Starlight
One man’s experience with something otherworldly.
It was an empty night; you know those ones where absolutely nothing seems to be happening in the world? It didn’t seem that way when I first said goodbye to the oncoming custodial leader when I had finished wrapping up my work for the day, but as soon as I stepped outside, it was just…quiet.
You see, I walk. Everywhere. I walk to the store, to my girlfriend’s, to work. And I walk home. I always figured it was friendlier for the environment, plus the thought of putting myself in one of those death machines didn’t sit right with me. I might have to rethink that eventually, but we’ll see.
The air was still. No breeze, the weather was in the middle place where nobody seems to complain that it’s too cold or too hot. There was little cloud coverage, and just a small smattering of stars dotting the sky. The usual people I expect to see on my walk home from work were absent. The homeless man living on fourth was gone, and his normal living quarters seemed like he wasn’t coming back. The gas station near my apartment was empty in the parking lot, void of the cashier who is usually outside smoking if there are no customers. I didn’t go inside though. Maybe they were stocking.
It didn’t hit me until I had gotten most of the way home, slightly more aware how peculiar the evening was, that not one single vehicle had passed me. It was almost as if the entire world had come to a stop, and I didn’t get the memo.
The uneasiness of it all caught up to me when I was about a block away. The realization that all these things happening at once wasn’t just some sort of coincidence. It was a Friday night in a busy city. I didn’t live on any of the main drags, but I worked and lived close enough to get my fair share of drunks shambling home, of college kids taking a stroll. To see absolutely nobody was impossible.
The only thing worse was when I did get home. My apartment building is your standard structure. A brick building, four floors high. Four apartments to each floor, plus the basement. Twenty in total. Each one was filled, and most were filled by younger folks in their early to mid-twenties. On any day of the week, someone was bound to have lights on and visitors, or be hanging out on a balcony, but each one was empty. Each light was off. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
I looked around at the surrounding buildings, and all the lights were off in them as well. No room lights peeking through the windows, no porch, or overhead lights to illuminate the walkway. The only actual lights were the streetlights themselves. If it weren’t for them, I would have assumed a blackout. At least until I realized that most people tend to leave their homes when that happens. People don’t like to be left in the dark.
I brought my line of sight back to my building, and someone was there. For a brief second, I jumped. After seeing nobody for so long, it was a fright in its own right, let alone that they appeared so quickly and quietly on such a still night. After that, relief. This too, also only lasted for a second.
The…person standing there was too tall. I’m not the tallest person in the world, but this person stood well over eight feet. Its arms hung down to almost its knees, and the knees themselves were bent out toward the side slightly. At first, I thought it was wearing all dark clothes, but as it stood on the other side of one of the only streetlights that was on, I could clearly see that it was its body. It bent and elbow, slowly raising a black hand, and waved.
Where there should have been eyes were two glowing silver lights. Just barely a pinprick of shine, but against all black skin of its face and the dark night, they stood out bright. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear, the razor-sharp teeth covering up half of its face.
My body screamed at me to run.
I took off, back the way I came, not wanting to attempt to get closer than the twelve feet I was from the thing. My feet made no noise as it slammed against the pavement, a fact that I tried to ignore as I kept up my pace, desperate to get away. I’m a walker, not a runner, but I pushed myself beyond what I thought I was capable of, finally making it to the gas station.
The parking lot was still empty, but now the lights that brightened it were fully out as well. My chest was pounding, and my mouth was dry. I stopped, staying on the sidewalk, panting, and trying to catch my breath as my throat felt like burning ice. It dawned on me that if my steps were silent, its footsteps could have been as well, and I whirled around to see if it had been following me.
The street was empty, but the bulbs of the streetlights had gone out as well. It hadn’t followed me. Even at my desperate pace, it would have caught up. Its limbs seemed made for the task. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.
I turned to the window of the gas station, and there it was, staring through it. It cocked its head to the left, then once again slowly raised its arm. The grin appeared, somehow clear as day, and the beads of light emanating from its eyes seemed to grow. It waved at me once more. I stood facing it, trying to decide what to do next, when something appeared next to it.
With its other arm, it had pinned the cashier of the gas station to the window. Holding them by the neck, it slammed them against the window over and over, a smear of blood being left behind with each hit. Finally, the glass gave and it let go, the body landing amongst the shattered glass, both falling to the ground silently.
One of its knees came up and it began to step through the broken window, and I started running again. I started to lose energy almost immediately, but I kept pushing myself through it. I panted silently, and as much as I couldn’t hear it, I could feel my heart slamming against my chest. My legs burned as my feet made empty sound against the sidewalk, and as I kept going, I noticed that the lights in front of me were going out almost as soon as I left them.
I wouldn’t let myself stop or turn around to face the darkness that was eating away at the world around me. I passed the homeless man’s box, now not empty, but the home of a decapitated corpse, blood making no noise as my shoes splashed through it. I kept going as the lights started going out as I was reaching them, a brush of something barely touching the skin on the back of my neck.
I powered through it all until I found myself back at my job, bursting through the front door into a loud, brightly lit lobby. Music was playing loudly for the cleaning crew as they did their work, and the sudden shock of florescent lightbulbs nearly blinded me.
I turned back to the door and looked out the window. The street was lit up with lights from all the businesses. People were ambling around, walking to or away the main drag where all the clubs were. There was slow moving traffic trying to avoid the increase of pedestrians in the road. And there was no creature.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and I nearly jumped completely out of my skin. The lead custodian had come to see who had barged into the building, and realized it was just me. He asked if I had forgotten anything, and I told him that I had to avoid trying to explain what had actually happened. I went over to the front desk and pretended to grab my house key from a drawer.
“Good thing you caught that before you got all the way home,” he said before heading back to work.
I checked the clock on the wall. According to it, I had only been gone for two minutes, not the twenty it usually took to walk home, let alone what felt like hours to run back.
It took everything that I had to push through the door out onto the busy street, but I finally managed. The night was loud. There was a good amount of people out enjoying a nice night. A cool breeze had picked up at some point, making me wish I had brought a hoodie to work that day.
I walked past the homeless man, who was sat up against the wall of a building, playing a harmonica. I tipped him everything I had in my pockets. He asked me if I had seen a ghost. I lied and said I was just feeling under the weather.
The cashier was outside smoking until a sedan pulled up to one of the pumps. They put out their cigarette, then held the door open for the customers as they approached. When they saw me, they held up a hand and waved.
My neighbors seemed to fill all the balconies that evening. Some chatting with friends, others just enjoying the night. I made my way into my own apartment, quickly turning on all the lights. I didn’t sleep that night. I’m glad I don’t work weekends, as I didn’t sleep the rest of it either.
I told my girlfriend. She’s into all this weird, supernatural stuff, and had heard of you guys. She’s the one who told me to reach out, to at least get it off my chest. I’m not sure if you guys can help at all, but I will say that talking about it feels better so far.
She and I have been together for a while, so we ended up moving into her place. I haven’t seen that thing since then, but any time a light goes out, I think about it. I sleep with at least the television on for some sort of light and noise.
I used to enjoy walking alone, and I still do. I just take in my surrounding more now. I always make sure that my path stays the same, and the few times that it seems different, I always backtrack to where I started. Just in case.
