“Yee naad-”

“Natalie, I swear to God, if you say that word I’ll kick you out of my car and leave you on the side of the road,” Hailey threatened.

Yee naaldlooshii is what I was trying to say to my friend Hailey. In case you don’t know what that is, that’s the Navajo name for a skinwalker. I just found this out not too long ago, too.

Skinwalkers are an interesting Navajo legend - basically, they’re like shapeshifters. I know a lot of people who live out in the secluded countryside that have claimed to see them. I, personally, never saw one before. Not until my idiot boyfriend brought one to my house.

Now, before my boyfriend told me about his skinwalker stalker, I had always teased Hailey about them. We would drive through secluded areas at night, just for the thrill of what lies in the darkness, but she wasn’t a fan when I brought them up in her car. I’d make comments about them just to freak her out.

Hailey, what if we saw a deer standing on its hind legs in the field next to us?
What if you saw yourself sprinting behind the car in the rear view mirror right now?

Despite my teasing, I really did believe in skinwalkers. I’ve always believed in legends and supernatural beings like that, and it was interesting to learn about, not that I really did that much deep diving into the subject. But what I did learn freaked me out. You would think that would keep me from making jokes about it in prime skinwalker territory, but not all of us have that much common sense. I’m not the only one though.

Like I had mentioned before, I don’t believe my jokes are what brought one to my house. You see, my boyfriend lives out in the countryside, with lots of open space around him. He’s always mentioned how he felt like something was stalking him out there, watching as he moved from his car to the house. He always kind of assumed it was some type of freaky animal. His suspicions were confirmed but it wasn’t exactly what he thought it was. According to him, he saw a skinwalker in the field when he came home from my place one night.

“Gavin, come on. You didn’t see a skinwalker.”

“Nat, I’m telling you, most animals aren’t that tall. And their eyes don’t glow green.”

“How much sleep did you get?”

He gave me a disapproving look. His claim was that the night before, when he got home, he saw a tall, looming creature watching him from the tree line with bright green and glowing eyes. Now, like I said, I do believe in skinwalkers, but my boyfriend also doesn’t get much sleep, so of course I figured he was hallucinating something watching him.

“I wasn’t hallucinating. There was a skinwalker at my place, and I saw him, and I literally almost pissed my pants. I promise, I wasn’t imagining anything.”

I caved in and told him I believe him, and as long as he didn’t conjure one up at my place that’s all that mattered to me. Then we went to bed and never saw any skinwalkers again. That should’ve been the happy ending of this story, right? Nope.

I really didn’t think about it the next day. I mean, I live in a pretty busy area. It’s not exactly where you would think most skinwalkers reside, but maybe some have a preference for bigger cities. More people to stalk, I guess.

Throughout the day, I had been cleaning the house, getting it ready for the week ahead. Since I work close to forty hours a week, I really don’t have much time to clean so I basically just do it when I can.

Time flew by, and at 8:40 PM all I had to do was take out the trash. It’s around the time of year where night falls pretty early, so I had to take the trash out in the dark. Normally that wouldn’t really bother me, but because of my boyfriend’s little tale that I happened to remember at that moment, it freaked me out. Just a little bit, not enough to piss my pants like some other people.

When I stepped outside and heard a low growl, maybe that was closer to pissing-my-pants territory. My neighbors do have a little pitbull that they leave chained up outside (ridiculous), so I just blamed the noise on him. That’s the most reasonable explanation, and to keep myself from freaking out, I had to stay reasonable.

Then I saw the eyes. Not pitbull eyes. Not any dog’s eyes. Nothing even remotely close to a normal animal or even human. And they weren’t even green, so at least my boyfriend’s skin walker stayed behind. All I could see in the darkness of my neighbor’s yard was two glowing red eyes. Maybe this was a good time to piss my pants, and God only knows I was close.

I’ve always heard the term fight or flight, and I figured I would be a flight type of girl. I was right. I threw the bags on the ground and basically flung my body back to the front door, frantically trying to turn the knob to get it to open. I heard twigs break under someone’s steps, and that’s when I pissed my pants. I guess I am more of a baby than my boyfriend after all.

The door slammed loudly behind me, but nothing could mask the growling noise I heard from the other side of the glass. Because it was so dark, I really couldn’t make out more than a silhouette, but the silhouette was enough to make me go from pissing myself to shitting myself. The outline looked sort of… fuzzy, like it had some type of hair on its body. The worst part were its eyes - somehow they were even brighter than they were before, a piercing and sinister red.

I had already locked the knob (thank God I’ve formed that habit), but I needed to find my keys to fully lock the door. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of whatever was on the other side of that glass, but I knew I had to. It had to be tonight that my keys weren’t hanging on the hook where I usually kept them. I’ll remember this the next time I toss them on my desk.

When I turned back around from grabbing my keys, those glowing red eyes were no longer staring at me. Somehow that made this entire situation way worse. I needed to see where he was, where he was stalking me from. I couldn’t really focus on that at the moment, so I hurried towards the door, locked it with my key, and closed the inside door. The windows were all closed and locked, so I knew that he couldn’t get inside without me hearing some resistance.

It took about three hours for me to finally calm down, but until then I kept my eyes open. I barely blinked until the stress from the situation turned into fatigue, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I didn’t feel the same presence as I did while I was outside, so maybe that was a good sign, but I really didn’t want to fall asleep. I felt vulnerable enough sitting in my bed, a hammer and mace next to me of course.

But I did. I fell asleep (in my piss soaked pants, might I add) and woke up the next morning, alive. I didn’t feel alive. I felt like ten years had been taken off my life. But I was breathing and I wasn’t hurt - not physically at least.

Oh, shit. Gavin. I need to tell Gavin.

10:34 AM. He was probably asleep, but at that point I really didn’t care, so I facetimed him.

I saw myself in the front view camera. My eyes were bloodshot and puffy, probably from keeping them open for so long. I guess this kind of freaked Gavin out.

“Nat? What the hell? Did you-”

I know it’s rude to interrupt, but I had to cut him off. I’m sure he probably didn’t understand most of what I said considering I was basically racing through the story, but his face at the end of my story told me that he understood enough. And he actually believed me, probably because I looked like I had the life sucked out of me.

I haven’t felt the presence of that… thing since that night, and it’s been two nights since I saw those red eyes outside my door, but I have a feeling it isn’t going to leave me alone forever. I just hope that next time I’ll be prepared, even though it’s pretty hard to prepare for a skinwalker attack. But if I do get attacked, blame my idiot boyfriend since he basically summoned it to my front door. Maybe I'll get him to kill it for me.