The Backyard Chant

Our house sat on the edge of a sprawling pine forest, and the family room, a recent addition, jutted out toward the darkness like a wooden finger. We had moved the computer there during renovations, and I often found myself alone in that room well past midnight, the screen my only companion. The sliding glass door, a sheet of black glass during the night, framed the yard and the forest beyond.

It was a Wednesday, a little after eleven, when I was wrestling with a paper on the Civil War. The keyboard clicked under my fingers, the only sound in the house. Then, a sound sliced through the quiet. It wasn’t a rustle of leaves or the distant bark of a fox. It was a voice, or many voices, chanting in a language I didn’t recognize, but one that felt ancient and heavy. The melody was a repetitive, rising and falling pattern, punctuated by a rhythmic, percussive element like a drum or a rattle. It was loud, unnervingly clear, as if the singers stood just outside the glass.

I froze, my fingers hovering over the keys. I turned my head slowly, my eyes darting to the sliding door. The blinds were drawn, but I could see the faint outlines of the backyard through the slats. The chanting continued, unwavering, filling the room. It seemed to come from all directions, yet specifically from the yard beyond the glass.

My heart hammered. I pushed back my chair, the legs scraping against the floor, and crept toward my parents’ bedroom down the hall. I eased the door open and peeked inside. The room was dim, lit only by the glow of the television, which was muted, and a small radio on the nightstand. Both were silent. My father was snoring softly, my mother was turned away. They had not heard a thing.

I returned to the family room, my legs weak. The chanting was still there, perhaps even louder now. I stood a few feet from the sliding door, my reflection ghostly in the glass. The sound seemed to beckon, to demand that I listen. And then, a new sound joined the chant: a low, guttural grinding, as if something heavy was being scraped against the concrete just outside.

I couldn’t resist anymore. My hand, trembling, reached out and touched the cold handle of the sliding door. A thought, wild and unbidden, flashed through my mind: ‘If I open this, I will see them.’ But another thought, more terrifying, followed: ‘If I open this, they will see me.’ I yanked my hand back as if burned. The chanting reached a crescendo, then stopped abruptly.

The silence that followed was even more oppressive. I stood there, listening to my own ragged breath and the pounding of my heart. Then, from the darkness outside, a single, clear voice spoke. It said a word I did not know, but it was unmistakably my name. My name, spoken in a language I had never learned, yet I understood it as an invitation.

I backed away, stumbled, and fell into a chair. The room felt cold. I wanted to scream, but no sound would come. I glanced at the computer screen, still glowing with my unfinished essay. The cursor blinks. But now, in the periphery of my vision, I thought I saw the blinds sway slightly, as if a breeze had passed through a wall of glass.

I never told my parents. I couldn’t. The next night, when I again sat at the computer, the chant did not return. But as I typed, I noticed something on the glass of the sliding door, a faint smear, like a handprint from the outside. But it was on the inside. And the handprint was far too large, and the fingers too long.

Years later, when we moved away, I learned that the land our house had been built on was an unmarked burial ground. But that’s not what scares me. What scares me is that on quiet nights, even now, miles away, I sometimes catch myself humming the melody I heard that night. And sometimes, just sometimes, I hear an answering hum from somewhere dark in the house, a hum that is not my own.