Two nights ago, something strange happened, strange enough that even now, thinking about it sends a cold ripple down my spine.
It was a little past midnight when the wind started howling. I was in my room doomscrolling through apps on my phone since I was unable to sleep at the time, when the sudden rush of air pressed against the windows and made the curtain flutter like wings. The sky hadn’t opened up yet, but it felt like rain was waiting just above the clouds, gathering its courage, then I remembered that my clothes were still outside.
I groaned at first. Who goes outside past midnight to rescue damp clothes from a storm? Apparently me. So I stepped into the night and was greeted by silence although it wasn’t all that silent as the wind was giving serious drama and tugging at the clothes as I pulled them off the line and in my head I was like “hurry up and get back inside.”
By the time I finished and stepped into the corridor, the whole atmosphere had shifted as the air suddenly thick, cold and heavy that it affected my gait. Well, then I knew something wasn’t right. At the far end of the corridor stood something shaped like a human but wrong. It was too still, and too shadowy. And yet, it was there, solid enough to cast a shadow and really silent to freeze my breath.
In that moment, every sense I had sharpened so I stopped walking. We just stared at each other across the corridor, two silhouettes suspended in a moment too quiet to be real. Then lightning struck, bright, white, and violent and in that flash, this figure moved. The movement wasn’t a rushed or panicked movement, it just glided past, as though the bolt of the lightning had pushed it along its path. Goosebumps exploded across my skin instantly and my heart slammed against my ribs. I couldn’t even swallow.
I don’t know what I saw, but whatever that thing was, I am certain of one thing, it was not a carbon-based lifeform. Definitely not human or animal nor was it anything this world has an easy name for.
The night folded itself back into silence, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been watching me. That something had followed the wind, slipped through the shadows, and walked past me as casually as someone taking an evening stroll and the strangest part was me realizing that the world holds more than what we see, more than what science explains and more than what carbon can shape.
I think that sometimes, prolly at midnight, when the wind grows wild and the sky crackles with electricity, the otherworldly slips through the cracks just long enough to remind us that we are not alone and that’s so terrifying.
My response to the freewriters daily prompt