Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find ghost stories, unsolved mysteries and other stories of the strange and bizarre. I'm always looking for both fiction and non-fiction stories of the paranormal – strange, supernatural, dark and creepy. You can even send me links to articles, creepy pastas and other stories you find online that you feel would be great for the show. Share them all with me at WeirdDarkness.com. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate and Shadows Symphony. In this episode, I reach back in time and pull an entire month of episodes from years past. In this episode, I reach back to exactly one year ago, September 2016. Now sit back, turn down the lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Five years ago, my wife and I decided to take a weekend break. The hotel we chose was a hotel named the Berenie Castle Hotel on the outskirts of Peebles on the Scottish Porter. The hotel itself lay in acres of land surrounded by forest. While getting dressed for an evening meal, my wife was sat at the dressing table while I was standing by the bed when suddenly the television, which stood on the other side of the room, switched itself on. It stayed on for a few minutes, then switched itself off again. It did this about three times. Neither my wife or myself felt phased by this until the following morning while we were checking out. The receptionist said to us, Oh, I see you were in the haunted room last night. When we told her what had happened, she said the room was haunted by a maid who had once worked at the hotel. She said that others had reported being woken up by a lady who would stand at the bottom of the bed staring at them as they slept. Others had witnessed the TV switching on and off as we did. We didn't at any time feel threatened in any way, but in fact have visited the same hotel on many occasions. The Berenie Castle Hotel can be googled and the story of the haunting is there for all to read. It was about 10 p.m. in late June when this happened and it really creeped me out. I live in Columbia in the countryside. I was forced one day to move my PC to our third floor studio to get a better signal from the modem in our house. While I was setting up the PC, I noticed that my iPhone's iCloud storage was so large that it could not actually complete a backup. This made me spend the next half an hour clearing my phone of old junk I no longer used. Lastly, I began to erase old pictures that I didn't wish to keep anymore. I cleared almost all of the photos, leaving just the oldest ones. There in the top row next to the very first photograph that I took with my phone of my dogs was a really very creepy photo of a kid with black eyes just staring into the camera. It was a very disturbing image. I have no idea where this picture came from. It was very old and I think I would have noticed it earlier, but the photo seemed to have appeared from nowhere. I tried tapping on the photo to enlarge it and get a better look at it to see if I could discern anything else, but instead the photo app crashed. When I went back after the crash, the picture was gone while every other picture was still there. I still have absolutely no idea where it came from. I didn't take the photo. I don't know anyone who would send me such a picture. This is not made up. It really happened and it scared me to death. I spent the next hour and a half looking for any possible answer. I often think about finding that photo on my phone and today I found this site and decided to post my story. It may not get posted, but it at least clears my mind at least someone else knows about this. I learned about black-eyed kids a few years ago through some of these odd conspiracy TV shows that sometimes pop up in Discovery Channel and such, but I was never really convinced about it until that picture just popped up without any reasonable explanation. How did the photo get there? It makes me shudder to think about it. As a young teenager, I was very close friends with the son of a geologist. My friend and his family used to spend much of their vacation time in Oregon and California exploring the ancient caves. One year, they invited me to go with them. When we got to the caves, my friend's father told us to take a sweater and a flashlight because it was very cold and very dark inside the caves. Me and my friend came to the entrance of the cave and his parents and sisters followed. When we were walking through the cave, there was a bunch of these little cul-de-sacs to our left and right. I went with my friend into one. It was called Lucifer's Corner. We stayed in there for around five minutes just looking around and realized that we were alone.  You could not even see your hand inches from your face. This was kind of random, but I told my friend to say Bloody Mary three times. He did and nothing happened. So, we fired up our flashlights and headed for the exit. The caves were starting to get boring. Once you've seen one cave, you've seen them all, right? We back out into the daylight. We couldn't find his family, so we assumed that they were back inside the caves. My friend and I went back to the entrance, entered the cave and walked through once again. We eventually came back to Lucifer's Corner where my friend and I had been before. We noticed that there were three lit candles melted on the cave wall in the same spot where my friend had chanted the Bloody Mary's. It didn't take anything else to make us turn around and bolt toward the exit. When we got outside, we were breathing heavily trying to catch our breath. We were both trying to come up with an explanation of why the candles were there, but there just wasn't one. The first house we lived in was alive with spirits. My parents didn't like to mention it, but it was. I was probably four at the time when I first noticed it. We were having a family reunion at our house and had the whole family over. Lots of food, lots of play, and lots of fun to be had with my cousins. I remember being tired and wanting to go to sleep just when the sun went down, though I went to my room and fell asleep. The party was still going on downstairs. I woke up to someone knocking at my window, but it wasn't a polite knock. It was like pounding with urgency. I didn't think anything of it, except that it was probably one of my cousins being mean or something. But the knocking hadn't stopped. It was just a constant knocking. I got out of bed to see who it was. I walked over to the window and opened my curtains, and while the loud knocking was still happening, there was no one there in front or on the side of the window. I remember breathing, getting really heavy in tears forming in my eyes. I couldn't move. I was so scared. Somehow I broke free of this paralysis and ran out to the living room, which was empty other than the TV being on, the clock on the wall that said it was almost 4am and my mother fast asleep on the couch. It definitely wasn't my cousins at that time. Another encounter took place around the same period. I woke up early in the morning while everyone was still asleep. I was making a bowl of cereal in the kitchen when I started to feel kind of weird. I opened the fridge door to get the milk, and I looked toward the other end of the kitchen and saw a hand, just a hand slowly fingering for me to come here. I did, right away as a matter of fact, thinking it was my dad, but when I turned the corner, no one was around. They were all sleeping still. There were other things that happened, but what I do remember strongly is never feeling alone. Even if I was home alone, the house would feel alive. I think a lot happened in that place, and I do believe some of it was not good. My encounter started like any other. Some kids came to my door. I was alone in the house playing video games when this long knock came to the door. I could see through the curtain on the door that it was just some kids, and living in a neighborhood with several families with kids, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Yet before I even opened the door, I began to feel extremely wary. I opened it to find two boys around 12 or 13 standing on my porch. The taller boy had knocked, the smaller had been straddling a bike. I found this odd that he was on my porch on his bike. He would have had to carry it up my front steps, and instead of standing beside it, was sitting on it. At first, they kept their heads down, and I asked if I could help them. They said they just needed to come in for a minute, and it wouldn't take long. I asked if they were from the neighborhood, and they didn't answer me. It was about this time that I realized something wasn't right. They kept trying to get in, and I kept telling them that they couldn't. They didn't get impatient or mad. They just kept trying to get me to invite them in. I felt that they were absolutely draining all the energy from my body. It was a battle. I can tell you without a doubt that yes, they are real.  In October of 1971, some friends of mine told me about the old Confederate cemetery across the river from Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the small town of Levaika. Trying to frighten me because I am from Michigan, they challenged me to go to the cemetery on Halloween night. With me driving and my friends giving me the directions, off we went to Levaika to see the ghosts of the Civil War. The cemetery was right next to this small white church that we had to drive down a narrow lane between Orchards to get to. There was a clock on a timer in the steeple that gonged for every hour. That Halloween night, when the clock struck twelve, the clock gonged thirteen times, not twelve. When I looked over to my left at the grave markers, I and everyone else started to see a mist rising from behind the markers. Everyone was trying to get me to drive off. One of my friends said we had to leave. When I finally did try to drive off, the car didn't want to. Now I am no mechanic, but when a person puts her foot on the gas pedal and pushes it half way to the floor of the car, the car should respond by going faster than five or six miles an hour. But that's what our car was doing. By this time I had the gas pedal to the floor and the car was still only going five miles an hour. As I looked out the left driver's window, there was a ghostly shape of a confederate officer floating next to my window with his right arm stretched out to me. I shook my head and yelled to him that I couldn't help him. He dropped his arm and slowly started to move back from the window. When I looked over to the right there was another ghostly soldier floating along there. In the rear view mirror I could see at least three or four old soldiers there with their hands on the trunk of the car. About that time the front wheels touched the pavement of the road between the orchards we were in and the orchards across the road from us and the car shot out from under me.  We didn't. When I looked up we were now facing the other lane we had just left and we could see the ghostly soldiers floating back into the cemetery. The next year, 1972, I tried to get someone, anyone to go back with me to the old cemetery. No one would go with me to see if the ghosts would reappear. I returned to California in September of 1973 and as far as I know, no one else has gone back to that old Confederate cemetery. The Impusa originally appeared in the mythology of classical Greece as a frightening female monster. She is the demonic vampire without shape of its own but with the ability to appear in many different animal guises and as a beautiful tempting young woman. Modern day Greek folklore still speaks of the Impusa who enters the body of its human prey, particularly children, to consume the flesh and blood of its victim. She loves to eat young and beautiful bodies and drink their blood because it is strong and pure. The monster thrives in water and on land so they tend to dwell along the coast. Lurking on the darkened roads at night, Impusa seeks its prey. Impusa represents the Grecian form of a vampire. In the Greek myth this female demon is usually described as having one prosthetic leg made of brass and the other leg of a donkey. From the waist up, Impusa is a human like creature with hideous blemishes and blotches on her skin. She was said to have been the daughter of the goddess of witchcraft, the knight, moon, ghosts and necromancy Hecate and was sent by her to torment people, especially travelers. Impusa, the shape shifter, changes its apparition into an animal or to a beautiful woman. She lures it over to drink its blood and consume its flesh.  One day, as Menopus walks along the road, he is met by an apparition, an Impusa, in the guise of a foreign woman. She is the phonation and under her spell, he falls in love with her, unaware of what she really is. They make plans to marry. Epilonius is rather skeptical of her. He attends the wedding and is introduced to her by Menopus, this very rich woman is the mistress of all the servants.  Menopus's bride is offended and orders Epilonius to leave, but his words have already broken her spell and all the gold, silver, and the servants vanished. Pretending to weep, the Impusa begs Epilonius not to force her to confess what she really is, but he does. Finally, she admits she usually chooses her victims among young and beautiful people to dine on them and Menopus is one of them. Belief in this evil monster persists into modern times. Present-day shepherds blame her for accidents that happen to their animals, claiming that she suddenly appears, hurts them, and disappears again. Later tales describe a whole race of these monsters, the Impusa, living on the North African coast in Libya. The Impusa is the early Greek term for the later Latin term lamaya. Over the ages, the descriptions of Impusa changed considerably and were often confused with lamaya. Ancient people believed that the only defense against these monsters was abusing them verbally or shouting insults. As a result, they screamed and fled away. Except for the Greek account of Impusa, the same awful creature is known in other ancient cultures of the Mediterranean region. So three friends and I decided we were going to camp out in this 30-acre sanctuary down the street from my neighborhood. It is paralleled by railroad tracks and a road on one side and then a small road on the other side. There is a lot of forest and trails, but also these big sand dunes and a huge lake that is pretty deep. So deep, we can't see the bottom. And in Florida there is always stuff to worry about like mosquitoes at night and spider webs along the wooded paths. Snakes, thankfully, left us alone. Now understand, when I say three friends, I mean two friends and sort of my friend's uncle. So that's Brandon, Dalton and Mike. Brandon is cool when it comes to nature and a survivalist guy. Dalton is my best friend and he is funny, but can get freaked out as easily as me.  He is awesome. We settled on three nights so we got ourselves a big tent and brought two coolers worth of stuff out there. The sun is high up in the sky and there is no clouds anywhere to be seen. It was a lovely day in autumn which meant it wasn't nearly as hot as Florida sounds like. As we unload our truck at the front of the trail, we had to hide the truck because there are no trespassing signs in a few places, but I see people out here occasionally so I think it more or less was a dumping warning. We noticed that there are absolutely no footprints this time.  So as we're walking out there, Brandon is explaining that this area used to be home to the Isis tribe that was fond of East Florida. It was interesting to listen to because apparently they built both mounds and thatched huts and stuff like that. Mike asked us if we'd ever heard of a banshee. To this I sort of face-palmed and dulled and laughed. Mike even chuckled and said he'd keep it for the night. We lugged our stuff some ways passing a few retention ponds and an open area towards the railroad crossing and had a drainage ditch on the other side. The trail ran down pretty far until it turned into a huge scrublands area that then turned into another scrubland cut off by huge trees. You know, the kind of huge tree that's so thick you can't tell if it's just now popping out of the ground or not. I always thought the place was cool, but I wasn't sure how I'd feel being there overnight. We passed the big trees and it opened up into a shaded place with pine leaves forming their own little hills and then the huge sand dunes hugged by the Floridian forest. Then, just touching the right tip of the place was this body of water we nicknamed Willow Lake. Most of the place was either sand or little shrubbery pushing up out of it and right along the banks of the lake was a downed telephone line God knows how old. We decided to lug our stuff up the side of the dunes because they turned into some secluded trails. We found the opportune location too. It was a huge open area of sand with a patch of tree jutting up on the outskirts from the left side of the entrance and then all wood on the right side spare for a small path that seemed barely beaten. This is where we would set up shop. Within the hour we had the huge tent up and Brandon went off with Dalton to collect some firewood. Florida is really bad on that part, so we'd use palm fronds to get the fire going and use actual wood to keep it burning. Good thing to know in Florida because the Skeeters hate thick smoke. Since I was at the campsite with just Uncle Mike, he brought some gin and popped it open. I never had alcohol in my life and I was just now 18, so I knew he'd try to have me drink some. Sure enough, here you go, Rob. I told him no, naturally, but my own curiosity was getting to me. I knew Dalton would jump at the chance to drink some gin or mountain bush when I knew Brandon would side with me. I told him to wait until the others returned. That way I'd at least have someone to agree with. That's when we heard it the first time. A wail that sounded like it came from at the base of the dunes. It was so close the hairs on the back of my neck were livid for seconds. Mike just laughed and cupped his hands. We used silly nanny to stop playing in the sand. Just as he had said that, Dalton stepped out of the woods, firewood in arms and into the campsite to ask what all of that was. Mike and I asked him where Brandon was and he thumbed over his shoulder that he was still carrying some palm fronds with him. You mean you weren't the ones who just made that wailing down there? Mike asked him, folding his arms together.  Mike sighed deeply and told him to bring Brandon back to the camp. He turned to me, Rob, you're coming with me. I looked awkward and asked him why since I wasn't used to being entirely alone with the guy because if this turns out to be dirty Mike and the boys, I need someone to trip so I can get away. So I went with him. We walked down the sand dunes having to pick our feet up because of the sand and when we got to the bottom we did a scan of the area. Honestly, the only thing that had changed was the position of the sun and the brightness of the horizon. It was now dusk, barely dark but getting there. I turned to Uncle Mike who was rather puzzled himself and asked him what he thought it was. He just said it had to be a tyrannosaurus in heat. I couldn't help but laugh at that. Mike was definitely the comic relief of us but even he looked a little concerned. He said he brought the machete for wood cutting but told me it was inside the tent near the back if I needed it. We shrugged the whole thing off after that and swapped some stories around the campfire. Thankfully the mosquitoes were nowhere to be found. Brandon continued to tell us more about the location and how the A.S. were also hunter-gatherers. That meant they didn't farm or grow anything but they hunted animals and gathered resources to survive. Dalton told us about some of the spooky stories he'd read online late at night and for the most part some of what he told us was genuinely spooky. Mike even contributed by telling us more about the banshees and how they wailed and the person would always die nearby but that sounded rather vague.  Of course we all laughed at him and told him the banshee was going to get him.  There was even one moment in the tent where Mike told him, calm down Brandy, banshees only show up when there's a flash of light. After a few seconds Mike lightly held down the button on the flashlight and Brandon screamed. The next day we woke up and went about our business of taking a piss off in the woods or going down to the lake just to enjoy the morning breeze but I noticed something odd. Upon walking down the reclusive hill there was something amiss in the dunes themselves. I saw our footprints which were hugely distorted due to the sand and then I saw what appeared to be deep impressions like something on all fours had bolted up the hill or down it. They were just so perfect that it couldn't be real. I'm paranoid about these things so I constantly had my eyes glued to the trails that we came from and others we hadn't checked out yet which I knew if we were I'd be bringing Brandon or all of them along. I really didn't feel like going alone after the whale yesterday. I sat on the downed telephone pole to wash my face off from the water and that's when I noticed it.  I blinked blankly figuring Mike must have wandered out last night or early in the morning and drunkenly left it there. I went back to our spot where Dalton brought more wood to and asked Uncle Mike about his bottle. He tilted his head and asked me where I found it. I told him down by the lake.  You didn't get up early in the morning and take it down there? He told me no but I raised my eyebrow at him. So you weren't hammered?  Bottom line was he said he didn't move it so I just gave him the gin and sat down at the camp. It was pretty lazy for the rest of the morning. All we did was eat some of our canned stuff and decided which trails we'd go down. Naturally, since the place we were at is connected to an actual nature park, we thought we'd try seeing if we could reach it. So we chose the path going around the side of Willow Lake.   And boy it was far. By 2pm we'd probably walked at least 3 miles or so and I could barely believe that myself. The place was supposed to be 30 acres and the fact that this trail rarely curved or made a turn bothered me at how far we'd gotten from the sand dunes. The only thing we had here were jagged trees and overlying canopy of Spanish moss and the just barely audible noise of the highway, so we weren't entirely that far from civilization. Our big problem now was that the path split into three. They all looked the same, spare for the center being riddled with pine needles. So we went down the mid-path, figuring less sand meant easier walking, the whale again from yesterday.  Consider myself a pussy, but I knew it wasn't Mike screwing with us. There was no way he could have been ahead at this rate. Brandon was giving us worried looks, but he brought out his 6-inch knife and Dalton told me to lie low. We were all speaking so softly that it was almost surreal. Brandon, though easily spooked, seemed so calm here. He slowly went ahead, minding where he put his footsteps because the pine needles didn't actually make too much of a noise. So while he slowly progressed 20 yards ahead of us, and also remembered that the trail is pretty isolated in the forest at this point, Dalton and I covered our six. We noticed something really strange just lying off to the hedge of the pine-needled path. I wanted to say no, I wanted to deny every ounce of it, but there was no denying the fact that an unopened can of mountain bush was right here, far from our camp.   We decided we'd head back to the camp and tell Mike about it. Something entered our peripheral vision. A blurring mix of gray and white ran from one side of the path to the other. One thing I remember definitely were three bony fingers on each hand passing through the bush and leaving nearly no trace that it was there. I've never seen Brandon hop to his feet and sprint as quick as he did, but we were all on our feet. As a matter of fact, I've never seen my own two feet work like they did. We forgot taking the can back and just ran as fast as we possibly could back to the lake. We didn't stop there. We ran up the sand dunes nearly collapsing because of the thick sand and shouted for Mike. Mike wasn't there.  I thought. We shouted for Mike for several minutes looking all around. Brandon checked the cooler and did a count of our stuff while Dalton kept pacing back and forward calling Mike on his phone. What are you sissy screaming about? Mike answered from the phone.  He asked us if we were really going to pussie out of our only time together over break and we decided we would just meet him at the front and tell him what happened. Screws staying behind at the camp, none of us were in man enough to do it after what we just witnessed. We made our way back past the two large trees and down the long trail until we found Mike walking up with a bag of potato chips and some water. He thought our expressions were hilarious, but asked us what was going on. Once we told him he was almost in disbelief. Mike asked us if we took his machete and I answered no. He told us we should consider knowing where it is if we seriously saw something. The rest of the day consisted of us staying near the tent, not really going anywhere alone anymore. We had all stepped down near the lake because Dalton and I started goofing around. We were wrestling, causing a huge dust cloud from rolling down the dunes.  And Mike, seeing another opportunity to mess with Brandon, did the banshee cry yet again. Only this time, off in the distance, the same wail from before answered him. We all looked at each other and said, what the fuck? At nearly the same time, this was when Mike stood up and scanned the perimeter, making his own checks of everything. See, Rob, this is why you need to get your concealed weapons permit, he said, walking down to help us up. When I asked him why, he answered, surely think I'm allowed to carry a gun. We weren't very talkative the rest of the night. We sat around the campfire, paranoid, tried roasting some marshmallows and playing some music from our cell phones, but it was hard to shake the feeling that we were under surveillance. You know, like there could be big red eyes somewhere, just watching, waiting. Mike kept his machete by his legs and Brandon had taken his own knife and carved the end of this long stick to make a spear. This is how spooked we really were. There was something out here and we were alone.  I'll just drive us back to Rob's place. At that point, we were all ready to get up and go, so there were no objections. Some camping trip this turned out to be. Mike stood up and lit a cigarette for a few moments, then muttered profanities to himself. He turned to us with a half grin, half frown.  I think I dropped my car keys. Of course, we all gawked and asked him if he was serious or if he was just messing with us. Because of course, Mike's been known to do that, but he was serious. He fanned out his pockets and checked all over camp using his cell phone as a light. So that's really it.  And frankly, we were tired and our hearts were still pounding from earlier. We just wanted to dig in and hold until daylight. We'd cut this trip short, making it two days instead of three. So we all huddled like frightened animals in the middle of the tent, that primal fear kicked in of being exposed or being towards the outside of the tent. Mike slapped next to his machete, keeping his shoulder on it. Brandon and I couldn't sleep, and Dalton drank some of Mike's gin to try and keep him from sleeping. Brandon was petrified and told me not to close my eyes. His paranoia made it harder on my own, and we kept ourselves up for as long as I can remember. We heard the mosquitoes on the outside of the tent. We heard some splashing down near the lake, and we heard a train horn eerily pass by. It must have been three hours before we finally started settling in. I was about to bury myself in my sleeping bag with my ears spraying alert. There was a thumping of sand being thrown around. It was getting closer and more to our ground level. I dared not sit up, but I started to tear up once more. That thing was bolting up the hill and into our campsite, just like it probably did the night before. I held my breath as the thing's heavy breathing passed on my side of the tent. Its footfalls weren't too powerful. The thing appeared like it was trying to sneak around. It also slowed down now that it was on even terrain. Now I couldn't help it. I turned slowly and silently to see Brandon's eyes completely open, staring straight at me. He was shitting bricks so bad, but I wasn't going to call him out on anything. This was horrifying and I really thought about the possibility that this monster could kill us with those long bony fingers. While it sulked around the camp and went through our cooler, I nodded toward Mike's machete. Brandon tried to take it, but Mike was too heavy, so we had to wake everyone up. I brought a hand out and suggested prodding Mike with his stick, so we did. Mike quietly groaned, but we covered his mouth.  The thing outside grunted and its heavy breathing panicked for a moment before subsiding. The thing's fingers were tapping on the insides and it lapped up the water like a big dog would. Mike wanted to whisper, but we frantically shook our heads against the idea, so instead of talking, he mouthed stuff to us. It was hard to understand him, but he reluctantly spoke, Wake up Dalton, sit up slowly. We all remained silent for the night around us had as well. We were almost terrified that it heard him. I couldn't stop shaking as if I got the chills, but we were reassured that the thing was still there because it started digging in the sand for some reason, and the sand smashed against the outside of our tent like we were being pelted with tiny pebbles. We pushed on Dalton's shoulder and he muttered, what? Mike sat up and held the machete ready because the thing outside stopped digging in the sand.  The thing was casting a shadow over our tent now. It was just taller than Mike who was prime in that category here. Like a grizzly bear or something, it stood to full height to observe the tent. It had to be at least 10 feet away right against the heavy forest, and since we were all on our knees inside the tent, we weren't even half of its height. Uncle Mike raised the blade, his own tattooed hands shaking. The monster moved its legs and stalked towards our tent. It extended an arm to poke the tent, running its delicate fingers across the fibers. Its breathing pushed in on the tent and out. The shadow gradually turned and its hands ran over the entrance, particularly along the zipper line. I was literally holding Dalton's hand in a complete maternal instinct. This was a real nightmare, a story you'd read or a movie you'd watch, and I was in the middle of it. My heart was pounding so hard that I could not only hear it but feel it in every ounce of my body. He could feel it too as he squeezed my hand.  Because we weren't calm, I thought we'd be dead. The fingers finally found the zipper. It fiddled and experimented with it. The thing looked like it had difficulty understanding. It pulled out on the tent, moving us a few inches. Then it pulled up, started unzipping the tent. It was halfway unzipped when Mike struck. He lunged out at it, swiping the thing across its arm and the monster letting out a shrill that could boil blood. We all screamed, seeing the thing roll around in the sand with Mike grunting to stay on it. They knocked over the ash pile and the partially burnt bonfire and dust was in the air everywhere. It was horrible because we didn't know what to do. We were sitting here watching my best friend's uncle fight off a creature with his blade and we weren't sure who was winning. I don't even remember much of the fighting. I just recall being petrified at the skeletal humanoid monster that in the middle of this fight had glowing yellow eyes and snarled like something neither from hell nor earth. Brandon took both Dalton and I by the arms and ushered us down the hill.  I reminded him that this thing was six feet tall and fast, but it didn't matter to us anyway.  We saw them hurtling down the hill, Mike literally punching the thing now with his fists. He didn't even have the big knife in his hands anymore until I noticed it was protruding from the creature's gut. And what's worse is the thing was digging its claws into his shoulder. It looked damaging like someone dragging a dissection tool across the skin. In their struggle, the thing must have walked back and forth because his neck was pretty diced.   He's literally dripping blood down his shoulders. The creature, on the other hand, just sits there, its body churning inwards and outwards, catching its breath and recuperating.  The sand made it difficult to sprint and that made things even scarier. The thing could lunge and snatch any of us at the rate we were going. It was like trudging through heavy snow. Thank God for Brandon's heritage. He told us how the Mohawk Indians ran. He suggested that we run their way or stick to the side of the path once we got back on it and it would keep us from sinking into the doom. We were at the bottom when it wailed and we heard it charging after us. It was already flying for all I knew from the adrenaline pouring into my veins. The sound of breaking glass shocked me, but I didn't stop running. I ran faster than any of them. I passed the two big trees and got out of the shrubbery and I passed the second large lake and I reached the truck. I had covered the distance so fast that my chest was about to explode from pain. My asthma was acting up but I started having trouble breathing. I didn't even bring an inhaler because I hadn't used it in so long. I found Mike's keys on the ground next to the car tires and just grabbed him. I couldn't do anything right now with my heart pounding and my lungs in anguish. I didn't even realize I left anybody behind in the dust and frankly, the only thought on my mind was the horrible creature. A few moments later, Dalton and Brandon came hauling Mike over and put him in the back seat of the truck. I gave them the keys and without them asking me if I was alright, got in the truck and Dalton took the wheel. We turned on the truck and its engine revved up. The headlights came on and the yellow eyes reflected while a continued crawling for us. Dalton shouted the Lord's name and put his foot down on the pad. We ran the thing over causing a huge thump. After that, we backed all the way out of the trail and without paying any mind, we sped off down the roadways to the nearest hospital. Mike was an ICU for days until they managed to save him. As for us, well we told our folks what had happened. They thought we were all dropping acid.  The whole city was in panic over this fiasco and nobody wanted to leave their homes. No other killing happened. The police did a huge sweep of the nature park and although they did find the remains and everything we reported, they found no creature, not even the blood. The mayor's response was to completely seal off the nature park and the 30 acres beside it and the city made it illegal and punishable by fine to enter anywhere around it. I finally got to ask Mike what happened only a few months back.  Said he cut it up pretty badly. I've never set foot in the forest down here ever since. What's up? The wheels turning and burning Rodney focused on the road. He had just clicked on the little button hanging from his ear silencing the jingle reverberating in the small cab. He didn't have to look at the caller ID. While he drove in the setting sun of the west coast, his wife Angie was back east where the sun had long ago set. She was the only one who regularly called him at that hour. So how's the driving today? Despite the miles between them, her voice sounded clear, but he knew it would probably be cutting out soon. It always did when he was in the mountains. Usual just driving along my automobile. He couldn't help but say his everyday joke in a singsong manner even though he wasn't in a car. The long tractor trailer was not just some automobile that anyone could drive down the road, and he was one of the many truck drivers who drove the large machine across the country. Oh, hun, everything going okay? How did she always know? He could try and fake being upbeat and positive, but that woman would still pick up on it. He didn't know how she was always able to do it, but it was downright supernatural. Somehow she had picked up on how his back ached, his head pounded, and he was five hours behind schedule due to the shipper hanging him out to dry. Maybe there was something to her being his soulmate. She had long since told him as much, but he was not the lovey-dovey type. It's been a long day, he said, sighing. Tell me all about it. Her voice stayed chipper, and he could feel it slicing away some of the bitterness he had been holding. Still, he didn't want to talk about his crap-tastic day. Not yet. How was your day? Oh, the usual. My little cling on at work was her usual self driving me nuts. She has no clue what personal space is, and it smells like she never showers. She gets right up next to me, and I have to fight not to gag. It's only a couple more weeks. I know, but why did it have to be me who trained her? Because you're the best RN there is. If you say so. So, Mr. Avoidance, how was your day? Uh, the sigh was long, no matter how much he tried to cut it short. It was hard not to close his eyes and get lost in thinking just how bad it had been. Well, it could have been worse. You might as well just tell her. It wasn't all that bad, was it? If he allowed himself to admit it, he guessed it hadn't been too bad. He was alive, and no one got hurt. It had just been a lot of wasted time, which would cost him in the end. Bad. Bad, bad, or just bad? Bad, bad. Oh, hon, what happened? Well, to put it simply, I can either be home this weekend, or we can pay the bills, and even making it home is a little sketchy. Why, what happened? Been sitting at a dock since yesterday. You're kidding me. He wished he were kidding. He explained it to her, although she already knew much of it as it was an old trucker's story. Sitting unpaid at a dock was an often and frustrating occurrence in the life of a truck driver, and it was never good when it happened to you. When it did, it always hurt. Yesterday he arrived an hour early at the shipper, mainly because he wanted to get there before traffic got bad. He was used to getting to places early. It was a good practice, because most times he was awarded with getting loaded quickly and getting back on the road, keeping the wheels turning. If the wheels weren't turning, he wasn't making any money. Truck driving wasn't like other professions. It hardly ever paid by the hour or the number of loads you hauled, but usually by the mile. By getting to a shipper early, he was able to get to his next stop that much sooner, and with any luck, back on the road with a quick turnaround. As the saying went, if the wheels ain't turning, you ain't earning. So when he arrived at Terrence Cairns, he hoped he would be in and out. After only five minutes, he was close to screaming as he walked back to his truck, getting ready to back up to a door having no idea how long he would be sitting. His load wasn't ready because the cans hadn't been made yet. Not only that, but the line was down. They were waiting on parts, and there was no ETA on when his load would be ready. He just knew it wouldn't be today. So he would have to sit there, unpaid, waiting until who knows when for his cans to be made and loaded. When he had talked to his wife yesterday, he had been cheerful, hoping his load would be done soon so he could get back on the road. When he heard them putting a few pallets into the trailer, he got excited. He would have to drive all night, but he'd slept most of the day, so it wouldn't be a problem. He was just ready to get out of there. But the light by his trailer stayed red, silence descending. Four hours later, then eight, and he still wasn't back on the road. When morning came, he was starving, having eaten all the snacks he kept in the truck. He had lost all his patience and still hadn't heard anything. The night shift had already left, and the day crew all stood outside in their smoking area, puffing away. Finally, he went back in to find out that the fix they had used on the line hadn't worked, and it was back down. The parts should be there in an hour. Then they'd get the line back up. Until then, he was one of ten other trucks, all of them sitting there waiting. Rodney told her much of the story, maybe exaggerating a little here and there where it felt good. He never actually threatened to hit the smug dock worker who was laughing at all the truckers trapped there, but he had come close. Telling her he did those things, the things he would never rationally do, always calmed him. Although he knew how much it stressed her out to think he was capable, he didn't know why telling her those things helped take some of the edge off. Maybe it was the darkness in him he knew was there, but always held down. That dark corner of his thoughts that scared him, thinking what he might do if he were pushed. He always hoped that darkness was just his imagination. He couldn't ever do any of that, could he? Rodney finished telling her his story, capping it off with him storming out of there just over an hour ago, having lost nearly two full days.  In truth, they had just stepped off the curb, but it felt good to pad the story. But why can't you make it home? It's only Tuesday. We'll see, hon, but right now I don't think we can pay rent. I pretty much just had my days off sitting at the dock. If I come home, that would be four days off this week, not making money. The line was quiet. He knew she was thinking about what he had just said, but also upset by the truth of it. What about Tina? And there it was. Rodney was already upset. He wanted to be there, already afraid he wasn't going to make it before all of this happened. He wasn't ready for this conversation. He saw the sign for the truck stop on the large billboard, seeing it was three miles away. He didn't want to lose more time, but he needed coffee and something more than beef jerky. His gums were bleeding from how much of the toughened meat he had eaten, and he thought he'd be sick if he ate any more. Did you hear me, Rodney? What do you want from me, hon? He asked, hearing the defeat in his own voice. He didn't know what he could do, and right then, he really didn't care. All of this, his life, just seemed to get more and more to the point of what did any of it matter. What was any of this for?  He closed his eyes, letting out a long sigh. The sound of the rumble strips on the side of the road were loud, echoing in the cab of the truck as he drifted off the road. He pulled it back with a quick jerk, keeping it from going past the shoulder. His heart beat loudly in his own ears as he got the truck under control. When the exit for the truck stop came into view, he flipped on his turn signal. He needed that coffee more than he thought. Okay, hon, I'll be there. Okay, and babe? God, he loved her voice. How did she always burrow her way into his heart and soul? She was as calm. Yes, hon? Be safe. We'll make it through, okay? We always do. Okay. I love you. Love you too. He ended the call and put the phone in the little slot in the dashboard as he pulled into the small truck stop. He eased up to one of the empty stalls on the fuel island, listening to the hiss of the brakes as they released. Part of him was too tired to even get out of the seat, contemplating just sitting there and letting his body crash into exhaustion. The sun was setting, the orange fire stretching to the pink and red haze of the day escaping. He wished he could shut down, let his day be over like so many others did, but his day was just beginning. He had a long night of driving through the Rocky Mountains, which would be endless stretches of nothing lost in the canyons so deep even the sky wouldn't be visible. He grabbed his thermos and emptied it as soon as he opened the door. This was a full thermos of coffee kind of night. The truck stop was a dump, but it wasn't like he didn't expect that, being so far in the middle of nowhere and probably the last diesel stop for 100 miles or more. You could think being the last stop for such a long distance would invite one of his big chains, but it was also so far from anywhere it had to be hard to keep the shelves stocked.   He brought it to the cash year's attention, but she just shrugged. Rodney saw her putting it back in the cooler as he walked out the door. The place was nasty, and he wasn't looking forward to the burger he had bought. It might end up putting him out of service somewhere in the mountains. The day just keeps getting better, he thought as he walked around a tanker truck parked next to his. As he looked around, he could see it was the only other truck in the place. With the little light from the overhead, he saw what looked like mud coating it from front to back. It was one of those older Peter belts, or maybe a Kenworth. One of those long-nosed trucks the two companies kept copying from one another. It was odd though as it had a moose guard on the front, spikes sticking out about two inches. They looked sharp too, and Rodney was sure that if the truck ever hit a deer or something, the creature would be ripped to shreds by this modification. Whatever works, he thought, climbing into his own rig, tossing the bag containing the burgers onto his passenger seat. He put the coffee in the holder he specially made, then turned the key. The engine roared to life with much more energy than he felt. He took a few swigs of his thermos, feeling the hot liquid working its way down his throat. He knew it wasn't going to do much for the headache pulsating in his temples, but it might help keep his lids open. Eight hundred miles. That was all he had to go. It would be a day and a half, then Rodney could find another load to get him north. Maybe he'd be able to make it home before his little girl's birthday. It'd be a stretch, but it might be possible. He just needed to haul and get it done. Rodney put the truck in gear and steered toward the exit. He barely made it ten feet when he heard a loud air horn. His heart leapt into his throat as he slammed down on the clutch and brake. He slid another foot in the gravel and stopped just in time to see the tanker that had been next to him tear past its horn blaring.  In a hurry much? He watched as the truck didn't stop at the exit, tearing straight across and onto the interstate. Rodney grabbed the mic and turned on his CB. Hey, man, in a hurry or what? The CB crackled in response. Then he heard a loud rumbling through his truck. It shook the cab. Then he felt it shaking him. When the CB cut out, he was left in the relative silence of his idling truck. Shaking his head, he put it into gear, easing it to the stop sign, and stopping to check for any traffic. He looked all around him, not wanting to take the chance of cutting anyone else off. Then, as his heart tried to calm itself back into a normal rhythm, he eased onto the interstate. Well, at least I'm awake now. Damn a hole. His stomach felt like acid and fire had combined and were twirling around while he tried to pay attention to the road. It wasn't easy. Their movements and gurgling sounds kept threatening to take away most of his attention, although it was easy to get distracted. It hadn't taken long before he hit the first mountain and was now chugging along up the steep slope. He had no idea how steep it was because that information was only at the top, meant as a warning for those going downhill who would have to stay in lower gears while riding their brakes. With him going up, there was no concern he would build up too much speed. As it was, he was in sixth gear, getting close to the need to drop to fifth as he slowed down to 30mph. He kept one eye on the road as he came up on a tight curve and his other on the RPMs, waiting for it to drop low enough to downshift. This was exhausting and it was still early. Something about a truck chugging along at slow speeds, endlessly climbing, was tiring. It took so much out of him, but he never knew why. Maybe it was just the low, dull, endless rumble of the engine. His head grew heavy and he felt his eyelids lower. He was so tempting to just nod off. Even just to pull over to the shoulder, he could set the brakes and take a quick nap. Rodney heard the rumble strips. His eyes shooting open. He was on the shoulder, having very little space before the guardrail and then a wall. The road had curved, but he hadn't. Pulling hard on the wheel to swerve back into his lane, he saw it.  It must be overweight because it was quickly dropping back in his lane as he worked to gain control of his own truck. The interstate was wide, consisting of three lanes to accommodate the right lane being reserved for the slow trucks like himself, but he was going faster than the tanker. He had to swerve more or they were going to run into the mountain. He pulled harder on the wheel, feeling everything shift in the truck. He had to lean into the turn, putting his weight into it. It was going to be close. The tanker had lost a lot of speed. The driver must have missed a gear because even if he were too heavy, he shouldn't be dropping back this fast. Rodney wasn't sure if he was going to get over in time. He swerved hard, keeping a close eye on the red lights of the tanker as they drew closer. When a loud horn blasted, he barely had time to register the four-wheeler as shot by him, barely missing the front of his truck. Rodney was nearly in the middle lane, but the car hadn't even tried to get over. Instead, the driver felt the need to blare the horn at him as he struggled to keep his rig from jackknifing, rolling or colliding with the truck in front of him.  He watched through his blindside mirror as his trailer cleared the back bumper of the tanker while he steadied out in the middle lane. His truck fell to such a low RPM for the gear, it lurched. He downshifted, eyeing the truck next to him. He made the gear, his truck slowly crawling past the tanker. It had to be only going a rough 15 miles per hour, but Rodney was now down to just a little over 20. As he came cab to cab with the other truck, he looked over, trying to give the other driver a nod of acknowledgement, but he couldn't see in the darkened cab. He grabbed his CB, nodding to it, not sure if the driver could see him. There was the glow from the console in his cab, but it was faint. He might be nothing more than a shadow as well. Hey buddy, sorry about that, thanks for letting me by. The CB crackled with no response as Rodney crept on past. He blew out of breath, letting his already frayed nerves calm. Maybe he should start to relax and have a decent night of driving. Wondering if there was anything on the radio, he reached for the knob, jumping when there was a blast of an air horn. It howled through the night, and he couldn't stop himself from jerking the wheel. He swerved to the right, remembering too late about the tanker. He looked in the side mirror and watched as he went into the tanker's lane, cutting him off. The truck swerved with him, hitting the guardrail, sparks flying into the night as the tanker screeched to a stop. Rodney swerved back into the middle lane, then signaled that he was moving to the right lane. There wasn't much of a shoulder, but he had to stop and make sure the other driver was all right. He needed to report the accident. He needed to, you're dead. The voice seemed to echo in his cab, a deep rumble that shook through the speakers and carried a touch of ice with it. It took Rodney a moment to figure out that it had come from the CB. Hey man, sorry, are you okay? I m coming back to see if everything is all right. He stopped the truck on the side of the road. He was still half in the right lane, but it was as far off the road as he could get. He put on his flashers and had started to climb out of the driver's door when he thought he heard heavy breathing coming through his speakers. The breathing grew in intensity, slowly forming into a primordial growl. He thought about getting on the CB and calling back to the driver, but the sound frightened him.  The driver was probably just shaken up or in shock. Rodney had to go back and make sure the man was all right, then report it. There was definitely no way he would make it home for his daughter's birthday now. He d be lucky if he didn t end up delayed by the cops for most of the night.  His shoes hit the loose gravel and rock that had fallen from the canyon walls around him, crushing as he started walking back. Damn curve of the road made it hard to see just where the tanker was, but he could hear the rumbling of the engine. He was getting closer. Or was that just the echo from the walls around him? It was hard to tell. Then he got blinded as the driver from the tanker turned every light on. The jerk didn t just turn on his lights and brights, but it turned on his fog lights as well. He also had a row of lights across the top of the truck, but they weren t regular lights, they were spotlights, and Rodney was caught in their blinding intensity. He felt like a deer, but it took a second for that thought to kick in. He heard the sound of the truck getting closer, with so much light he had just stopped there. When he realized what was happening, he moved quickly, barely making it between his truck and trailer, hiding in that little gap as the tanker roared by. Its air horn blew, the closeness causing everything around him to shake. He heard something shatter, but held on to the airlines as he tried to catch his breath. Even when everything quieted, Rodney was afraid to move. His vision danced with circles of light, and he had to count to 30 before the darkness settled around him. There were still purple and green spots swirling, but he felt he could see enough to poke his head out. All he saw was dark interstate. No cars passed, and the other truck was gone. He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the airlines hold him up, focusing on his breathing.  Slowly he eased out and kept a watchful eye for semis emerging out of nowhere to run him down. He started to think staying awake wouldn't be an issue, but heart attacks, those were becoming a growing concern. Damn. Rodney eased his truck to the top of the hill. Although with the darkness and with the mountain walls on each side, he was hard to tell he was at the top. If his truck hadn't started to speed up and he quickly had to shift out of the fifth gear, he might not have known. And maybe he wasn't. Maybe this was just a brief respite before continuing to climb. Then the wall on his passenger side fell away to a deeper darkness, his headlights no longer reflecting off the dull rock. Up ahead he saw the sign warning that he was coming up on a 7% downgrade, then another sign telling all trucks to exit into the brake check area. He hated pulling off, he was just more time wasted and he knew he had a pretty light load, only 30,000 pounds. His brakes weren't worn, so there shouldn't be anything to check. But if he didn't pull in and there was a bear hiding, it would take longer to get written up than just pulling in for a few minutes to check everything out. And it never hurt to check. Five minutes to check his brakes, then if something was wrong. But nothing is ever wrong. This is such a waste of time. He put on his turn signal and listened to the engine brake idle him down. He missed the days when it was an unmuffled roar. Now it sounded like a little whimper as it slowed him down. He pulled into the little parking lot, his attention immediately focusing on the tanker truck.  He could feel the heat rise as his heart pounded. The tanker was parked in the far stall away from the one light hanging from a wire overhead. He was nearly hidden in the shadows just sitting there. Rodney didn't see anyone walking around, no light from a flashlight as if the driver was actually checking his brakes. Nothing. The whole area was still. He set the brakes and climbed out of his rig. He hadn't planned on doing anything more than just a quick walk around, checking his own trailer for any smoking brakes, not that there would be. He'd been going uphill. The whole thing was pointless. But when his shoes crunched on the gravel of the parking lot, the image of that truck rushing past him flashed in his memory. He could still see the inside flap of his semi, his heart leaping into his throat as he tried not to scream. Before he knew it, he had his long-barreled flashlight in hand walking toward the truck. This wasn't him. He was not a fighter. But for that one brief moment as he gripped the flashlight, his knuckles going white, he could see himself being any other type of person. The anger was a rumbling pot of boiling water. He reached the driver's door and pounded on it, stepping back, waiting for the man to climb down. The night was still around him. The light shining behind him was far enough away that he felt like he was on the edge of everything good in the world. He was near the shadows on the verge of that darkness threatening to overtake him. He felt the chill of it, a coldness reaching up inside him. His grip on the flashlight loosened as he faced a man he didn't want to be. Already ashamed about missing her birthday, could he go home and tell his daughter how he had beaten the man senseless? He could see himself doing it too. That anger was on the fringe, begging him for control. He looked down at the flashlight. It wasn't there to light his way and he hadn't brought it to. He wasn't even holding it right. He had gripped it more like a club, ready to bring that heavy barrel down on the man's head. He took a step back. This wasn't him. He took another step away from the tanker. He flicked the light on, letting the beam light the way back to his truck. He didn't bother walking around to check his brakes. There weren't any DOT officers hiding up there and he had had enough. The night had turned into a nightmare and he just needed to get it over with. Getting down this hill was the first stretch in a long, exhausting run and he just needed to do it. He put the truck into gear and slowly drove past the other. The windshield was covered in dirt and grime, making it impossible to see in, even if there were light to do so. Even still, he swore he could feel the glare like someone was watching him. Good.  He's not going to get the best of me. Rodney had just turned on his blinker, preparing to merge back onto the interstate when he heard the crackle and hiss of his CB. Then a low, rumbling laugh built until a deep, raspy voice said, I'm coming for you, tough guy. You should have come in. We could have had a nice little conversation. Rodney shifted into another gear, not realizing he was accelerating faster than he should. He was already in fifth gear, but he wasn't watching his speed. His focus locked on the lighted display of the CB. You were all big and bad with that flashlight. Why didn't you open the door? I had it unlocked waiting for you. Rob heard the whine of his engine and tore his eyes from the CB, looking at his gauges. His RPMs were high, nearing 2,000 and he was doing nearly 65 in eighth gear. He should be upshifting, but that wasn't right.  He was losing it. Come on man, pay attention to what you're doing. He cursed to himself, slowly applying his brakes. It wasn't like in a car. He couldn't just push on the brake pedal and slow down to the speed he wanted to go. This was a 35,000 pound vehicle with another 30,000 pounds in his load. He had to slowly, gingerly push down on the brake pedal, bring it down to 5 to 10 miles per hour, then let off for a few seconds, hoping the engine brake would keep it from gaining too much more speed before he applied the brakes again. It was a process and it wasn't simple. This was where accidents happened. He had to keep paying attention or he would lose control.  Again Rodney felt like he could feel the driver's eyes on him. He chanced a look back through his driver's side mirrors.  There's road rage, but this guy is talking about killing me. He didn't see anything in the mirror, then narrowed his eyes. Was that a shape farther back? Could it be the tanker? If the truck were still parked at the brake check area, he should be getting out of CB range soon. There weren't any lights on the interstate behind him, but was that a tanker truck with its lights off? It was so dark back there, but sometimes there was just a brief glint, like the moonlight shining on something metallic. Rodney slowed to downshift into seventh gear. Releasing the clutch, the engine brake roared to life. Now in such a low gear, it would slow the truck without much work. He could start to breathe a little easier, maybe even relax. The CB crackled, peek-a-boo! The voice rasped back to that cold, flat menace that shook his cab. Rodney looked in his side mirror just in time to see the bright lights fill the night, reflecting on the canyon walls blinding in his mirror. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't. The tanker was approaching fast. Come on, there is no way this guy is actually going to hit me. But he was coming faster, getting closer. This only happens in movies. This isn't possibly happening to me. He took a chance and upshifted, not liking the idea that he was going to be speeding up on the downgrade. He took his eyes off the mirror. He had seen a sign just a second ago about an upcoming curve. He needed to watch for it before the other truck slammed him into it. Rodney was glad he did as the lines turned to the left. He put his weight into the turn, his truck lurching forward from the shift, the engine brake straining at the high idle. It didn't like the higher gear, and he tried to caress his foot on the brake to keep it manageable. He felt like he was fighting a losing battle, though. He knew it was getting away from him.  Rodney little mouse, run! He reached up and fumbled to turn off the CB, but he wasn't looking. He turned the wrong knob in the cab filled with static, hissing and popping as he kept his attention on the road. He dared a glance back, seeing the tanker falling back. He gasped in relief, letting it out in a long sigh as he made it through the curve of the road. When he felt his truck starting to slow, he knew he had made it to an incline. He took another breath, trying to slow his heart. As the road straightened and he started climbing, he enjoyed the slowing of the truck. When it reached the point to downshift, he did, knowing the tanker behind him was going to fall farther back. Thank goodness for the heavier weight of whatever the other driver hauled. He looked in his mirror and watched the driver behind him turn off all his lights. Great. Now what is he doing? You can run, but you can't hide from me mouse. Rodney reached up to the CB, finding the right knob this time. He turned it off and sighed in relief as the light faded from the display. The truck would keep falling back, so he had a few minutes, but that wouldn't last. He had to call the authorities, but what was he going to tell them? There was another trucker making threats? When he thought about it, it seemed like a pretty weak reason to call the local police. If he called them, he would probably be pulled over too, then put through a Level 1 inspection, which could tie him up for another 4-6 hours. Screw it. He reached forward and grabbed his phone from the cradle on the dash. He unlocked it, punched in 911, and brought it to his ear, not taking the time to connect his Bluetooth. Laws be damned. He took deep breaths as he checked his side mirrors again, trying to see if there was any sign of the other truck. It seemed like the night just swallowed it up. There had been plenty of moonlight before, but now it was just darkness, a sea of black. He could barely see any of the canyon walls, his trailer only visible in the mirror by the small dot of light marking its end. Even that seemed far away. He looked back at the miles of road stretching out before him, his lights shining into the endlessness, a yellow and white line disappearing into the night. Suddenly it hit him. His phone wasn't ringing. He pulled it away from his ear, using that hand to upshift the screen lighting up in the dark cab. When he got the truck into gear, it lurched forward as he pulled his phone up to look at the now dark screen. Damn thing. He swiped it again and looked to see it was just as he feared. No signal.  He didn't think the cell companies even tried to expand their coverage out there because it was never there when he needed it. Can you hear me now? No? Well, get out of here and give me some service. Suddenly he was slammed forward. The phone flew out of his hand, hit the windshield, and disappeared on the other side of the cab. He hoped the screen would have some light, but once it was out of sight, there was no trace of it. He didn't try too hard to look for it, as his gaze locked in on the road ahead of him. He took a second to glance in his mirror. He already knew who was there, but it was instinctive.  He fought it, keeping the truck straight, but before he managed to look back, the burst of speed diminished. He had the sudden feeling of being pulled back. His seat belt felt like it had tightened, but he knew that was impossible. The force that had been pushing him back against his seat now had him leaning forward against the restrictive belt. He took a second to breathe. There was that shimmer of hope deep within him that tried to say everything was okay, but what had just happened? He thought he had heard the sound of screeching metal and two heavy objects slamming against each other. That couldn't have been... could it? As he tried to take a deep breath and think about what was going on, he became blinded by light. It was like the sun was speeding alongside his truck, coming from behind, quickly moving around to his left side. Then a sonic boom of sound echoed through the cab, rumbling into his skull.  Rodney had to grip the steering wheel hard as it threatened to twist out of his hands. He fought with it, putting his weight into it. He ground his teeth, fighting to keep it from slamming into the rock wall. Suddenly the sound of screeching metal diminished and the force released him. The truck swayed under the new freedom, going left. Then he compensated and it went back to the right. He could now hear the whining of the engine as he idled high, the truck going faster than he should. He upshifted and flipped the switch for the engine brake. The engine roared, but he could feel the pull as it tried to slow him. He eased down the brakes as well, but the weight kept shifting as he fought to gain control of the truck. It was hard to see the speedometer or RPMs, but he still heard the whine. The light was so bright, the tanker truck staying on his left side, keeping pace. The light penetrated when he glanced to the left, shooting needles through his eyes. He straightened the truck, gaining control as he slowed. Rodney realized it was slowing faster than the engine brake was able to. It got so low, he had to downshift. He risked glancing out the driver's side mirror. The tanker truck fell back when he started to go up another hill. Thank God. Stars danced across his vision when the lights were no longer close enough to blind him. They were still annoying, but not something he couldn't deal with. That was it. This had to end.  Doing this kind of crap was going to get them both killed, or at the very least hurt. Now, both of them dying was almost a certainty. Semis were not toys. These rigs were meant to be driven by professionals, not testosterone-driven jerks who were just big kids playing with powerful toys. Rodney switched the CB back on. He had to downshift again as they continued to climb, the tanker falling further behind.  It was an accident. I said I'm sorry. If you want to pull over, we can have words. You can kick my teeth in. Do whatever to make you feel better. But if not, just let it go, man. Rodney clipped the mic back to the side of the CB and focused back on the road. The hill seemed to be longer than the previous two had been. He only had to downshift down to fifth gear, holding steady just below 30mph. The night seemed to drone on with the endless hum of the engine. Nothing responded on his CB, and his engine was a subtle rumble that threatened to put him to sleep. He had no idea how long he had been going up before we saw the yellow sign up ahead that marked another 7% downgrade coming up. His chest grew tight. It was time to see if the driver was going to back off or not. He wished he had his cell phone. If he could get a call out to 911, maybe they could get someone out there. He didn't care what problems it caused him. At least this psycho wouldn't be after him, and he would be alive. He tried to scan the cab again to see where the phone might have landed. But it was no use. He couldn't see much past the bright onboard company computer. The damn thing was always an annoyance during the night. Even if he dimmed it to the lowest setting, it would still be too bright. The glow made it too hard to see anything on the other side of the cab. What if he did see it? Was he going to try and reach across the truck and grab it? Do you know what they call this next hill? The voice on the CB had lost some of the viciousness he had felt before.  Was Rodney really just going to let it go if he did? How would he explain the damage to the trailer? He could come up with a story about how a car sideswiped him but it was so dark in the mountains there was no way he could identify them. He couldn't call it in because there was no cell reception and he couldn't send it through the company computer because there was no safe place to pull over and type in a message. The lie didn't sit well with him, but if it meant he lived, it was worth it. He was just grateful that he would see his wife and hold his daughter in his arms again, seeing their smiles. He grabbed the mic and keyed it. Not a clue. Dead man's drop. Rodney gave a nervous laugh. Really? Who calls it that? Locals, unlike most of the hills around here, this one doesn't have a pull-off ramp. If you lose control, there's nowhere to go. Okay? You get to the bottom, there's a nasty curve. If you come down too fast over the edge, you go. It's a straight drop. That guardrail isn't going to do much more than buckle and break when you hit it. Rodney looked at his driver's side mirror. He could see the tanker back there. He no longer had all the lights on, just the headlights, like a pair of eyes looking back at him, watching him. He took a deep breath. That sounds bad. Yeah, it's a rough way to go. Seeing yourself falling to your death, knowing there's no way you can stop it. Rodney tried to swallow down the large lump in his throat. He suddenly felt very parched, reaching for the thermos of coffee. He wasn't sure what to say, but it sure as hell felt like there was an underlying threat there.  Rodney looked at the CB then in his mirror. He neared the top of the hill and had to upshift before he grabbed the mic. My wife spent out with me a time or two. Sometimes we'd go out and use the truck to drive to some vacation getaway. You ever have any pets? No? Yeah, well, when you have no family at home, it gets lonely. Sometimes a dog is all the family you got. Rodney upshifted again, keeping an eye on his gauges, making sure the engine brake was on and keeping him from going too fast. He didn't dare upshift another gear, and as the engine brake took hold, he let the semi glide down the hill, occasionally tapping the brake to keep it from going too fast. This was how it should be. It was still a long, tedious process, but there was no rush or fight with it. Not when you knew what you were doing. It was all just a matter of paying attention. He still kept a watchful eye on the tanker coming up behind him. It wasn't charging though. It stayed right behind him, steady. He wasn't passing him, but he wasn't slamming into him either. It was almost like back in the day when drivers looked out for each other and ran in convoys to keep an eye on one another. That was back when the DOT would try to clamp down and some places were out to get drivers for no reason. There had been a time when truck driving was like the Old West. If you didn't have a brother to watch your back, you could turn around and find a figurative knife stabbing you there. Rodney waited for the driver to say more, but the seconds ticked away. He finally grabbed his mic, wanting to keep the driver talking, keep him calm. I can imagine. It's sometimes not easy having a pet out here. They get rambunctious. Sometimes you have to keep the window down and just let them hang their head out. They like that, feeling the wind blowing their ears back. You can almost see them smile. Sounds like something really amazing. Yeah. Light suddenly flooded around him, then came the angry roar of the tanker's air horn. Rodney knew what was coming before he felt it. He heard the smashing and grinding of metal as he was slammed back against his seat. The truck suddenly became a missile racing down the side of the mountain.  His horn blew, muffling the rest. His corpse is on my passenger seat. You ran me into that mountain and said you're sorry. You're going to be sorry. Rodney fought with his own wheel as the truck tried to slip around him. The tanker pushed on his trailer, causing it to zigzag, the load swaying, making it nearly impossible for him to fight with it. When he turned left, the trailer tried to go right, the rear wanting to meet him on the left. If he gave in, he would jackknife rolling both truck and trailer, so he would have to turn the truck back right in order to have the trailer push left, but the rear would still fight to meet him. Worse, he couldn't hit the brake. If he did, the trailer would swing around and he'd be in an uncontrollable spin. He had to keep going faster, upshifting to dangerous speeds in an effort to do the only thing he could do to outrun the devil on his back. They were going downhill, which made it easy to go faster than safety permitted. It worked. His truck started to straighten, his speed starting to build. He didn't dare look down at the speedometer, riding the accelerator instead. The engine screamed at him, not liking the higher RPMs. He was already going faster than the speed limit on his truck allowed. If he weren't going downhill, he would have maxed out at 65, no matter how hard he pounded on the throttle. There was just no more speed for him to give. But the tanker truck was heavier. Even if it had a limiter, which he didn't think it did, it had mass on its side, and Rodney could see the approaching lights in his side mirror. It was coming again. He saw a yellow road sign on the right, but he couldn't look at it. He was fixated on those headlights glaring at him. They came up behind him, crashing into his rear bumper. It didn't matter if he saw it or not. The other driver had already told him what was coming, and if he kept trying to outrun him, there was no way he was going to make it. He was sure to end up flying off the cliff, becoming a pancake on the ground below. What could he do? If he slowed, the maniac would just continue to push him, making him spin and slide until he jackknifed, rolling off the cliff in a mangled mass of metal. If he sped up, he wouldn't even see the curve. He would just break through the guardrail like it was paper. There was no good option. He wanted to just let his head fall to the steering wheel. Fighting was useless anyway. Why not just relax his shoulders, pound the wheel with his forehead, and let the tears pour down? He was never going to see his wife and child again. And maybe he deserved it. If he had killed the man's dog, took away his only companion. Maybe this was his punishment. He definitely shouldn't be behind the wheel. Not tonight. Maybe never again. It was obvious he was too much of a danger on the road. Screw it. It was a long shot. No, the idea had no way of working. It was sure to kill them both. But it didn't matter. It was something that deep down he always wanted to try. Some days he thought about doing it just to see what would happen. It was like his last day bucket list kind of idea, like trying to drive a semi through a fast food drive-through. Something so ludicrous that he knew he would never do it no matter how much he'd like to try. But now was the time. He pulled on the lever toward the center of his dash. The handle was well worn so that only a couple letters marked what it was for. T-L-A-K. And even those were barely visible. It didn't matter. He knew what it was for. Air hissed, sounding like it exploded out from under his dash. He never knew why it sounded like there was air escaping from under there, even when there might be an air leak somewhere else. But it did. And it now rushed to escape from the trailer brakes. He barely had a chance to look in his mirror before he felt the heavy jolt pushing him into his seatbelt. He felt the sting in his shoulder as it cut in. His body mass becoming heavy as the force pulling him back became stronger. The lever wanted to jump out of his hand but he held firm, keeping it low. Smoke now surrounded him. The truck slowed to the sound of squealing metal and screeching rubber. Then he heard the scream of an air horn and saw the tanker fly past him. He was quickly slowing, the tanker just beginning to slam on his brakes. Rodney didn't have time to watch him as he fought for control of his own truck. Although, as it were his back brakes doing most of the work, he didn't have the wheel fighting against him. He downshifted and the engine brake whined, slowing the truck. He let off the lever and pumped his brake. Now that the lever wasn't pulled, all the brakes in the truck worked, not just the rear most trailer brakes. He looked in his mirror, thankful to see that the trailer was still there. Smoke billowing out from under the tires. Then he saw the flames. Crap! He cursed, quickly letting off the brakes, the truck lunging forward. His brakes had caught fire and his back tires would catch soon as well. He had to stop. He had been slowing. The trailer brake had slowed him considerably, but he was still going downhill. His only option was to keep braking, hoping the trailer brakes would hold for just a little longer. His lungs burned. He hadn't noticed he had started to hold his breath as he gently applied more pressure, easing it down to 15 mph. He quickly downshifted, the engine roaring as its brake bogged down in such a low gear. He eased down the airbrakes again, keeping an eye on the driver's side mirror, praying that the flames didn't climb too high. The truck eased to a stop. He had gotten it as far to the side of the road as possible. His hazards blinking on the canyon wall to his right. He didn't wait for the truck to settle as he quickly released the airbrakes and jumped out, grabbing the fire extinguisher from his side compartment. He could hear the screeching of the hot brakes as they didn't want to hold the truck. He ran up the steep road, fumbling with the extinguisher, never having used one before. He hoped he had it right as he extended the little hose and tried to find the base of the fire to aim at. It didn't take long for him to realize it wasn't going to work. The fire continued to build and wrap around the tires. When the rubber started to melt, Rodney was sure one of them would blow at any minute. He was too close to them, and he winced with every pop, sure that he was about to get hit by flying debris. The extinguisher emptied, and he heard air hissing out, the small canister having nothing more. He was done. He backed away from the trailer, the flames following him, chasing after him. They would continue to chase him until he got to the front. Then they would consume his truck. Well, the company's truck, and he wasn't too sure he cared enough about the company to care about the truck. Things would be a lot worse though if the cab caught fire. Crap. He rushed towards the front and started lowering the landing gear. It crunched as one side hit the uneven ground, and he didn't try to force the other. He leaned under the trailer and pulled the fifth wheel handle, then ran to the front pulling on the airlines to get them free. When the rig pulled out from under it, it was allowed crash as the trailer dropped the rest of the way to the ground. He continued on, getting a little distance between himself and the trailer. He went about 50 feet before he stopped the truck and started looking for the cell phone, keeping an eye out for the tanker truck. He wasn't sure if the driver was going to come back as his trailer was now a blaze, a beacon for anyone nearby. It wouldn't be hard for the other driver to find him, and with the smoke trapped in the valley, Rodney wouldn't see him until it was too late. He grabbed his phone from the floorboard, glad to see it still had a charge, frustrated when he saw the no signal icon in the upper right corner. Didn't matter, the phone would get signal somewhere. He had to try to contact authorities, which might mean leaving the scene until he could call. He was exiting the truck when the first tire blew. It was a loud explosion that echoed in the canyon. Then the next tire, followed by another. He wasn't sure when the fourth tire blew as a loud rumbling started to overshadow the sound. He had no idea what it was, but the echo was all around him. It sounded like the grating of stone, heavy masses of rock colliding. Then he saw the first of the small rocks land on the trailer, pinging off the metal ceiling like hail in a strong fall storm. He looked up knowing it was impossible to see anything through the smoke, but he felt it when the ground around him started trembling. There were loud cracking sounds that he was sure came from above him. He didn't have time to secure anything. If he went back, he could be caught in the oncoming avalanche. His life had never involved much physical activity. It had become worse once he started driving a truck, spending most of his time either driving or sleeping in the back. Exercise was not a part of his daily routine, and as he tried to run down the road, he felt that mistake catching up to him. His lungs quickly burned with the demand for more air. With the smoke around him and the running, it was getting harder and harder to get any. He saw stars in the smoke and not the sky. His legs felt like they should be hurting, but he couldn't tell because his knees were filled with so much pain everything else could communicate with him later about how much they hated him. When the first rock fell, he didn't look back. After the third rock, he chanced a quick look over his shoulder, thankful he had gone far enough that his truck was only a shape in the smoke and he couldn't see any of the destruction. When the he's lifted, he looked around at the dark interstate. The glowing fire behind him lit the night in such an odd way, he could see a little bit in front of him, seeing the curve. He hadn't realized just how close to it he had been. Had he not slammed on the trailer break when he did, he would have flown straight through the guardrail, like the tanker truck did. Rodney looked at the stretch of missing guardrail, wide enough for a semi. He walked to it slowly, mesmerized. The driver had wanted to kill Rodney so much, his own life hadn't mattered. And for what? Because of an accident? Because Rodney had accidentally slammed him against the wall? It wasn't like he had done it on purpose, and the guy was partly to blame. He had blared his horn at him, making him look. Sure, if Rodney hadn't been so tired, he probably wouldn't have drifted over while looking, but still, the guy shouldn't have. Rodney remembered that the driver had told him something right before that last attack. He had been telling him a story, something about a companion. Rodney knew the road out there could get lonely, even with his daily phone calls with his wife, he still felt the loneliness. There were nights when he sat in his bunk and all he wanted to do was hold her, feel her warmth beside him. How would it be out on the road if there was no one waiting at home for him? He couldn't imagine it. So, if all a person had in the world was their dog, if someone took that away from him, how would he handle it? Well, he doubted he would go homicidal, but could he really be sure of that? He stared out into the darkness. He wasn't sure about a lot of things. A man was dead, and it was partly his fault. Where did he go from here? The moment he called the authorities, he could end up in jail for a vehicular manslaughter, 30 years in jail if he remembered correctly, although that was different from state to state. If he walked away, there was a chance his truck would be lost in the fire and avalanche. He could try and make a clean break, go back to see his wife and daughter, but would he be able to look them in the eye? No, not after all this. He stared at that endless darkness below him. The nothingness was so inviting. He felt like he could lose himself in it. What would be left of his life? What was going to happen now? He took another step forward and sat down on the edge, debating if he should walk, wait, or just push himself over. While I was younger, I used to work as a night auditor for a very popular hotel chain in New Orleans. This particular hotel was once an old warehouse in the central business district. It had a long history that dated back to the underground railroad where tunnels built throughout the building were used to secretly lead slaves to boats on the Mississippi River. When the hotel owners started to demo the property to convert it into a hotel, they found old distillery equipment used during the prohibition days. The building was saturated in fantastic and interesting history. I was told that during the renovation, a decision was made to keep much of the existing brick and woodwork. This gave the hotel an intriguing historic and warehouse feel to it. While it hadn't been occupied in nearly 40 years, the guts of the building were amazingly in great shape. It had such an interesting vibe and New Orleans is known for attracting the most interesting of guests for Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. I loved it there. Until the night I quit. It was close to 3.30 am when one of the guests stumbled in with a woman who frequented the hotel as a guest of our guests. She was one of the unspoken of perks that our concierge desk would provide when requested by only the most distinguished of guests. An incredibly beautiful tall black woman. Diamond never had a problem getting work, and she tipped us at the front desk, security, and the concierge incredibly well for turning a blind eye to our activities. Being a professional flirt, and me being bored out of my mind most nights, we often found ourselves having conversations when she finished her shift. The stories she would share with me to this day still boggle my simple mind. Being that she had worked in the hotel longer than I had, she would tell me these stories about a certain row of spa suites that were visible from where I stood at the front desk up to the mezzanine. She mentioned how strange things would happen in those rooms when she or one of her girlfriends would visit them at night with a client. They were strange things like shadows, moving objects, flickering lights and voices. I always took it as her showing off her art of storytelling and the fact she knew I often worked the desk alone at night, a point she often made when failing to meet her personal quota for the night. On the night I quit, however, she was not her usual self. Fact of the matter is, I didn't even speak with her that night, or any night thereafter. The last time I saw her, she was running naked and screaming right out of the front door of the hotel. I remember hearing her first through one of these spa suite rooms on the mezzanine. When I looked up to investigate the location of the sounds, I saw her hurl open the door of room M106 and watched her haul ass down the glass walled hallway, down the stairs and out to the street. I just stood there watching her in the shock and awe of the moment. Here was this voluptuous woman flopping all about, screaming, petrified and covered in something and all I could do was gawk. The moment she ran out of my sight, I sobered up and immediately gazed up at the open door of room M106. After staring up at the wide open entrance of the room on the mezzanine for about a minute, my stomach dropped every time I saw a shadow change within the room. Soon Bill, the loan security guard on duty, whipped around the corner from the back office area where he often took naps and quickly started asking me questions. Her screams woke him up. I pointed up to the room and tried to explain to him what had happened. He immediately called the police for backup and, per protocol, we both started to make our way up the mezzanine level, eyes transfixed on the open door, waiting for the drunken man to stumble out of the room. As we reached the hallway, other guests started peeping their heads out of their rooms to see what the commotion was all about. We quietly hushed them back into their rooms for their own safety. As we approached the doorway, Billy pulled out his gun and called out to the guest. There was no response, but we started to hear a very audible humming sound, almost like a rapid buzzing. When we entered the suite, we could see the king-sized bed at the end of the hallway. This was one of the smaller spa suites that had a bed and an armbar with a TV, a desk and a jet spa bathtub catty corner to the bed. The bed was unkept but empty and we couldn't see the rest of the room from the hallway. So we moved closer in and with every step, the humming began to get louder and the shadows on the walls seemed to be floating back and forth like they were waves in the ocean. I called out again to see if we could get an answer, but we did not. We moved closer to the edge of the hallway slowly and terrified. That's when we began to see them. The cause of the shadow was everywhere and on everything. They seemed to blanket the entire room, on the bed, on the walls, in the air. Then we turned the corner. Under the heat lamp, above the bathtub spa, there it was, a huge tent-sized swarm of angry and hungry termites. In the tub, laid our naked guest, covered in termites, being devoured by termites. His body was marked by broken wings and small drill holes all along his skin. His eyes partially liquefied from the incessant digging of the termites. This once portly white man was reduced to a shade of red, brown and gray of crawling skin. The sight and swarm made it unbearable to stay and Bill and I ran out of the room, tripping over each other in our haste. When the police arrived, they turned off the lights to the room and the swarm almost vanished instantly into the old wood beams that lined the room. A blanket of dead pests covered the room and the crunch I remember hearing as we walked through the room haunts me to this day. I was told Diamond suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome after the incident. She supposedly said that the man started to get very rough with her and that a shadow floated out of the cracks of the wood and startled the guest. He fell back into the tub and that's when the swarm manifested itself. The cause of death was a traumatic brain injury, but it wasn't from the fall. It was from the nesting of the termites. To this day, you can still rent room M106 at the old warehouse hotel in New Orleans. It's just under a different number. What are dreams? What are they truly? Are they bits and pieces of memories thrown together without design or purpose? Might they whisper tales of coming days or reveal forgotten recollections from days long past? Perhaps our soul is expelled from our bodies each night, thrust out into the void to travel to lands beyond the limits of our physical form. Consider this, what if our dreams are more than just mere nonsense? What if they were premonitions of adventures not yet had? Tell me, have you ever had a dream that appeared so real it made your waking life seem distant and dull?  Do you know of anything that could fill you with such sorrow to awaken each morning and desire with all your might that your eyes will open to a brand new world? Yet never does it come. With every sunrise that is the burden I carry. However, such sadness does not consume me, for you see, my dreams are much more than wishful thinking and longing of the heart. They are preparing me for something.  You are not the first to dismiss my words or mock me. Many simply laugh out of amusement, and others feign looks of pity towards me. Surely one who is mad would entertain such foolishness, they say. They see only a land of make-believe, a fairy tale fabricated out of a mind of an unimportant girl who does not know her place amongst a society of the proper and civilized. It is beyond their reason to believe that a child, orphaned as an infant, who never knew the embrace of a mother's love or the guidance from a father could still possess a birthright of excellence. Nor would they consider such a waif could excel above all others with only the determination of her heart and by the strength in her hands. Despite it all, I hold no malice toward anyone, for their conclusions are not without logic, albeit sadly short-sighted. All that is soon to be changed. For tomorrow is my birthday, and when I am gone they will know they were wrong. You see, tomorrow is my fifteenth birthday. It is the day my dreams foretold would come. It told me, before the sun sets on your five-and-tenth year of life, you shall return in our darkest hour with salvation on your back and light in your hands. By your blade you will rid the land of the worm. That is what I see each and every night when I close my eyes and surrender to sleep. So, for one brief moment, let go of all your misgivings and apprehensions. Listen to my voice and let me tell you about my dreams. In my dreams there is a realm so close to our own that only the width of a hair separates the two. They exist side by side, unaware of one another, yet they are so far apart that traveling the distance would take a thousand years. It is a medieval realm where science and magic live alongside each other as beloved friends. Machines and technology, sorcery and magic, here they are one. In this world, little distinction can be seen in matters of wizarding and science. Sorcerers and teachers or magicians and healers, they are the same here. This realm is ruled by six great nations, each under a king and a queen of virtuous heart and noble blood. Castles and villages, farms and towns pepper the land. All live simplistic lives with a hint of technologies both natural and mystical. In my dreams I see a beautiful domed temple made from ivory, white stone. The temple is home to six sacred weapons made from sacred steel, a gift from a goddess to one warrior from each nation. She offered these weapons in preparation for the day foretold the day of the worm. Honored are those blades, but in the center of the temple is the seventh altar, the spot most revered. Upon this shrine rests the armor and weapons of the daughter of the seventh tribe, a girl born under an eclipse of the three moons and conceived from the joining of a mortal and a god. Her bloodline will be the one that is destined to unite the realms and shine hope upon an oppressed people. In my dreams, the weapons I wield are made from mystical steel of silver and blue. My armor is impenetrable and strong, yet impossibly light. My gauntlet, a metal-plated glove with a wide cuff that extends past my elbow, serves as my shield. It houses a triangular disc with three blades that emerge from its tips with a lethal snap. When flung, the disc obeys my will. It lays waste to all of my foes, then faithfully returns to my hand without fail every time. Forged was my sword from the last remnants of creation and tempered with the solar storms of a distant star and cooled with the very essence of life. It is the mortal enemy of rot and decay. Never will my sword be broken. Nothing can shatter its blade. It is impervious to impact. Never will its edge become worn and dulled. The jeweled eye that sits in its hilt is my symbol and banner. It is the beacon that shines a light of defiance against any abomination of desolation that stands before me. In my dreams, I see a day in which black rain falls from the sky. Ropey strands of greenish-black tar pour from the clouds. Its touch brings corrosion and decay across all the land. The arrival of the worm is heralded by a clap of thunder as its fortress bursts through the clouds. It pierces the ground like a dagger stabbed into flesh. It is a jagged and pointed crystalline citadel with bulbous blister-like domes upon its walls. The crystalline mountain is the throne from where the worm will conquer and reign. Black waterfalls flow from the dark fortress and crash to the ground, spreading outward from the mountain's base. It is the source of the decay, a black mold of writhing masses of tentacles and tendrils that infest the land with its disease. Everything it comes into contact with begins to rot away, except for one thing, the dead. For what is a warlord without any army of pawns? The dead are absorbed and transformed into vessels for the worm's decay to take use and take form. They are the eyes, the foot, and the iron fist of the worm. The once good people are now primal and vicious creatures, servants of the mighty worm. They attack with razor-sharp teeth, they strike with fingers as sharp as daggers, and they stab with limbs as deadly as spears. The worm fills its ranks with the deceased and slain flesh of the surrounding villages and devours the helpless people with a gluttonous appetite. The blisters from the walls of its fortress release themselves and its army of decayed and mindless drones carry the smelly, rotting masses into the heart of all six nations. It will plant itself into the ground and become extensions of the mind and will of the worm. From here it will wage war against every man, woman, and child. It will lay siege against the people with a battle cry of a death rattle, screamed from the lips and mouths of their deceased friends, families, and loved ones. In my dreams, I see the goddess blessing the six warriors from each of the nations before spiriting away the seventh set of armor and weapons. She takes them from the walls of the vulnerable temple and hides the items in a place far from the worm's reach where they will wait for the child foretold to come. In a final act of sacrifice, I see the goddess exhausting the last of her immortality to open a door of light.  Goodbye, my beloved daughter. It is twenty minutes to midnight, the day of my fifteenth birthday. I sit on the wooden floor, and I am trembling next to a heated stove. It is not the cold I tremble from. It is pure fear that fills my heart. However, make no mistake, I have no fear of what is to come. I am not afraid of my destiny or the future thrust upon me. I do not fear the day when I march against any army of a thousand rotting corpses. I have no fear when I consider the many battles I will fight. I will face many monsters, and I will lose many friends. Still, I am not afraid. No, none of that scares me. Do you want to know what I truly fear? Do you want to know what scares me and fills me with such terror and dread? It is this. I am so afraid that when tomorrow finally arrives, it will come and go like any other ordinary day. Many people believe there are frightening places on our planet that lead to the underground realms of hell. One such place is a location in Stull, the small, peaceful, quiet town in Kansas. Very old legends tell that a collapsed old evangelical church along with the overgrown cemetery located atop Immanuel Hill of Stull is a place where true evil can be encountered. These legends are based on local stories that somewhere within the tiny run-down Stull Cemetery there is a set of hidden steps which descend directly to the underworld itself. The steps are nearly impossible to find and are covered by a hidden seal which only opens on Halloween and the spring equinox. If one does manage to find these steps, they should never venture down them, for it is impossible to ever return. Is Stull Cemetery a gateway to hell? In Stull's history there have been a few strange facts which speak to its long reputation of being a cursed area. First, in the early 1900s, a boy was accidentally burned to death by his own father. A few years later, a man in town was found hanging from a tree. Both of these took place near a road known as Devil's Road, which appears on old maps of Stull, although it no longer exists today. In short, Stull Kansas has long been a place of mysterious deaths and associations with the Dark Prince. Today, mysterious people guard Stull from disturbances. Stories abound of curious people being terrorized and chased out of Stull by pickup trucks. Some stories say that these trucks would trail intruders for over 20 miles. In 1867, a small church was built in Limestone on the hillside just above the average burial ground known as Stull Cemetery. The small town of Stull is located just 15 to 20 miles outside of Lawrence and only 13 miles east of Topeka, the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas. Less than 100 tombstones are still there, but a burned-out church practically does not exist anymore. Its old remains simply disappeared one night and since then no one was able to give any explanation why it happened. As a matter of fact, the disappearance of the church's last remaining piece of wall is a true enigma and so is the bizarre history of Stull's church and neighboring cemetery. The church has been standing vacant since 1922 and it has been badly damaged by vandalism over the years and by lightning which struck the church and caused a large crack in one of its ancient stone walls. According to coverage in the local newspaper The Journal World, dated March 30, 2002, the old stone church was mysteriously torn down on Friday, March 29, 2002. A man named Major Weiss, who owns the property, along with two other members of Harvest Hills, LLC, who he declined to name, informed that he did not authorize the abandoned church to be destroyed and hadn't been informed the church would be raised. Those who lived nearby stated that they were also unaware of the demolition. The old church at the cemetery near Stull finally met its demise. Landowners aren't yet sure who on Friday demolished the limestone structure which local legend had reported to be a gateway to hell, the local newspaper wrote. The Holy Bible says that the powers of hell shall not prevail against the church. More exactly it is written in the book of Matthew 1618 that, and I also say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. What kind of powers did destroy the rest of the small today abandoned church of Stull? Did some fanatics vandalize the old remains of the church long rumored to be some kind of access port leading to hell? Within the Stull Cemetery there was once an imposingly tall pine tree that stood until 1998 when it was destroyed to dissuade thrill seekers. Even though the tree was perfectly healthy, it was cut down the day before Halloween. The tall pine tree grew directly through a headstone splitting it in half. Local lore held that the tree was used to hang witches before the land was allotted as a memorial ground. Both the church and tree were considered landmarks of evil which would help lead the way to the mystical steps to hell located nearby. For more than a century, urban legends and other weird and frightening stories have referred to Stull's connection with the devil and satanic or occult activity.  Are they still active and hold their rituals in the area? Legends say that the original name of this small town was Skull. Later the name was deliberately changed to Stull in order to cover the place's relation to black magic, witchcraft, ghosts, and supernatural happenings which as the Catholic Church teaches have of diabolical origins such as haunting or possessions. Popular culture often makes fun of the devil, but in reality his existence is a complex and very serious subject. Dr. Mark D. Roberts, who is a senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in California, said that within defined parameters Satan and demons do have certain powers. Scripture nowhere gives us a systematic account of the demonic so there is much we can't know for sure, but we do know that evil powers can impact life on this earth even beyond the obvious actions of temptation to sin and demon possession. This is why, as Paul urges in Ephesians 6 verse 12, we should recognize that our true struggle in this world is against demonic forces. Nothing about these Stull Cemetery seems strange or abnormal and all what people have said about the place may still be just a myth, the Stull myth. But there are still many people living nearby who are true believers in this myth. All stories with the devil involved have always had a strong hold on human imagination and beliefs. Jesus himself mentioned the devil as the ruler of this world or prince of this world, John 12 31, John 14 30, John 16 11. In Ephesians 2 verse 2 he is called the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.  But we must remember that if evil powers can impact life on this planet, they can even much easier form a single person's beliefs and beliefs as we know influence people's lives dramatically. We also have to remember that there is no smoke without fire with regards to old legends, gossip and rumors. Sheltered by towering shade trees, a unique building sits on the 1300 block of South 3rd Street, about 2 blocks south of the Walnut Street Baptist Church. I used to walk by it every day with my dogs and it is another of those unusual buildings that always piqued my curiosity. Like so many of the homes in old Louisville, red bricks figure prominently in the construction, something that harkens back to a day when only the well-to-do could afford residences built of brick and stone. A brightly painted turret juts out from the corner to the north and two neat porches trimmed in gingerbread, one set back slightly from the other, flank the front of the building. Parallel walkways lead from the street and end at twin sets of steps that go up to the porches, where strange things have been known to happen when the sun goes down and the gas lamps bathe the street of old Louisville in a warm glow. And like so many of the historic structures in old Louisville, the building at 1324 and 1326 South 3rd Street harbors a secret.  It's the kind of secret that involves nothing more than the all-too-common themes of family intrigue and sibling rivalry. The story has it that construction on the spacious home began sometime around 1890, when Mr. Bowen, a well-to-do emergent, decided to build something known as a semi-detached home on 3rd Avenue's emerging millionaire's row. Although one might still hear that term used in England today, semi-detached has fallen out of style in this country, and most opt for the more accepted duplex when referring to a two-family home here. As can be imagined, this reportedly caused more than a little consternation among the well-healed residents of 3rd Avenue, who balked at anything other than the notion of a three-story single-family mansion joining their ranks. The respectable, albeit new though rich, families of the area had to have their own homes and grounds, and people who didn't meet these rigid standards lived beneath them. God forbid anyone in the late 1800s should talk of apartment living, a maverick lifestyle for those off-kilter dwellers content with living life on a shelf or packed in the sardine can. And on millionaire's row, at least, residing in semi-detached homes was only one notch above apartment living. When word got out about Mr. Bowen's plans to build a duplex, it seemed that resistance, if not in the neighborhood along 3rd Avenue, would foil his plans for the structure. It was rumored that some of his prospective neighbors had even threatened to take Mr. Bowen to court in an effort to thwart the addition of the two-family home to the burgeoning single-family streetscape of Millionaire's Row. That was until the reason for Mr. Bowen's building the duplex came to light. Mr. Bowen, it would seem, was burdened with two daughters who had entered their 30s with the misfortune of being single. Given their extreme degree of singleness, the two ladies were relegated to the annals of Spensterhood, and their father had no choice but to provide them with a comfortable abode in which to live out their remaining years as old maids. Whether it was this revelation that softened the steely resolve of the 3rd Avenue residents, or the fact that Bowen's financial situation had recently revealed him to be wealthier than most of his old Louisville neighbors, nobody can say. But a wave of charity nonetheless swept the barren lot at what would become 1324 and 1326 South 3rd Street, and the community welcomed the Bowen sisters with open arms. Mr. Bowen had the home built, and the sisters moved in, each taking up residence in her half of the dwelling, and for many years, so the story has it, the sisters lived in their comfortable home on what is now South 3rd Street. After the last sister died, with the Great Depression looming on the horizon, new owners moved in. Soon, the Bowen sisters were all but forgotten. About that time, the first reports of strange occurrences on the front porches started circulating throughout the neighborhood. Unexplained apparitions and odd, bouncing balls of orange light had begun manifesting themselves on the front porch, usually in the warm evenings of the spring and summer. According to various eyewitnesses, they were eerie, glowing orbs of light that would dance back and forth between one porch to the other. It was about eight in the evening, says Norbert Samuels, an old Louisville resident, who recalls a particular evening in the late 1930s as he strolled along 3rd Street with his mother, and we were passing by the old Bowen place. Samuels and his mother lived in a small apartment on nearby Kentucky Street, and they, like many in the area, had acquired the habit of taking regular after-dinner strolls. This no doubt harkened back to the early days when 3rd Street, once named 3rd Avenue, counted as the main promenade thoroughfare in the city. Clad in the latest fashions, old Louisvillians of the Gilded Age considered a stroll down its wide sidewalks an essential part of every Sunday afternoon. At an evening walk or constitutional down what the locals simply referred to as the street would become a tradition that lasted until the years after World War II when city dwellers started fleeing to the suburbs. It was a beautiful spring evening, says Samuels, and the light was just beginning to fade when all of a sudden my mother stopped abruptly. Samuels, who would have been no more than five at the time, recalls that her grip on his hand tightened as she turned and stared at the porch. I wasn't really paying attention at first, so I just stood there, but after I realized that she was looking at something, I looked up and followed her gaze to the porch on the old bow in place. The unsamuels drew in close to his mother as his eyes squinted to make out the activity on the porch. There was a bouncing light or something there, and that's what had caught her attention. And now 85-year-old recalls, today I know it would have been called a light orb, but back then it just looked like a shiny dot bouncing around. It was kind of yellowish-orange and very bright. I've never seen anything like it. Samuels says that he and his mother stood for several minutes and observed as the orb darted back and forth across the porch. It just kept bouncing back and forth, and then it sort of grew into a see-through cloud. Samuels says he then heard a gasp from his mother, something that caused him to turn and look. She raised the other hand to her mouth and when I turned back to look at the porch, I saw why. According to Samuels, the cloud had assumed the shape of what appeared to be an old woman sitting in a rocking chair. She looked like she had white hair done up in a bun in the back, and she was sitting in that chair rocking back and forth, he says. My mother and I talked about it for years afterward, and we eventually discovered that other people had seen the same thing. The ghost of the old lady in the rocking chair, as she came to be known, had apparently become a permanent fixture on Third Street. As children, our parents always used to tell us about the ghosts in the neighborhood. Recalls Annabelle Jordan, a Fourth Street resident who grew up in the very house her grandparents had built in the late 1800s. In all the stories we would hear, I always loved hearing about the old lady in the rocking chair. It wasn't a scary story at all, that's what I liked about it. It was just a nice old lady people would see every now and then. Little did Annabelle Jordan know that she would one day be one of those people to witness the apparition of the old dame in the rocking chair. I remember the not quite well, recalls the retired math teacher, because I had just left my best friend's birthday party and was on my way home from the corner of Third and Gullbert. She had just turned ten and it was May 5, 1949. Jordan says nothing seemed out of the ordinary as she walked down the brick sidewalk and approached the house to her left. That's what I thought at first, she recalls, but then something caught my eye. There was some kind of form on the porch. It was gray and cloudy. Once she reached the first walkway leading up to the front steps, Jordan says she stopped and tried to focus on the vague shape before her. I wanted to go up the walkway and get closer to the porch, but something in the back of my head told me to stay put.  The young girl stood there for a full minute and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. It was very faint, but there was a definite shape on the stoop. I knew right away I had to be seeing the ghost of the old lady in the rocking chair because I could see right through the apparition to the brick wall on the other side of her. In all my life I had never seen such a thing. After a moment or two, studying the strange sight, Jordan says she could even make out distinguishing features on the ghost. It looked like it was sitting in an old-fashioned high back rocker, and I could see her hair in a bun on the back of her head. There also appeared to be a white long-sleeved blouse with a cameo brooch at the collar and high top, black leather boots. I could even see that she had on a pair of small wire-framed spectacles. Not too long after the realization that she had come across the apparition of the famed old lady in the rocking chair, Annabelle Jordan says the ghost form simply disappeared. Just like that, she explains, it vanished. There one second and gone the next. In all her life she had never experienced such an odd encounter. She says she won't forget it until the day she dies. Others who have experienced firsthand the ghost of the old lady in the rocking chair share this sentiment. I never saw her myself, says Richard Oswald, a former resident of Old Louisville who now resides in San Diego. But I can vividly recall both my grandmother and grandfather talking about her. Both of them claim to have seen her in the 40s when they were both kids, and the thing that I recall most is them saying that they could see that she was wearing glasses, the old-fashioned kind that looked like round spectacles. Ruth Gibson remembers the same kind of glasses on the nose of the specter she spied in the 1950s when she and her older brother would spend summers with their grandparents in a police home on Ormsby Avenue. They had the most amazing house, and I'm pretty sure it's still in good shape even though it was divided into apartments in the 1960s. The grand staircase was the most striking feature of the home, and I have many fond memories playing on it as a child. There was an absolutely huge landing between the second and first floors with an incredible stained glass window. It was gorgeous. Gibson says it was on this same landing with the large stained glass window where she first heard tell of the old lady in the rocking chair. My brother and I used to go up there at night and tell ghost stories. We'd wait until right after the sun went down, we'd grab a flashlight and blanket and go up there after dinner to see who could scare the other more. Rants my brother usually won. Years later, Ruth Gibson says the story that she remembers most vividly is that of the lady in the rocking chair.  But it turns out that he was really exaggerating the story. There wasn't a murder at all. Leave it to my brother to try and make the story gorier than it actually was. However, Gibson didn't discover this fact till many years later, many years after she had a strange encounter with the apparition herself one day. It was the summer of 1955 and we had had only a week left at my grandparents, she recalls. It was the Thursday before Labor Day weekend and the last thing on my mind was ghosts. I'd spent the day with a friend at her house down by the university and I was just walking home down third when I looked up and saw a strange light out of the corner of my eye. At that moment, Gibson came to the realization that she found herself in front of the mysterious porches at 1324 and 1326 South Third Street. I swear just a couple nights before my brother had been telling me about the ghost of the old woman in the rocking chair and all of a sudden there I was in front of the porch he had been telling me about and there was this strange little ball of light just sort of dancing around. According to Gibson, the orb seemed to float in the air, bouncing back and forth between the two porches that flanked the front of the house. At first I thought it was a reflection from somewhere, she explains, but after studying it for a bit I realized it couldn't have been a reflection. I could see that it had some dimension to it, it was spherical in shape. After what seemed to be a minute or two, Gibson says that the point of light exploded before her eyes and all of a sudden erupted into a little cloud of sparkling light with all these little shivering bits. It's very hard to explain, but that's what happened. All of a sudden there was this cloud hanging there and the light sort of faded away. At first I couldn't believe my eyes and thought I had to be imagining it or something, or that there had to be some explanation for it. But Ruth Gibson didn't have an explanation for what happened next. Believe it or not, the cloud started to increase in size and it gradually began changing shape. People think I'm crazy when I tell them this story, but it eventually assumed the shape of what looked like an old woman sitting in a rocking chair. I swear it, you could even see her rocking back and forth. Ruth Gibson says she stood there, arms dangling at her sides for another half minute or so. Then the mysterious figure faded from sight and vanished. It was as if she had never been there at all. I looked around to see if there was anybody in the vicinity to corroborate what I had just seen, but I was alone. No one was on the porch, it was just me and my chill bumps.  Of course I wanted to tell my brother, she explains, but I had to sneak in suspicion that he wouldn't believe me. Although he enjoyed telling ghost stories, it appears that her older brother didn't necessarily believe inspectors himself. Rats loved scaring me and all, but he was very much the scientific kind, says Gibson. For him, there had to be a rational explanation for everything or else it didn't count. The only explanation for ghosts in his mind came from the paranormal, so he dismissed the idea of ghosts as reality. It was just fun and games in the end, and that's what he enjoyed. It turns out her suspicions weren't entirely unfounded. When she arrived at her grandparents' large home on Armsby Avenue, she rushed upstairs to tell her brother what she had just witnessed. He just sort of looked at me like I was crazy, she confides. He didn't accuse me of lying or anything, but I could tell he didn't believe what I was telling him. He said I must have seen an odd reflection or something, or that someone had to be playing a prank on me. He still says that to this day, even though he has talked to other people who claim to have seen the very same thing, he remains the eternal skeptic. But when it comes to the ghost of the old lady in the rocking chair, there are skeptics who have been swayed. One of them goes by the name of Madeleine Hecht. She has become a firm believer in the specter that haunts the porches at the late Victorian duplex in the heart of old Louisville. She is also the person who shared some very interesting information that might explain the reason for the purported haunting. I used to live in that building, she explains. I'm related to the Armstrongs, who at one time lived there. They were real big wigs in the neighborhood, and had quite a lot of money at one time. They got involved with the telephone when it first came out in Louisville and made a killing from it. John Armstrong, president of the Louisville Home Telephone Company, would eventually move out of the home and purchased a much grander residence just a half block down the street. I think most of the strange stuff with ghosts on the porch started way after they moved out, said Hecht. So I doubt that they ever heard of any of the weird stories, but when I lived there some 40 years ago, most of the people I knew in the neighborhood had heard about the little old lady who would return from the grave every now and then to rock a spell on her front porch. An amateur historian who has lived most of her life in the old Louisville neighborhood, Hecht says she considered herself a skeptic when she first heard the accounts of odd specters and rocking chairs plaguing the front porch of the duplex at 1324 and 1326 South Third Street. I'm pretty straight laced, she explains, and I had always been told that there were no such thing as ghosts. My father was a science teacher and my mother was an atheist, so neither of them believed in the eventuality of an afterlife. For them, specters were nothing more than the result of an overactive imagination. But Hecht says she always had a fascination with old homes and ghost stories. I didn't believe in ghosts since I had never seen anything, but I still loved to read about ghosts and hear other people's stories about encounters with them. I don't know what it was, but I really loved ghost stories. And when she heard the odd tale about the old lady in the rocking chair that supposedly haunted the front porch where she lived, it quickly became one of her favorite ghost stories. When I lived there, there was an Irish woman who would come in from Butchertown once a week and clean the place for us, she explains. Her name was Mary and she was highly superstitious, so it didn't surprise me at all that she believed in ghosts and would tell me stories all the time. In fact, I think she got a rise out of telling me those stories and trying to scare me. Mary, as it turns out, would also be the first individual to give Madeleine Hecht a first-hand account of the strange activity that frequented her front stoop.  She was sort of flustered as she shook the water from her umbrella and asked me if I had seen her. When I asked her who she was talking about, she just sort of looked at me like I was crazy and shook her head. The old woman in the rocking chair, that's who, was her answer. This time, I was the one who looked at her like she was crazy. According to the older woman, a foggy shape resembling that of a woman in a rocking chair had just vanished from the porch. She told me she had walked up the front steps and was collapsing her umbrella when she looked up and saw the form to her right. Although the apparition had a somewhat easy cast to it, the startled woman claims she could still make out enough features on the specter to identify it as an elderly woman with grayish hair done up in a bun in the back. And she even said it was wearing glasses, the old-fashioned round spectacle type, and a high-waisted skirt to boot. I don't know if she was telling the truth or not, but she did seem sincere at the time of recounting. Like I said, she was always making things up to scare me, so she could have been inventing this time too, but I found it strange that she was reporting the types of things on the ghost that people had been talking about before. Who knows, maybe she was just repeating what she had heard from other people. But there would be no such explanation for the site that greeted Hect's eyes one morning in April as she knelt in the front yard and pulled weeds from the flower bed while her mother prepared lunch inside. It was just your average, cool spring morning and I was enjoying myself among the Jean-Coules and pansies, praying that my mother wasn't preparing chipped beef on toast for me. To this day, that is something I simply cannot abide. Hect says she heard something stir on the porch and diverted her gaze there, mesmerized by what she saw. I looked up and there she was, just as plain as the nose on your face. It was an old lady in a rocking chair, gently rocking back and forth, and it didn't even look like she noticed I was there. She did seem a bit one-dimensional to me, sort of like an old black and white newspaper photograph, but it was clearly the ghost I had heard talk about. As with other sightings, Hect says the apparition sported a bun in the back, small wire-framed spectacles and a long-sleeved old-fashioned blouse with a cameo and a lace at the throat. But that's all I was able to make out, she explains, because as soon as I saw her, I yelled from my mother and ran inside, and you would have thought someone had gotten themselves killed by the way I was screaming. My mother almost had a heart attack when I ran back to the kitchen.   When I was able to get my wits about me and tell her what I had seen, she just gave me that kind of look all kids hate getting from their parents, a pitying stare that said she didn't believe me and might have been disappointed in me. No amount of pleading could convince her that I was telling the truth.