Chapter 1 – Chap 1

I grew up in the eighties, back before cell phones and the Internet, back during a time that when the power went out, you truly got the sense that you were disconnected from the world—especially at night—in a storm.

I was home one Friday night with my daughters—Cassie, ten, and Carmen, eight—and Carmen’s little friend Missy. Missy was a sweet little girl with fire-red hair and freckles, and a pleasant disposition that couldn’t have been more contrary to her appearance. We were sitting around eating popcorn and watching some silly movie about teenage vampires when all the sudden, a storm rolled in. We lived in an old farmhouse just outside the city limits and surrounded by a stand of pine trees, and we often lost power during storms. Sure enough, right after the first big flash of lightning and crash of thunder, the power went out.

“Aw Mom!” Carmen complained. “It was just getting to the good part.”

Were my husband here, I’d have him go out to the shed and get the generator, but he was out of town on business.

“It’s not Mom’s fault,” Cassie said. “She didn’t do it—the storm did, you doofus.”

“Don’t start,” I said. “She’s just disappointed—and I think you know that.”

Cassie rolled her eyes, as she was prone to do. Then we all just sat there, eating popcorn occasionally, but our attention soon switched to the storm as its intensity gathered—except for Cassie. She’d already gone to the kitchen to get the candles. Because we seemed to lose power on a regular basis, we kept a stash of candles handy. In no time, she’d lit four of them on the coffee table, casting a spooky glow across our faces.

“Looks like a strong one,” Cassie said between rolls of thunder.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Sounds like.” I noticed little Missy’s expression. She was alarmed—it was plain enough. I reached over Carmen, scooped her up and set her in my lap. She snuggled against me. “It’s gonna be okay—it’s just a storm.”

In her meek little voice, she asked, “Is there gonna be a tornado?”

Before I could answer, Cassie, holding her smartphone toward us so we could see the screen, said, “No tornadoes, just thunder and lightning.”

I looked at her phone, which was showing a local radar screen. She was right.

“This’ll last forever,” Carmen complained. “What can we do now?”

“Maybe we could just talk,” I said.

“Blah. What could we talk about that’s fun?”

“We could tell ghost stories,” Cassie said.

Now, Carmen rolled her eyes.

“Tell us a ghost story, Mom,” Cassie cajoled. “You always tell good stories.”

“Well . . .” I looked down at Missy, not wanting to risk scaring her more.

“I’m fine with ghosts,” she said. “I just don’t like tornadoes.”

Rowdy, our big black lab, jumped up on the couch and took the seat where Missy had been.

“You sure?” I asked Missy.

“I’m sure.”

“She’s sure, Mom,” Cassie said rather impatiently. “Come on—tell us a story.”

“Maybe.” I thought for a minute. “I don’t really know any ghost stories, but I do know a scary story—and it’s true.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Even better.”

“How do you know it’s true?” Carmen asked.

“Because, it happened to me,” I said. “I wasn’t much older than Cassie.”

“Cool,” Cassie said with a grin.

I seemed to have everyone’s attention—so, I told them a story . . .

It happened when I was fourteen, the day school had let out for summer. We were headed to high school in the fall, and I was feeling mighty grown up. Suzie was my best friend, and her boyfriend was a guy we all called Bubba. That first night of summer vacation, Bubba’s parents were going to be out of town, so me and Suzie had planned on going to his place—they lived in a trailer on the edge of town. I’m pretty sure me and Suzie had each told our respective parents that we were spending the night at the other’s house and fully intended to stay the night at Bubba’s (but I didn’t tell the girls that part).

Anyway, we got to Bubba’s about an hour before dark, and had been listening to music and watching videos mostly, when all the sudden, one of Bubba’s friends showed up, a guy named Weldon. I think that Bubba and Weldon had planned it surreptitiously, the intent being that I would pair off with Weldon so Bubba and Suzie could be alone—but that wasn’t about to happen. Weldon was a nice enough guy and all, but he was a dork, and he wasn’t that cute. Bubba would just have to wait for his alone time with Suzie.

Just before dark, as they were prone to do in the South, a thunderstorm began to roll in. We all went out on Bubba’s back patio to watch until big drops of rain began to pelt us, driving us back inside. We had just agreed that we’d play a game of Monopoly when a huge bolt of lightning struck one of the trees in Bubba’s yard. Not five seconds later, the power went out, leaving us in total darkness.

Bubba went to the kitchen and lit a big candle. He brought it back to the dining room where we were all sitting and set it in the middle of the table. The flame was big enough so that we could see each other’s faces and the space between us, but that was about it.

There was some discussion about what we were going to do. Suzie still wanted to play Monopoly, but neither Bubba nor I was too keen on trying to play a board game in that dim light. Bubba suggested he get his Ouija board, but Suzie wasn’t having any part of that. I don’t think Weldon wanted any part of the Ouija board, either, but he managed not to voice his concerns.

The rain had died down significantly by then, as had the wind, and there was a dim light filtering into the room through the windows, enough so I could see Bubba’s big German shepherd, T-Rex, standing transfixed at the backdoor, staring through its windows at something in the backyard. He was so still, like he was carved from wood.

Just then, a loud, crisp slapping noise emanated from the backside of the trailer, as though someone had hit the trailer’s skin with a big piece of rubber, something much bigger than a hand. We all startled, and me and Suzie both screamed. I think Weldon might’ve screamed, too, but I didn’t have time to think about that. T-Rex had begun to bark wildly, and just a few seconds later, another big slap came from the front of the trailer.

Things had gone from relative calm to borderline chaos over the span of a few seconds, and T-Rex had become even more unhinged—if that were even possible. He sprinted from the backdoor to the front door, barking crazily all the while, and then he returned to the backdoor. Suzie hadn’t stopped screaming, and only finally did when Bubba grabbed and shook her by the shoulders. It’s probably just friends of ours, he’d screamed back at her. Get ahold of yourself—Jesus Christ!

Everything did quiet—even T-Rex. But he’d returned to his post at the back door, standing still as a statue. I had managed to stay fairly calm on the outside—at least compared to Suzie, but I had a heavy fear on the inside—a heavy fear. Bubba and Weldon began speculating about who among their friends might be outside, and how they might go about turning the tables on them. I didn’t think any of their friends were outside, though. It didn’t feel that way. It felt like . . . something else.

It didn’t take long for me to get what I took as confirmation of that notion, that it was something else out there, stalking the grounds of Bubba’s trailer. There came a moan, a wail, something tortured and sustained, from somewhere outside, but close. It had to’ve been close. It was too loud, too piercing for it not to have been, and it was like no other sound I had ever heard, filled with everything evil you could imagine. It seemed to go on and on, and the four of us, still sitting at the dining room table, frozen in astonishment, stared in fear and disbelief from one to the other. Before it ended, T-Rex had sat back on his haunches, and with his nose raised to the ceiling, had begun to howl in unison with the terrible noise from outside.

After it ended, we all kept our seats, still staring back and forth at each other, seemingly unable to move. Finally, though, Bubba sprang up from his chair, and over Suzie’s protests, moved quickly to his bedroom. He returned a few seconds later with a shotgun and a pistol, the latter of which he gave to Weldon. We moved en masse to the kitchen, and there was discussion about what we should do. I suggested we call 9-1-1. Suzie must’ve had that idea as well, because she’d already picked up the phone to dial. After clicking the receiver a few times, however, she announced that the phone was dead. Of course it was.

There was more discussion, mostly filled with testosterone-driven nonsense about going outside and confronting—it, whatever it was—but that conversation was rendered moot by what happened next. All at once, seemingly every window in the place began to rattle violently, as if hundreds of fingers were tapping on every pane, filling the trailer with unbearable noise. T-Rex had begun his mad barking again, and had also begun to claw at the bottom of the door, desperate to get outside and at whatever it was that had been tormenting us. Suzie shut her eyes and began to scream, only stopping long enough to take in a new supply of air.

Bubba raised his shotgun and actually fired a shot through the window over the sink. Suzie somehow managed to scream louder. Weldon, not to be outdone, shot several rounds through the broken glass, though he couldn’t have been shooting at anything in particular, because his eyes were closed.

Bubba ran to T-Rex, and managed to get the door open before Suzie got to him. T-Rex made it outside; but somehow, with more strength than she could’ve possibly had in her body, she managed to grab Bubba around the middle and fling the both of them back from the open door. It was like she had taken them airborne, and they crash-landed together on the floor. Weldon ran to the backdoor, slammed it shut, and engaged the deadbolt.

All at once it was quiet, eerily quiet. No rattling windows, no pitiful moan, no Suzie screaming, no wind, no rain. T-Rex barked, then quieted, then barked again, then quieted. He sounded as though he’d moved some distance from the trailer, out into the woods that led up the hillside that climbed from Bubba’s backyard, as though he might’ve been chasing our tormenter away. Then, there was the sound, from close up, maybe on the back patio. It was a whimper, sharp and intense, almost like a scream, a beg for mercy, and then it abruptly went silent.

Before Suzie could stop him and over her desperate objections, Bubba was up and out the backdoor, shotgun in hand, calling for T-Rex. No reply came, though. For the next little while, the only sounds we heard were each other’s breathing and Bubba’s calls. I could see Weldon tense toward the door, feeling as though he should go out into the night to assist his friend, but not managing to find the courage. I remember feeling sorry for him.

I’m not sure how long Bubba stayed outside, whether it was just a minute or if it was ten, but he finally found his way back in. Suzie flung herself into him and squeezed her relief. After a moment, he told us that he hadn’t found a thing, not a trace of T-Rex, not a sign of anything else that might’ve been there.

Suffice it to say that none of us slept that night. We stayed in the living room together, the boys hanging onto their guns, me and Suzie trying our best to hang onto our wits. I’m sure we each thought we heard something nefarious from the outside a hundred times that night, but I doubt we had. When the first traces of sunlight began to penetrate the darkness, Bubba went back out. Reluctantly, I’m sure, we all followed after him. Suzie and I stayed together, mostly on the patio and clinging to each other’s hands. Bubba and Weldon each went their separate ways, scouring the surrounding area for evidence of what had gone on the night before. Bubba called for T-Rex every so often, but T-Rex never came.

After several minutes, Weldon stopped in the far corner of the yard and knelt down. He called to us, and we all went to him. There, in a patch of earth not covered by grass, was what appeared to be an animal track, but not like any track I’d ever seen or could even imagine. It was about a foot from end to end and in the shape of a Y, two long toes in front and one long toe in back. At the tip of each toe was a thin impression about an inch long, like what a sharp claw would’ve made.

We stayed at Bubba’s for another hour or so, until we were sure the town was good and awake, and then the boys walked us back to our houses. T-Rex never did come home.

By the time I finished telling my story, the rain had slowed considerably and the wind had calmed. The power was still out, though, so I could only see the kids’ faces by the faint candlelight. My two girls were scared—that was plain. Cassie was trying to act as though she wasn’t, but I could see it in her eyes. Ironically, though, Missy didn’t seem scared at all. In fact, she seemed pleased.

“That was a good story,” she said after she was sure I was done. “Do you have any other ones?”

No sooner than she’d finished speaking, there came a loud slap from the back of the house. I and my daughters all startled and inhaled sharply, and Rowdy sprang from the couch and ran to the backdoor. He began to bark, low and intermittent at first, but by the time the second slap came—from the front door—he was barking loudly and at a steady pace.

My girls had already panicked; Carmen was crying and had crawled into the space on my lap just vacated by little Missy. Cassie was fumbling with her phone, and finally looked up at me with fear in her eyes. “It won’t work! I can’t call 9-1-1!”

More slaps, more barking, more panic. I picked up my phone and tried to call my husband, but I had no signal strength—I couldn’t call anyone. I couldn’t even text. Reflexively, I tried to turn on the TV, but obviously, there was no power. I looked between my girls, feeling my heart rate accelerate as more slaps began to fall against our doors. We were all alone, completely cut off from the outside world, and it appeared we were on the cusp of a nightmare. Then, it occurred to me—my car was in the garage.

I quickly found my keys on the bar in the kitchen. I started to gather everyone, but then it occurred to me that Rowdy had stopped barking. Why had he stopped? I looked to the backdoor and found Missy sitting on the floor beside him, stroking his head, talking to him. He’d sat back on his haunches, and was listening.

“Don’t be afraid, Rowdy. We’re safe, so long as we stay here, inside the house, we’re all safe.”

The slapping noises had grown more insistent, as had the little screams and whimpers from my daughters. Then without warning, they all stopped, and there was no sound but the occasional echoes of rolling thunder from the far distance. Then it came, the same tortured wail I’d heard all those years ago from outside Bubba’s trailer, and it sent shivers racing up and down my spine.

“We need to stay here,” Missy said. It took a few seconds, but I finally realized she was talking to me. “We need to stay in the house. We’ll all be fine if we stay inside the house.”

Before I understood what she was doing, she’d stood up and flung the backdoor open to the night, and then she stepped just through the threshold. She kept one hand on Rowdy’s head, and he stayed on his haunches.

“Go away!” she screamed, and the pitiful howling from our backyard stopped all at once. “We don’t want you here! Go away!”

I could see her and Rowdy’s outline through the doorway, and yet I couldn’t move. My brain was telling me to scream at her to close the door, to run to her and close it myself, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there with my keys in my hand, watching in terror and disbelief. I saw something scuttle through the rain, past her silhouette and across our patio.

“Go away!” she screamed again. “Go! Away!”

She stepped back, stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, and then she calmly shut the door and turned to face me, rainwater streaming down her cheeks.

“We’ll be all right now,” she said softly. “As long as we stay in the house.”

“No,” I managed, suddenly unsure of myself. “We should—”

“In the house,” she said firmly. “We need to stay in the house.”

Every fiber of my being was screaming for me to gather the kids in the car and leave, but curiously I wasn’t moving. The ghastly moaning hadn’t started back up, nor had the slaps against the house. I thought back to that night when I’d been fourteen. Nothing ever came into the trailer, not even after Bubba had shot out the kitchen window. T-Rex had gone outside, and I’d always assumed that whatever had been out there had taken him. But Rowdy didn’t go outside. Missy could’ve let him run out, but she hadn’t. She’d told him to keep his seat—no, that wasn’t right. She’d kept her hand on his head, and he’d kept his seat, hadn’t run out the open door. What the heck was going on?

I looked back at Missy, and she gave me a little nod. Then the three of us—me, Missy, and Rowdy—went back into the den with Cassie and Carmen. I started a fire in the fireplace, and we all sat on the floor facing it.

I finally focused on the fact that Missy was wet from her brief foray onto the edge of the patio, so I went to the laundry to get her a towel. As I passed through the kitchen on my way back to the girls, I saw something I couldn’t understand. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but they weren’t. Leading from the backdoor to the den—to the girls—were two sets of water footprints on the hardwood floor. One set obviously belonged to Rowdy, with his pads and toes. The other set, though, it was—how can I say? It was inhuman. The other footprints were in the shape of a Y, leading from the backdoor toward my daughters. But as the tracks approached the den, they changed from being Y-shaped to being shaped like the soles of a little girl’s tennis shoes—Missy’s shoes.

The first thing I felt was alarm, but that quickly succumbed to disoriented confusion. What I was looking at didn’t seen possible—at least not in the world I knew. A little voice startled me from my meditation.

“Is that for me?” It was Missy. She was looking up at me expectantly.

I didn’t manage to answer, but after a moment I handed the towel down to her. She smiled, and then she looked back toward the backdoor, at the tracks on the floor. After a few seconds, she looked back up at me, sort of raised her eyebrows, then twirled on her heel and headed back toward the fireplace, drying her hair all the while. I had no idea what else to do, so I followed after her and sat on the floor, making sure to get between her and my daughters. There was something wrong here, something seriously wrong—and it had mostly to do with sweet little Missy.

“I know a story,” she said, looking at each of us earnestly. “Wanna hear it?”

“No,” Cassie responded immediately. Carmen just shook her head.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe we should.” I looked little Missy in the eye, taking note of her pale, freckled skin and pleasant veneer. “Go on, Missy. Tell us your story.”