Fateful Encounter

The Discovery Part 1

BOOM

And just like that, I was sitting up in my bed with my heart pounding out of my chest listening to the sound of my dog barking.

I scanned my room hoping to pinpoint what had caused the loud thunderous sound to jolt me awake and as I did, my eyes landed on the digital clock sitting on my beside table.

3:14 A.M.

'Ugh...seriously??!' I thought.

Though my room was slightly illuminated by the outside street lamp, causing the walls to be painted in a yellow-orange tint, my room was just too dark to show what had woken me up. With a defeated feeling, not just due to my inability to find the source of the sound, but also because I had to be up in a couple hours, I laid my head back on the pillow allowing sleep to overtake me once again.

"AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!," yelled an unfamiliar voice.

And as fast as that sound came and went, so did the opening of my eyes. Laying paralyzed in bed, my mind wracked through all the possibilities of what was happening...and if I was in any potential danger.

'Was...was that someone I just heard!?

What are they doing in the middle of the night!?

What the hell is going on!!?

Oh God, please, please, please don't let someone break into the house!' I frantically thought.

With my eyes now clenched tightly shut, I tried to steady my breathing. As my breathing returned back to normal, there was a nagging feeling left in its wake.

Get up...look out the window...go see...

Over and over those were the thoughts in my head and no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it kept coming back...stronger each time until I did something.

With a strong leap of faith, and a silent prayer to God, I threw the covers off my body and walked to the window. Opening up the blades of the shutter ever so slightly, so I was kept invisible to the outside, I looked out.

"What the heck...there isn't anything out here," I muttered to myself. It wasn't until my eyes looked towards the street light that I saw a dip in the roadway. As I kept staring at it, my vision began to focus and what I thought was a dip, was in actuality a crater. A shallow crater that would allow cars to pass through without getting stuck. Then it suddenly clicked. This had to be the source of the sound, but what caused this crater was another fearful mystery.

In a heartbeat, I was throwing on a jacket and walking down the stairs as quietly as possible so my family wouldn't be awoken. Everything was dark, but my eyes were slowly adjusting to the point where I was able to make my way to the alarm panel and turn off the alarm to the house. I was so eager and drawn to the wanting of investigating that shallow crater that I completely dismissed the fact that our dog had been barking for the last ten minutes and to be honest, I was surprised my family had not woken up to the sound of that.

I quietly made my way into the garage and through the side door where Buddy, our dog, was looking at me. With his tail wagging, happy to see me, I told him to go back and sleep. I don't know why I told him that, very well knowing that he was just going to come back and see what I was up to, but in case something happened, I didn't want him to be a part of it.

After opening and walking through the fence gate, I peered around the corner of the house to make sure no one was standing around it...waiting to kill me.

'I really should have some sort of weapon on me...or my phone at least,' I thought to myself.

For spring, the temperature was below freezing, colder than normal, and I could make out the frost that was barely starting to form on the grass. Come morning, it would look like a winter wonderland...that was, if I ever made it to see morning...

The sound of Buddy barking took me out of my intense monologue. "Buddy quiet! You're gonna wake up the whole house," I hissed just loud enough to stop him from barking.

I began to walk away from the house and approach the side walk. The reality of the crater was now starting to manifest and the idea of how tangible it now was caused my breathing to hitch. I was standing right in front it...it was there, clear as day. The fear that was now coursing through my body was deeply rooted in the fact that whatever had caused this crater, it was still out there and it was tied to the strange sound of someone, or something, yelling.

Crouching down in front of the crater, I scanned my neighborhood. I was in the middle of the street looking both left and right to make sure no one was coming my way. The trees were clear, and no one, at least to my knowledge, was hiding in them. But there was an eerie kind of quiet that hung in the air. Tension could be felt and I had every opportunity to call it quits and run back inside to my warm house and forget that this was happening. But I didn't. I didn't because my eyes landed on the single most shocking piece of evidence left by the crater.

A feather.

One...single...long...black feather.