This was a piece I submitted to a contest. It didn't win, but I wanted to share it regardless in spirit of Halloween. Enjoy!
Something Lives Out There
Something lives out there. In the shadows of this town not touched by the full moon.
They linger like scarecrows, eyes piercing through skin and bones into your soul. In the pitch-black nothingness, where coyotes howl in aching drones.
Prairies sprawl into fields hued yellow and emerald. In midday, I swear the sun touches everything as though no spirit realm opens; no dark entities exist.
But they do. Beneath one Halloween blood moon, the living and spirit worlds were as close as possible. It was the night I fell to the wrong side.
I stood at my window, watching skeletal trees bending to demands of hurricane-class winds, leaves swirling along the dirt road. I did this often. Standing. Wondering. Waiting. Something lives out there. I thought I was safe in the confines of home, despite walls moaning like old bones.
There they were. Yellow eyes that visited every full moon. It approached my window, not blinking as it retreated then returned several times. My stomach churned, the instinct to join it ever stronger.
My bare feet followed it to the edge of town before I knew it. I stopped. I hated this darkness, sauntering blindly into nowhere. I didn’t want to become a local who walked away from home, lights still on, and vanished. It happened each Halloween.
The eyes dissipated. I stepped forward into the sensation of falling. The wind whipping. Snapping at bushes. Whistling in my ears, crashing around me. Screeching. Screaming. Was that still the wind? Where was the moon?
Hands reached out – cold, no skin, no physical being. Fingers clenched my arms, pulling me forward against the wind. I resisted amidst blood-chilling screams.
I don’t know how long I walked. My legs were numb. Frigid. Skin raw from anguished gales. Exhausted from resisting.
My feet, cut up and bleeding, stepped onto something hard and cold. My arms fell free. My eyes snapped up when crimson moonlight trickled down, giving a glimpse of what lay before me. The train bridge. I teetered over 300 feet above the rushing river. Panic immobilized me; my feet unsteady. I shouldn’t have come.
Something lives out here. Where many took a leap. Where others drowned. I don’t want to be part of it. Why did I follow? Why did being consumed by shadows feel so oddly liberating?
I stepped backwards. There was grass somewhere. I never reach it. I tremble. An ice-cold chill goes over me. Yellow eyes appear.
“I don’t want to come,” I holler before it yanks me over the edge. I scream. A never-ending shriek of terror. Falling. Wind screeching. I don’t know when it ends but it must.
I awoke standing over my body. The wind dead. A train squealed across the bridge, a bright headlight above. The steel shook. Then it was gone. The moon shimmered white.
I look over at the yellow eyes, waiting patiently.
“But why?”
“You live out here now.”
“But I didn’t want to.”
“No. I wanted you to.”
Happy Halloween!
Image below by jplenio on Pixabay
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