Excerpt from my novella, The Encounter.

It began on Halloween.

The wind was blowing through the surrounding trees, rustling the leaves like a frantic bill collector. A cold front had drifted down from the north, bringing a chill to the air, making it the perfect night for the end of October.

Ben Freeman got home from work at 6:30P.M., and while his wife, Sheila, handed out candy to the kids trick or treating in the condominium complex, he got ready to take his pit bull, Betty, out for a fast walk around the neighborhood. Betty didn’t like the cold any more than he did, but she was jumping up and down with excitement like a baby kangaroo as he put the muzzle and leash on her. Her big floppy ears were drawn back and her long tail was wagging from side to side.

Ben smiled at her.

Then, slipping on a leather bomber jacket, he stuffed a clean-up bag into his coat pocket.

Once he and Betty were ready for the stroll, he gave Sheila a kiss on the cheek and grabbed a small Butterfingers candy bar from the bowl she was holding. Sheila told him he was going to get fat and then gave him one of those heart-stopping smiles that always made his knees shake.

“We’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said, grinning like a kid.

“I can already see the mischievousness in your eyes,” she said. “Are you hoping to get lucky tonight?”

“Remember what Tim Robbins said in The Shawshank Redemption about hope?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “not another movie quote?”

“Hope is a good thing,” he continued, ignoring her look of exasperation, “perhaps the best of things and no good thing ever dies.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“Then you’d better keep on hoping,” she laughed.

Ben winked at her and then led Betty outside and down the sidewalk in front of their home, passing a dozen or more kids in Halloween costumes. Keeping the dog on his right side, they headed to the small street that divided the condo community in half, turned left, and walked to Eastern Avenue. Betty did her personal business just before they exited the complex, and he picked it up with the bag, telling her what a good girl she was. He found a trashcan for the bag and candy wrapper. Then, stepping out onto Eastern, they turned left and headed to Reno Avenue.

As Ben and Betty were walking along the sidewalk, he noticed the stranger in the black velvet overcoat and silk top hat strolling past the 7-Eleven Store on the other side of the street. The collar of the overcoat was pulled up so the man’s face was hidden. Ben paid little attention to him, assuming he was simply another individual who’d dressed up for Halloween night.

Betty, however, gave him the eye.

Something about the stranger alerted her, but Ben had his own eyes on the intersection ahead and wasn’t concerned about anything else.

What Ben did notice was Betty lagging behind.

She wasn’t keeping pace and forced him to tug repeatedly on the leash. In fact, Ben didn’t even realize Betty was watching someone behind them until they reached the corner. It was then he threw a glance over his shoulder and saw the stranger in the overcoat dodging traffic and crossing over to their side of the street. He didn’t give it a second thought.

Leading Betty around the block, he saw she was still looking back as if worried about an unleashed dog sneaking up on them. Her lack of attention to the walk was beginning to annoy him. By the time they had covered twenty feet, he’d decided enough was enough and came to a halt. Ben used a shushing sound to get Betty to sit down. He then attempted to get her to look up at him, but she was still glancing back in the direction they’d come as if sensing something terribly wrong.

“What is it?” he said.

She whined with apprehension.

“Stop being such a baby. You’re a pit bull. If people see you acting this way, they’re going to laugh.”

The sound coming from her throat, however, was filled with anxiety, and it began to bother Ben in a way he couldn’t explain. Betty was scared. That was when he raised his head and saw the stranger standing at the corner under the streetlight, staring boldly at them. He and the guy looked at each other for a couple of seconds, and Ben began to feel goose bumps popping up on his arms.

“What the hell,” he said to himself.

Betty’s whine grew louder.

Though the stranger hadn’t done anything threatening, Ben felt a strong degree of hostility emanating from the person. He then unconsciously glanced around and saw they were the only ones on Reno. That was when warning bells began to sound off in his head. He knelt down beside Betty and took off the muzzle so she’d be able to defend herself, but left the leash hooked to the collar so he could still control her.

Standing back up, Ben continued to watch the stranger and waited to see what would happen. Then, the stranger leaned his face forward through the folds of the black collar and smiled wickedly at them. Even from where Ben was standing, he could make out the facial features and they weren’t a pleasant sight. The streetlight enabled him to see the tufts of red hair sticking out from underneath the hat and the frightening pock-marked face with its wide nose and blood-red eyes. When the stranger smiled at them in anticipation, Ben saw a large gaping mouth filled with what appeared to be sharp, discolored teeth.

“Shit,” he said.

Ben stared at the stranger in stunned disbelief, not sure if he had seen the man’s real face or imagined it. He didn’t have time to debate the issue because Betty started whimpering as the stranger took a step toward them. Ben’s mouth went dry, and he felt himself unable to move. Jerking on the leash, Betty jarred him back to the present moment.

Ben wasn’t a person who scared easily.

He had spent two tours in Vietnam as a tunnel rat. The things he’d experienced would make most men wet their pants. The stranger on the corner, however, filled him with a blatant fear he couldn’t explain. He glanced down at Betty and she looked up at him with her soft brown eyes.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Turning around, he began to run down the sidewalk as fast as his legs would go, keeping hold of the leash so Betty would stay with him and not charge the stranger.

The steady sound of the guy’s footsteps pounding on the cement behind them could be heard over the beating of Ben’s heart, giving him the strength to run even faster. Ben had never considered himself a hero, but at the same time, he’d never thought of himself as a coward, either. The sound of those footsteps changed his whole perspective on the meaning of bravery.

As Ben ran down Reno to Topaz Avenue, he could hear the stranger in the overcoat gaining on them and realized they’d never make it. He then had a sudden brainstorm. It dawned on him that the cinder-block wall surrounding the condominium complex was much lower on the Reno side. He didn’t know why, but instead of being eight feet in height, the structure was closer to six.

Ben made a fast decision and stopped dead in his tracks.

Sticking the muzzle into his back pocket, he moved swiftly to the wall, pulling the dog with him. Then, squatting down, he took a deep breath and picked Betty up. Filled with a surge of adrenaline, Ben raised her seventy-five-pound body up and over the top. He watched her disappear from view and then heard a loud yelp as she landed on the other side. He then took hold of the top edge and lifted himself up. As he started to swing his legs over, a claw-like hand grabbed his left ankle, causing him to lose his grip. He fell down the other side of the wall and hit his face hard against the cinder blocks. Though Ben didn’t realize it at the time, he’d just broken his nose and chipped two of his front teeth. Ben was barely conscious as he hung there upside down with blood running into his eyes and hair. What he remembered about those few crucial seconds was the intense burning sensation around his left ankle. The hand holding his foot was like a red-hot branding iron pressing though his cotton socks and into his skin.

Groaning in agony, Ben could feel himself being lifted back up. He could hear heavy breathing coming from above, but it wasn’t from exertion. No, the stranger was excited at having caught him. He attempted to open his eyes to get a better look at the individual, but his vision was blurred by the dripping blood. All he could see was a menacing shape wearing a black top hat.

(The Encounter, as well as other of my horror novellas and short stories, can be purchased in e-book format at Amazon's Kindle store for 99 cents.)