tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56129000953574218262024-03-13T22:39:01.934-04:00SOMETHING'S IN THE BASEMENT...Horrifying Tales of THE AMULETS. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-89569258369146742792014-09-06T19:03:00.001-04:002014-09-06T19:03:49.103-04:00Tales of the Amulet: Behind Me<p dir="ltr">    I was angry.<br>
    This was probably the seventh time in a month that the Buick took a shit.<br>
    And for the seventh time the car sat lifeless on the shoulder of the road, releasing its soul in the form of dirty, gray clouds floating skyward from under the hood.<br>
    So yeah: I was angry.<br>
    And the real tasty icing on the crap cake was rolling in from the west: dark purple clouds with that unmistakable stain of ugly tan swirling around beside the oncoming wall. Thunder argued its location from the horizon and the flickers of lightening announced the bigger storm to come.<br>
    Angry. But at least I had an umbrella, because yes: I had to walk. The road ran the rural outskirts of the city and from where I stood there wasn't a restaurant or a gas station for at least a mile. I was definitely walking.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> The drops began as soon as I shut the door; heavy, loud, and with a fury like the rain was mad at the ground. I popped the umbrella just in time as the downpour picked up speed sounding now like a waterfall splashing on a tent. I began my walk.<br>
The rain continued to pelt my meager covering like a barrage of water bombs. It was torrential for one minute, and an outright deluge the next. As I looked around with stunned wonder, I noticed immediately that the road's edge quickly became a running, muddy mess. And so I plodded on.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> Soon it became all too apparent that the arm not holding the umbrella - I rotated as frequently as my aching hands desired - was rapidly becoming a sodden sponge. It might have been an umbrella, but with the downpour, it was doing very little to deflect much of the torrent and bare!y kept me dry. I did my best to keep my mind off the drenching chill, and so I let it freely wander.<br>
I thought of my wife and kids warm and dry at home. I thought of my phone with its useless, dead battery. Why did I listen to music all night at work without charging? And so I walked and thought.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> Just then, something that most definitely wasn't the relentless rain caught my attention. I cocked my head as I continued my march through the deepening puddles. Then I heard it again. It sounded like footfalls beating in opposite rhythm to my own. Worse yet, they sounded agonizingly close.<br>
I breathed deeply and collected my thoughts. There was obviously someone behind me; someone near enough for me to discern their sounds through the ceaseless storm. I wanted nothing more than to stop and turn around, but half of me said not a chance, and forced me to keep walking even more quickly.<br>
My breathing came more rapidly, too, not only because of my pace, but largely because of my fear. Why was I so scared? I'm a grown man... And a big guy! So what if someone was following me? This was not the plot of one of those Slasher flicks In was so fond of. People don't just go around stalking and cutting up pedestrians! This was stupid!<br>
But that was just a bunch of macho bullshit because as the footsteps continued to match my pace, panic and blinding fear sank its claws even deeper. I swallowed hard enough for it to click in my throat and instinctively coughed, cleared my throat, and spoke aloud,<br>
"Guess I'd better call my wife!"<br>
There was no way my trail had any idea my phone was dead. I mocked dialing - knowing full well the lighted display wasn't glowing - and waited, pretending to listen to the nonexistent ring. And all the while the footsteps never faltered.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> My heart was hammering in my chest as I began to talk to no one,<br>
"Hi honey! Guess where I am!"<br>
I prayed for the plodding footfalls behind me to slow; to edge a little off their pace. But even as I carried on my fabricated conversation, they never once wavered.<br>
If possible, the darkness seemed to deepen around me. It felt as though its inky cloak was enclosing me so tightly I'd never be able to free myself. I tried to slow my laboring breath and forced myself to continue the charade I'd begun on my dead cell phone.<br>
"No, I've been walking to town. Yeah, it's crapped out again. No, I should be the..."<br>
I was abruptly cut off as the thing following me let out what could only be described as a laugh; a low, guttural chuckle.<br>
A cold bolt of fear lanced up my spine and I could feel its chill ring in my ears.<br>
I missed a step and nearly tripped. The night around me suddenly grew far warmer as the sensation of absolute dread made sweat bead all over my face and body. I juggled my umbrella from one hand to the other as my sweaty palms threatened to drop it entirely. I had sense enough to put my phone away before dropping it, too, since there was no reason to pretend any longer.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> I kept my pace, as did my persuer. By now my fear-heightened senses could clearly hear it breathing through the still-pouring rain. By now, the aching need to see what was back there was almost overpowering my natural fight-or-flight sensibilities. I had to know.<br>
I slowly - without breaking stride - turned my head.<br>
Just then my balance gave out and I stumbled over a rise in the road. My feet tangled and I fell over myself. I landed hard on my hands, both of which I managed to throw out in front of me to brace my fall. The umbrella cartwheeled down the road, and everything I had in my pockets jingled noisily across the blacktop; my key chain with my antique amulet bottle opener, my phone, my wallet... it all spilled onto the soaking wet street. I could feel the gravel as it stung deeply into my palms as the blood began to pool and trickle out. <br>
As I sat there on my knees, stunned, I looked desperately around trying in vein to locate any shadow or glimpse to show just who or what had been following me. But even as I shot my gaze as far as I could into the dark, rainy night... I saw nothing. I heard no sign that anything was ever there. By the time I scrambled to my feet and gathered my sopping possessions (the umbrella was a lost cause), I was drenched to the core. Heart thumping a hole in my chest, shivering from head to toe, and on edge like a startled cat, I continued fruitlessly to survey my surroundings. But still I saw and heard nothing.<br>
Nothing except my salvation:<br>
Headlights and an engine.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> The <u>End</u></p>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-6468081938471391642014-07-24T20:58:00.001-04:002014-07-24T20:59:53.739-04:00Tales Of The Amulet: Daddy<p dir="ltr"> Rachel sat down on her bed and yawned, stretching her arms high releasing some of the tension of the day. It was late. She'd been through the wringer today and could feel every second of it pulsing through her like hot, electrical wiring. Saying she was tired was an absolute understatement; she was exhausted and physically worn to her core. She peeled off her clothes, unhooked her bra, slipped into her favorite Monster Squad night shirt, and dropped to the bed like a sack of meat. Sighing deeply, she rolled to her side and managed to just get her phone plugged in when the blessed sensation of sleep swept her up in its warming embrace. Her last glimpse was of the digital clock on her nightstand: it was eleven twenty.<br>
It was the thud that woke her. It jogged her with such ferocity that her breath caught in her throat and she cried out a little. She lay there catching her breath and trying with staggering difficulty to understand if the noise was real or just a product of her sleep. But her question was answered for itself when the thud came again. Rachel squealed and felt the motion bounce her bed. She instinctively scooted her knees to her stomach and wrapped her arms around herself. The only light was that from her dim clock readout so she blinked and stared around the near-total darkness searching for sight. After a few minutes her innate bravery kicked in and she slowly undid her legs and made to step off onto the floor.<br>
THUD!! The forcefullness of the sound and its sudden, shuddering jolt nearly spilled her to the floor. It was then that it became evident that whatever it was had emanated from beneath her own bed. Rachel scrambled to the floor and stood idly by with pregnant anticipation. Another few minutes went by and she slowly made her way on tip-toes to her bedroom door. Just as she turned the knob, the thud came again with such force that she could actually hear the bed bounce against the floor. She yanked the door open, smacked up the light switch, and turned toward the family room. What appeared before her frightened her so instantaneously and completely that her comprehension didn't have time to catch up with what her eyes were trying to tell her she was seeing. She saw her father; her father dressed in his favorite T-shirt and sweats standing in the shadows cast by the bookshelf and the TV stand glaring at her with dreamy eyes rolled back into his sunken, pallid face. Yes her father who had died three years ago by his own hand right there in the family room. The spectral image seared itself into her psyche and the last sensation Rachel felt before black fog enveloped her was her knees buckling.<br>
A slice of dawn pierced beyond Rachel's closed eyelids and she winced, rolling away from the window. Then she jerked upright kicking the covers from her body. Her bed? No. Not possible! She knew with no doubt that she'd collapsed in the family room after seeing... Daddy. Impossible! It was obviously a dream. Absolutely without a doubt. Wasn't it? She sat there thinking past the fog that still blanketed her mind and stared off into the distance of her bedroom.<br>
Rachel's day was as hectic as all the rest -including a trip to the DMV to get her license renewed; a visit made all the more irritating by the jackass in front of her in line- and as she slouched into her front door the sensation of both being comfortably home and fearfully in a house that produced such a real-world nightmare that she'd felt it throughout the day hit her twofold. She dropped her keys in their pottery bowl, hung her jacket over the door hook, and looked off into the dimly-lit room still safely alit by the wavering setting sun casting purple stripes through the blinds. She was dead tired, but at the same time had almost no desire to go to her room to bed. But it was finally common sense that made her roll her eyes and walk with trepidation to her room. <br>
Rachel once more began to undress; she slipped the disk-shaped medallion she frequently wore from her neck, stripped down to her underwear, and slid into her nightshirt. Slowly the need to sleep enveloped her and as she sunk beneath her covers, relishing the cool comfort, all thoughts of the previous night faded away.<br>
The first thud jostled her awake at a quarter to one. Her heart hammered a vicious drum beat in her throat and she quickly clamored out of bed. The thud rocked her on her feet and the bed shook violently. She whimpered and ran for the door. Back in the family room she was once again brought to tears by the horrifying apparition that hung in front of her disbelieving eyes. Her deceased father was both passing through the ceiling and passing into the room. His wavering shape blurred and cleared back and forth; he was both there and not there, recognizable and amorphous, her father and a mist. Her fear was at its zenith... and then the phantasm froze. It turned and looked directly at her, and through her. Rachel was paralyzed with terror.<br>
His mouth worked. It didn't make a sound, but it made the motions. It mouthed "You" repeatedly and held a finger accusatorially at his daughter. Rachel saw black for the last time. As she faded into sleep, her final rest, the last thought that passed through her mind was that of her dad, happy.</p>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-76827367304231285052013-09-07T11:59:00.000-04:002013-09-07T11:59:01.979-04:00Tales of the Amulet (Back Stories Volume III)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>The Meeting</u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><br /></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Steve felt pretty good about himself. He stopped on the front porch of Karen Chase's home (her home she pretended to live in happily with her daughter, Meg, and her frequently absent husband, Shawn) and took a deep, steadying breath, staring out across the lawn he'd now come to know every Thursday afternoon. Steve Parker was a salesman from Payne's Home Improvement in charge of hocking windows and gutter covers to anyone and everyone city-wide. It was a crummy job all around, especially since very few people in this economy were improving their homes in any meaningful way. In fact, many were just outright selling and moving on to more fertile grounds. But were it not for Steve's position in said crummy job, he'd never have met Mrs. Chase one lonely, steamy Thursday in August when, given the circumstances, she'd likely have purchased anything from windows to the Polar Ice Cap. Steve was decked out in his typical Polo shirt emblazoned with the Payne's logo, hair combed slightly askew and tousled, and splash of musk just for its hint of crisp, acrid scent. Mrs. Chase was putty. She's invited him in -obviously bored and probably even a little ready for some sense of danger- and offered him coffee. He accepted, smiled at her politely, and watched in admiration at the swish of her butt as she led him into the dining area. She bought two windows, signed the requisite paperwork, and sat staring, like a coy animal, into Steve's eyes as both decided, wordlessly, to move things into the bedroom. And hour later, Karen became his Thursday stop. It was at this thought that Steve breathed deeply the day and stepped down the concrete steps to walk the block to where he parked his Buick.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The Buick had other ideas than Steve's of leaving. The starter chugged, but it wouldn't catch. It had happened before, and typically it just took a half-hour or so for it to calm down and fire up. Steve sighed, and smacked the steering wheel. Though he was parked a block away and around a corner, he still felt a certain sting of worry and apprehension. One never knew who might have seen him go into the Chase home and leave seventy minutes later. One never knew who had large eyes and loud mouths. Steve sat motionless and stared out of the windshield into the nosy world beyond. And it was just then he saw the reflection.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
His heart nearly stopped as it jumped into his throat. One wandering glance was all it took for Steve to catch a view of the man sitting in the back seat. Steve froze with what might have been a yell catching ineffectually in his larynx. The man sat stolid; a derby sat straight and crisp on his head, the shadow from the brim obscuring half of the man's face. He wore a full-length trench coat that covered him to nearly the ankles, and proper loafers finished the ensemble. Other than that -the mostly unassuming outfit- the man only held one other thing, and it was in his lap: a medallion the shape and size of a compact disk. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Wh-who are you?" Steve managed to stammer in a forced whisper.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The man sat motionless for a beat. "Someone who knows, Steve. Someone who knows."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Though Steve knew exactly what this man was talking about, he decided to play as dumb as possible. "What? What do you know?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Steve was, as he sat trembling and facing facts, scared to death. Somewhere in the cellar of his thoughts he supposed he knew he'd be caught at some point. However he was always sure it would be Karen's husband who'd do the catching. Steve saw his picture all over the house, since Karen apparently didn't believe in the time-honored tradition of cheating wives turning down images of their spouses for fear of them somehow knowing from afar. In this case, Karen's husband was kind of a mousy guy with weaselly features and slicked-back, 60's hair. All told, he looked a bit like Squiggy from the old <i>Laverne and Shirley</i> show. The man that currently sat cucumber-cool in the back seat was absolutely not Mr. Chase. Of this, Steve was nearly one-hundred percent certain.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I know of the indiscretions, Steve. I know of the ruination you insist in perpetuating, Steve... the sanctity of marriage.... That's what I know."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Steve blinked. He turned his head to the back seat rather than talk to the rear-view mirror and stared at the man in the black coat and hat. The man looked like he hadn't flinched; statuesque and frozen in time. Steve gave him a look of disdain and glared at him for a time. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I'm sorry but I'm not going to sit here and take any crap from someone who obviously has no clue what he's talking about. So please... get out of my car."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The man only sat; still and unnerved. The disk on his lap began to shine a little oddly and Steve chalked it up to glare from the sun through the glass or something. Until it pulsated.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Red tints of undulating hue snaked across the surface highlighting the etchings that Steve just then noticed. The face of the disk looked mottled with runes and glyphs. The scarlet pulses danced across the disk like tiny flashes of bloody lightning. Steve was momentarily mesmerized.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"The Amulet knows all, my friend; good, bad, and indifferent... it sees everything. And though it feeds from the endless trough that is human unkindness and ineptitude, it also seeks those floating in the mire of damnation and... well... inhumanity. It seeks them, and shows them the errors of their actions."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Steve stared dumbfounded at the man in black. His mouth hung open and a throaty sigh escaped him. The only movement that passed between them were the thin, gnarled fingers of the man as he played them slowly over the carved surface of the amulet.<br />
<br />
It was then Steve's mind filled with the torturous overture of the nightmares he might have inadvertently caused with his thoughtless acts. His head was thrown back, his neck arched with a snap and his spine followed. His mouth yawned open in a rictus of terror and a bark of pain escaped his throat. Thoughts paraded through his brain, each more painful and agonizing than the last; the past was shown proving that maybe Karen's husband knew after all and his subsequent plans for suicide, and the present played on as well where Karen herself began spreading the rift between her and her husband causing ripples in their child's life. And then there was the future -the worst part- slicing into his psyche like a hot dagger. Years not yet existing delivered images of a grave plot, a mourning woman, and a distant silhouette hiding in the shadows. The atmosphere was dull grey and heavy with emotion. Though Steve couldn't see it was dreadfully apparent that the cemetery stone had the name of Karen's husband, and the silhouette was their child. It was all too much... just too much.<br />
<br />
Then the red that surged across the disk's surface suddenly ceased. The angrily dancing lights suddenly stopped, and a deafening silence slammed into the car. Steve was curled into a fetal position in the front seat, a runnel of drool stringing into a pool at his cheek. The man in the black coat and hat slowly slide out from the backseat, he took one cursory glance at Steve, smiled wanly, and left the vehicle. The amulet glowed one final time; a pulse for good measure.</div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-59439907906557723582013-07-30T20:31:00.001-04:002013-07-30T22:16:54.518-04:00Tales of the Amulet (Back Stories Volume II)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I haven't thought about Jimmy and Wil for a few years now... probably more like a decade or two, honestly. But it's time I shared the tale of the one moment that -not to put too fine a point on it- changed my life forever. In fact, it changed it in a way that would scar me in the deepest and most profound way possible.<br />
<br />
It was 1981. My best friends in the world were Jimmy Davidson and Wil McMahon, and during that summer break from fifth grade we were inseparable. We attended Bible Camp together, we stayed over at one another's houses and back yards, and we spent as many hours in each other's company as physically possible. Life was great and during that vacation of '81, nothing could have been better, and yet what the three of us were soon to discover, nothing could be worse.<br />
<br />
Over the week of July 4th, I had to spend six days away from my pals on a family vacation to Niagara Falls. It was great, but three days in and I was pining for the companionship of my buddies. And by the time we rolled into the driveway at the end of the week, I was in full-blown withdrawal. Within the following fifteen minutes, Jimmy and Wil were sitting next to me in the yard bombarding me with questions and throwing six days worth of new information at me about what I'd missed. It was wonderful to be back home.<br />
<br />
But then Jimmy dropped the bomb. He looked at Wil and they both nodded. I looked quizzically at them as the readied themselves; it was clear that what they had to share was pretty damn important. I waited patiently for Jimmy to begin, both excited and a little frightened. He finally asked if I remembered the trail that led out to the old barn we called the Chicken Shack. It sat about fifty yards beyond the cul de sac on which our houses sat. I said of course I did, what about it?<br />
<br />
Jimmy continued with an air of hesitation. He said he and Wil were out catching fireflies a few nights ago when something shiny and very red captured their attention. It was sticking out of the dry weeds next to the trail. The sun had nearly set, but it wasn't its glow that reflected of the object's surface; the ominous deep vermilion hew was glowing all on its own. I nodded and shrugged not yet really getting the full weight of what I was being told.<br />
<br />
Now it was Wil's turn and he began by looking around to make sure no one else was listening. He glanced at Jimmy and continued the story. The thing they found was not only just emitting a sickly red light, but the closer they got they could make out a deep, reverberating hum that seemed to hit them right in their gut. It was a low thrumming that was almost painful. He and Jimmy got as close as they dared and stared at it. There was no doubt that it was metal; it had a rough, unpolished surface that looked almost ancient. But the most bizarre part were the etchings that encompassed the face of it. The closer they got, the more the ache of the vibration stung and burned. They got within ten feet before the nose bleeds. Jimmy said he felt a pop in his face and a trickle of blood oozed from his right nostril. Wil said he heard a weird echoing sound and his nose sprung its own leak. That was as far as they dared go, and they turned, abandoning their bug jars, and ran home.<br />
<br />
I sat with the two of them in silence. It was apparent just by their curious faces that each wanted to go back to it, but each wanted to wait for me. A bloody nose? I could deal with that. I nodded and wordlessly the three of us agreed to go the following night. I wanted to go then -dark was a mere hour or so away- but my parents had already confined me to yard and house for the night. Besides, I was tired and, truth be told, maybe a bit scared.<br />
<br />
I spent an hour that night staring at my ceiling pondering just what it could have been Jimmy and Wil discovered out there, and if I really wanted any part of it. I wish now that I'd chickened out, because little did I know that in 24 hours I'd never, ever be the same.<br />
<br />
It was Saturday night. The three of us had spent the day in a kind of distant haze. We dragged sticks around, kicked ay rocks, and generally just wasted the day. We went to Wil's for burgers and dogs on the grill and gathered jars for our cover of collecting lightning bugs. Our parents all knew where we were going; we'd been staying out late nearly all of Summer vacation. They knew we were safe and besides, I was having both over to my house over night. Our bases were as covered as they were going to get. And as the sun ducked behind the tree line and the little pops of yellow dotted the muggy evening, we set out.<br />
<br />
Mid-way down the trail I was the first to notice the ruby incandescence. It came from just off the trail the very same way Jimmy and Wil described. In a few steps it became uncomfortably apparent that the dull hum could be felt in the bottom of my chest. We stopped. No one said anything and neither of us knew just what to do next. But I knew if I waited too much longer, I'd have likely turned around. I took another tentative step, feeling that horrible drone deep in my gut. Jimmy and Wil followed suit, but somehow neither looked as though the sonorous buzz was bothering them at all. As I looked them over, wry grins danced across their mouths. It was then I felt the death-grips of their hands ad they grasped my upper arms.<br />
<br />
I remember shouting at them to let go, but neither even seemed to hear me. Soon my ears began to sting as the tremors grew in intensity. That's when I felt the jab behind my eyes and the rivulet of blood ran down my lip. I tried to fight my way free, hoping it was all a joke, but knowing it wasn't. We inched ever closer to what now looked like some kind of disc poking from the dirt. As I struggled I looked at my friends. Their eyes had rolled up and I could see only whites. They glared dead-faced and slack-jawed, trickles of foamy drool ran down their chins. We were feet from the object and I wanted nothing more than to be in my house and hiding in my mom's arms. I tripped a half-step and saw a pretty big rock. I fell on purpose and that quick move loosened Wil's grip just enough. I yanked my right arm free and grabbed the fist-sized rock. The blood was running freely now and I could feel my chest about to burst from the violent drumming that continued to get worse and worse. I stood and swung; the rock collided with Jimmy's eye socket and he wailed in agony releasing his hold. I looked back at Wil who was reaching toward me. I stepped back and whipped the rock, connecting with and subsequently breaking his nose at the bridge. He, too yowled in pain and dropped to his knees. My head felt like it was stuffed with angry bees and I knew I had to get away. But how could I leave my friends? <br />
<br />
I heard the voices. Way back, somewhere in the cavernous depths of my brain, I heard them. They spoke in hisses and chittering clacks. They called to me with their gibbering growls and guttural tones. They told me I'd won. They told me to kill. I stood above my fallen friends with a mind not my own, and I obeyed. I kicked and kicked until I felt crunching and mush.<br />
<br />
For a few years my new home was a Juvenile Detention Center and the occasional hospital hooked up to brain machines in hopes of answering "Why?" Eventually, as I'd remained silent for six years, I was given to the State and its cells and rooms. As I sit now... unsure of the time or the day or the year... I look around at the padded walls and wonder just how much of what I've told is just voices in my head. </div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-60616364191655586902013-07-04T11:48:00.001-04:002013-07-04T11:48:54.544-04:00Tales of the Amulet -The 4th<p>Dale sat on the hill above the high school football field. The grass was dead and dry and scratched at his bare legs. He looked down at the meandering masses as the gathering people chose their seats and spots for the fireworks display still 90 minutes away. The hot sun hung just above the horizon; its fat, shimmering heat permeating the muggy evening. Dale peered at it through his sunglasses and silently cursed its wretched warmth.</p>
<p>From where Dale sat he was comfortably out of the view of the scattered populace below, and that suited him fine. People irritated him to no end, and they always had. For Dale, seeing his father -just home from the first skermish in the Middle East called Desert Storm- descend into a pit of sorrowful madness was excruciating. His dad was a strong, proud man, but the war destroyed him from his psyche outward until what was left was a ragged husk that whithered and died like an Autumn leaf. Dale watched it all and stood by his father as waste ate him to death. His father was his hero regardless, but as he slowly died, Dale questioned constantly why his own government -those men he fought for- did nothing to help. Dale was done with people, and he found his solace in an item he discovered in his dad's old Army trunk.</p>
<p>It was a disk about the size of a '45. Its burnished and rough exterior was emblazoned with runes and etchings that meant nothing to Dale... but what did mean something was the pulsating rouge 'eye' in the center. It spoke to him. It comforted him, and it gave him both hope and a job. Dale would soon have the vengeance his dad so richly deserved.</p>
<p>As Dale sat on the grassy mound, he solemnly fingered the trigger of his dad's sniper rifle. It was loaded, and the safety was off. The time was nearly at hand; he just had to wait for the colorful explosions to light up the sky. Next to him, wrapped in a loose rag was the amulet. It thrummed red in unison with Dale's own heart.</p>
<p>The dark night slowly overtook the light of day, and Dale heard the announcement over the school PA system that the fireworks would begin in 15 minutes. Dale laid down and positioned the rifle, and in doing so he kicked the amulet from under the rag and it slid and rolled down the hill onto the night. </p>
<p>Dale froze. His mind cleared from a dense fog that had been blanketing it for what felt like an eternity. He suddenly heard his father's voice. His dad reminded him how much he loved him and that what had made him fall was no fault of Dale's. He told him that by his own choice he fought for the freedoms Dale enjoys and that what he was about to do would solve nothing. Dale heard his father's words and began to weep. What was he doing?</p>
<p>Dale looked up past the sight and saw hundreds of people gathered together in freedom and peace. The fireworks began and their beauty was unmistakable, as was the message for which they stood.</p>
<p>Dale silently thanked his dad, told him he loved him forever, and retreated with his rifle back down the hill as the bombs burst in air behind him.</p>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-6435483357263198302013-06-11T20:06:00.000-04:002013-06-11T20:06:44.184-04:00Tales of the Amulet (Back Stories Volume I)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
-DREAD-</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As the breathless man clung to his terrified children -holding them closer and wrapping his goose-fleshed arms around them- he loudly prayed, hoping beyond hope that His ears would hear. The four of them huddled beneath the stairwell in the basement, the man doing his very best to soothe his inconsolable children as they wept sorrowfully between hitching breaths and flooding tears. Their home was dark now, though the power had been cut out for several hours it was only over the last few minutes that the sun had set below the tree lines and its light no longer flooded in the windows. And it was this feeling -this feeling of eminent dread- that now crept over them like a nightmare; no lights, no calming effect of the last of the dwindling sun, no more safety. Though the man's sanity was rapidly fraying, he was a father first; and to his children a hero, and so he began to sing to them through his quavering, shuddering voice. He slowly rocked them; his big boy eleven-year old, his fiercely independent middle boy, and his little baby girl, rocking them and trying valiantly to assuage their escalating fears. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But the knock came anyway. The pounding was so deafening and intense that it felt like it could blow the basement door of its hinges.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The man caught his voice in his throat and his singing turned into a temporary shriek. The children (for the moment lulled into what was for them an unknown false sense of security) recoiled in horror and each began crying anew. Their father did his best to shush them soundly and appease them, but no solace was to be found in his words.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The knock came again. The four of them jumped and began begging out loud for the intruder to go away. The man finally lost his composure. A man of strength; a man that never showed emotion to his children, and a man who withstood all adversaries finally succumbed to the horror that overfilled his life, and he screamed at the top of his lungs. No words, just an explosive yell, long and overflowing with alarm and panic and release. The children stared at him in unison, momentarily too stunned to cry. But the moment was fleeting and as soon as they realized that their own father was just as frightened as they were, their sobs were even more wracking.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The long moments ticked away into what felt like little eternities. The man strained to hear any more sounds while the trio of children mewled in his arms. His limbs, he felt, were growing numb. He'd been sitting squat for ever and the weight of his horrified kids in his arms had begun to feel like lifeless sacks. But he knew they weren't and he knew they'd only protest with stronger constrictions if he made to move. He was trapped for the moment in every way; both down stairs in his own home and in the death grips of his terrified offspring. But he also knew that he had to see if the thing was gone. It had been far too long since any noise at all was heard. And it was only now that he realized his youngest had cried herself to sleep.<br />
<br />
The silence was deafening. The man slowly released his youngest into the arms of his oldest, placed a calming finger to his lips and began to methodically stand up. No one stirred, no one cried out, and the man knew now was the time to climb back into the turmoil and assess the situation. He stood, creaked a little and angled his tight joints so he could move without wincing in agony. He glanced with tireless anticipation and a heavy heart toward the wooden stairs that led into the proverbial belly of the beast...<br />
<br />
The stairs that lead to the beast he dreaded the most: The woman he loved. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-78639390923254779922013-05-27T18:25:00.002-04:002013-05-27T18:25:41.192-04:00Tales Of The Amulet XII - Spirits<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>-SPIRITS-</b></div>
<br />
I had driven as far as my exhausted mind would let me and I eased off the Interstate onto an exit for a town called Perkins. The sign that led me here boasted both a Motel 6 and a diner; the notion of either sounded like Heaven to me. Besides, not only was my personal fuel supply dwindling, but so was the gas in the old Buick I'd been piloting since Vicksburg. I braked at the four-way stop; the glowing red illuminating the surrounding black like a welcoming beacon. Turning right, I headed toward the motel following the sign: "Three miles ahead, left." I was almost shivering with anticipation.<br />
<br />
The parking lot was as desolate as it was abandoned; dark, deafeningly silent, and just short of full-on frightening. I'd seen enough horror films in my near 40 years to know a creepy hotel car port when one was presented to me, and I had to chuckle in spite of myself. I parked by the dimly-lit office and sighed as I killed the engine and listened to the quiet broken only by the ticking of the cooling motor. I climbed out of the car with a groan loud enough to startle myself, arched my screaming back, and made my way to the door as I winced through knots and aches.<br />
<br />
The door welcomed with one of those electronic chimes that sounds a bit like R2-D2. Sadly, not quite as 'small town' as I'd expected. The lobby was pretty standard for a mid-level motel: plastic potted plants in the corners, a long desk riddled with brochures for the surrounding attractions in a fifty-mile radius, two wing-back chairs that looked slightly over-used, and a wall full of artwork from people no one has ever heard of. I looked around, shrugged, and counted the paces to the front desk... a nervous habit.<br />
42...<br />
<br />
Though the small room was meagerly lit with hazy globed lamps positioned in all four corners, there was a small desk light sitting on the counter next to the ledger. On the opposite side was a bell. Quaint. This was the kind of thing I was more accustomed to seeing in one of these off-the-main-drag inns. I smiled again, and raised my hand over it, readying it to strike, when out from the back -maybe ten feet behind the counter to my right- came a small man decked out in a weathered Izod shirt and thick-framed glasses. He wore long carpenter-style shorts, Chuck Tailor's, and continued to chew his late-night meal as he wiped his mouth on one of the motel's own finest linens. I couldn't help but stare at his impeccably honed bald scalp that reflected the white glow from the wall sconces. He grinned, nodded in a welcome, and swallowed his mouthful with an audible gulp.<br />
<br />
"Sorry 'bout that, buddy. Dinner time, ya know... anyway, can I help you?"<br />
<br />
I nodded in understanding and started to remove my wallet from my pocket. "Yes indeed. I would very much appreciate one of your <i>fine</i> rooms!"<br />
<br />
"Mm-hmm... one of our <i>fine</i> rooms. Finest in all the land." He said sarcastically, likely at my expense. But if he was angry about it, he showed no signs of ire. "Well, we've got quite a slew to choose from, considering it's pretty dead in here and only eleven of our thirty-two are otherwise occupied... do you have a preference?"<br />
<br />
I mulled it over for a second, "Yeah, I guess I'd like one with a view of the parking lot out front here." I wasn't sure why I said that, but it sounded as good an option as any.<br />
<br />
He flipped open his reservation book and rifled to the midway point. "You're in luck, Mr.--"<br />
<br />
"Miller." I finished.<br />
<br />
"You're in luck Mr. <i>Miller</i>, room 27 is available and it just so happens to be the one just to the right as you exit the lobby."<br />
<br />
A tinny bleep echoed through the front of the office as the door swung open behind me making me jump just a bit. I spun around and watched as a older man dressed in a tattered trench coat and poorly kept loafers trudged it. He sported a unkempt Fedora with a really odd disc-shaped medallion on the band and lugged an abused briefcase under one arm, upon which sat a long umbrella. Was it raining now? No, couldn't have been; the umbrella was closed and didn't look at all wet. I stared far another second as the man surveyed the room, and then I returned to the desk clerk. He had a cocked eyebrow and a irritated shake passed through his head.<br />
<br />
He leaned over to me and whispered, "I know this dude. He comes in about twice a month on his business trips. Complete wing nut."<br />
<br />
I raised my own eyebrows, smiled wanly, and nodded in mock understanding. The clerk, whom I now suddenly understood was named Ted (his name tag was pinned far lower on his shirt than I'm sure it ought to have been), slid the key to me and I signed in leaving a fifty-dollar deposit for any damages or stolen property. Thankfully a credit card wasn't required since I don't carry one. We exchanged pleasantries, I said, "Thanks, Ted", and made my way back across the lobby.<br />
<br />
As I turned, I saw the man Ted knew standing in exactly the same disheveled pose in which he was standing after I looked him over a few minutes prior. He looked like one of those homeless person statue actors you see in bigger cities performing for handouts. I glanced; he didn't move an inch, so I pulled open the door and walked out to the parking lot. As it turned out, the 'wing nut' was probably just a little crazier than even I'd given him credit for: the night was full of stars and a slight crescent moon hung in the east.<br />
<br />
I walked the distance of probably the width of a football field (what can I say: sports are a big part of my downtime) and found that, indeed, number 27 was sharing a common wall with the lobby. Probably the side at which there was a storage room or maybe even the office's restroom, since I didn't remember seeing it when I was in there. Despite the obvious attempts to keep the motel as Old-Time cozy as possible, the door locks were still updated to key cards. I still call them keys no matter where I am. Old habits die hard. I slid it in the electronic reader, waited a second for the lights to blink green, yanked it out and turned the knob. Immediately I was greeted by a not entirely pleasant blast of cleaning product; bleach, bathroom cleanser, and something floral hovering just above everything else. I winced and coughed as I flipped on the light, and shivered just a bit as the farthest of two wall lamps blew its bulb with a crackling pop. Delightful. I'd have to razz Ted a bit about that in the morning.<br />
<br />
The bed spreads were completely reeking with 1970's charm, which is to say they were dark mauve with purple filigree patterns lilting about. And years of hotel visits had taught me a few things, up to and including stripping the bed cover and stashing it in a corner furthest from where one was to be sleeping. Apparently they can be riddled with human germs and... <i>other</i>, far more tasteless body fluids. I yanked it off the bed I'd be sleeping in, sat down heavily on the stark-white sheet, and sighed. I was even more tired than I'd imagined, but my stomach argued the point far more profoundly, so a trip to the diner was certainly going to happen soon.<br />
But that thought was dashed quickly as I was startled by a definitely unexpected knock at the door.<br />
<br />
I was a little unsure how to respond. Why would someone be knocking on this door? Was someone lost? Did I order pizza? That last thought was just to break the tension as I shook my head and got up from the bed.<br />
<br />
Another knock, this time followed by a muffled male voice, "Mr. Miller?"<br />
<br />
"Yes? Who is it?" I inquired sounding really silly to my own ears.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller, you left your wallet at the front desk." Came the response.<br />
<br />
I did?<br />
<br />
I felt my front pocket, sure it had been there all along... and lo and behold: no wallet. Well, what do ya know? Now this was just getting funnier by the second. It seemed good old Ted had Boy Scouted himself a courteous deed for the day.<br />
<br />
I laughed, said just a sec, and opened the door.<br />
<br />
And there stood 'wing nut'.<br />
<br />
For a second we just looked at each other. He, the poster child for the over-worked and society-whipped, and me, the epitome of hunger and exhaustion wanting nothing more than to find some hot food. It was a bizarre dichotomy to say the least. He just stood there, looking past me rather than at me. That was disconcerting. I tried to smile at him, despite the fact that he had a face that appeared almost exactly like something really surprising was happening just over my shoulder, and it made me rather uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
"Uh... hello?" I said, questioning everything at that point.<br />
<br />
"Yes. Hello, Mr. Miller. It seems you forgot your wallet back at the lobby. I took it upon myself to make sure it was returned to you. I told Theodore not to worry about it and that I'd make sure it was returned to you immediately. It seems we're sharing the same side of the building tonight, and since I was heading to 25 anyway... well, there you have it."<br />
<br />
"Okay... well, that's great... and thanks!" I stammered, still sort of trying to grasp the absurdity of the situation. I still stared as the man just spouted his diatribe without so much as a flinch. His face belayed not a twitch and he looked almost like one of those animatronic robots from those old pizza arcades.<br />
<br />
He lifted his hand and turned it over. His hand was incredibly big. Almost cartoonishly big, considering the rest of his frame, which was definitely not large by any stretch. Cupped neatly in his mitt-sized palm was my wallet, sure enough. I made a move to gingerly pluck it from his right when his left suddenly sprang out and curled around the circumference of my wrist with room for his spindly fingers to overlap his thumb. And my wrists aren't exactly bony. I stiffened visibly, and looked at him with a air of confusion and unpleasant surprise.<br />
<br />
"Hey! What the Hell!" I managed to bark through my unexpectedly dry throat.<br />
<br />
"Worry not, Mr. Miller, I mean you no harm. I promise. But I must insist on coming into your room before I return your wallet. There is something of the utmost importance I must share with you." The stranger said as he held fast to my wrist, though, surprisingly, not uncomfortably so.<br />
<br />
"I-I-I... was actually just leaving... for a meal... dinner. At the diner... ha ha... so, why don't we just-"<br />
<br />
"It is a pity, then, Mr. Miller. I am sorry to have inconvenienced you. However, I would like to return at a later time, for I need to give you -and of this you must trust me- the information I have." He said as he lightly placed the wallet in my hand while releasing my wrist. His touch left a frigid imprint on my goose-fleshed skin.<br />
<br />
"S-sure. Ah... Okay. Sounds fine. I'll be back in an hour or so, I guess?" I said as I looked him over anew. His pallor was waxy and he appeared to be sweating under his hat.<br />
<br />
"I shall make it two hours. No need to rush a meal, Mr. Miller." He said as he stood, "It's not good for the digestion, you know. Rushing a meal. Enjoy it. buy a paper. But please remember: this information is of vital importance."<br />
<br />
And with that he mechanically turned on his heal and headed to his room.<br />
<br />
I remained still as I watched him methodically plod away. What on Earth was this guy's problem? Why would a guy just randomly want to come into a person's motel room he'd never even met previously? What the Hell was going on? I turned back to the room, grabbed the key and my jacket, pocket my wallet, double checked that my car keys were in the other, and watched the door shut itself behind me. I was still starving, but before I headed to the diner I really needed to go grill Ted about this 'wing nut' and just exactly what his deal was.<br />
<br />
The digital chime of the lobby door bleeped through the air as I made my way to the front desk. To my surprise, a petite, cute woman and what must have been her daughter were waiting. The younger lady sat in one of the worn chairs and glared intently at her phone while her mother chatted sing-songy with Ted. I hung back a little, not really wanting to hear what was happening, since not much more than renting a room was the likely conversation. I looked again at the young lady in the chair and watched as she tapped her phone screen, probably texting or updating her FaceBook status. She smiled and giggled at whatever it was going on from the other end of her chit-chat. As I looked back to the counter, Ted had just handed the woman a key card and indicated where to sign. Money was exchanged, and the woman turned toward me and her daughter. I smiled at her as a look of surprise spread across her face like a weird mask. She glanced at me as if she had something to ask; but didn't. Then she walked past her daughter (barely even registering her appearance) who, in turn, did little more than grunt an acknowledgement, and the two left the lobby with an eerie quickness.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller!" Ted inquired, "I trust you received your wallet?"<br />
<br />
"Yeah... and that's what I came here to talk to you about." I said as I rubbed my brow.<br />
<br />
"Oh crap. What did Mr. Christopher do this time"<br />
<br />
"Mister... his name is <i>Mr. Christopher</i>? Are you kidding me?" I asked with a laugh.<br />
<br />
"Nope. Not kidding. That's his name. Oddly it escaped me when I mentioned him to you earlier. You'd think a name like that would stick with me... anyway, what happened?"<br />
<br />
"Well, when he came by, he made to offer me my wallet, and then grabbed my wrist-"<br />
<br />
"He did what? Did he hurt you? I can call the pol-" Ted sputtered as he grabbed the phone receiver.<br />
<br />
"No no... nothing like that. It surprised me, that's all." I said as I motioned for him to relax. "It was what he said after that really caught me off guard. Ted, he asked to come into my room because he had something really important to tell me. <i>Why</i> would he do that?"<br />
<br />
Ted didn't respond right away. In fact, he looked as though he had to find what he wanted to say before nearly a minute passed. "Um... here's the story on Mr. Christopher. First of all, he's really pretty harmless, as far as I've been told. I've only ever met the guy maybe four times over the past couple of months. He comes here looking identically to the last time, he buys a few nights in either room 25 or, well, room 27, oddly, and he more or less keeps to himself. That's about all I know."<br />
<br />
"No, that isn't about all. You said '<i>first of all</i>' which implies that you had a '<i>second of all</i>' to follow." I said with a knowing sneer, "So spill it, man... <i>what else is going on with this dude?</i>"<br />
<br />
Ted sniffed and looked around, obviously making sure he wasn't being watched by... who? No one else was in the room. "Okay, look. One time when he was a guest here... this was before I was brought on, another guest came up missing. No one said it was Mr. Christopher, though he was questioned, and the guy was never found. All of his stuff was just left in his room. The cops and the CSI guys or whatever spent a few days here, cleaned up his stuff, and nothing's happened since. Again, as far as I know. I only work nights on the weekends. But I guess I'd have been told if anything else had gone on. And there you have it."<br />
<br />
I stood there for a minute absorbing what I'd just heard. "Was there any reason to believe Mr. Christopher had anything to do with the missing man? Or was it assumed because the guy is obviously bonkers?"<br />
<br />
"I don't know. No one here told me anything else. Except to maybe be a little leery of the guy, ya know, just in case." Ted said as he nervously moved a pen around the desk.<br />
<br />
"Ted, I appreciate the info, but my guess is there might be something else you're not really allowed to say, and I can dig that. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye out."<br />
<br />
Ted looked like I'd caught him lying to his mother or something. But I left it at that, nodded to him, and left the lobby. By now I was famished.<br />
<br />
I sat behind the wheel for a few minutes just kind of stewing over the experiences I'd been through over the past hour. What was going on? Why, of any number of potential motels, did I choose this one? I could have driven twenty miles further on and stopped at Strongsville; the city was big and had a half dozen places to stay. What drew me here? I was tired, true, but not falling asleep at the wheel. I just couldn't put two and two together. But what I did know was that I was really, really hungry. I started the Buick, backed out of the spot, and drove what proved to only be about a mile to the diner. And when I say diner, I mean just that: Diner.<br />
<br />
It was small, but spread out. There wasn't a starkly visible sign anywhere. Just a placard on the front that read (in bold, blue letters on a dingy white background) 'Mom's Dive'. It was lit up- well, half of it was, and it pulsated with cheap fluorescent bulbs. The lot was actually pretty full; pick-ups, old beater cars, hard-driven minivans, and even a few motorcycles. I cruised in and parked next to the newest looking vehicle in the bunch: a Toyota hybrid. Obviously a traveler like me, judging by how it stuck out. I stepped out of the car and was immediately assailed by what was obviously cooking away in the kitchen; savory-sweet, toasted, roasted, and enough to make my mouth water. A rectangle of light lanced through the far right end of the building, proving that the back door was open and a man with a cigarette pressed into his mouth was leaning against it staring into the night. His white apron was mottled with any number of stains from various foodstuffs, adding to the fact that he was certainly one of the cooks. He didn't see me as I made for the glassed front doors and pushed my way in.<br />
<br />
To say the place was far more bustling than it even appeared from the number of vehicles outside was an understatement. It was no wonder I smelled god things cooking, because the place was just that: cooking. The diner atmosphere was palpable: red Naugahyde booths, black-and-white checkered floor tiles, a long counter with a dozen spinning stools, a rather eclectic supply of whimsical crafts and artwork festooning the walls, a smog of coffee fumes and grease, and the cacophonic din of chitter-chatter. It felt cozy, homey, and just a little out of time... but mostly inviting. I stood by the entry way and the sign proclaiming: PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED. There was a little wooden island with a dingy cash register and a crooked spindle jammed with receipts. Gum, Life Savers, a March of Dimes collection can, and a tray of business cards surrounded the perimeter of the cash machine, and just behind, having trundled up from one of the tables, was quite possibly the most singularly cylindrical woman I had ever seen. She was plump, but packed into her strangling uniform like a blushing sausage. Her cheeks were rosy in a way to make Santa Claus jealous, and her tightly knit mass of curly reddish-gray hair balanced perfectly on her head, with only two wooden needles jutting out like Martian antennae. She was, in short, adorable. Her ample and equally compressed bosom help present a time-worn name tag on which was written in cutesy script: DARLA.<br />
<br />
She offered me a genuinely appealing smile. "Howdy, there, buster! Can I get ya a table?"<br />
<br />
I smiled back, doing all I could not to chuckle. "Absolutely, Darla! I'm about as hungry as I've ever been!"<br />
<br />
She did laugh at that one. "Well you've wandered into the right place, then, haven't ya? C'mon, I got a booth with your name on it!"<br />
<br />
"Actually, Darla, any chance I could get a table... somewhere in a corner maybe?"<br />
<br />
She gave me a once over and realized that with my relatively large frame a booth was definitely uncomfortable, which was what I was hinting at in the first place. Darla nodded, grinned knowingly, and led me around to a small, two-seat table near the kitchen door. I told her it was perfect as she dropped a menu in front of me and expertly wheeled around to snatch a glass of water from the counter.<br />
<br />
"Coffee?"<br />
<br />
"Um... sure. Why not?" I replied, really wishing I had opted against, yet knowing full well sleep was a long way off.<br />
<br />
"Leaded?"<br />
<br />
"Definitely. Cream and sugar, if you don't mind."<br />
<br />
"Not at all! Be right back."<br />
<br />
And with that Darla sprang into action like a well-oiled machine. I sighed and began looking around. The faces were all in motion: eating, talking, laughing, drinking, yawning... it was alive with human emotion and activity. And it was then that I spotted her.<br />
<br />
In a booth near the door was the very woman I'd seen not an hour ago with her daughter in the lobby of the hotel. And maybe it was the light -maybe the ambiance- but she was stunning. Nothing about her was visibly different. Apparently she and her daughter had checked into their room and left immediately for a meal. But, wow: she practically glowed with allure and femininity. I sat there and stared, and I suddenly realized I wasn't even trying to hide it. She caught my eye and I quickly switched my glance to Darla who had serendipitously returned with my coffee. We exchanged smiles and she asked if I'd had a chance to check out the menu.<br />
<br />
"Ya know what, Darla, why don't you tell me what you recommend tonight."<br />
<br />
"Tell ya something, sugar: I recommend the same thing every night! The chicken-fried steak. It's Norm's specialty. It comes slathered with sawmill gravy, a side of mashers, and corn. It's divine, if I do say so myself. And I'll clue ya, its really not complete without a piece of our peach cobbler to end it all, if you know what I mean... a' la mode, even."<br />
<br />
"Sold." I said. It sounded more than divine. It sounded like Heaven.<br />
<br />
Darla swished away and I returned my gaze to the woman from the lobby. She was engaged in conversation with someone, likely her distracted daughter. It seemed to be going about as pleasantly as one might expect: there was some obvious finger wagging, head shaking, eye rolling exaggerated enough to be seen from as far away as I was. I estimated they were maybe fifty paces away, but I was getting at least an amalgamated gist of what was likely going on. For the life of me I couldn't look away, and when Darla returned with my steaming plate -a thing of pure beauty and southern over-indulgence- I was startled out of my gaze.<br />
<br />
"Sorry, suga', did I wake ya?"<br />
<br />
"What? No... no... I was... well it's been an incredibly long day. Most of which I spent driving. So, ya know..."<br />
<br />
Darla smiled wanly, "Well, I don't know about all <i>that</i>, but I do know I could almost feel the line of your gaze as I wandered over here with your meal. It's that sweet little thing by the window, ain't it?"<br />
<br />
I choked on my first forkful. Tears immediately welled up in my eyes and I needed to take a few gulps of ice water before I could talk. "<i>Who</i>? How did you...?"<br />
<br />
"Easy, stranger. I don't pass no judgement on anyone. I just call 'em as I see 'em. Besides: she's damn near the cutest young thing <i>in</i> here. I wasn't born last night, ya know. I can see when a fella gets googly eyes for a lass." She grinned again and I could tell there was something behind the warmth; something she wasn't telling me.<br />
<br />
"Well, I'm just going eat my food now, so..." I said carving into another bite of quite possibly the best chicken-fried steak I'd ever laid mouth on.<br />
<br />
Darla sighed and let her sassy stance fall apart. She dropped her arms to her sides and leaned in a bit with a look of concern on her face, "Confidentially, you might want to re-think your approach, especially considering the, uh... company she's keeping."<br />
<br />
And with that she turned on her heel and trundled back to the counter.<br />
<br />
<i>Company she was keeping</i>? What did that mean? Why was her daughter someone to be concerned with? Now I really was intrigued. Confused, but intrigued. As I tucked into the remainder of my meal I decided I needed a well scripted plan to meet this woman with whom I was suddenly infatuated.<br />
<br />
Fifteen minutes passed. I cleaned my plate so thoroughly there might have been no need to actually wash it. And I was full. I sipped my third cup of coffee; I liked being at one of those places where they actually left the carafe right at the table because I hate having to signal for refills. As I sat back, relieving the pressure on my loaded gut, I returned my attention to the booth with the woman. She was looking out the window into the night, nodding along with what her daughter was telling her. I couldn't make out what it was as the noise level was still at a fevered pitch; as often as people left, the same number replaced them. It was a busy joint, no doubt about it. And in a way, it's popularity played to my benefit as I spent an inordinate amount of time taking this woman in with long, drawn-out stares. Finally I spied movement in the boot. A head popped up from the side that wasn't in my view, and the person who stood was most definitely not the woman's daughter. In fact, the Fedora with its remarkable amulet was a dead give away: Mr. Christopher.<br />
<br />
To say I was shocked was to say I didn't nearly spill my coffee, and both of those things were instantly true. When did he get here? Was he here the entire time? I'd never dropped my sight from the woman for more than a few seconds at a time to eat and converse with Darla. What was going on? It suddenly occurred to me that this was was what my observant server was talking about when she said '<i>The company she was keeping</i>'. Mr. Christopher rose to his full height, nodded at the woman, and turned to head out, dropping several bills on the table from his wallet. I diverted my gaze and turned my body to look down at the floor. I had no desire to let the man see me. I waited a full thirty-count and returned to a proper sitting position.<br />
<br />
Mr. Christopher was sitting in the other chair directly across from me.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller! How fortuitous!"<br />
<br />
I swallowed and heard my throat click as it tightened, "Apparently."<br />
<br />
I looked over the strange man's shoulder and saw Darla. She looked at me with wide-eyed surprise and set what was obviously my dessert back on the counter. She was visibly unnerved, and quickly turned away.<br />
<br />
"Can I help you with something, Mr. Christopher?"<br />
<br />
"Ah, but it is I who am prepared to help you... as you no doubt remember."<br />
<br />
"I remember." I said flatly, "But I still don't understand. Not to mention the fact that you sat at my table without being invited. I'd suspect even you would understand how rude that is."<br />
<br />
"Tut-tut... <i>semantics</i>. Besides, no one was <i>using</i> the chair, for one thing. And for another, I'll be but a moment of your time. A moment you can scarcely afford to dismiss."<br />
<br />
I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that this man wasn't going to leave until he'd spoken his peace.<br />
<br />
"Go on."<br />
<br />
"Excellent. What I have for you is information, of that bit you have been previously regaled. But in actuality, it's a warning." He laced his fingers, nodded once, and sat still.<br />
<br />
"A warning. And what makes you think I need a warning about anything? You don't even know me."<br />
<br />
"Mmm... perhaps I don't know you <i>directly, </i>true<i>.</i> But I knew you were coming."<br />
<br />
I looked at him side-long, "Yeah, it didn't take a magician to assume I was coming <i>here</i>, considering it's likely the only restaurant for miles in any direction."<br />
<br />
He nodded yet again, and let a wry grin dance across his lips, "You misunderstand me, Mr. Miller. What I meant was that I knew you were coming <i>here</i>: the motel... this <i>town</i>."<br />
<br />
I couldn't help but bark a rather loud laugh, "What? What kind of crap are you trying to feed me?"<br />
<br />
"Eloquent. No.. (ahem) <i>crap</i> intended, Mr. Miller. Most certainly not. No, I only arrive at the motel when I am... shall we say, <i>directed</i>. Directed to do so. And as such, I was made privy to your eminent arrival."<br />
<br />
Ignoring the obviously crazy man, I signaled to the newly interested Darla to bring my cobbler and ice cream. But she hesitated.<br />
<br />
"Oh, Darla won't come here. She's... not too fond of me, I'm afraid."<br />
<br />
"What? Why?" I asked suddenly not smiling anymore. In fact, this whole situation had gotten a little too bizarre.<br />
<br />
"It matters not. What does matter is the warning I have yet to relay to you. You must listen, and hear me very well. Then I will be on my way."<br />
<br />
I sipped my tepid coffee, scowled at it, and nodded for him to go on at the same time.<br />
<br />
"Stay away from the woman."<br />
<br />
I froze.<br />
<br />
"Uh... wha-what woman?" I stammered, knowing exactly whom he meant.<br />
<br />
"Please, Mr. Miller. Let us not feign stupidity. You know about whom I refer. I reiterate: <i>stay away from the woman</i>. It is in your very best interest to do so."<br />
<br />
And with that, he thumbed his hat with a nod, quickly and quietly rose, and left the building like some kind of ghastly wraith. I sat stunned and numb, and watched as though I were in another place, in another time -outside of my own body- as Darla returned to my table with dessert. She, too, looked unwell. <br />
<br />
"He was the company she was keeping, I'm guessing." I said, barely hearing my own query through the sudden timpani of buzzing in my head.<br />
<br />
"Yeah. He was. He's absolutely one of the most... frightening men I have ever met. I'm sorry I held up your cobbler."<br />
<br />
"No, no apology necessary." I rubbed my temples and squeezed my eyes shut to force away the ringing in my ears. "What his deal, anyway?"<br />
<br />
"He comes in here every time he's in town. But I guess that's not really the issue since we <i>are</i> the only rest'raunt for a few miles... it's just his, what's the word... <i>demeanor</i>? Is that right?"<br />
<br />
I nodded and forced a smile, "I'd say that's just about perfect."<br />
<br />
"When he first started coming by -maybe a year or so ago now- he pretty much kept to himself. But eventually, he sort of got nosy. Anyone who'd arrive while he was in town he'd... well, he'd scare the pants off of, that's what. Talking about information and warnings and crazy threats if folks didn't pay him mind. And people started staying out. He'd never bother the regulars -folks who live here- but he'd sure get under the skin of passers-by. I'd had enough one day, after he made a woman cry, and I told him he had to leave. He nodded politely enough, but his eyes looked daggers right through me. Since then... well, I can hardly stand to be around him." Darla explained as she looked off into the distance of the diner, and likely the distance of her past.<br />
<br />
"Well, that answers that. He told me you'd never come to the table with him there." I said as I poured more coffee to warm up the room-temperature beverage in my mug.<br />
<br />
"And I'm just saying, here... it might not be a bad idea to... uh, <i>listen</i> to him." She said, returning her gaze right to my eyes. It startled me a little; her face was ashen and pallid.<br />
<br />
"What? I thought you just said..."<br />
<br />
"I know. I know. The man is a kook without a doubt. But here's the thing: his warnings <i>always</i> come true. Or pan out... or whatever you want to say. Somehow... he just knows."<br />
<br />
I looked at her and nodded. Was Darla serious? She must have seen the question in my eyes because she went on.<br />
<br />
"About eight months ago... yeah, that would be April... he was in town on one of his regular visits. He came into the diner, and at this point I had now seen him about half-a-dozen times. Anyway, he came in and met with a fella much like yourself: a guy just moseying through on his way anywhere else. The fella seemed nice enough, so I chatted him up much as I'm doing with you. And then Mr. Christopher gave him his cock-and-bull story, but the man refused to listen. He flat out told me it was hooey and left. The next day he was gone. They found all his belongings up in his motel room, but the fella had just vanished."<br />
<br />
I shivered so much goose-flesh erupted over my skin like a flurry of tiny pox. Didn't Ted tell me the exact same thing? The story of the man coming up missing and just leaving all of his stuff? I shuddered again and I must have looked like someone walked over my grave.<br />
<br />
"Are you okay? I've never seen a man turn <i>that</i> white before!" Darla announced as she took a step back.<br />
<br />
"Fine... fine. But I'm not hungry anymore. Thanks for the dessert, though."<br />
<br />
Darla waved me off, "You look like you need to lie down. Let me pack that cobbler to go, I'll just scrape off the ice cream so it don't melt all over." She left and returned quickly with a foam clam shell.<br />
<br />
I paid cash. Darla and I exchanged pleasantries and I said I'd be by for breakfast. She told me she was always there and looked forward to seeing me again. She also insisted I heed Mr. Christopher's urgency. In fact, she made me promise. I said I would, and left. The night was cold and I could see my breath puffing out in grey clouds. Just then the fact that I was exhausted slammed into me like a wall. It was definitely time for bed.<br />
<br />
Before I could settle into the car, I saw the woman leave the diner; her features illuminated by the halo of the restaurant's lights. I'd then wondered where her daughter was? Did she leave her back at the motel? That didn't seem particularly safe to me considering she was likely only in her young teens, if even that. And why would she eat alone when she had her child with her? It didn't make sense, but then, none of this evening made a whole lot of sense. I watched for a minute more as she got into her vehicle, started it, and drove off. One final thought popped into my mind: what on Earth was Mr. Christopher talking to <i>her</i> about? Was he giving her a warning, too? And if so, was it about <i>me</i>, as mine was about <i>her</i>? I had no idea. And I had no idea what made me care so much. I was mentally drained and I really needed some sleep. I slid into the driver's seat, fired the engine, and left for the motel.<br />
<br />
The knock came at 1:13 a.m. I had fallen asleep atop the bed covers, in both my clothes an my shoes. The TV was tuned to ESPN's <i>SportCenter </i>and it was on incredibly loud to my formerly-soundly sleeping ears. Another knock at 1:14.<br />
<br />
"I-I'm coming... just a sec." I said groggily. I rolled over and allowed gravity to tug my weary frame to a sitting-leaning position.<br />
<br />
It took a few seconds to wipe exhaustion from my eyes, but I managed to bring the waking world to focus and stood up. I peeked out the peep hole before opening the door, since my head hadn't completely cleared yet I pictured Ted in his pajamas carrying a peach cobbler... wait, what? But the image was of the woman. Alone.<br />
<br />
I dropped the chain latch, unbolted the dead-lock, and opened the door, "Yes?" That was all I could manage.<br />
<br />
"Uh... hi. I mean, hello, sir. Um, I'm sorry about the very late hour... but I need to... speak with you."<br />
<br />
She was visibly upset, that was obvious from the streaked mascara that ran inky rivulets down her flushed cheeks. Her auburn hair was a tousled nest, and she stood there looking anxious as she wrung her hands. She was even pretty in her current bedraggled state: not too tall, not too short, beautiful eyes -despite their watery sorrow- and features a guy like me could definitely enjoy. I couldn't help staring, as I'd done at her the length of my stay at the diner hours previous And it made matters all the worse that I was still almost half asleep and my mind was hammering out thoughts of raciness and indelicacy. She wore a T-shirt maybe just her size and her ample breasts jutted out. It was then I noticed she wasn't wearing a bra, nor a coat, or shoes. Her feet must have been freezing. She looked anew at me with concern and abject worry. I leaned against the door and ushered her in without saying a word. She took the offer and stepped inside out of the cold. Warning be damned: this woman was in dire straights.<br />
<br />
She sat at the little table that was positioned by the heat register near the only window. The curtains were down, but she stared through the little crack where they didn't quite fill the void. I went to the little coffee maker that sat in the bathroom, brought it out to the TV hutch and plugged it in while shutting off ESPN. She continued to gaze out at the parking lot through the gap in the fabric as I prepared the little coffee filters that came with the room; nothing spectacular, but enough to warm us up for what I was sure was about to be a lengthy stay. I poured water into the back and flipped the switch. Soon the smell of brewing Maxwell House filled the room.<br />
<br />
"So... can I offer you a plastic mug full of second-rate coffee?" I comically inquired.<br />
<br />
She turned to me with a face that looked like something out of a horror movie. Her eyes were huge, her face wan and colorless, and her lower lip quivered as she nodded an answer. I could do little more than look at her and feel terrible for whatever it was that had happened. I looked away as the crackling gurgle of the coffee maker signaled its complete brew cycle. I poured two mugs, walked the seven paces to the table, and joined her.<br />
<br />
"Thank you. I'm, ah... Miss Bonny... well, that's what my kids call me. At my school. I'm a second-grade teacher at Woodhill..." She quickly sighed, brushed hair out of her eyes, and smiled soullessly. It was all too apparent that she had been through something.<br />
<br />
"Hi, there... Miss Bonny. Nice to finally meet you."<br />
<br />
"I saw you at the diner tonight." She said, not letting any irritation at my constant ogling show through.<br />
<br />
Regardless, I flushed with a bit of embarrassment, "Yeah... the diner. Great food, wasn't it?"<br />
<br />
"Sorry, I wouldn't know. I never ate."<br />
<br />
I recoiled in sudden question, "Then why were you--"<br />
<br />
She cut me off, "Because <i>he</i> asked me to meet him. Mr. Christopher. He asked me to meet him there."<br />
<br />
I sat there dumbfounded. At some point between when I first saw Miss Bonny in the lobby and when I finally made my way to the diner, Mr. Christopher made his move on her, too. And by the looks of it, he'd frightened her out of her wits. But that was hours ago. And it was very evident that she'd been quite recently crying.<br />
<br />
I decided to angle the line of questioning back to when I'd first seen her, "Who were you with when I saw you in the lobby?"<br />
<br />
"What?" She asked with an overtly genuine raise in her voice.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, you smiled at me -almost making me think you wanted to ask me something- anyway, you smiled at me, and left with who I assumed was your daughter."<br />
<br />
She blinked twice. "I don't have any children."<br />
<br />
It was my turn to sit in disquieting silence. "Wait... then who was that little girl who followed you out of the lobby? Your <i>sister</i>?"<br />
<br />
"Sir- what do I call you, anyway?"<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller... since we're going by <i>formalities</i> for the time being... <i>Miss</i> Bonny." I said with an air of sarcasm.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller... I don't know what or who you are talking about. I don't remember seeing a little girl. And I certainly don't remember acknowledging anyone else there... aside from you, that is."<br />
<br />
"You're kidding! She was right there in the old chair in the lobby! Messing with a phone or something! Are you serious! She wasn't with you?" My inquisitiveness had reached an oddly fevered pitch.<br />
<br />
She solemnly and slowly shook her head, "I saw no one. And as I said, I have no kids. In fact, I'm here alone on my way to a Teacher's Convention in New York. I could have flown, but I like to drive, so..."<br />
<br />
I was flabbergasted and not a little bit dismayed. I saw the girl. I knew it. How could this woman possibly not have seen her? She walked right past her and the little girl followed her out the door. I shivered despite the warming heat of the coffee. Maybe she was just in a hurry. So what if it wasn't her kid, I guess it's possible that her gesture was just a coincidence... but maybe there wasn't a gesture. Maybe I just assumed there was because I also assumed she was her child.<br />
<br />
"I'd like to tell you why I came here... Mr. Miller." Miss Bonny said breaking the uncomfortable silence.<br />
<br />
"Of course. I'm sorry... go on."<br />
<br />
She took a sip of the coffee, peered once again out the window, "When Mr. Christopher came to my room earlier this evening he petrified me. Look, I know I'm a young woman traveling alone without much concern for trouble... and I regret that, but I just felt I'd be safer stopping at this motel rather than one in a bigger city with more people... more strangers. Ya know? Anyway, when he came to my room I felt all of my latent fears bubble to the surface. Especially after he told me what he forcibly said he had to tell me."<br />
<br />
I nodded. I understood how she felt. Mr. Christopher scared everyone, "I get it. I really do. Go on."<br />
<br />
This time she merely looked at her cup, "He warned me I was being followed. He said to always check the shadows. Can you believe that? Who says that to someone? '<i>You're being followed! Check the shadows</i>!' What is going on with this guy? He alarmed me so much I lost it and broke down right in front of him."<br />
<br />
"And this was before you went to the diner?"<br />
<br />
"Yes." She wiped the fresh tears from her face as I offered her a tissue, "I guess he felt bad for me because he invited me to dinner. I couldn't figure out any other reason why. Until I met him there."<br />
<br />
I looked at here again. I didn't understand what she was getting at. "You mean he had more to tell you?"<br />
<br />
"Yes." She took a long drink of her coffee, "As we sat there he asked me about myself and if I'd ever had any feelings of being followed... like, mysteriously so. I told him I didn't think so. He asked me if I ever felt that someone or something was 'there' when I was otherwise alone. I told him again that I didn't think so. He nodded, but he said nevertheless that I was, indeed, being followed by something... and he reiterated about checking the shadows. He went on to tell me about the waitress at the diner who was serving you and that situation. And he even explained about a very unlucky individual who chose not to heed his warning--" She trailed off and took a deep breath and looked once again out the window.<br />
<br />
Tears welled up in her eyes and I could think of nothing else to do but take her hand. She turned to me and smiled.<br />
<br />
"Funny thing is," I began as I laid my other hand on hers, "He told me to stay away from you. That was my warning."<br />
<br />
"I know. When I first saw you in the lobby today, that's exactly what I was going to say... for some reason I was going to tell you to stay away from me. And now it makes sense why."<br />
<br />
"You're kidding? You were going to tell me to stay away from you? <i>Seriously</i>?"<br />
<br />
"I was. I had no idea why. It wasn't like you looked like a creep or anything... even if you were <i>staring</i> at me." She smiled.<br />
<br />
"Well, you and the little girl in the--"<br />
<br />
"Wait a minute." She said suddenly, "You don't suppose..."<br />
<br />
We could do nothing more than look at each other. Tears trickled down her face and I had to do all I could not to literally scream. I don't scare easily; I love horror movies and the unknown, but this was just shy of completely and fully insane.<br />
<br />
Little else was said the rest of the night. Few words were shared; she warmed up to allowing me to hold her as she silently sat and shivered in my arms. Nothing made sense anymore. I had been in town for literally just shy of a full twenty-four hours and I had somehow slid into a severely outlandish set of circumstances. I was at a loss as to where to go next, but my intuition said to pack up now and get the hell out. But what of Miss Bonny? A name that just tickled me as almost unreal. She obviously was unsafe. Whether or not it was because she was actually being followed, or from Mr. Christopher himself... I didn't know. But I was implausibly worried. As I sat there in the chair cradling a woman I didn't know in my arms, I found myself rocking her back and forth; I slowly pulled ribbons of her hair away from her tear-soaked face, staring intently at her shuddering form. A maelstrom of feelings and plots stormed through my head, not the least of which was, 'what am I going to do with her?'. She moaned a little, and pushed at me gently attempting to sit. I released my soft grip, and watched her as she raised from my arms.<br />
<br />
"I think I have to leave." She said, matter-of-factly as she wiped her eyes on the wadded tissue in her hand.<br />
<br />
"What? Are you sure? Are you okay?"<br />
<br />
"No... I don't know. Maybe. But I know I have to go." She stood up and once again looked out of the slitted gap made from the too-small curtains.<br />
<br />
I looked at here askance. "Are you... <i>sure</i>?"<br />
<br />
She sighed, swiped her hair from her face leaving a thin trail of the remaining mascara that had run down her sodden cheeks, "No. I have no idea. It's been a... <i>bad</i> night."<br />
<br />
I nodded. In both agreement and weariness; I was definitely tired, even if I was buzzing from the caffeine. But I was only feigning agreement, because deep inside I was scared for both of us. Rather than let her freeze on her way back to her room, I offered her a hooded sweatshirt I'd packed in my luggage. But she refused, and said her room was just number 30 (an answer to a question I realized I'd never gotten around to actually asking her). I opened the door, and through an obviously forced smile and a put-on facade of momentary alacrity, she thanked me, and followed with two words that would haunt me the rest of the night:<br />
<br />
"He knows."<br />
<br />
I stood there a heartbeat and watched as she quickly closed the short distance to her room. And I counted the steps: 32.<br />
<br />
The door closed with its stuttering swish and click, and I stared at it half expecting Miss Bonny to return, while half expecting something -anything- else completely maddening to occur. In the few minutes it took me to realize how much I needed the bed, and to notice that it was pushing three a.m., nothing happened. I kicked off my shoes, shrugged out of my shirt and pants, and laid down. I flicked on ESPN again, but I was out before the fuzzy picture settled into clarity on the age old screen.<br />
<br />
"... He <i>knows</i>..."<br />
<br />
Fear sits on your chest and suffocates the life from your body. Fear comes in forms as innocent as a baby and as diabolical as a banshee. The fear I felt that night as I pitched and sprawled through three nearly broken hours of fitful sleep was as palpable as the cloying, wet sheet I was knotted up in. I awoke from a blissfully sporadic and short nightmare where Mr. Christopher was steadily burying me in dirt. I fought to claw my way free, but the relentless shovelfuls kept piling on the earth. I screamed for help and watched in terrified disbelief as Miss Bonny stood atop the open grave and just masked her face with her hands. The gaunt and sinister soothsayer continued his ceaseless scooping and flinging of dirt as he kept repeating the mantra, "He knows!" over and over. Yes, that night fear perched atop my petrified form like a poltergeist and supped on my wavering sanity. I woke, breathless and exhausted. I was drained and drenched with perspiration. I knew right then I had no choice but to leave. And soon.<br />
<br />
I had to shower first. I was literally sopped with the night sweats and I had to get out of my sodden clothes. I stepped in to the steaming tub (the water pressure left a lot to be desired, but such was the bane of motel bathrooms) and let the hot spray rinse away as much of the previous night as it was able. Sadly, much of what I saw; what I felt and experienced, remained. What I couldn't seem to heat through was the chill that marched up and down my spine like icy fingers. I stayed under the warming cascade for a while and let my thoughts play out. Part of me already had my keys in the ignition and was nearly backing out of the parking lot... yet the other thought held me fast and told me I had enough unfinished business with the haunting and mysterious Miss Bonny. The shower's rapidly depleting water temperature did little to really sway me either way, and so as the mist turned tepid, I turned it off and stepped out onto the bathmat.<br />
<br />
I glanced at the mirror. A habit, though I knew I wasn't as cleanly shaven as I would have otherwise preferred. Imprinted in the fogged glass were two hand prints. Child-sized hand prints. Condensation had just begun to pool and run little rivulets through the haze that coated the surface. I dropped my towel and listened. Someone had to be in the adjoining room.<br />
<br />
My heart was thrumming in the back of my throat. I looked again at the prints; prints that had certainly not been made by me... or any adult, for that matter. I began to breathe in halting gasps as I reached over on instinct to touch the markings left on the vanity. But I stopped inches before I could. I was scared to even be in the same room with the ghostly figures, and why I thought I wanted to <i>touch</i> them suddenly seemed horrifying and disgusting. But I didn't want to leave the bathroom. I stood there and shivered unsure of what to do. Was someone still in my room? How did someone even <i>get in</i>? I knew I locked the door behind-- wait, <i>did I</i>? I shut the door, but I didn't chain it. No, that wasn't possible: motel room doors lock automatically when they're shut, or else you wouldn't need a key. Then how... who? I ran thoughts through my head all the while cocking my ear to the door in hopes of maybe catching the intruder... or rather, in hopes of <i>not</i>.<br />
<br />
Minutes passed and I'd begun to feel foolish. What was I hoping to hear, exactly? I looked once again at the mirror and what I'd thought I'd seen moments before was nothing more than damp streaks and clearing spots where the cool glass had warded off the heat of the steam. I resigned myself to just being paranoid and overly tired, and opened the door to my room.<br />
<br />
The ethereal girl on the bed turned to look at me; her stare both <i>at</i> me and <i>through</i> me, a gaze of both sheer terror and foreboding innocence... and then vanished into the emptiness.<br />
<br />
I remember my knees buckling but once my head hit the bathroom door, the next half hour was nothing but a white flash.<br />
<br />
As I came to, I found myself naked sprawled like a haphazardly tossed marionette: legs akimbo and uncomfortably twisted beneath me, my temple painfully pressed into the corner of the door jamb, and my arms numbly folded underneath me. I groaned and struggled to sit, breathing past the monotonous throb in my head. A welt was forming where I'd apparently struck the wood, and it was tender and raw. I wasn't out long, maybe thirty minutes; my hair was still wet as was the floor where I'd come to rest. I had seen the little girl, of that I was absolutely positive. I had seen moist hand prints on the bathroom, of that I was slightly less positive, but still almost sure.<br />
<br />
The ringing phone stung my aching skull and raised me a shade more quickly from the floor.<br />
<br />
"Mmmm... Hello." I moaned.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller. It appears you haven chosen in error not to heed my warning." Came the gruff, sharp bray from the other end. It was doubtlessly Mr. Christopher.<br />
<br />
I held the receiver away from my face and looked at it in mixed puzzlement and trepidation. The tinny voice from the ear-piece echoed from my grasp, "Mr. Miller, I know full well that you are on the other end of this conversation."<br />
<br />
"What do you want." I croaked in a voice that was not my own, yet still from my mouth.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Miller, I am not making this call to humor you. I provided you with a very simple set of instructions... instructions you chose to ignore. This decision of yours has sent ripples in motion. Ripples I may not be able to calm. Do you understand me?"<br />
<br />
"Look, you bastard, she came to <i>my</i> door! She came to <i>my</i> room!" I barked into the phone.<br />
<br />
"Regardless the circumstances, Mr. Miller, the outcome -the rapidly approaching repercussions- shall prove to be... dire."<br />
<br />
"What was I supposed to do? Turn her away? You have literally scared the both of us to--"<br />
<br />
Mr. Christopher abruptly cut me off, "To <i>death</i>? This outcome may be more poignant than you can possibly imagine. I can no longer offer my assistance or cautions, Mr. Miller. You have set the cogs in gear, and I can assure you that you and Miss. Bonny are ill prepared to deal with the aftermath. Good day."<br />
<br />
The click from the phone was deafening. I returned the set to the cradle and looked at it in an amalgam of disgust and rage.<br />
<br />
As I threw my meager belongings in the trunk of my car, I couldn't help but argue with myself of what to do next. Nearly taking over my decision process every time was self-preservation: fight or flight; getting the Hell out of Dodge as quickly as humanly possible. However, I wasn't a jerk, and I knew that caught in the mix was an innocent school teacher suffering the same mental anguish as I was. Chivalry might me dead, but I guess I never got the memo. I knew full well I couldn't leave Miss Bonny alone. And damn the consequences. I stood by my car and stared off into the distance where the welcoming sound of the highway could easily be heard through the crisp, late fall air. I sighed, wishing I were picking up speed on the entrance ramp and heading away... far away. But I'd kick myself for the rest of my life if I didn't know <i>she</i> was safe. This place was making me see things. I'd only once before in my life seen what I thought might have been a ghost, but it literally paled in comparison to the image that appeared on my motel room bed. I was still shaken, but I felt a lot better just being out of the room all together. And with that, I knew I had to make a stop at the lobby. I had a key to deliver, and a little something else.<br />
<br />
"Ted!" I shouted as I purposefully marched to the counter, "Ted! Where ya hiding, buddy?"<br />
<br />
Silence.<br />
<br />
The lobby was eerily quiet. The remnants of my voice echoed through the small office. I leaned over the counter and tried to peer a little further around the back corner into the rear of the room, but to no avail. I couldn't see much further than where the hall entered the back.<br />
"Ted! Where are you, man! It's Mr. Miller!" Why hadn't I ever told him my first name? Oh well, it didn't matter, even as odd as my name sounded to my own ears without actually saying it.<br />
<br />
I listened again, and it was then I heard a lowing emanating from somewhere further back into the office. I stood there for a second and listened a bit more intently, and sure enough the moaning continued. It sounded like someone was either hurt or in the process of being hurt. I couldn't just leave it alone. I turned the corner of the counter, quickly walked to the little hall way, and peered around the edge into the rear office.<br />
<br />
Lord help me, I immediately wished I hadn't.<br />
<br />
Ted was curled up in a ball on the floor. A deathly pallor hung over his face like a sheet. Tears streamed down his face, and he was visibly shaking. A few feet just above his ashen face was an ethereal, translucent form that -even from the distance and angle I stood- was unmistakably the same little girl I'd seen only an hour before. She glared at him; scowled and chastised. Ted was absolutely terrified, a fact made all the more apparent by the rapidly spreading wet spot at the front of his jeans. I stood in silent wonder as the form continued its malevolent lesson. But an audible click from my gaping mouth betrayed me.<br />
<br />
The apparition turned, saw me, and I swear she smiled at precisely the same moment she seemed to fly directly at me... no, not 'at', <i>through</i> me. The feeling of sorrow and disillusionment was so palpable and real that I did all I could not to faint from the melancholia. I dropped to my knees and tried to catch my breath as I looked over at Ted. He was completely petrified with fear to the point that he appeared to be dead. I stood, walked over to him, and it turned out that appearances weren't always deceiving. Ted's breathing had ceased. I held his wrist and he had no pulse. I swallowed and immediately thought that I had to get to the phone.<br />
<br />
Until a voice shook me to my core.<br />
<br />
"Theodore refused to listen, too, Mr. Miller."<br />
<br />
<i>To Be Continued... </i><br />
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S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-77444238589643717272012-11-20T12:20:00.002-05:002012-11-20T12:20:41.020-05:00Tales Of The Amulet - XI <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><u>Turkeys</u></b></div>
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<b><u><br /></u></b></div>
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Part 1-</div>
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<br /></div>
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Ed sighed and sat back on his porch rocker. It creaked under his ever increasing girth; blame it on age, blame it on dessert- heck, blame it on complacency, it didn't need a name. He was getting heavier, and the arguing keen from the old chair only rubbed it in. He looked out over his yard. It appeared as vast as always: a tightly manicured lawn near his creaky deck, and a flora-laden landscape across the back forty. He loved gazing out over his property and watching as the wildlife popped in and out of their hiding spots. It was six acres all told, and he loved every square foot of it. It'd been his for going on thirty years now, after he'd inherited it from his sickly mother. Her death was melancholy, but not unexpected. It was the cancer that did her in back in '82 when Ed was just forty-three. His life's aspirations never really bore fruit, so he packed up what meager collections he'd amassed and moved back to the house he'd grown up in. Lucky for him, the little town of Handlers Grove didn't have a decent hunting and fishing surplus shop, so Ed was kind enough to oblige and soon opened 'Ed's Outdoor'. And as he sat there on the cool November afternoon watching the hazed-over sun slowly march its way to its daily death, he knew Thanksgiving was coming. And so were the turkeys. </div>
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Part 2-</div>
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<br /></div>
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When Ed first took residence a few months after his mother's passing, nothing felt right. The house was still haunted by her; knick-knacks strewn about the walls, printed area rugs in mundane places, cabinets full of innocuous clutter, some bizarre disk-shaped trinket hanging from the mantle that immediately turned his stomach, and the stink. It positively reeked of his mom. It was her perfume and her smell that clouded her during her last days when Hospice had to take over. It was stale urine, dirty, fouled laundry, and the ever cloying stench of a drawn out death. As he stood there in the doorway facing the stairwell leading to his mother's old room, he clutched a box that contained nearly all of the things he owned, and he wept. He stood there and cried like a baby boy who'd lost his favorite stuffed bear. The wave of emotion rolled over him like high tide. He didn't even cry at the funeral, for whatever reason. Call it masculinity. Call it potential embarrassment... whatever. But there he stood and the floodgates opened wide. A few minutes passed and he regained control of himself after a few hitching breaths. Yes, he knew it was the scent that did it. His mother was still there and he'd keep it that way. She was always good to him, despite her early divorce from his father, and the death of his step-father a few years later. She was always there; she was always mom. He did, however, pack away her things. Too many reminders were just too painful. And then it was his home and his alone. And he was happy.<br />
<br />
Part 3-<br />
<br />
Being as far out into the country as he was, there was a never ending parade of animals wandering his property. He'd begun setting salt licks out for deer, feeders for squirrels and birds, dishes of food for raccoon and coyote, and insect feeders as well when the season was right. It was like living in a preserve. But as the first year drew on toward late fall and into November, something strange occurred that Ed could never have been prepared for.<br />
One day, late in the month, the turkeys came. At first it was a few and their guttural screams woke him from a dead sleep at first light around six thirty. He leaped from his bed clutching his chest trying desperately to calm his heart and his nerves. His eyes were wide and blurry as he flew to the window. He slid the curtains aside and there, strutting across his lawn laying waste to every piece of food he'd left out, were a dozen wild turkeys. They pecked at the seed, the salt, the treats for the coons... you name it, they were devouring it. And they were huge. Ed had seen wild turkeys before and they were typically scrawny and gaunt, not a lot of meat on them... but these bastards were massive! Bigger than farm-raised even, and by the looks of it, pushing thirty pounds each. But they weren't the sluggish, useless meaty birds you see on TV when Thanksgiving rolls around. Oh no, these birds were active and angry. But worst of all, it was their eyes. The turkeys looked at the house and Ed could see their eyes glowing bright red like tail lights. And they didn't just glow, the throbbed.... pulsated. He watched, catching his breath in silence, as the turkeys decimated his wildlife spread. The birds wandered the yard, and Ed only hoped that they didn't catch wind of the deer he'd field dressed the night before. It was a surprisingly cold night, so he just left it hanging from the tree branch till he could deal with it the following day. Now, in fact. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that the turkeys smelled it. What followed was something out of a horror movie: beaks gnashing, meat stripped as though they were those piranha fish Ed had seen on those animal shows, and incessant cackling like a pack of angry wolves. They thrashed at each other, clawed faces, pecked and pulled feathers. It was terrifying. Ed could only hold back his gorge as he watched the birds strip the carcass to bloody bone. Fortunately, he hadn't eaten yet.<br />
<br />
Part 4-<br />
<br />
That first year was a surprise, no doubt. But the year following Ed was a bit more prepared, and this time he figured if they were going to stuff themselves on his animal treats, he'd happily kill one for his own Thanksgiving spread. And so he waited. Beginning around the middle of the month he'd begun getting out of bed just before dawn and loading his rifle. He was a hunter after all, and this was his property. He was going to give some paybacks this time. It was 1983, a year that Ed would later regret his actions.<br />
On the morning of the 20th, the birds arrived. This time there were twenty strong and as they wandered from the wooded horizon and onto his property it looked like forty glowing alien orbs slowly hovering in for an attack. Their calls were ominous and shrill. They looked around, jabbed one another for positioning, and marched like stalking soldiers into Ed's backyard. He watched, silently, as the turkeys shuffled up to their feast. And just as the year before, they tore into the offerings like they hadn't eaten in their lives. But Ed was ready. He quietly slid up the pane, poked the barrel of his rifle through, sighted his target (an especially rotund specimen) and fired a shot right through the bird's ruddy head. It's skull exploded into gory shrapnel. It stood for a minute, took a few cautionary steps toward its brethren, and collapsed in a feathery heap. The others stopped feeding almost instantly and looked at their fallen comrade. And then the screaming began. Like the cacophonous screech of a sick baby by way of a megaphone through the cone of a prison alarm. The sound was deafening and awful. Ed dropped the gun and fell to his knees. The birds carried on for what seemed like forever; back and forth, louder and more shrill, they bleated on and on. Eventually, the noise just ceased. Ed drew his hands from his ears slowly. He stood and looked out the window and watched as the remaining turkeys slowly tore their winged friend to shreds.<br />
<br />
Part 5-<br />
<br />
Years had passed and Ed had learned a valuable lesson. From then on he just left out the food and made sure he was occupied with busy work. He even recalled the year he'd forgotten to leave any food out at all. He was traveling that year to his friend's house in Martinsburg for the holiday,just a few hours south. He locked up, didn't think anything of leaving out goodies for his turkey pests, and left. Upon his return he instantly regretted this oversight as well. The birds had smashed through his big picture window, as evidenced by the trail of bloody feathers spotting the crime scene that looked as though someone had been murdered with a furniture duster. They'd ransacked his house, tore apart his couch and chair, pecked apart the wires to appliances, and managed to yank open the fridge and laying waste to its contents. The stench of fouled food hung in the place like a decaying body. That was the last time that happened. It cost him too much to argue with the birds, and so he just gave in. But this year would be different. This year was going to be the turkey's last.<br />
He sipped on his beer and knew, subconsciously, that tomorrow was the day. It had been far too long in years and he'd gotten to know the turkey's routine. But Ed was getting tired. He was too near eighty now to want to put up with the barrage of fowl that plagued his pre-holiday festivities. And besides, this year he wanted company at his house and the last thing he needed was the fret on about a flock of angry birds. He was ready, and he could only hope he'd catch the turkeys by surprise.<br />
<br />
Part 6-<br />
<br />
Morning. Early. It was six-fifteen and first light was maybe an hour away. Ed slid out of bed into his slippers. He stretched, yawned, and smiled. It was going to be a good day. He knew it. He strode with a shuffle to the kitchen where his automatic coffee maker had just finished making the pot he'd set to brew twenty minutes prior. He poured a mug, always black, and slid out a chair at his dining room table. It was as close to the window facing the yard as he needed it to be, and he waited. At last the calls echoed from the far side of his property; that wretched crowing that signaled the arrival of the mass of turkeys that had been ruining his holiday for thirty years. This year was going to end very differently; in fact, it was going to end before it could even begin. What he was about to do he'd seen on a cartoon, believe it or not (even he could only shake his head), and he just knew he could make it work in real life with only a few tweaks. You see, in the cartoon, the target got away, but Ed made damn sure that wasn't going to happen today. As the rafter of turkeys approached (this year quite possibly numbering in the thirties), Ed stood and slowly moved to the little button that was wired just inside of the window. Soon the birds began to feed on Ed's home-made goodies, each laden with enough black powder in all to blow apart a solid concrete wall. Each item was wired to a sparker that led back to the house. He wanted to catch as many turkeys as he could in mid peck so the damage would be just as spectacular as he'd imagined. He waited patiently. There was plenty of food.<br />
Then, suddenly, the time had come. Without another moment's hesitation, Ed pushed the button.<br />
<br />
The sound and the fracas that followed was a circus of freakish agony. Right off the bat after the button was pressed, ten bird heads immediately blew apart like miniature fireworks. Seconds later, the individual pieces of food exploded into geysering flame balls that set another twelve birds on fire. Then, as the still living birds suddenly began to scuffle in terror, the black powder in their mouths and stomachs ignited from the fire and intense heat. Guts burst forth like burning party favors. Turkey necks and beaks blasted apart like over-filled balloons. Headless bodies flopped around, torched feathers smoldered, and the acrid smoke of slowly dying birds coiled into the air on the lazy breeze. When it was finally over, only two birds still moved, and Ed just waited as the flickering flames eventually overtook them and they, too, popped like Champagne corks. It was finally over.<br />
Ed sat for another minute and enjoyed his coffee with a huge, satisfied grin. It was almost time to bring in the bodies. That food was going to last him for months.<br />
<br />
THE END</div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-53181311716410824182012-10-30T14:35:00.001-04:002013-08-04T17:53:51.395-04:00Tales Of The Amulet - X (The Last Halloween)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>I</b></div>
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<b>Evening</b></div>
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<br /></div>
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The full moon hovered like a dirty halo in the smoky night sky. Running footfalls and the distant whoops and catcalls of the last of the Trick-or-Treaters carried into the darkness like cacophonous notes borne on the breeze. Our pillow cases were loaded enough to be nearly heavy, and we'd each filled two a piece. I had mine slung over my shoulder; a nice accompaniment to my meticulously (and ironically) organized Hobo costume. My friend, Eric, was a racist ghost: eye-holes cut into a big, black sheet (a costume he now carried under his arm, claiming the damn thing was too hot). And Darren was a 70's Disco clubber complete with a giant, tacky (yet somehow horrifying) medallion-like amulet dangling from his neck. We looked ridiculous -all of us. But this was to be our last Halloween together... for various reasons. Eric was moving after the holidays out of state to live with his dad. Wyoming. <i>Who lives in Wyoming?</i> So, we sort of decided that since the three of us were being unceremoniously whittled down to a duo, we'd make this our last foray out into the Trick-or-Treating world. Besides, we were each pushing 15. It was time to pack it in, anyway. The wind had begun to pick up a bit. Unraked leaves took flight and spun in lazy circles as they chased each other in lopsided cyclones. The din of the last remaining kids faded into the night, and the three of us silently plodded up the side street to my house to conclude our evening. I was hungry, and not just for Snack Sized candy. My mom had actual food waiting for us...</div>
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"Hey, Stew... wait a sec." Eric said from a few paces behind me.</div>
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I stopped. Darren, too. He was even further in the lead than I was. His infamous perpetual hunger must have been dragging him by the stomach.</div>
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"Yeah. What's going on?" I asked as I turned toward Eric who had fallen back fifteen or twenty feet.</div>
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"Did you guys here that?"</div>
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Eric and I exchanged a quick glance and in eerie unison told Darren, "No."</div>
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"Guys I'm serious... it sounded... <i>deep</i>."</div>
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I chuckled, "Deep like <i>introspective</i>?"</div>
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Eric scowled. "No, shit head. Deep like <i>growly</i>... guttural."</div>
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Darren froze and cocked his ear. He cupped his had to his temple as though he were really trying to listen.</div>
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"I hear... <i>wind</i>. Dumbass."</div>
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Darren and I burst into fits of mocking laughter. Eric blatantly ignored us and looked around.</div>
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"Shut the hell up! I heard it again!"</div>
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This time, so did I. And Eric was right: it was deep. Low, raspy... like a thrumming purr.</div>
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"Dude, chill. I heard it."</div>
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Darren's eyes opened wide. "Bullshit!"</div>
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"No. Eric's right. I think it's coming from over there. The Stillwell Lot... ya know, where that store was going to go a few years ago?"</div>
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I pointed off to the right of the sidewalk. The Stillwell Lot was a piece of property bought by local party store owner, Xavier Stillwell back in 2005. He owned six local liquor stores in the area, each with more escalated prices than the last. But as it turned out, the city didn't really want (or need) another Stillwell's, and the lot remained empty to this day. It was from there where the sound originated, as far as we could tell.</div>
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And then it came again. And it might have been closer.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>II</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Chase</b></div>
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<br /></div>
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We stood absolutely still, and just listened. The crunchy chatter of dried leaves tumbling aimlessly in the wind seemed loud enough to be the hammered drumbeats of a marching band. And there, amid the crispy clatter of the long dead flora came that noise: hollow, gurgling, and churning. It sounded to us now not unlike the echoing whines of an empty stomach. This thought momentarily reminded me of my current state, but I snapped out of it as what could only be described as a lowing growl caught the wind and tore at our ears.</div>
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"Shhh... there it is again!" Eric said as looked at me, eyes round with fear.</div>
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"I <i>definitely</i> heard that. What the hell was that? It sounded like Darren's stomach through a megaphone!"</div>
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"Comedian." Darren scoffed as he, too, reluctantly nodded that he'd heard the noise. "But seriously, what could that have been? Is there a house with a giant-ass dog over there, or something?"</div>
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I shook my head, "I don't think so. As far as I know that whole lot all the way over to Park Street is just one, long, empty piece of overgrown land."</div>
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And I was pretty sure I was right. As we stood on Broad Street, Park ran parallel but about a full block-and-a-half away. It was a decent sized open area perfect for... well, another store that never happened. As it sat, the weeds had grown waist high, small saplings and shoots jutted out in small copses, and grasses as thick as reeds sprouted like land-locked islands of bristling foliage. It was obviously late fall, so everything was dry and dead and the stiffened bits of plant life whistled like an out-of-tune flute section. But the sounds we were hearing were nothing like the reedy shrills made by the blowing grasses.</div>
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"At the risk of sounding like a pansy, I vote we hike up our skirts and get the hell out of here." That was Eric, and those words will forever be etched into my memory because those would be the last words I'd hear him say.</div>
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The thing that burst past me knocked me off my feet. I could smell its rank decay in its wake as it leaped at Eric and beat him to the ground. I heard him yelp as the breath was knocked from his lungs, and then the unmistakable deep, thrumming growl erupted from the thing that stood mere feet from me. I could hear Darren panic; strings of expletives flowing from his mouth in blaring screams as he tripped over his own feet attempting to get away. I scooted back, regained my own footing and stared dumbfounded at the inky black mass that huffed its soured breath and bounced, spastically, on Eric's frame. Without a second thought, I gripped my weighty candy bag, and with a swing like a rail-spike driver, I brought it down on the beasts back like an unruly hammer.</div>
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What barked from its mouth was both the sound of agonizing surprise, and and almost human reaction: "OW!" The amalgam of beast and man suggested that this thing was directly from nightmares I'd log since grown unafraid of. Yet here it was. It turned its head as it purposefully lifted its frame from Eric. What I could see of its once-white teeth were stained pink and glistening rivulets ran down its damp chin. At some point over the last minute, it had bitten Eric. I didn't have time to figure out where. My body burned with fear; arcs of terror lanced up my spine and exploded into my skull. My eyes quivered and took in as much light as they could manage, giving everything a ghastly corona. My guts dropped a floor and piled up in a hot mass. I wanted -more than anything I'd ever wanted before- to run. But I was locked up. It took the gurgling cough of Eric to snap me out of it. The beast heard it too, and turned its gaze back to its interrupted meal. Eric's eyes were huge as he silently pleaded with me. A large chunk of his cheek had been sheered from his face and I could see his back molars poking out of the muscle. </div>
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I shouted. It wasn't a word; it was just to release the pressure that had built to bursting in my head. It was loud enough to redirect the monster's attention. And then I felt heat. Not coming from me, but from behind me. I could see from my frozen peripheral vision a glowing light. To my left ran Darren, his candy sack emptied and now burning from the flames from his lighter. He swung it like an juggler's torch and screamed as he lunged it at the beast. At that, I could finally make out just what it was I was looking at: pitch black fur covered a stocky, muscular frame, and fingered paws ended in scabrous claws. Its face was a mismatched and gnarled mess of fur and pustules; some of which had burst and ran green into his nose and mouth. It's eyes glistened at the swirling flames and showed true signs of abject fear. It reared back in revulsion; it's fangs sat deep in a mouth that was neither dog nor man, but was the absolute worst of both.</div>
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It clamored from Eric's body and I could see amid the dancing flames that it moved with human precision, but looked uncomfortable doing so. It had a beast's musculature and obviously relied on that to move quickly when it wanted to. As it backed away from the fire, it lowered itself into a predatory pose, which was our cue to scramble. I reached for Eric (fortunately the smallest and lightest of the three of us) and heaved him over my shoulder Fireman's style.</div>
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And then we ran.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>III</b></div>
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<b>Eric</b></div>
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We had an instant to make a choice, and it was a choice that none of us was going to be too fond of. If we continued to run down the street, we'd have to get to Main Street at the end and hang a right to get to my house. As it turned out, it was going to knock off about a third of our run if we just cut through the lot. Like I said: not the best option, but Darren knew it was true, too... we'd done it before on past Halloweens when we'd cause some form of mischief or another and wanted a quick escape before angry folks discovered us. It had been a year since any one of us had cut through the lot, but now seemed like the best time and our only speedy option. The decision took less than ten seconds: Darren kept the monster outside of our space by waving the last of his rapidly burning pillow case at it. It snarled and gurgled just beyond the light, ready to spring as soon as the fire burned out. We had no time. We nodded, we turned, Darren dropped the last of the smoldering cloth, and we took off at a sprint I'm sure I'd not performed in far too long. </div>
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Eric was much heavier than his bony frame would have ever led me to believe in any normal circumstance, but this wasn't that. He moaned and wept as he used his elbows to keep his head from banging into my back, which must have been incredibly uncomfortable since it was killing me. But I pushed it away; the distance to my house was only about a hundred yards and the whipping limbs and stinging grass were already making the run as difficult as I could handle. Darren kept pace and frequently stole glances over his shoulder. It wasn't necessary. We could hear the monster breaking through the overgrown foliage like a loosed bull. We could hear its labored, wet rasps not too far beyond our own heels. It was gaining slowly, but it was gaining. Guttural yelps bellowed from its throat and their sickening similarity to human cries were so unnerving that the sense of fear pushed me on a little faster. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Then Eric began to shift. His center of weight was now sliding down my back and I was losing my grip. I tried to adjust without giving too much of my current speed, but in an instant it was too late. Eric slid and fell, and I pitched forward, completely losing my balance. I skidded into the underbrush, tearing up my hands and face as I landed awkwardly. Darren stopped, too, reached down a hand and yanked me off the ground. We looked back, but we couldn't see Eric. But we could certainly hear the beast's footfalls and snarls pounding down on us, mere moments away.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"ERIC!" I shouted into the night. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A limp arm shot up out of the grass. He'd fallen a lot further back than I'd first realized. Darren and I made to run back to him, but our luck had completely run out. The moonlight caught the black form of the monster as it burst into circle in which we stood. It's wet, foaming breaths came rapidly and they caught in its throat as it struggled to breathe regularly. We backed up and ducked into some taller overgrowth. The beast lumbered closer to Eric's body and it looked around, arrogantly triumphant. And that was it for my friend. The monster shot its muzzle into Eric's weakened body and Darren and I heard the sloppy, chewing sounds as it fed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As sick as it seems, we knew we had time now. It was over for Eric, and though I was horrified and scared beyond rational thought, we <i>had</i> to go. I tugged Darren's shirt, and we slowly moved out of the grass and took off at a run to cover the last thirty yards.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>IV</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Night</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It only took a few seconds to fight the rest of the way through the weeds and saplings, and then we crashed the final few feet and out onto manicured lawn. We didn't stop running until we hit my yard which was two houses down from the backyard we'd broken through the field into. We dropped to the damp grass and breathed heavily in unison as we stared at the suddenly cloudless sky. I shivered uncontrollably thinking back a few moments ago as I watched one of my best friends being torn to fleshy threads before my eyes. It was almost too much... and then it was. I sprang to my knees and retched up the few pieces of candy I'd eaten along with most of that evening's dinner. Beside me, Darren began to weep. The weighty reality of what had just happened over the course of the last half hour hit us like a train wreck. How were we going to explain this? How were we going to tell our parents what had just happened? How were we going to tell Eric's parents? I had no idea. My mom and dad were literally four walls away, making snacks and waiting on our return. I sat in the grass next to Darren dumbfounded and overwhelmed with blanketing dread.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The night was uncomfortably quiet. It was one of those nights when the sounds from anything were amplified tenfold. And that was when we heard the howl. It wasn't quite animal, and it wasn't quite the distressing shout of a human... but we knew exactly what it was. And it sounded placated.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We had no choice. We had to go inside. Night was full-on, and ignoring our responsibility wasn't going to go away the later it got. We got up from the lawn and headed to my front door. We opened it; the warmth from the furnace swept us up and drew us in, as did the smells from the myriad snacks my mom had made. My dad sat in his recliner; '<i>An American Werewolf in London</i>' was playing on AMC. Mom was fussing over a Sudoku at the kitchen table amid the plates of hot snacks. She looked up and smiled.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And there sat Eric, munching on a Pizza Roll. He turned to us and winked. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>THE END</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-58706915496324986082012-09-28T08:49:00.001-04:002012-09-28T08:49:41.910-04:00Tales Of The Amulet Part IX - House<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The planks they seethe with ancient ire</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The boards and shingles creak</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With age-old dust and breath respire</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With soundless words they speak</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Alone it stands in solitude</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Beneath the crescent moon</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A soul-less life it does exude</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And shouts a song-less tune</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Its glassy eyes and gabled face</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Stare wanly, blankly, dead</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The crooked hungry staircase</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Beckons to be fed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Its body sheds, its columns peel</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Its weathered woods corrode</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It hungers for its latest meal</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To enter this abode</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But horrors live behind these walls</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And long-dead spirits roam</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For moans and echoes fill these halls</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And ghosts still call it home</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In days long gone, atrocious acts</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Befell this once grand Inn</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With blades that cut, and hatchet whacks</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The house ran red with sin</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
T'was murder there, the locals said</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And death to all who stayed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For checking in meant ending dead</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
T'was with their lives they paid</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And so it went, for years and more</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And soon t'was locked up tight</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Just memories of the guests it bore</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And their souls to walk at night</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But now it sits, in disrepair</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
At the end of a lonesome drive</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So do take heed, and do take care</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
If at its doors you do arrive</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For life still lives within its rooms</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The ghastly wandering dead</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And going in is certain doom</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
From evil, guilt, and dread</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So if you see, on lonely nights</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The House that seems well met</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ignore those warm and welcome lights</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For it's the House of the Amulet</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-34822332718430774602012-08-31T11:57:00.002-04:002012-08-31T11:57:29.515-04:00Tales Of The Amulet Part VIII - Purple Prose<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The ancient etchings ebbed and flowed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
with crimson hue they ran</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Archaic glyphs and siguls showed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And brought to his knees all man</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Its powers were imposing, true</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
its grasp on souls complete</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To those who saw, it saw them, too</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And to mortal lives: defeat</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Known by names throughout its time</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
to its creators, they knew fear</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And those who followed wrote in rhyme</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
of its legacy year to year</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Amulet; its modern name</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
grows stronger as it destroys</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Its terror is a boundless game</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With the tricks that it employs</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The horror it contains; undeniable</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
it can drive mankind to madness</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Attempts to ignore it; unreliable</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In its path: death and sadness</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With its pulsating face, it sees the <i>you</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
the beast within; it sets <i>you</i> free</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
No guard can shield; it sees right through</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and creates a <i>you</i> you can't unsee</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Amulet: Terror and evil made real</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
unluck and unrest be to those it finds</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
There is no cure; no way to heal</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It's strength lies within man's <i>own</i> minds</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So pray, and hope, and pray again</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
that The Amulet stays far away</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For its true cause is strife and sin</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And it might find you some day.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-3951092378404234412012-08-11T13:55:00.002-04:002012-08-11T13:55:26.807-04:00Tales Of The Amulet Part VII - Harvest of Sorrow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
** <b>Editor's Note</b>**<br />
-- <i>What you're about to read is (aside from a few narrative elements to move the story along) word for word and scene for scene an actual dream I had a few nights ago. After you read it, you'll likely be able to imagine the terror I woke from and the cold shivers that ran down my spine. Needless to say, I got up right after I woke up. Sleep wasn't going to come easily after that.</i> --<br />
<br />
It was a cold October morning. The rain drizzled in irritating sprinkles that wouldn't let up. The sky was a massive grey stone that masked any attempt of the sun to pierce its light through. It was dreary in every sense of the word, and that dreariness carried right over into the trip my wife and I had to make as we silently grabbed our jackets and headed for the car. Our journey was to begin with picking up a good friend of my wife's and bringing her to a new doctor in town. You see, she had an inoperable brain tumor and this new practice was home to a brand new medical procedure that basically worked like 'miracles'. Okay, not really miracles, but as close as humans are likely to get on their own, I guess. The doctors here were able to grow brand new pieces of you to replace the dying old ones. Pretty Science Fiction, right? Well, that's barely the half of it.<br />
<br />
You see, the truly gruesome and repugnant truth of it was that these doctors maintained a constant supply of un-living female torsos that actually 'gave birth' to whatever body part was needed. I know, I know... but bear with me here. Each torso wasn't technically conscious, or, even really alive. Because all they were, were torsos: no heads, no limbs... just the torsos with the necessary nutrients fed in to them and the required scientific adjustments made to just nurture the growing body part inside of them. Yes, they had wombs out of which the parts would emerge... though emerge isn't even correct since they came not from the traditional vaginal opening, but a pre-created slit almost like a Cesarean Section. It would open like a gaping mouth and the new part would be excised. It's not a pretty visual, but evidently it was an amazing procedure. Needless to say neither of us were to keen on witnessing this, but my wife's friend had learned all about it and was beyond excited to give it a go. And so, go we did.<br />
<br />
The building sat nestled in a wooded area just off the main road. Had we not caught a glimpse of the darkened brick facade, we might not have even seen it, as it was pretty concealed. Even the sign that proclaimed the name and address wasn't visible until we were practically on top of it. The drive was freshly paved, which indicated the simple fact that it had only been open for a short time. As we took the lazy 'S' to the doors where patients could be dropped off, we noticed a kindly nurse standing out front with a wheel chair already in tow. We had to wonder if she was just stationed there, or if it really was because our friend's appointment was in about ten minutes. Either way, we slowed to a stop, my wife got out, and led her friend to the nurse and to her medical chariot.<br />
<br />
I parked and met them in the waiting room. From the second I walked in I was uncomfortable. The ambiance was bland and uninviting: sharp angles, dark, muted colors, and a severity that made the whole room ache of a dank laboratory and less of a comforting anteroom. I sat next to my wife in one of the few chairs: bolt-straight and angry gray. Never before have I longed for tattered, year-old magazines. I stared at the reception area and the broken silhouette behind the mottled sliding glass. Etched on the front was a symbol I'd noticed with a cursory glance from the sign out front: it looked about the size of a tea saucer in this instance, and it was criss-crossed with odd glyphs and what looked like some kind of runes. It was the only thing in the room that really had a distinctive color: deep, blood-red that filled in the designs and ran the circumference of the bizarre amulet. It was stunning in its grotesqueness. Almost like a piece of frightening artwork that you fight yourself between looking away in disgust and falling into completely. I turned away and gave a wan smile to my wife. Her questioning brow led me to believe she'd noticed it, too.<br />
<br />
A moment later a door on the opposite side silently swung open and the same nurse who'd met us at the outer doors poked her head through. She had a stolid look of consternation on her face until she noticed her patient sitting next to us in her wheel chair. I'm not sure what she was expecting, but her mood seemed to change and a grin played across her mouth making her look almost sinister rather than the caring softness she was failing to pull off. I looked across my wife at her friend, and she sat up a little and let my wife pat her arm and give her a quick sense of security. The nurse nodded, walked behind the wheel chair, and wordlessly led our friend off into the innards of the office. The door swished behind them and the quite that followed was painful. I look at my wife; she at me, and we shared a sigh that was more worry than hope.<br />
<br />
We sat. There wasn't too much to discuss, even if there was an ruse-hued Mastodon in the room; we both wondered in our heads just what that bizarre sigul was and, come to think of it, why the crooked shadow behind the reception glass hadn't moved an inch. But we didn't talk. It was almost as if we were afraid to. It occurred to me that no sound at all had exited our mouths since we arrived. What were we scared of? Did we think we'd somehow sound differently? Were we expecting repercussions from the shadow behind the front desk? Neither of us knew, but neither of us shared. So we sat.<br />
<br />
Were it not for our watches, we'd never know the time, since -obviously- there were no clocks. Maybe obviously, but it's really unnerving when you can't just glance up at a clock and see the time. Even if you are wearing watches. There's just something oddly real about seeing a clock, especially in a place like a doctors office. Well, we noticed the time and several hours had passed without anyone relaying a progress report to us. This in and of itself was probably the weirdest part. There was always a doctor or a surgeon giving those waiting an update. But not this time. Time... hmm. The room itself became oppressive. The once annoying blandness of it became suddenly aggravating and all too small. I stood. My wife glanced at me side-long, but I waved her away with hand gesture meant to calm her, but it only served to make her stand, too. My ears pricked as I inched closer to the door through which our friend had been taken. I heard sounds like muffled beeping and an echoing chuffing. I pressed my hands to the door and then my ear, while directly behind me my wife stood directly across from the reception glass watching for any movement. She shook her head and I pushed my head to the door hard enough to hear a little better. Machines. There were machines chugging and chirping, the muted squeal of compressed air, and a low thrum from some other mechanism. It definitely sounded like an operating room, but somehow... foreboding. I pressed on the door and followed its trajectory as it opened into a poorly lit hallway.<br />
<br />
I let the door whoosh closed. My wife stayed behind likely to make sure the shadow person didn't follow me. The hallway was about as well lit as a backroom in an old museum. For a supposedly new building it felt ancient and creeky. Nothing about it screamed modern: the walls were dark and drab with no adornments what so ever. As my eyes adjusted, it became clear that the hallway ended in another set of doors. From where I stood, about halfway down the ten foot passage, I could easily hear the cacophonous electronics and apparatus working away beyond the end set of doors. Why was I scared? This was a doctors office not some kind of abandoned prison morgue from one of those ghost hunting shows. Besides, I'm a grown man and this was getting ridiculous. I righted myself a little more professionally, and headed for the doors and the sounds. Yet, tugging at the hairs on the back of my neck was just a little bit of fear that I couldn't shake.<br />
<br />
I stood and faced the set of doors. The two square windows that were built into the top center of each door were shaded and opaque. I glanced through one and saw only smokey halos and dulled glows. I turned and looked behind me. No one. The hallway was as barren as it was when I entered it. I wish I knew what was happening on the other side of the door through which I came, but I assumed that my wife was currently in the same spot I left her. At this point I really was at a zenith of decision: enter the doors and face whatever unknowns lay beyond, or turn around and leave this house of oddities and just hope for the best for our friend. Again I had to question even why I was arguing with myself in the first place. This was silly. I leaned on the doors and shoved my way in.<br />
<br />
Before me was a scene of such palpable horror that my breath was temporarily pressed from my body. The room looked like a movie set where <i>Hellraiser</i> and <i>Aliens</i> had somehow merged. Corroded hoses ran with filthy rivulets of indistinguishable fluid. Knots and bundles of dirty cordage hung like age-old cobwebs strewn from unseen connection to unseen connection. Haphazardly bundled wires like ancient holiday lights pulsated and glowed from one end of the blackened room to the other. Cables dripped, tubes shivered, black boxes with myriad switches and readouts hummed, and the wretched assembly line that housed the birthing torsos slowly moved in the distance. A click escaped my throat as I surveyed the ghastly images. I dared not move; the amalgam of electronics and whatnot seemed far too easily tripped over. As I returned my unblinking eyes to the moving terror that was the conveyor belt of un-living bodies, I saw their synchronized breaths as each chest ebbed and flowed in perfect unison. Each one sprouted a specific body part for any number of waiting patients; glistening with viscous liquid and writhing in tandem with their unconscious host. And there, in the middle of the sickening mass, bulging from its own slit just above the torso's abdomen, was my wife's friend's new head staring blankly skyward. Her mouth yawned and a pink, bulbous tongue gibbered.<br />
<br />
I held a scream as I burst back through the doors and sped down the hall. I encountered no one as I shot through the single door that led to the waiting room and nearly bowled over my wife. She let a squeal escape her mouth in utter surprise... it echoed thinly. I snatched her arm and we made for the exit. The fresh, cool art stung but it felt Heavenly compared to the stale, nauseating atmosphere of the office. As we sprinted the length of the parking lot to the car, I squeezed my wife's hand letting her know that there was far more to tell than even she could imagine. I stole a glance behind me and noticed the same symbol from the glass partition. It seemed to be glowing an even brighter shade of red. I couldn't get the car door open fast enough.<br />
<br />
End</div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-85714813554009678102012-07-01T11:31:00.002-04:002012-07-01T11:31:41.938-04:00Tales Of The Amulet VI: Trapped<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
William's life had become ceaseless torrent of bad news. One day, he was gliding high above the clouds; no worries, a happy family, and a comfortable life style. Things looked good on the horizon, and the storm clouds that built into towering, thundering maelstroms were safely in the distance. But then Hell came to William's life, and everything around him fell to pieces.<br />
<br />
William Michaels had a lovely wife, Elizabeth, and three amazing children: Marcus, Luke, and, and Olivia. They were never wealthy, but they were happy. The lived in a small house in the outskirts of town just across from a lovely wooded area where they would always see deer, woodchucks, blue jays, and many other animals out in all the seasons. It was beautiful, and they very much enjoyed their lives.<br />
<br />
Elizabeth always had the better job -or at least the better <i>paying</i> job- but this fact did little to take away from the love and complacency among them. They were happily married, despite Elizabeth's belief that William had often given up and only taken jobs that would just get them buy rather than improve their situation. But the very much loved each other, and the kids lived relatively stress-free lives as well. In fact, by all accounts, they were as typical an American family as you're likely to ever see.<br />
<br />
But Elizabeth had a very dark, and very sinister secret.<br />
<br />
William arrived home one day, distraught and very upset. Elizabeth glanced up from the table, past the vegetables she was chopping, and noticed right away that her husband a look of sorrow on his face. She had a cooler sensibility about her -which was quite typical and though it looked snarky and uncaring, it was just her look- and arced an eyebrow with a modicum of concern. William pulled out a chair, and sat heavily with a sigh. He looked at his wife past tear-blurred eyes and explained to her that the job he had grown to love was gone. She set down her knife, wiped her hands on her towel that dangled from the oven door, and walked to William with a mixed look of consternation and concern playing across her face. William sat slumped over in his chair, resting his head on unclenched fists, and breathed worried breaths. Elizabeth knew he needed comfort, but another side of her fought the urge to just melt into him and give him the satisfaction that everything was going to be okay. It wasn't, but she couldn't let him see that. She had to play it safer, and so she tousled his hair, kissed his cheek gently, and told him she lived him. William nodded, replied his love in kind, and shed a tear.<br />
<br />
Elizabeth retired to the bedroom after dinner. She said she ad a headache and needed to lie down, and William was more than happy to assist the children with homework and bedtime stories. And soon, as the evening settled in, the house noise ebbed to a dull roar, and the only noise was the family room television. Elizabeth sat up from her bed and looked around at the looming shadows. The moonlight pierced through a thin slat of the window blinds and played a white stripe on Elizabeth's dresser. It was in that top drawer, under her underwear and bras, where she kept it. Secure -she always hoped- and nestled in an old brooch box. But tonight, the calling was as strong as it had ever been... and even stronger. She knew what was inside, and she knew what it could do, but tonight was not a night she wanted it. But it wanted her.<br />
<br />
<i>It was 2002. William and Elizabeth had been married for three years and things were getting better every day. In fact, just six months previous, they had welcomed little Marcus into the world. The pregnancy had gone by surprisingly issue-free, especially considering that Elizabeth was predisposed to potential problems. Strangely, it was almost as if that very predisposition was erased completely, and though they worried quite often, nothing ever came of it and the nine-months sped by just as they do for thousands of others. </i><br />
<i>But Elizabeth knew something she was told never to let on to her husband.</i><br />
<i>Four months into her pregnancy, she began experiencing terrible shooting pains up her legs, across her abdomen, and around her lower back. Something inside her told her that these were the precursors to premature and a potentially still birth. She had to do something, but she couldn't tell William. He was far too busy attempting to secure a job, and that, coupled with fearing for Elizabeth far too often would only cause a panic. She had to talk to someone.</i><br />
<br />
-To Be Continued-<br />
<br /></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-65361180710612749282012-05-23T09:52:00.003-04:002012-05-23T09:52:55.887-04:00Tales Of The Amulet V ("Sometimes When You Wish You Were Anywhere Else)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Taylor leaned languidly on his bent arm, resting his tired head on his hand. In his left, he twiddled and rolled his pencil across his fingers deftly like some kind of magician.<br />
<i>Come one, come all! marvel at the Terrific Taylor as he wondrously wobbles his precarious pencil twixt his dexterous digits!</i><br />
Taylor was drifting again. His mind was swimming in and out of the moment as his eyes drooped ever more heavily. He blinked once, twice, attempting to struggle against the inevitable. He began to fall into a more purposeful breathing pattern, and soon, the hand that flitted the pencil began to drop, and the Ticonderoga hit the floor, eraser first, making a dull <i>plip</i> sound.<br />
Taylor was in is own mind. The dull drone of the lecture on Berlin Wall and its ultimate collapse continued unabated, but it sounded as though it it were being taught three classrooms away by a teacher created by Charles Schultz. Taylor's head slid down on his hand and he subconsciously knew that in mere moments, it would make little difference how '<i>out of it</i>' he was...<br />
<br />
He was right.<br />
The lights flicked off and the steady rattle-hum of the movie projector whined to life behind him. As old and worthless as these archaic forms of classroom information were, they were darn good for at least a half hour power nap. And that's just where Taylor was headed.<br />
In the rapidly stretching distance, Taylor heard the warbling diatribe of the host of the film as it trailed off further and further away...<br />
<br />
And sprang back into his mind like the return of a boomerang. Taylor was standing among his classroom cadets in the great meeting hall of the Second Infantry, Walking Dead Extermination Division. He loved how the circular patch over his right shoulder showed a skull emblazoned with the letters: <b>WDED</b>, with the <i><b>DED</b></i> written in dripping red letters. It was a cheesy acronym, but effective.<br />
The commander stood tall among the ten and eleven-year old students, but he treated each and every one as an equal. For Taylor and his division had proven themselves worthy time and again by infiltrating the enemy lines and sending the zombies back to their former deaths. Each of the twenty-five children had a unique talent that was used with great skill in battle. Some created spit-wads embedded with push pins. Some made rubber band crossbows that launched flaming erasers. Others, like Taylor, used their mastery of deadly sharpened pencils to fight off the hordes. They were all trained to the point of perfection, and the commander knew it, and trusted them.<br />
<br />
"Cadets!" The Commander continued, "Today is a big day for us! For today is the day we shatter the walls that separate us from the zombies, break into their stronghold, and acquire the thing that brought these <i>monsters</i> to life <b>in the first place!</b>"<br />
<br />
Cheers rang up from the twenty-five little soldiers as they thrust their fists in the air triumphantly. Taylor was especially excited because among them, he was the only one who had ever actually <i>seen</i> the instrument that was directly responsible for the zombie plague on earth: The dreaded Amulet.<br />
<br />
-- To Be Continued -- </div>
S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-34834190645801075392012-05-14T10:25:00.000-04:002012-05-14T10:25:00.713-04:00The Amulet: Nightmare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Aaron sat at his desk. The chair was cool and oddly refreshing in the early morning atmosphere of his room. His windows were open to the Early-May breezes languidly rustling the leaves just outside, and his fan hummed on 'Low' in his south-facing window. It was never very <i>cold</i> in the bedroom -it was rare that the winds changed just right to sufficiently make the air <i>chilly-</i> but the chill at this particular two-twenty eight a.m. was nearly <i>freezing</i> and it set deeply in Aaron's bones.<br />
<br />
Aaron pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubbed away the dwindling strings of his horrific nightmare. Or at least he tried to. Some of those strands clung tightly and kept bringing him back to the jarring dream that virtually trapped him in deep sleep. He remembered clawing, struggling... <i>fighting</i> his way to consciousness and he was exhausted for it. Exhausted for <i>it</i> and from the dream. The nightmare was palpable and heavy. Aaron could smell it; <i>sense</i> it. It still had hold and he couldn't shake himself fully awake. He sighed and reached for his cup of water that sat on his desk next to his laptop.<br />
<br />
Aaron would write it away. It suddenly occurred to him that the best way to battle the remains of a nightmare that refused to release his psyche was to write it out and drag it kicking and screaming from his head. He raised his laptop screen and watched as the warm glow of its screen spread into familiar brilliance. A quick mouse click and a writing program sprang to life. Aaron sat back and looked to the ceiling; his eyes closed as he re-stacked the deck that represented the cohesive layout of his dream. It didn't take long, for the whole picture hadn't fallen all to pieces just yet. He rolled his fingers, and set to write.<br />
<br />
"I was trapped. The gloom that fell around me was a black that no light could even hope to penetrate. And to even speak of hope -hope as a feeling of exuberance- is to speak of the dead, for hope had long since dissolved into disillusionment. I new I was in a city. A big city. Perhaps Chicago, since it is a city I am rather familiar with. I sat in a car. Oddly a 2-door coupe; a car I haven't owned for nearly twenty years. And I had a passenger. A passenger whose face I never saw; not before the dream, nor during, and certainly not one I could drag from memory even now. I saw hair. Her hair. I was looking at the back of this woman's head, and her hair was long and sandy-blond. This much I can remember. She was alive -which is to say (<i>as you'll soon see</i>) she wasn't among <i>them</i>. She breathed rapidly and shivered with the same choking and relentless fear that I was feeling (<i>and that I feel even now as I write this</i>). She moaned with little, tight, audible whines that sounded like the mewls of a sad cat. I felt bad for her, and I swallowed my fear as best I could manage, only to have it collect in a sickening lump in my throat; a lump that was either going to escape in a cacophonous scream, or a flume of fear-induced vomit. (<i>incidentally, the lump has returned as I regale...</i>). Though the dark was so inky and thick, we both knew -this female passenger and I- that the things just outside our ridiculously un-protective doors were seconds away from scrambling into the car with their guttural gibbering and twisted, knurled talons ready to flay our flesh. I broke out in goose flesh (<i>just as I did in my sleep and just as I do now</i>) and a chilling sweat beaded my arms and head and rolled down my neck. It was just then my female passenger's throaty groans turned into words. I understood almost immediately that she was repeating the droning mantra, "My fault... my fault... my fault..." over and over as she rocked back and forth. Right then I had no idea what it meant, that monotonous dirge, but the closer I looked her over -feebly attempting to garner a guess at her identity- I finally noticed something hanging from her neck. Even in my dream I recognized the item; it was an item I, myself, had created... in the wakened world. (<i>As I write this I have begun shaking and feeling tenseness creep through my terrified muscles.</i>) What she wore was The Amulet. The very disc-shaped rune-stone that held a starring role in each and every one of my stories! And it was alive with its wicked red brilliance. It pulsated in time with the woman's erratic heart beat. And it thrummed in unison with the approaching monsters that were moments away from springing out of the darkness with their chattering mouths and their angry hands...<br />
<br />
And then I woke. And I lay there on the cusp of screaming into the night. I fought to control my breathing. And then I sat. And here I am"<br />
<br />
Aaron leaned back from the computer satisfied but feeling no better for the writing he'd done. In fact, all it had served to do was reattach the strings of the nightmare he'd thought he'd severed. His shoulders felt tight and the back of his neck throbbed as though a weight had been tugging it downward. He reached his hands to his nape and prepared to work the muscles out. It was then he felt the chain. The chain he knew all too well.<br />
<br />
Aaron wailed into the darkness as the ruby hue ebbed and flowed at his chest.</div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-68082146765559688492012-01-15T11:48:00.003-05:002012-01-15T11:56:32.644-05:00The Amulet: Homecoming Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I paused a moment to clear my throat and take a sip of our dwindling water supply. It wasn't fresh, that's for sure, but boiling it (I had learned a few things from TV years ago, my friends) made enough of a difference to at least keep us from getting painfully ill. But it still tasted flat and all together harsh. But water was water... Where was I?<br />
I took a sip and looked at Danny. His wide, cornered-doe eyes pleaded for me to continue; but the fear poorly hidden just below their shimmering surface told me that he was also quite frightened, indeed. I shrugged my shoulders; I asked if he was sure he wanted me to go on. He knew about the Amulet: everyone has at the very least seen its symbols. He nodded. I continued.<br />
<br />
I held up the metallic disk to the waning light coming up from the open attic door. It glinted, horrifically in the dimness. Its runes played a angry rose hue across the surface that met in the blackish-rouge 'eye' in the center. There was a sickening vibration that emanated from the thing that I could feel so deeply it almost shook my bones. I was immediately revolted by it; it's shape, its feel, its antique hieroglyphics... all of it. Yet, at the same time, I was oddly attracted to it. It spoke to me. It <i>called</i> to me. And just then I had the overwhelming urge to throw it back in the box and never set eyes on it again. A hand touched my shoulder and I could have sworn my heart stopped.<br />
<br />
Danny let out a yelp. It was weird because he never talked. Hadn't ever spoken word one since we'd met. But when he called out, I knew he had to be scared. I set my hand on his knee and comforted him. I smiled; even chuckled a little because I knew what was coming. It wasn't bad. Not yet.<br />
Not <i>yet</i>.<br />
I went on.<br />
<br />
Selah stood just behind me. She burst into laughter as she obviously saw that I had turned ghostly white, and my mouth hung open; breathing like I'd just run a mile. I gathered myself, and looked her in the eye. She saw the box I had open, and asked if she could take it downstairs. I cringed a little, and took the glass of iced tea she offered. I didn't know what to say even after she asked a second time. I just stared at her, and the box, dumbfounded. I didn't know why I was hesitating; just a box with a... what? And Amulet of some kind? Why was I worried? And that's when I finally told her: Sure, go ahead and take it. It might have been the worst mistake I have ever made.<br />
<br />
Danny hissed in his throat; ya know that sound you make when something startles you and it sounds like you're drinking really quickly from a straw? That sound. I didn't laugh this time. I think he finally understood that what I had found would eventually become why the world we know had become... <i>the world we know</i>.<br />
You see it was that very Amulet that brought on the Scourge. An epic cloud of devastation that slowly, agonizingly coated everything with fixers. The fixers were like some kind of psychotropic drug; a drug so insanely powerful that everyone who ingested was 'fixed', or completely under the control of The Scourge. Then they -the very people we had come to love, and know in our daily lives- became twisted, gnarled, and feral. And they were called The Scourers. They were sent out on nightly patrols, when the sun wasn't piercing through the now unpredictable atmosphere (some days it would intensify the sunlight, others it would block it out completely and the earth would literally freeze) and the Scourers were pulsating with fixers and they would search, relentlessly for survivors. They would devour you whole, and spit back nothing but a shambling carcass of your former self. A new Scourer.<br />
All of this because of the Amulet. The Amulet I'd let slip away.<br />
I let Danny nestle into me, and I continued.<br />
<br />
You see, just then I had only a vague notion of the gripping control of the Amulet. I had held it, and gazed upon it; and were it not for my precious Selah arriving just when she had... well, who knows. Worse things were yet to come, but just that minute I gripped its cloying terror in my hands... well I knew. I just knew that this thing was a culmination of every evil, vile, wretched thing imaginable. And Selah was carrying the box in which it lay right down the attic steps. As much as I knew -deep down in my soul- that I had to stop her; had to grab that box and destroy it in any way necessary, as much as I knew this: I let her go. Even then it had a hold on me that I never even conceived. It had already set into motion its own plans. As ridiculous as that sounds, and even though I had no earthly idea how it had come into my possession in the first place, the gears were were already turning. The Amulet was about to spread its disease.<br />
She disappeared below the doorway and into the garage. And I just knew that thing was about to change hands.<br />
<br />
Danny once again peered up at me; this time through misty eyes that had begun to run with tears. His lip quivered, and he sniffed a little. But worse yet was his trembling: he felt like a little motor, running silently but churning. He was petrified. And so was I. But I'd learned to push my fright deep down inside. I had spent years telling myself that it couldn't have been my fault; that I was only indirectly involved. I knew this, but it took a long while to accept it. Danny had just found out, and yet, even as he shuddered with horror, he didn't pull away. He didn't flip out and run screaming (I bet he could scream if he wanted to) into the night. Maybe he understood, too. I don't know.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">-- To Be Continued-- </div></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-9932112456101160982012-01-14T13:25:00.000-05:002012-01-14T13:25:49.087-05:00The Amulet: Homecoming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">We sat shivering in the basement of the old, burned-out American National bank. A few cans of unlabeled vegetables and beans sat opened and half-eaten near our small fire. We'd managed to find what used to be a pretty good sized wok in a dumpster across the street where the Joy Fong had once stood, and now the saute pan served as a portable stove of sorts. Burning it it now was a bunch of warped chop sticks, also procured from the derelict Chinese food eatery. They seemed to burn longer after we soaked them for a bit in a soured tub of old cooking oil. Danny sat with his back against the vault wall and sighed; something he had done often after a day of scrounging and pack-ratting everything and anything we could find of value. For a boy of twelve, he had tremendous reserve and a will that nearly never quit. But it did, right around the same time every evening. And that was fine, because my forty-year old tenacity wasn't as limitless as it once was.<br />
<br />
Danny and I met about a month earlier. I had lost my family a few years ago, to the horrors you see, and I was traveling as best I could on my own. I was lonely, of that fact there was no doubt, but I never tried too hard to find anyone else, because most of the remaining human race had either gone completely insane -thanks in part to the Fixers (I'll tell you about that another time)- or had been devoured by the horrors; the creations brought on by the Scourge of the Amulet. So, there were very few of us left. But I found Danny... or should I say Danny found me. I was kneeling, lost in thought, over a dead deer carving off good meat with a sharpened comb handle. Most of the carcass had gone off, but a bot, near the head, was still okay... provided I cooked the hell out of it. Which I'd planned to do anyway. And it seemed Danny was just as hungry as I was. He'd found the decaying animal, too. But Danny had a gun. A gun, it turned out, that wasn't loaded. But it scared me just the same.<br />
<br />
I wanted no part of a bullet, so I dropped my tool and the meat, and Danny just scrambled up to the carved pile and began shoveling it into his mouth; no cooking necessary. I calmly told him that were he not to char the dickens out of that meat he was going to be puking up his shoes by the end of the night. I offered to build a fire and make us dinner. Danny glanced at me with fresh juice dribbling down his chin, looked at his gun that was now a few feet away (I kicked it just to be safe) and not only did he nod, but he burst into tears. I don't think he'd seen a person in a very long time. Especially a person who wasn't under the influence of The Fixers. He ran to me, clung hard, and wept into my filthy sweater. That was all it took; friends for life, we were, after that.<br />
<br />
Danny and I had found the bank vault a few days ago. I had to chase a lady who was just lousy with The Fixers; gibbering and swollen, fistulas and pustules oozing grey liquid, her left eye dangling, forgotten, from its socket... she was a sorry mess, and wasn't long for the world. I finished her misery with a jab to the back of the head. A quick search of her meager possessions only provided a small tack hammer and a rusty bucket. But the vault was a fine place to hold up, and so Danny and I brought in much of our findings before the Scourers began their nightly hunt, and we felt relatively safe.<br />
<br />
Danny sighed deeply again, and rubbed his eyes. I sat down beside him and rubbed his filthy hair. He smiled; his eyes deep with sorrow, regret, and an aching sadness that threatened to bring tears to my own eyes. I smiled back, and offered him a piece of a Dolly Madison snack cake we'd found a few days before. He shook his head, and mimicked opening a book with his hands. I shook my head, momentarily not quite understanding... until he did it again, this time mouthing, "story". My face lit up with recognition: Danny wanted a story! Hey, I could do that for the kid. Besides, I had quite a few. Especially since I had seen The Amulet just before it destroyed everything.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">The Tale</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Eight years ago, I was married to an amazing beauty named Selah with twin daughters named Joy and Faith. Yes, we were Christians and very involved in our local Church. Our friends were there, our love was there, and our lives were there. But the hand of darkness wasn't far off. But we didn't heed the warnings. We believed we were as safe as we needed to be. Even our Pastor -Paul Easton; a wonderful, if naive, man- refused to acknowledge that trouble was simmering just on the horizon. Of course, this particular trouble wasn't Biblical... it just <i>was</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The time had come to move. Our house was just too small, and with to growing daughters and the distinct probability of more children to come, it made sense to find larger dwellings. But before the packing, it was time to part with as much of our unneeded sundries as possible, so we had a garage sale. My job was cleaning out the attic; a feat that was made all the more difficult by the fact that it hadn't been done the entire time we lived there. Eleven years of boxes just shoved up there willy-nilly. So, needless to say, I had a full weekend ahead of me. As I went through stuff, Selah would take what she deemed sale-worthy, and set it aside. The rest got thrown out. Things were going along swimmingly; we found old China, baby toys, decent clothes, shoes, books, VHS tapes, and oodles of things we no longer used. But then I found it. Deep within the recesses of the musty attic, in a box that held nothing but a moth-eaten drop cloth; it was metallic, the color of pewter, with runes strewn about the surface. I had, as far as I knew, never seen it before in my life... and I wish right now that I'd never laid eyes on it then.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">-- To Be Continued -- </div></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-67015363974209222632011-09-22T18:59:00.000-04:002011-09-22T18:59:56.114-04:00The End<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">1.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Waves lapped at the little wooden dock like hungry tongues exploring the remaining bits on a corndog stick. The old lumber was rotted and spongy, but it held through the years and the seasons on the shore of the aged fishing cabin in Connecticut. The inlet was relatively secluded and didn’t often get either the human traffic or the battering waves of the Atlantic, so the dilapidated timber that securely held the old launch a few feet above the water line never got more than just splashed repeatedly rather than drown.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It was Sunday. James Wickford was eyeing his kayak as he nibbled on a bologna sandwich. He knelt and flicked at a pretty plump spider that meandered around the boat’s bench. It looked clean enough, and James was ready for his regular Sunday jaunt into the sea with his fishing gear. From the peripheral vision of his left eye he caught motion and a series of concentric circles indicative of ripples. This wasn’t anything unusual, there was always something swimming by or moving around down there… but this time, something seemed immediately different. A mound slowly rose to the surface; drab green and flecked with mud and slick with a substance that reflected streaks of sunlight. The mound rapidly grew larger as water rained down and muck slid off the oily object and hit the suddenly churning water in heavy plops. James Wickford dropped his sandwich, shivered where he stood, and began to howl with crippling fear in the back of his throat. His legs only worked a little and he physically shook as he worked them to back up. But his journey was short lived, and he tripped over an exposed stump and flopped to the damp earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The mound became a massive ribbed and horned mountain. The newly exposed humps and knobs that attached themselves to the original mound surfaced just under the little dock, and proceeded to shatter it to bits of wet wood with a wet, coughing crunch. The planks that attached themselves to the shore peeled up like loosened teeth, and then they too twisted and snapped. From the hidden inlet, the otherwise calm and peaceful fishing spot became a churning, torrential maelstrom. And then, what was once but a filthy hulk, now stood forty feet tall, dripped feverishly with water and some kind of thick, oily mass, and looked around both curiously and uncaring at its surroundings. The creature’s head was free, and James could hear its raspy, soggy breathing. He’d never seen anything so big in all his life, even having once been whale-watching. He fought to stand; his brain fought to get him moving, fought to get him to run back to the house and speed away in his truck, but his legs refused to respond and so he sat, and he felt his bowels release.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Its snout gouted putrid, green fumes and a deep, guttural thrum echoed from somewhere far within the beast. Its nothingness-black eyes surveyed the landscape and spotted just below it the quaking form of something… something showing tremendous fear. The beast slowly leaned forward, arms broke the surface of the water, but they were arms like none other ever seen. Where elbows were, attached to an upper arm –as gigantic as a tree trunk- were not one arm (radius and ulna) but two complete sets both ending in horrific talons, freely dripping with fetid slime. The immense beast pulled itself forward and bent down to come face to humongous face with the cowering thing on the ground. James began to scurry backward, catching his pants on gnarly bits of fauna, and pulling them free, smearing the ground with feces. But the beast continued forward, suddenly stretching its incredible jaws, jutted on every inch with crusty, rotting teeth. The cacophonous belching howl that spat forth from the opening mouth split the heavens with its tone, and the frightened being dropped dead to the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The rest of the creature excised itself from the little cove and stood erect, but not on legs. The beast, now nearly a hundred feet tall, spread apart several trees with its claws, and called out again with a terrible, echoing squeal. Just below its waist was the rest of its body; coiling and writhing like a massive snake. It was riddled from front to back with gleaming barnacle-like thorns, each oozing freely with reeking and viscous fluid. The beast inched forth as sticky slime coated its trail in a thick veneer, and the run-off slowly dissipated into the earth and everything around it. As it touched the dead body of James Wickford –the body that was scared and deafened to death by the incredible monster- the corpse twitched. The thick mucous spread across the body of James. He suddenly jerked and jolted… and slowly stood, gaping into the void.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Eric Watson lowered his cupped hands and listened intently to his own echo reverberate through the Northern Michigan forest. He and his crew –Aaron Phelps, Kevin Marrick, and Danielle Furst- the NMSA (Northern Michigan Sasquatch Association) had spent the better part of the last four days hiking camping, and otherwise scouring the forests of Marquette, Munising, and Ishpeming setting laser-site traps, night-vision camera perimeters, and basically globally positioning every piece of land they could in an attempt to once and for all prove the existence of Big Foot. So far their efforts had more or less come up fruitless, often only hearing possible calls, spotting and casting slightly iffy footprints, and seeing occasional deer bones scattered about. But they were stolid in their drive, and relentless in their work, so they kept up their collective spirits by making every little find a huge deal. So far, it appeared to be working.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>“Nice call, Eric! I could hear that one clearly way over here! Over…” Aaron said into his walkie-talkie as he squatted a few hundred yards away from Eric and Kevin.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>The return report crackled through the radio, “Thanks. That one was built on pure adrenalin. I’m getting a little worn out. I mean it’s, uh… pushing four a.m. We’re gonna lose daylight here pretty soon.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>“Word. We’ll start making our way toward you guys, maybe we— “<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>The last bit of Aaron’s words caught in his throat. A few feet to his left he could make out the crystal clear sounds of something approaching very quickly. Twigs snapped under the footfalls and a deep, hollow breathing huffed with each movement.<span> </span>Aaron froze where he stood. He slowly reached to his right and yanked on Danielle’s thick jacket. Aaron turned to look at her and she, too, was standing, mouth agape and wide-eyed, staring in the direction of the sounds. She nodded slowly, and swallowed heavily with an audible click that seemed to echo all too loudly. Aaron and Danielle stared into the cold, inky blackness as what they were tracking methodically stomped through the underbrush and nonchalantly pressed its way through low tree branches, sometimes snapping a few, letting them fall to the ground. The noise got ever closer; Aaron and Danielle heard nothing else but the ruckus that was occurring just to their left. The pine trees rattled, the forest floor rumbled, and the darkness line suddenly got just that much darker. The overpowering odor that wafted through the cloying, resinous pine was horrifying. Aaron and Danielle did all they could not to vomit on the spot. It smelled like putrid, rotting flesh, dead fish, and wet dog. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The slowly rising sun lit the dead black night like luminescent, white ghost. In the extremely dim glow, Aaron and Danielle could now make out a hazy silhouette of the creature that towered before them. It was nearly ten feet tall, covered skull to ankles in thick, course fur, and had a slightly primate-like face. Its oval head was bare, but splotched with burrs and bits of twigs. Its visage hung long as its nostrils yawned with every throaty, wheezing breath. It snuffed, tested the air, and at first looked right over the heads of the two petrified shapes standing directly in front of it… <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Until one of them let forth an ear-splitting wail. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron recoiled just slightly as Danielle bellowed a scream that could only have come from the depths of her very soul. The hulking beast took a step back, snorted, and howled with a throat-wrenching call that sent birds chattering out of the trees.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Suddenly the two-way radio clipped at Aaron’s belt barked to life, “Wow, guys! Those calls were amazing! I thought we were calling it a day? Over.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The hairy creature eyed the black box from which the voice came, stared directly at the two beings standing like statues, and by its own instinctive nature, shot out its sinewy, muscular arm and grasped the first thing by the throat, lifting it to its feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle squealed, almost inaudibly, in the back of her throat as she was instantly lifted from the ground by her neck. The sasquatch’s hand was the size of a baseball glove; roughly furred and studded with filthy, black nails. She was brought face to face with the beast as he explored her with a side-long, curious look. The monster’s mouth burst open. Flecks of warm spittle spattered Danielle’s face as she saw massive fangs like dirty steak knives. And then it came at her throat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">3.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige Wilson drank the last few gulps from her umpteenth can of pop, belched triumphantly, and chucked the empty into the collection box. The array of terminals at which she was currently staring glowed in front of her like a battalion of readied robots; each empty, unblinking eye awaiting orders from their human master. Paige worked for a small company sanctioned by a hush-hush Government subsidy that spent sleepless nights gazing into the cosmos for any and all signs of potential life. The crew- including Paige herself- were all secretly certain that there really was nothing out there, but a big fat paycheck was a big fat paycheck, regardless of the dullness and utter pointlessness of the job itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The little concrete building that sat above ground, and marked the actual entrance to the company, was built in Baltimore, Maryland and was marked, rather inconspicuously, TBIRC –Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point. This rather lackluster acronym stood for The Baltimore Inter-Galactic Research Society. The company sat underground as to distance itself from as much of Earth’s own interference as possible and used twenty-four satellites strategically placed throughout a six block radius. It housed a group of scientists hand-picked through a government program back in 1992 to scour the skies every night for any cough emitting from any distant location in space. Besides Paige, there were sixteen others, each at their own set of screens staring intently at their own quadrants of the void. So far, there had been eight incidences of potential white noise coming from huge distances, and, sadly, each had been debunked as either outer-planetary interference or, oddly, the sounds of dying solar systems. So, basically, over the past 20 years, the persistent crew had found nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige began sipping the fresh foam from another opened can of soda, when a very unusual anomaly appeared on the top row of eight screens. She swallowed, as such surprise was known to bring on unwarranted spitting, shook her head thinking false alarm, and stared anew at the rather quickly moving hash mark. Not only was it still there and still approaching a vector very near Earth, but it was also moving at a clip she’d only seen in meteors and comets. And it didn’t look at all like a piece of space detritus or a dirty snow ball. In fact, it looked sharply angled and… metallic?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige immediately angled her head-set mouth piece, pressed the call button, and hailed her superior, Dr. Runjeet Ashraff. Fifty yards down the hall, Dr. Ashraff’s remote communications display showed a blinking light, and he begrudgingly set aside the unspooled pages of read-out data and left his office.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Miss Wilson, I was alerted to your communication. Is something amiss?” Dr. Ashraff inquired in his still-quite-thick Indian accent.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yes, sir!” Paige replied hurriedly, “Take a look at this! I’ve been tracking its trajectory for a few minutes now and it appears as though it is heading directly for Earth!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Runjeet bent at the waist, dropped his glasses from his head to his face, and stared intently at the top row of display screens. After only a few seconds it appeared that what Paige was referring to was exactly correct.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“It certainly doesn’t appear to be any form of cosmic debris. We haven’t been tracking any sort of off-track meteors or comets, have we? No… no. That’s impossible…” Dr. Ashraff traced his finger along the projected path of the oncoming object.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“As you can see, Doctor, the object appears to be sharply angled and even made of some kind of metal. It almost looks like a US Military Stealth Fighter in many ways, except it isn’t black and there might be… yes! Look! Are those lights blinking? My God!” Paige turned to look at a stunned Dr. Ashraff who had quickly begun to sweat on his balding scalp.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Security Code Alpha Zero-Zero Tango,” Dr. Ashraff instantly tapped one of the many communication outlets on his mobile device and was immediately put through to the supporting Government section in charge of the TBIRC, “This is Dr. Runjeet Ashraff of the TBIRC in Maryland, Colonel. Yes sir, it appears we have discovered some kind of incoming anomaly just outside the distance of the sun, sir. Yes sir, it does appear to be on a course for Earth. No, sir, we are as yet unsure of its size. Yes, sir we will keep you informed. Yes sir. Thank you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Soon a crowd of scientists nearest Paige’s readout were ogling the display and offering their own insight as to what it might be. Dr. Ashraff alerted everyone to return to their stations and switch their displays to the same quadrant Paige herself was studying. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Runjeet turned to Paige, his face ashen with fear, and continued following the path of the UFO.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">4.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Towering, fifty-foot conifer trees toppled like stacks of lose cards. Oaks and elms were carelessly felled like models made from toothpicks, and the very ground itself sighed and retched as the ambling beast slithered across the landscape bound for nowhere. The small forest parted and revealed a freeway that led to the deeper parts of town. Trees dropped across the asphalt like slain soldiers and lay about, damming up traffic. The rapidly collapsing flora proved too much for the speeding cars; no one could brake in time and the resounding squeals and wrenching, broken metal sent arcs of flame into the early morning sky. As drivers and passengers began to slow at the realization of a massive accident, it became all too apparent that something horrible and ghastly was moving across the twisted wreckage. The onlookers, some young children and others with weak constitutions, wailed the call of the damned into the air and fainted dead away. Others scrambled free of their cars, leaving them running, and fled hollering into the woods. The monster paid no mind, and retained its path to wherever it was headed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As the creature slid remorselessly over the carnage it caused, its barnacles leaked ceaselessly about the gnarled metal and the hideously slaughtered bodies therein. It’s vile, tacky slime drenched the corpses, thickly coating them in a fluid veneer. The dead twitched, released themselves from their steel coffins, and joined the march behind the winding beast. One by one, each and every slain man, woman, and child dug itself free from the terrible chrome and aluminum madness, and shambled forth dropping severed limbs and broken parts on the way as they fell in line behind the others.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Those still alive and watching in icy horror saw first-hand the reanimation of bodies they’d once witnessed die in ghastly wrecks. The living looked on as a parade of the most impossible of nightmares ambled forth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Lynn Harper –with her three-year old daughter, Anna, cradled in her shuddering arms- stepped from her still-intact car (having missed the last vehicle in the long line of destroyed autos by mere feet) and stared, dumbfounded as only thirty yards away, hitching, puppet-like corpses meandered out of their contorted, stannic coffins. The scene was just too overwhelming.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Lynn exploded with a deafening scream that startled her daughter and set her, too, into fits of braying weeps. Thirty yards away, with the immediate suddenness of an instant, one of the dawdling cadavers stopped short at the sound of human noise. Lynn snapped her mouth shut and instinctively put a cupped hand over her daughter’s mouth. Others had gathered behind her and were pointing ahead at several of the moving dead now changing course at the sudden realization that there were living humans not far away. Without missing a beat, Lynn hugged her child closer, and began shoving her way out of the gathering crowd of motorists. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Now within twenty yards, several of the dead were scrabbling their way across the wreckage.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The obscured, opaque slits that were Danielle’s eyes struggled to focus. She could hear crunching and feel slight tickling as she wiggled her body so she knew she was lying flat on the forest floor. She slowly took in a comforting, steadying breath and blinked the blur out of her vision. It was early morning, which made sense considering the last time she could remember anything the rising sun had just begun tinting the horizon with its milky glow. Birds were twittering in low branches and Danielle felt as though she could hear something small pattering across the underbrush. Then the sun went black and Danielle caught her breath.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Standing above her was a tall silhouette with its hand extended.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“You alright?” It was Aaron. He knelt and offered his hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Dunno… guess so…” Danielle said as she struggled to a sitting position. “Wh… uh… what ha-happened?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron unscrewed the top of a water bottle and handed to Danielle as she swooned a bit and bobbed her head. “I, uh… can’t seem to remember much myself. Well, everything up until the ‘squatch picked you up, I can. After that: nothing. Do you even remember that?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle stared intently at Aaron for a very long minute and eventually shook her head in both amazement and complete puzzlement.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“A sasquatch picked me up? You mean like…” Danielle animated being lifted as though in a cradled position.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron shook his head and sat next to Danielle. “Nope. He got you by the neck, babe. Lifted you right off your feet. With one hand…” He trailed off as he looked off into nowhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well I guess that explains why my neck and head… shoulders too… are killing me. Did he just drop me and run off?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron shook his head again. “I don’t know. I remember seeing you, you were screaming and… I went to punch… ya know, hit the thing… and that’s the last I remember. That’s it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle took another swig of the cooling water and pressed the half-full bottle to her throbbing neck. She sighed, looked around instinctively –worried something might still be out there- and leaned her head on Aaron’s shoulder. “So where’s Eric and Kevin?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“They caught up with us just as I was getting up, a few minutes ago. They ran back to the truck to get a few supplies and call an ambulance. They –well me too- thought you were…” Aaron touched Danielle’s leg and smiled.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well that’s very chivalrous of them. Maybe you should radio and tell them I’m okay.” She returned the sentiment and put her hand on Aaron’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Can’t,” Aaron said as he fished it from his pocket. “Broke. Must have happened during the scuffle. Oh well, you should probably get looked at anyway.” He stood, returned the damaged radio to his pocket and stretched with audible pops.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“I suppose. I feel like I got hit by a bus. And…” Danielle pulled the now sticky water bottle away from her neck, “It looks as though I’m bleeding. In two spots…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>On the right side of Danielle’s neck - just below her jaw- were two, centimeter-diameter, punctures, both still weeping with clotting blood.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">6.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige Wilson ticked a few strokes on her keyboard and watched the screen zoom in closer to the unidentified object making its way toward Earth. Her heart was beating so hard and fast that she could hear it in her ears. Her eyes were glossy and a lone tear escaped across her cheek, but she wasn’t sure if it was because she was so overwhelmingly excited at the current circumstances, or scared beyond all comprehension.<span> </span>Either way, she swiped at it, took a deep breath to steady herself –this was no time to start breaking down- and checked the count-down to when the object was due to enter the atmosphere.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>1:24:37 – Less than ninety minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Runjeet Ashraff recognized the clear signs of Paige’s emotions, because he, too, shared the same feelings but was surely not going to show his cracks to his crew; they relied on him to lead, and to do so without jumping for joy or especially breaking down. So he stared with renewed interest at the screen as Paige zoomed in further showing the anomaly still on a bee-line for Earth. And he, too, saw that there were less than ninety minutes until its potential entrance into the sky. Thirty more minutes and he would have no choice but to contact the higher authorities at the White House. But for now, he had no choice but to watch… and wait.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Up until now, the UFO was little more than a tiny, possibly metallic blip on the screen, but just then something happened; something no one could have possibly expected. The object suddenly expanded to nearly three-times its original size and appeared to sprout nodes from all of its three sides. What was once a perfect triangle was now more similar to an odd, molecular-type structure: a three-sided craft with four outcroppings on each side each ending in a smaller, round ‘polyp’. It now began to take o more of an organic shape than just a straight-sided triangle. Paige gasped and began to shiver. Dr. Ashraff could no longer hold back and he, too, let out a moan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>1:19:19<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">7.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As you enter the town of Candlebrook, Connecticut, the first thing you notice is the quaint little shop owned by Marg Fields called ‘Olden Times’. She and her husband, Carl, bought the run-down building back in 1964 and immediately began stocking it with bits and pieces of their own personal collection of gathered things from years past: rocking chairs, cabinets, China sets, baby clothes, old pictures, and any number of other forms of bric-a-brac. Since then, it has become the most well known and deeply cherished stores in the burg. It was the first to be reduced to crumpled timber and felled bricks. In the creature’s wake the building looked like a smashed model. And the bodies of Marg and Carl shuffled behind it smeared with a slick sheen.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">8.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle looked, stunned, at her palm. It was tacky and bright red. Aaron raised an eyebrow and stared, concerned at Danielle’s face. She sighed forth a gruff laugh and wiped her hand on her pants. Aaron shook his head with a wry little smile, and kneeled, anew, at Danielle’s side. She coyly grinned, stared at the ground, and lifted her hand once again to her neck. Her middle finger lightly prodded the puncture wounds, feeling them run slightly with thin rivulets of blood, slowly clotting. Aaron tore off a piece of his under shirt and began to fold it into a bandage. Danielle raised her gaze, peered longingly at Aaron as he gingerly leaned forward ready to wrap the make-shift dressing around her neck, and their eyes met. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron and Danielle had never been anything more than just great friends. Sure, there were moments between them that were often misconstrued as flirty situations, but nothing ever went further than fawning and almost brotherly-sisterly fooling around. Last summer, they almost decided to date; they each discussed the possibility with their cadre of friends, everyone already assuming that something was, in fact, going on. Their friends were thrilled and wondered how it hadn’t happened long ago; citing their years-long friendships and secret love for one another. But nothing ever materialized and they just went on being friends… good friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As Aaron put his arms around Danielle’s neck –gently avoiding bumping the wounds- she tilted her head to the side and gasped, with a moan, letting him take her in his embrace. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron got as far as placing his hands on Danielle’s shoulders, working the compress around her neck, when he felt her warm breath just below his throat. Her soft lips grazed his flesh and he immediately exploded in goose bumps. He inhaled sharply, pretending to ignore the feeling he had lancing through his body: ecstasy, joy, desire… the feelings he’d always secretly hidden from Danielle; hidden behind walls of play and childish goofing. The warmth of her mouth pressed into Aaron’s neck and worked its way down nearly to his shoulder, and then back up. Aaron did all he could to concentrate on sealing Danielle’s wounds under the cloth, while at the same time only thinking of the torrent of fluttering feelings arcing through his suddenly too hot body. He groaned, deep and fulfilling in his throat. It was a groan that had been pent up for years, longing to be released in Danielle’s passionate embrace. He shuddered, dropped the torn bit of T-shirt around Danielle’s shoulders, and let himself fall into the feelings he’d never known…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle’s fangs pierced deeply into Aaron’s jugular, and his elation blocked out all the pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">9.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Eric Watson and Kevin Marrick stepped out of the woods and off the two-foot drop onto the shoulder of the road. Their SUV sat parked, secluded by a few trees and blanketed by a Navy-surplus camouflage net that looked remarkably like loose leaves and low-hanging branches. Eric snatched the leading edge of the false-flora tarp and yanked it free from the hood and the windshield. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“So, do you think Danni and Aaron saw something back there?” Kevin asked as he began loading his gear into the back seat, “She sure looked pretty banged up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yeah, she did. I dunno… I guess.” Eric laid the net on the ground and began haphazardly folding it up, “I mean I want to believe… I want to… well I guess it doesn’t matter, the point is she is banged up. We should probably get to the nearest…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The trees just past their vehicle began to shudder and sharp snaps emitted from the footfalls of some approaching thing. The saplings along the woods edge spread mere feet from where Eric and Kevin left them moments earlier, and a sudden, penetrating wall of odor hit the two men waiting fearfully by the SUV. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Son of b…” Eric began as he continued stuffing the tarp into the back seat. “Oh… oh man…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Kevin stared at the approaching thing, still buried in shadow. He slowly began to slide into the driver’s seat and watched, completely dumbfounded as a towering sasquatch strode into view. In ear-splitting screams, the man-beast let forth a cry that startled the men so completely that they shook and covered their ears and squinted their eyes. Suddenly, the front of the SUV dipped down sharply as the bigfoot, now close enough to touch, pressed on the hood and shoved it to the ground. The metal crumpled, the window split and spider-webbed, and the bumper exploded from the frame and clunked to the road.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Kevin fumbled the key into the ignition, turned it to fire the engine, and immediately slipped off the fob as the front end was once again pressed rapidly toward the ground. Once again the world was broken by the deafening scream of another call as the beast climbed the vehicle and stood, howling into the sky. Kevin froze as a filthy, fur-coated fisted hand burst through the windshield and snagged him by the jacket. Eric reached across his lap, turned the key completely, and the engine roared to life. In the dirty grip of the monster, Kevin managed to focus just for a minute and slammed on the gas.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The SUV remained in Park and the engine revved as the wild sasquatch tore free the ruined window, climbed into the front, and fed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">10.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>1:15:45<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige Wilson drummed her pen against her chin nervously. The UFO, that had previously been making a direct course for Earth, had completely stopped moving. The side of Paige’s screen ran with numbers that gave approximate distances and even an area of the craft within inches of its actual size. From where it was currently stalled, it measured a radius nearly the size of a standard city. It was far bigger than anyone had anticipated from its earlier location: yes, it grew some as it change shape, but no one could have guessed that it had gotten big enough to dwarf a small town. And Paige could do nothing more than stare at the hovering, slowly rotating object.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Runjeet Ashraff was in the middle of his fifth phone call to the White House. He had yet to be directly connected to the President, but he knew that it was imperative that it happen very, very quickly. Finally, he heard a click on the other end and a voice break the silence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“This is Secretary of State Parker. I will be speaking to you, Dr. Ashraff, along with President Haynes on a three-party line. Please, doctor, tell us exactly what you’ve discovered,” The Secretary’s voice was indifferent and surprisingly calm.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yes sirs. At about 18-hundred hours, the TBIRC –that is to say Paige Wilson of the TBIRC- discovered an anomaly on a direct course for Earth coming from deep space. We immediately determined that it wasn’t categorized as any form of space debris or commonly known cosmic occurrence,” Dr. Ashraff continued to the highest officials in the free world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Was the object exhibiting any kind of offensive maneuvers?” This was the President’s voice, and Dr. Ashraff suppressed an urge to blurt out a child-like ‘hello’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“No, sir. It was merely –as far as we could ascertain at the moment- just heading toward Earth. However-“<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“However?” The Secretary interrupted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Uh… y-yes sir. However, the craft did… change. In mid flight. Sir.” Dr. Ashraff wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and snuck a sip of water to quench his suddenly killing thirst.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Did you say it ‘changed’? How did it change, doctor?” The President once again inquired.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well, sir… it <i>appeared</i> to… grow.” Runjeet sat back in his chair and looked side-long at Paige.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">She turned to Dr. Ashraff with a look of shocked horror plastered across her face. “And, uh, doctor… <i>still</i> growing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">11.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Beth Tennant sat bolt-upright in bed and tried desperately to focus on the bed-side clock. She was coated in sweat and shuddering, even as she sat absolutely freezing. The nightmare she’d been jostled from was ferocious, but it was the sound like an ear-shattering—<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Explosion…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>There it was again: the sound of a distant explosion. Oh no! Was it happening again? She’d been far too close to the September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks that the slightest noise of something blowing up –that wasn’t happening on July 4<sup>th</sup>- jarred her terribly. She leaned over the side of her bed and stared out her bedroom window. Her single-bedroom, sixteenth-floor apartment had a pretty awesome view of the city and she was able to get a good look at much of the horizon. It was three fifteen a.m. and the inky black night coated the entire city only broken by slight halos of street lamps and 24-Hour store fronts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>In the distance, perhaps a few miles south, came another muffled <i>whump</i> followed by a shower of sparks. The object immediately silhouetted against the plume of sparkling flame was unimaginably enormous. For the split second Beth saw it, the hideous form of the thing was etched in her retinas forever. And then she heard it, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Over the deep, echoing boom of the next fountain of firey bursts, Beth distinctly heard a throaty wail that vibrated through to her very core. Beth’s eyes took in the horror once again and could plainly make out a body, and large, scrabbling arms attached to… a writhing snake body? Beth was now sure she must still be asleep. There was no way what she was seeing could possibly be real. Another blinding flash flowered even closer to Beth’s apartment, maybe only a mile away this time, and it shook the ground so violently that she was knocked precariously from her bed and fell, painfully, to her knees on the floor. Suddenly her clock winked out and the bathroom light she always left on went pitch dark. This was definitely not a dream. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As scared as she was, Beth couldn’t tear her view away from the catastrophe happening to her city. Noises she’d apparently blocked out as she was waking up to the awful sights began to flood her ears: cars were blasting their horns, sirens were crying out from any number of emergency vehicles, and the sounds of panicked screams carried throughout the night. Peril was setting in and she once again watched helplessly as madness gripped the town.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>So close it rattled the teeth in her skull, the thing that was laying waste to everything Beth loved barked a shrill, guttural call into the sky. She instinctively slapped her hands over her ears and scooted back against her wall, no longer interested in seeing the hellish reality playing out before her like an all-too authentic horror movie. Her mind had taken in all it could handle, and all Beth could do was sit back and add her fearful screams into the cacophony of the dying city. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">12.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As the deep ochre sun gave up its last gasp beyond the edge of the earth, the waxing moments of early dark spread their cloaking deep blues across the forest. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron and Danielle held each other, suppressing the onset of shivers that come with the approaching night. But this time, the chill of the air meant nothing to them as their embrace was of passion and desire, and not that of warmth. Aaron looked to the sky and grinned; it was a grin of enameled daggers and of opalescent, feral needles. He parted his fangs to take in the scents and breathe deep the clean night air, but for the first time since the very moment he cried as a birthed infant, he felt no need to inhale. In fact, his body showed no signs of even having the suffocating want to perform such natural habits. It was a curious feeling, but not all together unpleasant; though there was a tinge of fear somewhere deep in his psyche, it soon faded. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>He looked down at Danielle and she, too, smirked up at him and he noticed that her chest as well did not have that familiar rise and fall of a human’s respiration.<span> </span>And the answer to his unasked question suddenly became all too obvious: Danielle and Aaron were no longer the standard definition of human.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Wow. Is this… is this magic?” Aaron asked as he gently released Danielle and moved to stand.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle giggled a little and shrugged her shoulders, obviously just as shocked as Aaron, “I don’t know. Maybe? But what I do know is that is feels… <i>free</i>!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yeah… that’s the word I was trying to find, ‘<i>free</i>’. Boy, for a day spent searching for creatures of myth and legend, who would have guessed that we’d <i>end up</i> as entirely different creatures of myth and legend!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle laughed harder this time and stood as well, “I can feel my teeth. They’re so sharp! Oh, and I’m really sorry I bit you… I mean, I guess I could have warned you first.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Oh, no… don’t apologize… don’t apologize at all! This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m glad it happened with you, Danni.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Me too. I think I might… love you, actually.” Danielle leaned her head onto Aaron’s shoulder and kissed him gently on the cheek.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well,” Aaron asked as he returned his affection to Danielle, “Now what do we do? Should we try to find Kevin and Eric. I bet they’d just love this! Oh, and I’ve always loved you… but now, somehow even more.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle’s eyes suddenly got brighter, more erratic. She furrowed her brow and leered at Aaron, “Now that is a good idea… besides, I’m suddenly really hungry… but it’s not a stomach growling kind of hunger…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Now that you mention it… it’s almost like a, I don’t know, a longing for something…” Aaron confirmed as he absently wiped and the slowly congealing blood that clung to his neck.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>In a blink, Danielle’s mouth was enclosing Aaron’s blood-dampened fingers and a low, animalistic slurping escaped her lips.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Aaron sighed, licked his incisors, and nodded, “It’s blood. That’s what I want… <i>blood</i>!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle continued to lap up the last stains of red from Aaron’s fingers, “Let’s go get it!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">13.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The trail of death left in the wake of the towering, rampaging creature grew in vast numbers as every minute passed. The monster slithered like an enormous eel over the bricks and mortar, the flattened metal and glass, and the demolished homes, schools, businesses, and churches as it continued its unabated trek through city after city. But the dead didn’t stay dead, for as the nightmarish beast trampled humanity with every twist and turn of its incredible bulk, it also oozed its unnatural slime like some kind of hell-spawn slug. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The gloppy, dripping opaque paste fell upon everything, including the bodies that lay crushed and mutilated by the unearthly thing. And as each became covered in the wretched cocoon, they began to violently shudder, scream out with the continued death-knells they fell proclaiming, and begin to walk anew. And now the marching masses of the once dead numbered in the thousands. Their chittering, gibbering mouths yawned and flexed with gore… and hunger. The dead that followed the monster without thought or hesitation began to search, on their own, for prey; their insatiable feasting spread further from the lumbering parade that once stuck close to the massive hulk, and now moved out to attack those left alive after the initial devastation fell upon the cities and towns. <span> </span>The starving, gaping maws of the somehow living corpses fell upon those that stopped even for a second to see the unimaginable horror unfold before them. Children were wrenched from weeping parent’s arms; the pleading parents were then, too, engulfed by the encroaching hordes of the unnaturally fixated cadavers that ran freely through the war-torn streets. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>And the unstoppable terror that tore the undefended land asunder continued without a thought. Perhaps it was possible that the hideous giant had no thought; perhaps it was possible that it had no clear course, but just to move on as it always had on the lands and places from whence it came. But in its aftermath it left smoldering ruins, unfathomable destruction, and army after army of the traveling undead.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">14.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff stared at the monitor. It was the same monitor he’d been examining for the past several hours, and up until now nothing had really changed much. But as he watched with a new chilling fascination, the metallic craft that had hovered just outside of the earthen atmosphere began to literally unfold into something entirely different; something that –even as it shifted and eerily morphed- fluidly became an entirely new shape. What was more or less a triangle with individual nodes sprouting from its three sides suddenly and without warning became a much more of an octagon with an attached circular ring outlining the perimeter. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Dr. Ashraff! What is going on!” It was the Secretary of State’s voice echoing tinnily from the speaker of the phone that hung limply in the doctor’s hand, “Doctor! Answer me, dammit!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“S-s-sir… y-y-yes sir, I’m sorry… I, uh, would suggest that you show Mr. President the, um, special monitor we ha-“ Dr. Ashraff was suddenly cut off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“No! Doctor you know damn well that <i>that</i> knowledge is completely privileged! What gives you the right to-“ The Secretary, too, was broken up in mid speech.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>“I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary,” The President began, “Am I missing something here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Sir, not a thing, sir. Dr. Ashraff was mis-speaking. He has no idea-“<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Mr. Secretary, you will keep your mouth shut until I am through speaking to Dr. Ashraff. Doctor, please continue… you were saying something about a ‘special monitor’?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Sir, yes sir,” Runjeet began as he swallowed hard and continued focusing more of his attention on the UFO reforming in front of his face, “The special monitor was installed by our corporation previous to your administration. It is specifically used –and most strictly- for occasions such as this… uh, sir.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“You mean to tell me, Mr. Secretary, that I have had a monitor the entire three years I have sat as President and I am now –during a potentially incredibly dangerous situation- just finding out about this? Please tell me this is not what I am –<i>failing</i>- to understand.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Secretary of State Parker breathed heavily into the line. He was audibly upset at both Dr. Ashraff’s outburst, and at President Haynes’ irritation. He had been sworn not to announce the presence of the monitor that would keep the President –he of strict honesty and over-zealous information giving- completely in the clouds. That is, he angrily had to admit, unless something just like this were to happen. He had no other choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yes, Mr. President. That is the truth.” Secretary Parker begrudgingly admitted with a deep sigh.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“I see. Well then, what I want –<i>what I want right now</i>- is for you to make this monitor available to me. Please hang up your end and go do as I ask. Now. And as for you, Dr. Ashraff, I’d like you to hold the line while I transfer phones so you and I can finally look at this thing together. Is that okay?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Absolutely, sir. It is my pleasure to share with you any and all information I have found.” Dr. Ashraff admitted as a little smile danced across his face.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige noted his rapid change in facial features and turned quickly back to the screen <span> </span>that she, too, had been staring at for what seemed like forever. And as she did, the newly shaped craft began to once again move toward Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">15.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Cradled in the mottled hairy arms of the lumbering sasquatch dangled the limp bodies of two human men. The nearly human big foot walked on to its forest nest as confused as a little child, and not really understanding why it had the bloodied and battered corpses of two male people draped over its furry shoulders. It had encountered people before, but always from a distance and it had never, under any circumstances, come into close contact with them. But lately, for some reason, all the gentle giant wanted to do was to find them, touch them, and destroy them. But why didn’t the other two stay dead? It could not comprehend why, though it had bitten the woman severely and strangled her, she continued to live? It had no real reason to hurt people, it had no carnal want to harm humans… but here it was just the same: people were bad; people were the enemy and it had to kill.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Movement against the beast’s chest startled it and it stopped in its tracks. It snuffed in surprise and dropped the bodies just as one began to twist his head and open his eyes. The sasquatch stepped back and grunted a confused bark. From the damp forest floor, the humans stirred and moaned, shifted and stretched.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Uh… what… what’s happening?” Eric pleaded as he slowly groped at the darkened wet leaves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The towering ape-like creature ducked into the deep black shadow of a tree and, as were its natural instincts, remained absolutely still and deafeningly quiet. He watched in what to it was similar to a human being flabbergasted as the people writhed and spoke on the ground in front of him. He was, for the first time that his unknowing mind could fathom, absolutely frightened.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Wow… I, uh… I dunno. I don’t even know where we are? Last thing I can remember… weren’t we in the car?” Kevin replied as he, too, fought to regain his consciousness. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Eric rubbed his quavering hands over his face and neck, and they came away tacky with what could only have been drying blood. He opened his palms and even in the deeply darkened night, it was still obvious they were coated with sticky blood. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Why… why am I all bloody?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Yeah, and look at me!” Kevin cried as he held up his own open, splayed fingers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As Eric leaned in to examine Kevin in the shrouded early night, his tongue just naturally snuck out as it would anyone in any kind of concentration… and that’s when he felt them: his teeth were finely-pointed daggers. He immediately flung open his mouth and began to explore his new found fangs with both his tongue and his fingers, at the same time momentarily intrigued by the residual clotting blood still coating them. “Thweet Jeethuth, Kev… are…are your theeth tharp, too?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Are my wha—“ Kevin began as it quickly dawned on him what his friend was trying to say, “What the…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Though the sasquatch only understood a few small English words -much like a dog or a primate would comprehend a few- <span> </span>it could tell just by how they were probing each other’s mouths in utter fascination that something highly unusual was playing out before it. It was now so scared it began to cry and softly wail to itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>In unison, the boys looked rapidly in the precise direction of the big foot, and in the shadowy eve, they both grinned the grin of the hungry.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">16.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The terrorized people of the city of New York fled in panic as the mammoth, hideous creature laid waste to everything in its path. Though the monster had no clear direction and was seemingly only wreaking havoc at random, the barrage of walking dead –corpses shimmering in the early morning light with a patina of viscous slime oozed upon them from the beast itself- were suddenly realizing that they needed, perhaps wanted to feed. And feed they did: as the large city’s inhabitants scurried, awash with horror and blinding fear, the shambling carcasses that were once human citizens snagged them in their tracks and bore down upon them with ravenous and insatiable appetites.<span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">***<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Channel 9, Action News, this is Frank O’Brien with a special report.” The interrupting signal of a bulletin broke into every station, both local and those like CNN and CNBC, “The city of New York is once again under attack, however in a completely different, seemingly more horrifying –and certainly less understood way, today. For on the horizon behind me you can plainly see some kind of towering creature demolishing everything it its path. Authorities have just been made aware that this –thing- for lack of a better term made its way inland from a small cove in Connecticut. What it is, where it came from, and why it’s here are all, as yet, unanswered questions. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>As you can also see, circling above it are numerous military helicopters and we have just been informed that more vehicles are en route including tanks and armored Hummers with members of the Armed Forces ready to, hopefully, stop this creature before it continues further inland destroying anymore cities in its path. We will be staying with this story as it develops. For now, let’s send it to Les Warren—“<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">***<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Choppers buzzed the creature’s head and heedless attempts to communicate with it fell on deaf ears. Though it moved with a sickening, writhing grace through the city, continuously toppling buildings and crushing anything that stood in its way, an attack by the military had yet to commence. Perimeters were created from cul-de-sacs of concrete pylons, but the monsters tremendous bulk and perseverance just shoved them aside like a child’s building blocks. And always, following in its rear, were battalions of zombies trudging through the aftermath, scouring the wasted grounds for victims on which to feed. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It had become horrifically obvious that these rampaging cadavers could not be killed as many of the armed citizens and military personnel understood from watching many movies. Head-shots were useless, knocking them down and chopping off their heads was a fruitless venture. However hard you fought to bring the reanimated dead to a stop, no matter how powerful the weapon, nothing seemed to break the grip of the sludge that clung to them like webbing. It incased them and held them together as they pressed on consuming the living, leaving nothing but gore in their wake.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>New York had once again fallen to terrorists, only this time the nightmare was incomprehensibly unreal.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">17.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige felt a tap on her shoulder. Her attention was, as it had been for the better part of a day, firmly held by the images that played out before her on the monitors: a UFO was only moments away from entering Earth’s atmosphere. They had less than a half hour. “What is it? Oh, oh sorry… yes, Tom… what have you got?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Tom Andrews was one of Paige’s assistants who often picked up a few extra hours on various shifts so she could knock off early and get some sleep. If anyone in the TBIRC was monogamously attacked to his job with loving fervor, it was Tom. He loved Sci-Fi, all things horror, and was a huge fan of the creepy, crawly bug-type movies that featured monster-sized insects rampaging through cities. And it was these thoughts that immediately coalesced in Paige’s mind as she saw Tom’s ashen face and saucer-sized eyes. “I-I-I think you might want to call Dr. Ashraff over here and see this…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Tom looked exactly how you’d describe someone who has just seen a ghost: pale features, lidless, gaping eyes, and an air of sickening pallor all over his face, “O--K… what’s going on?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Tom grabbed Paige’s sleeve and led her to another set of monitors on the opposite wall. And there, right in front of her playing out exactly like any given monster movie, were live feeds from several news channels reporting an attack on New York in the grotesque form of a gigantic creature. Paige’s brain wouldn’t allow her to register what she was seeing. How could it even be remotely possible that at one end of the building they were watching the potential first invasion of an alien space craft in modern records, and on the other they were witnessing New York being reduced to smoldering rubble by an impossible terror… and now a new reporter inside a separate box next to the first was going on about… <i>the walking dead</i>? This was too much for Paige, and she slumped down in Tom’s chair and gasped for breath.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff saw that Paige was no longer behind him as he waited for the President to get to his monitor at the White House, and began searching frantically for her. He found her at Thom’s desk, slouched in his chair as Tom pressed a cool washcloth over her head. He ran over to her and before he even had time to ash how she was, he saw on the screens before him the chaos that had befallen New York. He was frozen and had to physically force himself to turn away. “Mr. President… glad you are back! Ha-ha-have you seen… have you seen what’s happening in—“<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“In New York. I have just been made aware. In fact I was talking to my head officials while you were on hold. In my wildest nightmares I have never, ever, imagined something like this happening. Never. Tell me you have some kind of good news on this Unidentified Flying Object of yours.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff, in a mild panic (momentarily having forgotten what was happening above the Earth rather than on it) ran back to the monitors showing the movements of the UFO. He drooped with a heavy sigh. The moment he’d been waiting for was finally happening, “Sir… the craft has just penetrated our atmosphere. Sir… it’s directly above the United States… and still approaching.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">18.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The sky unfolded like a clouded blanket. Roiling cumulous swirls cascaded and burst into hanging gray blobs. For a moment, the sun was utterly in the blocking spherical shape of the metallic object that appeared directly overhead. People on the go halted suddenly in their tracks and peered skyward: day instantly became night, and then just as quickly the warmth of the mid morning returned as the shadowed craft approached closer to Earth. But no one moved. The vision of a hovering octagon encircled by an outer ring hovered in the heavens. It was eerily silent as the collected populous of the US stared up at the now motionless object, each lost in his or her own moment of frozen fear. The craft hung in the sky like the attached toys on a baby’s mobile, and in that instant a pulsating ring of lights ignited and began to chase around the outer ring. What followed was an audible hum that broke the deafening quiet, sounding not unlike a turbine whirring as it performed some unseen function. Still the unidentified object remained completely motionless, except for the glowing circle of lights that continued to increase in velocity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Abruptly, darkening storm clouds began to build all around the object. Crashing thunder echoed across the land and forks of blue lightning split the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">19.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The only sound was the slight wind gusts whistling through the pine boughs. Eric and Kevin sniffed the air like animals searching out prey, which was -in effect- precisely what they were doing. Newly discovered wild instincts seethed through their bodies; coursing from vein to artery to every fiber of their being. The men slowly stalked the grounds taking in deep breaths of the surrounding air sneakily ferreting out their prey: the very beast from which they’d gained their brand new hunting, vampiric, monstrous personas. The men were thirsty and they hungered for a meal that no human food could quell. Deep within them burned a desire so wanton, so heated that nothing stood in their way as during their search they tossed aside huge, dead logs, wrenched massive boulders from the earth, and leapt from one branch to another. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The sasquatch remained dead silent as he watched the feral humans hunt it. He had never known fear like this.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>But it had to move. It knew it wasn’t safe where it sat; crouched behind the stump jutting from a rising mound. Eventually the men –now more beastly than ever, apparently made so by its own horrific mauling just hours before- would smell his presence and attack it. And this idea made it more afraid for its own safety than anything ever had in its life. Even as a hunter by its own livelihood –daily making necessary kills for its own existence- the sasquatch was unaccustomed to fearing for its very life from its own prey. And yet, this new prey that it had –albeit inadvertently- somehow changed into creatures it had never known, created a shuddering panic that triggered in it a need to run and hide so powerful that at the moment, it could do no more than sit, frozen; watching.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It forgot itself for just that moment, and the humans were on it like ravenous wolves. It howled as pain like it had never known ripped through its core; teeth piercing its tough hide as though they were razor-sharp daggers. The darkness began to swirl as flashes of light burst before its fading vision. And then there was nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">20.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Danielle and Aaron crept lightly through the underbrush and hanging fir boughs, stepping, feline-like, without making a single sound. Their senses were aflame with scents and odors wafting all around them; animals settling in to rest, flora alive with soft, lilting richness, and, of course, the cloying tinge of a fresh kill. They knew they were close.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Open ground spread before them, and Danielle and Aaron saw in their crisp night vision Eric and Kevin at feast. Flowing around the prey like a giant darkening stain was the last vestige of its life; the sour, coppery nose of newly spilt blood filled the chilled air. It was immediate: Danielle and Aaron lost all control and trampled the last few feet to the dying creature, thinking only of satiating their gnawing desire to feed. They both grunted and lowered their heads, as though their animalistic behavior had completely taken over. Eric and Kevin looked up with sinister grins played across their faces, and returned the guttural snorts allowing their friends to join them in the fantastic feast. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Soon, the four friends who had once been nothing more than human, nothing more unusual than regular people going about their day trying to debunk myths and prove theories, were gathered around a creature no other human could really ever explain or really ever solidly identify, feeding on its flowing life blood like piglets at suckle. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>They drank until they were full. But their metamorphosis continued unabated. <span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">21.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>High above the eastern seaboard of the United States, deepening gray storm clouds were gathering like a swirling hurricane. The darkening sky, that minutes before showed the rising sun and the wakening of a new day, now looked ominous and foreboding as the building, towering thunderheads piled upon one another like angry dams of dirty snow. In the eye of the storm hovered the impossible craft; spinning repetitiously, pulsating with illumination, somehow –beyond all human understanding- creating the massive front that collected just outside of its metallic perimeter. Tremendous booms of thunder echoed through the atmosphere followed almost immediately by sinister forks of steel-blue lightning. Then the rain began to fall in vicious maelstroms.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>For a moment, the enormous beast stuttered in its step, and turned its curious gaze skyward. It knew, and it understood, what was happening hundreds of feet above its head. It was the first to feel the rain drops as they cascaded from the immense thunderheads in drenching sheets. It could remember and realize that far too many times in its eons-long existence the very same thing occurring: its pursuers were, once again, attempting to cleanse the planet on which it trod of its destruction. It had millions of memories from countless other times on innumerable other worlds of the very same moment and the very same result. It was never afraid, it had never set out to wreak the havoc it undoubtedly had, and it had no intention of ever becoming the fugitive it had so long ago become.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Deep within its cranial recesses, like the still waters of long ago forgotten well, the creature’s most ancient knowledge bubbled ever so lightly to the surface. It somehow understood that the very ground over which it traversed even now, the age-old Terra Firma on which it currently stood, was oddly familiar to it. From within itself came a feeling; a shivering recognition that it had, a millennia ago, walked these very same grounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>It also knew that it had never been captured, or destroyed completely by the beings who always sought to punish it for taking actions it scarcely understood. Yet here it was again, just as it had been over time immeasurable, locked in a moment with those who spent eternities hunting it down like some kind of frightened prey. And it knew that it somehow had to make this time’s end result… different. It was done running.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The Heavens were torn asunder and the black-clouded sky let forth a torrent like humanity had not seen in hundreds of years. Rain fell so hard and fast that there weren’t individual drops anymore, just gushing floods like soaking waterfalls. Thunder deafened, lightening blinded, and the storm surge raged.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">22.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It was a time when evolution had yet to make its first great strides into becoming creatures that would, eventually, over countless generations, become even the most basic recognizable forms of intelligent life. The planet -much later to become known as Earth- was a roiling, steaming, constantly shifting desolate wasteland. Craggy outcroppings of unworn rocky plates jutted forth like the scales of a forgotten dragon. Pools of sulfurous, fetid water constantly gurgled and spat forth toxic fumes that spewed out in acrid bubbles from the open fissures of the planet’s core. A low-hanging cloud of deadly gas and particulate debris slowly meandered across the world, blocking out the life-giving sun and holding the frozen planet in a death grip that would still be years away from exposing its treasures. And one solitary creature emerged from a great lake of putrid stench and stepped, for the first time, onto the arid crust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It opened its eyes and surveyed the strangled grounds; completely void of life as far as it could see. Yet it knew, a distance from where it stood, things stirred and lived. It began its journey in search of three creatures that it was born to assist; a trio of things that would remain on the planet over millions of years, eventually giving in to the power of legend and myth. This creature was already ancient; having been born before even galaxies… and even then it had been given a task. It’s entire existence hinged on locating and teaching a small collection of living beings their ultimate destinies. Each was as different from the other as any three things can be and still tread similar paths.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The first was a gentle giant. It would soon call primeval forests its home. It would have a modicum of intelligence and hold guardianship over nature. But it also held a deadly secret. It was to be called Sasquatch.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>The second was to be two things, but never at the same time. Its life was in constant turmoil revolving solely around the waxing and waning moon cycles. It was a balance of both friend and foe, and often the scales were to tip in opposite directions. It was to be called Lycanthrope.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The third, and perhaps the most frightening of the three, was a creature of such incomprehensible terror that its very name would one day strike cold, wicked fear in the hearts of all who heard its utterance. There would be only one, for that was all that was needed. It would command the impenetrable shore on which it survived, and it would be a worthy audience for even the eldest Gods of the universe. But, it would one day be summoned to punish the very creature that gave it life. It was an unbreakable circle that would take eons to be finally be made whole. This monster would be called C’thulu.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Thus the creature continued on its path. It had time, but not much. The internal struggle within its brain had already begun to fight free. There was work to be done.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">23.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige Wilson and Dr. Ashraff sat in the highly illuminated basement of the The Baltimore Inter-Galactic Research Society; their collective attentions adhered to the digital readouts portrayed on the monitors around them. A new day had dawned since their first discovery of the alien space craft. Originally it appeared as a tiny blip moving through space, but the several hours since had shown vast changes and the pictures they now witnessed were of a cyclonic object aggressively creating an incredible storm. Though they were at least forty feet below the substrate, they could plainly hear the torrential rains buffeting the concrete building above their heads. The winds moaned and threatened to sheer their earth-bound antennae from their moorings, and each scientist secretly prayed against such possibilities lest they lose their feed… and as it was, their screens had begun to flicker ever so slightly in the raging maelstrom.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Adding insult to injury was the more recent discovery of a titanic creature trampling through New York City like some kind of long-extinct, prehistoric dinosaur. And, oddly, it was this –not so much the bizarre UFO- that sparked to most panic in the research facility’s inhabitants. When balancing between two completely unbelievable occurrences, the mind seems to latch on the least credible and it begins to weigh the heaviest, tipping the scales and igniting a new kind of fear: the possible impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Mr. President, I am at a loss as to what to either recommend or what to do at this point,” Dr. Ashraff coldly admitted. “This is something neither of us has ever seen, let alone ever imagined.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“I understand, doctor, and thank you for your candor. I must prepare for a public address right now, but I do want you to continue communications with my staff, so I will leave you with David Barnes, my Secretary of the Interior. He is also my chief ‘science officer’, if you will, and likely… well, ‘understands’ more about things like this than anyone. Thank you, doctor.” There were audible clicks and movement as President Haynes switched his headset to his replacement, Dr. Barnes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Good morning, Dr. Ashraff. It is my pleasure to speak with you. I have been updated on all the current goings-on and will be with you as things continue.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Welcome, Dr. Barnes. I have read your theses on the possibility of Ancient Aliens on Earth and I found them very informative and well written,” Runjeet said as he rolled his eyes in a gesture of his true feelings. “So… with what you seem to understand, does any of this make any sense to you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Barnes reclined in his chair and moved his gaze between two 55-inch, flat screen, High-Definition monitors, each scrolling with figures and numbers as well as the dual images of the circulating storm and the craft, and the rampaging beast that now seemed to be staring skyward. He snuck a glance around the small office and found he was alone, aside from a set of security guards posted at the door. He reset himself in front of the action, nodded in readiness, and spoke into the head set.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well, Dr. Ashraff… yes, yes it does. Let me tell you about a find we unearthed just five years ago in the Outback of Australia. A find that literally shows the very indescribable acts we’re all witnessing. And the key to its undoing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">24.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The acrid, vile stench of decay and sour meat hung in the humid air like an unclean butcher shop. Wafting through the trampled ruins of what was New York City was the sickening odor of death and those who reeked of it: the living dead. Hunger begat slaughter; slaughter begat death; death begat horrific rebirth; and the beast that ran with a never ending flow of the toxic sludge that re-animated deceased tissue marched the march of destruction. Corpses shambled through the ravaged streets stopping only to tear living flesh from the citizens as they attempted to flee. Blood, viscous and rank with its coppery scent, sluiced like red syrup throughout the city, trailing the rampant and unholy murders brought on by the cadaverous demons. Citizens lay screaming along the roads, grasping at the fountains of gore that erupted from their killing wounds. People trampled madly past flattened cars, crumbled buildings, and the multiple bodies that, for one moment, lined the curbs, and another bounded forth searching for another human victim. The devastation was incalculable; no one could even imagine the cost of livelihoods, let alone the towering cost of human lives. Multitudinous numbers of the dead rapidly became a scourge of zombies causing the vicious circle to repeat itself infinitely. New York City was a terrifying wasteland.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Peace began to fall in the quenching form of precipitation. Drop by drop; soon sheet by sheet, the cleansing rain began to pour. The swirling, charcoal-gray cloud formation that hung far above let loose its collected payload, and the impending storm broke. The deluge soon built to a crescendo and started to rapidly flood the city. And the marauding dead suddenly ceased their mindless shuffling, falling to the ground, unmoving.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">25.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The ones who lived sought shelter in what was left of the buildings still standing in the whole of New York City. Most were either demolished to flattened husks of their former glorious forms, or else looted to the point of looking like picked over skeletal remains. But it was those that the remaining populous flocked to. Hundreds packed into the lower floors of gutted office buildings, even more scrambled to emptied shops and stores, and still others found evacuated homes on the outskirts of town and temporarily inhabited them. Anywhere, it seemed, was deemed safe just as long as it was as far off the open streets as possible. The people were being forced from their own city as inhumanity ravaged the streets, devouring any stragglers left alive. That was, until the storms came.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Those closest to windows peered out in a mixture of confusion and amazement. Though they felt overwhelming sensations of loss and crippling fear, there was something soothing and comforting about the sky opening and enveloping the horizon in a Biblical downpour. They watched as the streets ran like rivers tainted with the blood of the innocent. Bodies of the victims bobbed along the raging torrent like damming logs and were followed by even more of the city’s detritus and debris. The cleansing weather front felt like a saving grace, but no more so than when the survivors finally began to see the buoyed cadavers that were once the scavenging dead. They flowed down the flooded roads like ghastly flotsam, some clogging against parked cars and fire hydrants like engorged blood platelets in a gigantic artery. The stink was overwhelming; the sour tinge of old meat and wasted flesh hung in the air like a muggy blanket. And the rain continued, pouring down without pause, as it slowly rid the city of its befouled predators.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">26.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Before them lay the desiccated, exsanguinated husk; its matted, fluid-soaked fur becoming clotted in the warm evening breeze. The gentle giant’s life now extinguished by the very monsters it unknowingly created. Leaves rustled ever so lightly; the night’s noises were surprisingly mute, save for the rhythmic, sonorous rasps rising from the four once-humans. With their feeding complete, the friends all fell into a satisfying coma and literally dropped where they fed. Their faces and hands, the fronts of their shirts and jackets, and even smeared in red wisps through their hair, was an impressive abundance of coagulating blood. Were it not for the very clothes on their backs, they’d go completely unrecognized as the former people they once were not twenty-four hours prior; mud and bits of flora clung to their rapidly growing hair, their crimson snouts protruded from misshapen faces like a nightmarish amalgam of beast and man, their triangular ears jutted from the sides of their slightly more compressed canine heads, and terrible claws pierced through their gnarled fingers like corroded nails in twisted wood. But they remained bipedal, for this was not a transformation that made them fully animals. No, this was a transformation that made them something that no human from the ancients till now had ever laid eyes on. The beasts that now slept, satiated and bloated, were of imaginations so vast and incredible that to call them lycanthropes was to only scratch the surface of an ever spreading horror. What they had become was something new, something outside comprehension… something that should never be.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">***<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The night was crisp. Fall had certainly taken hold, and after the scortcher of a summer they’d had this year, it was none too soon, either. Hunting season hadn’t strictly begun in Michigan just yet. Sure, bow was just around the corner, but Terry Ferguson was always a rifle man. And no, Terry Ferguson didn’t always follow the letter of the law, and so this brought him out on this cool, slightly bitey morning in search of maybe some wild turkey or, if he was really lucky, a nice buck. Terry was lovingly familiar with these woods; he was reared just ten miles south, having grown up in an old logging house raised by his daddy. It was always just the two of them; daddy would head off to the mill and Terry would fend for himself for hours a day, exploring the woods, setting small game traps, teaching himself to hunt like a man, and always bringing something interesting home for supper: coons, pheasant, woodchuck, and even the occasional deer. Daddy died in ’68, and Terry was sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle in Marquette, not too far for his home grounds, and now that he was pushing thirty, he wanted nothing more than to be back home, scouring the forests and stalking the wilderness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Another reason for his decision to skirt work today and take to nature was the news coming out of New York City. Terry had heard some unbelievable garbage in his life, but word that there were attacks by a gigantic monster, an alien space craft, the living dead, and a wicked storm was just too much to handle for one morning. He stared at his television for about twenty minutes trying to absorb all of what he was hearing and seeing; chaos, fear, demolition, visuals straight from horror comics… it was enough. Terry had to get out and get away from reality… or, unreality, for a while so he called into the plastics plant, feigned sickness, packed a few odds and ends –including his trusty hunting rifle- and headed out into the early dew.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The light tendrils of fog curled across the damp foliage like phantom fingers. The air was heavy with moist earth and the approaching sunrise, bringing with it the promise of a wonderfully sunny day, all the more perfect to hang out among the firs and maples and take in the bounty. But another scent caught Terry’s attention, too. It was sour, foul, and ripe with decay. He couldn’t be sure where it was coming from, but it did get stronger the further north he pushed into the trees.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Cresting a small hill, Terry’s stomach lurched and his eyes spread open in stunned terror. In a clearing about fifty yards ahead lay the body of what might be a bear surrounded by four smaller bodies each clothed but –even at this distance- not at once resembling anything human. Terry was frozen somewhere between gripping fear and a tugging curiosity. It was when one of the forms surrounding the bear stirred that Terry’s legs finally decided they’d move under their own accord, and he slowly, silently, crept forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Within twenty yards, another of the bizarre beings that lay around the –sleeping?- beast began to make groaning noises that were far to feral and guttural to be anything human, and Terry once again found himself unable to walk any further. A call echoed from the mouth of the creature, a call that fired itself into Terry’s mind and carved a path of abject fear straight down his spine; it was a disgusting mix of wild pig and a rabid dog. Terry felt a gorge rise in his throat but swallowed it away without a sound. He knew he was breathing rapidly and was surely going to reveal his position unless he got himself under control.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The second of the four creatures sat up and began to sniff the air like a dog being led outside for the first time. He quickly shook his head in an attempt to locate whatever it was that caught its olfactory senses. Terry had a sneaking suspicion that it was him they were smelling, but he wasn’t about to wait around to find out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Shaking off his strangling fear, Terry slowly raised his rifle to his sight line, eyed in the target with the scope, and popped a shot directly through the back of the creature’s head. As he quickly lowered the gun, the other wakened creature sprang to his feet and leapt to his friend’s side. He emitted a mournful low and raised his glance to look around him. His eyes locked on Terry and the red-stained forms of his fangs were bared in anger. But it was too late.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Terry had his rifle poised for another shot the second the beast was on his feet examining his friend, and as soon as those beady, sinister eyes were on him and those ghastly teeth were flared, another shot rang out in the misty morning hitting the second creature right between the eyes. The beast stiffened, yawed a little to the right, and pitched to the side landing directly atop his friend. The ring of the gunshot stirred birds and some little mammals from their resting places, yet it did not even budge the two remaining creatures that lay, just breathing beside the –it wasn’t a bear after all- furry mound. At this realization, Terry ventured forth even closer with his gun at the ready.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Upon closer inspection, it became very clear that the large creature was decidedly not a bear after all, but something far more simian-like. Terry could do little more than stare at it rolling over in his head the simple fact that it might just be a sasquatch. He’d heard of such giants patrolling acres and acres of Michigan forest, making themselves seen to a select few who, in turn, regaled tales of the massive monsters and their storied myths. But Terry had never –nor thought he’d ever- see one, alive or dead. But here it was; its fur was tacky with congealed blood, bite marks dried with deep red stains all over its body, and the look on its face was of utter panic and frozen fear. Terry felt a small sense of sorrow for this beast. He knew it was the creatures –two of which still breathed- that did this to it, and it just somehow felt very unnatural. In fact, his entire day had felt completely unnatural.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Terry turned to the two creatures that lay on the matted earth, resting, as it now seemed, enveloped in each other’s arms. The picture was grotesquely unimaginable; snouts pressed together both caked with gore, clothing shredded in places that allowed for more intimate closeness, thick mounds of fur protruding from their faces, arms, feet… backs, stomachs… It was hideous. Terry could only bare to look the length of time it took to aim, and to fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Two more shots radiated through the waking forest. Terry looked around and said a silent prayer to a God he –up to this point- never really bothered to speak to, and removed a collapsible shovel from his pack. He dug into the early afternoon, neatly burying the four creatures in one single hole, covering it with wet leaves and fallen needles to hide the carnage as best he could. As for the sasquatch… he left it be. Somehow it felt more natural that way; nature had birthed it and it would be nature that would waste it away. Feeling satisfied, Terry looked one more time at his work, packed up his things, and began the long walk back to his home.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>When night fell, and Terry was sound asleep in his bed with all six of his doors locked, some of the dirt shifted just a bit… the dirt that topped the unmarked grave that held the bodies of four once-humans.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">27.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The President’s Chief Science Officer (also his Secretary of the Interior, which meant even less than normal at this particular moment) climbed into the armored limo carrying with him the only conceivable means by which to destroy the rampaging monster that even at this very moment was moving –albeit slowly- south from New York City. Rain pelted the car’s windshield and the buffeting winds threatened to tear it from the road, but Dr. Barnes sat staring into space, undeterred by the weather’s vicious attack, yet silently concerned at the unmoving UFO that seemed to be the cause of it all. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>A large Halliburton briefcase sat next to the Secretary, and rattled slightly as the stretch slipped and jagged at the wicked bursts of wind. Dr. Barnes was intimately familiar with its contents. It was 2006 and a small, ragged group of Paleontology students were busy carving out and mapping a new dig in the Australian Outback. A new species of dinosaur had been discovered, one that was slightly smaller than a T. Rex but every bit as terrifying a predator, and with the exception that this one –according to the fossil imprints- was covered with fine feathers. This discovery alone was enough to shake up the scientific community; the prospect that many of the already discovered dinosaurs may have had feathers and eventually evolved into modern birds was still a hotly debated notion, but here it was in all its glory. Sadly, this discovery had to be kept tightly under wraps –literally as well, since it was to be transported to the Smithsonian in D.C.- until the collected heads of certain specific scientific groups could make closer examinations. Dr. Barnes was asked by the President to make the trip to Australia high priority to oversee the final unearthing and transporting. His arrival was met with high approval -and even a bit of fawning considering actions like this were hardly routine at dig sites, But Dr. Barnes took it all in stride and even began to feel a little out of place still dressed in his suit and tie. Luckily, he brought with him two of his closest colleagues, both vastly more prepared than Dr. Barnes himself, and it was them he’d sent to assist with the remainder of the dig. And it was later that same afternoon that the hollers of delight and discovery echoed from the chasm as something else was unearthed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It turned out to be more like ‘somethings’, since what appeared to be, at first, just a rune-etched slab crusted with eons of rock and dirt turned out to hold with it the most important piece of the mythical puzzle: The Amulet. No one was really sure if that was actually what it was, considering most amulets are worn much like brooches or necklaces and this disk was roughly the size of a tea saucer. But, according to what could be deciphered from the glyphs, the ancient sigil-engraved artifact was indeed used as an adornment. Be that is it was, the round, metallic item was as horrifically grotesque as it was strikingly beautiful. Though it had sat encased in its earthly tomb for untold centuries, it came free nearly unworn and untouched. The surface held an almost crystalline sheen; a polish as though it had taken on a veneer deep under the ground rather than lost a luster like most other objects. The center resembled an unblinking eye in both a metaphorical sense and in the fact that it was an almond shape with a deeper center like a pupil, all of which was of the angriest hue of blood red anyone had ever seen. Emitting from the epicenter and scrolling outward toward the edges were unreadable writings carved and inked in the same damnable shade. Surrounding the crimson, bisected in four parts by the writing, were symbols and hieroglyphics in a tongue completely baffling to all of those who looked upon it; all of those present with enough combined linguistic knowledge to span the entire modern globe, as well as those languages considered dead. It was terrible to look at; a wretched piece of the ancient occult. Yet, it was impossible not to gaze upon; an object of untold power and opportunity. And thus it had to be locked away until a time when others could decipher its hidden passages. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>A year passed until enough information was gathered to make a more educated pass at the stone slab and its accompanying Amulet. After a few months of painstaking research and breaking down of a language so ancient and unused that it hadn’t been even heard of since the Macedonian era, a reasonable recovery of the lost text was made. It told the tale of a great being who traveled to Earth far pre-dating almost any life, and how the being gave its vast knowledge to three creatures that would carry with them the secret to a time in the future when they would be called upon for very different reasons. The time was to occur in 2011, a mere three-and-a-half years away, when the being would once again return to Earth and rend it asunder. There was but one of the three creatures that could be called upon to stop it, though it was not as an assist to the race that inhabited the Earth, it was just because that was its destiny. The writings made no indication of humans –apparently having no idea of what race would be the wisest- nor did it actually spell out the year as 2011. In the latter case it was more of an obscure mathematical method that worked out to be that precise year. And in the former case, it literally didn’t mention any race at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The information struck those involved as almost too ridiculous to be true. However, there were those –the Secretary being one of them- who knew better than to discount something so random and so believable –at least in his own eyes- and so he kept the objects locked away in the sub-basement of the Smithsonian under the guard of a revolving set of armed men until the time was right to do what was necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>As the limo pulled into the TBIRC parking facility after its remarkably short journey, Dr. Barnes sighed, relieved to finally release the secret he’d kept hidden for far too long. He popped the latches on the case and peered inside at the metallic disc that sat before him. The center eye pulsated in time with his heart beat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">28.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff responded to the request from security that the Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Barnes be allowed to enter immediately. He expected the Chief Science Officer’s visit and nearly met him at the door directly. The two exchanged pleasantries, passed greetings to one another and the Secretary’s escorts, and made for the information bunker stationed below the Earth’s surface. Business was of utmost concern, and the matter at hand was taking a decidedly terrible turn for the worse. They sat, and stared at each other in momentary silence not quite sure where to take the next step.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Dr. Barnes,” Dr. Ashraff began by shattering the stagnant silence, “You spoke of something you had discovered that could potentially end this madness.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Barnes shifted in his chair, still a little uneasy about sharing knowledge he had kept so close to himself for over four years. But, in the end, the survival of a nation depended on his decision to relinquish something held so closely by only a scant handful of people. “Yes, Dr. Ashraff, it is true. However, what I’m about to tell you will more than likely force you to see me in an all together different light. Can you accept that?”<span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Well, Dr. Barnes, since I have no Earthly idea what it is you are about to tell me, then yes, I suppose whatever reaction you assume I will display might just fall under the category of a ‘different light’.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Fair enough, Dr. Ashraff. Fair enough. Well, since our precious little amount of time seems to be dwindling faster every second, I suppose I ought to regale you with the tale.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Dr. Barnes told the story of The Amulet. Dr. Ashraff sat in stunned and utterly confused and disbelieving silence. And in the war room, Paige Wilson stared at the display as the alien craft turned the storm it had created into a Category 2 hurricane. The monster, in all its seemingly lost persistence, pushed to the south terrorizing town after town.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">29.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>“But it says that this… uh, R’yleh is somewhere… hm… I guess that’d be in the South Pacific, right?” Dr. Ashraff inquired skeptically as he gave a sidelong glance to Paige who had since been called into the private meeting; more to do with her initial discovery than her actual knowledge of the situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>“Well, that is indeed where the archaic directions point, for sure,” Dr. Barnes continued, “But it also states at the time of its purpose it will have repositioned itself somewhere near… oh…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Oh what, doctor?” Paige interjected, just a curious as her colleague.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Um… oddly it states that it would be somewhere between a reigning Old Kingdom and a Newly Formed Kingdom. I’m guessing that it means… off the coast of America in the Atlantic.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff had to chuckle a little at the even odder notion that an entire location, however difficult to believe on its own, had the ability to relocate just because that was its destiny. “Look, I’m going at this whole thing with a few grains of salt here, Dr. Barnes; the simple notion that this amulet has the power to raise an abomination to thwart an already rampaging abomination is blatantly absurd. But now you’re asking me to take this already baseless piece of artifact and - just on assumption mind you- believe that the locale spelled out in the glyphs can move just because it’s supposed to? I’m sorry, doctor… I really am, but…” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“I understand doctor, I really do. But just imagine for one second that this ancient text is completely true. Are you willing to drop it like fiction just because it doesn’t sit well with your notion of what can and can’t be believed? Do you think anyone thought Dinosaurs could have existed in their presently known forms over fifty years ago? Of course not, they would have been called crazy to do so. Do you think that the Christian Faith would be as solid as it is, were it not for the written teachings of The Bible? Absolutely not, Dr. Ashraff, and this circumstance is no different,” Dr. Barnes explained with a palpable feeling of passion everyone in the room felt.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“Okay. Let’s just assume that this writing is, well, a kind of eminent instruction manual from thousands of years ago. It doesn’t make any difference what any of us believes, what matters is are we going to put all of our eggs in this one basket and just hope beyond hope that it works? I mean we’re talking about raising a potentially nightmarish beast to destroy one we already have… what if it doesn’t work? Being no worse off than we already are, in this instance, is to concede to our own deaths!” Paige proclaimed as her rising guile filled the room.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The two sides stood in gnawing silence. They were all right, of course: there wasn’t any proof this would, or could work, the ramifications of its insanity were not lost on any of them, and any amount of bickering wasn’t going to change it. Dr. Barnes looked around and accepted the fact that he might have to go at this alone. He alone; the guardian of The Amulet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff broke the hastening silence, “I’m as skeptical as you can possibly imagine, but I’m taking all of this on your word.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Paige nodded in agreement, staring blankly at her hands. The necessary agreements were made, and now it was only a matter of finding the correct location. Dr. Barnes gestured to his limo, and told the driver to head toward the coast.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">30.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The bathing downpour drenched New York City, flooding streets, drowning those caught out in it, and washing away any signs of the evil scourge of the zombie invasion. The marauding monster knew it would happen; he’d seen it time and again and the result was always the same. Something about his physiology seemed to reanimate dead tissue regardless of its make-up, provided it was carbon-based and reasonably intelligent. It turned its gaze once again to the craft that remained aloft just at the cloud line, generating the wicked winds and sopping rain, and scowled; nothing new to it at all, though it still had trouble understanding how it fit into all of this. Still the beings powered up the hurricane and spilled its cleansing contents across the already devastated city. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>And there, deep within the ancient recesses of its mind, it understood where its path lay: it was going to finally be vanquished. After countless eons of empty travels to innumerable worlds doing its one, soul predestined duty, it’s time had finally come. And though it felt a small tinge of remorse and disdain that what it had been created to do was once and for all concluded; it was mostly at peace. It was time to go home. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Finally.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">31.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The limo sped to the Maryland coast following a path that no one could understand, yet Dr. Barnes somehow felt was right. He held the steel briefcase, peered longingly and terrifyingly inside, and watched… and listened… and felt. The reddened center of The Amulet pulsated more quickly the closer they got to the shore, and that pulsing, in turn, followed the metronomic pace of his heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff and Paige Wilson sat on the adjacent bench in the rear of the limousine, both staring out their respective windows. Neither was completely sure what was happening, and both were still riveted and equally stunned at the occurrences that had gone on over the past day and a half. It had been a day that no other human had even dared dream was possible. Even curious and overly-imaginative children and Sci-Fi authors could not have even come close to describing the brutal horror that they’d watched unfold. And now –and this was perhaps the most insane part of all- they were headed to an unknown cove to summon a creature that would, somehow, put an end to the madness. No; it was all madness begetting more madness. Neither had any inclinations that this was going to end well for anyone, yet neither could even devise a conceivable outcome. It was, after all, madness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Suddenly, Dr. Barnes barked into the intercom for the driver to stop. The limo had arrived at an old fishing dock. Wooden piers sat crumbling into the unforgiving sea, overgrown weeds and saplings choked the boat entrance, and what appeared to be years of neglect and avoidance turned the once pristine boating slip into a slowly dying tenement. The doors were opened by Dr. Barnes’ armed escorts, and the group of scientists stepped out onto the soggy ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>No words were exchanged as Dr. Barnes immediately set to work, almost as though he’d done this on a regular basis. The case was unlatched and The Amulet was gingerly removed and set on the hood of the limousine. Next to it was placed the ancient rune stone with its nearly unreadable glyphs and carvings. Dr. Barnes looked out to the calm sea, and breathed deep the salty air, steadying himself for the performance he’d waited four years to act out. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Dr. Ashraff and Paige took a side-step to give the doctor his needed room, neither understanding why it was even necessary, but letting the compulsion move them regardless. They watched in abject curiosity as Dr. Barnes began reading the incantation in a dialect neither had even dreamed existed. It seemed there were many steps to the proper ceremony, and the doctor seemed to know every step flawlessly. They could have sworn that just then the wind picked up just a touch; a chill that bit to the marrow was in that wind and it conjured fear throughout the spectators. Out at sea, a slow roiling erupted from the surface, churning into a frothy boil. Paige and Dr. Ashraff found themselves in one another’s arms, holding themselves against the coalescing terror that was rapidly whipping about them. Gusts buffeted the trees, curling them side-long against the attack, and even shook the stolid limo on its wheels. The icy nip built to an almost frigid crescendo and stung them to the core. When it at once seemed like they could no longer stand the maelstrom, Dr. Barnes bellowed what was to be the final words written on the ancient stone out at the tempestuous ocean:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span><i>“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!” <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">32.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>A city rose from the churning waters; a city carved entirely –innumerable eons hence- from solid stone. It was towering in it enormity; blocking out the sun and scraping the very bottom of the Heaven’s themselves. With it came a cacophonous roar that seemed to emanate from within the stone fortress itself; it echoed across land, sea, and sky, dropping all who heard it to the ground, writhing in agony and fighting to stave of what was thrumming right through their skulls. Adorning the massive throne that sat at the helm of the gigantic, floating island were rows of circular disks that looked remarkably like The Amulet used to raise it; each pulsating in rhythm like a hundred heart beats. And yet it was what sat upon the throne that created nightmares and turned away even the demons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>The horrific leviathan that perched upon its earthen chair was of such indescribable loathing that even the mere sight of it scarred visions and burned its visage forever into memories. Hued a shade of sickly, unnatural gray-green, and splotched throughout its ghastly form with writing and gibbering sores like wretched barnacles, the lamentable abomination surveyed the surroundings like an angered God. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>And so it was. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span>Grotesque, abhorrent, nauseous… the brutish thing sat wheezing in ire at its tower door. Tendrils of ocean steam spat forth from its maw over which hung a bulbous mass of threshing tentacles, each layered with knobby protrusions and angry spikes. Its serpentine fingers viciously contorted as its wicked talons dug feverishly at the craggy arms of the throne. Pustules gouted ichor, and open fistulas ran freely with rivulets of phlegmy sputum. Sprouting like giant, water-logged umbrellas from its back was a set of leathery and severely chapped wings; both hung limply down across its shoulders, neither looking that they had any strength to create lift. Its entire skull throbbed with the choking breath of oxygenated air; individual sacks like bellowing bladders struggled to maintain breathing. The immoral redolence that hung in the air like a wet sack was gagging and palpable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>It slowly leaned forward, bringing to bear its entire face. An ancient, putrid cough burst forth with a sound like misfired torpedo, and then it spoke.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>Gargling bass erupted from its mouth; the sound split the eardrums of the onlookers. Only a single phrase was uttered as the six assembled, cowering humans screamed into the sky:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span>“<i>The end</i>.” <span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span> </span><span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-54569172425215219442011-05-19T14:03:00.000-04:002011-05-19T14:03:26.221-04:00The Amulet XXI - The Stairs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;">I.</div><br />
Tendrils and wisps of the remainder of the early morning fog streaked the ancient stone like the fingers of some long forgotten ghosts. Eerie tails of opaque white curled among the lichen-strewn rocky outcroppings and looped over the dew droplets that clung to the spears of timothy. The air was thick and cool; the morning sun had been shut out by the encroaching gray clouds, yet the wetness of the humid air felt cloying and dank. The pebbled surface of the decrepit masonry was slick with damp moss and ran freely with tiny rivulets of moisture that had collected in the exposed crags and loosed rock. The stairs angled upward into the weighted cloud and disappeared into the spectral gloom of the slowly receding morn.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">II.</div><br />
Ages ago the stonework steps were built as a pathway to enlightenment. Their creators and masons were monks, who desperately searched for a way out of the valley they inhabited. For the valley had fallen to an evil so unspeakable and horrid that they had little choice but to escalate themselves skyward toward the hand of the God they'd prayed hadn't forsaken them. And so they constructed. They meticulously and laboriously unearthed and drug stone and rock from the river at the base of their valley home. They toiled day and night perfecting their last path to salvation. Yet for them, it was too late. They soon fell as the blanketing repulsion suffocated them. And so the staircase stood, as a reminder to what could have been.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">III.</div><br />
At closer glance, the fine scroll-work that ran the length of the ancient and crumbling steps was quite impressive. It also spoke volumes of what the monks who created the massive stairs were working toward. From the moment the sadistic sickness befell their civilization, their lone goal became escape. Their God promised sanctuary, but the people were made to earn it. Freedom from the oppressive bleakness would not come without sacrifice and offerings; their lives wouldn't be preserved, and therefor spared, without a total and complete giving of themselves. And the etchings that looped and whorled up and across the surface of each eroding rise was a true testament to their undying devotion.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">IV.</div><br />
Piece by piece, slate by slate, boulder by boulder, the steps slowly and with painful precision fell into shape. Decades passed and the tower of fitted rocks grew ever higher, just as people gave up their lives and plead to their God as they fell. The colony gave up much: celebrations, livelihoods, daily freedoms; all for the defiance of the sinister and the quest to achieve salvation. They lived and died by their powerless struggle between good and evil. But the evil had strength. And the evil was in the earth itself. It seethed, it writhed, it gnashed, and it fought the people every single step of the way... and every way of the steps.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">V.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As the afternoon sun burns away the remainder of ghastly fog, the slithering tendrils that caress the exposed roots hanging languidly from the depleting stone evaporate into ethereal nothingness. A step back reveals the perfection of the rising hill. Its corners; perfect. Its angles; uncompromised. Its rises and falls; works of art. And the edging that showcases the precision script winds its way up either side cascading from the top-most stone to the very bottom. The encroaching wind echoes with the broken spirits of a thousand buried voices as it whirls up the steps. The haunting drones of eons past -living with the long dead calls of ancient voices- ebb and flow through the haunted, overgrown valley.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">VI.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The population slowly died away. The evil of the valley had manifest and entered the spirits and very souls of the adolescents. It crept in and strangled the life out of the righteous; the blank slates who devoted their lives to constructing the stairs and reaching the hands of their loving God. The children began to hate. They began to thoughtlessly punish. They began to commit hateful crimes and destroy the builders of the stairway. With recklessness and deviant amorality, the young overpowered and eradicated the old. But even with the elderly falling, the steps eventually reached completion, much to the behest of the strangling horror from below.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">VII.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The cryptic designs that ran the length of upward stairwell did not sit idle. Their circular etchings vibrated with a deep, guttural thrum. And they pulsated a dark, haunting red hue that ebbed in rhythm with the beating hum. Each connecting hoop-shape looked exactly like an amulet of sorts. They were roughly the size of saucers with even more intricate artwork; tribal in nature, that encircled a center 'eye'. And it was this eye that truly emitted the most horrific shade of blackened red. Anyone who stood long enough at the stairs, or who made the decision to walk its seemingly endless path, would begin to understand what the long deceased civilization was attempting to reach. And one would be unable to understand how feelings this dire and terrifying could be misconstrued as anything other than pure and complete evil. Maybe it was the Gods within the valley who were the actual true amalgams of truth. Many have fallen as their understandings were shattered. And many have followed the path of the amulet. </div></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-27230170998930020392011-05-09T11:40:00.000-04:002011-05-09T11:40:02.992-04:00Nightmare: Tales Of The Amulet IV<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Something was there. Right in the corner... I could almost feel it.<br />
<br />
My breathing came in swift bursts. I consciously tried to regulate it; there wasn't much point in huffing and puffing myself into a heart attack. But the fear was in the driver's seat and if it wanted to tighten my chest in crashing agony... well, it was going to whether I liked it or not.<br />
<br />
I don't scare easily; I've been a rabid consumer of the horror genre (TV, movies, books... et al) for nearly as long as I can recall. But damn it, when there's something in the room --right there in the corner-- the terror is as palpable as taste.<br />
<br />
I think it moved. I start shuddering breaths again as I try --like a child in rapture at a TV show tries-- to tear my focus away from the... whatever it is... in the corner of my room but I just can not look away. It might leap if I'm not looking.<br />
<br />
I feel and hear my throat catch and click as I try to swallow myself back into the fact that it's just a room and whatever that shadow is is not going-- shit, it moved again. Damn it. If I can move my legs a little maybe the sound will make it twist a bit so I can... It moved again.<br />
<br />
My legs don't want to work. It seems my unnatural fear has usurped my limbs for itself and is insisting on holding me down like some kind of flailing hospital patient. I don't like that at all. I need to move... I need to jostle myself back to my room and not this gaping, shadowed tomb I find myself stuck in. Movement is the key and it always seems to knock a little non-fiction back into one's head. I gotta try that again...<br />
<br />
With a whole lot of conscious effort I managed to shift my feet back and forth, making little, soft whisks under my sheet like a couple of anxious animals. And the corner shadow did more than move; it vibrated. I swear, it looked like it was in two places at once and it rotated between the two; back and forth, back and forth like a other-worldly pendulum. It was in the shadows, and then it wasn't... and then it was. All I could do was stare. And I began to cry! Not in the saddened, heart-felt weeping of a sorrowful situation, but out of absolute and all-encompassing fear. I was literally frightened to point of tears.<br />
<br />
But why? I knew it couldn't be real... right? It couldn't possibly be a thing and not just a something... a something right from my room like a shirt or... it moved again. This time I'm almost sure it --what?-- slithered? It undulated and gesticulated like an eel! Oh shit, it really is a thing, isn't it? I' questioning myself at this point... myself and what I know to be sanity and insanity...<br />
<br />
And then I heard noises. From the living room I could hear what sounded like the television: monotonous, muted gabbing the way a blocking wall can make it sound. Somehow I was only slightly more comforted...<br />
<br />
Because I live alone...<br />
<br />
The shadow coughed. A throaty, deep-crawed, guttural cough. And then it chuckled...<br />
<br />
I can't lie here and write anymore... I need -- </div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-16449182616409976782011-04-27T13:51:00.000-04:002011-04-27T13:51:52.644-04:00The Amulet XX - Errant Desires<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The desperation he felt had weight. The sorrow coated him like a sodden blanket and wrapped him so tightly he could feel its suffocating grasp. Every breath was a shuddering, wheezing fit wracked with hitching sadness and the never-ending flow of tears. But worst of all --the thing that held him in a vice grip of shame and misery-- was the <i>guilt</i>. Why had he even given in? Why had it become acceptable with him? Why hadn't he seen it coming? The tumult of questions beat at his head like a progression of angry drums.<br />
<br />
And alone he sat. He'd allow his mind freedom to wander without even remembering giving it permission. It would trace the trail of shock and revelation backwards through the days. It would trip over visions, stumble headlong into occasions, and fall head first into moments just as it had the first go round, only this time witnessing each with the outcome first. And sometimes his unconscious would stick and repeat like a movie frame caught on a fleck of broken film. He'd relive those monstrous memories over and over, always knowing how each would end but praying nonetheless that this time... this time he could effect them for the better. But never. And then he'd jostle his head, shake himself free from the torturous thoughts, and snap himself back into the now. The now that was flooded with grief, unanswered questions, and dark, vast, endless sorrow.<br />
<br />
And his desperation had a weight like a revenant's chains. They slowly, methodically drug him lower and lower to where, in all actuality, his head languidly lay on the ground. And he wept. The seething guile he knew was finally exposed ratcheted through his mind like a thousand connecting cogs. And he'd lifelessly beat at his head in a harmless attempt to knock loose the thoughts that sought nothing more than to consume him in a fit of ravenous madness. Fear would bubble to the surface and send his teeth to chatter, just as his wanton need to project his weakness on anything else would push away the terror and try to take control. Wrath won out all too often and he felt as though his blood would scream, super-heated from his veins causing him the forbidden comfort of bleeding to death as he bawled for what he'd lost.<br />
<br />
Though it was she who brutally trod on his heart with her deceit and blatant duplicity that ultimately reduced him to a fragmented husk, it was always the thing that began it. He'd long since forgotten how it came to them; never was one to hang onto stories about objects. But it had come to them and it had brought with it the immoral, disastrous, fiendish misgivings that gradually forced a wedge between them, culminating in her desire to insult him and make him suffer. She fell under its mesmerizing charm. She succumbed to its morbid revulsion, and with it she fed. She became a glutton on the negativity it poured forth, and she eventually turned... into something else. Her actions were deplorable and her explanations despicable. She buried her thoughtless words and actions into him like daggers.<br />
<br />
He was done. He saw no road ahead, no distant, glimmering horizon. He was done. His life had sloughed from him like a layer of dead flesh; she removed that cleanly. He was done and he knew it. No silver lining, no darkness prior to a better dawn, and he could care less how much greener some other pasture might be. Nothing mattered. Nothing worth anything remained.<br />
<br />
The hull-grey .45 sat desolate on the table. He stared at it for a bit. He licked his lips wondering how the metal would taste and if it would shatter his teeth before darkness fell. He fingered the trigger and scooped up the gun. It felt icy in his cradling palm; icy but somehow inviting. He glanced down one last time at the pulsating, undulating rouge hue that swam across the surface of the amulet as it hung, and hummed, from is neck.<br />
<br />
He was done. </div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-60511631838660950912011-04-20T19:41:00.002-04:002011-04-20T19:50:55.535-04:00Face Time Continued : The Amulet Part XIX<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Continued From <a href="http://flashfictionfestival.blogspot.com/search/label/THE%20AMULET%20Part%2013">HERE</a>...<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">1.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tim yanked out a bar stool and collapsed up to the soda counter. Grizzly made a bee-line for the Men's room whistling a Steppenwolf tune.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">"Hey buddy, how about a couple cold Cokes for me and The Griz?" Tim said as he sloughed off his steamy hide vest and draped it over the neighboring chair.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">"You betcha, mister! Hotter'na raped ape out there, ain't it?" The kid behind the counter proudly announced as though it were the first time he was actually able to use the epithet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tim chuckled (mostly to humor the kid) and smacked the counter in approval. As he shook his head relishing the humor, two sweating glasses of Coke were carefully dropped to the veneered surface. The kid nodded, returned to his stocking duties, and laughed a little himself, proud of his little comment.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Grizzly appeared from the saloon-style doors, announced his appearance by erupting with a fierce belch, and resuming his whistled rendition of 'Magic Carpet Ride.' His eyes lit a bit as he saw the glistening glasses of soda and he, too, sidled up to the bar and raised his glass in a mock toast.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">2.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Erin absently wiped at the irritating itch of a drip that clung to the lip of her nose. She sniffed up some of the blood, wiped at it again, and never once even thought twice to examine the red liquid stain that smeared across her hand. She inhaled a few times, swooned, coughed a bit, and all the while glared with woozy fascination at the plate-sized disk she held in her grip. She admired --no, she ached at the touch of --the surface; it's roughed chrome... but more like a smooth pewter (nothing was quite as it seemed... nothing), the gleaming steel... but more like the dulled metallic sheen (it seemed to rearrange itself at every touch), and that horrid (beautiful) red eye in the center. It hummed; but it pulsed. It changed; it didn't. It was sickening; it made her gorge rise with every thrum. But it was also, somehow, everything she ever wanted. The amulet sang in her grasp and the song was something between desire and agony.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">3.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tim and Grizzly sat among idle chatter and slowly nursed Coke after Coke. The icy drinks offered them just enough lost humanity after so many miles on the dry, arid road. They spoke on and off to the counter man (who, as it turned out, was named Earl and who was, happily, from right there in town), and they occasionally meandered through the aisles of the store picking out a few items here and there with which to survive the rest of their day-long trek. And though they shed every inhibition, they still clung (however slightly) to their natural skittishness... but nothing could prepare them for the girl who wandered in with a glare in her eyes like a cornered, angry animal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The store's door whisked open, setting off the sleepy chime, and Erin stood there, not unlike any other day she was scheduled to work... except for the fact that she looked like a trapped beast facing off her predators. Even Earl caught his words in his throat. He'd seen Erin hundreds of times, but never with the ghastly pallor she cast and never with the hyper eyes of something inhuman and feral. All they could do was stare... until Erin leaped...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">To Continue... </div></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-25480569208839049042011-01-22T20:30:00.007-05:002011-01-28T12:43:18.280-05:00The Amulet: BusinessHigh atop the mountain range in New Los Angeles sat the hospital known as Te' Luma Health Systems. Since 2110, the corporation had provided a way to reverse the onset of natural aging. For hundreds of years prior, getting older was just a way of life and the complete result of it, but Te' Luma discovered the secret. <div><br /></div><div>Locked inside every human is a very simple trigger lying dormant in a very specific set of amino acids. When each is triggered in a specific sequence, they begin to systematically reverse the effects of aging. Mental acuity is reestablished to its twenty-year plateau, physical prowess becomes that of a typical, moderately fit thirty-year old, the standard signs of aging such as wrinkles and graying recede almost completely, and the person nearly wholly returns to an age where ageing is never even an issue. It's nothing shy of a miracle. But how did Te' Luma find this God-like cure-all? It depends on who you ask.</div><div><br /></div><div>Local legend tells of a man by the name of Martin Derrick, a man, who it seems, is coincidentally the great grand father of Te'Luma's founder, Ivan Derrick. From stories pieced together over the years it is known that Martin, sometime in 2021 was out plowing his farmland just before planting season. He was tilling the soil when suddenly his machine grinded to a halt. As he stopped to investigate the source of his troubles, he discovered something foreign lodged in the tilling disks. After some finagling, Martin was finally able to remove the piece. The item he held in his hand was a pewter-colored (albeit filthy) circular object roughly the size and shape of a tea saucer. After some cleaning in curiosity, he held the disk to the sun and noticed runes and hieroglyphics scrolled across the surface of the outer ring. The center hummed and lit with a dull crimson phosphorescence that spread like blood-filled veins into the writing. It shook, almost unnoticeably, with a numbing thrum that seemed to set off all the nerves in Martin's hands as he held the amulet... yes, that's what it was: an Amulet. And it somehow beckoned. Beckoned to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>As the years passed, Martin began to regain some of his youthful fervor. He tended to daily tasks with a bit more aplomb and whimsy than his age would let on. He was up at four, tending to the animals and the land, in by noon for a hearty brunch, and back to work till sundown. This was daily, and he thought nothing of it, especially as he kept the amulet with him at all times. It wouldn't let him have it any other way. And Martin was content. But he couldn't help thinking, as he said his prayers and kissed his wife, that there was something else he could be doing with his new found vitality. And there was, at least one thing: his wife bore him his first and only child, Emmit.</div><div><br /></div><div>As Emmit grew and began to take on likes and dislikes of his own, it was clear to his father that farming was not in his boy's blood. Emmit was adventurous, daring, risky, and far too scatter-brained to focus on tending the Earth, so, when he turned eighteen, Martin helped his son pack -including the Amulet hoping beyond hope that it would impart the same luck and youthful exuberance it had for Martin, though at the same time quite reluctant to see it go- and sent him on his way to make his fortune in the city. A fortune that would become the basis for the end of death as we know it.</div><div><br /></div><div>To be continued...</div><div><br /></div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-18466762379829014522011-01-17T10:03:00.003-05:002011-01-17T10:48:51.455-05:00The Amulet: Kindred IIKimmy and Molly lay curled up on the couch. It was a little after three a.m. and neither had slept. Tanner arched his eyes restlessly at the girls as though begging them to give him some purpose... something to do. For tonight, even the dog was an insomniac. <div><br /></div><div>The girls had spent several hours writing. They found some paper and a few Sharpies and set about coming up with some semblance of a plan. They had to leave, of this there was no doubt. But where to go? Kimmy knew that she had an uncle who just lived about ten miles away out past the mall, so they had thought about going there. But that would require quite a bit of walking, an exercise neither was to thrilled about. Molly suggested they head to some place like her church, which was a little closer to town, and was full of food and things. They considered this option, too, until the conversation got weighed down with the constant numbing pull of a recent past filled with, of all things, their now dead parents. Then they just sat, silently wept, and stared, with hollow emptiness, into the room. And so it went.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kimmy stretched, reached out and patted Tanner on his ignorant head, and smiled, sadly at her blissfully unaware dog.</div><div>"Tanner... you have it so lucky. You're just a dog... you have no idea what's happening and you have no reason to care," Kimmy choked back a sob and swiped her sleeve across her face.</div><div><br /></div><div>Molly nodded, sighed, and yawned. She wished just a little that she could be Tanner, too.</div><div>"Kimmy... I'm really hungry. What's left here to eat?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Kimmy and Molly raided what was left of the decent food in the fridge consisting of half of the cherry pie they'd begun last night, a bag of carrots, two plastic cups of yogurt, and some very cold -and probably a little old- lemonade. They found quite a few cans of food in the pantry along with several boxes of crackers and other snacks which they decided would be best saved for their trip neither really wanted to discuss. Tanner sniffed, muzzled, and knocked over his kibble and lapped up a few pieces feigning hunger more than fulfilling any real desire to eat. The pink elephant in the room hung around like an impending piece of terrible news; Kimmy and Molly had to get down to the business of forming a cohesive plan. I was time to go.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kimmy went to her parent's bedroom closet and found a small suitcase on wheels and a tennis duffel bag. She spread the bag open and unzipped the luggage on the floor. The girls filled the duffel with all the canned foods they could conceivably carry along with the much lighter crackers and snacks. Kimmy, in turn, found a few outfits in her room, including a few she'd just outgrown that would likely fit Molly, and may just be a bit baggy. She asked Molly if she'd brought a toothbrush to which Molly literally guffawed a big, boisterous laugh. Kimmy laughed, too, and found a spare that had never been opened from its package. They glanced at the medicine cabinet and felt it best to only take things they were sure about and decided on Band-Aids, bandages, cotton balls, a bottle marked Aspirin that Kimmy knew was for aches and pains, and a package of her mom's pantie liners. She hadn't begun her period yet, but there was no sense in tempting fate without some kind of protection. After another thorough check for anything they might need, Kimmy tossed a kitchen knife and the meat tenderizer into the bag. Then she shut both, handed the handle of the suitcase to Molly and slung the heavier duffel over her own shoulder. She leashed Tanner (just in case), snatched the hatchet and slid the handle into her belt. Molly decided against the cumbersome pitchfork and instead opted for the kitchen cleaver.</div><div><br /></div><div>The girls stood at the door. They stared into the open expanse of the world beyond. Under Kimmy's shirt, dangling from her neck, the amulet slowly pulsed. </div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5612900095357421826.post-6124645068229429082010-12-26T22:19:00.003-05:002011-01-17T10:02:04.028-05:00THE AMULET: MemoryThe last thing she remembered saying was, "How did we hit it that hard?"<div>Dana Marts lay in her hospital bed staring, unblinking at the ceiling. The white tiles mocked her from twelve feet away. The monotonously cheeping box beside her monitored her fragile life; fed her fluids and kept the tube attached to her face chugging in the life-giving oxygen. Dana let a tear fall down her cheek at a weird, forty-five degree angle. She really had no other choice. Her chest lifted every six seconds as her lungs inflated and emptied the air from her frail being. Her lips were cracked with chap as the hung, swollen in the room. The blanket was draped over her, innocuously, collecting the dust that hung in the solemn air. No one sat in the chairs, no one paced the room in pregnant anticipation, and no one monitored the machine and took notes with alacrity. And the heavy metal amulet draped off the edge of the bed-side table and thrummed with its beating, amber hue. The last thing she remembered saying was, "How did we hit it that hard?" </div>S. W. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07571275635694016704noreply@blogger.com0