nmpickar
04-19-2010, 10:13 PM
Something Coming In The Dark
Nick Pickard
Something evil, in the dark,
Is coming close beside me
I cannot run, I cannot hide
Where I will go, he’ll find me
I cannot see it, I only hear it
Its coming closer still
In darkness I have ventured in
In darkness I’ll be killed
Brinnon Washington was a town of little significance. Composed of a gas station, a motel, a general store, a liquor store, and hardly any homes. The things keeping the town alive were the weekend houses just outside the town, on Hood Canal, and the national park. With one major road in the town, people who passed through hardly noticed they were there, and those who did come in, were only their briefly to buy food, or liquor. If a day came when the town of Brinnon ceased to exist, the world would continue on as it was without even knowing.
In a town of this kind of isolation, and seclusion, things can go on for weeks and days without anyone knowing about them. And if something comes along with the importance of knowing, the town’s people either don’t care, or keep to themselves.
It is this mentality and way of life that separates them from the residents of shore houses on Wawa point. Many of these people are businessmen with their families on vacation for the weekend, or old retirees searching for peace on the shores of Hood Canal. The combination of city people coming to Brinnon usually doesn’t provide very much conflict. Those on Wawa point usually don’t come into town unless they need supplies, and those in town usually don’t venture out to Wawa point.
Robert Hermann spent much of his time on the point. A single, forty-year-old teacher from Seattle, who enjoyed his summers and weekends on the point and the seclusion it gave him. He never liked children, young adults, or anyone. The only things he enjoyed were reading, writing, and classical music. He didn’t enjoy anything that interrupted those three things.
On a cool night in late September, Hermann was spending his weekend in his cabin reading, over looking the canal from his back porch. The sun had already set, and Hermann was reading by lamp light on his back porch. This was one of only three lights in his whole cabin. The lights in his cabin consisted of the light on his porch, the light in his kitchen, and the light in his living room. He had no light in his bedroom. His cabin was the last on a road of twenty other houses. His stood out because his was the only house you could see from the road. All the other houses had long extravagant driveways up to the actual house, while his stood modestly on the road, with just a one-car garage to fit his small car. The road was lined with tall extravagant trees, blocking all light from the houses to the road. Hermann enjoyed this about his house. He relished this separation from his neighbors.
Reading his novel, immersed in the world only the dictation of Stephen King could bring to life, his read for hours deeper and deeper into the night. He looked out off of his porch to see the lights of the town of Brinnon, visible from his back porch only because of the one light from the Brinnon general store. As stepped through each page of his book, screening every page for every ounce of significance, and symbolism, the lights went out. Hermann was on his porch, plunged into a pit of darkness.
He got up out of his chair, felt his way to his glass sliding door, and entered his house. He patiently walked through his house to the light switch, and flipped it on. He flipped it back off. And on once again. Each time failing to reintroduce light to the room. He had no candles, or things to start a fire. He was never an outdoorsy like of person. He was more of the kind that enjoyed a controlled natural setting, rather than a situation controlled by nature. After a minutes pause, he decided to go to the general store in Brinnon, in order to pick up something to build a fire with in his fire place. He never really used his fireplace, but he also never liked the cold, and wanted to be warm tonight. He had also never built a fire before, but he had read sometime ago how to do it, and he assumed it wouldn’t be too hard.
He walked over to his garage, and prepared to get in his car only to stop short. An electrical opener opened his car garage, and all electricity was cut off for the moment. So, not to be deterred, he set out on foot towards the store. It was only three miles walk, and he always enjoyed a nice stroll along those country back roads during the day. They probably would look lovely in the moonlight he assured himself as he put on his scarf and coat.
He stepped out into the night. Holding his flashlight in his left hand. He hit the button, and a small beam of light came out of the pocket-sized flashlight. He stepped out onto the road and began to walk. He noticed how definitive a sound his footsteps made as they slammed onto the pavement. He was a very clumsy walker. Just a few footsteps away from his home, he turned and saw his house had completely disappeared. Swallowed in a shroud of darkness. He took steps much slower than he normally would. Not for any other reason than he wasn’t as sure footed in the darkness, even with the dim light of his flashlight. But as he continued on up the road away from his cabin, the light dimmed as well. With each continuing step, the light dimmed, the deeper into the night he walked, the darker the light became, the night consuming the last bits of life of his flashlight in mere minutes.
After a moment, Hermann’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could see a little better. He used the stars above him as a way to see where the road turned, and continued down the road. To get to the road the Brinnon general store was on, one has to go down the road Hermann’s house sat on, past a cow pasture, turn, connect with the main highway and a two mile walk along the highway brings you to the store.
Hermann reached the pasture, and stopped a little to observe the scene. The moons sliver light reflected across the plain, portraying a passive and peaceful setting, the cows sleeping in the field, in a cluster, in the corner. He started to walk again down the road, and as he did a peculiar sight caught his eye. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining things, for his eye sight was very poor in the dark, but he thought he saw something creeping closer to the herd in the distance, something big, black, barely moving, and hardly noticeable, but edging closer every second towards the herd of cattle. Upon reexamination, there wasn’t any figure at all, and he continued on his way.
Continuing down the dark road, he couldn’t assure himself that there wasn’t something in the field. Hadn’t he seen it? Didn’t it stand out amongst the grasses in the field as an anomaly, a deviation from that which belongs in a field? As he continued down the pasture road, he reached the highway, but continued to dwell on the mysterious phantom. What did it look like? What would it be like? And why was it so far from the herd? Was it a sickly cattle wandering aimlessly from its herd, its mother abandoned it as a lost cause, to roam freely, unprotected, to fend for itself in the confines of it’s pastoral prison?
He reached the road, and saw a car in the distance speeding toward him, the lights burning his dark adjusted eyes. The car came and went, but Hermann was tossed back into a pit of darkness, the car’s light destroying all vision he had in the night. Hermann stood silently, motionlessly, and attentively in the darkness. Unprotected, and venerable to everything, he listened to hear the nocturnal noises around him. Waiting, hoping, praying for his partial sight to return. All he could hear was the soft breathing of the cattle in the field next to him, and the steady beat of his heart, beating loudly in contrast to the silent night.
He continued down the road towards Brinnon to the sounds of his feet scuffing the pavement and the soft droll of his beating heart. It wasn’t long before the dim night vision he had minutes before returned and he felt a little more secure as he continued to town. It was just as his sense of security was restored, when he heard something else behind him. He had never heard that sort of noise before, something like the sound of a heavy foot lightly thumping the ground. He paused to hear if the sound would come again. But he heard nothing. Just the sound of his heart, beat just a bit louder. He didn’t wait long before he continued down the road, but this time he was listening carefully for the sound. He walked carefully hoping and dreading to hear the sound again. Was it nothing? Was it his imagination? It had to be. “Thud.” He heard the sound again, only this time he was sure he heard it. He looked, he strained his eyes for something. He didn’t know what, only where. He couldn’t see anything. He called out with confidence, “Hello!” There was no reply. “Speak up, friend.” The second time with a little less confidence. But no answer came, just another noise, advancing in his direction. Hermann turned, his heart now pounding. He couldn’t determine now whether it was the thing in the darkness advancing or his heart pounding through his chest making this noise. He began walking again, but quicker, with purpose. As he accelerated his pace, the sound behind him picked up as well. He was being hunted, stalked, pursued by a dark figure in the woods a mile from anyone who could come and save him. His new pace seemed to incite the figure behind him. As he quickened his pace, so did his pursuer. He began to jog, and then suddenly broke out into a run, adrenaline pouring through his veins. He could hear the presence behind him pick up the pace. But what he could also hear is more than two feet. This was no man. This was an animal, a beast; a savage creature hungering for flesh. The images of being eaten alive pouring through his mind as he raced down the road, feeling the beast behind him close the gap. Almost out of breath, and energy, using his last bits of life to continue his sprint for survival, a beacon of hope caught his eye.
The luminescent beams of another car coming around the bend came into view. He turned around, and there was nothing behind him. The animal had gone. Scared off by the sound and light from the car. Only one hundred yards away, and speeding towards him, Hermann waved his hands hysterically at the car in order to flag it down. A wave of joy spread through Hermann’s body. His nightmarish trot through the darkness was over. His trip back to his home in the confines of a warm car just seconds away. The car coming closer, couldn’t come soon enough for Hermann. Like a child waiting for Christmas to come, he couldn’t wait. The car crept closer and closer. Even speeding at fifty miles an hour seem slow. Coming toward him as if it were a dream, coming closer and closer, nearer and nearer. The car, almost upon him, and now past him, speeding its way, down the dark secluded road. Hermann’s dream became a nightmare. Not only was he alone, but he had lost any ability to see in the darkness as well. He could see nothing, feel nothing but the bite of the cold night air, but what he could hear, he dreaded, the soft thud of the animal’s feet, coming from the deep darkness of the road toward him slowly, edging closer and closer. He ran. Where he ran, he didn’t know, he knew it wasn’t on the road anymore. He was now in the woods, stepping over stumps and brushing bushes in his flight. He ran faster than he ever imagined he could run. He ran so fast he fell, out of control, into a tree. He rebounded as quickly as he fell. His vague vision restored. He climbed, why he didn’t know, but he climbed higher and higher, and as he climbed he was pursued up the tree by the beast of the night. Higher and higher, until the branches became thinner and thinner, he was running out of room, he had to press on, till the branches broke beneath his boots. Crack! Hermann’s world stopped, his mind spinning, what was happening, where was he? He was in the tree. Still, clutching the fir for dear life. The branches had succumbed to the animal’s weight, and the creature had plummeted into the darkness below. All was silent. Nothing could be heard except Hermann’s heart beating. He felt his heart, almost in his throat, attempting to burst out of him, the pain of running so fast, and climbing so hard, now wearing into his body, his head spinning from hitting the tree in his dash from the road. He stayed motionless in the tree for a long time, waiting to hear anything from the dark abyss below. After what seemed like hours of waiting in the tree for some sign of safety, Hermann began his treacherous climb back down to the forest floor. He felt the broken branch the beast broke during his pursuit, and continued down the tree. Upon climbing down the tree, Hermann realized how tall of a tree this was, and realized how far the beats must have fallen. He could now see the ground and a figure, lying unconscious on the ground. He stepped on the final branch before he was at the ground, and slipped. He plummeted six feet to the ground, and fell unconscious next to the beast. He awoke minutes later, again plunged into a pit of darkness, his eyes disarranged to the darkness once more. Almost hyperventilating, he could see saw nothing but for the first time in the darkness he felt something that hadn’t been there before. A warm sensation creeping down his back. A wet, rotten, growling pant directly behind Hermann’s head. Hermann’s breathing slowed, and he closed his eyes, going into darkness once more.
Nick Pickard
Something evil, in the dark,
Is coming close beside me
I cannot run, I cannot hide
Where I will go, he’ll find me
I cannot see it, I only hear it
Its coming closer still
In darkness I have ventured in
In darkness I’ll be killed
Brinnon Washington was a town of little significance. Composed of a gas station, a motel, a general store, a liquor store, and hardly any homes. The things keeping the town alive were the weekend houses just outside the town, on Hood Canal, and the national park. With one major road in the town, people who passed through hardly noticed they were there, and those who did come in, were only their briefly to buy food, or liquor. If a day came when the town of Brinnon ceased to exist, the world would continue on as it was without even knowing.
In a town of this kind of isolation, and seclusion, things can go on for weeks and days without anyone knowing about them. And if something comes along with the importance of knowing, the town’s people either don’t care, or keep to themselves.
It is this mentality and way of life that separates them from the residents of shore houses on Wawa point. Many of these people are businessmen with their families on vacation for the weekend, or old retirees searching for peace on the shores of Hood Canal. The combination of city people coming to Brinnon usually doesn’t provide very much conflict. Those on Wawa point usually don’t come into town unless they need supplies, and those in town usually don’t venture out to Wawa point.
Robert Hermann spent much of his time on the point. A single, forty-year-old teacher from Seattle, who enjoyed his summers and weekends on the point and the seclusion it gave him. He never liked children, young adults, or anyone. The only things he enjoyed were reading, writing, and classical music. He didn’t enjoy anything that interrupted those three things.
On a cool night in late September, Hermann was spending his weekend in his cabin reading, over looking the canal from his back porch. The sun had already set, and Hermann was reading by lamp light on his back porch. This was one of only three lights in his whole cabin. The lights in his cabin consisted of the light on his porch, the light in his kitchen, and the light in his living room. He had no light in his bedroom. His cabin was the last on a road of twenty other houses. His stood out because his was the only house you could see from the road. All the other houses had long extravagant driveways up to the actual house, while his stood modestly on the road, with just a one-car garage to fit his small car. The road was lined with tall extravagant trees, blocking all light from the houses to the road. Hermann enjoyed this about his house. He relished this separation from his neighbors.
Reading his novel, immersed in the world only the dictation of Stephen King could bring to life, his read for hours deeper and deeper into the night. He looked out off of his porch to see the lights of the town of Brinnon, visible from his back porch only because of the one light from the Brinnon general store. As stepped through each page of his book, screening every page for every ounce of significance, and symbolism, the lights went out. Hermann was on his porch, plunged into a pit of darkness.
He got up out of his chair, felt his way to his glass sliding door, and entered his house. He patiently walked through his house to the light switch, and flipped it on. He flipped it back off. And on once again. Each time failing to reintroduce light to the room. He had no candles, or things to start a fire. He was never an outdoorsy like of person. He was more of the kind that enjoyed a controlled natural setting, rather than a situation controlled by nature. After a minutes pause, he decided to go to the general store in Brinnon, in order to pick up something to build a fire with in his fire place. He never really used his fireplace, but he also never liked the cold, and wanted to be warm tonight. He had also never built a fire before, but he had read sometime ago how to do it, and he assumed it wouldn’t be too hard.
He walked over to his garage, and prepared to get in his car only to stop short. An electrical opener opened his car garage, and all electricity was cut off for the moment. So, not to be deterred, he set out on foot towards the store. It was only three miles walk, and he always enjoyed a nice stroll along those country back roads during the day. They probably would look lovely in the moonlight he assured himself as he put on his scarf and coat.
He stepped out into the night. Holding his flashlight in his left hand. He hit the button, and a small beam of light came out of the pocket-sized flashlight. He stepped out onto the road and began to walk. He noticed how definitive a sound his footsteps made as they slammed onto the pavement. He was a very clumsy walker. Just a few footsteps away from his home, he turned and saw his house had completely disappeared. Swallowed in a shroud of darkness. He took steps much slower than he normally would. Not for any other reason than he wasn’t as sure footed in the darkness, even with the dim light of his flashlight. But as he continued on up the road away from his cabin, the light dimmed as well. With each continuing step, the light dimmed, the deeper into the night he walked, the darker the light became, the night consuming the last bits of life of his flashlight in mere minutes.
After a moment, Hermann’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could see a little better. He used the stars above him as a way to see where the road turned, and continued down the road. To get to the road the Brinnon general store was on, one has to go down the road Hermann’s house sat on, past a cow pasture, turn, connect with the main highway and a two mile walk along the highway brings you to the store.
Hermann reached the pasture, and stopped a little to observe the scene. The moons sliver light reflected across the plain, portraying a passive and peaceful setting, the cows sleeping in the field, in a cluster, in the corner. He started to walk again down the road, and as he did a peculiar sight caught his eye. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining things, for his eye sight was very poor in the dark, but he thought he saw something creeping closer to the herd in the distance, something big, black, barely moving, and hardly noticeable, but edging closer every second towards the herd of cattle. Upon reexamination, there wasn’t any figure at all, and he continued on his way.
Continuing down the dark road, he couldn’t assure himself that there wasn’t something in the field. Hadn’t he seen it? Didn’t it stand out amongst the grasses in the field as an anomaly, a deviation from that which belongs in a field? As he continued down the pasture road, he reached the highway, but continued to dwell on the mysterious phantom. What did it look like? What would it be like? And why was it so far from the herd? Was it a sickly cattle wandering aimlessly from its herd, its mother abandoned it as a lost cause, to roam freely, unprotected, to fend for itself in the confines of it’s pastoral prison?
He reached the road, and saw a car in the distance speeding toward him, the lights burning his dark adjusted eyes. The car came and went, but Hermann was tossed back into a pit of darkness, the car’s light destroying all vision he had in the night. Hermann stood silently, motionlessly, and attentively in the darkness. Unprotected, and venerable to everything, he listened to hear the nocturnal noises around him. Waiting, hoping, praying for his partial sight to return. All he could hear was the soft breathing of the cattle in the field next to him, and the steady beat of his heart, beating loudly in contrast to the silent night.
He continued down the road towards Brinnon to the sounds of his feet scuffing the pavement and the soft droll of his beating heart. It wasn’t long before the dim night vision he had minutes before returned and he felt a little more secure as he continued to town. It was just as his sense of security was restored, when he heard something else behind him. He had never heard that sort of noise before, something like the sound of a heavy foot lightly thumping the ground. He paused to hear if the sound would come again. But he heard nothing. Just the sound of his heart, beat just a bit louder. He didn’t wait long before he continued down the road, but this time he was listening carefully for the sound. He walked carefully hoping and dreading to hear the sound again. Was it nothing? Was it his imagination? It had to be. “Thud.” He heard the sound again, only this time he was sure he heard it. He looked, he strained his eyes for something. He didn’t know what, only where. He couldn’t see anything. He called out with confidence, “Hello!” There was no reply. “Speak up, friend.” The second time with a little less confidence. But no answer came, just another noise, advancing in his direction. Hermann turned, his heart now pounding. He couldn’t determine now whether it was the thing in the darkness advancing or his heart pounding through his chest making this noise. He began walking again, but quicker, with purpose. As he accelerated his pace, the sound behind him picked up as well. He was being hunted, stalked, pursued by a dark figure in the woods a mile from anyone who could come and save him. His new pace seemed to incite the figure behind him. As he quickened his pace, so did his pursuer. He began to jog, and then suddenly broke out into a run, adrenaline pouring through his veins. He could hear the presence behind him pick up the pace. But what he could also hear is more than two feet. This was no man. This was an animal, a beast; a savage creature hungering for flesh. The images of being eaten alive pouring through his mind as he raced down the road, feeling the beast behind him close the gap. Almost out of breath, and energy, using his last bits of life to continue his sprint for survival, a beacon of hope caught his eye.
The luminescent beams of another car coming around the bend came into view. He turned around, and there was nothing behind him. The animal had gone. Scared off by the sound and light from the car. Only one hundred yards away, and speeding towards him, Hermann waved his hands hysterically at the car in order to flag it down. A wave of joy spread through Hermann’s body. His nightmarish trot through the darkness was over. His trip back to his home in the confines of a warm car just seconds away. The car coming closer, couldn’t come soon enough for Hermann. Like a child waiting for Christmas to come, he couldn’t wait. The car crept closer and closer. Even speeding at fifty miles an hour seem slow. Coming toward him as if it were a dream, coming closer and closer, nearer and nearer. The car, almost upon him, and now past him, speeding its way, down the dark secluded road. Hermann’s dream became a nightmare. Not only was he alone, but he had lost any ability to see in the darkness as well. He could see nothing, feel nothing but the bite of the cold night air, but what he could hear, he dreaded, the soft thud of the animal’s feet, coming from the deep darkness of the road toward him slowly, edging closer and closer. He ran. Where he ran, he didn’t know, he knew it wasn’t on the road anymore. He was now in the woods, stepping over stumps and brushing bushes in his flight. He ran faster than he ever imagined he could run. He ran so fast he fell, out of control, into a tree. He rebounded as quickly as he fell. His vague vision restored. He climbed, why he didn’t know, but he climbed higher and higher, and as he climbed he was pursued up the tree by the beast of the night. Higher and higher, until the branches became thinner and thinner, he was running out of room, he had to press on, till the branches broke beneath his boots. Crack! Hermann’s world stopped, his mind spinning, what was happening, where was he? He was in the tree. Still, clutching the fir for dear life. The branches had succumbed to the animal’s weight, and the creature had plummeted into the darkness below. All was silent. Nothing could be heard except Hermann’s heart beating. He felt his heart, almost in his throat, attempting to burst out of him, the pain of running so fast, and climbing so hard, now wearing into his body, his head spinning from hitting the tree in his dash from the road. He stayed motionless in the tree for a long time, waiting to hear anything from the dark abyss below. After what seemed like hours of waiting in the tree for some sign of safety, Hermann began his treacherous climb back down to the forest floor. He felt the broken branch the beast broke during his pursuit, and continued down the tree. Upon climbing down the tree, Hermann realized how tall of a tree this was, and realized how far the beats must have fallen. He could now see the ground and a figure, lying unconscious on the ground. He stepped on the final branch before he was at the ground, and slipped. He plummeted six feet to the ground, and fell unconscious next to the beast. He awoke minutes later, again plunged into a pit of darkness, his eyes disarranged to the darkness once more. Almost hyperventilating, he could see saw nothing but for the first time in the darkness he felt something that hadn’t been there before. A warm sensation creeping down his back. A wet, rotten, growling pant directly behind Hermann’s head. Hermann’s breathing slowed, and he closed his eyes, going into darkness once more.