I don’t know what to do right now. My family thinks I’m paranoid or making stuff up, and all the roads are blocked from the storm. Perhaps someone can explain how to fend this thing off. Anything I can use to get rid of it, please. Hopefully the power stays on.
Anyway, it started off a few weeks ago. We live in the horse capital of the US, Ocala, FL. We’re a working-class family like many others here—I work managing several construction teams at a home construction manufacturer. My partner is a teacher at a nearby elementary. So, we’re up early. Like 3am early. It allows us time to get things prepped for our kids, get in some exercise, and be out the door before most families are even getting up so I can have my teams ready, and she can set things up for her students.
My daughter, the elder of our two, has a small chihuahua named Daisy. So naturally that means I take care of her. And Daisy is an impatient little creature. The moment we’re out of bed, I have to take her out for a walk, lest I want yet another piss stain in our rugs. We overlook the area where SE Lake Weir Ave meets SE 31st St. It’s your typical working-class apartment complex, and it was down in the grass near the intersection that I found myself on this first encounter
This particular morning, things felt off. The roads intersecting by our apartment building were near silent even though roaring engines and stupid kids often made the ambient noise level rival that of a busy NYC street. A thick fog was settling around the area, though, admittedly, it is what you’d see four out of five days of the week. But this time, it was cold.
Now I don’t know if y’all know what Florida fog feels like in the May to September months, but it’s anything but chilly. It is muggy and unpleasant, and filled with the boggy smells of amphibians and wood rot. This was not that. It was reminiscent of a cold fall day in the Smoky Mountains. The air was still and seemingly muffled.
While I strained to hear even one distant engine of a car speeding up from state road 441, I almost felt like I could hear whispering by my ears. I turned quickly, feeling like a breath had touched my ear. But nothing was there. Daisy had curled up on top of my foot and let go of her bladder. I felt the warm fluid hit my toes and was more surprised than angry. This was the embodiment of Little Dog Syndrome. But instead of yipping and snarling at whatever odd thing might crop up in the pre-dawn dark, she was obviously terrified. I had resigned myself to picking her up and carrying her inside when the whispering came back.
I was caught off guard by how much clearer it had become. It was full of phrases that were profane, pleading, threatening. Like hearing several voices at once. “Hey baby do you like having a good time?” one woman whispered into my ear in the most seductive, enticing kind of way. “What the FUCK do you wanna do about this?” came another. My sense of machismo became inflamed, and my grip on the leash tightened. “Please, my family needs to eat,” came a third voice, broken and croaking. I instinctively reached for my wallet before realizing I was standing in the damp grass in just pajamas and piss-soaked flip-flops.
My head was spinning from the different, conflicting emotions that prompted me to engage with the voices. I then turned my gaze back over to 31st St. Directly across was a figure of complete blackness. There were the silhouettes of a head, arms, legs… all visible only because they managed to be somehow darker than the black shrubs behind it. I couldn’t see, but felt it grin at me. Like throwing on a cloak in one swift and fluid motion, it was suddenly a she, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde who began speaking to me as clearly as if she were just in front of me.
“Hey, you’re a lonely looking man,” she cooed, starting to walk across the empty street. “How about we get back to your apartment? I know she wouldn’t mind.”
Unbidden, my sense of insecurity about the state of my marriage and lack of ability to incite intimacy from my partner came forwardmost in my thoughts. My longing to feel someone in my bed, the closeness of flesh meeting, started to overwhelm me. My heart was rising to my throat and my shorts were strained. But the dark figure was there, just behind this veneer. I managed to back step, and step again. My kid’s dog was practically pinned to my leg and eagerly followed as I turned around and started walking away, feeling daggers being stared at my back.
I moved towards our building but hesitated, then kept walking past like mine was another of the dozen or so other apartment buildings on the property. Somehow, I thought, it wanted to know where I went. So, I walked, and walked, and walked. Went around the property’s basketball court and mail center; went through the playground; passed the pool.
It took at least 20 minutes, but I finally stopped feeling eyes on me and decided I needed to get inside. I walked up to our first-floor apartment, fished out my key, and let myself in.
As I closed the door, the obnoxiously loud buzzing of a car’s modified exhaust pipes could be heard roaring by on Lake Weir. And for the first time, hearing that crap was a relief. The din of engines and wheels on damp roads had come back to normal and I welcomed it like an old friend.
“That took a while,” I heard my partner call from our galley kitchen, bustling around with prep work for the kids’ lunches.
“Yeah, uh… dumb dog decided she had to explore the property to find the perfect piss spot,” I lied. I’m not sure why. It’s not like my partner and I were openly hostile. Just… cold. She still cares deeply for me, and we share our thoughts and feelings all the time, even if intimacy was one department the strain was being felt. I kicked off my flip-flops, thankful the wet grass had mostly just left them and my feet damp and taking note to scrub them down and headed off to hit the shower.
The unease I felt from the encounter with this streetwalker, as I’d come to think of it/her, quickly faded as the rush of getting the kids dressed and ready so I could drop them and get to work set in. By time I dropped them off, I think I very nearly had forgotten about it.
And so, things proceeded as normal for the next few days. I might have given pause to think of the streetwalker once or twice, but my thoughts were far more focused on the familiar pattern of prep, drop kids, work, pick up, work, make dinner, showers, and then sleep and repeat.
The Saturday bookending that week, though, it happened again.
I was up at 5:30 cause, unfortunately, when the dog knows it’s time to pee and have breakfast, they can’t be expected to wait over an hour and not bug you into wakefulness. I leashed her up and took her out.
This time, the feeling was instant. Like the last time I was primed at some unconscious level to be wary when the circumstances repeated themselves.
I picked up our dog to avoid another accident and held her close. The figure appeared again, this time a few yards further down, and was making its way to me. “I thought you’d be around here,” it said, taking on an aggressive stature and slipping into something that looked like it could be Sal, the smarmy bastard from work who had a never-ending ticker tape of shit to talk at and about me. I didn’t come from a construction background, even though I am an experienced DIYer, and he’d always taken issue with some manager/coordinator with a data and operations background coming in and telling him and his teams where to go and what to do.
My blood boiled almost immediately. My face felt hot, and I squared up before I even knew what I was doing. My feet began taking me forward through the dirt covered in fallen Spanish moss. I was going to show this prick who the fucking boss was, one way or another.
A sharp bite to my hand snapped me free. I gave a shout and looked down at Daisy. She was never aggressive except in a playful way, but this time it seems I’d been squeezing her too tight, because she looked up at me dolefully and whined. I felt guilt immediately wash over me and clear away the aggressiveness that filled me. It was then I again could see the dark figure clearly once again. It had crossed the street and was standing just opposite the low decorative fence around the apartment property. I had nearly gotten right up in its face, having been maybe a couple yards away from that same fence. I could hear whispers start again but shook my head clear of them as hard as I could and backed away.
“Stay the fuck away,” I snapped at it. Though I intended to use my Booming Dad Voice™, it came out like a scared little croak. It just laughed in my head, and I couldn’t turn and run fast enough.
Again, I found myself walking around the apartment complex, sticking to the brightly its central areas by the leasing office, pool, and mail center. When the sun was edging its way over the horizon, I came back to our apartment, again free of the eyes I felt and hearing the traffic drive by.
Once inside, I found the whole family still asleep. Of course they were. They never got up earlier than 8 on most weekend mornings. Still shaking, I set up the dog’s breakfast dish and went about making a breakfast fry-up of eggs and bacon and sausage.
I wish I could say it got better and this… thing—whatever it is—finally went away. But the encounters just became more frequent. Thankfully, the first two times seem to have hardened me—a little. I became more self-aware of my emotional state, keeping my mind and body cool even as I saw and felt the chilled fog on my skin and heard the noise of the roads recede.
Weirdly, I started feeling like I was looking forward to challenging the streetwalker. Like it was a game to me. Even Daisy started to toughen up. She even growled with her hackles up at the thing.
I think that was part of its plan. I think it wanted me to feel overconfident. It was waiting for a mistake.
The second to last time I saw it was when it threw me for a loop. I was driving my kids home. It was broad daylight. There were cars everywhere, for chrissake. My daughter, such a lovely young lady, has an enormous streak of empathy in her. We were singing along to a sea shanty mix, being loud idiots together (the best kind of dad feeling), when she suddenly pointed and shouted, “Daddy look! That person needs help!”
We were at the intersection of Lake Weir and 31st, waiting to turn left to then pull into our apartment building. My vision darkened and my mouth went to sandpaper. A homeless man was standing there, sign in hand, begging for some cash. Usually, I always made a point to give money to the homeless as an example to my kid. I don’t give a shit about these assholes who say they’re just gonna spend it on drugs or booze. So will I. I can’t judge these folks.
But this wasn’t just your typical homeless person that had been popping up all over the intersections of Ocala as of late. It was that thing. The streetwalker. I could see right through it. It grinned at me, and a pleading voice filled my head, “please, sir, I know you have plenty of cash in that wallet of yours. Any little bit would help. Please.”
“I…” I started, and then tried to swallow with a parched throat. “I’m sorry honey,” I said to my girl, “I gave away my last bill. I’ll need to pick up cash later.” I lied. Even as I did, I could feel my hand trying to shift to my wallet. There was cash. A lot of it. Hurricane Ian was coming, and we’d already been doing our prep work.
This time, it wasn’t Daisy or even my kids who snapped me out of it. A truck with a train horn laid into me from behind. Apparently, the light went green during this terrifying moment. I nearly jumped out of my skin from the ear-splitting horn. But I drove on, getting away from the streetwalker. Once again, I found myself thankful for some of the most obnoxious drivers out there.
I wasn’t paying enough attention, though. I had groceries I picked up on the way home with the kids. I had dinner to help prep. I had chores to deal with.
I didn’t meander around the property.
I unloaded the kids, the groceries, everything. We were still in full view of the intersection. I was desperate to be inside. I wasn’t letting myself think things through. I wasn’t mentally feeling out if eyes were on me.
That was two days ago. That night, nothing happened. Even if it did, I think the hype around Hurricane Ian rolling through was keeping us occupied. All we did was work on getting things ready, testing flashlights, going over our checklists.
But last night it came.
The kids were in their bedroom along with my wife for their safety. They were all on the bottom bunk of the kids’ bed while I kept watch in our bedroom. Listening for tornados, watching weather reports. I planned on staying up through the night since we don’t have shutters and it was on me to rush the family into the tub if a twister was coming.
I must have dozed off around midnight and immediately started dreaming. It was the Islamorada suite my partner and I had booked a year ago for a little getaway. The breeze was pleasant, and we were in bed, just enjoying one another’s bodies. It was so raw, so intense. It was like we were really back there—
CRASH
I snapped awake, standing in the whipping winds of the hurricane’s outer bands on our porch. The branch of a massive oak near our building had snapped, crashing into the metal fence below. The air had grown icy cold, and I shivered in my skivvies. Just on the other side of the screen door it was there. The streetwalker. Its not-smile was there, filling me with dread and sickness. I tried to scream but threw up instead, stumbling backwards and slamming the sliding glass door open.
I slammed it closed behind me and locked it up as quick as I could. The streetwalker had moved around our porch to stand directly across from our sliding door. I put down the safety bar and popped the kid lock, barricading the door as well as I could. Then I drew the blinds.
I wish I could say that was it; that it went away; that it’s not going to bother me in here.
But that’s not how this is going to work, it seems. I sat on the bed, scared into wakefulness and refusing to move. I cranked up the tv volume to try to drown the whispers out, letting the news about the storm fill my mind. I kept checking on the kids’ room, making sure everyone else was safely slumbering away.
When the sun finally rose, the whispers stopped.
Now it’s midday and I’m trying to get this out to everyone I can think of to seek out help/advice. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go all night without sleep again. The roads aren’t safe. There are gusts kicking up and the danger of being crushed by massive branches of these old growth trees all over Ocala is ongoing.
I tried talking to my partner and my extended family who live in another building here. They think I’m making shit up to spook them. When I bring up evacuating Ocala I’m met with bewilderment and resistance. To their point, it would be unsafe taking the kids from a building that is faring perfectly well in the storm, especially since anyone we know who’d be willing to take us in is south, through the worst part of the storm path. They have enough issues of their own.
I need to end this threat. I don’t know what the streetwalker wants of me. But it intends to take it. Tonight.