The Chaser

By Jeff Tilden

Everyone has a story as sojourners in this life. The story isnt always easy. It can be tough, chaotic, and sometimes just outright dark. However, it can also be beautiful and a partial reflection of the glory that awaits with the Father. This tale shows the balance of lifes darkness and beauty. Ultimately, it is a story of hope and a story of love.
The Chaser follows the narrative of Julius Talbot, a young college student with aspirations of becoming a filmmaker. Julius feels like he has been haunted by bizarre nightmares his entire life. As he gets older, his dreams begin to say something to him. He begins to believe that his nightmares are actually showing him real-life events.
As a committed Christian, Julius makes the connection of his dreams to spiritual warfare. His journey takes some trying turns when he befriends Dexter McKay, an elite college quarterback. Dexter is also haunted by something unseen. Always feeling compelled to go out of his way to help others, Julius is plunged into some dark times after he meets Dexter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973614814

Jeff Tilden

For the last 13 years, Jeff Tilden has been working in full-time Christian ministry. He has served in numerous roles on church staffs and as a U.S. Army Chaplain. He has deployed to Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star. As an avid blogger, he has continually cultivated his passion for writing, which also includes some experience writing for television. Jeff is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Stephanie, reside in Clarksville, Tennessee. They have two children, Karis and Silas.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Altered Anticipation

T here’s something haunting my dreams. I know what it is, but I’m too afraid to face it. I see the shadow of a train howling and screaming, but at the same time lights are burning in my eyes keeping me from seeing the madness. The image of the rushing cars sweeping by me continues to play over and over again. The aftermath isn’t real, or is it? Truthfully, I don’t know anymore. It’s quite possible that I’m starting to go insane. Is this how sane people feel before they slip over the edge? I want this to be fixed, but I’m starting to wonder if I really even care.

These are the thoughts that were infecting my mind. Sometimes the one running to help is really the one in need of the help. A smart man told me that, but at the time he told me I had no idea what he was talking about. I was in college, twenty-one years old, and I was considering a big change in my life. I wasn’t happy with the career path I was marching towards. Truthfully, there was no plan, no job lined up, no entrepreneur in the family to schmooze in with. It was just me. My name is Julius Talbot and I’m a compulsive liar. It’s not that I lie to people. In fact, I’m usually quite honest. I lie to myself, and that’s why I have a story. I don’t know why I do it. Perhaps it’s a hidden optimism that resides deep down inside of me. The true reason is more likely that I’m afraid. I fear the dark side of life, but at the same time I try to fix it in others.

For so long I had suppressed a truth, a truth that haunted me. It riddled me with guilt, but over the years I had started to doubt. I wondered if the truth was real, or if some supernatural force was playing games with my mind and emotions. If it was real, it’s been well hidden. Either way, I was beginning to understand that I had to face it.

It was the Fall semester of my junior year at Austin Peay State University. Four weeks in, and I already felt like I was in a groove. However, this one particular morning things started intensely changing. My nightmares had been consistent for years, but something was now different. I wasn’t feeling myself. I was in a state of mind far from my usual condition. I think it was mostly brought on by a surprise infirmity. My stomach was turning tight like a knot. It was a continual twisting that seemed to be squeezing the life out of me. It kept me up almost the entire night. It was an awful feeling, and there seemed to be no end in sight. I spent much of the night hugging the toilet in my apartment uneasily, knowing that my stomach would continue to turn even after throwing up. Every time I felt a heave coming, I would stick my face in the bowl and release the demons from my stomach. I know this sounds gross, but it’s important to understand how I felt.

It wasn’t like me to get sick. I usually stayed pretty healthy. The last time I had remembered getting sick was on my eighteenth birthday. That was over three years ago, and as far as I could remember, it was only a cold. There wasn’t a real good explanation to my unusual good health. I exercised every once in a while, but it wasn’t a huge part of my life. I never really ate health food or kept to a strict diet. I just never got sick. Call it a blessing from God. Call it luck. Call it the result of living a clean-freak lifestyle. Whatever it was, for some reason, it didn’t work on this day. It felt like a poison had taken over my body, and that I had lost total control. I felt so terrible that I couldn’t even move. The whole thing was quite overwhelming.

At seven o’clock in the morning my alarm blared loudly, but I couldn’t make my way to slam my hand on the snooze button. It didn’t matter anyways; I had been awake so long nothing was going to ease me back to sleep. The alarm just added to my current pain. It sounded like a warning siren pounding in my head. Each beat seemed to drive grief deeper and deeper into my system. In a twisted way, I hoped that my own vomiting would relinquish the nuisance in my mind. Not only was I hurting physically, but for some reason my sickness seemed to be linked to a sort of depression I was feeling brought on by these thoughts and dreams that were only getting worse. I kept hoping with every passing second that I would fall asleep, wake up and it would all go away. However, it wasn’t going away, and eventually everything started to drive me mad, including that annoying alarm. I still couldn’t muster enough strength to make it stop though. It was just going to continue to fan the flame of misery I was feeling. Today was supposed to be a normal day for me. Ironically though, this day would mark the beginning of some uncanny times for me. It was September the 25th, a day that I can now pinpoint as the start of my healing. It’s funny that the day started with sickness.

I had a big project that I was working on. Normally, I thrived on every opportunity to work on my video projects. I loved doing video work. It was my passion, my dream, and what I thought to be my calling. However, my normal anticipation for a shot at doing this kind of work had been drowned out by my overwhelming sickness.

I worked as a film editor and cameraman for the Peay Beat. It was a news-television show produced by myself and fellow college students. Austin Peay had been a good school to me. I was now in my third year at the school, and had considered staying there and graduating. However, I really felt strongly about making a change. Like I said, after graduation, I had no plan. I loved video work, but I really didn’t see myself working for a television station or doing the news the rest of my life. It has been an infatuation that consumed me since my first homemade feature film at age seven. I like the art of video and photography. It’s an emotional expression all in itself. That was a large part of the reason I had a hard time translating that passion into a career choice. There are not many businesses lining up to hire guys who want to be artsy with a camera. I can’t help it; I’m a storyteller, not a business mogul. Believe me, my parents weren’t too excited about me picking a major that wasn’t going to lead directly to a safe and secure job, but I knew it was what I enjoyed doing. Nothing else energizes me like the camera. It’s my canvas. My creative juices flowed through all the projects and pieces I did in college. Although it wasn’t the most exciting expression of my passion, a story on a construction plan to put up new fencing on campus would quench my desire to create video, at least for a little while.

The piece I was supposed to shoot on this day was with the school’s blue-chip quarterback, Dexter McKay. This was the first nationally known football player the school ever really had. He was putting Austin Peay on the map, and everyone wanted a piece of him. This had been a piece that was difficult to set up, because of the busy schedule of McKay. Also the fact that he had a strange obsession with staying as far away from the media as he could, made it tough.

I had eagerly prepared myself the night before. Although, I did get wrapped up in helping a man that I found walking along the highway in the rain. I stopped my car to figure out why he was alone in the dark and wet. Turns out that he had a spat with his girlfriend while they were at the store. She freaked out, took the car, and left him. I couldn’t help it, but for some reason I always had a knack for seeking out those in trouble. Nonetheless, I still found time to be ready for the interview.

However, when the ailment came it was the furthest thing from my mind. I had one hour to get to school. My apartment was three miles from campus, but riding in a car even for that short time wouldn’t have been safe being so messed up. It was eerie how quiet my apartment was, except for the annoying alarm. For the first time in my college career, I could rest easy and feel more comfortable being in my own apartment. My former roommate, Alex, had moved out in the summer. My best friend, Randy, took his place. Alex had been kicked out of school for his dropping grades. His partying seemed to get the best of him. Luckily, Alex’s hedonistic ways had no effect on me. A lot of people joshed me about my straight and narrow attitude. What’s funny is that I never considered myself to be perfect. I’m flesh and blood just like everybody else. I have my struggles and vices, but I guess you could say I was different than my peers. Along the way I’ve had a lot of solid people pour into me. Unlike my close friends, I held onto the strong Christian convictions and principles I learned as a kid growing up. I couldn’t turn my back on my faith. It had always been my hope and peace in dark times.

For some reason though, doubts had been creeping up in my mind. It wasn’t that I was struggling with the age old question, Is there a God?. It was just the fact that some haunting memories wouldn’t leave me alone. For weeks, my mind had been slowly starting to play tricks on me. One minute I was happy, the next minute, depressed. The sickness was the perfect capper. It kept me focused on dark things, made me unable to sleep, and had me seeing visions that I know now I wanted to keep suppressed.

As I closed my eyes and tried thinking of something pleasant that would help me sleep in the midst of this personal storm, I was just making things worse, I think. When I closed my eyes, my mind started wandering and thinking. It was like I had no control over my thoughts. I knew that if I could reign in these bizarre fragments that I would probably feel better physically, and that’s all I really wanted at that moment. Right after I had made up my mind that I would stay in the bed for the rest of eternity, my phone rang. I didn’t feel compelled to tough out the sickness and answer it. I did however; want to destroy my alarm clock. Instead of pressing the button to turn it off, I stumbled out of bed and ripped the cord right out of the socket. This was likely due to my frustration of being sick and hearing the awful noise of an ear-piercing alarm clock.

I glanced at my phone and the name Randy Baker scrolled up on the ID. Randy had always been a good friend of mine, so it was natural that he became my new roommate. He was already on campus that morning, and he was likely calling to arrange lunch plans. Randy was one of those friends who withstood the college transition. In terms of college transition, I mean we ended up in similar walks of life after high school. We even looked alike. We were both skinny, stood just under six feet tall, and had shaggy brown hair.

I had many friends who changed after high school. Some went far away to school. Some paid a fraternity to douse them with new friends. Some became flakes and weirded me out. Randy and I remained close, and that’s why I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal if I just called him back. He didn’t leave a voicemail. I knew he wouldn’t. That wasn’t his style. He was too hyper to spend time leaving a message. I was just relieved that it wasn’t Wendy, my video project partner. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her, and give her the awful news that I was too ill to make it to the interview. Instead, I sent her a text message and quickly shut off my phone. From my vantage point, Wendy was a bit of a high-maintenance glory-hog. She wasn’t going to have much sympathy for me.

After laying my phone down, I trotted back into the bathroom. I felt like another round of hugging the porcelain was in order. After ten minutes or so, I was determined to start sleeping it off. I crawled back into bed, and slowly pulled the sheets over my sick body. I was definitely weakened by this sickness. As I shut my eyes, I started pondering again what the culprit of this current illness may have been. It was a strange occurrence. The day before, I had felt terrific. I went to class early in the morning, and slept through part of a philosophy lecture. In the afternoon, I played racquetball with Randy for a couple of hours. My evening included dinner with my parents. My dad had just bought a new grill, and he wanted to test it out. I was all for it. It gave me a chance for home cooking, which was one of the things I missed about living at home.

I was glad to be in my own place though. Like I said, my parents always gave me a hard time about my future. My father had worked in the lighting business for years. He met my mother while doing lighting for a theater group in Texas. Although they both had ties and passions in the entertainment industry, they heavily encouraged me not to follow that path. Neither one of them made any money or had a whole lot of success in that field. That’s why they were so persistent in trying to persuade me to major in business or go to some type of trade school. I consider those things a bore. Thus, my rebellion toward the parental advice raised a little tension. Most of the time, it just caused me and my parents to never bring up the issue. However, the unspoken disagreement caused some distance in my relationship with them.

While I laid in bed thinking about my parents, my future, and life in general, it started to make me feel even sicker. I thought it had to be the fact that I was dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress in all these areas as the cause of this funk. For some reason though, this explanation still did not seem to justify the real cause of the illness. I wished that I could just clear my mind. I wasn’t going to feel better lying awake and thinking. I thought if I could just sleep it off, get back in my regular routine, that things would clear up. I pulled my sheets up to my chin, and buried myself in the bed. I turned over on my side, and tried to hide my face from the sunlight peeking in through my window. Tears leaked out of my closed eyes and started to cover my face. I had no idea why I was crying, but it seemed to comfort me at the time. My anticipation of an exciting day had been altered to a bizarre anxiousness about my physical and mental health. These aren’t the things a college kid needs to worry about. Too tired to clean the tears off myself, I fell asleep and tried to dream about another day.

CHAPTER TWO

Dexter McKay

F inding an end to my nightmares would come through my experience with Dexter McKay. I never would have fathomed the mysterious intertwining of our lives that would occur. However, it is apparent to me now that divine hands brought us together. On paper, we appear to be polar opposites, but under the bright examination lights it’s clear to see that we have both been at war with the same enemy.

There was more to Dexter than what met the eye. He was a mountain of a man, standing about six feet, five inches and completely solid. His physical presence alone made most intimidated to speak to him. Add to that his introversion and emotionless exterior, and the fear he struck with many seemed justified. He was a perfect gamer which made him an incredible quarterback and athlete. To say that he had ice water in his veins would be an understatement. Dexter was a giant iceberg with no hint of fear in his eyes.

It was hard to see him as a real person. He didn’t have any friends. He walked alone. He took care of his business on the football field, and disappeared afterwards. There was a great cloud of mystery surrounding his life. Rumors had been created and spread in place of the truth, because no one knew the truth. Dexter didn’t open up to people. If we could have seen the figurative guards that protected his personal life they would look like a heavily armed militia, standing at cold black gates, giving a stench so foul that no one would dare walk within miles of their range.

Only a miracle provided me access to Dexter. This access was exciting and overwhelming at first, but I soon learned that the admission came with a price. This price beat me up emotionally, physically, and spiritually, but it was necessary for both of us.

It became clear to me shortly after meeting Dexter that he was hiding some pain, much the way I had been masking my own. He was the first person that I actually believed may be facing the same nightmares I was enduring. I can honestly say that I viewed Dexter McKay as the key to unlocking my own problems. However, it’s always been in my nature to nurture the vulnerable, and seek to fix the problems of others. So naturally, I would spend more time trying to dissect his brain rather than healing my own wounds.

Before I began my quest to solve Dexter, I had to meet him first. Our initial meeting felt like chance, but I now understand it to be orchestrated by a sovereign hand. Dexter’s desire to steer clear of the public gave me no hope to land an interview with him when my ambitious project-partner, Wendy Slade, approached me for help. She was determined to gain notoriety, even as a college student. Her eyes were set on becoming the next Oprah Winfrey, and as far as she was concerned, she couldn’t reach that sort of success soon enough.

Wendy was a fiery and gorgeous red-head. She certainly had the looks to make an imprint in the minds of men. With the beauty, came a strong-willed confidence. She was certainly the type of girl who would not ever give me the time of day. I’m weak-willed and quiet, resting a bit on the nerdy side, which I am completely fine with. I wasn’t looking to impress Wendy. I had other things to worry about. It’s this combination that made our connection make perfect sense.

Wendy was chasing an internship with a talk show in Nashville. Each year the station would search for broadcasting students from all over the state to fill the intern slot, leading to a wealth of experience, contacts, and opportunities. To compete for the spot, hopeful students had to put together an interview piece highlighting their skill as an interviewer, but also demonstrating their will to nail a sit down with someone of interest. Wendy needed two things. She was already a terrific interviewer. She had developed that skill well, working for our campus news station. Wendy needed a notable subject and a dynamic person behind the camera. I was her selection for the later. We already had opportunity to pair up on several class projects. It helps when the professor pairs the class up alphabetically by last names. Slade and Talbot followed each other every time in our case. Anyways, Wendy had seen my work and knew I was the best, as did I know that she was the best. Our projects far surpassed our fellow classmates. It was no surprise to get the call from Wendy that she desired my help for this most important of projects.

The trick was landing a local celebrity or interesting figure to make her piece stand out. Being that Dexter McKay was gaining national attention and eluded the press as the impossible interview, there was no other option in Wendy’s mind. I tried talking her out of it. I feared it was a lost cause. Dexter wouldn’t agree to this, especially coming from two fellow students and our humble operation. And despite Wendy’s head turning looks and overzealous attitude; she would certainly fall short in cracking this egg. Interesting enough, I ended up being the one who nabbed McKay. It certainly wasn’t my charm or assertiveness, because those things don’t exist in me. However, to make Dexter agree I did have to do some things that went against my nature and forced me to get out of my comfort zone.

After several failed attempts at getting him to talk, Wendy reached out to me in desperation. She went to practices, games, and waited outside film sessions. These were the only places she could even get a glimpse of Dexter McKay. She would try to chase him down, but even the foxy Wendy Slade got blown off. She would have been better off as a stuttering telemarketer or a crazy transient on the street proclaiming that the end is near. Dexter walked past her like she didn’t exist, often hiding his eyes behind his aviator glasses and keeping his head from making even the slightest turn. He moved with textbook tunnel vision, unaffected by screaming fans and media types. He could care less. His mind was set on much deeper things.

See what you can do to get him to talk, Wendy asked me after her miserable failures.

I’ll try, but I doubt I can do much better, I told her. If he wants nothing to do with you, he’ll definitely want no part of me.

I originally made no plans to try and talk to Dexter. I thought Wendy was functioning with naïve optimism, and I was too scared to hunt him down. But for some bizarre reason I felt compelled to complete this task. I couldn’t shake it. I needed to do whatever was in my power to get Dexter McKay to interview. Even if I viewed this as impossible, I at least had to try.

"How is a rinky dink camera boy like me going to accomplish what big shot professionals hadn’t been able to do?" I would think to myself.

I had nothing to offer. Even if I had money, which I didn’t, he clearly wasn’t interested in shedding his skin. I knew that even if I happened to get lucky and just see him, I would face the same fate as Wendy, possibly worse. My imagination ran wild with what he would do to me. I had never seen him lash out at anyone, but I just assumed that he had no problem crushing people that got in his way.

In my cowardice, I approached the assignment by doing something I had never done. I began to stalk him. I never saw myself as a creepy, obsessed stalker. But then again, that’s the definition. Looking back, I was probably obsessed. The interview eluded me. It felt like the one that got away. I wanted to figure out everything I could about Dexter McKay so that I could capture this beast.

I first started following Dexter after he left places in which I knew he would be. I was privileged to have a press pass from the university since I worked for the Peay Beat.

This afforded me opportunities to get on the field for football practices. I would watch the entire practice and wait for Dexter to leave the practice field house after he showered. He was like clockwork. Twenty-five minutes after the final whistle, he was walking out to his car. He carried a faded, red gym bag. It looked like the bag he might have owned in junior high school. It had character, marked with holes and a severely frayed strap. As soon as he got to his small, tan, economy car, he would open the back door and quickly toss his bag in the back seat. He slammed the door shut and almost immediately opened the driver’s door, got in, started the car, and sped off.

I decided not to follow him in my car. I felt that might not be inconspicuous. I just watched him and waited. Besides, I knew where he lived. Eventually, he would wind up at his apartment, which was only a block away from campus. If he wanted to, he could walk home from practice. However, he never did. Most days, he would drive off to some unknown location, and pull into his apartment about a half an hour after practice. I would park on the other side of his apartment complex parking lot, in position to see his arrival but far enough away to remain out of his sight. I didn’t want him to get suspicious of me. I didn’t want him to know I existed, at least not as his stalker.

Many of the evenings I sat in that parking lot feeling guilty, cheap, and dirty. I would try to justify my behavior by reminding myself that I had no desire to harm Dexter. I just wanted to figure this guy out, and see if there was anything in his routine that would leave me clues on how to get him to talk.

After a few weeks of reviewing the same post-practice routine, I decided to begin following Dexter more closely. I learned his class schedule, and started to tail him as he walked the campus. Similar to his rigid routine after practice, I quickly learned that he treated his class schedule with the same tedious repetitive markings. He never swerved. He walked the same paths. He stopped at the same water fountains. He used the same doors and steps, and kept to the exact same times. This wasn’t highly unusual, considering that class schedules often force students in predictable habits and routes. However, Dexter’s routine was so noticeably unchanging, down to every little detail.

As I followed Dexter McKay, I began to learn more about him. Even without talking to him, I was getting to know the real person behind the façade. He frequently talked to himself. Many times I could see his lips moving, but there were a few times I could actually hear him speaking out loud. Oddly enough, he would use hand gestures as if trying to communicate something more clearly. Sometimes the gestures seemed more forceful. It almost appeared that he would have arguments with himself. I wanted to believe that he was practicing a persuasive speech for a debate class, but he did it so often. Also I later realized one of the motivations behind him talking to himself. It wasn’t that he was carrying on a conversation with his split personality. Although, I believe this may have been the case some of the time. Dexter would replay actual conversations with other people over in his mind. He didn’t have many conversations, but every time I was fortunate to observe one of his social interactions, I would notice that immediately afterwards, he would seem to repeat the entire conversation out to himself. He would speak both parts. It was almost as if his brain had to further process the interaction seconds after the conversation had ended.

I wanted to pass this along as some type of football-related brain injury, but I soon suspected that Dexter was dealing with some type of social complex or disorder. Obviously, he hid this well to most, but after weeks of spying on him, I couldn’t help but pick up on it.

Even with this knowledge, I still didn’t feel any closer or confident in getting him to sit down for an interview. My stalking hadn’t helped me gain anything, but I still felt pulled to continue pursuing him. I personally wanted to know more about Dexter. I wanted to know why he talked to himself, and what made him obsessed with order and an unwavering schedule.

I soon took my following to the next level. I started to stake out his apartment late at night like a detective waiting on a murder suspect to walk out and leave a wealth of incriminating evidence. It turned out that Dexter was actually quite the active late night person. This afforded me a greater opportunity to feed my obsession with this guy.

My curiosity was growing swiftly like a weed that was beginning to choke out any shred of common sense that remained in my brain. Sure, I wanted to get the interview and help Wendy, but more than that I wanted to know what made McKay tick. I wondered why he remained so introverted. A quarterback was supposed to be a vocal leader. I thought perhaps that’s why Dexter chose to play for Austin Peay over a much larger school. Maybe he wanted to disappear and stay off the radar. Of course, that’s hard to do when professional football teams are foaming at the mouth, ready to snatch up the next great thing. He never had a chance. Even without opening his mouth, the legend of Dexter McKay thrived. Everyone knew who he was, and many were obsessed just like I was. There were stories going around that he was an orphan, landing on the doorsteps of the university with nowhere else to go. Other stories claimed that Dexter was in hiding from a maniacal family that was rooted in an unnatural religious legalism. Supposedly, they wanted him to marry his sister and take over the family farm.

I tried not to listen to such stories. Most of them seemed so far-fetched and ludicrous. The only ones that tempted me were ones of his accomplishments on the field. In his first three seasons, he had won twenty-nine games and only lost five. He had led Austin Peay to a pair of conference championships and was heavily favored to lead them to another in his senior year. His arm strength was superb and supplied more reasons to fear him. His teammates were often scared to receive his passes, and defenses were intimidated to break them up. One story claims that in a game his sophomore year against Jacksonville State, McKay threw a pass so hard that when an opposing linebacker tried to make a play on it, the ball ripped through the defender’s hands and shattered the bones in three of his fingers.

Those were the types of tales that sucked me in. I didn’t fully understand it, but I felt a genuine touch that something was drawing us together. I was so sure that Dexter truly needed me. I would picture myself helping him through whatever plagued him, and later having the favor returned to me by being one of those cool guys that hung out in the circles of professional athletes. I had become like one of those rabid fans, except that I wasn’t so much a fan as I was a dreamer. I’ve always lived as if my life was some type of poetic story. I often operated under the assumption that every move I made was under a touch of destiny. It’s not that I believed I was going to be great, it came more from my belief that there is a supernatural, divine being who is actively involved with His creation. I just knew God wanted me to cross paths with Dexter McKay. I was normal. I had never followed anybody before. I had never obsessed over another person. I didn’t want to believe that I was going crazy, and truthfully, I am certain that wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, I continued to seek out Dexter. Now I was beginning to monitor him in the late night hours.

Dexter would often go for a jog around one o’clock in the morning. He would leave his apartment, walk swiftly towards campus, and start running once his feet hit the sidewalks around the stadium parking lot. One particular night, about a month after I started following Dexter, I tailed him closely as he went for his nightly run. I walked behind him, keeping a distance of about two hundred feet. I normally kept a safer distance hiding behind trees, buildings, and cars. However, on this night, I walked behind him almost as if I was just another late night jogger who just happened to be also going on a stroll. I wasn’t really sure what the closer look was going to accomplish, but I thought that maybe it would lead to a valuable discovery. All was fine, until he turned around.

It was one of the more frightening moments of my life. I would compare it to watching a horror movie, seeing the main character navigate through a dark, abandoned house, only to have a threatening figure appear in a doorway after a flash of lightening.

It happened just several seconds after Dexter began running around the stadium lot. He took off, just as he always did. However, he stopped so suddenly, like he had heard someone call out his name. He turned around and glared in my direction. I stood frozen in my tracks, about fifty yards away, across the street. I wasn’t sure what I needed to do. First of all, I wasn’t completely convinced that he was looking at me. Secondly, I felt that if I took off running in the opposite direction, it would make me look more suspicious. His eyes seem to pierce right into my mind. He could probably see that I was scared. I had no idea what he was going to do to me. I also wondered if he had known that I was following him all along. What made it worse is that he stood staring for what seemed to be at least a full minute. He didn’t move. I’m not sure if he even blinked. He was like a crouching lion, waiting for his prey to move. He was about to pounce. Sure enough though, he turned around and continued running, never giving me another glare. Of course, I didn’t give him the opportunity. After he started jogging again, I left the scene. I found my way to my car and sped home.

That was the last night I truly stalked Dexter McKay. I no longer wanted to take a chance that he might kill me. Besides that, I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t obsessed and that I wasn’t going crazy. If anything, that scare knocked me back into reality. Following Dexter McKay was not what God wanted me to spend my time doing, and it most certainly wasn’t going to score me an interview. It was a waste of time. I should have known that getting that interview would be more about being navigated to the right place at the right time, rather than me trying to navigate myself to the right place at the right time.

A week after the glare incident, I was wrapping up some editing for another project. It was late as I left the edit room located in the school’s mass communication building. In fact, I worried that I might be in violation of a new policy that the school had just handed down. Due to a string of recent night thefts in many campus buildings, the dean of students had issued a policy that students were not to be inside any campus building after eleven o’clock. Dorm buildings and the library were the only exceptions.

It was close to midnight. I had lost track of time in my effort to finish editing, and I worried that the feeble press pass that hung around my neck wouldn’t keep me from facing trouble if I were to get caught. I hurried to my car, digging furiously in my pocket to wrangle out my keys. However, as I did this, I noticed someone else trying to make sneaky movements around the athletic center, which was located just across the parking lot of the mass communication building. At first thought, I assumed that another student was finishing up some sort of project and had also lost track of time. I had decided to just ignore it and leave, but as I saw the figure move about in the shadows, I was intrigued. It appeared this person wasn’t trying to leave the athletic center. This person was attempting to break in. I truly believed that I had happened upon the campus culprit.

This is the thief! I thought. My heart began to race as I pondered being the good citizen and going to the campus police station, or being the good reporter and getting a look at this sneak’s identity. If it hadn’t been for my close encounter with Dexter and my odd, late night stalking, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to take on this sort of vigilante-like mission. I chose to find out who was behind the campus robberies.

I closed my car door and clung onto my press pass. I figured that if I got caught, I could at least prove to campus police that I was not a thief, but just a nosy mass com student who was looking to make a great scoop. I watched as the figure walked around to all the doors, looking for one that would be easy to break into. After trying the main doors of the building and a couple of windows, the person, who was obviously male, finally found success by muscling open a back door that appeared to only be