roseembolism (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roseembolism) wrote2018-10-28 02:14 am
roseembolism) wrote2018-10-28 02:14 am
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(Repost) Twenty-first Minor Spirit of October: The Night Song
Reposted from...elsewhere.
Twenty-first Minor Spirit of October
True Story
Instead of Inktober, I'm doing a spirit a day for October.
At some point in a telling of spooky stories has to come a true story that happened to the author. This is my true story.
When i lived on the Mesa in Santa Barbara, across the main road from my neighborhood was a large gully slicing across two ridges, with a dry stream going all the way from Carrillo Street to the City College. Sandwiched between two subdivisions, it was choked with chaparral, had little side canyons and groves, and was everything a active hyperactive teenager could want. I explored all of it, and was utterly fearless, whether it was poking my head into temporary caves made from storm runoff, or dashing through abandoned homeless camps.
Except for one place. The grove.
At the top of the gully where the streambed disappeared, there was a tiny meadow area surrounded by old eucalyptus trees. It was always cool and shaded and damp, even in late summer. Though it was only a few tens of yards down an embankment from a major access road, it was always quiet there, the hum of the city muted.
And it was mean. Angry.
Nothing ever happened to me there. I never saw or heard anything. But whenever I went through that place, the hairs on the back of my neck would raise, and I would get nervous. I couldn't escape the feeling that someone was watching me, silently angry that I was trespassing. I was reluctant to bend down under the low-hanging branches, lest the leaves touch me. Ants, or spiders might be on the branches, I said to myself. But the reality was I didn't want any plant there touching me.
As I said nothing ever happened to me there. But I made sure to never say there after sunset. And it was an odd thing; though it was a perfect sheltered camping spot, i never saw the trash a homeless camp would leave behind.
A biologist might talk about subsonic sounds, or it might have just have been an imaginative teen letting fantasies run wild. That's what my rational mind says. But the primal side that reacts to danger? I think they're was something there that was angry and hateful.
Time passed. I grew up and moved away. And one day when i visited my relatives, i saw the canyon had been made into a park, except for the area where the grove had been- the trees had been cut down and it was now a cul de sac with several houses in it.
I'm sure they're very nice houses. Expensive, though they have no view. Nice and private and quiet.
But you could not pay me to stay overnight in one.
Twenty-first Minor Spirit of October
True Story
Instead of Inktober, I'm doing a spirit a day for October.
At some point in a telling of spooky stories has to come a true story that happened to the author. This is my true story.
When i lived on the Mesa in Santa Barbara, across the main road from my neighborhood was a large gully slicing across two ridges, with a dry stream going all the way from Carrillo Street to the City College. Sandwiched between two subdivisions, it was choked with chaparral, had little side canyons and groves, and was everything a active hyperactive teenager could want. I explored all of it, and was utterly fearless, whether it was poking my head into temporary caves made from storm runoff, or dashing through abandoned homeless camps.
Except for one place. The grove.
At the top of the gully where the streambed disappeared, there was a tiny meadow area surrounded by old eucalyptus trees. It was always cool and shaded and damp, even in late summer. Though it was only a few tens of yards down an embankment from a major access road, it was always quiet there, the hum of the city muted.
And it was mean. Angry.
Nothing ever happened to me there. I never saw or heard anything. But whenever I went through that place, the hairs on the back of my neck would raise, and I would get nervous. I couldn't escape the feeling that someone was watching me, silently angry that I was trespassing. I was reluctant to bend down under the low-hanging branches, lest the leaves touch me. Ants, or spiders might be on the branches, I said to myself. But the reality was I didn't want any plant there touching me.
As I said nothing ever happened to me there. But I made sure to never say there after sunset. And it was an odd thing; though it was a perfect sheltered camping spot, i never saw the trash a homeless camp would leave behind.
A biologist might talk about subsonic sounds, or it might have just have been an imaginative teen letting fantasies run wild. That's what my rational mind says. But the primal side that reacts to danger? I think they're was something there that was angry and hateful.
Time passed. I grew up and moved away. And one day when i visited my relatives, i saw the canyon had been made into a park, except for the area where the grove had been- the trees had been cut down and it was now a cul de sac with several houses in it.
I'm sure they're very nice houses. Expensive, though they have no view. Nice and private and quiet.
But you could not pay me to stay overnight in one.