Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.
By
R. Peterson
It was the small black hours
of the nineteenth of April, mid spring 1932 when yellow seed planted days
before had turned green, peeking from between broken clods hungry for sunlight.
I had just eaten a stack of pancakes and was rinsing the dishes in a bucket of
cold water. A light breeze began in the trees and then hid from some nameless sidling
horror. Feathery branch tenants had already begun their restless flutters … soft
talon clicks on new bark … an avian orchestra tuning before a concert. We were all
waiting … plants, masters and animals … but morning never came.
In my mind, night had
lightened somewhat to dim … but now I’m not sure. The hands of the windup clock
on the wall, a birthday gift to Emma a year before she passed, had moved well past
six under the crowing chicken’s ceramic wings. There was what we called dry
current in the overhead wires leading to the farmhouse, but not enough power in
the lines to make the electrics glow. Where there should have been light from
the windows at sunrise there was only a creeping black beyond the lamp on the
table. I opened the front door but could see nothing. In vain I listened for
the rumbling of the storm clouds that had surely thrown a dark blanket over my
farm and the town of Cloverdale a half-mile away. When the oil-flame sputtered
out I searched the house for more matches. But no matter how many I struck, each one
refused to create more than a flea-sized spark.
I was half convinced that
it wasn’t the lamp but my eyes and that I’d gone blind when the bell on the new-fangled
telephone sounded - six times before I managed to find the dang thing in the
darkness, and that was only because I tripped over the wire leading to the empty
barrel the crank box sat on. Sarah Porter scolded me for not answering quicker
as she had the sheriff holding on another line and a dozen more calls to
transfer. I heard Walker’s too-damn-calm voice when Sarah transferred me to his
line.
“Hank, as you probably
know we ain’t got any light in town today, natural or otherwise. Some strange
dark cloud is covering the city and the state police have the highway blocked a
mile out on each side of town. If people find their way out then that’s okay
but they ain’t letting anybody in to cause accidents. We’re on our own and we
want the Emerson family to help lead some of us through the darkness.” Jack and
Gloria Emerson and their three teenage children were all born as blind as bats,
through some chance defect of meeting, mating and a rare genetic eye disease
that was passed on to their own unlucky generations. They operated a dairy with
about thirty Holstein cows and were my closest neighbors going into town.
Since blind farmers
cannot legally operate teams of horses let alone automobiles they walked
everywhere. The town’s only blind family knew every stone and blade of grass in
Cloverdale like a mouse family knows the dark foraging passages under a
granary.
The sheriff asked if I
thought I could make my way there as them people had no phone. I told him I
figured I could just by walking straight out my front door until I touched the
fence then turning right and sliding my hands (with gloves on) along the barbed
wire that ran between my farm and Jack’s a quarter mile south. The sheriff said
to have all five Emerson family members report to his office in town and he’d
tell them what he needed done. I hated to let go of the phone but Sarah cut me
off after she said she had at least a dozen people waiting to complain to the
sheriff.
It was while I was
searching for my gloves that the grinding sound started … like some hungry animal
chewing through the wood on my porch. Darkness is a kind of fear but being
alone in it is worse. I heard the screen door bang open and felt something like
broom bristles bush against my leg just below my knee. Icy fingers ran up my
spine. It was a full two seconds before I could breathe. I first thought of my
dog Rufus but he had died a year before Emma. Thank God I found my gloves a few
moments later. They lay next to my grandfather’s old single action Remington. I
couldn’t remember the last time the pistol had been fired or if it was even
loaded. I jammed the gun in my overall
pocket, no longer feeling safe in my own house.
It wasn’t so much wind
as it was things moving through the air, like bits of rotted fabric that
dissolved when you touched them. I tried to keep going in a straight line after
I exited my front door but reaching the fence seemed to take forever. It was so
dark I began to wonder if I’d gotten turned around and perhaps wasn’t even
going in the right direction. Another of the bristly things brushed my leg and
I decided they had to be tumbleweeds … but how could they be moving without
wind? Finally the glove on my outstretched right hand caught on a barb and a
second later I was gripping the wire fence. I wanted to run but I knew that was
impossible.
-------2-------
I’d never noticed how wide
the irrigation canal was that went under the fence and crossed beneath Canyon
Road until I tried to step across and got both legs wet up to my waist. There
was a vile smell of death that caused me to gag. Something floating in the
water rubbed against the tips of my fingers. Another frosty jolt struck me as I
realized it wasn’t a piece of wood but a floating corpse covered with hair,
from what creature I didn’t know. I had to get away from the smell and I tore
both gloves to shreds on the barbs as I ran.
I could hear the mooing
of the cows when I was perhaps an eighth of a mile away. The sound was
strangely comforting. Dairy herds must be milked every morning and every night
come wind, blizzard or fire and I knew blind Jack and his sightless offspring
would be leading the cows into the barn.
People who have come
back from death have reported seeing a bright light at the end of a tunnel. I
thought I might be on that same path when I noticed a glow in the distance.
Fear became awe and then fear again as I approached the Emerson house. A
glowing, egg-shaped object larger than the milking barn radiated greenish blue
beams of light which created other glowing egg shapes around the house and
several outbuildings. The glow wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the darkness
completely but I could see the ground and other objects about ten yards out
from each building. I was right about the morning milking. I watched Jack’s
blind son David and his sister Nancy lead about twenty cows into the barn,
unaware of the strange glow that covered the outside and inside of the buildings
and the beams of light that led to the glowing egg. Just before the last cow ambled
through the double doors, Nancy turned and cupped her hands around her mouth as
she called. “Sparrrrks! Here boy. Here boy! Saaaaaatan! Here boy! Where the
hell are you two mutts?”
I thought I knew where at least one of the dead dogs
was.
“When we finish the
milking I’ll go look for them,” David told her. “Someone on one of the nearby farms
must have a bitch in heat. I trained them too well.”
“You should have had
them both fixed when the Vet was here giving vaccines, then you wouldn’t have
this problem,” Nancy grumbled. “It was only an extra two dollars.”
“Ouch!” David laughed.
“That’s why dogs are man’s best friend and not woman’s”
I was ready to shout
and make my presence known when several dark shapes passed through the light’s
glow. My tongue felt like a block of ice and my voice fled into the darkness. They
were at least seven foot tall, walking on broomstick legs and balancing with
broomstick-like arms. The huge round heads attached to cylindrical bodies reminded
me of pumpkins except for the greenish blue color and the lifeless large black
saucers where eyes should have been. A wide slit halfway down each cranium opened
to reveal double rows of teeth that looked like white finishing nails pounded
through a thin board of flesh.
Obviously both David
and Nancy were unaware of their monstrous visitors as the creatures gave them
thirty seconds and then followed them inside.
I pulled the Remington from my coat pocket and
started toward the barn. But I quickly stepped back into the shadows when I
heard more voices.
This time it was the youngest son, Leroy herding
another dozen cows toward the barn. About ten steps behind him more of the
strange creatures followed. One of the broomstick monsters carried a bundle of
dead chickens; over twenty orange feet were bound together with bailing wire.
Another led the Emerson’s stock breeding-bull, Twister, by a short rope. Every
animal on the farm large and small was being guided into the barn.
-------3-------
I
wanted to believe Gloria Emerson was in the farm house cooking breakfast. I
could smell frying bacon mixed with the starchy smell of crisp hash-browns as I
crept through the doorway. Despite the grave situation, my mouth watered and my
stomach rumbled. But then I suddenly lost my appetite. The countertops the
floor and the kitchen table were all covered with blood as if the local butcher
had set up shop in their kitchen. Strips of fatty pork still sizzled in a large
pan on the woodstove unaware that it would never be eaten by humans only
consumed by maggots in the months to come.
I
thought I’d reached my limit of terror when I spied something flesh colored in
the dust next to a table leg. Like a fool, I picked it up for a closer
examination. Flaming red nail polish on the manicured end of a finger-tip
caused my vocal cords to go into a kind of convulsive dance. I was screaming
out loud and hurled the finger away as I lurched from the farm house.
-------4-------
The
doors to the barn were closing as I bolted toward them. The beam, slanting from
the barn upward, was filled with objects flying through the translucent tube
like the vacuum capsule pipelines in a large office building. I watched in
horror as disjointed arms, legs and other body parts, human and animal, were sucked
upward into the egg.
I
made it to the barn before the door closed and then wished I hadn’t. A
mechanical ramp of some kind led to a metal platform situated about where the
barn’s hayloft has previously been. A dozen of the broomstick creatures lined
both sides of the ramp as people and animals were fed into a kind of shredder.
Blood spattered across the inside boards of the barn and the wooden beams
holding up the ceiling.
I
don’t remember aiming at anything. I was mesmerized by the huge flame that came
out of the end of the barrel each time I pulled the trigger. The glowing beam
of light and the broomstick creatures all disappeared just as the last body part
was sucked inside the egg. The bottom of the egg looked like the open door of a
blast furnace. An immense heat shriveled the stubble on my chin and I dashed
outside with seconds to spare. The barn, the farmhouse and all the other
outbuildings whooshed into flames.
I emptied the gun into the glowing egg rose as it
rose into the air pulling the darkness with it. I remember seeing sunlight for
the first time in sixteen hours as a final beam of light shot downward. My
right hand felt like it was on fire and the pain was incredible. The egg got
smaller and smaller until it was barely a speck disappearing into the sky. Then
to my horror the darkness came again!
-------5-------
“Bravo!
Bravo!” Richard Chapman from the Montana State Police stood up from his chair
and applauded. “That’s got to be the best flying egg story I’ve heard all year.
His face turned from exuberant to ugly. He walked around to my side of the
table, jerked me out of my seat and slapped me against the wall. “What the hell
did you do with the Emerson family after you torched their farm and made off
with their livestock?”
I stared at him, bemused. Thankfully the second wave
of darkness had been my own mind, trying to protect me. On regaining
consciousness, I’d staggered into town, headed for the Sheriff’s office. Now it
seemed I was back in a nightmare.
“I
told you the truth,” I stammered. “Ask Sheriff Walker … he’s the one that sent
me there.”
“Let
him go Chapman,” Sheriff Walker entered the room holding something in a plastic
bag, “unless you want to explain this in court!” He dropped the bag on the
table. “You were with the other cops at the roadblocks. You know something dark
was keeping any sunlight from reaching our town!”
“That
don’t mean I believe in flying eggs,” Chapman sneered as he opened the bag.
“You’ve
been on the state force for what … six months? You might be a big city cop from
back east but you know nothing about Cloverdale or the unbelievable things that
go on in my small town.”
The look on Chapman’s face was priceless as he
pulled what remained of the ancient handgun from the plastic bag. A severed
finger with flaming red nail polish dropped and rolled across the table. The
Remington serial number on my grand pappy’s gun as well as the black walnut hand
grips looked almost new. The metal cylinder, barrel and trigger parts had
turned into hardened pools of liquid steel.
“Hell
fire!” Chapman gaped. His eyes bulged like two practice cue-balls with large black-painted
dots.
Completely unruffled, Sheriff Walker guided me
around the table and toward the interrogation room door, careful not to bump my
bandaged hand.
“I
don’t think the man under the ground had anything to do with this,” Walker said
with a smile as he closed the door behind us, “… unfortunately there are far worse
things outside our world.”
THE END?
