Footsteps in the Night

two teenagers get stuck walking up a mountain road and when the snow comes so do the ghosts

Footsteps in the Night         

   The mountains of Colorado stand out on the horizon in majestic beauty and grace for the passer by thirty miles North of Denver on Interstate 85. They jut up on the horizon, blue and rugged outlines on the Western sky. I grew up in the small town of Longmont, located about ten miles from the Western slope of the Rocky Mountains. In 1976 I turned sixteen, got my driver’s license, and my two brothers and I got to live in a house up in the mountains for a season in our lives.

    Raymond, Colorado is a small town twenty-five miles up the South Saint Vrain canyon from Lyons, which is right on the foot of the mountains. The drive up there is a winding, curving, uphill journey that eventually winds up into EstesPark, and ultimately Pikes Peak. The landscape echoes of nineteenth century mines and ghost towns long gone.

    My older brother Ed was a powerful kid, muscular, and shy. An accomplished high school athlete, his attentions were mostly in Longmont where he spent much of his time. My younger brother Budd was intelligent, considerate, and friendly. He and I were close, almost constant companions in a paradise of mountain trails and rocky peaks, when we weren’t pining away in the bus on the mountain road to LyonsHigh School. On Friday and Saturday nights we'd head on down to Lyons to drink beer and resume a never-ending search for a "score." It was on one of those Friday nights that Budd and I ended up on a journey back up that mountain that we hadn’t reckoned for.

    We had an old Toyota sedan we used to get to and from Raymond with. That night we were playing pool with little luck and when ten thirty came, we went to the car to head home. The little blue 'Toy' would not start, not at all.

     “Dangit’ Steve, I’m gonna’ get that jerk Larry.” Budd said, pacing in anger. I was tinkering around with a misconnected cylinoid, leaning into the open hood of the car. "Lori was my girlfriend about six months before he ever met her, and he had no right to say anything about her, especially to me.” His girl in Longmont had given him some serious heartache. One of his classmates had gotten wind of it and played his emotions for all they were worth.

     “Don’t worry about it, bro.” I replied. “He ain’t nothin’ without his three brothers to back him up, and you know he never goes ‘nowhere without them. You got a smoke?” I disconnected the battery and closed the hood. The car wasn’t going anywhere.

       “Sure man.” Budd handed me a cigarette. “I just got a pack a little while ago.”

       “Well, ‘looks like we’re walkin,’ dude.” I said, locking the driver’s side door. “Unless you wanna’ go back in there and ask your buddy Larry for a ride all the way to Raymond.”

       His anger erupted into a punch of his fist on the car, just what I was fishing for.

     “I wouldn’t ask that…” Budd’s face flushed for a second and he regained his temper. “I would much rather walk, Steven. Unless you are too much of a woos' to make it all the way.” He looked at me with a challenging grin that had motivated me to climb many a mountain. He had more strength of character than I did, and had always challenged me to do things with that grin of his.

     “My sentiments exactly, Buddie.” I answered, looking up at the sky. It was a September night, and there was a rumor of snow in the high country. But I wasn’t any more willing to be a burden to anyone for a ride than Budd was to ask that other kid for anything whatsoever. It was a matter of pride.

     “You got any money left?” Budd asked. “Looks like it's gonna' be a long night.”

     Inside my pocket was a one-dollar bill and three pennies, that was it.

     “Just enough for gas to get home, a buck.” I replied. “You?”

     “Spent my last on smokes, man.”

     “Well, we ain’t gonna’ get there just standing around shiverin', bro.” A chill breeze seemed to drift down from the darkness as we scanned the sky for stars, but there were none visible because of the snow laden clouds forming above us. “Let's start walking.”

      And off we went, one foot in front of the other, into the night. We walked away from the car that let us down and the friends we thought we had, my little brother and me. Streetlights lit the road until we passed the outskirts of town, then our eyes became accustomed to the darkness. We'd learned to see by light of the stars, an old Indian trick. We could still see the pavement of the road beneath our feet so we kept walking. 

    All that mountain climbing really paid off. We set a good walking pace and just kept putting them one in front of the other. Meadows we gazed at on the bus to school now surrounded us, the sage and the snow covered grasses seemed to glow in the night, and we became part of the landscape itself in our journey. Budd and I made many journeys together, from climbing Mount Elbert near Golden, the highest peak in the continental US to driving to California in my old van to visit Ed years later. Time went by, the road passed beneath our feet, and the grade became steeper. We smoked cigarettes one at a time, passing them between us, and we talked.

    We talked about Lori, Budd’s Indian princess that he had loved so. Wendy, my latest failure at romance, was discussed at length, and how I missed her. We told disgusting jokes to the mountains we walked by and could not see, laughing and hooting to hear our voices echo from the rocks, trees, and the river below. We cussed each other, cursed our supposed enemies, the president, all bureaucrats and communists; just to hear the words come back to us from the blackness. We talked and laughed until there was nothing left except the echoes of our footsteps, marking cadence of our journey up the road and into the dark night.

    After what seemed like several hours to me yet a few minutes to Budd, as long it took to walk nine and a half miles, we saw a light that gleamed like a beacon in the darkness ahead of us. Using the ember of a cigarette I was able to determine that it was almost two in the morning. And it was starting to get cold, very cold. We figured that if anybody were awake maybe they would let us warm up, give us some hot chocolate, or even brandy and beer; after all it was Friday night. We hoped for anything that could break up our endless walk.

      The road curved around to the last two hundred meters or so to the light and it began to snow. As we approached the small house with the light on we heard what sounded like people talking and women laughing. The snow became heavier as we got closer to the small house. The sounds of people became more clear and defined. Apparently there was some kind of a party going on and we were finally in luck.

    “What are we gonna’ say to them, Steve?” Budd asked as we stepped up to the driveway. “We ain’t got no money or nothin.’ ”

    I stopped and looked at him, pulling the dollar out of my pocket, a pauper’s fortune. The sounds of laughter and even singing became loud, licking at our ears like taunting sirens.

    “Listen to that, man.” I said. “Does it sound like anyone's gonna'care that we ain’t got any money?” The party was getting pretty rowdy. Budd looked at me, and I just said to come on.

    I walked up to the doorway of the small house and all the noise subsided instantly. I looked back and Budd motioned for me to knock on the door, which I did. When nobody answered I rang the doorbell and a light came on from within the house. I listened for the rowdy soiree that had enticed us to the house in the first place, but there was only silence.

    The door opened.  Inside was a short pudgy woman in a robe with curlers in her hair, rubbing her sleepy eyes.

    “Wadda’ ya’ want?” she bellowed angrily.

    “Uh, umm,…“ I stammered. “Do you, uh... know what time it is, ... ma’am?”

    She looked through her screen door at me with disbelief. “What time is it?” she asked herself. “You two bumbs wake me up at two thirty in the morning to ask me what time it is? I tell ya’ what, I’ll call a cop to come tell you what time it is!”    

    She slammed the door and started to yell at someone from inside. I heard some things crashing and saw another light come on over my shoulder as I ran down her driveway and back up the road. We sprinted away until the light of the house was no longer visible through the falling snow. We stopped, panting.

    “What the hell just happened, Steve?” Budd asked.

    “Yeah, what did happen back there?” I replied.

    “I don’t know. That was really weird, man!”

    I looked him dead in the eye and asked him exactly what he had heard, just to verify that I wasn't alone in going crazy.

    “A bunch of people having a big party.” Budd answered. “Isn’t that what you heard, Steve?”

     His reply verified that we had both heard the tirade of people in festivity that vanished as soon as I stepped up on the porch of the house. But we both heard it, and likewise we both heard it dissipate in the blink of an eye. He retrieved two of his last cigarettes, one apiece this time, to calm our nerves. As soon as we had finished that smoke a man pulled up in a jeep, picked us up, and took us to us to our house in Raymond.

     Budd and I had walked up a mountain road in the middle of the night, hardly any cars passed and none stopped. It wasn’t until we'd woken some poor woman up at two in the morning to ask her what time it was that some guy picked us up and drove us to our doorstep. We were tired, cold, and had hoped that the party animals we both heard on that porch might help us. It seems that maybe we'd hallucinated the whole thing. After such a long walk, so late at night, and in the thin air of the mountains, it stands to reason. I like to think otherwise.

    Those hills have a reputation of settlers that occasionally make themselves known, spirits of those who'd lived and died in a long past era. Maybe some of those ghosts were having a joke with Budd and me because of the way we behaved as we walked up the road in the blackness, as we broke the stillness of the cold, dark night. By waking that poor woman with the curlers in her hair in the dead of the night, the party of spirits seemed to have conjurred up a fellow driving up the canyon, sparing us the falling snow and the long walk in the frigid darkness. To me, they lent some measure of benevolence to two young men enduring the mountains they had as well so many years ago, allowing me and Budd to continue on in the land they'd once worked so hard to live in. Afterwards our footsteps echoing in the darkness faded like the snow that fell, melted, and flowed to the sea in the Saint Vrain River.

 

SR Urie

Reviews

[emmajoy]

What a wonderful tale! You described your relationship with your brother, so warm, close, fun... you described the life you had, and you talked in a way that just made me hear you (Brit that I am) and, then to cap it all, you invite ghosts and thingies and turn the story on its head.. GREAT!

'Maybe some of those ghosts were having a joke with Budd and me because of the way we behaved as we walked up the road in the blackness, as we broke the stillness of the cold, dark night.' ... so appreciate that sentence.. really says so much.

Good luck with the contest, you deserve it!

[Priscilla Sayers]

A wonderous story that left me wanting to know more. Most intriguing. Thank you for sharing such a story that is both mystical to me and shows the bonds we chare with our siblings. My sister and I had the same tye of moments that you describe here. We have them still. I am pleased that you had me read this as it relates to so many and the love for your brother is apparent and heart warming.

[Lena M. P.]

I have walked those mountains (my brother and his family live there) and you brought them to life for me. It does get very cold there and the winds through the aspens can sound like ghosts whispering in the trees. The fun and youth you brought to the story made it very special. I enjoyed the walk with you and your brother. Nicely written.