D (7:48)
Aware of what was going on, unsuccessful in her attempt there, she went to a house a couple streets down and broke in and was armed with a knife. Although there were not many details, the people living there seemed to have been more prepared than me since they handled the situation and the police arrested her again and took her to a mental hospital. I didn't hear any word of whether anyone else was involved, but that experience was definitely something I will not forget. Thankfully I have moved to another city since and I now have security screens on all of my doors. There are a lot of stories I could tell about the house I grew up in. I was eight when we moved into the house in Lawrenceville, Georgia and I lived there for about five years in between 2003 and 2008. It sounds very cliche to say that there was something off about the house, but there was. I didn't have anything to compare it to at the time really. I had an overactive imagination and practically watched whatever horror movie I could find, so it was easy for me to say that it was all in my head back then. But looking back, I have never lived somewhere that could consistently raise the hair on the back of my neck like certain rooms in that house did. I used to leap across the doorway to the bathroom because I was afraid there would be someone in there when I walked by. I would always close the door to my sister's room at the end of the hall because even after she moved out, it somehow still never felt empty. And no one went in the basement alone, which is where the first unexplained thing happened in this house. About two months after we moved in, our parents were at work on a summer day and it was just me and my sister. I'm playing original Sly Cooper on PS2 in my room when my sister barges in with our dog, grabs my baseball bat, and swiftly states we need to get out of the house. With a look in her eyes that made clear this wasn't a joke. Our neighbors down the road was an old church friend and used to be a cop in New York and we were told to go there if anything ever happened. My sister and I marched over to their house and she told them that there was someone in our house, but as we got further from the house I think there was a level of uncertainty that built inside her as to what just happened. Our ex cop neighbor probably felt that uncertainty and thought he better check the house himself instead of calling the police outright. He found nothing. When he came back to ask her what had happened, this was her story. She noticed our small dog Max was standing at the top of the basement stairs barking into the darkness with his tail between his legs. She then followed him to the bottom of the steps to see what he was barking at as this seemed unusual for him. He was then peering around the wall at the bottom of the step steps towards the storage room, whimpering. She picked him up and peered around the wall to see what had him stirred and to this day she still maintains the same story of a man standing in the dark corner a few feet in front of her. With a grin he put a finger to his lips and whispered. I had just turned 21 and frequented the bars regularly. In hindsight, I probably spent too much time drinking with my friends. I didn't have a car or a cell phone and I lived on the outskirts of town. It was a 45 minute walk downtown. The town I live in is generally a very safe place. It is a wealthy, well to do, white bread community, so walking home alone at night after drinking was nothing that bothered me other than the actual walking. It was a Tuesday night and that meant pints were cheap, so I wouldn't say I was completely wasted, but I certainly was more than tipsy. Instead of walking home along the sidewalk where I feared I'd be picked up by the police for being drunk in public, I decided to take the bike path that ran along the train tracks. This meant the walk would take longer, but much safer and less likely I would run into any sort of trouble. The bike path was not very lit and knowing what I know now, I should have been a lot more nervous about walking alone in the complete darkness at 2 in the morning. Like I said, I had just turned 21 and was certainly an arrogant young male who was thinking about women and not minding my surroundings. I had taken this path many nights and coming across anybody else was rare. If I did perchance come across somebody this late at night, most of the time it was just another drunk college student who had the same thoughts as me. Either that or they were homeless, but if so, I would say they were all homeless. So this night as I'm walking I noticed further down the path was somebody walking towards me. He wore a large hiking backpack and had his hoodie pulled over his head. It was so dark I couldn't see their face. I could really only just barely make out their outline. This person's gait unquestionably revealed him to be a male who I figured was probably just a transient. It was odd to see somebody walking towards downtown at 2 in the morning. When I got really close to him and we were about to cross paths, this person just stopped dead in his tracks. And I could tell he was staring at me because his head just followed me as I walked by. It creeped me out a bit and I certainly felt that it was a bit odd. As I continued to walk, shrugging at the situation. I just didn't feel right. Something in my gut made me feel wrong. I stopped and turned around to see this person still staring at me. What? I asked him as I stopped walking and remained to stare back at him. That's when he hissed at me like a snake. A long vicious sounding hiss that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I had hoped that he was just being weird or perhaps was on something. I nervously laughed a bit and said okay and continued to walk on. I made it a few more steps and turned to look back. He somehow managed to get closer to me without making a sound. He stood completely still. I figured perhaps I was just drunk and imagining things. I turned back around and walked. Taking a few more steps, I turned around once more. Now I knew he was closer. I couldn't believe that I couldn't hear him approaching behind me. What unsettled me even more was how every time I turned around, he would manage to stop and stand completely still. Uh, are you following me buddy? Once again he let out this creepy hiss, just staring at me. Now I was freaked out and had this strange sensation that I was some sort of prey. Hey, screw you man. I now yelled. In hindsight this was a bad idea. But because I already felt like I was some sort of target and the last thing I should have been wanting to do is provoke this sick twisted guy, I started backing away. At this point, not taking my eyes off of him. He just stood there hissing. The hisses were getting longer, louder and more malintention was apparent in them. As he started to hiss louder and louder, he began to engage in some sort of pursuit. At first they were basic steps, but the further I backed away, the more he sped up, taking bigger steps towards me. I said screw this to myself, I'm getting out of here. I noped it out of there and began into a full fledged run. He started running after me. I could hear his heavy boots gaining on me, hissing like a cat, growling like a dog. I feel his spit hitting me in the back of my neck. Get away from me, you sick bastard. I might have peed myself. I was so scared. All I could think to do was run as fast as I could to get inside of my house as quickly as possible. I have always been a very fast runner, but this guy was much taller than me and his legs were really long, so he was really cutting down the distance between him and me. I managed to keep a good five feet between us though, checking back behind me as I saw his arms reaching out in an attempt to grab me. I finally made it out of the bike path and onto the crossing sidewalk of the street that was lit up by the street lamps and a few passing cars. I was so relieved to finally make it back to civilization. There was a gas station over by my house and I thought I would run to the safety of it inside, only to see that the lights had been shut off and the doors were closed. Crap. I had to make it to my house. As I got closer to my house, I could see my roommate's lights were on through the window. Chris. I shouted. Chris, open the door. Open the door. I'm impressed. I yelled loud enough that he actually heard me. I saw the front door of my house open up and my roommate standing at the doorway looking confused. I ran up the steps and almost jumped. Jumped inside my house, slamming the door shut behind me. Dude, what are you running from? He asked. You didn't see that guy chasing me? No. I ran to the window and looked outside. He was gone. I have no idea what happened to him, but that guy, he scared the crap out of me. This, perhaps, is one of the most interesting things to ever happen to me. In my 36 years in this realm, I have perhaps encountered a Sasquatch or a Freaky Bear, or perhaps had an experience with extraterrestrials. And I've definitely met some very strange, creepy people in Northern California. This experience, however, is just an experience. I have no idea how to explain, nor do I know what to think, nor do I ever want to think about it ever, ever again. However, I feel as if I have to get this one off my chest because it is weird. And oftentimes I have very strange dreams that are involved around it, and it makes me believe, subconsciously, I suppose, that I have never dealt with a possible trauma from what had happened. I was born and raised in New Mexico and ended up moving to California with my father throughout the rest of my life, with the exception of some stints here and there due to jobs and whatnot. Normally I avoid New Mexico like the plague. It is a haunted, godforsaken, rattlesnake infested hellhole. My mother and my sister however, just refuse to leave the desolate wasteland and so oftentimes I have to go down there and visit, especially when my mother got cancer. She's fine now though. She had a tumor on her parathyroid and it was removed thankfully, so the backstory is over. Onward with the actuality of what had happened. I was driving my piece of crap Honda down the highway when it just ran out of gas. I found that odd because when I had started the car and initially I still had a quarter of a tank, but such is I guess it just sort of sputtered out in the middle of the highway around the end of the road of the reservation. I knew that there was a gas station about a mile away once I managed to get out onto the highway. So I took my empty gas canister out of my trunk and walked out in the heat. I had a backpack of Gatorades and water bottles to avoid heatstroke. I was aware I could lose quite a bit of electrolytes very quickly on the road I walked down. It was very complicated to call my sister Kelly to let her know where I was and what the situation was because there just did not seem to be signal anywhere. I walked and I walked, sticking my thumb out to no avail for there were no reservation police or other passerby trucks. It seemed as if I was all alone out in the brightness heated sunshiny day out in the middle of freaking nowhere New Mexico. As I walked and I walked, I saw a dead hummingbird on the ground. I found that very sad at first. Yet as I walked further and further I found it odd that there was even a hummingbird there in the first place. They are not typically seen in the area from where I come from. They're not non existent, but they're just super duper rare to see. There's not a bunch of what I would consider to be the sort of nectar they seek, nor pollen from flowers of which they desire. Further along I continued down the open road with the sun beating down upon me. Soon after that I saw another dead hummingbird. Now I thought, this is getting weird. Weirder and weirder. Perhaps, I suppose deep down I sort of subconsciously preferred to consider it just a coincidence. It was only after a few Hundred yards more that I saw another one, and then shortly after another one and another, and then another, and then more, and then even more. It came to a point where there were more constant dead hummingbirds started to trail away from the side of the road and then make a trail off, away and into the berm. This may have been a bad idea on my part, but my weakness has always been that my curiosity is pretty preferred to get the better of me, which is what killed the cat. So I followed the trail of dead hummingbirds. It was almost like a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail. It seemed as if it was some sort of methodically laid out plan of follow the dead hummingbirds if you dare. It went on and on until I had passed the berm and completely away from the road and now in the arroyo and deep down amidst the few sparse trees to and fro. And that was where I found was. It was something I'm not sure I could ever describe. It was just like this, this strange pile of dead hummingbirds like. Like it was freaking huge. Maybe about two feet from the ground. A huge, massive, disturbing pile of them. I sort of stood there rather perplexed, and I scanned all around the place to see if there was more of an indication as to what transpired. Yet there was nada, nothing. Zilch. It seemed as if there was just an inexplicable pile of dead hummingbirds out in the middle of the desert. It looked like a holocaust of them. That's when the real weirdness happened. There was this very strange, shaky, quivering sort of hum that was more than just audible. No, this was also physical. I cannot say that the ground was shaking. I would rather say it seemed as if my head did. I began to feel a bit nauseous. And the first thing I thought to myself was get up on out of here. Like a coward, I did. I ran and I ran. And the worst decision I didn't even realize that I had made is I just started running randomly without any adherence from where I originally came from. Basically I was just running in a direction without any regard. It took me a solid 30, 45 minutes running throughout the arroyo to find the road again. Some native was driving down the road when I stumbled out from the side of the road and he picked me up and gave me a ride to the casino that had a gas station. And when I filled up, he offered to give me a ride back to my car. He could tell that I was shaken up and I could sort of sense he didn't want to broach the subject, but sort of felt as if he should. So he asked me if all was alright. I didn't want to go into it much, but I sort of explained a few of the details, but only a few for fear of sounding like an absolute whack job after what I had told him. His silence is what unnerved me the most. He either thought I was nuts or he straight up did not want to talk about it. Eventually that hum, he said, yeah, it makes me sick too. I filled up my tank, I went to work, I apologized for being late, and I explained what had happened. Nobody at my job site wanted to speak a bit. Fast forward about a week and a half or so, perhaps two. My sister woke me up asking if I could sweep the front walkway because she was too grossed out. I did not know what to infer, but I love my little sister and I would do anything she asked. I suppose I wish she had told me it was just ridden with dead lizards just laying on their backs, the bluish gross veins exposed upon their bellies, ants upon ants, just completely devouring them. It was at best disturbing. So I got the push broom and I pushed them off the walkway. And that's when the hum began again and I just sort of fell to my knees and could not stop feeling nauseous and began vomiting a bit. My sister and I have always kept this from my mom because I didn't know how she would react. I do not know what happens out there in that strange part of New Mexico, but I will say this. If you ever stumble across tiny dead animals, like a pile of them just out in the middle of the desert, just leave it be. And if you hear the hum, never ever return. I remember it was unusual for there to be fog in that time of year out along the beaches of la. I will not divulge where or when precisely as to avoid as much condescension for sounding like a madman. It was bonfire night where all folks in the neighborhood and all others considered to be cool enough were all invited out to the beach. And so thus all of us went, friends and strangers alike, out to the beach, out to smoke and drink and witness the younger crazy kids spin fire and poi and all of that other stuff they are so into. The reason that I was there at all was because I had a friend named Ben who absolutely insisted I come along to this cool bonfire party out along the beach. Ben's always been a great guy. I've known him for 25 years. He was on Broadway, cast predominantly as A singer. I was proud. And also, I was the best man at his wedding. I know this man, but things can change. There was this girl and she seemed really cool. Long blond hair, curves, magnetic blue eyes. A dream come true. For me, that is. I sat out there away from the bonfire, upon a log, contemplating other things and also contemplating this girl, this beautiful girl who comes up to me and introduces herself. Me of all people. She asks, what are you doing sitting here all by your lonesome? You want to rip this? I would have been a fool not to partake. So, of course, yours truly, your humble narrator. Well, I'll just say it was partaken. So yeah, I got stoned. She was hot. Don't judge me. Like I had mentioned prior, I found it strange that it was such an unusually foggy, misty night at this locale at this time of year. It was almost as if a cloud had decided to drop onto the beach line, which is strange. Next thing I know, Ben approaches me and the cute girl I was talking to at that moment, and he asks me, wanna take a walk? That seemed like a strange question to me because I had supposed it was readily apparent that I was totally satisfied where I was and where I sat, being interviewed by a bombshell buxom blonde. Her and I, inexplicably both said yes. And onward and onward into the night. We went further into the fog and into the mist with absolutely no regard to our questions or our instincts. Yet I do vaguely remember feeling like I was being called to do something from somewhere I knew not. It was such an odd feeling looking back upon it now. So Ben, this girl and I, we walked off past the bonfire, past the organic light source and into the inexplicable fog and mystery. One of the last things I remember from that evening is seeing a big bright light enraptured protectively by the mist and fog. And so, of course, I thought to myself, yeah, man, why not? And so on I walked, trying to walk into the light, obscured by the smoke and fog and mist and cloud and whatnot. I woke up with my alarm clock off like madness at three in the afternoon. A setting I have never set it upon. I was late for work. Upon my thigh rested a nasty BB sized bump that rested in a sort of obsessive trance. I could not leave it alone. All I wanted to do was pick and scratch at it. The workplace was already amiss from the moment I set my foot through the door. The owner of the establishment already says to me, rick, I need to speak with you in my office. Walking into the office of this piece of crap I worked with for so long, I was ever so curious what he had to say this time. Why didn't you come into work yesterday? I'm sorry I was late. I usually make it by my 2 o' clock shift and and then the interruption happened in which he said, yeah, you were supposed to be at work at 2 yesterday and now here you are a day late and a dollar short. So I left. I left because I was confused. I sort of remembered being with Ben the night prior, so I figured he'd be able to fill in the details. He's always been an awesome friend like that. So yeah, I drove to Huntington beach to visit him and his wife at his apartment complex. Now I have always known that Cleo was a shy woman, but I had earned my stripes with her and I was best man at her wedding. It was so strange to see her with the chains and the bolts attached to the door as she opened it. Yeah? She asked me. Hey Cleo, I said. I was hoping to speak with Ben. He can't speak is what she replied with onward and onward into the light we walked. Into the mist, into the fog. But the strange beacon of light that dwelled inside of it, that is the one that kept us all going into the white light I walked. What? I asked her. He doesn't want to speak to me. No, she said. It's not that he doesn't want to speak with you. He just can't. Cannot speak. This was an immediate thing and or occurrence that perturbed me. I mean, like what? Decidingly I barged in through the door to check it upon my best friend where in which I found him lying upon the floor struggling to scream with the most clog stopped guttural sound protruding from his throat.
