Synopsis:
When animal mutilations, strange lights, unidentified flying objects and poltergeist activity becomes too much for a Utah rancher and his family, he calls for long distance help. The Boys in Grey arrive to find a place that may even be too much for them as they stumble upon the solution to one of the nation’s most enduring mysteries that really is out of this world…
**Uintah Basin, Utah
20 miles outside of Vernal
April 1993**
The land was dark as the storm lashed the night-laced earth. Lightning snarled like blazing blue white sky-dragons while the thunder growled and rumbled like an enraged monstrous tiger, piercing through the gale force winds that ripped up and down the Uintah Mountains with their rounded and at times pointed snow covered gray rock peaks and valleys. For miles, there was nothing but open field and plain, studded with ancient rocky outcrops that during summer were hot enough to cook an egg on and during winter, turned into dead lumps of ice and snow.
Now was the spring time and the storms were frequent as the heat of the day rose in shimmering fields of invisible sweltering nothingness, the air hot and humid, and at night, the air cooling down so fast it was like winter had set in again. Nature was powerful in the Uintah Basin. Here, man’s survival was secondary only to nature’s whim to allow him to claw out a meager existence and only then if she was in a good mood.
The city of Vernal was lost into the miasma of the late night storm, what locals would have called a gulley washer. Nevertheless, this land was not totally uninhabited. Native American tribes had lived on the land almost continuously for over twelve thousand years, and more importantly, the Ute Indians who called the basin and the surrounding plains and hills home then as they do now. The first white men had first set foot in the Ute lands in mid 1700’s, led by Father Dominguez and Escalante, Spanish priests and explorers.
In the 1860’s, when Brigham Young had sent an expedition to the basin to see if the region could be settled, he was less than enthusiastic with his reviews, going on to state that the basic was nothing but a waste, good for nothing but nomadic hunting and to hold the world together. The Utes had carved a living out of the rough land, and they were a proud and just people, fierce and loyal yet full of stories and wonderful legends of beings and creatures, stories of strange lights in the sky and vanishing people.
While they were a brave and powerful people, there was one place that the Utes refused to go. For fifteen generations they had avoided patch of land in the western basin, a land of cliffs, gorges and plains with forests and fields. When they talked about the place, it was in hushed quick whispers, whispers dripping with fear that silenced the stories before they were ever fully uttered in case …in case IT heard them and would come to collect its dues. The place was a cursed place they said, a dark place, an evil place for it was as they said, in the path of the skinwalker…
Emerson Ranch, Uintah Basin….
Ronald Emerson was forty-three years old. He had been raised by his father, a stout and sturdy rancher with a firm hard worth ethic in mind and Ron had inherited that ethic. He was tall, about six foot three, and not a small man by any means. He had wavy and now somewhat thinner hair that had at one time been a dark brown but was now a rusty mix of gray and tan. His face was weather lined, not chiseled but still it showed the many hard days out in the hard Utah sun. His eyes were sharp yet not unkind and were the color of a steel gray pool and as sharp as an eagles.
His ears, just as sharp, rested under his mop of unruly hair. He wore a dark rain slicked coat that reached down to his ankles and he rode atop a beautiful chestnut stallion, his personal favorite of the four horses he and his family kept on the ranch, named Dommers. The hat on his head threatened to blow away as the violent winds from the storm. Around him, the rain swept across the sun-baked grass and the stars had vanished into the swirl of dark clouds. The lightning flashed like a supernova, causing the shadows of the trees to shoot across the ground in horrifying shapes, twisted forms and dancing death umbraes.
A few seconds later, the thunder shook the earth hard enough that Ron thought it would split open. Dommers reared on his hind legs, neighing loudly, his rain-slicked reins almost sliding out of Ron’s grip, his mane billowing, his eyes rolling in his sockets as he chewed on his bit.
“WHOA! Hold it!” Ron yelled, his voice lost in the storm as he tried to calm the horse down, and with great effort was able to get him to settle down enough, though he pranced uncomfortably in place.
The rain made it hard to see but Ron could make out his fifteen year old son, Jake, next to him, dressed in a yellow rain slicker, soaked to the bone just as Ron himself. They both had been out in the raging tempest for the better part of two hours trying to round up the cattle that had escaped their pen and had hastily made for the fields next to the river and the gulley as if the devil himself were on their heels. That thought made Ron screw up his face as he tried to force the idea from his mind and the images that came with it.
The cows, he remembered had been peaceful, standing under their shelter in the north east corner of the ranch, about fifty feet from the rustling tree line, trying to avoid the storm as much as they could, lowing and calling in the dark. He had been watching them intently as his wife, Becca, stood next to him, tense like a rubber band. The storm was bad but that was not what had the Emerson’s worried. It was the something else that had been plaguing the ranch since they had moved in six months ago. He remembered the first day as clear as now as if it were yesterday.
The ranch itself had struck him and Becca as far and beyond as possessing the most stunning landscapes they had ever laid eyes upon.
480 acres of cottonwood trees, Russian olives and a lush greenly carpeted grazing pasture on the north east end of the property bordered by a forest that went on for miles all the way back to the majestic snow capped Uintah Mountains that overlooked it all. The ranch was bordered on the north by the forest and the pasture which itself was bordered by a two hundred foot ridge made of red rock. When it rained, the dirt and mud below the ridge became a deadly torrent. This canal was where the cows had run too, huddled in terror and in fear.
But it wasn’t of the storm.
He remembered seeing the herd divide into two groups, like something was running in between them, scattering them, working them into a frenzy. He had strained to see it then, through the glass of the kitchen window, but the storm made the shadows all alive but he could have sworn there was nothing there. It had been moments later that whatever was scaring his animals, unseen as it was, finally worked them into such a state that his largest and most prize heifer had ran head long into the fence line, smashing through the thick wooden planks like toothpicks sending shattered wooden braces and joints flying. The herd had swarmed out behind her, trampling her as she fell into a daze, stamping the life out of her in their haste to be away from their invisible tormentor as their hooves thundered across the open plain towards the ridge and the gulley.
It wasn’t the first weird thing to have happened.
No. The weird lights came first. The strange blue and red orbs that flew around the ranch. The objects in the house going missing and turning up in odd places…the odd snorting sounds when nothing was there even in the house itself. The strange sulphurous stench and the absolutely horrifying feeling of being watched that was so real it often felt like someone was there with you, right on the top of the back of your neck, breathing but you never felt anything. Only the idea of what I might see kept me from turning around but even if I did, there was never anything there, he remembered.
Those were the little things…
Then there had been his dogs, three prize blue heelers who were about the closet thing he had to a best friend. He, Becca and Jake loved them and they were the best guard dogs a man could ask for. One day, one of those blue spheres had appeared and started tormenting them, bobbing and weaving just out of reach, sending the poor beasts into a frenzy of rage. In a spout of anger, Ron had let them off their leashes to chase the blue ball of light, tired of having his animals terrified, tired of seeing the unknown lights and the strange presences and smells…the smell of a predator.
The dogs had chased the light across the field and the light seemed to pay them no mind, only dipping low enough to tease them, almost as if it were playing with them.
Ron remembered growing fearful as the light reached the edge of the tree line and for some reason he never recalled, he yelled for the dogs to come back, but they had ignored him, instead, plunging into the forests after the blue ball. A few moments later, they vanished into the vegetation and for a few seconds, it was silent.
Then came the sound, a high piercing howling wail of agony, tapering off into yelps and canine screams. Ron wanted to tear into the woods but found that had had not been able to move and out of terror refused to go in after his prize dogs. His dogs never came out that night or the next morning. When the sun came up, and having gotten his courage back, Ron had grabbed his gun and went in after his pets.
What he found in the clearing, he would never forget until the day he died.
There, in the clearing just past the tree line, the grass was scorched deep black and brown and the air stuck of burned hair and charred flesh. There were three circles of deeper black earth, as if something had burned intensely in those spots. In the middle of the spots was a pile of black greasy black material that was unrecognizable except that it stunk of burned fur.
Whatever those blue spheres were they had incinerated his pets, liquefying them alive.
He had vomited and had run from the clearing and from that day forward, he kept his distance when the blue ■■■■■ of light were dancing on the horizon.
Now, almost a month later, here he was, with more weirdness as something invisible had driven his cows to smash through the fencerow. He and Jake had not seen any sign of what may have spooked them but regardless, these cattle were his family’s source of income and Ron prided himself on loosing less than 1 percent of his herd each year before in New Mexico, before they had moved here, to the Uintah Basin. Over the last two hours they had rounded up almost all of the cattle and all except for the one that had been trampled during the stampede were accounted for.
Or they would have been, except for the younger cow that had just given birth to a new calf last week. The calf itself was safe with the herd that they had managed to round up into a rough circle, and though shaken badly, they showed no further signs of stampeding. But the younger cow was nowhere to be seen.
The near hurricane blasted them with rain and pieces of grass as the lighting snarled in the skies like snakes of light, flashing like strobes and the wind and rain made it hard to hear. Jake’s horse, a younger and slightly smaller female named Ebony remained stilled but her eyes were wide and her nostrils flared with each breath. Ron knew that something wasn’t right but he couldn’t see anything in this storm.
“Dad! Where is she?!” Jake shouted as the rain lashed his face, matting his hair to his forehead.
“I don’t know! I hope she didn’t—“
There. He heard it. A low-pitched low that grew in timbre to a pleading bellow that was almost lost in the thunderclap.
Ron smiled in spite of the situation. The cow. She was alive.
“Over here! Stick close to me and stay away from that ridgeline! That’s a two hundred foot drop!” he called and with a flick of his heels sent Dommers into motion, the horse trotting forward briskly. About five feet from the edge of the ridgeline, Ron pulled back on the reins and Dommers neighed wildly shaking his head, stamping his front feet. Something was here he didn’t like but still there was nothing in sight. The cow’s pitiful cries were coming from…
“How in the hell?!” Ron cursed violently as he looked over the edge of the ridgeline and in the next lightning flash saw the young female at the bottom of the gulley trying to climb her way back up out of the swollen river onto the rain slicked and muddy shores where the mud ran in streams and torrents. Her front legs were cutting deep grooves in the mud as the water began to rise as the rain engorged the already turgid river.
“We have to get her out!” Ron reached around to his saddlebag and took out his longest rope, and he gauged he had about three hundred feet of it. Riding over to the nearest thick cottonwood that he could find, he looped the rope around it in a triple slipknot, making sure it wasn’t going to come undone. “Jake, come here! Your smaller and weigh less. I need to you tie this around you and take the rope down there,” Ron said, pointing an inclined drop that went down much more gently and shortened the trip down to the river to about a hundred and fifty feet. “That slope is made of rock and it’s safer than trying to go down on the southern end!”
“Right dad!”
Jake went about wrapping the rope around his waist while below them the cow was beginning to tire, thrashing wildly.
Next to her, in the dark, a dim dirty yellow glint flashed that had no nothing to do with lightning. The flash grew and began to stretch out, flat, hovering in mid air as the space around it begin to ripple like a heat mirage. The yellow light began to burn a furious orange and the rip began to widen, like a mouth. The cow noticed the light, the strange pulsing shimmering brightness, hotter than the sun.
Her eyes began to run in their sockets, rolling wildly as she began to bellow louder, her tongue sticking out and froth forming at her jaws, clawing for the shores as a dark shape began to reach up and out of the light, probing, seeking.
Jake had made it half way down the slope, carefully, his footing precarious as he nearly slipped on the loose rock, his father holding the line steady, the storm pelting them violently, his flashlight beam aimed at the ground beneath his feet.
Almost there, he told himself…almost…just a bit further and—
His feet went out from under him as the mud and rock slurry finally took away all the traction he had and with a cry of shock and pain, he slammed down hard on his back, driving the wind from him as he crashed and rolled down the final fifty feet, the world spinning wildly.
“JAKE!!!” he heard his father yell over the storm and then the world threatened to go blacker than it already was as he hit rock bottom, careening to a sloppy and muddy stop on the slick and mud thick shores of the river.
Rubbing his head he called out.
“I’m alright! Just fell on the slope!”
His father ran to the edge and kept the rope tight in his hands as the slack began to play out. Down below, Jake found his flashlight lying a few feet away from where he had come to rest. Picking it up, he was surprised it was still working. He cleaned off the lens and shook it for good measure. The beam stayed steady. He made his way carefully with large steps to pull out of the mud as it sucked his feet down deeper, getting closer to the cow.
Odd, he thought. She wasn’t moving or calling anymore. She’s probably exhausted, he thought. Wiping the mud out of his eyes, he saw that he wasn’t mistaken. She was lying as still as stone.
The light played across her eyes and that was when he realized something was horribly wrong.
Her eyes weren’t reflecting the light. Normally, they would be shiny, wet, and even slightly greenish as they refracted the beam. But there was nothing….nothing but darkness…and…
Red. Lots of red.
Jake felt his stomach retch as he moved the beam down her face…
…what was left of it.
…the flesh from her jaw had been stripped clean to the bone, exposing her teeth in a death’s grin, her nose holes now gaping black and smoking slightly. Her tongue…gone…One of her ears…sliced away as neatly as with a scalpel, revealing the pink flesh of her inner skull standing wetly out in the beam of the flashlight.
As his light moved down the body, his hand began to shake and the light began to dance. There were strange deep gashes on her sides, as if she been raked by something with ungodly claws but the slashes were huge, a good few inches across. It was her rear that was the worst.
He felt his mouth drop open and he knew he was going to vomit. He kept swallowing as he moved closer to see the impossible. Her entire ■■■■■■ had been cored out, as if something had taken a tool larger than a coffee can, but perfectly round and sawed into her and…
…yanked out everything inside. The light dropped from his hands.
The cow’s internal organs were missing.
Gone.
Taken.
There was no blood on the ground. No sign of a struggle.
His mind reeled.
“DAD!!!”
Ron had worked his way down the slope and stood next to his son, his own flashlight illuminating the grisly scene.
“….they got her…its back again dad…” Jake said the rain poured down and the night boomed with the growls of thunder.
“…Its back…”
Ron wondered, there, in the dark, with the smell of sulphur tainting the air and death all around him, if the growls were caused by the thunder alone.
**One Week Later…
Emerson Ranch
Uintah Basin….**
The strange car came bouncing up the rutted gravel driveway, dust trailing out behind it towards the Emerson ranch homestead, following the now repaired fence line closely. The sun shone brightly and all signs of last week’s torrential downpour had vanished. Now the air was warm with a steady yet gentle breeze that smelled of cottonwood, hay grass and earth that caressed the world like a ghostly mother. The single story ranch house was simple yet functional, just as it needed to be. A large plate glass window overlooked the expanse of fields that stretched all the way back to the main road, while the kitchen faced the northeast pastures and the tree lines.
It was built of brick that had begun to fade to that light pinkish red that brick seems to discolor to. It had built just over fifty years prior by the previous family. When the Emerson’s had bought it, they had discovered it had strange add ons by the previous family, including double dead bolts and latches on every door, inside and outside as well as heavy iron rings sunk into the ground on the back porch facing the north eastern fields with heavy chains attached. The previous owners had said they kept guard dogs posted there. They never said what they were guarding against. Ron had found it odd, but he and Becca assumed it was the eccentricities of the elderly.
Six months later, Ron wondered darkly if he was the one who was mistaken. The deadbolts and latches now served an all too clear purpose…to keep things out that wanted in.
He sat on the front porch with Jake, sipping a glass of lemonade, his hat pulled low over his eyes, dressed in well-worn jeans and a t-shirt, his boots on his feet. Jake wore a sleeveless top and khaki shorts and sneakers. Becca had run to town to discuss some issues with the mortgage company. Jake was enjoying the day off as the school’s air conditioning system had shorted out and the school board said it was too hot for them to be there.
Ron watched the two-door coupe bounced up and down the road at a decent pace as it neared the entrance to the ranch, the dust cloud behind it rising and fading into the air like an ancient smoke signal. It was a Chevy Cavalier, a light turquoise with black trim and cheap plastic wheels. A peace sign hung from the rearview mirror and it flashed brilliantly silver in the sun’s glare.
The stories of the strangeness that was taking place on his ranch had finally been leaked by neighborhood gossip to the press and the media had a field day with it. Since it had broken late last week, he had been besieged by curiosity seekers, wackos and wierdos of every nation and creed. He highly suspected this would be a another one and frankly, he was sick of it. He eyed the car with a mix of irritation and suspicion as it stopped at the gate and waited from him to come up and greet the driver.
When it was clear that they would not be going away, Ron sighed and set his drink down.
“Come on…let’s go see what in the hell they want. Probably want to build another tourist attraction.” He grumbled in frustration to Jake as he rose from his wooden chair on the front porch. Crossing the yard, his footsteps crunching as he got on the drive way path proper, Ron made a fast, deliberate and steady trip straight to the gate and opened it, stepping out of it with Jake not far behind, his hands in his short’s pockets.
He stopped next to the driver’s door as the driver’s window rolled down. He got a glimpse of the driver and he rolled his eyes mentally. Perhaps it showed because the man behind the wheel of the Cavalier flinched slightly. The driver was a tall man, maybe six foot three, with blonde hair and the blue eyes of those of Norse decent but he had none of the power or presence of his Viking ancestors. Rather, he was skinny, with a pointed nose and watery eyes. He wore numerous rings on his fingers and was dressed in a tie-die shirt and bell-bottoms that had went out of fashion thirty years ago.
“Look mister, you need to turn around and just go back where you came from. We don’t want to do any more interviews, we sure as hell don’t want any documentaries and don’t offer me a theme park. We aren’t interested.” Ron summarily and gruffly told him.
The man shook his head and held up his hands in supplication.
“No, man you got it wrong. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to meditate here, to connect to the energy of our mother earth and nature. That’s all man…to commune, man. I drove a long way just to be here. I can feel the energy right now….come on man…just a few minutes…where it’s all happened at…I have to see.”
He sounded and looked like a damn hippy and though Ron couldn’t smell any drugs on him, Ron still felt his eyebrow reach for the brim of his hat. He surreptitiously looked at Jake in disbelief. Jake shrugged. The guy was obviously nuts.
“Just ten minutes man…that’s all and I’ll go. Swear, man. No photos, no video, nothing.”
Ron considered.
The man wasn’t asking for money, he had no cameras or recording equipment that Ron could see. He was one man not ten and if he got out of hand, the gun was in the back of the truck, Ron though dryly. What the hell…this could be interesting if nothing else than for a laugh and God knows we need it around here.
Sighing in resignation, Ron threw up his hands.
“Fine. Park next to the house. We’ll take my truck to the fields.”
Ron nodded to Jake and Jake quickly pushed the long metal gate all the way open, swinging it wide to allow the car to pass through. They both stood and watched the man park the dusty coupe next to the flowerbeds on the outside edge of the path. Ron cringed. Becca was going to be furious because he could have sworn he saw the left front tire crush some flowers to a mushy pulp. The man oblivious, shut down the engine and leaped out, practically jumping in place with excite as he looked around him, as if he had never seen a house before.
Jake dutifully closed and locked the gate behind him and followed his father to Ron’s truck that was parked just outside of the garage. The truck was a 1989 Dodge Ram, and still kept in cherry condition. Its skin was normally a deep red and the grill and headlights were gleaming squares of chrome and glass. Right now, the big truck was covered in mud and dirt and was in bad need of a wash.
Jake waited patiently by the truck while Ron quickly stepped inside the house to grab the truck keys from the key holder next to the door, letting the screen door slam behind him as he exited, keys in hand, jangling as he walked. Seeing his father with the keys and realizing he did not want to be sitting in the truck cab with this lunatic, Jake bounded up into the truck bed, using the rear tire as a boost.
Unlocking the truck, Ron didn’t even look back at the hippie.
“Get in. We don’t have all day.” He barked and without further prompting, the strange tall blonde man practically tripped over himself to jump into the passenger seat, slamming the heavy metal door in his excitement hard enough to rattle the glass. Ron growled in irritation but said nothing. Revving the powerful engine, Ron shifted the big truck into gear and pulled out of the driveway and started out across the yard and to the fence line gate.
Jake quickly leaped down and opened the gate while his father drove through. Closing it behind the truck, he leaped back up in the truck bed as the vehicle began its journey in earnest to the north-eastern fields, bouncing and jumping over the ruts in the ground, the open fields sprawling out around them as the ranch house slowly faded from view.
As the minutes ticked by and they drew closer to where the weirdness seemed to be centered at, the blonde man grew more and more excited, like he was going to see some kind of park ride or amusement show. Ron’s aggravation with the idiot grew. If only the man understood how this thing, whatever it was, had terrified his family, plagued them with fear, butchered their animals…it was like living in hell.
Fifteen minutes later and now well away from the ranch house, they were in the center of the grazing pastures with forests on either side of the wide-open field. The grass came half way up to the truck tires and every so often cow dung piles sat dryly in the earth. Rocks poked up occasionally with their dull gray faces silent and somber. A dry wind blew and the sky was still cloudless. Throwing the car in park, Ron killed the motor.
“This is it. This is where most of the weirdest shit happens. Lights, animals dying. Weird looking flying things. You have ten minutes.” He said bluntly, and got out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. The blonde hippie had already bounded out of the truck and bolted off to about fifty feet from the truck. He stood there for a moment, and closed his eyes and began to breathe slowly and deeply before finally tossing his head back and spreading his arms out like wings, like Christ on the cross and stood that way. Ron leaned up against the passenger side of the truck and looked from the crazy man up at Jake who watched silently but was barely holding back a laugh.
The sun shone and the scene was almost idyllic, a strange sort of natural beauty to it and for about five minutes everything was normal.
Until Ron realized that all the birds had stopped singing.
In fact, he couldn’t hear anything at all now almost as if the world had been shut off from all sound, like in the dead of winter when there is a deep snow on the ground. It was that same pressing heavy silence.
Somewhere, there was a noise, high-pitched and slightly metallic, almost like a cowbell.
It rang twice and then stopped.
None of his cows had bells. The man didn’t seem to hear the noise.
Suddenly, Jake stiffened, as if something had poked him in the ribs. Ron caught he movement out of the corner of his eye and looked at his son. The boy was facing forward, his eyes wide and his face had drained of color.
“Jake? What’s wrong?” he asked, the blonde man paying them no mind.
“Dad…look.” Jake pointed, his hand shaking in growing fear.
Ron whirled and looked, following his son’s gaze, his eyes tracing the ground all the way back to the far tree line, about a eighty yards from where they stood. At first he saw nothing but dark trees and cool shade, dark and impenetrable. There was nothing there—
Then he saw it.
He felt his blood run cold and his heart begin to speed up as every hair on his body stood up. His flesh broke out in goose bumps.
There, running through the trees, was…something. It was huge, at least a good six feet high, maybe ten to fifteen feet long…but there was no form…only a strange transparent heat-shimmer like mirage that distorted the world as it passed through it briefly, like clear water given form. The trees parted around, the grass bent and swayed as it ran through them, stalking quickly, like a predator…but there was nothing there other than that strange heat-mirage.
It came to the edge of the tree line, slowed down and seemed to slink out of the bushes, pausing at the edge of the field. With a growing sense of horror and realization, Ron realized it was hunting them, looking at them…whatever this thing was. This was new. A whole new damn ball game. Ron couldn’t see a head or body but he knew…he had seen big cats hunt and kill their prey…this heat shimmer behaved just the same.
It seemed to lock on to the blonde man like a homing missile.
“Oh shit…”
The shimmering field of waving transparent lines moved faster than his eye could track and instantly it charged, rocketing across the open field at sixty miles an hour, the ground thumping beneath its invisible feet as dirt clods flew up from a body that didn’t seem to exist.
The blonde man still stood there, his eyes closed his head thrown back, and humming to himself, his arms wide as the invisible horror bore down upon like a locomotive. Ron moved to shout a warning and the beast was upon the man, coming to an immediate and impossible stop without warning right before him in a giant shimmering shifting heat haze.
Whatever the monstrosity was seem to pull in on itself and then the air was split by an ungodly roar, a bellow from another time and place, half a scream, half a bear’s roar with the deep resonance of a lion that shook the world. At last the hippie man opened his eyes in terror as the force of the beast’s scream blew his clothes backward like a hurricane, throwing him to the ground, a good ten feet back, head over heels. The heat haze seemed to look up at Ron and a low growl came from the empty air as the haze itself turned and bolted back melting and vanishing into the tree line as if it had never existed.
His brow covered in a cold stick sweat, Ron finally shook himself out of his fear and went to check on the hippie, kneeling down beside the man. All he need, Ron thought darkly, was for some New Age ■■■■ to get on his property and have a heart attack. The second Ron got within grabbing distance, the blonde lanky fellow latched onto him in a death grip, weeping in sheer terror, his grip strong with the power of a man in the throes of unparalleled fear. Ron struggled to extricate himself and the man simply would not let go. Jake looked on helpless.
Exasperated, Ron finally told the man bluntly. “If you do not let go, I am going to hit you.”
In a shivering voice, the man did not look up, but replied.
“I’ll let go…just get me out of here…promise you’ll get me out of here….”
Ron nodded and the man finally let go and quickly, Ron helped him into the truck.
Fifteen minutes later, Ron and Jake, back at the house, watched as the strange and now very scared blonde man leaped into his car and spun gravel he peeled out of the driveway so fast.
As the Cavalier practically flew over the ruts and bumps in the long driveway, Ron made a decision immediately.
For the last six months since they had moved in, they had been terrorized by strange lights, orbs, things moving on their own, weird noises and strange and often horrendous animal deaths. Today, the …stuff…whatever it was…had taken on a new deadly turn…for the first time, it had showed a clear and present threat to a human being directly.
His family wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe. His livelihood was being destroyed.
Enough was enough.
It was time to call in some help
The only question was who he was going to reach out to? Who in the hell do I call?
Suddenly a dim memory came to mind, a memory he would’ve have thought twice about being the practical man that he was. Now that memory came to light and so did a phone number.
He knew who to call.
He went inside the house as Jake stood behind him in the living room, the cool air conditioning feeling fantastic compared to the sweltering heat outside. He dialed the number and lifted the handset to his ear as the number began to ring. A moment later, a woman’s voice answered.
“Yes…my name is Ron Emerson…and I have a problem.”
<B>**GHOST
BUSTERS**</B>
<B>**“Mutes”.**</B>
