Being assigned to Camp Pendleton was a dream come true. Located in Oceanside in Northern San Diego, it’s one of the biggest Marine Corps bases in the US. There’s a ton of stuff to do nearby, whether it’s going to the beach to surf, swim, or go for drinks at the pier. The people around here are mellow, and there’s a surfer sort of vibe to the neighborhood I moved into.

Everything was going great for me the first few weeks while I was here. But I noticed that despite the laidback attitude of the surrounding area where I lived, my work-life was rigid and inflexible, my commanding officer gruff and no-nonsense. I began to realize this place was not going to be a cakewalk.

Then, one cool night, I woke up disoriented and far from my bed. Looking around, I saw there was nothing nearby. Not another person for miles. Just flat, dirt ground with hills in the distance, and the black sky full of stars and a full moon above.

I must have been sleepwalking, I thought to myself, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

I had been marching in my dreams while remembering my days of basic training. And I had somehow ended up in the middle of the dirt field. I looked around in every direction and finally saw lights in the distance behind me. At least I had an idea which way to go now.

Turning around, I started to walk back towards the base, my legs wobbly from the long walk while asleep. It felt surreal to be out there in the middle of the night, and I didn’t understand how it could have happened. I had been caught sleepwalking once or twice before, but I'd never gone anywhere near to this far. Part of me wondered with a paranoid fear, just how often this happened without me realizing it.

I walked for a few minutes alone, feeling an increasingly strange sensation like a tingling on the back of my neck. After a while, I began to suspect it was that outdated lizard-brain notion that someone was following me. A remnant from some bygone era when humans actually had to worry about being stalked in the night…

Just as I had that thought, someone cleared their throat in the darkness behind me.

A chill ran up my spine and my flesh broke out in goose pimples as he spoke, his voice deep, gruff, and commanding.

“What are you doing all the way out here so late at night?” he asked.

He stepped closer and in the moonlight I could see him more clearly. My voice caught in my throat as I looked at his eyes and saw they were yellow, like a cat or a wolf or a snake maybe.

“Haven’t you been told to stay in your bunk at this hour?”

His tone was predatory and overwhelmingly creepy, but his demeanor was otherwise friendly. The part of my brain telling me to run was suddenly being hushed into submission by an unfamiliar voice which told me this was fine, and not to worry about a thing.

Look at his uniform, the voice said. And sure enough I looked down to see he was wearing a Marine Corps uniform, with the insignia indicating he was an officer.

You wouldn’t want to disrespect a superior officer, would you? The voice asked.

“Sorry, sir. I must have been sleepwalking. I’m just heading back towards the base. I can make it home from there.”

He showed his teeth in a grin and told me he’d walk with me for a stretch.

“We must be distant relatives from somewhere down the line,” he said as we walked. “Both of us out here walking in the middle of the night. I wish I could chalk my trip up to somnambulism - but I’m just a run of the mill insomniac. I can never get back to sleep once I’m up. I usually just go out for a long hike - it reminds me of the old days when I was deployed, I guess. Going for long marches that started before sunrise and didn't end until long past noon.”

The more time that went by, the more guilty I felt for having almost run from the man. He was just an ordinary guy. And the conversation became easier as we built up a rapport and I told him about my life and my background, and where I was from.

When I looked back at his face, I was shocked by what I saw. Maybe there really was a family connection between the two of us. In the increasing light from the base as we drew closer to it, I saw there was a striking resemblance between us.

He didn’t look like that when you first saw him, that suspicious voice in my mind said uneasily. His eyes were yellow, remember? And now look at them, they’re brown.

But it was quickly drowned out by that other, louder voice which spoke up and said all of this was okay too. It was just dark out in the dirt field, and I hadn’t gotten a clear look at his face until now.

“Tell me more about your parents,” he said. “I want to know all about them. What are they like?”

I started speaking again, feeling hypnotized as I looked into the older man’s swirling brown eyes. He was walking slower and slower, and I was matching his pace. The base was close now. I could see the lights of it were very bright up ahead. Less than a couple hundred yards away. But they were getting dimmer suddenly. The light was fading. But how?

Were we walking backwards now? Was I even walking at all? Or was something dragging me now? It took me a few moments to shake the strange, sleepwalker's haze from my vision, and I realized I had been in a trance of sorts.

When I looked at the man’s face again through my half-closed eyes I was astonished at what I saw. He didn’t just bear a passing resemblance to me - he could have been my long lost twin brother. His eyes were the same shade of brown, his hair close-cropped and chestnut. His jaw was defined and his nose was sharp and angular.

But his smile, and his teeth - those were not like mine at all. They were pointed and long, designed for tearing flesh from bone and ripping it to shreds.

He was pulling me, dragging me across the dirt, deeper into the darkness again.

“Who are you?” I heard myself asking, and in that second he changed completely.

It wasn’t like in a horror movie, when you see a man turn into a werewolf over a matter of a few minutes. The metamorphosis was NOT slow and drawn out. Instead, it happened in a split second. I blinked and the man who looked like me was no longer there. In his place was an indescribable monster - tall with long limbs, pale grey skin, and pitch black eyes. Its jaw unhinged as it revealed teeth longer and sharper than those belonging to a wolf or a bear.

It reminded me of that strange, ethereal white-masked creature from Spirited Away, full of hate and hunger and wanting to consume everything. It didn’t appear solid. This thing looked like it was made of shadows.

A shot was fired suddenly, bringing me out of my hypnotized stupor. I realized that I was being dragged away from the base. The creature had my shoulder between its jaws and it was biting down so hard I could feel it grating against the bone.

Another shot rang out and I heard a few people yelling. There were footsteps and I heard something approaching from behind me.

The thing tried to pick me up in its jaws, and it was so massive and so strong that it actually succeeded momentarily. I thrashed and punched it in the face, kicking it in the eyes. My shoulder was on fire and my entire arm felt like it was dangling by a thread, as if it would pop off at any second, unhinging at the joint like a Thanksgiving turkey drumstick.

And then for a second I thought it would. It popped out of the socket and dislocated. The flesh began to rip and tear and bleed. The creature nearly tore my arm clean off as another shot rang out.

I gave it one more good, hard kick to the face and the already-wounded monster dropped me to the ground, letting out a low moan of pain. It fell, its form turning into a large black puddle of darkness like an oil spill, before skittering off into the night like an infinitely long centipede. It blended in perfectly with the shadows, and was gone a second later, just as a few other marines arrived.

“Are you okay?” one of them asked, helping me to my feet. “Man, I never thought I’d live to see someone get attacked by a mountain lion! You’re lucky to be alive!”

It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he was saying, it was so bizarre. The thing which had just attacked me looked nothing like a mountain lion. It was long and tall and humanoid, with a black, wispy shroud surrounding it like a living cloak.

“Man, are you blind?” the other Marine asked. “That wasn’t a mountain lion!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t crazy. Someone else had seen the thing as well.

“It was a wolf! A big, gray wolf! Man, I’ve never seen one so big! You sure are lucky to be alive, though. That’s for sure. Do you want us to call for an ambulance?”

I shook my head.

“No, I’ll be fine. I can walk.”

I took a nervous look at them both, as if judging for myself again whether they were human or not. But I decided these two were the real McCoy. If not for them, I would have been that thing’s dinner.

The two of them walked me back towards the base and I tried to decide whether I should tell them the truth of what I had really seen. But with each step we took, the memories started seeming more and more surreal and dreamlike, to the point where I even started to convince myself I had exaggerated what happened. Maybe it was a mountain lion. Or a gray wolf, far from its pack, desperate for food.

But no. The memories could have been wiped away, but the teeth marks were not. They were strange, and totally unlike anything a wolf or a mountain lion might leave. When I went to the infirmary to get the bites looked at, they told me they’d never seen anything like them before.

After several sets of blood cultures and antibiotics, they never did figure out what was wrong with me. Or how to get rid of my symptoms.

Sleepwalking being primary among them. I would get up from my hospital bed in the night and it would take a whole team of security guards to get me back into my room. So desperate I was to escape. Back to the fields, I told the men. I needed to get back to the dirt fields. To march.

All they could do was watch, as my symptoms got worse, and as black, vein-like formations began to spread from the bite wounds. Like a dark plague, spreading throughout my body.

Everything is so cold now. And I feel like I’m losing control. I don’t want to feel like this, but I can’t help it. Whatever bit me, it infected me. Its contagion is spreading throughout my system and I can no longer fight it. I get these windows of time when I’m with it enough to speak and live my life, and then I get a period of darkness where I remember nothing.

They discharged me recently, leaving me alone to deal with the symptoms myself. I think they're worried about having me so close to the base. They don't know what I'm capable of anymore.

Most nights, I wake up far from home and don’t know how I got there, just like that night in the dirt field. Like I’m sleepwalking all over again.

Except that’s not what this is. This is something much worse.

The dark veins are spreading up my neck towards my face, making me stand out and look strange. People think they're bizarre facial tattoos, inching their way towards my skull. They keep asking me if I’m alright, as sweat pours down my reddened face and my eyes dart around with nervous paranoia.

The blackouts are getting longer and closer together.

I don’t know how much longer I have left to be ME.

And I’m terrified of what’s going to happen when those veins get to my heart. And my mind.

Who knows how long I have left before I’m out roaming the dirt fields… Looking for a meal.

MAD

TCC

YT