Last night after family fondue and a Christmas eve movie, I was tried and hit the bed around 11:30. I fell asleep right away, but woke up after what seemed only a short time. One of those situations where you feel like your body forgot to do something as far as nighttime prep goes and is saying, “Not yet.” I looked at my Garmin with the light up watch face and it had only been an hour since I’d hit the sack. I thought maybe I had a full bladder after the holiday movie Scotch and that was what had popped me awake. Alcohol doesn’t sit as well as it used to these days.
But then I heard snow crunching outside. Loud enough that I assumed it was what had interrupted my sleep. I listened for a moment, trying not to move or breathe too loud and miss the specifics of the location. But I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the side of the house, the neighbor’s back yard, or our back yard. It seemed like it might be a midnight bathroom run by the neighbor’s dog, Odin, although usually he gives a finishing flurry of barks. Or maybe it was someone taking a late night short cut home through our yard after a party at one of the houses on the cul de sac. That’s happened before, although usually it’s kids avoiding a long walk from the bus drop. That clearly wasn’t the case after midnight. I thought it would pass right away. And it seemed for a moment as though it had, as if my attention had caused it to stop, which I’m sure we’ve all experienced with a strange, nighttime noise. But then, right as I was starting to drift off again in little cycles of eye-closing microsleep, it came back, intermittently crunching in the snow. Enough noise that I started to worry someone was messing around behind the house.
We just had new windows put in, including where I was in the upstairs bedroom that looks out over the back yard, so there are no blinds to keep the noise out. Perhaps I was hearing something from much further away than I suspected. Amplified Christmas eve squirrels chasing each other through what’s left of the berried trees, or some of the other neighborhood dogs doing their late night business. It was still worth a check despite there being likely, even common, sources. Who knew if someone had decided our new windows and doors were worth a “security check” while we were asleep. So I rolled out of bed for a quick look, not even bothering to throw on the nearby robe. I stood framed in the back window, attentive in nothing but underpants, scanning for the source of the noise.
Nothing. No noise. Not even a squirrel bouncing between trees. The only disturbance I could see were footprints in the snow on the deck. Which was strange. Because we don’t use the deck in the winter. And because there’s no yard access to the deck. We didn’t have steps put in when it was built the year before last. You can only access it through the full season porch. Which was locked. Wasn’t it? We’d last used that door in the fall, before the snow fell. It was locked, I told myself. Of course it was.
The footprints started on the side near the neighbor’s house and were directed toward that … locked … porch door. Strangely, they ended halfway there. Had someone tried to get in the house, changed their mind, and backtracked? Some drunk neighbor who thought they were sneaking home after a bender? Or again, one of those local kids, maybe out past curfew and confused trying to skulk home after curfew?
If they had – although I found it difficult to believe someone would assume a stairless deck was the entrance to their own home, but alcohol can play some unusual mind games – they would have left a mess of the snow on the deck rails and presumably used the little table in the back patio area to get to the deck, likewise leaving a mess of the snow there. But I could see the deck rails and I could see the small table five feet below the deck and both were undisturbed, covered in a layer of pristine, although slightly melted, snow without so much as a squirrel print. While I was standing there in the window, thinking about how someone could have air dropped onto my deck, I heard the crunch of slightly melted snow again. This time there was no question where the noise had come from. It wasn’t from next door, or a distant sound across the expanse of the dark back yard. It came directly from in front of me and below. From the deck.
There were two more foot prints in the snow.
But these prints weren’t aimed at the door to the porch or two divots in the snow I had missed leading back off the deck. These were pointed directly at my window. Like someone had turned while taking a slow step forward to face me from the center of the deck. This is where, if this was a horror story, someone inevitably says, “I couldn’t see anyone, but I could feel the weight of invisible eyes watching me.” That’s how you know it’s not real. Because that’s absolutely not how it felt. Despite the obvious presence of feet, it didn’t feel like an invisible human was there, doing something as human as watching through human eyes. There was only the impression something was there, I’d caught it’s attention, and it was waiting, pointed directly at me. Ominous? Yes. The unknown always triggers a bit of fear. My presence in the window. Its presence on the deck. Waiting. For what? Did it want inside? Was it out for a walk? Was it dangerous? Was I as much of an enigma to it as it was to me?
I stood there for a good five minutes, although it felt much longer, before backing away. I gave the deck a second glance to see if my movement was reciprocated and, when it wasn’t, lay down in the dark room again wondering if that would be a catalyst for some sort of action. I waited for the crunch that might indicate it was moving toward the house or going away now that I was no longer holding its attention, or the rattle and scrape of the porch door which would tell me for sure whether it was locked. But that crunch never came and eventually I drifted off, feeling safe with locked doors between me and the presence on the deck.
When I awoke this morning, I looked out the bedroom window again safe in the bright light of day. The footprints are still there and it’s even clearer they start on the deck and end on the deck with no visible disturbance of nearby snow. Two of them are still pointed directly at my bedroom window as though someone stopped to look up, caught in their secret walk midjourney. I don’t feel it out there the same way I felt something standing there last night. I don’t know if something is out there waiting. Or what it’s waiting for. Besides me.
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