I am a 30 something mom. Married almost 6 years, two kids, one boy, one girl, and our dog, Abby Sue. We own our own home that is nestled in a little corner of the country that isn't far from town, but not too close to any people. We have no close neighbors and we fall asleep peacefully every night listening to the sounds of crickets or the occasional bull frog. It's perfect. The life of which I always dreamed, right down to the picket fence.
I work second shift, while the rest of my family is on day shift, what with school and my husband's job. Therefore, I am always up later than my family. I usually come home, grab a bite to eat, shower, and then lay in bed reading stories on NoSleep until sleep takes me. Abby always greets me at the door with her tail wagging, but she is happy to snuggle back up in bed with one of the kids while I get settled in for the night. Once I go to bed, she always gets up and follows me, then curls into a Beagle ball at my feet to fall back asleep.
About a week ago, as I am laying there reading, Abby stood up and came to the head of the bed and sat, her floppy ears perked at attention. She stared into the darkness of the en suite bathroom for several minutes, never moving. This is very odd for her. As I've said, we have no close neighbors to make noise that would unsettle her. I put my phone down and listened carefully. Nothing. Maybe it was the scary stories I had been reading, but I couldn't help it when the heebie jeebies came over me. I put my hand on Abby's head, softly stroking her lemon-colored fur and tried to get her attention. She was so intently focused on whatever she was staring at that she paid no attention to me. At this point, I am completely weirded out. So I got out of bed, walked into the bathroom, and flipped on the light. Nothing out of place. I listened carefully. No sounds other than the usual. I looked back towards our bed and Abby is still sitting there, staring at me with her unusually colored ice-blue eyes. She seems to be looking at me imploringly, as if she's begging me to come back to bed. "What is it, girl?" I ask her. She let out a soft whine and started thumping her tail against the mattress, but made no move to get off of the bed. After a couple of minutes of double-checking, I turned the lights off and crawled back in bed. Abby finally curled up at my feet again, and we drifted off together.
The next day was business as usual. I got up, got the kids their chocolate milk and settled them in front of a cartoon so I can make breakfast for us. My husband leaves for work early, around 3:30 am, so it was just me, the kids, and Abby Sue at home. One of the first things I noticed was that Abby was not scratching at and bouncing around the door with a full bladder like she normally does in the mornings. I went to the door and waited for her to jump up on the arm of the couch to be picked up. She was just laying in the middle of the living room floor, staring at me. "Come on. Don't you wanna potty?" I ask her. Finally, she got up and came to me, albeit very reluctantly, and I took her outside to her tie out cable. (A fence does absolutely no good for a beagle, TRUST ME.) Usually I leave her outside for about an hour every morning because she likes to run around and sniff for any woodland creatures that might have crossed our yard during the night. However, on this morning, after only a few minutes, I heard her tell-tale "I wanna come in" bark. I went outside to bring her inside and started making the kids' breakfast.
The whole day it seemed that Abby was very listless and nervous. She followed me around everywhere I went. If I was in the bathroom, she was laying outside the door, patiently awaiting my exit. Every once in a while, when I would be just sitting and playing on my phone, she would get up and pace around the house, sniffing at various corners and such. A couple of times she even growled and raised her hackles. This is extremely out of character for our dog. Usually she is content to play with the kids or lay curled up in the recliner or her favorite sunny spot on the back of the couch. The only time she normally follows me is if I'm in the kitchen, because she thinks she might get a treat or a bite of leftovers.
I have to admit, Abby's restlessness was making me... Well, pretty restless. I tried to put it out of my mind. Chalked it up to the fact that I had been reading so much NoSleep and had creeped myself out to the point that I was reading too much into things. It was probably just a stray cat or dog outside that Abby could somehow sense that was making her act funny. That's what I told myself, anyway. I put it out of my mind and didn't think much about it after I went to work that afternoon.
The unfortunate side effect of my husband and I working opposite shifts is that we don't see each other very much. We have one day off together a week, and we sometimes see each other in passing as he is coming home and I am leaving. But usually my sister-in-law comes by to get my preschooler off the bus in the afternoons and play with my two-year-old until my husband gets home. That day was one of those days, so I didn't mention anything to John, my husband, about Abby. We texted a few times that evening about the kids and whatnot. Around 8:30 pm, which is their bedtime, he sent a text saying that he thought Abby might be sick. All of those heebie jeebie feelings came back to me as I sat on a bench outside of my work.
When I got home that night, Abby didn't greet me at the door as usual. After spending the last two and a half hours worrying about her after John's text, this put me into a full-blown panic. After I looked in to check on the kids, noticing that Abby was not in one of their beds, I walked towards my bedroom with horrible thoughts running through my mind. Would I find her dead? Did she somehow get out and is fending for herself against any number of wild animals that roam the night? I stepped into my bedroom and she was not there. I walked down the hallway to the room the kids share to check again. Maybe I missed her. I didn't. She wasn't there.
"Abby? Come here, baby. Abby, where are you?" I called, standing at the end of the hallway. I heard a soft thumping noise, but at first I couldn't tell where it was coming from. I'm not gonna lie, I almost had a heart attack before I reasoned that it was probably Abby's tail thumping against something after I called for her. I walked farther into the living room, following the sound. I called out again, "Abby? Come on, girl. Come out." The thumping got slightly more vigorous, and I determined that it was coming from behind our recliner. So I walked over and looked back there, and there is Abby, looking so forlorn but, of course, tail thumping.
Once I coaxed her out of her hiding spot, which was a very weird thing for her to do, I assess her. She gradually comes out of whatever her problem is and is soon happily following me around the kitchen and jumping up to lean on my belly with any chance she gets to get some loving. I make a mental note to call her vet the next morning and go about my business, thinking maybe she had just gotten in trouble for something and feels guilty. I also make a mental note to ask John about it.
But then, when I headed for bed, she refused to come into my room. Despite calling, patting my leg, lots of petting, she just wouldn't. I stood in my bedroom doorway while she sat four feet away with her head down. And when I went towards her, she peed a little puddle in the floor as if she were scared witless. I cleaned up after her and left her to her own devices, all the while worrying about her. She opted to sleep in the recliner instead. So I went to bed and pulled up NoSleep, and felt almost ready to crash when the noises started.
In the quiet of the night, I heard a car door slam in my driveway. Abby, normally goes ballistic, barking and bouncing around at this sound. However, I heard nothing from her at first. Then a moment later, my ever-considerate pup let out a soft woof. Almost as if she knew everyone was asleep and didn't want to wake them up.
Footsteps outside my window on the sidewalk leading to my front porch. Another soft woof from Abby. It is around 1 am at this time, who the fuck is at my house.
Kind of in a panic at this point, I shook John and said, "Someone just pulled in the driveway and is walking to the door! It's the middle of the night! Something bad has happened." Another soft woof from Abby, as if confirming what I had just said.
Footsteps were then sounding loudly on our wooden porch. John jumped out of bed and practically ran to the door. He looks out the peephole. "I don't see anyone, look out the window," he demands.
I pulled back the edge of the curtain covering our front window and... Nothing. "There's no one there," I reply, somewhat incredulously. No one on the porch or sidewalk. No car in the driveway. Nothing. John and I looked at each other with wide eyes. "I heard them," I said, insistently. "I heard the car door slam plain as day, and the foot steps on the sidewalk. Someone was there."
"Maybe it was just a dream," John said softly. "You know how when you are falling asleep and you have those vivid dreams that make you jerk back awake? Maybe that's what it was."
"But Abby was woofing. You heard her, didn't you? And you heard the footsteps on the porch! Someone was there!" My voice is high-pitched and pleading. I was beyond scared.
"I'm gonna grab my pistol and I'll go take a look," John said to me in a reassuring tone.
I nodded in agreement, then walked over to pet Abby. "You heard it too, didn't you girl?" I asked her as I laid my hand on her head. It's at this point that I realized that she was trembling like I had never seen her before. Abby was scared and this scared me.
As John heads out the front door with his .22 caliber pistol, I walked down the hallway to check on the kids. Both were sound asleep, seemingly undisturbed by all of the commotion.
A few minutes later, John came back in to report that he saw nothing out of the ordinary. "It could have been a deer walking around out there. You know they're all over this place at night. The damn beasts have eaten the whole garden already, they are probably trying to get to the refrigerator to see what else we have," he says gently in a joking manner. He could tell I was unnerved, so he placed a hand on my shoulder and kissed my forehead. "It's okay. Let's go back to bed."
I nodded my head, eager for the comfort of logic. I followed him back to the bedroom as the thought occurs to me that the deer in the yard doesn't explain the sound of a car door slamming. I do my best to put it out of my head, and crawled back in bed. The absence of the previous adrenaline rush, coupled with a long day, has left me exhausted. Soon, I drifted off to sleep.
Sometime in the night, after John had left for work, I awoke to my four-year-old son crawling in bed with me.
"Hey, buddy, what's going on?" I asked him, my voice clogged with sleep.
"Abby is scared," he replied sleepily. "Something outside must be scaring her."
He laid his little head on my shoulder and fell back to sleep almost instantly. Although it isn't unusual for Conner to crawl into my bed after a scary dream, his intuitive statement about Abby pulled me hurriedly out of my half-asleep state.
After making sure my boy was settled comfortably in my bed and asleep, I jumped up and practically ran down the hall to check on my daughter, Brooklyn. She was still sound asleep in her bed and I breathed a sigh of relief. I walked through the living room, checking to make sure that the door was properly locked. Pulling back the curtain again, I peered into the darkness. A dense fog had formed, limiting my vision to only a few feet in front of my house. I stood, almost mesmerized, as I watched the churning fog for a few moments. Then something caught my eye. A dark shape in the fog. It seemed to churn restlessly with the fog, taking no real form. I squinted and tried to look closer. As I stared, I got the distinct feeling that someone - or some THING - was watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a 5-alarm blaze going off in the pit of my stomach. From behind the recliner, Abby let out a soft growl, which made me jump nearly out of my skin. I let the curtain fall back into place, and walked over to coax Abby out of her hiding spot again. But she was having none of it. She lay there trembling, with her hackles raised. No tail-wagging this time. It was safe to say that my dog and I both were thoroughly freaked the fuck out.
After checking all the windows and doors and making sure they were locked, making sure the alarm was set, and trying once again futilely to coax Abby out, I set about making coffee. No way was I going back to sleep.
After a cup of coffee, I summoned the courage to look out the window again. The fog had lifted. Strangely, it was just gone. No trace of it or the dark shape that I saw within it remained. I checked the weather on my phone to see if there were any heavy fog alerts, and it showed nothing. "What the hell is going on here?" I muttered to myself.
As an added precaution, and probably just to make myself feel better, I went into my bedroom closet and pulled down the combination lock-box that we keep the pistol in. I checked to make sure the semi-automatic pistol was fully loaded. I even loaded up the extra clip. I left the box unlocked on the back of my kitchen countertop. Out of reach of the kids, but still handy and close enough for me to get to if I needed it.
By this time, my adrenaline had once again worn off and, despite the coffee, I was tired. I flipped the TV on to the early morning news and laid down on the couch, hoping to catch a nap before the kids woke up. Abby finally came out of her hiding spot and curled up with me. We drifted off.
An hour or so later, I awoke to sounds that will forever haunt my dreams.
Submitted September 02, 2016 at 11:41AM by valeristark http://ift.tt/2bOgu8I nosleep
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