Hidden Tracks: Still of the Night
Waiting for the night to come
Hidden Tracks takes its titles from songs I heard when I was the right age to let them all the way in. Then it drags them somewhere darker than the lyrics were ever willing to go. You don’t need to know the songs to get the stories. But if you do, they’re going to sit differently after this.
See all Hidden Tracks stories →
Gwen found the muddy footprints outside her bedroom window just after six, too large to be a dog.
She stood in the wet grass in an old Blink-182 shirt and boxers, phone in one hand, coffee breath still sour in her mouth, and looked down at the flower bed like it might explain itself if she gave it enough time. The prints came from the side fence, crossed through the dead marigolds, and stopped three feet from the glass.
Not dog. Not coyote.
The ground there was churned down hard, pressed flat in a rough oval, like whatever made them had been there a while.
Gwen looked up at the window. Her window. Left side of the bed.
“Jesus,” she said, but softly.
She crouched and took pictures.
In the photos the tracks looked worse. One had a long, almost human heel. Another showed four blunt forward marks sunk deep in the mud. Toes, claws, same difference. She zoomed in until the image broke into grain and blur.
Her hand shook. She told herself it was the cold.
It was late October and the little rental still smelled faintly like cedar, even with the windows cracked. She had been there nine days. Nine days in a one-story house at the edge of Waverly with a gravel drive, a leaning shed, and enough distance from the road that nobody could casually see who came or went.
That had been the idea.
She stepped back and nearly planted her bare foot in the biggest print.
“Shit,” she muttered.
The morning had that flat gray look Ohio got when the sun was up but not yet committed. Behind the house, the tree line stood packed tight, all trunk and shadow. A dead vine tapped lightly against the siding near the kitchen corner. Somewhere down the road a truck started, coughed, and pulled away.
There were more tracks heading off. Harder to make out once they hit the patchier grass beyond the flower bed, but enough. A drag here. A deep press there. Whatever had stood outside her window had gone back toward the fence and disappeared into the brush beyond it.
Or climbed it.
She thought of the sound that had pulled her half-awake around two in the morning. Not a scratch. Something brushing the side of the house. She had lain still in the dark, telling herself branch, raccoon, cat, wind, anything dumb enough to let her sleep again.
Now there was mud in the marigolds and a spot under the window where something had planted itself and watched her room.
She went inside and locked the back door, though she was pretty sure she had locked it before bed.
The kitchen was narrow and clean in the mean way furnished rentals usually were. Two chipped mugs. A knife block with only three knives in it. A fake bowl of green apples on the table. Her actual coffee sat cooling beside the sink, untouched except for the first sip. She picked it up anyway and drank. It tasted burnt and thin.
Her phone was on the counter where she’d left it charging overnight.
Three missed calls.
Blocked number.
Gwen stood very still for a second, coffee mug halfway down from her mouth.
The calls had come in at 1:12, 1:19, and 1:43.
There was a voicemail.
“No.”
She said it to the phone like that settled things. Then she hit play.
At first there was nothing. Just the dry static sound of an open line and somebody breathing too close to the microphone. She almost hung up.
Then a voice, low and worn down around the edges.
“You left the side window cracked.”
Gwen stopped breathing.
The voice went on, quiet as a confession.
“It sticks at the bottom corner.”
The message ended.
She stared at the phone. Hit play again. Same breathing. Same voice. Same sentence in the world guaranteed to make the house feel occupied.
The side window. Bottom corner. Left side of the bed.
Nobody knew she was here except her sister, the landlord in Chillicothe, and one friend in Columbus who had promised, hand to God, that nobody would hear a word.
Gwen set the mug down hard. Coffee slopped over the rim and ran across the laminate.
“Great,” she said to the empty kitchen. “Love this.”
She deleted the voicemail.
Her hands wanted something to do. She wiped up the coffee. She checked the back lock again. She walked to the bedroom and looked at the window from inside.
The voice had been right. The lower left corner never sealed all the way unless you lifted and shoved at the same time. She had learned that the first night and said, out loud to nobody, “Good enough.”
Apparently not.
The curtain that hung there was thin and cheap and cream-colored, which seemed suddenly like a stupid color for anything meant to keep the world out.
Gwen pulled it closed anyway.
By eight-thirty she was in town.
Waverly looked the same as it had when she was seventeen and desperate to get out. The gas station by the highway still sold fried bologna sandwiches under a heat lamp. The old pharmacy still had the sun-faded Pepsi sign.
She parked outside Rhodes Hardware because it opened early and because she needed longer screws, a better curtain rod, and maybe a knife if they sold common sense in a box by the register.
Inside, the place smelled like fertilizer, cold metal, and stale popcorn from the machine by the door. A radio played something old and twangy from the back office. Mr. Rhodes himself was behind the counter in a John Deere cap, reading glasses halfway down his nose and a yellow legal pad in front of him.
He looked up when Gwen came in.
“Well,” he said. “A Hendricks.”
She hadn’t been a Hendricks in twelve years, and he knew that. Small towns liked to keep your old names handy in case they needed to cut you down to size.
“Morning, Ronnie.”
He nodded once. “Your aunt’s place treating you all right?”
“Mostly.”
“‘Mostly’s’ Ohio for ‘bad’.”
“‘Mostly’s’ Ohio for ‘I need longer screws’.”
That got half a smile out of him. “Aisle four.”
Gwen grabbed a basket and headed there. Screws, a new latch plate, one of those metal dowels for sliding windows.
Ronnie wandered over while she was comparing two boxes.
“You hear anything out there last night?”
Gwen looked up. “Why?”
He shrugged like it had only just occurred to him to ask. “Turner place lost three hens Tuesday. Dog over on Blain Road came back opened up pretty good.”
“Coyotes?”
“Maybe.”
He said it the way people said maybe when they meant no.
Gwen set the heavier box in her basket. “I had tracks outside my bedroom window.”
Ronnie’s face did not change much. That bothered her more than if he’d laughed.
“Big?”
“Too big.”
“Hm.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“Depends what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking if there’s something out there I should worry about.”
Ronnie scratched once at his jaw. “There’s always something out there to worry about.”
“Ronnie.”
“Get a floodlight. Motion sensor. Don’t leave food out. Keep your doors locked.”
“I already lock my doors.”
“That’s good.”
His tone made her hate him a little.
She pulled out her phone and showed him one of the pictures. Ronnie held it away from himself, then closer. Looked at the print a beat too long.
“Could be a big dog,” he said.
“Sure. A dog that knows what side of the bed I sleep on.”
That brought his eyes up to hers.
For one second, just one, she saw recognition there. Not of the tracks. Of the sentence. Of what it meant for somebody to know where you slept.
Then it was gone.
“You got anybody bothering you?” he asked.
Gwen looked back at the picture. Mud. Broken stems. One pressed shape in dirt.
“Used to.”
Ronnie waited.
She put the phone away. “Not anymore.”
He cleared his throat and nodded toward the counter.
“Take the good screws, not the cheap ones. Cheap ones strip.”
“Thanks.”
“Also,” he said, and now he sounded like he was talking around something. “If you hear anything again tonight, don’t go outside to investigate. People watch too many movies and get themselves killed.”
At the register she added a motion light, two batteries, and a can of wasp spray the size of a fire extinguisher.
When Ronnie handed over the bag, he said, “Your aunt used to keep bells on the back gate.”
Gwen blinked. “What?”
“Little silver ones. Christmas-looking things. Drove her nuts at night, but she said they worked.”
“Worked on what?”
Ronnie shrugged. “She never said.”
“That’s comforting.”
He handed her the receipt. “You want comforting, go to church.”
Outside, the air had warmed a little. Gwen loaded the bag into the passenger seat and sat behind the wheel without starting the car.
Across the street, a black SUV idled at the curb in front of the laundromat.
It could have been anybody’s. There was nothing special about it except the long crack in the left headlight and the smear of dried road salt up the side panel.
Gwen stared anyway.
She had not seen that SUV in months. Not since Columbus. Not since the last night, the screaming one, when a glass shattered against the wall and left a glittering crescent in the drywall, and the person she’d left stood at the counter with both hands flat, jaw jumping, eyes fixed on the floor like looking up might make things worse.
Her phone buzzed.
You alive?
Gwen stared at the screen. Then typed back:
Define alive
The dots came back almost instantly.
Did Rory find you?
Gwen went cold all over.
A got a voicemail.
Liv picked up on the first ring. “Fuck, Gwen.”
Gwen could hear traffic behind Liv and a cart rattling over pavement.
“Get in the car,” Liv said. “Drive here.”
“Bring what?”
“Yourself would be a good start.”
“I don’t want you in this.”
“Then drive to the sheriff’s office.”
“And say what? Hi. My ex is stalking me and there’s a coyote with boundary issues?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“The thing where you make it sound stupid so you don’t have to say it’s real.”
Gwen looked through the windshield at the SUV. When she looked again, it was pulling away from the curb.
“I only needed one week,” she said.
“You were never getting a week.”
Across the street, the laundromat door banged. Someone laughed. Gwen barely heard it.
Liv lowered her voice. “Lock everything. Keep your phone on, but don’t answer back like you’re still together.”
That almost got a laugh out of Gwen. Almost.
She ended the call and drove home.
At the gate, she saw them.
Three little silver ones tied there with red thread, bright as candy in the gray yard.
Gwen stood looking at them a long time before she made herself move. She cut them down with scissors from the junk drawer and wrapped them in a dish towel. Then she hung them from the latch on the side window.
Not because she believed in anything Ronnie had said. They made noise, and she was done with surprises.
The rest of the afternoon she spent making the place meaner.
She replaced the flimsy screws in the strike plates. Jammed dowels into the back windows. Mounted the motion light over the rear door and had to finish the last screw by hand because the old drill in the shed coughed once and died like it had made a choice.
She carried the wasp spray and a hammer into the bedroom.
By dark, every light in the house was on.
The place looked ready for something she did not want to name.
Gwen stood in the bedroom and watched the yard disappear inch by inch behind the cream curtain. Even with the curtain drawn, the full moon left the yard too visible. She kept her phone in her pocket. No more calls to Liv. No sheriff. No lies she could not afford.
At nine-fifteen, the motion light flashed on and off once, though nothing crossed the yard.
At nine-forty, the bells on her bedroom window gave a single bright chime.
Gwen went still, one hand on the dresser.
At ten, something brushed the outside of the house.
Not scraping. Not clawing.
A body passing close.
Gwen snatched up the wasp spray and the hammer.
Her throat tightened. Every sound in the room sharpened. The tick from the wall clock. Her own breathing, too fast and too loud.
Then the voice came from just outside the window, low and close.
“Gwen.”
She shut her eyes.
Not because she was shocked. Because of how familiar it sounded, hearing her name in that voice.
“Go away,” she said.
A shape moved behind the curtain. Not enough to make out a face. Just enough to prove someone was standing there.
“You should have kept driving,” the voice said.
“You should have stayed in Columbus,” Gwen said.
Then, very quietly, “I tried.”
The hammer turned slick in Gwen’s hand.
“You don’t get to do this here,” she said.
“By tonight, it won’t matter.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
No answer.
Then the voice came again, closer now. So close she heard breath hitch on the other side of the glass.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
The first hit shook the glass hard enough to rattle the whole frame.
Gwen jumped back and the sound that came out of her was not fear, it was pure furious reflex, the sound of someone who has been patient long enough.
The curtain kicked inward. The bells snapped against the latch. The lower left corner lifted half an inch and slammed down again.
The second hit cracked the wood.
Gwen yanked the curtain aside and sprayed the wasp killer straight through the gap. She held the trigger down longer than she needed to.
The sound that came back was part scream, part animal, and all wrong. A dark shape reeled away. Wet fur. One eye catching the light. Too many teeth in too little space.
She stumbled back hard into the dresser and stood there breathing.
Outside, the motion light flashed on.
For one clean second she saw the whole thing crossing the yard. Tall on two legs, then down, then up again. Shoulders wrong. One arm hanging lower than the other. Dark around the mouth.
Then it hit the corner of the house and was gone.
“No,” Gwen said.
She started to run.
The bedroom window boomed again just as she hit the doorway.
She turned in time to see the lower pane burst inward.
An arm came through first, dark and matted, too long from wrist to elbow. The hand clawing for the latch was almost human except for the nails and the way the joints bent wrong around the frame.
Gwen brought the hammer down with both hands. She wasn't thinking about survival. She was thinking about the wine glass that shattered against the wall in the Columbus apartment. Rory staring at it like it had appeared there on its own.
The thing jerked back with a choking sound. Blood splashed the sill. The hand vanished.
She didn’t wait.
She lunged back, ripped the bells off the latch, shoved the broken curtain aside, grabbed the lower sash.
The head shoved through the gap. One eye catching the light.
Gwen slammed the sash down on its neck and leaned on it with everything she had.
The thing thrashed. One arm clawing at the siding, the other hooking at the sill. The smell hit her all at once. Wet fur. Blood. Dirt. Under it, something that had no business being here. Soap. Cheap gas station coffee. The cedar candle from the Columbus apartment.
Her throat closed.
She leaned harder.
“Gwen,” it said.
The voice did what the teeth hadn’t.
Its hand found the bells where they had fallen in the struggle. The sound it made changed. Not louder. Stranger. Shocked and raw and cut off fast. The fingers jerked back. Where the silver touched skin, smoke curled up in thin gray lines.
Gwen stared at her own hands on the sash. Stared at the smoke.
Little silver ones. Christmas-looking things.
Your aunt used to keep bells on the back gate.
Drove her nuts at night, but she said they worked.
Worked on what?
She had asked that like there was going to be any answer she wanted.
The full moon. The shape in the yard. The teeth. The voice.
The silver.
Her aunt had known. Ronnie knew enough to keep passing it along.
“Oh my God,” Gwen said.
Not coyote. Not human.
A werewolf.
She snatched up the red thread of bells and looped it around the trapped throat.
The smell changed at once. Burned hair. Burned meat. Something sharp enough to sting.
The claws caught her across the forearm. Pain opened there bright and clean and she welcomed it because it was simple and everything else was not.
She twisted until her wrists screamed.
The shoulder tore free.
The thing came through in a convulsion of fur and broken wood and dragged her with it because she still had the bells wrapped tight and was not letting go, was not doing that, was not giving an inch of this.
They hit the floor together.
Its weight drove the air out of her. The face above hers kept shifting by fractions. Snout pushing out then pulling back. Too many teeth, then only teeth that were too long. One eye human with pain in it.
“Don’t let me,” it said.
Gwen got a knee up and shoved.
Not enough.
The mouth opened over her throat.
Her free hand found the wasp spray. She jammed the nozzle into its mouth and held the trigger down and did not stop until it recoiled, choking, head snapping sideways.
She came up on one knee and grabbed the hammer.
It lunged blind.
She swung once into the side of the skull. She felt it in her shoulder, in her back teeth. Once into the shoulder. The third time it caught the hammer in both hands. The silver burns across its palms were bright and wet, already blistering.
It looked at her.
Really looked.
She saw the burst blood vessel in the left eye. The small one near the tear duct. The one she used to notice in the bathroom mirror while Rory shaved the side of her head and asked if it looked even.
The hammer dropped from its grip.
Gwen drove the claw end into the gap at its throat where the bells had bitten deep, and hit bone, and felt nothing about it except done.
The body convulsed once. Hard.
Then it went down against the bed and did not get up again.
The bedroom went quiet except for Gwen’s breathing and the slow metallic ring of one loose bell spinning on the floor.
She stayed where she was, crouched with the hammer still in both hands, staring.
The motion light outside buzzed through the broken window.
Blood crept off the dresser and onto the floor in a thin line.
Nothing moved.
Then the body changed.
Not all at once. Not clean.
The long bones pulled back under the skin in sharp little jerks that turned Gwen’s stomach. Fur thinned in wet patches. The jaw shortened. One hand opened on the floor, human now except for the blood and dirt packed under the nails.
The face kept shifting under the blood.
By the time it finished, her ex-girlfriend was lying on the bedroom floor with Gwen’s aunt’s silver bells driven into her throat.
Rory’s eyes were half-open.
Gwen set the hammer down and sat back hard on the broken glass.
She did not feel it.
Rory’s hands lay open at her sides. Both palms were burned where the bells had touched.
Gwen looked at the hands.
Rory had grabbed the bells.
Rory had come through them anyway.
Rory had always known exactly what frightened her.
The locks. The waiting. Someone standing just outside the room, knowing the shape of her fear before she said a word.
Rory had known it well enough to use it.
Well enough to bring it here and die under it.
Outside, the motion light clicked off.
The bedroom dimmed.
