Last week, after listening to NPR's "Homework" segment wherein there was a call for scary personal tales, I emailed the following story to the host. The story was almost used on the next Homework segment--I guess almost isn't good enough in the 15 Minutes of Fame area--and because it was fun for me to recall I wanted to tell it here. Come back a ways in time with me, to about 1985 or so, to a crisp October night along the North Platte River in Central Wyoming...
I don't get frightened very often. I live alone in the country and I have learned to trust my ears, listening in the night for the talk of an owl or the babble of ducks on the river to tell me that everything is all right. One fine night in early October, I was reading. The evening had decended uneventfully, the lapis sky darkening to star-sparkled velvet. I had a warm fire in the stove and a cup of tea beside me as I read. I was considering going to bed when I heard the kind of scream that makes your blood run cold, as if someone quite near was being brutalized. I doused the lights and listened at the front door. Another shriek ripped the night, coming from the direction of a neighbor's hay meadow and sounding very close.
I don't know why I did it, but I found myself scrambling for my coat, a flashlight and the axe handle I keep by the door. Outside, the night was crisp and damp and my breath smoked as I made my way towards the barbed wire fence. There was a place the wires had gotten hung up on each other making the fence lower and easier to climb. A deer trail led from this low spot and I followed it now as yet another shriek tore across the fields. I was panting with terror as I made my way up the short bank that marked the boundary of the hayfield. The woods lay in profound shadow, cast by the cold light of the five day-old moon. In the dampness I could smell the windrows of hay, ripe buffalo berries still drying on the bushes and the smokey sweetness of newly fallen leaves. Another scream made me stop hard. My knees shaking, I raised the flashlight and shown it out far across the field. It was late and there was no other light, not even a truck on the distant highway. Once more, a horrifying scream chilled my blood. My flashlight beam searched the windrows for the source, which seemed to be coming from further away this time. I was far out into the windrows now, without shelter from any maniac who should find me there. Suddenly a shriek sounded from right behind me! There were two murders being committed, and I was caught in the middle! I gasped and turned, expecting to be cut down where I stood. Not twenty feet away, the screamer turned from me and trotted off, his coat rusty even in the moonlight. His scream was answered by his mate's. I had been lured out into the midnight hayfields by two foxes.
Since then, the foxes have become trusted friends who let me know if anything is amiss. They pass close to the house at night, their noses sniffing for mice under the open window and their light footfalls making little sound. Coyotes, turkeys, deer, owls--I know and love them all as good neighbors who are welcome to my quiet end of the woods. But there never is a time where I don't jump sharply at the sound of foxes screaming.
Now that the darkness of the Last Eve has fallen and the sweet smell of leaves in the dampness is filling your nose, pull up to the fire and tell us all a story--The Scariest Thing That Has Ever Happened to You.