Leave Only Footprints by Kyle Arivett-White

Leave Only Footprints by Kyle Arivett-White

I’d stalked this house for a long time. Hunted it like my prey. Been tempted by similar houses but discarded them. Knew this one was mine.

Tonight, I parked far away.

I approached the house in the dark.

Dead leaves crunched underfoot.

Skeletal trees offered me no cover.

I wanted no one to realize that this was my house.

Especially not the fucking others.

Cold, sharp winds scraped across my exposed skin like jagged glass. Winter doesn’t find its way to Texas often, but when it does, it attacks with a vengeance.

A storm was coming. One that the forecasters said would make the snowmageddon of a few years back feel like being in the tropics. I counted on the storm to dissuade the fucking others from tracking me. That the biting cold would force any potential looky loos inside for warmth.

I’d made certain I hadn’t been followed. I had planned this moment down to the microsecond, and it was a good plan … except for the old woman and her wiener dog.

Where had they come from? Not from inside my house. I’d watched it for weeks, knew every peel of paint and missing roof tile. No one inhabited it. No tire tracks disturbed the waist-high grass of the front yard. No smoke emerged from the crumbling chimney. My house had been abandoned long ago.

It was the only house on this rutted, single-lane, backwoods, pitiful excuse for a road. The nearest neighbor was miles away. Surely, the old woman and her dog hadn’t ventured from that distance.

“Hurry up and do your bidness,” she shouted at the shivering animal.

I crouched behind a mound of leaves and garbage piled so high it could conceal the carcass of an ice-age mammoth. Despite the cold, the pile gave off a steamy putrescence that filled my sinuses. The vision of maggots copulating by the thousands inside the mammoth’s rotting carcass filled my imagination. I gagged, wanted to hurl, but swallowed it down refusing to make a sound.

I waited and willed the dachshund to be quick, but his ‘bidness’ seemed to be as frozen as my toes. I hugged my backpack trying to keep its contents warm. The imagined stink of maggot jizz made my lungs burn, my eyes water. Damn it. I didn’t know how much longer I could remain crouched next to this stinking filth. But I couldn’t move. The old lady would see me.

This was taking too long. It was past midnight. I had to get inside my house. I peered out. The woman and her dog were gone.

I jumped up or tried to. Stinging pins and needles made my legs cramp and sent me sprawling ass-first onto the ground. Icey slime saturated by pants; seeped into my boots. But I didn’t care. My house was finally mine. Rising, I duck-walked like a toddler with an overfull diaper until I saw a light flash through the house’s front window.

I hid behind a tree. My heart pounded against my ribs like a methed-up drummer.

Someone was inside.

Not the old woman. I could hear her dog barking far down the road.

That meant it was the fucking others. The thieving others.

I wanted to shout, to curse, to break something. The others couldn’t have learned about the existence of my house. I’d never mentioned it. No social media posts, no slip of the tongue. To throw the others off my trail, I’d dropped hints about a different house. One in Houston. Far away from our normal hunting grounds in Dallas and Fort Worth.

This house was my discovery. Mine alone. My untouched treasure to plunder. I wouldn’t allow the fucking others to steal it from me. Not like before. It was impossible that they were here. But as the light once again twinkled in the window, I knew they were inside.

Anger thawed my frozen body better than any sauna could have. I mounted the rickety porch, ready to pick the lock, but found the front door open.

“Nathaniel?” I hissed between gritted teeth. He always did sloppy work like leaving front doors unlocked. Carelessness that drew unwanted attention. My fists knotted at the thought of his smiling, smug face. The same look he’d possessed when Karen dumped me and started dating him.

This time, I wouldn’t hold back. I would smash his smugness, along with his teeth, down his throat. Stealing a girlfriend, I could overlook. Stealing my house. That meant war.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. Darkness engulfed me. I went statue-still and listened. No footsteps. No mocking laughter. No taunting sexual grunts.

“Hello?” I said but received no response.

Activating my phone’s flashlight app, I swept its beam across the floor. Seeing no footprints in the thick layer of dust, I convinced myself there’d been no light. That it had just been a reflection, or an illusion caused by my nerves.

I was alone.

I rushed to examine the rest of the house. I found no evidence that anyone had stepped inside for years. Relief washed away my tension. The house was mine. Truly mine.

The house groaned, low and throaty, as if welcoming me inside of it. I removed my gloves. My hands jittered as I stroked the carved wood of a door frame. It gave me goosebumps as if I were touching a new lover for the first time. Unlike the leaf pile, in here the smell of age and decay were as sweet as ambrosia. I’d been right. This house was special.

I focused the phone’s flashlight not on the floor but on the room itself. As the glare illuminated the space, I gasped with surprise.

I stood in a kitchen. On a 1950’s-style Formica table rested an even older-looking soup tureen that belonged in a museum. The tureen’s contents glowed neon green and had long ago solidified with the ladle stuck in the middle like a weird, metal flower.

I giggled as I rushed to remove my camera equipment from my backpack and snapped a photograph.

A pantry held dozens of old cans and boxes. Faded tins of Edgeworth Extra High-Grade Sliced Pipe tobacco. Argo Gloss Starch, its box blindingly blue as if it had been printed today. Item after item that haled from so far back in the past that I didn’t recognize the brand names. Yet all of them had an aura of anticipation, as if waiting for their owner to return to use them again.

My fingers ached to touch them, to absorb their history, to spirit them away as trophies. But I flicked the urge away, imagining it like a little devil on my shoulder.

Take only photographs. Leave only footprints.

The creed of urban explorers.

Technically, I’d committed a crime the moment I’d stepped inside. The police wouldn’t care that this house was abandoned, or that the door had been unlocked.

I was trespassing.

But I wasn’t a thief. I wouldn’t take any of the items I saw. My goal was to document the past exactly as I found it.

Move nothing. Take nothing. Ruin nothing.

I sought only to be the first to photograph these forgotten and mysterious relics. To be the first to ferret out an abandoned building’s secrets. To try to understand mysteries like why a ceiling-high stack of magazines had been worthy of collecting but not of journeying on to their owner’s next abode.

Exploring these abandoned places was an incomparably addictive thrill. One better than any drug, or even sex.

One worth keeping secret from the fucking others.

Let Karen and Nathaniel hump like rabbits. I had finally found my dream exploration.

I moved to another room and tingled at the sight of a 1920’s-era record player the size of a modern washing machine. White mold speckled its dark mahogany case, but otherwise, it was unspoiled after all these years.

My hands trembled as I snapped a picture. The flash revealed dozens of cherubs smiling back at me from peeling wallpaper. As I captured their eerie, one-of-a-kind expressions, I continued to grin my I-discovered-them-first grin.

I’d never been the first one inside before.

I’d always followed Nathaniel and Karen.

There was that one time with Karen’s little sister, but –

No. I didn’t want to think about that. To allow it to ruin my perfect find.

But what about the accident and what happened to Tara?

“No!” I shouted and spun around fearing someone might have heard me. My head smashed into a low-hanging chandelier. A half-century of dust avalanched down upon me. I bent and contorted my body trying to protect my camera equipment from the swirling dirt. It brushed across my exposed neck, choaked me, seemed to taunt me.

Just like the fucking others.

They’d never respected me.

Had always treated me as if I were inferior to them.

Each time I’d located an unexplored building in the Metroplex, they would swoop in to steal it from me. To escape their notice, I’d been forced to venture beyond the city limits. To go beyond urban exploration. Beyond even suburban exploration. To search until I found the perfect building in the deepest nowhere of East Texas.

The search had taken every weekend for almost two months.

But it’d been worth it.

My body tingled with more excitement than I could almost endure.

I shook off the dust like flicking away bad memories and snapped another photograph of the record player. I started toward an old desk when I heard a noise coming from an adjacent room.

I froze, my thoughts returning to the flash of light I’d seen through the front window. Someone was in the house, and they’d heard my outburst. The soles of my feet burned with unease. I fled the room and back toward the front door determined to not get caught like Tar—

No, what happened to her hadn’t been my fault.

I’d almost reached the front door when I saw a person standing in the room.

“I didn’t mean to break in,” I said, my voice shrill. I expected to hear the click of a shotgun. Instead, silence burned my ears.

Having not explored this room thoroughly, I thought perhaps I’d been spooked by more cherub wallpaper. I panned my phone’s flashlight in that direction. The watery glare illuminated a woman’s face. I yelped and stumbled backward, almost tripping over an overstuffed ottoman.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” I stammered until my rational mind finally caught up with my racing fear.

A woman, but not a real one. An inflated sex doll propped in a corner, her mouth a huge O, as if surprised by my presence.

Nerves prickled my body.

The blow-up doll hadn’t been in the room before … had it?

In my rush I could have overlooked it. But seeing it now, I couldn’t wrap my brain around its incongruity. The doll wasn’t aged. It was new as if it had been manufactured only seconds earlier. I’d seen no objects in the house more recent than the 1950s. To find a brand-new sex doll among such antiquity made my skin crawl. Something didn’t feel right.

Idiot. Stop being foolish. Remember how long it took to find this house.

So what if it contained one inconsistency. It also contained the box of starch, the old record player, and the Formica table. Those were the items that were important. The ones with a unique history that made the risk of going to jail for breaking-and-entering worth the danger. Not some modern, Made-in-China sex toy.

Turning away, I searched for new treasures to photograph. I played the phone’s flashlight across the front room’s floor. Noticed the dust disturbed by my size 13’s. But I also saw smaller, daintier footprints. Ones I hadn’t noticed earlier. Ones that clung so close to the perimeter of the walls as to be almost invisible. Footprints leading to and from the blow-up doll.

My stomach clenched.

The front door had been unlocked.

I moved to check outside on the porch. No footprints.

I looked again at the floor just inside the doorway. No dainty footprints. Just some dead leaves that I’d probably tracked inside.

Stop it, I wanted to shout at myself. If someone was here, they would’ve already announced their presence and called the police.

I’m alone. Stop shitting on your own happiness.

I resumed my exploration. Moved down a hallway into an unexplored rear bedroom. Photographed a ceramic vase filled with flowers long past dead. However, unease continued to irritate my brain like a hangnail that I couldn’t remove. My special house began to close in around me.

Then, through the bedroom’s only window came another flash of light, followed by a scream. I glanced outside. In the back yard, a naked woman ran through the moonlight. What looked like blood covered her face and body.

A man, dressed all in black, chased her. He carried an industrial-beam flashlight in one hand and a machete in the other.

I jabbed at the screen of my cellphone trying to unlock it. Got the password wrong twice. Feared I’d locked myself out. When I finally entered the correct numbers, my hands shook so badly the screen blurred. It took me several agonizing moments to realize I had no service this deep in nowhereland.

Outside, the girl screamed as the man caught her. She struggled. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and drug her toward the house. I wanted to run, but fear glued me in place. I clung to the wall, praying the maniac hadn’t seen me. I heard them coming close to the window. Him cursing; her screaming. A door slammed and I thought they’d entered the house. When I heard no footsteps inside, I worked up the courage to peek outside. Directly below the window was a door to a root cellar under the house. They had disappeared down into it.

I wanted to run back to my car and flee to get help. But how would I explain my presence in the abandoned house? It wouldn’t matter that in the process of committing an innocent crime I’d stumbled upon a much worse one.

Besides, it would take over an hour to reach Tyler, the nearest city of any size. By the time I found the police and convinced them to believe me, the girl would be dead. Her killer gone. I had to do something now.

I needed a weapon. I returned to the kitchen and pawed through the old cans and boxes, some of which burst open at my touch. My gut twisted with guilt. I was damaging my pristine house, but I kept searching. Yanked open drawers only to find them empty; ripped a cabinet door off its rotted hinges. All for nothing. Where were the knives or an old gun? Something more substantial than pipe tobacco and starch?

Finally, I found a wooden meat tenderizing mallet. I hefted it. It felt light, inconsequential. Definitely not a weapon that would overwhelm a machete-wielding maniac. What little bravado I’d previously possessed tucked its tail and whimpered. I decided the smart thing to do was to go get help. I turned to leave the kitchen when up through the floorboards came the woman’s pleas for mercy, followed by the voices of several other women.

A serial killer.

Urban exploration, even in the rural outback, was supposed to be a thrilling discovery of old bottles, furniture, and knickknacks. Not uncovering a murderous fiend. How I wished I hadn’t gone it alone. How I wanted the others to be here. Together, we could thwart the maniac. Alone, I was nothing more than a frightened little boy about to piss himself.

I turned, almost left, but the voices grew louder, stoking my guilt. I had to do something to help the women.

I tiptoed back toward the room with the window that overlooked the cellar. The moment I reached it, the cellar door slammed. I nearly bit off my tongue trying to stifle a yelp. I clutched the mallet and peered out the window.

The naked woman had escaped again. She screamed. I also wanted to scream as the killer caught her and dragged her back to the root cellar. I trembled, not sure what to do, when I heard the door slam again. Only this time, it wasn’t the naked woman. The serial killer emerged alone.

I watched as the killer walked around the house. I followed him, moving from room-to-room, window-to-window, hoping to ambush him before he got me. But he didn’t enter the house. I watched his flashlight as he departed the yard and walked down the road.

Leave. Go now. Run.

I opened the front door determined to heed my own good advice, when the voices shouted in unison.

“He’s going to kill us!”

“Please, won’t someone save us?”

I could be a hero.

I could flip off the fucking others when I became famous.

Before my good sense talked me out of it, I exited the house and retraced the killer’s footsteps until I found the root cellar door, unlocked.

“He’s gone,” I whispered as I opened the door and peered down into the dark abyss. “Quick. Run up here. We can go to the police.”

Moans of agony filtered up to me. He probably had them tied up. I’d have to go down and free them. I slowly traversed the crumbling concrete stairs. With each step my back burned as I expected the machete to plunge between my shoulder blades. But the ever-increasing moans kept me moving deeper into the subterranean chamber.

As I entered the freezing darkness, a sewer stink accosted me. I panned my phone’s flashlight across the cellar. It appeared to be bigger than the house above it. The light dimmed, grew weaker. A glance at the screen showed my battery almost drained, and that I still had no cell service.

I saw nothing, but I knew the women had to be down here. Their pleas for help had grown louder. Trembling, I stepped deeper into the darkness. After an agonizingly long time, I saw a naked woman laying bound to a bed at the distant end of the root cellar.

“I’ll h–help you. You’ll be s–safe,” I said, my teeth chattering. I ran to her. Just as I reached the bed, the dirt floor crumbled under me.

I fell. Tumbled. Rolled down into a pit.

I shrieked as white-hot pain lanced my legs. I kicked out and tried to stand, but both efforts made the pain worse. During the fall, I’d dropped the phone and could no longer see its shining light. Blinded by the darkness, I reached down to touch my legs. I screamed as metal prongs ripped my hands open.

Barbed wire.

I’d fallen into the serial killer’s boobytrap.

I rolled left, then right trying to crawl out of the pit. The walls of the freshly dug hole crumbled and avalanched down upon me. Dirt stung my eyes, filled my mouth. I tried to wipe it away, only to smear it into a bloody, muddy paste that caked my face. And with each little movement, the devil wire sliced deeper into the flesh of my legs.

 “Please help me,” shouted the woman.

I glanced up. Maybe it was a side effect of the mind-searing pain, but I could see the woman laying on a bed above me, her hand extended down toward me.

I swallowed my pain and said, “It’s okay. I’m here.”

I reached for her. Our fingers just barely brushed tips.

She felt cold.

Not human.

Another inflatable sex doll.

“T’weren’t none of ya bidness,” said a voice from the darkness.

The old woman.

“Hey, what are you playing at?” I shouted.

From above came female laughter. Followed by, “Hurry up. I’m freezing my butt off.”

“You’re the one who insisted on running around naked,” said a man.

 “I didn’t think I’d have to do it a dozen times before he saw me.”

My stomach cringed. I knew these voices. “Karen, Nathaniel, is that you?”

“Yeah, dumbass,” said Nathaniel. “Thought you could hide this place from us, huh?”

“No, I –”

“We’re tired of you following in our dust,” said Karen. “You weren’t even smart enough to leave when you had the chance.”

“What do ya mean?” I asked.

“The weird sex doll inside the house,” she said.

“And my flashlight, or Karen out walking a dog,” said Nathaniel.

“Or that a fucking serial killer would leave all the doors unlocked,” said Karen, her voice thick with disbelief. “Didn’t you think any of that was odd?”

“Yeah, but –”

“But you didn’t care,” said Karen. “Just like you didn’t care when the cops arrested Tara.”

Karen’s little sister. I flinched and said, “That wasn’t my fault.”

“You led her into that building and wouldn’t let her leave. Just one more photograph you kept saying. She trusted you, and it ruined her life.”

Not my fault, I wanted to shout but couldn’t. Because of her arrest record, Tara had lost her full-ride college scholarship. Had gone on a binder; crashed her car. Now she lay in a nursing home, little more than a mindless vegetable.

“I’m sorry,” I shouted, tears burning my eyes. “Really sorry. You’ve made your point. Now help me. I’ve fallen into some barbed wire.”

“Razor wire,” said Nathaniel. “Cuts deep and doesn’t let go.”

“‘He’s going to kill us,'” mimicked Karen and they both laughed.

“Let’s get outta here,” said Nathaniel. “I have to return the sound equipment.”

“Yeah,” said Karen, “I gotta get my aunt’s dog back to her.”

“Y – you can’t leave me,” I shouted.

The root cellar door slammed closed. I tried again to climb out of the pit, but the barbed wire yanked me back tighter than a lover’s embrace.

I scrambled, clawed, screamed, cursed. More dirt rained down on me. Only the sudden realization that I was burying myself alive stilled me.

Breathing hard, I forced myself to calm down, to listen.

“We better hurry back to Dallas. Ice is starting to fall,” said Nathaniel.

“Supposed to be a blizzard. Texas will be frozen solid for weeks,” said Karen.

From the direction of the root cellar’s door, I heard the rattle of chains and what sounded like the click of several locks.

“Let’s come back in a few years,” said Nathaniel. “Yeah,” said Karen, her voice growing faint, as if she were walking away. “His skeleton will make great photographs.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Kyle Arivett-White 2026

Image Courtesy: Patrick Pierre from Unsplash.com