The Trip That Lasted a Year - Hell Night

Turn down the lights, lower the blinds, give the kids some cocoa... this story is best told by a campfire with stars above and bushes behind. But, this will have to do. I'll preface this, like with every good campfire story, by saying the events really happened.

To pick up from last time, remember I am at this point staying (living would just be too kind a word) in a borrowed 12-ft camper trailer, until I could find something of my own, out on a 20-acre horse ranch. There was an "outhouse" - a small building with a good-sized bathroom, shower, and laundry - which beat out the little eensie weensie toilet and shower in the trailer. I did plug in the electric, so at least I had some light at night, dim as those camper lights are. Because I had nowhere else to put my stuff, I had containers, those plastic bins you see at Target that hold like 40 gallons, great for horse food, knick-knacks, and other divorce remnants. I stacked several of them right outside the door. Sometimes the cats would need to jump up away from the owners' mongrel dogs, and so I had arranged them in a stair-step fashion, and even used them as a catch-all for my keys, coat, purse - all safe, secure, in this outback place.

I had already cursed the Powers That Be for not letting me have a decent twenty-minute conversation without dropping calls, and I'll say that I was NOT a... dare I ?... happy camper. My face at that time was probably permanently pouty. At least it felt like it, always cursing, yelling at everything. It was thusly that I exhausted myself each night.

One particular night, J, that ol' night owl, called me up about midnight. Of course I would never sleep through an honest-to-goodness opportunity to connect with another human being, so I pulled my groggy butt down from the top bunk, stepped over more boxes in the aisle, and lurched for the ringing phone. "Heyyyyy." I said in my oh-so-appreciative tone, before my mood had a chance to turn sour, before the inevitable dropped call brought out Ms. Hyde. J began to talk, and it was all I could do to begin waking up to listen. But as I did begin to listen, I started to hear something that was far different than J's voice.

"Wait, wait..." I told J, "hang on, I'm hearing something weird."
"You are still asleep," he says. But as each second passed, I could hear... footsteps? Are those footsteps? ABOVE ME?

"Something is walking on my roof," I insist.
"You're still slee- peeeeng," he sings in my ear. "Wake up." Then there were more footsteps.
"I'm definitely NOT sleeping, and there is something on the roof." He is continuing to try to tell me something, but I am oblivious, hearing only something walking above me. An owl? I'm a country girl, there isn't a lot that lurks about that I haven't known about. A nighthawk? But it doesn't have that bird-type walk. I can just make out a plunk, plunk, plunk as it's walking from the back toward the front... uh, wait, now there is ANOTHER set heading toward the back! I interrupt my amused spectator on the phone, "NO I'm NOT sleeping, now there are TWO things on my roof!" He proposes what I've already run through, the minuscule list of things that could go bump in the night. I think that whatever it is, whoever they are, they are up there, and I'm in here, so I'll continue talking... that is, until I heard an actual bump. From underneath. Bump, here. Bump, bump, from over there.

"Uh, there are things UNDERNEATH ME NOW. Do something!"
"Why don't you just take a look outside, maybe it's the dogs."
Yeah! those mongrel beasts. Always chasing rabbits into odd pipes and under junk, plenty of which was scattered throughout these acres. So I get up on the dining cushions, butt pressed up against the half-round table, gently pushing aside a portion of my clothes, which are all strung along the curtain rods of the front windows.

Shadows. Could it be dogs? they only have two... but there are more, here are four... five... seven. Maybe feral dogs. My panic is suspended, at least they'll move along once they find nothing. "Get out your flashlight," he suggests. I do. I peer out once again from the wall of clothes, and click it on. The shadows kinda flee a bit, but then stop abruptly. I shine it around, and get a glimpse of fur, of... a leg? Then one comes right into the light.

Werewolves. A pack of 'em. Pointy snouts, beady eyes, fangs, and a head about two feet long...
"HELP ME!" I yell into the phone. "I've got werewolves outside! I'M GONNA DIE NOW!" My head is spinning. This can't be real. I don't believe in werewolves. But they're here!
"Shhhh, calm down," J is trying to tell me. "They aren't werewolves."
"I'M GONNA DIE, I'M GONNA DIE..." His voice is far away, two hours away, yet right here, and he is going to hear me screaming to my death. If the call isn't dropped, that is.

"LISTEN TO ME. Look again. Go on, take another look," he chides me. "Maybe they're have-a-(something uninteligible) I try to peek my eyes just... over... the edge...
"Have a what?" I ask.
"Havalina. You know, the wild pigs" (spelled Javelina). I shine the flashlight bravely around once more. Sure enough. They are as big as medium-sized to large dogs, they freeze when the light comes on again, and I see that what I thought was a head was actually a white marking behind their shoulders.
Their snouts twitch. Grunts are uttered. Again they begin moving, content there is no threat. Now I hear the first container knocked over. Shit, all my stuff... hey, they're after my grain! "Hold on," I say, with a tinge of anger now.
"Wait..." his voice calls out from the dining cushion. No time, I'm on a mission. Horse feed is a little spendy on a fixed unemployment income!

I turn the door handle, knowing my pitchfork is just outside the door. I grab it, and raise it in the air: "Alright, you sonsa bitches! Get outta here!!" I step outside, banging that pitchfork on the ground, watching the shadows scurry. I turn to look behind me, and see the bottom of one container being dragged under the trailer. "Let go, dammit!" I bang the pitchfork somemore, pulling the container back, righting it, observing some loss of grain here, a pile of pellets there. "Shoo! Scram! Beat it!" I pull all the containers with sweet feed, pellets, and other assorted vittles into the trailer. I had no floor room to speak of, and walked on the balls of my feet in the tiny spaces left, but I refused to let them win. They could eat what was left of the spoils and go their way.

I got back in, and J was still on the line. "I'm back." I told him what I'd done.
"You are crazy," he says, "I was trying to tell you to stay inside, those things are dangerous. They are notorious for attacking people and their pets, it happens all the time here. Yeah, they climb trees and shit, they are quite ferocious! Look it up on Wiki. Haven't you heard of them?" I had, but only from people who said they didn't really exist.

Just stories told around campfires, they said.