The Hitchhikers Who Hide in the Punctum Caecum

You have a blind-spot. This isn’t a criticism, it’s a fact. If you’ve ever been stargazing and discovered some distant celestial object that fled from your field of vision when observed head-on you’ve experienced this phenomenon. You may have been encouraged at some point to draw a dot on an index card and find it yourself, goaded into a little game to teach you a thing or two about perception.

The point on the back of your eye where the optic nerve attaches, the punctum caecum, cannot receive light, resulting in a gap in your vision that your brain effectively hallucinates to compensate for. If you’ve ever used Photoshop’s smart-fill feature to remove an ex from a picture you’ve seen how a computer can extrapolate from nearby information and make a pretty good guess as to what an image would look like if you hadn’t brought the person who broke your heart to your sister’s wedding. Your brain does the same thing, but even better, and it does it every second your eyes are open. We waltz through life, blissfully unaware or uncaring that we’re not actually seeing what we’re seeing and we’re verifiably incapable of seeing the so-to-speak “big picture.”

People who live in moose-country will tell you that it’s a bad idea to stand directly in front of a moose. Their wide-set eyes leave them with a big blind spot and discerning motion or a presence there makes them anxious. However, people who hunt moose will tell you that the blind spot can be used to your advantage. Since the days of hunting with sticks and stones moose have been stalked by cautious hunters making a strategic approach from a certain angle. Do you ever feel anxious?

Have you ever been taken by a vague sense of dread out of the blue in a place you normally feel safe? Have you ever felt a sudden sense of not-aloneness? Have you ever scanned a room looking for something you think you thought you saw? Have you ever felt stalked by something unseen? They hide in our blind spots.

It got bad for me. The panic attacks grew so frequent that I sought relief from what I assumed was some failing of my nervous system, a subconscious or chemical effect of stress. I went to a psychiatrist, sat in the modern confessional with a tray of kinetic sand and magnetic toys on the low coffee-table between us, and identified the things that were troubling me. I wasn’t completely honest, but that seemed fair, because he wasn’t completely listening.

When I was done he said a few things about catastrophizing and intrusive thoughts. I left the office with a few prescriptions he said would take the edge off and help me sleep. He also said I should use some of my accrued time off and go up to the lake I had spoken fondly of. The doctor’s eyes had perked up when I’d mentioned childhood summers up in the woods. He was familiar with the area. Behind him taxidermied fish fought with diplomas for prominence on the wall.

He’d spoken animatedly about how beautiful it is up there this time of year and by the time he sold me on the idea of going, the question that had caused me to bring it up was lost in the flow of conversation. That question was “When was the last time you remember being happy?”

Having never made the drive myself I saw the trip to the lake through entirely new eyes. I’d only ever ridden in the backseat, and now found myself on a journey perpendicular to the one the child in the backseat had been familiar with as I gazed out the windshield. Beyond the highway lay dozens of miles of country roads where every sign has multiple bullet holes and airplane liquor bottles glitter on the wayside, left behind alongside bloated roadkill by those who collect the beer cans.

I passed “Speed Limit Enforced By Aircraft” signs, though that has always seemed like an empty threat to me and I’ve never heard of someone being issued a ticket issued by some eye in the sky. I saw a state trooper parked behind a billboard, but he was standing next to his cruiser, on the phone and smoking a cigarette with his Smokey the Bear hat on the hood. I didn’t slow down. He didn’t wave back. I was feeling better already and I hadn’t even started taking the pills yet. The excitement of getting away, along with the beautiful day, and streaming a playlist of the music I’d listened to in high school had drastically improved my mood.

Even the tech giants have blind spots and after I lost cellular service I found an FM station playing “the hits of yesteryear.” While searching the dial a radio preacher speaking breathlessly about the book of Joshua gave me chills. He was rhapsodically recounting a day when the sun froze and stood still in the sky. I quickly hit the scan button and soon found myself distracted, noting the similarities between my playlist and the oldies station.

The prison had not yet been built the last time I’d passed this way and the “Hitchhikers May Be Escaped Convicts” signs made me laugh. Having been raised in the era of Stranger Danger I’d always regarded hitchhiking and picking up hitchhikers as activities for people with an active death wish. Now that I’ve been up here a while I see that it’s not an uncommon way to get around. There’s a correlation between the roadside jetsam and the number of people with their thumbs out. Up here even during the day it’s safe to assume that half the people you see are drunk, whether they’re behind the wheel or not. At the time I laughed at the idea of picking up a hitchhiker, only vaguely aware that I already had.

The cabin I’d rented online was right on the lake. It looked rustic, but comfortable, promising “stunning views” and “satellite internet.” Still, it was a bit of a drive from the small conglomeration of stores that constituted “town” in these parts, so I stopped for supplies. There was a pickup truck in the parking lot of the market with a dead moose in the bed, a shaft protruding from between its eyes. A man stood by the driver’s side door cradling a crossbow.

I am not an outgoing person, but the psychiatrist had said I “should make some friends” and even though he said it with a reproachful tone, he wasn’t wrong. The hunter looked like a young Santa Claus. He had a ginger beard and his t-shirt read “Toys For Tots Poker Run” with an image of a motorcycle surrounded by presents rounding over his belly. The cabin did not come with a boat, which I’m sure is a matter of liability for the owners, but I very much wanted to see if I could get to some of the fishing spots I used to go to with my dad while I was up here. I figured a guy who hunts moose with a crossbow might own a boat. It wasn’t until I got closer that I saw there was blood on his hands.

My studies have taken me all over the world and I’ve discovered that it’s not that people who live off the beaten path fear what outsiders will take from them. They fear what outsiders bring with them. I’m not saying this is how it should be, just how it is. “Xenophobia” is a pejorative term, but its roots are in self-preservation. Our culture can be traced through the language. Survival of the Fittest holds true here and our current state of things is built on a graveyard of dead customs and tongues, though half-remembered echoes of them pass our lips every day.

My out-of-state plates, not to mention the entirety of my person and all of my mannerisms immediately identified me as “not from around here,” and the man, whose name was Chris, because sometimes life imitates art, predictably asked me what brought me to these parts. I surprised myself by replying that I was writing a book, though this was the first time I’d had that thought. Chris didn’t even ask what the book was about, he just beamed and told me he had “a lot to say” and invited me to meet him at the bar next to the gas station the following night. As he pointed I caught myself staring at his fingernail, which was flecked with red. Chris asked if I liked moose steak and I was too polite to say no, but the truth is I didn’t know. People who live in these places are almost always happy to share and give, it truly is the fear of what we bring to them that makes them wary. I agreed to meet and headed to the lake after loading the car with groceries.

The cabin was on the far side of the lake from where we used to stay, but the pastel reflection of the clouds in the water at sunset was the same as I remembered. Points of electric lights visible through the trees up the hillside on the far shore provided the only evidence of nearby civilization. To access the internet here required reaching to the sky, but an electrical cable had followed me down the long driveway. Despite being equipped with a backup generator the listing was only available May through September as early snows usually knock the power out for the entirety of the winter. I arrived in August. It is now February and I can confirm this.

I had forgotten how loud it was at night by the lake. Birdsong fades as dusk settles in, accompanied by splashes in the water as fish and frogs leap through the surface feeding on the ample insect life, whose cacophonous collective voice begins to rise like a symphony from the forest. Bats swoop through the dying light and I swear that removed from the noise and electric hum of the city I can discern their ultrasonic screams at the edge of my perception, carried on the same breeze that laps tiny waves among the smooth rocks on the shore.

I want to shriek back and thank them in their own language for their efforts against the horde of mosquitoes that have already detected my carbon dioxide and begun to feast on my blood. I know I should run back inside and get the spray that would keep the swarm at bay, but the sight of the stars takes my breath away.

It’s impossible to study language without encountering new philosophies, and I try to not let the more arcane ideas I’ve run across color my thinking too much, but it is, of course, unavoidable. My field of study requires cultivating an appreciation for metaphor at a level most often found in the realm of poets and those who travel there know the place borders the kingdom of madness, and so I’ve kept myself from thinking dangerous thoughts as best I could during the course of my career.

You may disagree that there are dangerous thoughts, but I assure you there are. There are conundrums that can grow in the mind like a cancer grows in the brain. Paradoxes in higher maths can gestate malignantly as they threaten deeply held understandings that by all manner of reason must be true, despite the evidence in hand that they are not. Gödel starved himself to death.

We are driven by ancient instinct to fear the dark, though it is not the dark we truly fear, but what the dark brings with it. Despite that, that tired refrain of spiritualists and self-help texts which states “without darkness there is no light” is not untrue. Nowhere is this more evident than beneath the night sky far removed from the light pollution of the megalopolises. The darkness reveals how crowded the vast universe truly is. Stars upon stars spread out across the Milky Way, which the Chinese call The Silver River, a name I find much more apt.

With only the kitchen light on in the cabin behind me the darkness is so complete that one can only differentiate the land from the sky by finding the demarcation where the field of stars turns to utter blackness. I am a lonely person, but I do not feel alone when I look up at night. I started to feel not-alone in the way that initially brought me to this place and retreated inside as my heart began to pound to look for the pills.

Later, as I lay in bed I admit I felt more relaxed, but I could tell it was a chemical relaxation, akin to the false sense of courage instilled by alcohol. Before any intoxicant’s tipping point of self-awareness the imbiber remains conscious that their emotions do not, at this moment, spring from within. These induced emotions lack the veracity of natural ones, though this usually only becomes apparent upon reflection in the light of the next day.

The pills were indeed relaxing, making me feel like a feather moving through molasses. The sense of physical calm would last through the night, but after I saw the thing standing at the foot of the bed my mind raced and did not stop until morning.

There is a treatment for anxiety called a “stellate-ganglion block” in which an injection prevents a nerve in the neck from sending panic signals to the body. It is my understanding that this treatment provides relief for many people, but since seeing what I saw, I can only imagine the bridge of a cruise ship bathed in red light, klaxons sounding a dire warning as the crew scrambles, certain of their impending doom, while tourists drink pina coladas and play shuffleboard on the pool deck below. Such a scene unfolded within me that night.

A note in the informational binder left by the owner had explained that the flat-screen in the living room had all the streaming apps, before referring in an apologetic tone to the aged cathode ray tube TV in the bedroom. As an analog relic in an age where all signals were digital it was capable of displaying only static, not even the blue screen that later models used to spare the viewer from the onslaught of disorganized electrons accompanied by a jarring hiss that could make you jump out of your skin if you weren’t expecting it. The note went on to explain that the woman who owned the cabin used it as a white noise machine and nightlight when she stayed there, and to please excuse her eccentricities.

Nostalgia made me turn the TV on. The seductive call of my pillow enhanced by the pills made me leave it on, though I had the presence of mind to use the last of my energy to turn off the overhead light. We’d had similar sets when I was a kid, but my father was protective of his possessions and so it was only at the lake that I was first brave enough to press a magnet to the glass of a television set. The pills had made me wistful.

If you’re too young to have experienced this or old enough to know better, allow me to explain this particular joy of childhood that was available to but a generation. Magnets had always seemed like magic to me. The way some unseen force in a mundane object exerts itself on the world around it spoke of mysterious underpinnings in the world around me.

What is said about idle hands is true. It was a rare rainy day at the lake and I was amusing myself by throwing refrigerator magnets at things to see if they would stick. After requiring a broom to dislodge one from the ceiling fan I resigned to keep my experiments more in reach as I approached my father, asleep in the recliner with a baseball game on TV.

I put a magnet shaped like the letter X on my father’s forehead and was tempted to run and get the little camera I’d been given for my birthday, but I remembered his reminder to save film for fishing “unless I saw a flying saucer full of little green men.” Suddenly the X looked like a target. Someone important has been assassinated recently and the TV news often featured crosshair graphics while serious people spoke in dire tones. I snatched the magnet away from his face, eliciting a grunt, and impulsively threw the suddenly distasteful thing at the television.

It didn’t stick to the screen, but where it rebounded the pitcher’s face took on a bright lime hue. “Look dad! A little green man!” I yelled, but my father only grunted again and adjusted himself in his sleep. In retrospect I’m glad he didn’t wake up, because it took a bit of fiddling with the magnet to return the TV to its original condition. This experience was helpful in enlightening me as to how invisible effects can affect the real world. Afterwards I would often amuse myself by doing this, but it was a dangerous game as I discovered that I could not always undo whatever damage I wrought with the magnet. Strange spots of colors appeared on the screen and my father would often hit the side of the set and curse.

I was lost in drowsy reverie thinking about driving to the old spot in the morning, hoping the place was still standing, thinking about magnets and my dad, when I saw the thing standing in front of the TV. It was as transfixed by the static as I had been as a child, drawing a hand made of shadow across the screen, carrying the static in colorful currents. My eyes widened with a start and it disappeared. Terror infused the very core of my being. I tried to convince myself this was the hypnotic effect of the medication I had taken, but the thing reappeared each time my vision drifted. My fear did not lessen, but the righteousness of being correct was very validating.

The thing that was there in the room with me, just beyond the foot of my bed was the same species of thing you see when an incongruous shadow seems to flee from your vision. There are many of them, these quicksilver nimble beings that are almost always hiding in the blind spots of our punctum caecum. You can spot them sometimes if you catch them unaware, for they are fast, but not infallible. You discern them just beyond the spot you cannot see, though they are keen to being perceived and will conceal themselves if they suspect you’re looking for them. There’s probably one with you now. Look if you dare.

I don’t know what they are, but I think they are not unlike hitchhikers that we unwittingly pick up. We remain aware, yet unaware of them.

They are why we fear the dark. They are why we fear outsiders. They programmed our instincts in the days of prehistory. I did eventually sleep, though I dreamed of suffocating shadows more felt than seen which exerted some violating gravity on a place deep within me.

In the morning I drove around the lake to the house we used to rent. I was happy to see it was in better shape than the last time I had seen it, with a detached garage instead of an awning as well as an addition with skylights, though it was delight accompanied by a twinge of bitterness in the belief that whomever owned it might have more money than we did, but couldn’t possibly have loved the place more.

Upon returning to the cabin I sent a message to the owner asking if I could pay in full to stay for a year. A response came back almost immediately saying that would be fine, that she’d have diesel delivered to top off the generator in October, and a request that I acknowledge that there would be no refund when I left mid-winter. She said I’d probably have to hike out and return for my things in the spring. I agreed to her terms.

I met with Chris. We drank beer and told me about hunting moose from their blind spot. He finally asked what my book was about. I lied and said it was a horror novel. He said the most horrible thing is regret, and I should write about that. Before we parted ways we went to his truck and he gave me a zip-top bag of frozen steaks. The meat was so dark it looked black under the streetlights.

I was still pleasantly buzzed while I stood outside the darkened cabin later. Happy to have made a friend, I gazed at the sky and formulated my plans. My book was non-fiction, not horror, and I needed some months to get it done.

A hoot from the depths of the woods caused me to reflect. “Barn Owl” is such an arrogantly applied taxonomy. It saddles the species with human baggage, implying that these magnificent nocturnal hunters, descendants of the dinosaurs, were somehow incomplete before humans arrived and invented barns.

In Tzeltal, the language of the Mayans, owls are categorized by the sounds they make. This onomatopoeic approach seems more elegant to me. Their words hoot or screech in such a way that the meaning is clear, even to those unfamiliar with the vernacular.

Perhaps it is my field of study that forces me to consider what word these beings have for us, though this assumes they have a language. If, in keeping with linguistic economy, they refer to us by the sounds we make, as speakers of Tzeltal do with owls, I suspect they do not use some syllabic jumble of human speech. This is pure conjecture, but I imagine their word for us is the noise we make when we see their faces.

Glimpsing one of these things at the edge of your vision as it darts back into hiding can cause a flood of anxious adrenaline, but that perhaps familiar experience is nothing akin to seeing their faces. Demon, devil, monster: these words are inadequate. The likeness of these beings is hard-wired deep into our instinctual memories. It is the face of fear.

You will likely never see one clearly. Those who do are usually quick to take their own life, firm in the knowledge what that feeling of not-aloneness truly means. The “lucky” ones get trundled off to be medicated to the gills in some inpatient facility, staring off into space for the rest of their days. I know what they are staring at.

Imagine yourself driving along a desolate road at night. The music, or the hiss of the tires on the asphalt, or your own thoughts have lulled you to a state of hypnotic complacency as you race through the dark. Now imagine that your headlights pick out a figure on the side of the road ahead. As you approach you see that it is a hitchhiker, alone, thumb raised in the dark air under the stars.

Whether you are careful or reckless, something within you insists that you not stop. A foreboding sense of danger hangs in the air, though it’s hard to tell if it springs from horror movies and public service announcements about the perils of such encounters, or from somewhere deep within. Regardless, you are full of curiosity, that double-edged sword which hangs over humans and cats, and so you slow your car as you pass the man on the roadside.

In the few moments that he is bathed in the light of your headlamps you see he is the man from your nightmares. Perhaps it is the face of the boogeyman your elders once invoked to keep you in line, a thing you never truly believed in, though at this moment you realize it was more that you wanted to not believe, and that’s not the same thing. Perhaps it is the face of someone who hurt you long ago, from whom you finally felt safe, separated by time or distance or the veil of death. Or perhaps it is the face that long ago drove early humans to huddle in groups around fires, anything to keep the night at bay.

As you glimpse this face you may make a sound, a barking scream or a rapid inhalation. You may laugh as you speed off down that dark road, but these are personal invocations, tailored to the individual’s response to such a sight. This sound is not their word for us.

No matter how shaken, relief would arrive in short order. The mind is resilient and it is easy to catalogue such an experience as a trick of the eyes or some fleeting madness. Before long mundane thoughts or the hits of yesteryear or simply the sound of the road beneath you would slow your pounding heart and return you to a world that makes sense.

Imagine that as that last bit of adrenaline leaves you, the tension from the fight-or-flight response settles into a dull ache in your neck. Your thoughts turn to picking up some painkillers at the next gas station. No, not the next one, the one after that, further is better, maybe even the one after that.

With a plan in place, you’re feeling better. The sight of something, a barn perhaps, catches your attention and you stare at it through the driver’s window as you pass. Returning your gaze to the road, something moves in your peripheral vision and as you turn you see the hitchhiker sitting beside you. The sound you would make is their word for us.

Once they realized that my book was about them they stopped hiding from me. There are many of them now and I see them all the time. There’s one grinning at me as I type this. Others are moving around behind my chair.

My book has been posted to my webpage. No views yet, but it hasn’t been long. I’m going to post this explanation or eulogy or whatever it is next. I only ever took that one pill, so I have plenty left. It’s a bitter night and I’m going to go lay on the lake under the stars, something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing since it froze. Of course they obscure the sky with their faces, but when I dart my eyes around the stars look like television static.

I’m not doing this because of them. I’ve gotten as used to them as I can. Even fear has a terminal velocity. I’m doing this because I’m afraid that anyone who reads my book will start to see their faces, too. Thanks for taking me fishing.