One night when I was somewhere around seventeen, I was visiting my best friend. I was friendly with her mom (who shared my love of Guns’n’Roses, which best friend decidedly did not) so when best friend wanted to go to bed, I hung around in the living room talking to mom for a few minutes before heading home.
The big old console TV (remember those?) was showing one of the Critters movies.
I was, as I said, around seventeen. But home was a half mile away, and it was a dark (but moonlit!) night. And I lived in the country, did I mention that? It was an empty half mile, with no streetlights, no houses, and probably not a single car passing me. And there were dark patches on the road.
Yes, I knew they were spots where the gray asphalt, sparkling a bit with mica chips, had been patched with tar. I’d seen them on the walk to best friend’s house. I’d seen them, walked over them, ridden my bike past them, probably a thousand times. I knew exactly what they were, and I bet I could have mapped them with my eyes closed.
That night while I told myself exactly what those dark patches were, I walked wide around them anyway, keeping an eye on them even once I was past, in case one of them tried to come after me.
More than being scared, though, I was annoyed. Let’s face it, even in the 80’s, these weren’t the most convincing puppets around.
And I knew that. I told myself that. Several times! Could I convince my brain that I was safe, walking that road I’d walked in the dark hundreds of times? Yeah, no. Could I just get it to stop embroidering every whisper of grass, or plunk of a frog or something in the pond as I walked past, creating monstrous beasties about to eat me? Nope.
When I was fourteen, my dad handed down a tiny little camping trailer when he bought a bigger one. I’d moved into it that May and in October (in Pennsylvania) when it started getting chilly, I tried moving back into the house that was occupied solely by my brothers (thirteen and sixteen.)
Yeah, nope. Moved back into the camper, and lived in it without heat for the next five years. Unafraid of bears (never saw one,) or wandering bad people (them either,) or snakes (nope,) or wasps (had a nest one summer.) ANYWAY…
My camper is important, because it explains why when I got home, and had walked up the (dirt, light colored, I could see it) driveway and past the house and up over the hill (through grass, that didn’t scare me) and got to my camper, I stared at the dark shadows under it for a few minutes. It was on tires, you see, blocked of course, but great dark empty space anything could be under there including a bear but at that point it wasn’t a bear I was worried about.
Then I got a stick and popped the door handle (locks? Who needs locks in the country?) and backed up and took a FLYING LEAP into my camper and then I was safe.
Skip forward about fifteen years. My husband (now deceased) (I didn’t do it) loved horror movies. He knew in his soul that if he could just get me to watch the right movie, I would love them too! He tried to show me Nightmare on Elm Street (yes, all of them.) He tried to show me Thirteen Ghosts. Jason! Michael Myers! That one with a laundry press that was actually a demon!
Yeah, nope.
I tried, again and again, to explain that every single scary moment I’d ever seen was still with me and I didn’t need any more. I was a grown woman with a child. I didn’t need to be afraid to walk up a dark flight of stairs, thank you very much.
Seventeen or so, thirty or so, fifty plus… Sunday night I learned that it really doesn’t matter how old I am. Because Sunday night when it finally cooled off enough, I went for a walk. It was, of course, dark.
I’ve lived on this street for three years. Except for the time a house three doors down blew up (meth operation, apparently?) it’s been very peaceful. I needed 1200 steps to make my Fitbit goal. It was a gorgeous night for a walk, with a nearly full moon and a light breeze. I was just going down the block and back.
Halfway down the block, there was a–I’m thinking a dropped mask? –lying in the street next to a car. It was dark, though, and all I could see was a dark patch with what might have been a string or might have been a spider-like leg. So I spent the next half-block of my walk telling me that thing had NOT popped up on spider-legs to follow me after I walked past it, it was JUST A DROPPED MASK.
On the way back, I walked on the far side of the street, and I tried very hard not to remember which car it was next to, in case it wasn’t there anymore.
Thank you, writer-brain. That was great. Not.
From now on, I’m taking the dog. Dogs know things. And also, the person with the dog usually survives those movies.
Please don’t tell me of instances when that didn’t happen.