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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/wakingup_withwolves on 2024-10-29 21:31:52+00:00.
I’m from the American Southwest, in what was once the Navajo Nation, and that’s where this story takes place.
I was dating this girl, Gigi, at the time. We’d been dating for a little over a year at this point, and had both just graduated high school. One weekend, Gigi’s grandparents asked her to house-sit while they were out of town. You see, they had a cat named Jake that her grandma absolutely adored, and they lived out in a secluded area 30 minutes from town, so it would be hard for someone to drive out there to check on him every day. It was an extremely rich neighborhood called Kayenta. Every home was a multi-million dollar estate built on several acres of private property. So when Gigi asked if I wanted to stay over the weekend with her, I excitedly said yes.
The first night her grandparents were gone, Gigi and I drove to the house, out in a gorgeous, fertile part of the Great Basin Desert. We followed the narrow road, weaving between dunes, until we came to the end of the pavement. From there, we drove another 10 minutes up a winding dirt road, and then, we caught sight of the house.
I was in awe.
It was a beautiful adobe home, with Mexican ceramic tile floors, and Navajo tapestries decorating the walls. The first thing I did was wander through all the rooms, of which there were many. The front door opened into the living room; a spacious room with high ceilings, a fireplace, and plenty of seating. Just to the left was the dining room, kitchen, and bar area. Through the living room was her grandma’s library, a couple bathrooms, and the guest bedroom. And finally, across the hallway was the master suite, decked out with a bedroom, a bathroom, a shower room, a sauna, and a den leading to a private porch. The place was built like a maze; every room forked into two more, with multiple ways to get to anywhere. But my favorite thing about the house was how many windows there were. The walls of the kitchen and living room were entirely made of windows so you could always take in the gorgeous desert view.
We found Jake curled up on a couch in the den of the master suite. He was a large black cat with green eyes, and was very friendly.
“Hi, Mr. Handsome!” Gigi greeted him with a scratch under the chin, just where he liked it. “Did you miss me, Jakey?” He stretched out his neck and purred, enjoying the attention. I chuckled. Pets having human names was always humorous to me. “Oh, who’s a sweet boy?” Gigi said in a cute sing-song voice. We must’ve disturbed him, because as soon as Gigi stopped scratching him, he got up, stretched his legs, and walked out the cat flap in the door.
“They just let him come and go as he pleases?” I asked.
“Yeah, he knows his way back home,” she said. “We just can’t let him out after dark.”
After putting out some food and water for Jake, Gigi and I decided to follow his lead, and we set out adventuring in the sandy red hills that surrounded the house. Being an experienced hiker, Gigi had a path she liked to walk in the early mornings when she stayed out here. She guided me through the washes and ravines, and we talked and admired the beauty. We were about 20 minutes away from the house. I didn’t know whose property we were on, but we had surely crossed out of Gigi’s grandparents’ by now. After a few more minutes of walking, once all the houses were out of sight, Gigi started climbing up a hill.
“Up here,” she said, “this will be perfect.” The sun was just starting to set over the western mountains. If you’ve never been to the desert, let me tell you, the sunsets are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The sky turns into a painting palette. Red, orange, pink, purple, and blue, fading to black as you look east, with millions of bright stars speckling the void. It was breathtaking.
“You see that valley over there?” Gigi asked, “Right at the slope of the mountain?”
I nodded.
“How many people do you think could fit in that valley? Like, if they stood shoulder-to- shoulder?”
I thought about it for a second. “Probably, like, the whole country.”
“What?!” She exclaimed, “You know that’s like 350 million people, right?”
“Yeah, but people are, what, 2 feet wide on average?” I reasoned, “And probably less than a foot deep. If everyone got crammed in, I think we could do it. Shit, we could maybe do all of North America.”
Gigi wasn’t having any of it. “You had to retake algebra; there’s no way I’m trusting your math.”
“Algebra isn’t real math; it’s a puzzle with numbers, and I suck at puzzles.”
Gigi didn’t respond, just kept staring off into the desert. After a moment, she said, “The whole country, huh? And this valley is only a fraction of the whole planet. There’s so much out there I bet no one’s ever seen.”
“And been forgotten.”
Again, she just stood there, staring at the beams of sunlight behind the mountains. It was starting to get dark. “We should go back to the house,” she stated. “The coyotes are gonna come out soon.”
We were on the way back to the house. The sun had completely set now, and darkness crept in fast. About halfway there, I felt the hairs raise on my arms. I got chills. It was a strange feeling. I hadn’t heard anything unusual, but my brain was screaming at me: ‘You’re being watched.’ Before I could say anything, Gigi turned around and stared behind me.
“I think there’s something following us.” She said softly. She felt it too. “Stay quiet, but act calm.” I wanted to start booking it back to the house. Gigi had to tell me that’s a bad idea. “You don’t run from predators,” she said. “Right now, it’s just curious, but the second you start running, you become prey.” So we walked. The minutes felt longer at night. The feeling of being watched grew stronger with every step. Like it was getting closer. Surrounding me.
A chill wind blew through the air, soft as a whisper. “Gigi…”
Dread opened its eyes.
“Did you hear that?” My voice trembled. Every inch of my body went cold. It was 70 degrees, yet the wind cut to the bone. Strange, for October.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Gigi insisted, but there was fear in her voice. “We’re almost there. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back.”
Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back. I kept repeating it to myself. It became my mantra.
We were walking up the last hill now. My heart was pounding. I don’t know what was following us, but it wasn’t just a coyote. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back. The sand was loose beneath my feet. I prayed I wouldn’t slip. If I fell backwards, the night would consume me. I knew it. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back.
Finally, we were peaking the last hill. Once at the top, under the light of the porch lamps, I turned around and looked.
But there was nothing there.
I had to laugh at myself. My mind had tricked me, let paranoia run rampant. It was only a coyote, I’m sure, if it was anything at all.
Gigi and I walked into the refuge of the kitchen through the sliding glass door. In an instant, the warmth returned to my body, and a feeling of safety washed over me. We looked at each other, sharing a moment of peace, then we started laughing.
“No more night hikes,” we agreed, happy to shrug the whole thing off. While we stood there, laughing at each other, I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful she was. Her long, curly, black hair, brown almond-shaped eyes, and freckled brown skin. Seeing her laugh and smile made me feel safe. Maybe it was the adrenaline still pumping, but she never looked more beautiful to me.
“Want a drink?” She asked. That was exactly what I needed. Perfect opportunity to check out the in-home bar, I thought, but Gigi declared those bottles off-limits. “That’s the expensive stuff. They’ll notice if it goes missing,” she explained. “My grandma used to keep some in the library, though. I’ll see if it’s still there,” and she walked around the corner. I went to the den to check on Jake, but he wasn’t on the couch. He wasn’t in the living room or kitchen either. Probably not a big deal; cats have places they like to hide, and this was a huge house. Plenty of spots to choose from. Still, it’d been a while since we last saw him; I figured I should let Gigi know.
But upon entering the grand library, I instantly forgot what I went there for. Enormous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, built into the walls, lining the entire room, filled left to right. No space was left unoccupied. There must’ve been a thousand books in this room. I walked right past Gigi as she searched a cabinet to look at the selection. Many of the books were about the Navajo people, about their traditions and beliefs, and about their superstitions. One in particular caught my eye; a book about ‘Yee Naaldlooshii’, or skinwalkers. Shapeshifters in Navajo folklore. I picked it up and opened it. Half the text was in another language, and what was in English was analyzing the parts I couldn’t read. I kept turning until I came to a picture of a frightening mythical creature, unlike any I’d ever seen, like a feathered wolf with antlers, and human eyes. Quite an unsettling drawing…
“A-ha!” I heard Gigi exclaim. From deep in the cabinet, she pulled out a perfectly cheap bottle of Bacardi. “This won’t be missed.”
“Probably been forgotten about.”
She walked over and noticed what I was reading, and visibly cringed. “Ugh, put that away. I have nightmares about that book.”
“You’ve read this?” I was surprised. Gigi wasn’t superstitious, or all that into Navajo culture like her grandma. Never mind that ...
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