Dark Out Here

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Nobody's immune to difficult times, but few can say that hauntings can lead you to the way out. My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story, dark out here. It has been so long, and I guess we've gotten used to remembering only the happy moments. But I was asked about the saddest moment of my life and we ended up here. As I sit and think about it now, with kids, a house with a large yard, a stable job, it's tough to believe what lies deep in the tunnels of my brain memories of dark times, hauntings, and a way out. So when I was asked about the saddest moment of my life, I think of this one. Her name was Kathy, and she lived with her mother, while I already had a semi stable job and working my way up a marketing firm. I had my own apartment with my own furniture, and had just gotten a new car. The stage of our relationship was, I would say, at the point where I would be asking her to move in with me. We already did everything together for years, maybe four or five, and we enjoyed each other's company most of the time. And she was in that process. Some of her things were already in my apartment, and she would spend Thursday through Monday over with me. Again. Things were all right a good part of the time. Every once in a while she would get irritated by little things, stuff that I could easily change, but refuse to. Answering the phone at night would bother her the way I drank water with the loudest, most a knowing gulps in history, as I used to call it. We're also on the list. Looking back now, I remember all of the apologies I had to give. I guess that's where the story began, and not at the trigger point. That one was definitely when her car got towed, she had taken longer than usual getting home, so I gave her a call. Annoyed, she told me she would be home a little later and that she was fixing something important. To just let her deal with it, and that I did. I had no choice. When she got home with a yellow sheet a copy of some document, she went straight to the room without saying a word, passing right by me in the living room. I figured she had gotten a ticket for driving so fast, like she always did. But I had never gotten a ticket, so I had no idea what one looked like. Knowing she had a difficult day, I simply let it go like I always did. I waited until about midnight to head to the room, and in the bathroom I saw her keys, her wallet, and that yellow piece of paper right there by the sink. She would usually leave these things out on the little table by the front door, but she just took everything with her this time. Kathy was knocked out. I couldn't tell for sure through the light of the bathroom shining across the bedroom, but I thought I saw her shoes were still on. I stiffened up thinking of the yellings she would do in the morning. After finding her freshly washed pillow covers smeared with her makeup. Once again, I brushed my teeth as quietly as I could while looking down at her stuff. When two handwritten words stood out from the document, towing fee her car had been towed. I feel like any other girlfriend would have called me that day to tell me about it, but not Kathy. I admit I was snooping around for the amount she had been charged, but instead of finding out the amount, I found the location the place where she had gotten it towed Sunnyside Motel. This next section of the story is blurry with explanations and excuses, blaming me for looking at things that didn't belong to me, until finally Cathy got her things and left, never admitting anything, never apologizing. When someone says that their life was turned upside down, got it exactly right. That's what it felt like, a mess. Everything shifted from my sleeping schedule to how I felt at work. The conversations with my friends were not the same anymore, and I always felt eyes on me. One drink with dinner turned to three or four without it. The television would always be on, and soon I stopped answering the phone even at night. Life had gotten away from me and I was about to be fired from my job. It just felt so dumb, embarrassed and guilty. Things only got worse that the days went on with little energy to get out of bed and take care of the house or myself. It's weird looking back at it and trying to pinpoint exactly what that feeling was. The best I can describe it as is running out of gas, tired. Two days after my birthday, I started feeling different even my parents had left early that night to let me get better on my own. Supposedly, I knew I was ruining their night by making them buy the cake from the grocery store. It didn't even bother to get my name written on it. It was not a child anymore, and nobody would take care of me. Not a big deal. I was not a big deal. And so the days went on, running out of gas with every passing minute, not knowing where I would end up or where I could gather the energy to do regular things. I tried talking about it, writing it out, but I think hearing myself out loud and looking at the words my mind was coming up with made things worse. It was around two in the morning when the circling thoughts decided to get closer and take a peek at me memories of the good old days, a time when I was more or less happy. You see, there was a stretch of road up by one of the hills that I used to like going to with my friends back in high school. So many of us would gather there that I wouldn't even know their name. Sometimes a friend inviting a friend of a friend to the scary part of the woods. Back then, people spoke of Elizabeth Arnold, Gregory Booth, and this other guy simply known by his middle name Michael, who had actually gone to high school with us, and all of them had similar stories. They would walk up there one evening and then be found several days later hanging from a tree. Michael's story was the one that I became most familiar with. A couple of people from school would pass around an old yearbook. I think it was still part of the library's collection because they wanted the shelves to seem full. Someone had written rip next to his black and white picture David Michael Thorne smiling in that photo taking in the seventies. It was that kind of story that made me feel alive out in the woods, knowing that there was something else there with us, memories of people that were once alive, ruined by a bunch of underage drinkers and troublemakers with nothing better to do on a Friday night. To get there, we would start at the base of a hill where a trail would lead us through several large trees, instances of views of the city every now and then until we would get to the patch of grass. It was dizzying. Sometimes being there it would be like tree after tree and suddenly a small field of nothing. The trees like wall surrounding you in every direction were beautiful or terrifying to look at, depending on the night sky. Tina had joined us one night. She wouldn't drink or anything, but I had heard through a friend that she had asked around if I was going. Decided to make the trip out. I was a regular, of course, so it would be going either way, but knowing I would see Tina made things a little better that night. We rarely talked. Blame it on shyness or a paralyzing crush, but we both knew what was happening, trying to sit next to each other, feeling those butterflies in my stomach. I remembered almost holding her hand on the way down the hill one night. We were the last ones down and had all the time in the world to talk, but didn't. It's strange, right, thinking of beautiful moments and such a dark place. Remembering those nights under the stars made me feel a little better. The memory was over as soon as I opened my eyes and saw the light bouncing off the side of the fridge in my dirty kitchen. Those times like my life were over. Part two of Dark out Here is coming up right after this stay with me. It took me a few more nights like that before I started waking up at two in the morning, like a calling or a silent alarm clock, waking me up until the thoughts of that dark trail up to the viewpoint kept coming back, started like a what if? What if I could feel those same things again? And then I thought of the darkness so comforting and magnetic. One of those nights, so I went out to the storage locker thing I had where Kathy used to park the car. I grabbed a few things and close a trunk. I needed to get this out of my system, and so I drove over to my hometown for an hour and a half and turned left on Evergreen Drive and parked right at the base of that trail. There were no other cars there, but I could hear the typical chatter of a Friday night high school kids. Probably traditions don't die. I wanted to look around before going up there, so I eagerly parked the car and walked up to the sign. And it was with wonder that I looked at it wanting to run my fingers through the old white carved lettering signaling the name of the park, a place we called Nevergreen because you would only see the trees in the dark, and it was like I had never grown up. When I started taking a few steps into the trail, it was short, the hill wasn't that big to begin with, or maybe it just didn't look that way. Now this was definitely the place. It felt the same. A few more steps up the hill I went before I heard talking ahead of me. Maybe they would offer this middle aged man a drink, like we had done so so many times when you were in high school. I'm sure if it was to befriend somebody or to keep them from getting us in trouble. That picked up the pace. It was a group of teenagers, as expected, with another person walking behind them who turned around. The moon was out so I could see the familiar outline of his face and hair. He must have thought the same thing about me, because he stopped and looked right at me, smiling. Do you ever have those encounters too, people that you knew from high school and might have even been friends with at one point, but I'd forgotten all about I mean, your mind, nose, or name, and it's only a matter of time before it clicks and suddenly, boom, you're back in the nineties. It only took me a few seconds to remember Jared hanging out. I see. I told him a phrase we used to tell each other back then. He walked up to me and said, nah, they're slow walkers, in his usual tone. Jared and I were never close friends, but we had more than one class together, and he would always be up there at the viewpoint with us. Seeing him again was good for an instant, and then I realized that I hadn't even brought my jacket, the notebook, and the other things that I needed for that walk that night. Not that I would need the jacket, but I knew Jared would only slow everything down, and if that was proven Once he started asking questions, not the typical what have you been up to questions, but the hard ones, if I was all right, and what had brought me there? He started walking up the hill very slowly, and I could see that he was intensely focused on what I was saying, completely silent, and his arms completely still by his side. As we made our way up, we passed by one of the benches as he promptly sat down. At one point, I don't remember how I started talking, but I sat next to him as I explained things to him, the explanation of why everything was going wrong and why it was all my fault, lack of focus, poor decisions, and a streak of bad luck. I told him about Kathy and the incident hit almost no reaction to it. I told him how I found out, what I told her, and how everything ended, the way I saw myself diving deeper into this hole I knew I would not be able to get out of, and that I was okay with that. I explained to him the thing about my job and my boss, the one who told me to switch desks from the window to the end of the hallway. We all knew that he wanted to be closer to the new girl than her colorful blouses, and nobody would say anything. Oh wow, I hated that place, I told Jared. I paused for him to respond, and yet all he did was listen. We talked, or rather I talked, for a while until the teenagers came back down the hill, one of them drunk as they stared at me. When the last one left and left us in that silence, echoing everything I had just said. I started crying. It was completely unexpected to see those real tears. It was as though the trees and all the things I had seen and were yet to see, were crying with me. Like I said, this was the saddest moment of my life, and at the time I didn't even know it. When you're in a world like that, all you realize is how numb you feel. And that's if you're lucky. Some aren't even aware. The trees, Jared finally said, you know, they've seen things too, and they still stand. It will be all right. Go back down, go home. It's dark out here. When I think back now, and in those quiet nights when I start getting all introspective and emotional with gratitude or pain, I think of that night. We sat there for a long time until I agreed with him that I should go home. It was almost three in the morning by that point, and living things started to come back. I thought of having to go get gas, because then I would need it. I thought of my notebook and the jacket of my heart beat, blood and the sun rising. The sense of relief. I drove back that morning in a daze, unaware of what had just happened and how memorable it would have become. I suddenly thought of Jared and who he had been the whole time I talked about myself and forgot to ask what he was up to, how he was doing, and what happened to his dreams of basketball. Had he married Millie? Was his dad still teaching at the community college. Their talk had gotten me back to the car without getting to the top of that trail, the whole purpose of the trip. But I thought I had gotten exactly when I needed out of it, and so I pulled over toward the lights of the gas station but the ten bucks I had left and took out my phone. Facebook was not as popular back then, but I knew I had one, so I typed in his name, and the gas pump started before I could search the gas pump and the nozzle stopped. Then I saw his profile. Well rest in peace, May he live forever in our memories. The last post of his sister put on his wall was three months before the bulk of them were from a year back. I must have sat there for a good half an hour before the attendant started hosing water around the pumps. I got out and I grabbed my receipt and put the nozzle back before driving along that dark road. Was my mind really that far gone? Had I really seen him or made the whole thing up? The drive back went by very quickly, and with every thought of Jared zooming in and out of my mind. I pulled up to my driveway and turned off the engine. I sat there wondering where my mind would go next, not with that sad uncertainty, now perhaps a little hopeful, something difficult that I wanted to continue, now that there was a way out, And so I stepped out of the car and went around the back to the trunk. We put in the key, grabbed my notebook, the jacket and the rope, put everything back in the storage locker. I made it home. It was dark out there. 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