Her tone begged forgiveness, 'You know it’s not me, right?'
'I know,' he hugged her again. 'Let’s take a break. We’ve been at this a while.'
She agreed, stood, and led him away from the wedding plans and into the lightless living room. Despite the dark, he found the television remote control by instinct and powered on the set. The plush sofa flickered in television light. The couple sunk deep into the couch.
'It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?'
'Sure, as long as I start showing some ambition. We can’t have little Ben and Carol Ann crawling around with dirty diapers, right?'
Her eyes widened.
A voice from the television interrupted: '…State police say it’s as if all the drivers took their feet off the gas pedal at the same time. No skid marks whatsoever.'
A camera followed a short-sleeved reporter across a stretch of highway. Red and blue lights flashed off canyon-like rock faces on either side of the road. The reporter stopped and pointed toward a tangled mass of vehicles. Fire trucks and police cars surrounded the mess.
'This is an isolated area. Westbound traffic on Interstate 80 would not have seen what happened here because of rocks, cliffs, and trees. The only evidence left behind is the empty clothes of the victims, who were probably driving along at over sixty miles per hour when something happened. It is an eerie, almost serene sight- lacking the carnage usually associated with highway pile-ups.
'EMS has counted thirty vehicles but no persons, no remains, no blood-not a clue as to what happened. Authorities will attempt to identify the missing persons from license plates and VIN numbers. A command post has been established at the nearby State Police barracks in Milton.'
Ashley gasped aloud. Richard shuddered.
They knew Milton to be barely a thirty-minute drive from where they sat.
The news of the weird had reached their corner of the world.
2. Shadows
Rich and his demo car left the suburbs of Wilkes-Barre and headed into the mountains and forests surrounding the valley. The high beam headlights cut through the pitch-black night revealing lonely, boring black top and monotonous double yellow lines encased in walls of featureless woodlands.
Sporadic flashes of light danced behind the clouds overhead. Rich guessed the flashes to be the summer phenomena known as ‘heat lighting.’ Those distant and dull flickers lacked the power to brighten the countryside and served only to heighten a feeling of isolation.
The glow of the gauges reflected off Rich’s tired eyes. The digital clock on the stereo showed 12:30 a.m.
With nothing but trees, hills, and the occasional stream to serve as landmarks most travelers would find the area a bland, confusing maze. To Richard Stone-a life long resident of the 'Back Mountain' section of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania-those roads traveled familiar ground. Over the years, he had crisscrossed those roads and the surrounding wilderness on dirt bikes and snowmobiles.
He made his way through almost automatically, concentrating more on watching for suicidal white tail deer than on direction. He could probably drive the route blindfolded.
AM talk radio broadcast from the stereo. The host and his callers fed on the rash of disappearances like frenzied sharks.
'Grant from Brooklyn, you’re on.'
'I think the government gots a new ex-pair-mental lazer to keep our population down. We’re using up all da water ‘n stuff, ya know?'
The host responded, 'Oh now that’s just beautiful. I guess the Norwegians were overpopulated, too. It’s not a death ray, Grant. I think it’s a bunch of green-skinned Martian-types snatching up specimens for their zoo. I’d even believe our last caller more than you, the one who thinks it’s judgment day and God is just taking his time.'
Richard turned off the radio. He had heard nothing other than theories and conspiracies and biblical references since leaving Ashley’s couch.
Enough.
Instead of the radio, Richard selected the CD changer on the stereo. The soothing tone of Patsy Cline’s Walking After Midnight eased through the cabin and filled Richard with a hint of calm.
He listened to a series of her greatest hits, songs his mother and father had introduced to him years ago. Songs that had filled the cabin of their family car during long Thanksgiving trips to Granny’s house across state near Pittsburgh: five hours of Patsy Cline, young Elvis, and Buddy Holly.
What might sound an eclectic cross section of artists to some all held the same place in Richard’s mind. The music conjured more than simple images; it conjured feelings of affection and warmth. The songs served as a reminder of his connection to his family. A reminder of the memories and experiences they shared. He could nearly smell fresh-baked pumpkin pie drifting in the melody.
By the time Patsy finished Sweet Dreams, that monotonous blacktop weaving through those featureless forests arrived at his driveway.
Richard steered on to the partially hidden path cut through those thick forests. The tires of the sedan rumbled over the gravel drive as it ascended a soft slope until reaching the clearing surrounding his family’s cedar home.
A simple two-car garage sat perpendicular to the house. A solitary bulb hung between the bay doors and carved a globe of bright out of the otherwise dark lot. Another light joined the first when the motion of his car activated a security spotlight atop the front porch.
He guided the Malibu to a quiet stop at the foot of the steps behind the Blazer belonging to his dad.
His father’s career had changed from truck driver to well-paid mid-level manager five years ago. That had been ten years after founding a private trucking company. A larger conglomerate had bought the small-but- growing company. Dad’s reward had not only been a lump of cash but a desk job with good pay and hours to make a banker envious.
Mom worked part time at the Arthritis Foundation for charity, not income. She made it home by six every night No doubt her Miata rested safely inside the closed garage next to dad’s partially assembled classic Mustang.
Rich swung open the car door, stood, and shivered. The late June night had felt warm when leaving Ashley’s but out there-in the 'boonies'-the thermometer read lower.
The heavy thud of the car door closing echoed across the night, possibly the first artificial sound in hours. He took two steps toward the wide, sweeping porch. The stone and dirt mix of the clearing crunched underfoot. Another shimmer of ‘heat lightning’ flickered through the heavens.
He heard a noise. Not quite the noise of thunder, but similar, and it came from the forest. Something out there moved, barely beyond the reach of the homestead’s lights.
Something big. Something gigantic.
Rich’s brain struggled to decode what he saw: a mass of black nearly as tall as the oldest Oak on their property and lurking behind the first rows of trees in the forest.
That slightly chilled June breeze blew through him like a sharp arctic gale. That familiar forest twisted into a strange, warped place.
Most of it remained hidden beyond the screen of trees. He glimpsed only a tiny fraction of the whole. What he saw made no sense: a black, scaly wall.
A feeling of insignificance fell over him with tremendous weight, so much so that his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. Fear kept him in place, out-dueling an impulse to seek a hiding spot. He had become a puny ant in the shadow of a massive elephant, thankfully small enough not to warrant attention.
The intruder grunted a noise-maybe an exhale-low enough to tremble the ground, followed by a muffled crunch as unseen weight stomped on the forest floor. A vibrant crack told of a snapping tree limb. The wall of
