It was 2 a.m. when I first saw it.

I was at the cottage in North Carolina, sitting on the swing in the screened-in front porch. I hadn’t been able to sleep and I was just sitting there, looking out at the sand and neighboring cottages. It was a beautiful, breezy, moonlit night and all I could hear was the sound of the wind and the waves crashing to shore.

Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. It had darted around the corner of a cottage and was moving in starts and stops across the sand and sea oats. Whatever it was, it’s herky-jerky movements were sort of unsettling to watch. It was like it was jumping on predators, devouring them quickly, and moving on. Finally, directly in front of the cottage, it stopped. I stood up and pressed my face near the screen, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It was about the size of a large cat, but wasn’t shaped like one at all. It was… sort of shapeless.

And then I had a scary thought. What if it’s looking at me? I swear I could make out two black eyes. I half expected it to make a charge but it just sat there, seemingly taunting me.

But I would not be intimidated. I snuck inside the cottage and grabbed my trusty baseball bat and a flashlight.

Then, with a mixture of terror, curiosity and trepidation, I crept down the front steps.

What the hell was that thing?

Finally, I reached the bottom. Across the sand, The Thing was still there. I felt like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie “Signs”, when he took out the alien with the baseball bat. I could hear the words in my mind… “Swing away, Shoe. Swing away.”

I crept closer, but the mysterious Herky-Jerky Thing With No Name did not move.

And then, suddenly, it darted 8-10 feet and stopped, seemingly on a dime. Then it was as quiet as death, as motionless as a corpse.

I was perhaps 20 feet away from me with a light in hand, bat at the ready.

In retrospect, I don’t think I wanted to do The Thing harm. I simply wanted to see it up close. But the strange way it moved, here and there, up and down, back and forth, made me uneasy. It seemed somehow alien. I feared it, possibly because I knew not what it was. As I approached, I half expected it to make a charge, leap upon my shoulder, rip a vein out of my neck, and kill me without remorse.

Hence, my weapon. The Louisville Slugger. The great equalizer, or so I hoped.

As I drew closer, perhaps to a distance of 10 feet, a horrific thing happened — it came at me. It was flying now! As it charged, it seemed to grow bigger, like an octopus underwater or a peacock spreading its wings.

It was heading straight for my face.

I staggered backward in an effort to avoid the onslaught of what was to come. Fangs? Talons? Both? At that point I may or may not have let out a screech akin to that of a 1-year-old infant whose bottle was snatched, but that’s neither here nor there.

Oddly though, The Thing flew over me, past me, and landed behind me. I turned, but it was still, again.

Was it trying to scare me? If so it had succeeded. But it was now between me and the cottage. I was trapped. Why the hell did I come down here in the first place?

The night was quiet as I weighed my options. Yell and try and scare it away? Circle around it and try to get back up the steps to the porch? Swing away? Run for my life?

Meanwhile, it sat there, unmoving. I could see its icy stare, daring me to try and get past it.

Finally, a thought. Maybe the light would scare it away.

Slowly, I brought the flashlight up and aimed it at The Thing. With my thumb I gently and slowly flipped the on switch, expecting the worst. And there, squatting in the dunes, was … a plastic shopping bag from Food Lion. With a yellow, black-eyed happy face on it.

It had been blowing around, snagging on Sea Oats, darting about the sand, and messing with my mind.

Oh good Lord. I felt like a complete idiot. Keep in mind I’d been stalking a happy face plastic bag for nearly an hour. Damn you, happy face shopping bag. Damn you to hell.

At that point I grabbed the bag, tossed it in our trash can under the cottage, and went back up to my swing, where I sat shaking my head every few minutes, amazed at what a moron I’d been.

Anti-climactic? No doubt. But the very next day I bought one of those rechargeable searchlights at Walmart. From then on when I spotted a Thing in the Sand, I checked it out from the safe confines of the porch.

My heart, and sanity, are better off for it.

P.S. – Upon rereading this story it sounds really dumb. Or to put it more succinctly, I sound really dumb. Perhaps alcohol was involved. I cannot be certain.

P.P.S. – Hey, I was on vacation. Chillax.

Dave Shoemaker is a retired teacher, athletic director and basketball coach with most of his professional years spent at Paint Valley. He also served as the national basketball coach for the island country of Montserrat in the British West Indies. He lives in Southern Ohio with his best friends and companions, his dogs Sweet Lilly and Hank. He can be reached at https://shoeuntied.wordpress.com/.