The Stalker Between the Worlds: Too Close To Home

LINKS TO PRIOR INSTALLMENTS
Episode 1:  Walking Dead
Episode 2:  Dem Bones

*Warning: Photographs and information in this ongoing series might be upsetting to some readers. Discretion advised.*

This will be an ongoing series chronicling a couple years' worth of encounters with bizarre, horrific, and taunting interplay between one innocent citizen and a stalker that defies description (at least in our known world).

This was an exceptionally well-documented series of events that may at times be too graphic or horrifying for some readers, but it is our hope that by sharing this experience, someone out there might recognize a set of circumstances that are similar.

We have advice to be given to anyone encountering what I am at a lack of words to accurately describe, so henceforth refer to it as…the stalker between the worlds.

"Too Close To Home"

Having decided to ignore the the bones, but finding himself compelled to try moving them around upon occasion in an oddly shy back and forth, the Walker pondered the origins of the Stalker. 

The Walker came to the self-protective stance that he should not ever remove any of the items from the location and he should not be consistent or predictable in his interactions, so as to make the Stalker wonder if he was truly engaged in a communication or just simply bored. It wouldn't do to have this odd fellow knowing he could get a rise out of him.

This was all well and good when it was on the roadways he walked daily, but then it did something he never saw coming - it started coming up to the Walker's own home.

When the Walker wanted to capture a stray cat to give it a new home, he took a kennel and set it out in the yard with some cat food in it. He didn't lure the cat, but he did find the kennel missing. 

He puzzled over who would take the kennel and then started poking around the yard. He went into the woods a little ways and found the kennel sitting there, but no cat food inside, it had been shaken out of the kennel.

He put the kennel back, put the cat food in it and tried not to bother himself about it. It was a large kennel. He knew no raccoon was pulling that all the way into the woods. Yet, he could not for the life of him imagine why someone would take off with it, shake the food out of it, and leave it in the woods. 

A second time, the kennel went missing, found in the woods again. The cat food bowl he used was missing. 

The Walker shook his head, carried the kennel off and set it down, putting talcum powder all around it on the ground. Whoever this was, he was going to learn soon who was messing with it.  

In the back of his mind, the Walker wondered about why this was happening and who wanted to mess with his things in his yard. He studied the windows on his home so nearby and felt an involuntary shiver of worry. It wouldn't do have odd things occurring so close to home, but they seemed harmless enough. 

Try as he might, his mind kept going back to the other weird things happening around there and he hoped to God they weren't somehow related.

One time, the kennel was taken, but the talcum powder was undisturbed. How the heck did someone pick up the kennel, leaving that neat rectangular unmarked area where it sat,, but didn't drag it over the talc or leave a footprint? 

Another time, the kennel was dragged across the concrete, but still no footprints in the powder.  

Okay, now the Walker was getting annoyed and rather defensive. This was his property and unexplained shenanigans were not going to be allowed.

Closer examination with colorization - still showed no evidence of how the kennel was lifted and moved. 

He set the kennel out again with the talcum powder, determined that anything that could pick up a kennel had to walk on two legs. 

And then, a week later, it finally happened. The kennel was moved and there was one footprint inside outside of the talcum powder, another right were the kennel had sat. He held his foot up against it and his size 12 shoe size was smaller. 

The Walker frowned, studied the space between the two prints. It didn't even make logical sense. How did one step where the kennel was lifted without planting his foot there? The foot had to be planted after the kennel was lifted.  So just where was the other foot? The only other footprint was outside of the talc, but it was made with the talc. 

He loaded up the kennel and took it away, not wanting anymore unnatural interactions on his property.

When it quieted down, the Walker figured he was free and clear of whatever was instigated by the kennel's presence when out of the blue, he came outside to find his dog food bowl and water bowls that sat on a stand a foot off the ground, had been slapped away in two different directions. The contents had sprayed all over the place. It looked as if they had been slapped angrily and whoever did it, didn't want the food, it was everywhere! 

Something was getting near his home and curious about what he had. The Walker made a mental note to pull things in for then night and try to keep close to home. 

To get his exercise in one day, he took his restless dog along on the walk and as they approached the area where the pigs had been the deer skull was sitting, he felt a change in his dog. The normally easygoing pet got restless, anxious to move on, pulling on the leash, not looking at all comfortable. The Walker couldn't help but follow his lead and walk away briskly, trying as usual to not glance and see if the skull was still there. 

A few days later, the heavy dog food bag had been moved and there was a drop of blood on it. The Walker stepped back from the bag and looked around him, expecting to see someone nearby who had just bled. They didn't seem to want the dog food, simply wanted to move the bag away. It made no sense, but then nothing else happening around his property or his roadway made sense anymore. 

Fast asleep, the Walker came awake with the sound of his dogs barking. He got up, looked out the window to see the wash of light from the motion detector. His eyelids fluttered, he was exhausted. He pivoted, went back to bed when he heard nothing more and fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, when the Walker headed outside to his shop, he pulled the heavy spring-loaded door open and stepped into the cool dark getaway where he kept all his tools and paints, things he worked around the home with. When he turned to leave, his eye caught something out of place. The magnet that usually held the door open for him was stuck to the side of his metal cabinet. The large double barred magnet could hold 150 pounds and was made for professional use. He looked up at the 7-foot mark where it usually held the door open and pondered it. The magnet did not just come down on its own. He held it up in the air, looking at the spot up high where it always sat and tried to imagine any scenario that did not involve someone with a good reach.

He recalled the dogs barking, the motion detector light on and they both pointed to someone being in his shop, letting the door slam instead of easing it down. They might have rattled the magnet, but it seemed kind of a far-fetched conclusion that it landed onto the metal bench. No matter how he looked at it, the magnet was in a place it did not belong and the dogs had barked, the light was on, and come to think of it, in his deep sleep state, it might have been a loud sound that first alerted him to the dogs' barking. 

Just in case, the Walker studied the contents of his shop and found everything else in place, nothing taken. Perhaps the light and the dogs scared them off.

The Walker made a run of placing a game cam near the areas of activity and when he found nothing, he felt confident that it was all over and whoever or whatever had moved on to find better pastures to play in.

Things seemed to be pretty normal for a time. The Walker ignored the bones, went his own way on his walks, didn't wake up to dogs barking or things being moved around and all was right with the world when all of a sudden, like a pesky neighbor that popped in unexpectedly, the odd happenings started again. 

This time, the dogs did not bark, the motion detector light did not go off, but someone was in the shop, lifted and dropped the door gently this time, and made off with only one item - the magnet! Everything else was in place. Not only had he taken the magnet at 7 feet up, but he had konked his head on the metal flashing and it was pulled out, nails and all. 

It's almost as if he didn't fit through the doorway, the Walker pondered as he hammered the flashing back down again. 

The Walker stepped out onto the porch one sunny morning, stretched and yawned, looked up at the hummingbird feeder to find it was missing something. The plastic white flowers that locked into place were all gone. He looked around the ground to see them down there, as if they had been torn away. In fact, the feeder was empty of its nectar. He looked up at the feeder, right around the 7 foot mark and dismissed the usual culprits that might try to reach up and pull down a plastic flower that was well attached, such as a raccoon. A squirrel might have found a way to shimmy down onto it, but he certainly couldn't snap the plastic flowers off, try as he might. 

With a determined set to his jaw, the Walker went about his morning, thinking about that hummingbird feeder and someone snapping the flowers off as if they were plucking petals from a flower and tossing them aside, and then drinking back the nectar just for good measure.  

One promising and clearing, beautiful day after some rains, the Walker took to the driveway, on his way for his daily constitutional when he passed by his car and stopped and frowned. Atop the sunroof, there was a large muddy print. A very odd large muddy print. He leaned over and studied it. It certainly didn't look a muddy animal climbed up there. There were no muddy paw prints and it looked kind of like, well, a large hand perhaps. 

Determined not to ruin his walk and his mood on that fine day, he pivoted, walked away and pounded the usual circuit of his miles of walking, clearing his mind, concentrating on things he could deal with like upcoming events, goals for the day and the week ahead. By the time he got home from his rounds of the clean countryside, the Walker realized he forgot to even look for the deer skull. 

Not allowing the roadway changes to bother him, the Walker continued to breeze past the skull, not study the shoulders carefully and pretend as if nothing had ever tainted his quiet rural neighborhood. 

He went about his daily duties, including running some chores to the store. As he drove off in his car, he noticed something on the hood of the car. It was about a foot long. He figured a branch from a tree had fallen and by the time he arrived, it would have blown away, but he got to the store parking lot and climbed out to find that it was a turd. Not just any turd, a nearly one-foot long one. 

He studied the hood of the car. There were no dents to indicate someone climbed up on his car and let a long one rip. He scooped it away with a branch from the parking lot and it left a nasty stain, yet another hard to ignore indicator that something was very much stalking him.  When he got home, he took out the camera to photograph the residual print of the turd. 

That reality sank in and he felt his jaw tightening in determination. The Walker wasn't sure how one went up against an unknown being that wanted to get his attention in some of the most perverse ways, but he'd be damned if he'd let something get in the way of the peaceful security of his country retreat.

Another quiet period left the Walker putting his guard down for the first time in a long time. He went out to get the dog food container, having the ritual of feeding the dogs twice a day like clockwork. This morning, he unsnapped the container to scoop out of the food and give his dog the stomach enzymes when the container of enzymes was missing. But the lid had been clamped back on. He tore apart the shop, the porch, anywhere it could possibly have gone, knowing full well he dropped the container into the dog food container each time he locked it back in place. The clamps were on it. Whatever had gone in there and decided to take the pricey tablets had to know how to unsnap the cover and resnap it. 

Exasperated beyond belief, the Walker pondered this hometown stalker and all he could think was, What the hell do you want? You freak! 

Little did he know at the time that things were going to take a very dark turn of escalation....