To the Stone Bull Bluff [short story]

There was something prancing around in the woods of my youth. I had felt it those late nights when we would all gather, and climb the hill up to Stone Bull Bluff, in the pitch black of midnight.

We were many, so the dread of being alone at night in a dark forest was masked by our loud chattering and the twinkling of our cigarettes. We were many and we were men.

The climb took an hour, but once you got there you enjoyed the view of the sleeping town sketched out by the rows of street lamps lining the main boulevard and contoured by the Dam signal beacons to the North. Well worth it.

I was always last, stumbling up the violent slopes, grasping for patches of grass to pull myself up, trying to catch up with the group. At times, when they went around shrubs a little too fast or over mounds a little too quickly, I found myself in absolute loneliness, in the dark open space. Nothing was standing between me and Evil. I realized then that the fear of being alone is not about loneliness at all. It is the fear of another. Because everything you hear, you actually feel attacking you from behind.

You look up, but there's nothing there but the jaundiced stars, flickering some light on you through hand-shaped oak branches, cracking in the gentle night winds. They have become your ambassadors, pleading to the heavens for mercy.

But the anguish retreats back into the bushes—you're safe. You're with friends. And you are many. And you are men.

Read my other short stories: Onore| To the Stone Bull Bluff| The Shifting Path | The Spy | Picnic on the White Cliff

image credits: Corbis