It wasn’t just a fear that squeezed me somewhere in my middle region; it was a fear that made me want to hop out of my skin and disappear altogether. We had climbed into our tent earlier in the evening, zipping the flap with a sharp zing against flocks of mosquitoes. The campground was dark, tucked away in a protected pocket of nature off a remote highway. Just as sleep was slowing my thoughts, the terror began.
It was a cell phone alarm. I imagine it was one of the un-smart varieties. The song was a trumpet fanfare punctuated with the tinny sound of drums. I suppose it would have been catchy in the daylight, tempting me to sway a little to the rhythm. But on the cusp of sleep it was obnoxious. After half an hour of the song repeating itself at regular intervals it went from obnoxious to worrisome. Where were the owners and why weren’t they silencing it?
We were in a cul-de-sac of three campsites, and the tune pierced the quiet from the site opposite us. The large tent glowed faintly in a glimmer of moonlight. The car was parked there and yet the song persisted. Were they passed out? Or worse…?
After an hour of the relentless alarm, my husband steeled himself and pulled on his shoes before zipping out of the tent. I waited tensely in my sleeping bag, willing the song to silence. It wasn’t long before he was back.
He whispered tensely, “No one responded, and when I got close to the tent flap it looked like there were red streaks on it.” Could it be that there was no one alive to hear the alarm? Dread iced over my body. It was nearing midnight, but surely the campground host had to be notified.
I scrambled out of the tent. I would not be left there with that song or the desolate tent across from us. It was so dark that we stumbled along in baby steps. I clung to my husbands back and walked small, tight steps behind him. Our steps on the gravel road mingled with the eerie alarm until we gingerly step-walked far enough away. Then we heard our own steps, sharp bursts of sound in the night. Crunch…! Crunch…! Crunch…! Crunch…! Our footsteps followed us eerily. Blood hammered fiercely in my ears.
We finally reached the campground host’s trailer. A light was on inside. My husband knocked firmly on the door. “Who’s there?” came the response. My husband told of the alarm that wouldn’t stop, his visit to the tent and the streaks of red on the tent flap. We were met with silence. We heard whispers and then the light went off.
We were surrounded by the dark, completely unprotected from whatever was out there. That is when I wanted to crawl out of my skin and just disappear. It was a paralyzing terror. Now we had to face the solitary sounds of our footsteps echo around us as we edged back to our campsite and the dreaded trumpet fanfare. The only thing to do was to climb in the car where the sound was shut out and the click of the door locks provided some sense of safety. I cocooned myself in my sleeping bag in the backseat, while my husband took the passenger seat. We dozed in and out of fitful sleep until sunlight glowed beyond the foggy windows.
When I cleared a spot in my window and peered at the dreaded campsite, I was sure I’d see police cars and crime scene tape. Instead I saw smoke rising from a campfire. I blinked and looked again – sure enough two people were making breakfast around the campfire. There was no caution tape or crime scene, just a calm morning with smoke wafting hazily in the morning light. I couldn’t believe it! What I was sure had been a murder or suicide turned out to be very heavy sleepers and a forgotten alarm.
It made for a good campfire story later, distressing as it was. But the truth is that that eerie music has followed me into my relational life. Repeated small annoyances, familiar patterns of behavior and I begin to tell myself a story that ends in doom. I sometimes become paralyzed in fear.
A counselor once told me, “You can only know what you can videotape.” That bit of wisdom returns to me at intervals like a light, illuminating the dark corners of my mind when I’ve found my way into a horror story.
I can’t know others’ motivations. I don’t know what the future holds. I can’t read thoughts. I don’t know why things went as they did in the past. I can only witness the present as it is unfolding. A behavior on repeat is just something to attend to, not a future crime scene.
When the music becomes eerie I can hear it as a refrain to get my attention. I can see it as an invitation to become aware. If I listen to that signal, I can stop and notice instead of letting my imagination begin to tell me a story of terror.
It’s been eight years since that night, but writing about it brought back a visceral experience of fear.
When I asked my husband if he wanted to read it, he grimaced and said, “I’m not sure…”
“Too scary?” I asked.
He paused, “No, too embarrassing!”
It’s true. But it also taught me something valuable – eerie music is only as scary as I imagine it to be.
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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Haunted".