As I walked along the old train tracks, my intended destination was home. It was late; later than I usually walk anywhere at night. I had stayed at the office after hours to finish work on a project and had lost track of time.
The bus line traveling out of the city was no longer running for the night, and I had heard of a shortcut along the nearby and now-decaying railway trail, which had been out of service for some decades now, serving solely as a nearly-ancient reminder of times past. I had never walked the trail before, but if it was truly a shortcut, it would put me at my destination long before I would get there by any other means. The air was pleasantly warm on this particular evening, and time was already shifting deeper into the night; I decided to take the shortcut path.
It was quiet on the trail, quieter than I had expected given that I could not have been more than a mile or so from the constant hum of streetlights and never ending buzz of the city’s nightlife. This environment seemed like advanced solitude compared to the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world not far outside the densely-wooded trail. All I could hear was the crunch of my own boots as I walked over the dry, dead autumn leaves that had fallen from the trees and onto the track’s gravel bed. As I forged on, passing moments of uneasiness would pass through my body as I thought I heard faint whispers emanating from the pine tree thicket, about ten feet away from me on either side of me and running parallel with the rail tracks on which I was walking. The uneasy feeling continued to arrive and pass; still, I pressed on, determined to reach my destination.
By now, it was dark; darker than usual. The moonlight was pale and scarce as the sky was barely visible at all through the bushy canopy, provided courtesy of the seemingly endless pine forest in which I was otherwise engulfed. The small amount of night sky that I could make out through the trees was dulled by the thick shroud of mist, making it impossible to tell if there were any stars tonight. I continued the tracks in between the endless overgrowth of vegetation, which still offered the only path forward. The thin, sickle-shaped moon provided my only guiding light ahead, though scarce it was; what the moonlight was unable to illuminate for me was drowned in shadows all around. Here and there, I thought I was catching glimpses of a figure standing at the edge of the tree line from the corner of my eye as I walked. It had been a long day, and surely was just my mind playing tricks on me. I kept moving forward.
Eventually, I noticed the pitch-black silhouette in front of me some distance away, also walking along the tracks, in the direction opposite to my own; still much too far away to see any features, but I was certainly alone no longer. The pit of my stomach once again felt unsettled, but I was too far along on my journey to turn back now; besides, what a foolish thought it would be to consider that I might be the only one walking this path. Seeing no reason to panic at this moment, I gathered my composure and continued, cautiously.
As I drew closer to my passerby, I came to a dead stop in my tracks. My leg muscles were tense, feeling as if they were locked immobilizing me where I stood. Standing before me at a distance which was too close for comfort, also halted in their own footsteps, was a tall, shadowed figure of a man. The both of us stood several feet away and facing each other head on, seemingly frozen in time and place. After several minutes which undoubtedly felt like an eternity, the stranger began to slowly move closer toward me. I recall being unable to hear the crunch of his footsteps on the leaves as he approached, although the ground was covered with the dried-out sheddings. A sense of overwhelming dread surged through every inch of skin on my body as I continued to stand straight up and in place, too shocked to budge a muscle.
The man, who was incredibly tall and exceptionally slim with a dark, menacing demeanor, kept his hands tucked deep inside his slate gray corduroy slacks. He wore black dress shoes and a long, black silk cloak, tied at the front with his hood draped far over his face, allowing only the tip of his chin, acute and angular, to peek out as he faced me from no more than five feet away.
As he continued to inch closer, I remained still as a statue, motionless with fear. I could hear no sounds nor feel the warm wind across my face the way I did at the beginning of my journey, the silence was deafening, the numbness excruciating. The man moved close enough so that we were inches away from being chest-to-chest.
“I love a good evening stroll…,” He said with a soft voice that was more like a series of hissing sounds culminating together to form an audible and coherent sentence, “You never know what you’re going to find hidden away in the dark of the night.”
He craned down, lifted his right hand from his pocket, and placed it gently on my left shoulder. He then leaned in near my ear, whisper-hissing, and begged the question, “How far are you from home?”.
My hands were shaking involuntarily as I struggled to retain my composure. I could feel my throat tighten and it felt like someone was standing on my chest, digging their heels into my ribcage. Every breath I drew meant that the next was going to be more strenuous than the last. I managed to turn my head to see the face of the dreadful shadow which was looming over me. As I peered inside the low hood, all I could see were two sinister, milky white eyes, which appeared to be fixtures within the otherwise deep, abysmal space, void of any other features other than his smooth, pointed chin.
Somehow, I managed to choke out the words, “Maybe twenty minutes,” although realistically I had not one inkling of how far away from home I actually was. The figure let out a soft chuckle, I felt him pat me on my back two, maybe three times. I knew I should have run at that moment; and I regretted not retracting earlier when I still had a chance to turn back.
Before I could muster any reaction, I felt a heavy, blunt force to my left temple, followed by pain overtaking all other sensation, shaking me to my core. The pain was more intense than anything I had ever felt in my life up to this point. My mouth began to fill with the salty, metallic-brass taste of blood. Paralyzed and flooded with bitter agony, I collapsed. I never saw the man after that; I still don’t know if he stayed to watch me die.
As I lay supine on the ground next to the tracks, atop a mixture of dirt, dead leaves, and gravel from the rail bed, I kept my eyes open at the velvet-black sky, seen only through the cracks in the canopy of pine. I accepted – nay, I hoped that my lonely, solitary death would come quickly, ending the nightmare which had now swallowed me. I could just barely feel the stale October air gently caress my cheeks one last time, and the warm, familiar aroma of cedarwood penetrated my nostrils. I remembered this nostalgic scent from when I was a young boy living with my mother and father, who always kept a large, cedar storage chest in the foyer of our family home. Every breath I drew continued to require more physical exertion than its predecessor, I needed to rest. The moonlight slowly dimmed and was extinguished before too long.
It was cold; colder than I’d ever felt when I was alive. I had finally arrived at my destination, but I was never going to return home.
Keith Hudak 