A few years ago, my oldest and dearest friends came to stay overnight with me, four generations of women. They were on their way to visit schools offering basketball scholarships to the fourth generation young lady in that family. When bedtime came there was an inflatable mattress, a couch, and the bed on the back porch. The little basketball player was too afraid of the woods on the other side of the screens and the perceived isolation of my house. We all gently teased her, and I assured her that we were safer here than in the city. She was not buying it. Some weeks later I told her grandmother, "Tell M. I would come to visit but I am too afraid to stay in town."
The first night my son and I spent here was uneasy. It was early spring and the prairie had not warmed up to make any noise. When we turned the lights out it was vastly silent and dark. The absence of the enormous and constant city noise was most disturbing. In the almost twenty years since, there have been so few times when I had genuine reason to be afraid, all of which were revealed to be reasonable people or situations. I can confidently boast I am unafraid to live in the country.. EXCEPT when my imagination runs amok.
One of my favorite things is to wander in the middle of winter nights. Once my eyes adjust, I can see perfectly well to safely hike in the moonlight. Living in the country, as we say in Kansas, I realized that the moon is not in the night sky most of the time but even just a slice of moon is enough to see well enough to walk to the barn. On a clear, moonless night the starlight is enough to safely walk my property. Starlight can be bright enough to cast faint shadows. If I take a flashlight, I am effectively blind without it, limited to the little cone of light it produces. For anything I must do outside at night in the summer I use a flashlight because there are snakes. Otherwise, my eyes are perfectly suited to seeing in the dark, just not seeing snakes.
For the most part, being outdoors alone at night is fine. I enjoy myself immensely ... until... a scene from a horrible movie flashes into my head. If I am not disciplined with my thoughts, I will soon be sprinting for the house, dogs wondering why we are all running. Scenes of The Blair Witch Project (the little stick structures) flash into my mind's eye and suddenly the shadows are full of creeping ghouls. Sometimes the demon shouting the priest's name as he entered the house in The Exorcist rolls up in the old memory bank and I am done for - the devil now looms behind every tree and bush. This is the reason I stopped watching frightening movies long ago. Some of those scenes stay with me. They scared the bejeezus out of me then and they can scare the bejeezus out of me now, decades later.
I do not have to be outside to scare myself, either. Sometimes I will be in bed enjoying the cool breeze from the open window when my mind turns on me. Involuntary images of a shadow man just outside the screen slowly rises into view. The top of his black, featureless head appears and if I do not stop my imagination immediately he will continue to rise, a looming black menace inches away. This is not fun.
My son has the same afflicted imagination. He once lived in a house with a piano in the basement. A few times when he was home alone he heard a single loud note from the piano. Why that would be so terrifying I cannot say but he and I both find that intolerably scary. He told me he was not sure if he actually heard a sound or just the thought of a single note in the empty basement scared him. I understand because that is how the shadow man is born - I merely have a lightning thought of how damn scary that would be, and voila, shadow man rising!
I can be parked on an isolated country road alone for the sole purpose of stargazing, thoroughly enjoying life when all it takes is imagining a beam of light descending from the sky. No one would ever know what the hell happened to me. Even if they knew, nothing could be done about it, (though perhaps the new Space Force would be a resource). I could be mercilessly tortured in a horrible laboratory cage on an alien spacecraft but my kids would never know.
None of these things are anywhere nearly as frightening as growing too old and moving to the "rest" home.
(Image from Shutterstock - royalty free)
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