the light and I saw its eyes, and the way it looked at me and I knew beyond a doubt: the nightmare was real.
As I dashed for my bike the thing started running at me. I ran for a few strides holding my bike before jumping on and I pedaled as hard as I could. As I was desperately trying to get up to speed I could hear the footsteps behind me. The thing was running fast, getting closer every moment. I rode as hard as I could, rain stinging my face, throwing everything I had into going faster, faster, faster. Streetlights whizzed by, thunder roared, and I could still hear it running. My heart was beating so fast it felt like it was about to burst. My foot slipped on the pedal and for a moment I swerved idly and I thought I was going to fall, but I managed to steady myself. It had slowed me down and I tried desperately to get back up to speed, but I started to feel the strength seeping from my legs, my muscles cramping up from the cold, my breath heavy, lungs burning, and I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream no.
And there was still nothing ahead of me but darkness and emptiness, nothing but empty, abandoned buildings around me. As I raced by another streetlight and my shadow stretched out in front of me I could see another shadow chasing mine, the footsteps getting louder, closer. I pedaled with all my might but my legs were becoming leaden, lactic acid was building up and I was slowing down. I tried to push harder but I realized I was running out of strength, running out of stamina. Then I heard it screech. The most horrible sound I’d ever heard. It echoed between the buildings, reverberated in my skull. It was so close. It was catching up. I leaned forward and pushed with everything I had, and I think I screamed then. I could hear it panting now, the sound of its feet hitting the concrete louder with each moment, close, so close, and gaining still. I wanted it to stop, in my head I was madly begging please stop, stop. But all my strength was going, my legs were aching, I couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly there was a bright light to my right. By the time I had turned my head and saw the car it had already hit me. I saw everything spin: a windscreen, a flash of the hood, then the dark sky, and for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever I felt weightless. Then I hit the concrete and all the air rushed out of my lungs. Everything went black, but somehow my mind seemed to stay awake. I felt the cold rain on my face, the warm concrete beneath me, and I knew that thing had been right behind me, almost on top of me. I tried desperately to move, to get up, but my body would not listen. Footsteps approached me through the rain and my mind just gave up, all I could think of was to curl up and cry. Then I heard the voice.
“Jesus Christ! He came out of nowhere! Fuck fuck fuck. Please don’t be dead, please be okay.” Something touched my shoulder and my sight slowly returned. A young woman was standing over me, wild panic in her eyes. I looked around past her as she started babbling, asking me if I was okay. I couldn’t pay attention to her, I needed to know where that thing was. I saw my bike, mangled beyond repair, several feet away illuminated by the red glow of the cars’ taillights. I saw a young man walking around the car, looking at the damage.
Then I saw it, standing just beyond the reach of light, in the shadows of the street I had come from. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. It seemed to be waiting, ready to move at any moment. I wanted to warn the woman crouched over me but all I could manage was to groan. She held my hand as she yelled into her telephone, begging for an ambulance to come quickly. Then I saw the young man moving towards the dark street. The street where that thing was waiting.
I tried to force a scream out, I tried to point towards him but the woman held my hand and told me “Don’t move, it’s gonna be okay, help is coming alright? You’re gonna be okay.” The young man had noticed the thing there, was moving towards it. But he didn’t understand, he hadn’t realized yet what he was facing. He moved toward the darkened figure slowly, and there was nothing I could do to warn him. The thing suddenly lunged, clearing the distance between it and the young man so fast I almost didn’t see it move. It grabbed the young man by the throat, stifling his final scream, and dragged him into the shadows. And for the brief moment before I passed out, I was relieved, thankful that it took him and not me.
The police visited me in the hospital and asked me questions I couldn’t answer. All I could say is that someone had been chasing me, someone pale with dark hair who appeared to be wearing a dirty gray suit. Of course they never found him, or the young man. The young woman also visited me several times, begging for answers I did not have. I felt guilty listening to her tearful pleading. The final time she visited I broke down and told her what I’d seen. I expected her to call me crazy, or get angry and scream at me, but she just turned pale and went very quiet. I understood then she had noticed that thing too, and all this time she had been hoping for me to tell her it wasn’t real, that it was just a bad dream. But we both knew then that the nightmare was real.
My left leg never fully healed and I have a slight limp now. I never returned to the bar where I’d been working. I got a job at a coffee shop during daytime hours. These days I barely go outside when it’s dark, I refuse to go down dark alleys or empty streets. I escaped that thing but it doesn’t matter. I know it’s out there somewhere. I know now that monsters exist.