Broken Antlers
It was late at night, maybe 10:30 or so. I had gotten off work around ten, like always. I worked the evening shift at one of the libraries at my local college. It was a smaller one, maybe a few hundred square feet, but it was a popular place for students as it was meant for the medical school that brought many students to the university that made my home a college town. This meant it was open most of the day, including well into the night. My job was to watch the place, clean everything up, occasionally answer phone calls, and help students find books. It was about as dull as a job could get, but I was happy to find anything that wasn’t my typical work in kitchens and grocery stores after college. Even though I liked the job well enough, I couldn’t help but always feel a little creeped out right as my shift ended. Being alone in a place like that, the hum of machines was the only noise to fill the silence of those late hours on nights when everyone else had left.
The evening shift wasn’t what stuck with me from that night, but I knew it had made me already uneasy. That split second, I was alone in the dark after turning off all the lights and hearing all the machines clicking and whirring as they powered down; it was never fun to sit in that dark, surrounded by uncanny noises that you couldn’t help but feel like there could be something else with you, hiding behind a wall of disparate sounds. But I always knew nothing would happen, so I never let it bother me too much, or so I told myself. I locked up and headed to my car as soon as possible once 10:00 pm hit. It’s silly to be this worked up over being alone in the dark, but it was a latent uneasiness I had about darkness since I was a kid. I always felt fine by the time I got to my car. It was a short walk from where I worked anyways. I reached my destination, lit up a bowl, and went home.
I lived alone off the highway, not too far from town. It wasn’t a bad commute, given my odd working hours and the large interstate that stretched through our village. Despite my general anxiety up to this point, I reassured myself nothing could go wrong once I got home. It was while getting off the interstate, on a drive that was so familiar to me, in a place I never expected I would see something. Even though it passed me in the blink of an eye, it would stick with me for so long that I had to tell it here all this time later. The night it started.
As I took the exit that I always take to get to my house, I saw something pass me by. It was so odd because of how fast I traveled that it would stick out in the dark. I remember the distinct feeling that I had passed by another person while taking the ramp. I still don’t know how to explain it; I just remember seeing the flash of what looked like a figure with white skin walking off to the side of the ramp, wearing a large duffel bag or backpack, too. I got to the bottom of the hill of this off-ramp; there’s a stop sign and a two-way paved road that runs under the highway to get to the neighborhood in which I live.
When I reached the hill’s bottom, I stopped and did a double-take. I saw nothing in that darkness, illuminated by only the artificial light of my car and the adjacent highway.
It may seem odd that I’m making such a big deal about seeing a guy walking by the highway in the dark, and I spent so much time in the next week or so telling myself that, but that area was no regular place for hitchhikers or homeless people to be. I lived and worked in the same small city most of my life. I have had the experience of knowing where I would see someone just looking for a ride or trying to find a place to sleep: it was always in gas stations and truck stops where you’d see folks without a car traveling around the country. There was a vast rest area not 2 miles from that off-ramp, often their destination. But this person seemed to be going in the opposite direction—West instead of East. In between, the adulterated beauty of the country was flanked on both sides by that massive highway that connected most of the state. The only way to get to my house was to follow the road, including a bridge across a vast river. As someone who had driven the area many times, I understood that he would’ve had to find a complicated route around the river to get to where I saw him. In short, it was illogical for him to be walking around there. Nevertheless, I brushed it off and continued home, figuring it to be one of the many tricks of the darkness of the country mixed with the weed.
Despite how odd it was, I had only seen a flash of a person walking around; I didn’t even know it was a man. It might have been anything when it’s that dark. At least I kept telling myself that. But I knew something more was at play; I was unsure what it was. I carried on my daily life like it was nothing, going to the same job, carrying out the same Sisyphean task of having to hear that same horrible whirring of the machines, all to drive home and take that same ramp. It was back to clockwork. After all, what business did I have knowing where anyone else goes? I’m not such an easily scared person, nor am I the kind to worry too much about what people do to get where they need to be. I tried not to worry about it. I failed. The situation crossed my mind more and more when I closed the library at night, sitting in the dark alone, my only ‘friend’ being the unnatural whirring of a whole facility shutting off its devices. It felt like being in something dying—a death rattle in the dark.
The nightly ritual continues: I close up shop, walk to the garage, smoke, and procrastinate while watching random videos online while slowly killing my car battery—routine post-work decompression for a 21-year-old. To finish off the lackluster night, I began the drive home. My experience, which has filled my dream with dread since it started, is why I’m writing this. I still remember small and insignificant things, but they were warnings from the world that I should’ve taken a different route that night. I wish I had.
The drive home went the same as always, coming nearly to completion when I reached the bottom of the hill at the turnoff for my house. In the middle of this off-ramp, I saw him again. Even though I had never seen his face the first time, I saw the same man standing in the center of the road at the very bottom of the small hill. I knew it as soon as I registered what I had seen. I could only hit my brakes quickly to force the car into submission. I stopped about halfway to the bottom of the ramp, allowing myself a few moments to recognize what I Was staring at. I was astounded by this slight concrete slope wedged between the dark emptiness of midwestern country farmland and an equally empty highway.
He was unphased. He just stood there, bathed in the light of my car. It all happened so slowly, but I know it couldn’t have been more than a few moments since we locked eyes. He wasn’t even a total of 100 feet away from me. Even though I was encased in a car, I felt powerless. And he smiled at that moment, his brown eyes locking with my green. It started as a slight smirk on the right side of his lips, almost like a look of reassurance, like he knew he was in an uncanny place too, but wasn’t shocked at all by it. He was in a gray sweatshirt, dirty blue jeans, and a pair of running shoes so worn it was hard to notice anything distinguishable about them. His hood was up, and the light reflected off him, mixed in with a healthy dose of anxiety from my brain. What was seconds came to me like years when the smile extended, his front teeth came out as his lips parted with a slowness that made it feel all the more deliberate like he was intentionally drawing it out of me; he had been waiting for this. When it was over, I saw a plain-faced guy in his 30s. Despite having the clothes of a vagrant, his teeth were shockingly white. That made the smile slowly creeping across his face even more unsettling there in the light. To this day, I don’t know if what happened next was shock, instinct, or something more sinister.
Even though it felt odd breaking the gaze, I had to do something and honked my horn to indicate my need to pass by him. The smile broke, and his white teeth receded behind his lips, breaking the facade for a second. He stood there a bit longer, seemingly taking in what I had done, but the rest of his face eluded me by the hoodie that hung over him. That’s when he walked off to the gravel on the side of the road, knelt over, and dropped something into the rocks between the paved road and the tall, thistly grass by the small hill that hugged the right side of the exit. Without looking, he finally descended into the tall grass, being sucked back into the darkness. I sat from the perceived safety of my car, utterly perplexed by what happened.
I tried to peer into the dark before the brightness of the lights of another fellow car approaching from behind. They greeted me with their own horn’s unique tone. I descended to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. I had to wait until tomorrow to see what he had deposited by the ramp. I’m grateful for that other driver and glad they forced me to stay in my car. I would return to the exit the following day with the protection of daylight and the presence of even more vehicles. I parked my car on the side of the road. I was avoiding the dead deer I hadn’t noticed in the previous night’s darkness. I reached down where I thought he had dropped the item and grabbed an instructional booklet for a camera. It was one of the ones you get when you receive a new electronic device., It looked less than 20 pages long and was maybe 8X10 inches in size at most. The book seemed meant to be paired with a rather expensive-looking trail cam that was nowhere to be found. The booklet was muddied up by where it had been dropped, but I saw it professed to have a longer battery life than any other trail cam for its price. ‘So weird, why would they care to leave it here?’ I said to myself.
I took the booklet home and thumbed through the pages without cleaning it. Everything seemed to indicate this was an ordinary booklet, filled with technical terms for trail cams and instructions on setting it up. Then I got to the 2nd to last page. It was a crude, poorly made picture. At first, I thought the brown smudges were drawn with the same mud that covered the other pages, but it didn’t have the same smell or hue as the mud. It was dried blood. I spent so long focusing on what the drawing was made of that my first reaction was to kick myself once I realized what I had been looking over; the drawing was a crude smiley face with more minor streaks at the top of the character’s head. They were so poorly drawn I couldn’t understand what I was looking at, but then I remembered what I had come across before finding the book: a dead deer. My heart was already in my chest, pounding like an engine starting to combust, wondering if this blood and that deer by the highway was his doing and what the intentions of this bizarre shit was. I flipped to the final page in the back of the booklet. The words were slathered over pictures of a smiling father and son standing together over a freshly killed animal, another deer. It simply read, “C U!” It took all my mental fortitude at this point not to throw the pamphlet just to keep myself from rapidly building anxiety. What had I walked myself into? I was so profoundly frightened, filled with such dread that the weight of the anxiety felt like someone had dropped an anvil on my whole world. It was a while before I noticed someone had written my license plate number down in the corner of the page.
I spent the day with many questions about what was happening and why. I felt sick whenever I got into my car and had to drive home. I started going out even less, limiting my time to drive as much as possible to work and required social gatherings. A vast cloud had been cast over me in the shape of someone whose face I couldn’t remember, and I just had to sit and wait for the next play. I had chosen not to go to the police; what would I tell them? I was no lawyer, but I knew that a vagrant leaving creepy messages wasn’t illegal, and that was all I had to say about this guy. Any attempt would have been met with just more questions I didn’t have answers to.
Subsequent days were like a daze with these thoughts consuming me. Furthermore, living in the backcountry meant I was enveloped in complete darkness at night, and at work, I was only stuck with the feeling of total isolation as I stayed there late into the night. Every corner without illumination became a pair of staring eyes. The bellowing of the powered-down machines did little to ease me. I had chosen to change up my nightly ritual now. I parked as close to the building as possible and did not delay, trying to get home ASAP; anxiety had become the dictator of my new closing routine. Even the route I took to get home had now changed. My house and the few “ neighbors” we had stood as beacons of light against the all-consuming darkness that enveloped the world when the sun abandoned us, like lighthouses nestled against a rocky shore. Like the sea, I had no idea what was out there, if HE was there. The worst part was that, even though I had let this somewhat odd interaction frighten me, I somehow had forgotten his face. Not his smile etched like a stone in a mountain, not the pristine teeth that filled that horrible maw of false joy, nor his clothes, but his face. In my dreams to this day, despite the suffering he would wreak on my life for impending days and weeks, I intend to recount here that his face still eludes me. Eventually, time would pass, and I moved on. Like so many other things, time finds a way to let us rationalize the most uncanny of experiences when they find their way into reality. Unfortunately, reality is also often far more cruel and pernicious.
There were signs that someone had randomly selected me that night to be the target of their machinations in the coming weeks, but it either had concealed itself all too well or had just decided to pick up where it had left off. Eventually, things began to calm down, and I returned to my day-to-day tasks: working the same job and trying to find some purpose to fill the long, tedious hours of my working life. In between these were the typical experiences of your 20s, trips with family and friends, and the occasional romantic interest in my life. I even got promoted in my job within months of these initial incidents. These should have been the focus of conversation when I reminisce about young adulthood, the subject of dreams and warm reassurances through life’s complexities. But it isn’t. It’s not what consumed my dreams; it turned my brain against me. It’s him.
While it’s not my intention for every detail of my life to be revealed here, I suppose it is crucial to provide context to understand what else I was doing during this time. Something I always enjoyed doing, especially since it was summer, was spending time in the woods that my neighborhood surrounded. Amongst the area I lived was a series of houses. Among the few houses, stretch disconnected dirt paths that formed crude trails. In truth, they were merely the result of previous residents clearing paths of brush on ATVs.
I had been walking my dog on a trail off to the side of my house. This trail had decent shade as the trees that grew sound were tall pine trees; the bushes and thicket that plagued other trails around the neighborhood were replaced by the needles and small spherical fruits that fell from the trees. This made the trail very walkable and spanned the length of the neighborhood I lived in, being within eyeshot of the house itself. All of this made it a favorite of mine to walk my dog and spend time at.
There was one particular tree that stuck out. It was a giant weeping willow at the banks of a small pond that stood a hundred yards from the pines that laid the trail towards its very end. Its long, thin branches stretched from the tall tree into the ground. Across the other side of the pond’s banks lay the backyard, and from there, there is the window to my bedroom on the house’s second story. My dog had been on the edge of the pond, rummaging through something. I figured it was a frog or turtle that had caught her curiosity. I approached my dog, Stevie, who I had left unleashed on this particular day.
“Stevie. Stevie, what is it, girl? Did you find something?”.
I brushed her long ears back to see what she had been sniffing. I discovered what initially looked to be a small black rectangle. It was marked by mud, covered in leaves save for a black circle left by the bank. I knew what I was looking at when I saw the camera lens. It had been advertised as having such a long battery life you could leave it running for days, and it was the trail cam. It was pointed at my back window where I left the blinds up; he had never left.
The feeling I had when I had the camera is one that some may call dissociation, a feeling like you’re not in your own body, not in yourself. It felt more like I was observing some character in a story making this realization rather than this being my current situation. It felt like things went fuzzy in my eyes for a split second. All I could do was squat over the pond bank and try to rationalize the situation. No matter what I wanted to tell myself, I knew deep down exactly what had happened: I was being watched, and even if I had already met the person doing this, it wouldn’t matter. I had forgotten his face. I couldn’t go to the cops; I had no family or anyone who would listen. I was utterly alone. My only protection was a collection of kitchen knives I didn’t know how to defend myself with. This guy had every advantage over me in my own home and land, and I had no choice but to wait for the next move.
The house I lived in during this experience always had a porch light that flicked on and off due to a faulty wire that was far too expensive to justify fixing. It lit up fine; it just blinked every so often. Given my late work hours, this is always the first thing I see when approaching my house. As I was coming back one night, a few weeks after finding the camera, something already felt off, and the dull ache of anxiety began pulling at my chest. Something I had been feeling day in and out. As I pulled up to the house, I saw the blinking had stopped. White-yellowish light burned at a solid, unending pace. ‘Weird,’ I thought to myself. I hadn’t noticed the small black bag tucked in the corner of the porch. Even if I didn’t know why this had happened, I’d find out the following day. The scent was what caught my attention. Flies were buzzing all around the bag; rot, death, and decay were mixed in with the smell of the daffodils that lined the perimeter around the porch; it created a sickly sweet smell. I didn’t feel the same horror I had earlier when I looked down at the bag’s contents because I had already put it together that whoever left the bag was the same one to fix the light. I looked down into the bag, and my stomach twisted as I assembled what it was. Antlers. Antlers and meat.
They were from a smaller buck, to be sure, and they looked to barely be old enough to meet the minimum for hunting deer in most states. It was about 2 inches in height with 3 points on both antlers. What was more concerning was that it was still attached to chunks of the head, with blood and brain matter coating the bottom stem of the antlers. Yet, the head itself was nowhere to be found. They looked to have been pulled off by hand.
‘Who the fuck could pull antlers out of a deer’s head by hand like that. Much less get close enough to a deer to do it,’ I thought.
I called a game warden to the house. I needed someone to help me, and I finally had some evidence. Two officers pulled up half an hour later in a white truck bearing an enforcement logo. One was a tall man with no visible hair from his baseball cap that bore the same logo as his vehicle. His partner, the senior officer, did the talking. He was an older man with a cowboy hat that similarly covered much of his hair, though some long red strands poking out the back told me he was nowhere near balding. I was figuring out how to explain anything that had happened except to show them the bag. I thought about mentioning my hunch about who had done this but was worried I’d be labeled crazy. Or even accused of having done the deed myself.
Both officers were strangely calm when I showed them the bag. They showed up as if this was any other call. Both remained silent while I explained how I came to find the bag. The senior officer was Marty; he gave the impression he was experienced as they came. He spoke first, donning black nitrile gloves while speaking
“Do you have the bag now?” “Yes,” I said. “After I realized what was in it, I put it back down where I had found it so I could call you guys,” I responded.
“Perfect, son. Take us to it”.
I led them to the corner of the porch where it had been left. His taller partner kept his sunglasses on as I studied his face while he studied the bag.
He appeared to be in his early to mid-40s, had olive skin, and a constant frown that naturally stuck out. He said nothing, even as he moved the front porch swing the bag had been left a few inches from. Nothing about him stood out other than the 5 o’clock shadow that was all over his face. He stared over the contents of the bag with Marty. He winced at the smell, revealing the first hint of any emotion. He placed the bag on the swinging porch to his right. The two men stared briefly at each other, serenely speaking to each other so I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Marty came back over to me.
“Alright, son. To tell you the truth, we’ve never seen anything like this before. The best thing we can do right now is to survey the area and try to find the rest of the animals. It looked like poaching, but we need to find the rest of the animals before we can investigate further. Since you live here, would it be ok with you if we looked around? You can even help us if you want. You just have to be careful not to touch anything if we find something you think may be relevant.”
I readily agreed.
We spent several hours looking around the property. There wasn’t any protocol for what we were doing, so Marty and his partner, whom I heard Marty refer to as DeWalt a few times, were left to use our naked eyes. We spread out and searched for several hours. Marty and DeWalt followed tracks and tried to keep out for footprints or anything else that helped. Hunting was prevalent in this area, but I’m sure neither of these guys had to deal with this sort of thing during a regular deer season. We looked through the field of tall grass flanking the pond, keeping my eyes close to the bank and the tree groves that dotted various parts of the property line. We’d find it in the most secluded part of the deepest of these tree groves.
It was the smell of rot that drew us further and further into the tree line. Young pine trees, not even 10 feet tall, quickly turned into a small, angry patch of thorn trees, the largest and ugliest things we had on our land. There were no words spoken when we saw the buck’s body. It felt wrong to talk. He was laid out ceremonially on his back and sunk deep into the thorn tree that propped it up. It was like what a person would look like sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. It was facing toward us, too; its front hooves were still propped up, too, giving the illusion its headless body faced me when I approached it.
The thorns were not long enough to have impaled him, but the thorns pierced all the veins and arteries, leaving dried blood, and the remnants of the creature’s bowels spilled onto the grass in a now dark brown stain. The head was missing. There was no sign of it anywhere. The animal’s body had shrunk significantly. It was a young buck, but it looked like a grayish-brown husk after several days of death. That was all that remained of its body. The worms and birds had seen too much of its flesh. There was as much exposed bone and muscle tissue as discolored brown fur. Wherever the head was, it was likely in a similar state. Nothing deserved to die this way, and the way he had done it made it feel more like a human than a deer. It felt like murder, and I wondered if it was meant to be a message or a gift. I felt violated even seeing this, but more than anything, I felt sad for the deer.
Marty was the first to say anything.
“Hmm. What the hell kind of poaching is this? Usually, they just take the antlers and leave the rest for the birds. Never seen someone take a whole fucking head”
He was alarmed, just the same as me but spoke with more disbelief than anything. DeWalts forehead scrunched in disgust, a natural reaction from the smell. He turned to me, my face reflecting in his sunglasses.
“ Do you know why anyone would want to leave this here for any reason, man?”
I shook my head, only half breaking my gaze with the mounted body.
“What does any of this mean, Officers?” were the only words I could get out. Mary stared back in silence. DeWalt spoke with clarity for the first time. “ Whoever did this to you wants your attention. Now that he’s got it, there’s no telling what else will happen. We need to complete a report and see if we can cross-examine this with other reports happening in the surrounding area. If you are uncomfortable staying here, I would get out then. It’s all we can do right now, sir”.
“ Right” was all I could squeak out as I stared at the ground, where I noticed the black strip of hardened flesh that I had realized was the deer’s tongue by my foot. He hadn’t died screaming.
Talking with Marty and DeWalt was the best thing I could have done. It made me realize I was powerless until I could gaze upon this dark stranger’s face again. A smile that haunts me even now. I agreed that night on the road with him that our lives have become intertwined and that I can’t stop it until I leave or something else happens. The investigation Done by the game wardens proved inconclusive. Nothing would ever come of talking to the authorities. I had suspected as much, but having it confirmed to me by a very underwhelmed office assistant at the game warden’s office hit harder than anticipated. It was a confirmation I was truly alone.
My paranoia grew, and my anxiety reached a predictable all-time high. My sleep was minimal, and it was difficult to even keep up at my job, which I had found painfully easy up to this point. There had to be a change, and that’s when I did it. I gave up and left. I had lost, I was in an untenable living situation, I had isolated myself from my family and friends, and the job I had was more or less the entire reason I had gotten here, so quitting hadn’t proved much of an issue. I’ve lived as a hermit in a neighboring city for three months. I had left my house abandoned, carrying what I could in my car. Unfortunately, the bank that held my mortgage wouldn’t let me go so quickly. To sell my house to recuperate on the money spent to move cities with no job lined up at the last minute, I had to go back recently to clear out myself so I could begin selling the property and not lose my stuff to liquidators. I had initially considered hiring a moving company, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much when I already had so little left. More importantly, I also figured if he were still watching, he’d somehow be able to sabotage this or me more by infiltrating the movers. I was trying to escape and move on with my life, and going back to finish packing up would be the last thing I’d have to do before I could do that. Stupid as it was, it seemed like a small price to pay at the time.
I pulled into the driveway; the house already looked long abandoned, the grass was overflowing, and the flowers were dead like it was winter despite being mid-April, a time when nature was rich and flourishing around here. I had drawn the blinds, giving it a look of shuddering. The roof and exterior looked worn, though; paint was visibly chipping from the exterior, and gutters were stuffed with foliage, clovers, and felled leaves, way more than expected. The flower patch I had once let native flowers run wild was dead, and I smelled oddly near them as I got out of the car to get a better look. It’s like fresh mulch, but it had been a while since I laid any in too long. The whole place smelled a bit of rotting plants, something I had finally gotten used to not smelling in the weeks since leaving. The entire house appeared like some run-down old home in a city, not the recently built country-style home I had invested in. It felt dead, and somehow, the death was so pronounced. I knew coming back was a mistake.
In retrospect, things were undoubtedly off initially, but they were subtle enough that I chose not to leave. Strangely, I wanted to go inside now; it felt like the only course. The outside looked slightly off, and it was easy to chalk up to nature. If you don’t care for your house, it will look bad. But things in the kitchen were moved around; I knew how I organized my pantry and cabinets, and things were off, a can of soup being where the beans always went. As I walked out from the pantry, I came face to face with a figure standing a mere few feet away in the middle of the hall between the kitchen and the front door. Their knife swung so quickly it was all I could do to look at their mangled mask, an eyeless deer’s crudely skinned face.
In what felt like a flash, the man revealed himself by swinging down with full force on my arm with a knife. It didn’t cut deep, but my shirt was torn, and blood came out at a steady pace. As quickly as I could register what happened, I threw the can of black beans I was holding. It crashed into his throat; he reached for it and stammered, and an uncanny croaking sound came from him as he struggled to breathe. I realized now he was wearing the face as a death mask. The question of the deer’s missing head was solved. It was twisted and held together with bits of wire and staples. Pustules that had burst and healed lined around the face, leaving dry blood encrusted on the faded brown fur that looked to have been painted with brown paint to make the mask’s skin appear less rotted. The nose was caved in, and bruising was made more explicit by the deep yellowish-brown bruises that adorned it, giving the deer’s face an uncanny appearance. What remained of its empty mouth fell open perpetually, seemingly being spared the same wires and staples the rest of the mask had used to stay together. This made the head seem like it was perpetually screaming. As I took in the surreal face garb, he got up, stumbling to pick up his knife. No sounds other than heavy breathing came from him as we locked eyes. I could see no smile from the horrible excuse of a mouth hole his mask had. But there was no need for it to come off; we had known each other the entire time and knew it would come to something like this. A part of me had hoped this whale time I had been crazy, or somehow his torment would go away. He had stopped being human, more of a black cloud than a stalker or stranger in the night.
I tore down a small metal curtain rod from the window hanging over the kitchen sink. I had made my way towards my dark stranger. The metal snapping sound as I desperately wrestled it from the wall gave my assailant a sense of urgency as he moved with incredible swiftness to try and get on top of me. Luckily, I had gotten to my feet in time, almost totally to miss my first swing on him. A silver lining came in the form of me using the artichoke-shaped decoration on either side of the curtain holder, making enough contact with his temple to make him stand back and clutch his mask-covered face, knife still in hand. Before I could fully stumble, I found my footing, reared back, and put as much force as I could into hitting his torso. I felt the contact of the ribs and what I thought was his sternum. This knocked the wind out of him as he started gasping and coughing. I had hoped to turn the ground to my advantage, but he proved he wouldn’t go down quickly, beginning to slash with intense ferocity as he approached me, his pace getting quicker.
I darted for the stairs as I didn’t want to get pinned against them or the nearby wall, hoping that higher ground might give me an advantage. Instead of standing, I let instinct take over and threw myself into the guest bedroom upstairs. I locked the deadbolt I had installed when I first got the place. I knew this place better than him. This tiny bit of confidence was quickly washed away by the horrible stench that I realized permeated the room. The room was always effortless, as I wasn’t one to have many guests. The simple white-sheeted bed was home to a pile of dirty clothes and old boots caked in what I hoped was dried mud. The sheets themselves were nowhere to be seen on the bed itself. I then looked towards the small closet just a few feet away from the nightstand that, along with the dresser in the opposite corner, constituted the only other piece of furniture in this room.
Before I could search for the source of the smell, I knew I had more important things to deal with and began searching to find something that I could use other than the now bent curtain rod I had been clutching in my shaking hands. I practically lunged at the nightstand. I threw the drawer open, and all the while, I tried to listen for the psycho skulking around downstairs. My attention focused on as I laid my eyes upon the contents of my new squatters’ drawers: A Phillips head screwdriver, a small set of needle nose pliers, and three sets of eyeballs neatly organized alongside each other. One was a large set of brown eyes, and two were smaller sets of eyes: one green, one blue. Without thinking about who the other eyes might have belonged to, I finally realized where the stench came from. I moved towards the dark closet, screwdriver raised in anticipation of something worse than what was already here. It didn’t disappoint. Two desiccated corpses, their eyes two hollow black holes, stared up at me. They were naked; their skin had become grey and nearly translucent from how little flesh clung to their husks. They couldn’t have been dead for long, but the man downstairs must have killed them and deposited them pretty early on after I left. I had never seen a dead person before. Still, the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach the day I saw the deer manifested itself physically as I hurled all over the rug my mother had given me as a housewarming gift many years ago.
As I was wiping the rest of the vomit from my lips, I heard the doorknob jiggle rapidly. The clanging of something hard on the wooden door quickly followed this; he was trying to break the door down. I searched around the closet, waking a nest of flies that had no doubt been gorging themselves on the two corpses. I wrestled through my old clothes that had seemingly remained untouched, unable to find anything useful. The banging grew louder as I heard the slow snapping and pulling of the wood under some great force. He had likely seen the axe as my only real weapon in the house. I ran to the other side of the room to peer out the window and saw that my worst fear had come true: both left side tires of my car were flattened, with my windshield and front hood smashed up for good measure. There was no escape, only to fight.
To say my situation seemed hopeless was an understatement of epic proportions. I looked down and could see my steady shaking, making the screwdriver harder to hold. This was only exacerbated as I heard the next swing of the axe split more wood, sending pieces flying. I backed myself against the wall, moving ever so closely as another cleave opened the door more. I could hear his labored breathing as he chipped away at my only barricade. I nestled myself by the knob, hopefully just out of eyeshot. I saw that the door had been taken down to where he was starting to wiggle his hand through an opening to try and unlock the door. With all the desperation of a final girl in a slasher movie, I stuck the pointed blade of the screwdriver as deep into the soft flesh of his hand that connected the thumb with the rest of his hand. I could hear it peel off like a zipper coming off a coat; his screams and the subsequent gush of blood told me I had been successful. I realized now, though, that I had been too successful. The screwdriver was lodged deep into the hand, with a tiny red-tipped bit of metal peeking out the other side of his hand that was mere millimeters from the door knob. Before I could get it back, the hand jerked back out. Not wanting to get my face split in half, I lurched back. I only heard stammers of pain before the screwdriver flew from the hallway into the room, sticking into the wall with a force that cracked the paint surrounding the area where it had landed.
My heart was racing; I hadn’t noticed yet that my arm had been covered with my blood, the wound from an earlier cut was more profound than I had realized, and what I had been chalking up to nerves and anxiety about my situation was probably also combined with the effects of significant blood loss at this point. Things were starting to look blurry. The walls slid blue hue and were now fuzzy like TV static. My face and arms felt cold; rising to my feet was difficult without the support of the wall, but I was still lucid. I swung the door open as I heard the grunting continuing down the hall. I saw him heading down the stairs, no doubt trying to reach for another weapon.
What happened next has left me vexed until recently. I used to think I did it because I was letting my more base instincts take over, and I was reeling from the blood loss. But I knew I pushed the fuck down those stairs onto his ax because I had to. I saw an opportunity to stop the fear and anxiety that had consumed me for months, all stemming from a figure that had felt so dangerous and elusive to me this entire time. Now, I just realized it was some bum who skinned a deer’s head so he could squat in my house; at least, that’s what I told myself. I had heard his cries of pain, seen the blood and confusion and fear in his body language that took over when I had cut him. Now, here he was, bloodied and just as hurt as me. I saw an opportunity to get my peace of mind. As little as I thought about what I was doing, I remember it quite well. I swung the door open, ran down the hallway, and met his gaze as he tried to limp down the first few steps. I briefly saw his eyes through the mask; it was all I needed for confirmation. My boot went right into the side of the pus-filled cheek of the deer mask. Some of them popped, leading to orange blood mixed well rushing out from it and spilling all over the guard rail. I knew this would not injure him, but the shove I reached in afterward would undoubtedly compensate for any cushioning the mask provided.
Somewhere on the way down, the ax went from his left hand to being in his stomach. When he hit the ground, the squelching sound hit my ears before I could see the pool of blood that formed around his slumped-over body. As I walked down the stairs, I had to hold on to the railing to support myself, and the world got less and less clear. The wound had reopened on my arm, and fresh blood began leaking out faster than before. I walked over the phone and dialed 911, only stating someone had been hurt and they needed to come to my address. I walked over to the body on the ground and noticed tiny, light breaths still emitting from the chest. I lifted the mask, slipping it off.
The face underneath meant nothing to me. It was a white, pale face that seemed to be losing color as he drained out on my carpet. The brown hair was disgusting as it had matted under the sweat and poorly treated mask. The eyes opened up after staring and talking in his face. His lips started to try to say something. It took a moment, but the words finally connected to the sounds in his tongue. Before the words left his mouth, I placed my hand on his mouth like a parent silencing a defiant child. I tightened my digits around his nose using my thumb and pointer finger. The hand slipped around his neck, soaked in my blood. I closed on his throat.
The hand squeezed harder and harder; it got to the point of tightness, causing a stinging pain that rang out in my hand. The nose was held lightly, just enough to close the air off. The body slumped over as the last breath slowly passed through. The sun was getting close to setting. Orange light peered through the window, covering the body in a golden shimmer. The stranger was dead. The wood of the floor was an unnerving shade of crimson. The room started to go white, and before I knew it, I wasn’t seeing anything anymore, and the last thing I heard was my head thudding on the floor.
The first thing I remembered when I woke up in the hospital was how unforgettable his face had been. There was something distinct about it other than that he had blue eyes. Though, that was hardly a rare thing to see. The second thing I noticed was Dewalt sitting by the bed. He was dressed in the same uniform when we first met; the tan shirt bearing his badge and occupation stood out against the serene witness of the hospital room. “Glad to see you’re doing better; you sounded like you’ve been through hell.” I sat up; my head initially felt fuzzy from the sudden movement. I must have been here a while. “Yeah. I have been for a while now. But it’s over. That bastard who killed that deer is finally done and buried.”
Dewalt’s eyes met mine; they were a bright blue that I hadn’t expected of someone with his build; it was bizarre to see him without his sunglasses.
“You and I both had an interest in seeing that son of bitch dead. After Marty and I had been to your place, we knew something weird was happening; how could we not? A dead deer impaled in the deepest part of a property? It was something I wouldn’t think of even in my nightmares. Marty and my shift alternate got a call a week or so later. I was down by the river bottoms checking hunters for their tags when he left me a voicemail. I wanted to tell him to wait for me, but he was already headed there before I could do anything. The other guy was solid, he said-”
he was starting to sniff in a failed attempt to hold back the coming tears.
“ I found them in the closet. They looked like they had been dead awhile,”
I said in protest, not wanting to accept what I had, in the back of my mind, known since I found them.
“R-r-remember how that deer looked? How was it wa-was so dried?” He briefly paused to wipe his eyes and blow his nose with the same tissue. “Coroners say if you drain something on its blood and leave it in the sun for a while, you speed up the process of them withering like that. Why would someone do that though I-”
he stammered again. I thought a new set of tears would flow, but he twisted his face and breathed to compose himself. He spoke flatly in an attempt to stay together.
“Marty wasn’t the type to talk much outside of work. He’s a good guy, but he thought a part of professionalism was that you didn’t casually spend time with work associates. It was a Friday, and I was off before he got back. He told me not to worry; his work phone was on, but his supervisor’s phone wasn’t tracked with GPS or anything. He took his car and hated unannounced visits to his house, so I didn’t call or check in on him. I emailed him asking him to report if he found anything ASAP, but it wasn’t like either of us would see it before Monday. He always told me I worried too much and was overly paranoid with other people. The guy he was with was new and had been a handful on him that week, so he was extra on edge. They had probably been dead for a couple of days, and they bled out fast because the guy slit their Femoral and Carotid arteries. Them being in the sun until you came back on Sunday was all the time he needed to soften their skin so he could take the eyeballs out more easily.”
I stared at the floor, simultaneously taking in his words and my environment. It sounded wild that he wouldn’t come looking at it first; how he made it made sense to me. Marty was disturbed, bothered deeply by what this faceless being could do. He somehow got tipped off to come back to the house. But how? DeWalt rose to his feet and looked down as he felt around his shirt pocket for the sunglasses.
“I was the responding law enforcement to the scene when we found you. You were almost dead, too. Thank god we got you here in time.”
He spoke at length about how the nameless figure had been living at my house for days, with evidence suggesting he had stayed in the fields around my property for even longer. He went on about how Marty and the other responding officer, a new hire named Tom, were lured to their demise by a false call on an old satellite phone I had forgotten about in the shed months prior. Eventually, DeWalt got himself together and left the room. I finally had time to let all the puzzle pieces wash over me like a wave in peace. The first feeling wasn’t horror, fear, or any of the other feelings you might experience when putting a situation as utterly depraved as the one I had been through. It was a sense of annoyed relief.
It didn’t seem to immediately register to me that I had seen the demise of 3 people, nor that I had almost joined them myself. The worst of it was over; my experiences forever changed me, and the scars from this day would last a lifetime, physically and mentally. I knew would come, but at that moment, I felt relieved knowing that I would never be watched again; it felt like a hard-won victory rather than a victim. I had spent so much time looking over my shoulder that it had become one of the only things I knew had felt real. No matter what was given up, I finally got that feeling out of my head and wanted to savor it.
It would be a few weeks of physical therapy and bed rest before I return home. DeWalt was my primary contact with the outside world, and with his help and the hospital,l I would begin receiving a steady daily stream of friends and family I had grown distant from over the months of my stalking. Combined with my steady progress in physical therapy, I was able to leave the hospital in a few weeks with both my body and spirit repaired more than before. It was also during this time that I wrote all of this down in hopes it would add context to why I fell off the face of the earth for so long.
When I left the hospital, it wasn’t just with a fixed body; I felt like I had regained a true sense of purpose in life rather than just trying to survive. The next step would be returning home. Due to my incident, the realty company would end up refunding most of the money I sank into trying to move towns so rapidly, and I decided I would invest part of that into fixing my old home. I won’t let my past, including where I live, hinder my future. Thank you for reading if you made it this far, even though I know it will be a long time before I can feel true normalcy again, the little exit by my house off the highway doesn’t seem so scary anymore, and the machines at work whirr a little less loudly. The death rattle in the dark is no more. My dark stranger is dead.