True Story:

Riding my bike home from my best friend’s house. Mom said be home by midnight. 

The field between our houses was a couple of acres. Old crops of wheat still sprouted up, but what was once farmland was now a field. This field would soon be new homes and a street connecting his neighborhood and mine would be in its place. I thought this field was pretty special. I didn’t want homes being built there. It felt sacred to me. Should be left alone. Sometimes I got scared riding my bike home through the field at night, down the dirt beaten path so many kids used. Used mostly during the day though. Sometimes I rode my bike all around the acreage even though the distance was triple, because I didn’t feel like crossing the field alone. This night I had to hurry to get home. It was getting late. 

Late summer night. Quiet. Beautiful and very still. Growing up in a town so silently silent, especially in the summer when everyone vacated to go to the lakes. I loved it. No one around. Listen for the train whistle from the tracks a few miles away just to be sure you aren't the only one left. Someone else is up. Someone else is awake. someone else is here.

Whistle blow. Blooow. Bloooow. 

A mourning dove in the evening as sun was setting would do the same thing to me. Remind me I’m not alone. Another being is near. 

Coo. Coo. Cooooooo. 

This night no train. Doves asleep. Just me. Soundless. The field. The dark night sky. The beaten dirt path. Somewhere a clock was ticking warning me to hurry. My bike metal chain and spokes banging as I rode shot home. Getting close to the street, closer to the homes and something catches my attention. A sound. A drone. A buzz. What is that sound? Like a garbage truck in hydraulic lift. Louder. More condensed. A sound I can’t place. What is that sound? I’m nearing the end of the field, almost to the street. Our house is across the street, second one from the corner. Always struck me as an odd location. Available. Exposed. Just off the edge, but not far enough in. Sitting silently in the dark of the night. A streetlamp on the opposite side lit the driveway. A small tree on the verge not moving. No wind. No one on the road. Just me, my bike, this sound. 

Squinting as I near the house, trying to orient the sound with my eyes in the dark. I’m starting to ride faster now this sound urging me. I see something. Noise coming from the end of our driveway. Something I can’t identify. Something is at the end of our driveway. The sound tells me it could be a garbage truck, but this is impossible. Not this late. Not on this day, not even close. I am looking at it trying to identify. It is smaller than a garbage truck, and my mind is trying to orient what I’m looking at. The sound confuses what the object could be. Not quite a truck, smaller. I am thinking a man with a shopping cart. A shopping cart? No, that is too small. Shopping cart doesn’t make that kind of noise. Doesn’t make sense. Mechanical electrical vibrating sound noise. So I think it must be, truck.  But no, what I see is too small for that. Smaller than a truck. As tall but not as long and more dense. 

I flash on the sound which is so loud now I wonder why no one is coming out of their front doors to investigate. This small college town where nothing ever happens. People leave their doors unlocked at night. Yet no one comes out of their front door. No one turns on a porch light. This sound. This shape of noise mass and a person behind it at the end of the driveway. Why isn’t the man in the garbage truck driving? It isn’t a garbage truck. He isn’t in it either. He is behind it. He is pushing it? I think of Mad Max. It isn’t necessarily a man. 

Something not from this time is at the end of our driveway and I have to pass it up our driveway to ride my bike into the garage. How do I know it isn’t from this time? From the space I live in? I am terrified, I am out of my body. What the hell is that. I want to cry. I’m scared. I can’t look at it any longer. That sound is near deafening. A male being with a shopping cart the size of a truck full of stuff making a horrible noise at the end of our driveway. I’m alone. I have to get home. 

I ride my bike up and over the curb diagonally across our lawn to the far side of the house where I know the gate to the fence is always open, otherwise I couldn’t get into the backyard. I ride around to the back door of the garage, connected to our house. Jump off my bike and throw myself at the backdoor to the house which is unbelievably locked. I can hear him. It. That. The sound is getting closer, right at our front door. I am banging on the back door with my fists, and miraculously mom appears. I am stammering. That sound. That sound. What is that? In the driveway. Mom! My mom doesn’t even respond. She looks out the window of the front door and nothing is there. No sound. Nothing. She doesn’t acknowledge my hysteria and says goodnight and walks upstairs to her room. I run downstairs to my room, which has windows on ground level facing the driveway.

Don’t turn on your bedroom light. You don’t want to be seen through the windows of your room.

I look out. Nothing is there. No sound. No man. No noise. No truck. Nothing is there.