Silence Broken

  I awoke with a start into the complete and utter darkness of the night. I lay there wrapped up in my sleeping bag straining my ears to try and find the noise from outside the tent that had awoken me from my slumber. I control my breathing taking deep slow breaths to be as quiet as possible. The heavy silence of the desert surrounded me completely. Did I only imagine the sound? I laid motionless letting my eyes rove around the tent trying to see anything through the darkness, but I could not even see the sides of my small single person tent.

  Just as I began to tell myself that it was nothing. Just my imagination. I heard a soft scratching noise at the side of my tent. It seemed like something was trying to dig into my tent. My nerves were stretched to their braking point as I lay there debating with myself on if I should just lay there silently or get out of that tent and run as fast and far as I could. I quickly decided that staying there as quietly as possible was my best choice. Besides, I could not leave Jake behind. What if the thing got him? The thing had worked its way down to the front of the tent and seemed to be increasing his efforts to break into my tent. I drew my legs up to my chest in order to keep my feet as far away from the thing as possible. Time seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl as I lay there listening to the scratching, clawing, and loud sniffing noises coming from the front of the tent. It seemed liked hours before the thing lost interest and left my tent alone.

    I continued to lay there trying to stay as quiet as possible, but I could feel my breath coming out loud and heavy with fear now. What was this thing? Was It dangerous? Just then I jumped as I heard a loud crashing sound like the sound of pots and pans being knocked off a table coming from out in the campground. Could it be a bear raiding our camp site? My mind was suddenly filled with images of a big hairy fierce creature with vicious claws and huge slobbery fangs. I just knew the sound of the crash came from Jakes tent as the bear crashed through it to devour him alive. However, the silence had returned as deep an ominous as before. There was no blood curdling screams, so Jake must still be okay. I decided it was time to do some investigating to see what was going on out there.

  Mustering up as much courage as was possible in this situation I felt around the foot of my tent to find my flashlight. Click…. Click…. Oh no the batteries are dead! I took a deep breath and slowly unzipped the flap of the tent. I pulled the flap back slowly and tried to peek out from the bottom corner to get a view of the campgrounds, but it was too dark I could not see a thing. Crawling slowly out of the tent I could see that there was barely a sliver of moon present in the sky allowing for the stars to look brilliant setup against the deep darkness, but unfortunately it also did not allow for any light to penetrate down on our campsite this night. I knelt in front of the tent for a while listening intently trying to pick up the slightest sound. The utter silence and the complete darkness was unnerving, and I almost quit my mission right there and crawled back into my tent to wait out the trouble till the sun came out, But I shook that thought from mind deciding it would be better to wake Jake up, so we could face this situation together.

   I stood and walked slowly over the uneven ground in the direction that I knew Jakes tent stood. I kept my ears and eyes open to try to identify any potential danger out here in the open. When I reached Jake’s tent, I called his name softly, but no answer came in return. I knelt to try and get his attention and found the front of his tent open and Jake missing! Where could he have gone? He would not leave me. Jake is my best friend. I felt around the inside of his tent and found his flashlight missing. I looked out over the darkness to try and see any sign of jakes flashlight, but all I could see was darkness on top of more darkness.

  Another loud crashing noise came from about ten feet away, and I jumped with fright. “Jake?” I called out into the darkness hoping it was only him trying to find his way around camp in the dark, but no reply returned. I swallowed hard and was beginning to regret my choice to leave the safety of my tent. If you have never spent the night out on the high desert range on a dark night then you can not even begin to understand the complete and utter feeling of solitude that was feeding my fear at this time. Panic was beginning to really set in. It was all I could do to fight back the urge to just crawl back into my tent and cry my eyes out. I consciously took deep breaths, and cleared my mind of the panic, so that I could come up with a rational solution to my problem. Things could not be as bad as they seemed at this moment.

   I inspected Jake’s tent and could not find any rips or damage of any sort, so I knew at least the thing had not pulled him out of his tent and carried him away. That was good news. I decided to walk in the direction that I had heard the crashing come from to make sure that it was not Jake in some sort of trouble. I arrived at the camp table to find things in complete disarray. Still too dark to see, I felt around finding the dishes knocked over and spread all over the camp site. What happened here? Had there been a fight? Just then a long high pitched howl rang out across the desert sky from a coyote out there in the darkness just outside the camp followed by a bunch of answering yips from his friends encircling the camp and seeming to surround me. Horror instantly clutched at my chest. A chill that seem to go all the way to bone ran down my body, and I got a big lump in my throat that I just could not manage to swallow. I was terrified not just for me, But Jake too lost out there in the darkness somewhere.

  I started to back up looking every which way trying to see even a shadow of the danger that I knew was close by when I tripped over a large rock on the ground. I hit the ground hard driving the breath from my lungs. As I lay there gathering my breath back, I was sure that I was going to be pounced on any moment by a pack mad coyotes. Then I felt a cold scaley body slithering over my arm that lay outstretched in the grass. A shiver ran down my spine as I pictured a six foot rattlesnake slithering over my arm. I jerked my arm back as quickly as possible and jumped up to run for my life.

  About twenty yards outside of camp I crashed into a mesquite thicket and fell heavy to the ground beneath the trees. I was panting hard at this time and had to strain my ears to hear anything over my breathing. The silence had returned heavier than ever. I still could not see anything, but I could feel the fresh scratches on my arms and legs from running through desert brush. The sand under the trees felt cool on my skin as I lay there trying to gather my wits together. I was lying there in the silence. My heart began to slow it’s beating. My breath was coming in more regular intervals when out of nowhere I felt a hand grab my shoulder from behind! I turned almost jumping out of my skin to see Jake crouched down behind me. His flashlight was on and shining up onto his face giving him a ghostly appearance. He looked straight into my terrified eyes and said, “Can you keep a secret?”