PART 1: https://redd.it/3j3vmk
This story is a little more recent, but very fresh in my mind due to recent events, so it was easy to put it into writing.
Ever find yourself in that pre-sleep limbo where, you clearly didn’t prepare yourself properly for bed? You have to pee. Maybe you’re replaying something scary you watched over and over in your head. You should have showered because your armpit odor is physically keeping you awake. Your wife is making some weird clicking noise when she breathes next you. The baby monitor is jacked so high that the static is actually too loud. Possibly, it’s just that you're hungry.
Last year I found myself in just such a situation where all of the above scenarios applied at about 1 am in a single night. Having my priorities straight, I decided to satisfy the hunger first. I live in a two story colonial in the northeast with my wife, two children, and no pets. It’s a nice place on a cul-de-sac in a valley with a few houses all within sight of each other and ringed by woods. I guess you can say it’s a little bowl of civilization out in the wilderness. It’s a very quiet area, no road traffic or outside noise. The only problem is it really works against you when you want to do things around the house while the family is sleeping. Not wanting to wake anyone I started the slow process of sneaking to the refrigerator.
My First Objective: Slide out of the covers and the bed without disturbing the wife. I hate that moment when you wake your significant other up and they immediately snap up to interrogate you, awake enough to be upset and press you with questions, but not coherent enough to understand your answers, hence increasing the level of their frustration with you beyond just the fact that they are now “awake”.
Success, wife was still asleep.
My Second Objective: Skulk down the hallway and stairs without disturbing the children. I don’t know about you, but my children wake up if you swallow loudly at night. Any sound that is remotely human registers in their slumbering brains and triggers a response of “It must be time to play.” Those of us with kids also know, it is clearly not time to play, but you have just signed up for an hour of negotiation to get them back to bed… each.
Success, kids were still asleep.
I decided not to turn on any lights but when I got to the bottom floor I realized I really had to pee. I flicked on the light in the half-bath, basically blinding myself and decided to just sit down to get this done instead of trying to aim sightless. I admit, not very manly, but very practical and effective.
I exited the toilet with my eyes still adjusting and nearly crapped myself in shock. The direction I was facing is my large sliding glass door that opens to the deck in the backyard, and as soon as I enter the room the shadow of man passes right beyond it. I froze and the man freezes at the same instant. The hairs on the back of my neck sky-rocket and that shiver that reaches from your ears down to your shins takes over. I’m not even sure it is a shiver; the feeling is more like a drug entering my blood stream and tingling through my body. He’s staring at me and I am staring right back, un-moving for what feels like forever. I lean slowly back toward the stairs to go get my gun, and the man leans in the same direction just as cautiously. Shiver number two follows the same path down my body. It is then that the cobwebs shake out of my brain and I realize the man is me. The little light that is emitting from bathroom behind me has projected my silhouette on the window, which appears as a shadow. I smirked at myself and relax and walked towards the slider to continue my trek to the kitchen.
It is then that my eyes focus beyond the glass of the slide door onto the deck beyond it and I stop dead in my tracks. Que shiver number three. Just beyond the slider on the deck illuminated by what little light is emitting from the night sky is a shape of a man, or what could be a man. Deja vu, but this time it’s real. It was bigger than me, well, at least wider than me, and distorted somehow. Wavy? No not wavy, hairy maybe? It was bad light, maybe it was a man in a big coat. No, it must be a bear on its hind legs I think to myself.
It too appears to be staring at me, just like my silhouette moments before. It stands there totally still. The hulking shape isn’t what gets me, although since there are barely three feet and a few panes of glass between us, it should. The eyes were animal eyes, the type that glow in the dark. It had to be a bear, humans don’t have tapetum lucidum. But wait… do bears? I can’t remember and that was not the time to stop and Google it. Hell, I didn’t even have my phone on me; I was in my briefs and nothing else. We locked eyes, and staring at that reflective surface under its retinas was like looking into my own soul.
Light, I needed light. Light will scare it off, I think. I slowly reached to the wall on the side of the slider to flick the switch for the deck light. Its eyes shifted away from mine and it followed the slow movement of my hand. Crap, it was actually watching me. Shiver number four. I got within an inch of the switch and my silent sneak to the kitchen abruptly ended.
The shape exploded into movement, lunged and threw its arms at the window, slamming it with its hands. Hands? No, had to be paws. With the ferocity and speed at which it hit, I was sure it was coming through the glass and I fell over myself backwards trying to get away. The glass didn’t crack but the resounding boom was as if the slider was a drum-head for my entire house. When I looked up, it was gone. I jumped up and immediately flicked on the outside light, and cursed the CFL I installed out there. It was the kind that has to warm up or something utterly ridiculous for this age of technology, so full illumination didn’t happen for a few minutes. It was just a dull glow at that moment. There was nothing on the deck and nothing as far as my eyes could reach in the backyard.
It is then that I focused back on the slider window. Clearly on the bottom were the hundreds of little hand and fingerprints from the greasy little paws of my children, but up higher right at my eye level were two of what appeared to be equally greasy human hand-prints. I have big hands but these had me beat by an inch on each finger (yes I put my hand up to them to compare). But it couldn’t be human. What I saw was animal. The paw had to have hit and smudged as it dragged across the glass making it appear as fingers. It was a trick of my mind, right? Wait, do paws leave grease prints? No phone, no Google, still in my underwear.
At that point, I could hear the family waking up from the sound, so I jumped into action. I ran to the other doors in the house and started flicking on every outside light we have. I also doused the bathroom light to drop our interior illumination to nothing. I wanted to see out, but whatever or whoever was out there wasn’t going to be looking in anymore.
I bounded up the stairs and told my groggy wife to manage the kids, and that there was a bear or something creeping outside that I had to be downstairs to keep an eye on. She asked what I was planning to do and I basically looked at her without an answer. Yeah I have a gun, but it’s a small P22 and she knows it. I have it for target practice and to make noise when critters are around and dissuade would-be intruders. I’m not sure it could even penetrate the hide of a bear (or human). I might actually be more dangerous with my slow-pitch softball bat.
I unlocked and opened the case with the gun and hauled back downstairs unsure of what I was actually going to do with it, and started moving from window to window as I loaded it. The deck was lit, the porch was lit, the driveway was lit and a back basement door was lit, but there were a lot of blind and dark spots out there. There was a decent mist that had settled in the valley too which didn’t give much beyond a few dozen feet to see other than the wet foggy glows of flood lights outside the garages of my neighbor’s houses. I wondered if I should call the police for a bear outside my house at night. Do you even call police about this or animal control? Is anyone at animal control going to answer at 1 am? Probably not, I mean this is the country after all.
The house fell into silence as I stopped moving and peered out the back windows. My wife had finally settled the kids down, and I assumed she must be holed up in one of their rooms making sure they stayed that way. Forty-five minutes of silence broke with a crash outside. My garbage cans. I tried to get to a vantage point near the garage, but it was a bad angle from the kitchen. I could make out my trash strewn on the ground and I could see a shadow being cast from the garage flood light onto the back yard. The light distortion and angle exaggerated the size and movement of the shadow into something 40 feet tall, but something was clearly moving over there… a lot. The shadow vanished.
Before I could even get to the other side of the house I could hear it. Whatever it was, it was now trashing the furniture on my front porch. Loud thumps and dragging noises reverberated over the entire front of the house. I looked out of a window from my office and I could see a wicker chair and its cushions strewn on the yard just beyond the porch. Then another slam, right on the front door. It was like the bang of thunder close by and staggered me back a step. I’m a big guy, but this was intense.
I could hear the children start to cry from the noise and my wife called my name with panic in her voice from upstairs. I told her to call our friend who is the K9 unit in the neighboring town. It was clearly time to get the authorities involved, but I wanted someone here who actually gave a damn about me and my family. Another slam. Another. This thing seemed like it wanted in.
The calls of my wife and the cries of my children ended up triggering some basic instinct and I decided to take action. Something between bravery and testosterone induced madness. All I know is that a wave of understanding that I needed to protect what was mine descended on me. It was an animal, it had to be. I had to spook it. I was sure I could chase it off. Loud noises, threatening posture, I am man, creator of fire, the internet, and Mars rovers… let’s do this.
NOTE TO READERS: I have since learned this is exactly the opposite of what you want to do with bears. Make loud noises before an encounter to make your presence known and keep them away. If you have an encounter, be quiet and non-threatening and don’t run. Back away slowly. Don’t make direct eye contact. As mentioned previously, I did not have my phone on me for Google, and yes I am still in my underwear at this point.
I decided to open the garage. Maybe the mechanical sound would spook it. I could get out and around to the side of the porch that way and chase it off if it was still around. I ran out in a pair of flip-flops i had near the door and paused before exiting into the driveway. I could still hear it slamming at the front door. The garage opened painfully slow and my driveway covered in trash came into view as the portal opened. I turned back to the side wall and grabbed a spade shovel with my free hand. I took a deep breath, turned toward the front of the house and started yelling and waving my weapons frantically.
I was alone.
There I was, on my front walkway looking at my porch. All the furniture was strewn across the lawn and my decorative seasonal wreath was in shambles near the welcome mat. I was literally in the mist, in the dark, in my underwear, with a tiny pistol in one hand and a dirty spade shovel in the other.
There was no sound. No animal.
I realized then the garage door was wide open and so was the door into the house. My family was in there. I ran back to the garage as it had only been moments since I left it, and decided I had to close it and myself out. I was out there, which was dumb, but I was damned if whatever this was would get into my house.
As I reached up to the keypad to shut the door, I was overwhelmed with an awful smell. I remembered the garbage cans and the trash all over my driveway. But, this wasn’t the smell of garbage. This smelled like feces and something else… skunk maybe. Great, a bear and a skunk I thought. This night was getting better. As I was punching in my code for the garage, my back was basically to my entire property. This is when the last shiver from that particular night hit me. But this one was different. The chill from the ears to my shins happened. But it was accompanied by a warm breeze. A really foul smelling warm breeze, right over my left shoulder.
I froze for what felt like an eternity. I could feel it. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. Fear won out in my brain and it sent a scream of impulses to my entire body to do something, anything. I dropped the pistol (don’t ask me why) and swung the spade blindly behind me as hard as I could with both hands at chest level. I connected and hit something solid and I was rewarded a split second later by being slammed into the side of the house harder than I’ve ever been hit before. It took me off my feet and completely knocked the wind out of me. The pain was followed with the sound of a grunt and some odd combination of a howl and growl. Some of the noises may have come from me, but definitely not all of them. I have never heard anything like it before, nor have I heard anything close to it since. It was odd because there was something to the sound. Not anger, not pain, more frustration or disgust. It was almost as if I had disappointed it, which has really stuck with me to this day. I slumped into the driveway gasping for air with my back to the house and looked up in time to see something dark and hulking lope away on two legs just out of the periphery of the flood lights and into the mist towards my neighbor’s yard.
I got to my feet somewhat unsteadily and ran back into the house, closing the garage behind me. All I could think of was how painfully slow this damn garage opener was as I watched the driveway fade from view. I half expected whatever it was to come charging back in just underneath the door before it fully closed. I entered the house and it took me a moment to gather my wits, but I looked up to see my family in the living room staring at me in horror. I was in my kitchen, still in my underwear, covered in a cold sweat, with a spade shovel in my hands. I connected eyes with my wife and shook my head. I tried to give her a look that said, “We’re not going to talk about this, not in front of the kids.”
I decided my acts of heroism were done for the night and it was time to wait for my friend to arrive in his cruiser with his flashing lights and his trusty K9 partner. I also realized that I stunk to high heaven. Whatever was out there tagged me with something and I had carried it in the house.
My officer friend arrived some time later and listened to my story. He conducted a full sweep of the property, but the kicker is his dog (who would normally charge a tank) wouldn’t leave the cruiser. Whatever it smelled, it didn’t want any part of it. It even had trouble with the residual stink coming from me. He spent three hours patrolling our road with his spot and retired just before dawn. He determined that there was clearly evidence of an encounter with a large animal, but whatever it was had moved on.
It took about 6 showers to get the smell stuck to me to be tolerable. The CFL bulbs around the outside of my house have since been swapped out with powerful floods, and they are on 24/7. I also now call the authorities immediately for every “bear” sighting. There hasn’t been another incident like this in my area as far as I can tell, but every so often I catch wind of that unmistakable smell on an evening breeze, most recently last Monday night while having a cigar on the porch.
Submitted September 01, 2015 at 10:59PM by THExBODY http://ift.tt/1UkyXhy nosleep
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