Snake Eyes

 I am being watched. It is something that I long lived in denial of. Excusing it as some quirk of hereditary anxiety or an overactive imagination stifled by rural upbringing, but since returning to my childhood home denial feels like a luxury that I do not have the distance to continue affording. So, yes, I am being watched.

I grew up in the western interior of Nebraska which I’m sure already brings a not inaccurate image to mind. Tiny home with a creaky floor and bad insulation, a beat-down silver Camry with a peeling “come and take it” sticker on the bumper, and a highschool with a graduating class of forty five. I left home the second the ceremony was over. I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Maryland before journeying onward to college in Boston.

I had fallen in quickly with a group of girls around my age, one of whom being my roommate, that were all from the area. Every one of them had some story about being watched or followed. Usually it was something as simple as a drunk guy stumbling after them for a few blocks, but one of them, Anne, had a legit stalker. A guy from her highschool, Paul, who had graduated the year before her and who Anne could not recall a single conversation with. Despite being warned off by the police multiple times, Anne would still hear about him lingering outside her old job at a coffee shop, have unwitting acquaintances holding packages for her from him, or receive dozens of voicemails from proxy phone numbers professing his love for her. Unsettling shit, to put it mildly. I asked her once why she didn’t just call him back, and tell him off. According to her, it was best to just never call attention to herself. One day he would hopefully just forget, and find someone new to obsess over. I must admit that I was somewhat obsessed too.

Not with Paul or Anne, really. But with how it made Anne feel. It wasn’t something she talked about often, but I made myself an easy shoulder to cry on. I had a sort of kinship with the dread that made her voice shiver and skin go pale whenever someone turned out of an alleyway a little too quick, or a car tailgated us for a few blocks. I actually met Paul once by circumstance. Don’t think he knew who I was at the time. He was a tall, ginger fellow with an unmistakably awkward air about him. I don’t remember what was said between us, but I do remember his eyes. They were a hazel sort that sat somewhere between brown and green. Reminded me of a rattlesnake’s. I also remember that, for a second, I wished that he was watching me instead. Not for Anne’s sake, or even that I was desperate for attention. But I thought that a crowd would feel less dangerous. I didn’t know why I thought that.

It took years to figure it out, but after a particularly bad spat of depression following a breakup I began to see a therapist. He was fine. Not particularly astute or insightful, but he was curious and willing to hand out a prescription or two which kept me coming back. Then my father died of a stroke. It wasn’t totally unexpected, he was nearly 90 and health had been in decline for a few years now. What I hadn’t expected was the near panic attack brought on by the thought of returning home for the funeral. My mentioning of it, of course, brought on the questions at my next appointment.

“What was my relationship with my father like?” Fine, we didn’t talk much but there wasn’t much left unsaid now that he was gone.

“My mother?” Tense at the moment, she refused to move out to DC where I was currently living and I wasn’t about to sacrifice my career to move back to Nebraska. But, historically, no complaints.

“Any siblings?” An older brother who also moved away at the first opportunity. Lives in Paraguay doing conservation work on some endangered bush-mouse. A younger sister and younger brother. They’re still around the midwest.

“Why do you think he moved so far away?” Well, he was always described as a bit of a free spirit which meant he smoked weed but was cool with all the teachers. I imagine that Nebraska just didn’t suit him anymore.

“And yourself?” I don’t follow.

“Why did you move away?” … I never felt safe.

“Why?” I don’t know. Nothing bad ever happened there, I just always had a bad feeling, you know?

“No, I don’t but I would like to. Can you tell me about the first time you remember not feeling safe?” Sure, I could. It’s not a story I told often, but I had recounted it to a few friends, Anne among them, for one reason or another over the years.

People say that cities never sleep, but then draw the corollary that places like Wyatt, Nebraska must hardly ever be awake. Which I would agree with if we were talking about the people, but there’s more than people on the prairie. The city is awake with car engines, late night restaurants, and drunk 20-somethings stumbling to their apartments. Out there though, its buzzing insects, croaking toads, scurrying rabbits, and howling coyotes which are only slightly less cacophonous than the aforementioned drunk 20-somethings. I can hardly remember a night that it was quiet even during the bitterest parts of winter.

This was one of those rare evenings. It was after dinner, and the house had something of a pall cast over it. Conversation at the table had turned to church which my older brother was decidedly uninterested in attending, and to which my mother was always quick to guilt him over. It hadn’t blown up into screaming or anything like that, but my brother had finished with the dishes and quickly retreated to his room. Which left me and the other two siblings to finish up the other chores which included taking out the trash. For most people, or for the suburban population which we have just decided encompasses “most”, that just means a few steps outside the front door to the bins. For my family that meant crossing the back two acres of property, hopping the small stony wash that only flowed twice a year, and tossing the bag into a concrete pit in the ground which would be set alight every other month provided the wind was down. My younger brother and sister were not keen on the duty once the sun had gone down, and I, fancying myself the brave one, was happy to avoid the monotony of detailing the stovetop.

When I stepped outside, I don’t remember feeling like anything was off but looking back I can paint something like terror over the top. Like an oil painting darkened by a wash of diluted ivory black. The wind howled like it was trying to say something to me. Dogs barked somewhere in the distance. Our chickens softly clucked and came to the window of their henhouse when they heard the door close, but did not leave the safety of it.

I set off down the well trodden path that lead through the back gate, and out over the wash. I stopped briefly to peak around the edges of a briarbush for mice or rabbits. Found none. So, I continued on and dropped the bag into the burn-pit, and then I stopped. I don’t know why, but for some reason I just realized right then how silent it truly was. No dogs, or chickens. Even the wind had seemed to lie down for the moment as if anticipating something. The hair stood up all over my body. I shown my flashlight around, but there was nothing to see. Just a wide open plain only occasionally interrupted by patches of trees and the roll of a hill. But something saw me. I know it did.

I thought for a second about calling out, about asking if anyone was there, but fear had wired my jaw shut. Probably for the best too. The rabbit is wise not to ask the wolf if it is there. I took a step back. The wind flicked my hair in front of my eyes, and between the strands I thought I saw a shape. A shadow just outside the beam of my light.

I turned and ran back to the house. I slammed the door behind me, which my mother scolded me for, and told them that I thought I saw someone on the back acres. My dad, doing his best to comfort us, said that there was nobody for miles and unless they walked in we would’ve seen their headlights. This made some sort of sense to me, but didn’t account for this deep dread that had curled up inside me. When I woke up for school the next morning, I caught him sleeping in the armchair with a shotgun at his side so maybe he felt it too.

I don’t think that dread ever left me. It’s always been there, curled up like a sleeping viper. When I was younger and away from home, it was fun to stir it to action every now and then. Maybe that’s why I liked listening to Anne so much. Now that I’m back though, it is slithering through my veins with abandon.

I arrived back home last week. My younger sister has moved back in as well as we get mom’s things sorted out although she didn’t go as far as I did; working an office job with the railroad in Omaha. Don’t think that any of us are planning to keep the house. The two boys have been calling in, but can’t offer much help from Paraguay or Wisconsin. They seem mostly fine with it which is why I think that I’m the only sibling who got mom’s last call. A voicemail left at 3:22am the night she died.

“Hey Sid, it’s mom. I- I’m just out back right now, and I was thinking about ya. I,” she laughed a dry, old laugh, “I went to take the trash out to the burn-pit, and I forgot that it’s not here anymore. I had your dad cover it up with the tractor the summer after your freshman year when…” she paused as the wind muffles the mic.

“When I realized that you weren’t coming back for the summer. That was a hard year. But, anyways, yeah, we buried the pit because of the snakes. Yeah, a bunch of rattlers decided that that was home, and they’d be damned if a little thing like fire was going to put them out. Anyways, I-” she paused and I could hear the wind again, quieter this time, but unmistakably away from her ear. I heard her call out, a soft, “hello?” that disappeared into the night.

When she put the phone back up to her mouth she sounded shaky. “Yeah, well, guess I will just have to take it into town with me.”

The call ended there. The missionaries found her in the wash a few days later while doing a house call for the pastor.

I can’t go outside the house at night anymore. I haven’t crossed the wash even in the daylight, but, at night, not a single step outside feels safe. I can feel it watching me. I don’t know what it is, but I know that everything out here that scrapes some sort of living by doesn’t want to be noticed by it. Yesterday it was barely sunset when I went to grab the eggs from the hens, and the coyotes were making a big racket in the distance. I made it three steps off the porch before their yapping shut up like harshly scolded children.

And I knew I wasn’t safe.

The house creaks with the wind and settling cold tonight. It’s late and I can’t sleep. I closed the curtains on the windows, but they feel so flimsy right now. Sheer despite the heavy burlap colored fabric. A shadow flickers across the beam of moonlight on my wall.

Something clinks in the kitchen, and the floorboards groan. I wonder if it’s my sister getting a drink, but I don’t know why she’d be up after 2am. Still, I want to know if it is her. I stand up from the bed, and approach the door. The knob is cold in my hand, and I feel that unmistakable prickle of rising hair. The wind isn’t blowing now. It’s like the whole world is holding its breath.

I turn it anyway, and open the door just a crack to peak down the hallway. The rest of the house is pitch black. There is a moment where I think I see something peaking around the corner where the hall turns into the kitchen. Something small and round at a little above my eye level catches the reflection of the moonlight from my room. A glassy brown-green color like a snake’s eye.

My throat tightens as I speak, “hello?”