sounds, I myself, find it hard to dispute. Every time I get that eerie feeling, it takes me back to that cold January night over fourteen years ago, and the most frightening moment in my life. It was during my sixth grade year that this story takes place, and my family and I were actually in the process of building a home. During this period, we were living in a small rental house out in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding property was isolated, tucked way back beyond dense thickets, and surrounded by cornfields. While it was serene during the day, at night it was pretty eerie. The house itself was small, and provided little comfort from the cold, due to little insulation, large windows and literally no central heat and air. It would be freezing in the house, and all you could do was bundle up. In years since, I’ve reflected on the incident and I’m sure that the date was 1/11/ 2002, because it was a new moon on a Friday night. School was closed early that day, due to some light snow fall. The night started out rather normally. My parents were taking my little sister to one of her friend’s sleep overs, and then going out on a dinner date; they wouldn’t be home until late that night. My older brother had just been hired on at the local cinema, and had to work until nearly midnight. Essentially, I would be home alone, way past dark, in the middle of nowhere. As it stood, though, I’ve always enjoyed a little solitude. So, I put two layers of pajamas on, wrapped a heated throw around myself, and began enjoying the night.
It was roughly half way through the night, as I sat playing Animal Crossing, that my mind began to wander into dangerous territory. My parents wouldn’t be home until much later, and I knew I had to capitalize on the opportunity. Out of all the deviant thoughts that came to me that evening, the one that was particularly tempting was the riskiest option of them all. My parent’s kept hidden a second refrigerator, which was stocked with alcohol for special occasions only. The fridge was hidden out in a big old barn, which was at least a hundred yards from the house. Never had I attempted to sneak any booze before, nor had I ever had any alcohol before, because I was just too afraid of getting caught. For most of the night, I had resisted the temptation many times. As the night went on, though, I had convinced myself, as long as I only took a small sip from an open bottle, then they wouldn’t catch me. It was a little after ten that I threw on a coat and my school shoes. Believe it or not, we did not have a working flashlight at the time, but I wasn’t going to let anything scare me. Every kid has a point in their life when they haft to prove something to themselves, and I thought that if I could brave the dark, I would be one step closer to being a man. The only favor I gave myself, before stepping outside, was turning our back patio lights on. The first thing about that night, that was striking, was just how dark it was. There was no moon that night, or even any stars; it was dark as hell. Even the illumination from the patio lights seemed to be gobbled up by the darkness, barely a few feet away from the house. The second thing I vividly remember was just how quiet it was; I remember this distinctly, because I actually stopped for a minute to see if I could hear anything, but there was nothing. In truth, I was already getting scared. There was a fresh layer of snow on the ground with no footprints leading to anywhere near the barn. To leave an obviously be-line trail from the house to the barn would’ve been a dead giveaway. Instead, I decided to walk directly into the cornfield, which ran in back of our house, all the way past where the barn was. My foot prints would have been invisible amidst all of the dead cornhusks. It seemed like my trip was a sure thing, but little did I know that my careful planning wouldn’t have mattered either way. As I left the cornfield, and approached the barn doors from its far right side, I began to feel very uneasy. The more I began to think about it, the more I realized I didn’t really want to be in that big barn, alone. There I was, just a few feet away from the barn doors, and realized I didn’t want to go through with it anymore. There was a tremendous compulsion to sprint back home, but for some reason, I walked back straight through the yard. I didn’t care if I made tracks, anymore. After making about halfway back to the house, I was stopped dead in my tracks. Something was wrong. A cold chill went through my whole body. My blood ran cold and my muscles tensed up tighter than a drum. Looking back, it only seems even stranger, but just like a deer, somehow I knew, without looking or hearing anything at all, that I was not alone. My gaze was fixed on the ground, as I was too afraid to look back. Though, up to this point in my life I had felt this feeling before, never had it been this strong, nor has it since. After an eternity of listening to my own heart beating, I somehow found the nerve to turn my head back towards the barn. Maybe some fifty yards away, hiding on the left side of the barn, opposite to where I had approached from, were two round white glowing eyes, resting about adult height off of the ground. They stared right back at me, and as soon as I saw them, I gasped in shock. At this moment, I was too frightened to think rationally, so I just waited to see what would happen, but nothing did. The eyes just kept looking at me, motionlessly. It was then, through sheer force of will that I shouted out towards the eyes. In as confident a voice as I could muster, I yelled out into the still night “Hey!” Nothing happened for several seconds, and then the eyes began moving towards me! The eyes glided toward me silently, without swaying. All at once, something snapped in me, and I just began running as fast as I could, back to the house. Nothing was going through my mind at this point except panic, and at any moment, I was expecting to be pulled to the ground by whatever was chasing me. Even though I ran harder than I have ever run, it felt like a year before I got back into the rays of the patio lights. Never did I look back, except for the terrifying moment when I had to stop and open the two doors back into the house. As I turned around to shut them, I saw the eyes out in the distance, still looking at me. The eyes appeared to have moved much closer, maybe only a few yards from where I had originally seen them. After locking all of the doors and windows in the house, I began to calm down some. My dad was the only person in our family with a cellphone, at that time, but after dialing several times with the cordless phone, I could not reach him. For a while, I sat in a dark corner in the living room, away from all windows in the house, just waiting for something to happen. As my mind calmed down, enough for me to think, I began to try and rationalize the situation. The first idea that ran through my mind was that it was just a regular animal, but it was unlikely any animal would approach a person like that, and at that, they didn’t make any sound. My second thought was that it might be the headlights of someone’s ATV. This didn’t seem likely, either since, again, the engine would have made some kind of noise. After another many minutes of nothing happening, I had calmed down substantially. Though I was still afraid, I began to feel a little silly for being so afraid. Calling someone now would only show that I was incapable of taking care of myself, and to a young boy trying to prove himself, that was unacceptable. To help put my mind at ease, I decided to call up one of my friends. Since I didn’t know his home number off-hand, I would haft to get the phone book, which was in one of our kitchen cabinets. After walking into the kitchen, I began looking through the cabinets. With my head in one of the cabinets, I suddenly get a familiar chill. A tremendous sense of dread takes over me, as I pull my head out of the cabinet, and look towards the big kitchen window. There they were, the two eyes, and appeared to be only a few feet away from the window! With this, I lost all composure. I must have suffered a panic attack, as fell to the floor, screaming so loud, that I thought I might faint. The eyes stared back at me, never blinking or moving, just looking. I managed to crawled from the kitchen to the living room, and rested my back against a wall, just to the side of one of the windows. This window had blinds which were closed. Hopefully, I thought, sitting just to the side of the window, if it tried to peer through the blinds, it still wouldn’t see. As I sat in the dark listening, I heard something that made my heart sink. Only a few feet away, I could hear something very softly open the screen door, leading to the patio. There had been no sounds of footsteps leading up the door. Then I saw the door knob to the main door rattle softly, as it was trying to be opened. Thankfully I’d locked it, but I didn’t feel any safer, as I was fully prepared for this spawn of hell to knock it down. The only defense I had left was to hide behind our big screen television. There must have been silence for a whole minute, when suddenly, I heard the screen door shut, as if someone had just simply let go of it. After a few minutes of sitting in the darkness, I could hear my parents pulling into gravel driveway. A big wave of relief came over me,