I love where I live. Within a stone's throw, there are plenty of houses filled with families and friends... houses that illuminate the evenings with floodlights, and fill the air with sounds of life being lived and smells of dinner on the stove.
However, in contrast to these well lit, comfortable places, there are the dark places. The nooks and crannies situated between shrubs and garbage cans, the inky cavities that butt against the back of the garage and creep through the windblown dogwoods.
It's in these places that something lurks.
Something that I saw with my own two blue and totally sober eyeballs. A thing that my neighbor saw with his own not blue and more than likely sober eyeballs.
And honestly I don't have a doggoned clue what it is.
Let me tell you what we saw...
Karl came home one night about a month ago, and looking up from his vantage point in the driveway, saw something about waist high, dark, and long legged dart into the woods down the road by our trash cans.
Night had fallen, and he couldn't tell what he saw. He simply knew it wasn't something that he could readily grab from his daily vocabulary.
It creeped him out a little.
And when he told me, I immediately went into Scooby Doo mode and proclaimed it a Chupacabra...
I kinda fancied the idea of some legendary creature like a Chupacabra scampering through the forests around Dhuland. It was neato.
Well, at least until it scared the bejeezus out of me a week later.
It was ten o'clock, just before bed and I decided to let Ruby out to go pee pee potty. I usually let her out the back door, but I'd already started toward the bedroom so I opened the front door for her. She darted across the front lawn and disappeared in the blackness in the direction of my mom's house, probably to harass a raccoon or something.
So I walked down my sidewalk and began calling, "Ruuuuuuuby.... Ruuuuuuuby." I stood there for a few minutes, but no Ruby. Not surprising. She enjoys rounding up critters down by the marsh... even if it means making her ever so patient mommy wait for her in the dark.
So there I stood.
And then something caught my eye.
From my left periphery I caught sight of a swiftly moving creature. It came from behind the azaleas about forty feet away from me, running at a full gallop diagonally across the lawn, I guess sort of parallel to me.
It's the weirdest thing. I will swear I saw it, but I'll be danged if I can put a name or word to it. It was about waist high, brownish like a deer, but I didn't notice any white on it. I couldn't see a tail or ears, it looked like it's head was pointed toward the ground, or perhaps stretched long and low for speed. I don't know.
And the crazy thing was panting, or snorting, or grunting. I could hear it's breath as it matched the beats of its feet tearing across the ground.
I stood there, kind of afraid and not afraid at the same time. It's like because my brain couldn't assign it a definition, it didn't freak me out. The creature huffed and puffed into the night, and a minute later Ruby came scurrying up beside me without ever batting a pomeranian eyelash in the direction of the creature.
I ran inside and woke up Big Dave, told him I'd seen it... the mystery creature Karl had seen just a week before. I described the beast and even acted out its gait and the snorting/panting noise it made.
Crazy right?
Was it a deer? Big Dave says he doubts it because of the noise and its all out head down run instead of a springy gallop.
Was it a wild hog? Too tall I think.
Dog? I guess... but it would've been a really tall dog, and why didn't Ruby pick up on it?
And to top it off, we now have new evidence of a creature roaming the yards of Dhuland...
A pawprint... a BIG pawprint. It's a cross between a clawed foot and a hoof, as best we can tell.
So maybe it was something like this...
Something like a coyote mutant alien?
Something that may have mutilated our beloved chicken, Echo?
Something...
like a chupacabra!
