Tonight my need for a cigarette usurps my fear of the dark. At twenty-seven years of age, I am too old for such childish inhibitions, but still have a nightlight burning when I lie down at night to sleep. I tell my wife that it is so I can see, should I need to get up in the middle of the night to urinate. The truth is that completely dark rooms—pardon the pun—scare the piss out of me.

I turn on the light that hangs from the ceiling of my rear patio and then step through my sliding glass door. It is at times like these that I wish I had married a fellow smoker. Alas, my wife does not smoke and I am banished to the outdoors like a reprobate turned out of a homeless shelter for being drunk. 

My wife—I love her more than I love breathing—is always nagging for me to quit. She just does not understand the addictive hold that my cigarettes have on me. To go without my fix of nicotine causes my heart to race, causes my hands to shake, and causes the world around me to take on an air of unreality. Even trying to think during nicotine withdrawal is near to impossible. It is like trying to drive through a dense fog at the hour of midnight. One knows that he’ll be okay once he’s out of the cloud, but it seems as if the cloud will never end.

The night-time air on this evening in early March is cold. A slight breeze rushes past my face and my ears tingle from its bite. It is not the arctic chill of the kind that blows through in the middle of January, but cold enough, all the same, to make me wish that I had worn a heavier jacket. 

The one that I am wearing is lightweight, colored with the black and gold distinctive to Pittsburgh’s sports teams. The breeze eats its way through the meager protection of my jacket, causing me to shiver for warmth.

I light my cigarette while looking over the backyard. The porch light does not help very much at all. The light extends only halfway up the slope of the backyard. Beyond that point, the night appears darker than it would have without the extra illumination. If I were to think about it, I suppose that standing in that light would make me more visible to those things of which I am afraid. It gives me comfort, and for that comfort it is worth the risk.

The bare trees sway back and forth with the breeze. The branches look like shadowy fingers which are waiting to grasp anything that comes within reach. This thought sends a shiver up the length of my spine. I press my back to the door and survey the yard, looking for anything that I might wish to run from, anticipation of finding such causing my muscles to tighten. In the yard of the house two doors down is another tree that looks like the silhouette of a fifteen foot man. It nods at me, as if to say, do you think that you are honestly going to get back into that house alive? Having seen this particular tree in the daylight, with its limbs cut close to the trunk, making a narrow V, it does not scare me as much as it could.

My back stays pressed to the door. The cool of the glass seeps through my jacket, making my skin feel as if it is pressed against ice. Although uncomfortable, I do not mind how the door feels against my back since it prevents anything from coming to me unseen from behind. I feel as if this gives me a decided advantage over the imaginary phantasms of the night. 

I take a drag from my cigarette and inhale, holding it in my lungs for a few seconds. The nicotine rushes through my veins, calming my nerves and warming me a little. A noise that sounds like a jet firing up its engines arises from out of nowhere. I try to press back against the door, but cannot go any farther. I look around for the source of the strange sound. I would find this sort of sound normal if I lived near an airport, but here in a suburban neighborhood, thirty miles from the nearest major airport, it seems wrong somehow.

I wonder, not for the first time, why I have never grown out of my childhood fears. Back then this paralyzing terror over dark places was understandable. I remember looking out of my bedroom window in horror at a figure walking on the wooded hillside, not two miles from my house. I could see the shape of this figure’s head bobbing above the treetops, more than once causing me to wet myself. My fear of this creature was so intense that my parents had to switch bedrooms with me so that I could not look out over that hillside any longer.

The woods here in southwestern Pennsylvania have always been something that I like to avoid after dark. When my wife and I visit my in-laws, I feel as if the woods surrounding their house are aware of my presence. My friends in school would tell of a house near a particularly depraved piece of woods, which they said was haunted. While I have never doubted the haunting of this house—I once had my won weird experience there—I believe that it was haunted because of the beings that lived within the trees nearby. 

My cigarette is near the filter. I take a final drag, and then I cross to the edge of the patio to field-strip the butt. I twist the filter between my thumb and first two fingers until the ember falls to the ground. 

I look up before turning back to the house. The very thing that I have always been afraid that I would see stares at me from my neighbor’s porch. I can see the faint lines of a shadow and a pair of eyes glowing like the discarded ember of my cigarette, eyes that have no business being attached to an actual, living creature. From the same direction, I can hear the rumbling of a low, barely audible growl.

I am now stuck with an impossible choice. If I try to get into the house, this thing will have me before I get to the door. If I try to run, it will have me before I reach the street. I know that I cannot stand here either, locked in a perpetual stalemate with a creature unlike anything that should exist. However, it does exist and will eventually tire of waiting and come for me anyway. I decide that my odds are better if I am in constant motion, so I take off toward the street. 

The creature lunges for me upon my first step. My angle is good and it rushes by behind me. I gain a lead of a few steps on it as it stops to turn around. I do not know if a few steps give me much of an advantage, however. I wonder if there is any advantage against the unreal, or at least, what should be unreal. Even so, a few steps are better than nothing.

I rush past a rhododendron growing at the side of the house. Its thick, rubbery leaves look black in the night-time gloom. I dodge around the maple tree growing in the middle of the front yard. Its white bark makes it glow in the light coming from the nearby streetlamp. I rush down the small, steep slope of the front yard and almost stumble when I get to the street. 

Out of the corner of my right eye, I see something else coming for me over the crest of the hill. Another set of glowing eyes burning with hateful fire. Another pair of eyes appears in front of me. I find it curious that they left me a place to go, as there is no other creature to my left, but who am I to argue with their generosity, even if it was unintended. 

I cut left and head downhill. I can hear all of the creatures behind me, quickly closing the gap between us. Houses fly by me, blurred in my peripheral vision. My entire body is tensed, waiting for the pressure of a pair of paws on my back that will inevitably come. I am almost to the bottom of the hill. I can feel the breath of one of the creatures on my legs.

I cut left again at the bottom of the hill. I have no desire to blindly run across a main road, not even at one in the morning. A tractor-trailer blows by me, reinforcing my decision to turn. My smoking is catching up with me. My breath goes in and out of my lungs in short, painful wheezes. My legs feel as if they have gone into orbit, but I dare not stop running. The consequences would be dread indeed. Ahead of me, and also to my left, two more sets of eyes appear. It is now clear to me what they are doing. They are not chasing me but leading me somewhere.

I stop running with an abrupt jerk. I turn and begin to cross the now abandoned street with my shoulders hunched over, showing a look of false resignation. I have no intention of lying down for them whenever we get to wherever it is that they are leading me, but for now I feel it is better not to let them know that. 

Two creatures come up beside me, one on either side. I look at each of them in turn while crossing my hands behind my head to help catch my breath. I take a large, deep breath, and then I exhale in an audible whoosh. The coolness of the air helps to cool the burning in my lungs that was caused by my unplanned run. These creatures are the ugliest things that I have ever seen. Their paws and hindquarters have the alternating black and orange stripes of a Bengal tiger, with a dog’s head and a shark’s mouth. Two black stubs—they are too small to call them horns—are growing from the tops of their heads, one behind each ear.

They lead me past Sarah’s Dairy Bar, where my friends and I used to hang out as teenagers. Its neon pink sign shines into the night, declaring the business with pride, even though it has been closed for the past four hours. Behind Sarah’s lies a patch of woods. We enter it, crossing over Chartier’s Creek. The water flows by, speaking the same language that all running water speaks. Tonight its words are not calming but ominous. We climb a hill and pass onto a baseball diamond in right field. They lead me through the outfield to a hole ripped into the waist-high meshing that serves as the fence. The woods continue up another slope, this one much steeper than the last. We come to the top of the hill and my escorts signal for me to stop by one rushing into my path. An entire den of these creatures surrounds me. In front of me and overhead, an owl alights upon a branch.

I look around the den, trying to assess their numbers. I turn slowly, so as not to show any aggression. In mid-circle, I feel the ground begin to vibrate. I stop turning and double over, sure that I am going to regurgitate my entire dinner. It is now that I realize that I am standing in the same patch of woods that I looked out on at the age of seven. The same patch of woods that contained that terrible creature and that brought me to incontinence on an almost nightly basis. I know what is coming for me. I was sure, as a child, that I never let it see me. It must have. After twenty years it comes to claim its long awaited prize.

The ground vibrates harder; shaking is a better description. The trees even begin to shake like antennas in a strong wind. The owl that had come to watch a boxing match between the dog-like creatures and me decides that it is better off not sticking around, gives off a soft hoot, and flies away. I am now on my knees. My fear is way beyond paralysis. A tree falls nearby.

A shadow appears in front of me and a feel the warmth of incontinence once again flowing around my waist and legs. My seven-year-old mind perceived this creature to be ape-like. What I see before me is no ape. I have no idea what it is. It wears a robe down to its feet with a hood that covers its face. The true sense of resignation that I lacked outside of Sarah’s I have now gained. I have no energy left in me to expel toward saving my own life. This newcomer took care of that. 

I am lifted from the ground and above the tops of the trees. I can feel the warmth of its breathing. I close my eyes and brace myself against my oncoming doom.

I take the last drag from my cigarette and put my imagination to bed for the night. I walk to the edge of the patio to field-strip the butt. I twist the filter between my thumb and my first two fingers until the ember falls to the ground. I look up before turning toward the house. Staring at me from my neighbor’s porch is... OH, GOD!