Some Things Lurk

It was one of the busier campgrounds I discovered a little too late, but I decided to set up my tent and stay the night anyway. That left me most of the day to hike the trails around Burney Falls.

In the late afternoon, I returned to #37, my campsite, to find I had neighbors on either side of me—an older couple on the one side and a family of four on the other. Within half an hour of my return, the seven of us were laughing and carrying on as if we had known one another a lifetime.

In the end, we co-mingled our dinner and then sat about our community firepit enjoying beers and conversations about life and travels. At about 8 p.m., the couple’s kids went to bed early, reminding me of how it was when I was young, laying awake, listening to the grownups talk until the Sandman found me.

Before I knew it, even the older folks were off to bed, including me. With the two couples returned to their trailer and camper, I set about cleaning up and banking the fire for use in the morning.

As I strolled back from the bear-proof garbage cans some 100 feet away, I heard what sounded like a person heavily fast-walking behind me. When I turned to look, they stopped in their tracks, hidden in the shadows.

“Maybe they didn’t know I was in front of them,” I told myself as I thought about the full moon in the sky ahead of me.

Thinking no more of the person, I entered my tent and climbed inside my sleeping bag. It wasn’t long before I was fast sound asleep.

How long I had been asleep, I don’t know, but suddenly I was fully awake, listening, certain somebody was walking around my tent. Then I saw a hand press in against the fabric of my tent.

My breathing halted in my chest, but my heart felt like a military drum playing a loud tattoo. I quietly reached under my boots and touched the only thing my dad had left me, his Desert Eagle.

The hand disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, and I let out my breath. As I did this, I watched as a face pressed itself into the side of my tent.

It continued inward and down until it nearly met my face. That is when I withdrew my pistol and throttled the slide back with a sharp, staccato snap.

The face disappeared, and I heard a set of feet race off through the wood, twigs snapping and pine needles crunching. I remained awake for much of the night from then on.

Come morning, when I crawled from my sleeping bag, I found large muddied handprints all around the outside of my tent. Some things lurk in the woods at night that are more dangerous than wild animals.