IN THE DARK OF NIGHT

I’m Not Sure What Really Happened

But it freaked me out

In the evenings, after washing the supper dishes, twenty-eight-year-old Dorothy and fifteen-year-old me would sneak outside for a cigarette. Even though Dorothy was old enough to smoke, my mother would not allow it.

While Dorothy and I stood in the backyard, she looked up at the night sky.

“It’s a lovely night,” she said. “Calm. Not a bit of wind.”

She reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out two cigarettes, handing me one. I struck a match on the zipper of my jeans and held it up for her.

She leaned forward, lit her cigarette, took a deep drag, leaned back, and exhaled. I lit mine and we stood in silence.

It was a relief to escape the noisy, chaotic household.

We stood side-by-side, each puffing on our cigarettes.

I tilted my head back. Looked up at the vastness of the sky. Wondered what my boyfriend Will was doing at this very moment. If across the Atlantic Ocean he was wondering about me. Missing me? A chill ran up my spine. I pulled my sweater tighter around me. The air was much cooler than I’d first thought.

Wanting to change my serious thoughts, I looked at the two glowing red ends of our cigarettes.

“I hope no one looks out and sees us,” I said, thinking the two glowing dots might look like bright red eyes.

“Yeah,” Dorothy said, cupping her hand around her cigarette. “I’m always worried your mother will catch me.” She turns her back toward the house. “I can’t imagine how crazy she’d get.”

We moved further from the house, closer to the barn. We stopped talking.

The quiet of the evening became eerie as I slipped into what felt like a trance.

Dorothy and I kept moving along as if we knew where we were going.

When we reached the barn, I noticed the door was ajar but figured no big deal — someone must have forgotten to close it properly.

Dorothy gripped the edge of the door and I thought she was going to close and latch it, but she opened it wide and stepped inside. I didn’t ask why. I just followed.

There in the darkness, we stood side-by-side, smoking our cigarettes, knowing no one could see us.

I didn’t like being inside the barn even in daylight. But I remained brave and dragged harder on my cigarette.

The quiet covered us like a heavy blanket, the hens didn’t even make a sound. Everything was so still.

I took a step back. Bumped into something where nothing should have been.

I felt myself press up against another body, my shoulder against someone’s chest, someone taller, like a man.

I turned my head to look over my shoulder. Saw only darkness.

The air in the barn grew colder. I sprang to life like a jack-in-the-box and ran outside, leaving Dorothy behind.

I called back to her, “Run, Dorothy! Run!”

She bolted from the barn. “What’s wrong?’ she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I… a…” I paused, trying to sort out what had just happened. “I don’t know. I… think. No. I know. I… There’s someone in the barn… a man.”

“What?”

“I leaned back and bumped into him.”

“What?”

I repeated what I’d just told her. This time on the verge of tears.

She gripped my arm, and said, “You gotta calm down. You can’t go in the house like this.”

“But Dorothy… Dorothy, what was it? What if…”

“You can’t say anything. You’ll get us in trouble. We can’t explain being out here, much less in the barn. You got to act like nothing happened.”

I paced back and forth, stopped, and asked, “Do you think it was real?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I can’t stand this. I don’t know either. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to believe.”

Pacing, I ran my fingers through my hair. Tried to calm myself. Stopped and looked at her, asked, “Did I imagine it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. But I’m not gonna find out… just stop thinking about it.”

“What am I supposed to think about?”

“Anything but that, just for now.” She reached out to stop me from pacing. “Pull yourself together.”

“It was so real. So real, Dorothy. I felt myself up against someone. It wasn’t the wall, I swear. We weren’t standing anywhere near the wall. How could I feel it if there wasn’t anything there? Fuck, I’m never going inside that barn again.”

And on and on it went. Until I calmed down enough for us to slip back inside the house. Acting like nothing had happened.

Mom was busy talking on the phone and wasn’t paying attention to where anyone was anyway. I walked to my room.

Once there, I sat alone on my bed with what had just happened circling inside my head. I kept looking for an explanation.

It reminded me of an incident many years earlier when one night a bang on the bedroom door woke me. Followed by the sound of rattling chains, and a man kneeling by my bed. His head was a glowing skull. I screamed. Woke up the rest of the house. My mother came running. Turned on the lights, and it all disappeared.

That incident left me confused and scared. My mother said it was a forerunner, and that someone close to us would die. When Roy, one of our boarders fell ill and went into the hospital and died, my mother said he’d been the one who had appeared before me. I don’t know if my mother was right or wrong. Just relieved for an explanation.

This time I was alone with no explanation. Left to question if it was real or not. Or if I was losing my mind?

Please share what you think. Real? Imagined?

Have you ever experienced anything like this?

And below is the previous scary bedroom experience.