Nothing To Fear But…

Week 39: Written September 29, 2016

When Oscar took the garbage out to the curb, he saw it. Nothing but a shadow in the street, the silhouette of a dog or a fox — a shadow, but nothing there to make it.

When he stopped to look at it, the shadow vanished, running off into the woods. It wasn’t gone, though. Oscar could feel that, too.

He went back inside and tried to forget about it. He put a new bag in the trash can and made himself a snack (a warm slice of apple pie, a la mode). When he turned on the television, it was already on the news, so he changed it, wanting something funny instead. There was never anything funny on the news, not unless you were a psychopath.

He found a “Seinfeld” rerun and relaxed, even though a voice in the back of his head kept asking loudly, “What was that? What did I just see?”

No, Oscar said, putting his foot down. It was an optical illusion, just a strangely shaped tree branch swaying beneath the street lamp. That’s all. It had to be. The alternative — the terrifying alternative — was impossible.

After the episode was over, it was midnight. An old clock on the mantle, a family heirloom, chimed softly a few times and then fell back into the barely audible rhythm of alternating ticks and tocks. It was bedtime.

Oscar grabbed a sleeping pill from a kitchen drawer and headed upstairs. Then he thought twice and ran back down to grab some ear plugs, too. And an old sleeping mask he once got on an airplane flight.

Somehow, through the medically-induced drowsiness and blocked ear canals, he could still hear the clock downstairs. It was like the rubber balls in his ears were actually ear buds and they were plugged into something at full volume. He tossed and turned, hoping it would just go away, but the sound only got louder. Frustrated, he yanked the plugs out and trotted back downstairs.

He grabbed the clock, opened the back door, and threw it into the yard. There was a satisfying shatter as it struck the ground and then merciful silence. All he could hear then was the peaceful song of an August cricket and his thousands-large band.

A dog howled somewhere in the distance.

It was a horror movie howl, a Halloween howl, one that hit three distinct bone-chilling notes before fading away. Up above, a full moon shined down, giving everything in sight a halo. For some reason, Oscar thought that meant something.

He remembered back to when he was a child and he’d always sneak into the den after his parents went to bed so he could watch scary movies. There was a local guy who had a public access TV show on Thursday nights. He went by the name Steve L. Scareya and showed indie fright flicks after midnight. Most Friday mornings, Oscar was a mess, though it wasn’t because he stayed up late watching the movies. He usually couldn’t last more than ten minutes before running back to bed, frightened. Steve certainly lived up to his moniker.

The worst part, though, was how that fear took over Oscar’s brain. If the scary movie involved big, giant monster insects, he’d see them all night. Every little noise he heard he was absolutely certain came from some monster insect hiding in his bedroom. If he felt an itch, he’d scream, thinking some bug was climbing all over him.

Sure enough, though, the next Thursday he’d be back in the den, watching the next monster movie Steve L. Scareya had scheduled.

Oscar loved and hated that feeling. He loved the excitement, the thrill, but could only handle so much.

Now, he felt the same way. And that howl he heard so far in the distance? He was certain — 100% absolutely certain — that it was the shadow dog he saw in the street. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. And he knew, too, that the dog had howled because it knew Oscar was outside. It knew he’d hear it, and he knew what that meant.

The dog was coming for him.

He crawled back into bed, plugged up his ears, and covered his eyes, but it was no use. That howl was still echoing through his head. Not only that, he could hear the dog panting, too, as it ran through the woods back to Oscar’s house, back to where he’d seen it just an hour earlier.

Oscar shivered in bed like a little girl. Why, he told himself. Why can’t you just fall asleep and forget all this?

There was a knock at the front door. One hard knock.

No, it wasn’t really a knock. It was a bang, as if something had just run right into it. And now, as he pulled his ear plugs out yet again, he could hear something else.

Scratching.

No, no, no, it can’t be. It can’t POSSIBLY be. There’s no such thing as invisible dogs. This isn’t a Stephen King story.

But his brain was unwilling to accept this logic. Oscar’s brain, under the right influence, was capable of believing anything. For crying out loud, he’d seen the invisible dog’s shadow with his own two eyes. That was truth right there. That was fact. No amount of logic or sound reasoning could remove that image from his brain. It was the gigantic pit over which any explanation had to leap in order to ease Oscar’s petrified heart.

The scratching got loud and stronger. It sounded as frantic and anxious as Oscar’s own breathing, so quick and heavy that it was bound to break through. So he did what he’d been taught in school way back when in case of an earthquake; he crawled beneath his bed, hopeful that any dog big enough to be a threat would be too big to fit underneath the bed frame.

Now there was no denying it. He heard panting — not outside, but right down the stairs, getting closer and closer. It was as loud as his own panicked breathing, maybe even louder. It was just outside the bedroom door now, and he could hear nothing else.

It started to open and he cursed himself for not locking it when he came back upstairs the second time. What an awful way to go, having forgot to turn a measly door lock.

Oscar squinted, terrified of what he might see but unwilling to be completely blind to his attacker. The scariest thing was… nothing. He could see nothing there, just an empty space where the dog SHOULD be. He peeked from beneath the bed and saw nothing was hallway.

Even though all he could hear — and he’d testify to this in a court of law — was the Earth-shaking rumble of a dog’s angry growl, so loud it was like it was amplified by a set of professional-grade subwoofers.

Oscar crawled backward to the wall, getting as close to it as he could. The dog, the one he couldn’t see, entered the room. He knew this because he could hear each of its sharp claws tearing at his bedroom carpet. He could even see the thing fibers get pulled up and snap back down with each step the invisible dog took.

He was sniffing, trying to find out where Oscar was hiding.

Oscar held his breath. Any noise he made could be his undoing. He tried to be as quiet as possible, which was a little like trying to keep an avalanche from rolling down a mountain. He was shivering, every bone in his body. He could hear it rattling against the wall, but he didn’t dare crawl away from it. He’d made even more noise then.

The dog stopped sniffing. Instead, he growled again. And then he pounced.

Oscar felt his teeth sink into his ankle and screamed. He looked down. Even in the darkness, he could see two holes, two big holes in his right leg, each one leaking dark liquid onto the carpet in large doses.

He kicked into thin air, kicked both into no direction and every direction, waiting and hoping to strike something somehow. The dog, though, just waited, and then pounced again, this time ripping flesh from his right forearm.

Oscar screamed out again and, like a child throwing a tantrum, flailed his limbs in all direction. He still couldn’t see anything, but he felt his limbs make multiple strikes. Some were to the bed frame, but others struck something…warm and dense.

He kept going, ready to do perform this ritual till sun up if it meant surviving the night. He felt like a crying baby in a crib, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was winning.

He kept going and kept going and suddenly it was morning.

He’d fallen asleep at some point in the night. As terrified as he’d been, he’d eventually passed out due to the struggle and woke up on the floor just next to the bed.

Had it all been a dream? he asked himself. The blankets on the bed were a mess, too, all tossed about like he’d been rolling around in bed the whole night.

But then he stood up and felt the pain. His right ankle, right down through the foot itself, was swollen. It was nearly twice its normal size — and there were two or three severe bite marks that were the source of the infection.

His arm, too, was in pain, but not nearly as much.

The ghastly sight made him woozy, but Oscar felt relieved. And he made a resolution, just the one he’d made years ago to stop watching Steve L. Scareya on Thursday nights; he resolved to never, ever, EVER bring the garbage out after dark again.