Footsteps

Inspired by a personal experience, twisted by a personal fear.

"Let's get some light going in here boys!" Jeff exclaimed as he fell back onto the dusty and worn out couch. He was slightly too tall to lay properly on it, and I cracked a smile as I watched him awkwardly attempt to position himself comfortably across the faded brown and green cushions. Small rips in the fabric exposed slightly damp padding, and a vaguely moldy smell emanated from the piece of furniture. Like everything else in the room, the  couch was aged and battered by long exposure to the weather.

"Why don't you get off your a*s and help?" I said, jokingly prodding at him as I sat in a dirty plastic lawn chair across the room from him. 

"You're sitting down too!" he snapped back in an annoyed tone. I chuckled as we both stood up to help our other friends illuminate the room with a random arrangement of candles and flashlights. We were accompanied by our friend Jake, who was already in the process of lighting a candle, and Zhane, who was leaning against the wall while he casually toyed with a cheap pocket knife. He grunted when I pointed a flashlight in his face, prompting him to help us get situated for the night. It was the dilapidated barn beside Zhane's trailer that we were spending the night in. Zhane lived here with his mother who rented the trailer from a close family friend. It sat on a piece of property a quarter mile from any neighbors, and three hundred acres of posted property surrounded it. The three of us found Zhane's place amazing to explore, as abandoned barns and distilleries rested throughout the property. It was one of these barns that rested only a couple hundred feet from his trailer that we decided we wanted to spend the night in.

The bottom floor of the barn was used as a shed by his family, and the top floor contained different piles of junk scattered among random pieces of furniture and broken glass. The room seemed far from suitable for residing in; a third of the floor was too unstable to be stepped on and broken glass littered sections of the room. None of us minded, however, as we were avid explorers of the abandoned. We found places such as this exhilarating to be in, and the atmosphere that would be repulsive to others was almost intoxicating for the curious explorers in each of us. 

"Are we really sleeping in here?" Zhane groaned as he closed his knife and turned on a flashlight. 

"Yeah," Jeff and I replied casually and simultaneously.

"Where do you guys plan on laying down at?" 

"I've got my bed," Jeff boasted as he pointed at the couch. He looked at each of us, waiting to see if anyone was going to complain. His tall and smaller stature was only half visible in the poor illumination of the room. His light complexion looked only paler in the light of the candle, making him look a little ridiculous in his baggy jeans and flat-billed hat. However, Nobody opposed him claiming it for the night, despite it being the most comfortable of spots in the room. Each of us looked up to Jeff in a different way, and in more ways than one he was the leader of our group. I always came close second to him, but we treated the authority over decisions with respect rather than competing for power. Our group had been together for most of our childhood, and we were all happy with the dynamics of our friendship.

"Stop being a p***y Zhane, you've been complaining all night," Jake mumbled after several minutes of silence. He was always the most aggressive in the group with his words, and we all agreed that he was a little crazy. There was little opposition to this by anyone that knew him, as the first person to typically tell you he is insane would be Jake himself.

"Well I just don't see why we are sleeping in here when we have TV and food in the house," Zhane grunted at Jake. The three of us slang a barrage of insults sarcastically at Zhane until he finally gave in. Our group was very outspoken, and the hazing that we did to each other was always taken lightheartedly because of this. Very few things were taken to heart, which made our friendship only stronger. 

"Tonight is like initiation for you anyways Zhane, this is the first time you've chilled with us this late," Jake commented. Jeff and I agreed with this, as our fireside conversation in the late evening were where we truly bonded in the past. Zhane was the newest to our group, so we didn't personally know him as well.

"Whatever, we are going to have to go get some blankets or something though," Zhane said as he turned on the last flashlight that we had brought with us. The entirety of the room was now visible, distracting me for several minutes as my eyes wandered across its contents. My chair was situated towards the middle of the room, facing away from where Zhane's trailer rested outside. On the wall directly in front of me was a large door that didn't fully close and led to a one-story drop off to the ground. The stairs that hugged the barn wall to my right were the only means of getting in and out of this room without jumping out of that door. Small windows scattered themselves among the rest of the walls, serving as homes for clumsily elaborate spider webs and the husks of dead insects. 

After cleaning up the small area of the floor that we were using for the night, the four of us got lost in meaningless ramblings about school and girls accompanied by corny jokes that we laughed at even when they weren't funny. Jeff played music loudly on a speaker from his phone, and Zhane and I sang along as we scarfed down leftover pizza and chips. A significant amount of time passed, although I do not recall how much. We had all lost track of the time and reality around us; nothing mattered in that moment but the fun that we were having without a worry about judgment or responsibility. 

As I began to space out while Jake and Zhane conversed about what music genre was better, the sound of Jeff's speaker slowly receded in my mind until it sounded like nothing more than a soft hum. My eyes remained focused on a scratch in the floorboard for several minutes while my mind wandered. I became numb to what was going on around me, and my body slumped a little as it attempted to relax itself in the lawn chair. However, something seemed to be pulling at my conscious, keeping me from being able to relax. This eventually pulled me back into reality in search of what the disturbance was. I looked around where I was seated, but nothing had changed from what I could see. From the sound of the music and conversing to the randomly lit room, everything seemed in order. As my senses searched for what was out of place, my ears suddenly caught an odd sound with an unknown source.

Thump, thump. 

The sound resembled footsteps on the stairs, causing me to straighten up in my seat and look to my friends for any sign that they had heard it. Jake and Jeff showed no reaction, but Zhane was staring back at me with the same alertness that I had. He shot Jeff a glance, making him look up from his phone at the two of us. I silently brought a finger up to my lips as an indication to listen, and he nonchalantly turned down the music. His composure wasn't due to a lack of care; he didn't want to reveal that we were listening for something if someone or something were to be sneaking up the stairs. We worked as a system with these kinds of things in order to stay safe. We assessed situations intelligently rather than with brute force, as we knew that we could easily be overpowered if someone did have intentions of hurting us.

Thump, thump. 

Another set of footsteps proceeded after the first, catching everyone's attention this time. Zhane had mentioned a coyote problem in the nearby woods before, so our minds immediately jumped to that conclusion. With the thought that it was most likely a wild animal, we each flipped open various knives and  gathered towards where I had been seated. "Could that just be Cujo outside?" Jake asked Zhane quietly. It was a plausible idea that it was simply Zhane's Saint Bernard that slept outside, but it wasn't an ideal one either. The sound being that dog would have meant that Cujo had broken off of his metal chain to come upstairs. While Zhane was family and would have no problem with this, there was a reason people outside of Zhane's family nicknamed the dog "Cujo".

"He's chased cats and turkeys up here before," Zhane replied simply.

"Well that's no problem if it's him then we jump out the door and run to the trailer," Jeff whispered.

"Do you want to get yourself killed? He will jump out and run you down. Just let me take care of him," Zhane instructed. 

Thump, thump.

Silence. I hold my breath, and Jeff tightens his grip on his knife. We wait.

Thump, thump, followed by an unnaturally low growl.

"That's not Cujo," Zhane whispered in shock, his eyes widening at the sound of the creature.

Jeff was the first person to take action, walking towards the top of the stairwell. The rest of us stacked up behind him, watching silently as Jeff shouted down the stairs.

"Hey!" Jeff shouted angrily and boldly down the stairs. His intent was to intimidate any coyote or other wild animal that could be on the stairs. 

Thump, thump.

I picked up a nearby aerosol can that was empty while Zhane and Jake handed us flashlights. Jeff shouted again before stepping back and allowing me to take the lead. I blindly whipped the can down the stairs and let it bounce to the bottom. It echoed on each step with a loud metallic clang before rattling to a stop on the bottom. As soon as it had reached the bottom, the others stacked up behind me as we moved as a unit down the stairs, inspecting every corner and crevice with our flashlights. Once the room was cleared, we took a moment to breathe and relax. Whatever the sound was coming from wasn't in here, at least not anymore.

Thump, thump. 

"We need to check the perimeter," Jeff said bluntly to us. I nodded and followed Jake as Zhane tracked behind Jeff. As we stepped outside into the darkness, our flashlights spun around wildly in all directions. We didn't see any immediate signs of danger, but my flashlight sweeped across Cujo's dog house to reveal him hiding inside, his chain still intact. Upon seeing this, Zhane and Jeff checked the sides of the barn while Jake and I remained out front. I could hear the others conversing while my light searched across nearby trees. After a long period of anticipation, a shout finally came from Jake at the front of the barn.

"Guys, come over here," Jake demanded in an upset tone. Jeff and Zhane ran to the front with me to find Jake simply staring at the woodline. Confused, we looked up to an unexpected flash on the horizon.

Thump, thump. 

The distant explosion of light and color from fireworks decorated the sky above the silhouette of trees. Two fireworks were cast up and transformed into small bursts of white light, the boom of each resembling the sound that was heard in the barn. At the revelation of how foolish we had been, Jeff screamed  a string of curses to the skywhile we all laughed together about the whole event. It took several minutes before something prodded my mind that erased all sense of joy and security. 

"Zhane?" I called out.

"Yeah?" he replied calmly.

"You said that growl wasn't Cujo."

His face twisted a little in confusion, and in the realization of what my words meant quickly gathered the others. Jeff and I didn't hesitate to grab the necessities for the night from the barn while Jake and Zhane unlocked the trailer for us. We spent the night inside wrapped up in covers on couches and recliners while we commentated wrestling matches and old cartoons. The previous events had been forgotten, and all of us slept far more soundly than we should have.

The next morning brought heavy eyes and messy hair as each of us forced ourselves up after a late night together. After sharing a breakfast consisting of junk food and orange juice, Jeff and I decided to grab the rest of everyone's belongings from the barn. As we walked, we reflected on the strangeness of the whole situation, questioning why the fireworks were set off so oddly and why Cujo was still hiding in his dog house. Stepping into the barn, we could now see the details of our surroundings that were lit by sunlight seeping through cracks in the wall and broken windows. Besides the normal contents of the bottom floor, which included quads and lawnmowers, something blatantly stood out about the stairwell. Deep scratches in the wood were visible not on the stairs themselves, but on the railing alongside them. We both approached the upstairs slowly and cautiously, expecting to find a terrible nightmarish scene. However, the room was as we left it. 

Neither of us mentioned the sight to the others, and we left Zhane's shortly after gathering our things from the barn. I have never been back to that place; Zhane and his mother bought their own house somewhere more populated only a few months after we stayed there. I haven't talked to him much since he moved, but I was told that a new family began renting the trailer shortly after they left. While I don't know who the family is, I pray for them every time I see fireworks in the sky. 

Author's Note

My only note is that if you don't understand the "Cujo" reference, it is a 1981 novel by Stephen King about a rabid dog, and the psychological horror became a film in 1983. I hope you enjoyed this piece, I would appreciate any criticisms about the pacing or atmosphere that the story had. Thank you for reading!

Reviews

[Akash gaikwad]

I just loved the last line summed up the whole story!! I think overall it is really good story all the character and situation are builded up nicely as reader I wanted to read till the end. And the end is not much disappointing... I found the end good then usual thriller stories. Thank you for sharing!!

[Deason]

Thanks so much for taking the time to review! I'm glad you enjoyed, this was a fun one to write. I'm working on some new stories right now, I hope you'll check those out as well when I share them.

[Akash gaikwad]

Yeah for sure,I will check them out. Just send me a read request when you upload it.