Tap. Tip tap. Tap tap tap tap … tip tap.
Whatever it was, it was behind me, though I couldn’t see it. A blanket-like, 3 a.m. fog had settled over Baldwin Lake, its outriggers oozing across the road like tenebrous fingers, wrapping themselves around half-buried tree roots, obscuring the decaying remains of autumn’s expired leaves.
Caught in a dank breeze, leaves scudded across the shrouded pavement, etching out sounds like death watch beetles — chitinous, skittering.
Tap. Tip tap tip.
Definitely behind me. Closer now.
I stopped and stared back into the darkness, trying to pierce the fog. The tapping suddenly ceased. I waited, but it did not start up again.
I thought of my bed, waiting in my apartment on the other side of the lake. Cozy. Comfortable. I should be there now, I thought, not out strolling through this abominable, impenetrable fog! Insomnia or no, what was I thinking?
I started walking. A few steps and I heard it again, faint but unmistakable: tap, tip tap, tap.
The next street lamp was 500 steps ahead, a tiny, glowing pocket of light in this misty, musty blackness.
I wasn’t exactly scared. Not yet. This is Greenville, not 17th Century London, not Transylvania. A nice, quiet neighborhood, nestled up to a small lakeshore. Bad things don’t happen here. Not REALLY bad things.
And though I’m older than dirt I can — or could, at last check — still bench nearly 300 pounds. I’m not helpless.
But … tap. Tip tip tap.
What WAS that sound?
I stopped again. Tap tip tap t— It stopped, too.
I waited. Nothing. Then … tap … then nothing again.
Why hadn’t I brought a flashlight? I often do when walking around the lake after dark. But this October night was unseasonably warm and inviting. When I had set out 30 minutes earlier, the fog had seemed sultry and secretive, an opportunity to spend a little time in my own private, late night world, all alone.
Except … I wasn’t alone. Someone was out here with me. Behind me. Keeping pace with my steps. The streetlight still seemed a long way off.
I thought about calling into the fog, “Is anyone there?” But what if nobody answered? I knew someone was behind me. Following me. Walking when I walked, stopping when I stopped. Pacing me. Stalking me.
If they didn’t answer, what would that mean? That they didn’t WANT to answer? And if not, why not?
Gooseflesh rippled to life on my arms, crawled up my shoulders, traced stealthy, cloying fingers over the back of my neck.
Tap. Tip tap.
I walked faster. It didn’t escape my notice that the cemetery was coming up on my right. I sometimes walk there, under the light of a noonday sun. Even then it seems pleasantly gothic, a throwback to the days before the sterilization of death, to a time when the dearly departed were laid to rest beneath imposing monoliths of granite and stately oak trees. It’s a cemetery to which the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come might accompany Ebenezer Scrooge, or from which Igor might harvest a few human organs for the experiments under way back at Castle Frankenstein.
On a sunny day, the cemetery is pleasant and peaceful. On a foggy night, with something tip-tapping in your wake, it becomes stage dressing for a B-movie horror extravaganza, one in which you are to be the ax wielding maniac’s next victim.
But at least the cemetery’s entrance is near the street lamp. I halted beneath its glow and waited. Here, I decided, I would make my stand and face down whatever it was that tip-tapped behind me.
Tap. Tip tap tip. Closer now. From within the billows of fog, a shadow detached itself and moved forward. Tap. Tip tap. T—
It stopped. Less than 20 feet from my feeble circle of light, something stood still. Tall. Dark. Waiting. Then, when I thought the standoff would go on indefinitely, it lurched forward, its right arm held stiffly forward.
“I’ve got mace!” Not the guttural growl of an ax wielding maniac, but a quavering, tremulous contralto.
Out of the fog stepped a slender young woman, maybe 30, vaguely pretty, led by a small, leashed dog of indeterminate genus. The dog’s toenails clicked against the macadam. Tip tip tip tap.
“I thought you were an ax wielding maniac,” I said as she passed. I meant it to be funny, but she didn’t smile. She clutched the dog’s leash like a lifeline and hugged the opposite side of the road.
As she disappeared into the fog ahead of me, the tip tapping gained speed and soon faded. I breathed out, back in, out again. I started walking.
One by one, the muscles in my back unclenched and I relaxed. The streetlamp’s glow fell behind me and I was again swallowed by the fog.
In any decent horror movie, I realized, it would be at precisely this point that SOMETHING would reach out of the fog; something with gnarled, misshapen hands, with perhaps too many fingers, or too few. And those hands would not caress, but grab, rend, squeeze.
That last mile home seemed to take a long time.
Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com or at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com. Mike’s paperback, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville or online at Amazon.com.
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