Gray moon

*7:22 pm:early dusk

Parker sighed as the sun dropped behind the mountain and felt himself tense as he headed across the dusty field and towards his old farm house. Night was near, and this night would bring terror. When that hated silver light came through the trees, it always did.

Inside his house, a house he shared with one bluish-green parakeet and nothing else, he kicked off his boots and shook off his flannel shirt, dropping it carelessly over a chair. Around his neck, on a chain thin from age, he was almost unaware as he lightly touched his old dog-tags. It was habitual, normally not even noticed, but almost oddly reassuring in some small back part of his mind. His military days, now 30 years behind him, were GOOD days, after all.

Those days were before the nights of terror. Or, he acknowledged to himself, it was actually maybe the mornings that brought the terror, in his memories, as hazy as they were....it was just in the night when the terror proper actually occurred.

And with that bit of grimness, he headed to his room. Exhausted, yes, but sleep would be fleeting at best this night, he knew that well. All he could do was carefully lock his reinforced steel door(speciality security door that had cost him 1400 dollars he really didn't have to spare), check the burglar bars on his window, hide his door key in an oddly unreasonable location.

And lie across his bed and await the inevitable.


*7:23 pm:four miles east.

"Dammit to flaming hell!"

Harrison eyed his boss---the high sheriff of Cherokee County---and almost grinned despite himself. After all, it wasn't like such a good southern baptist to make such an un-church worthy exclamation! He decided, despite the grim and nasty scene before them, to take advantage of the situation with some colorful language of his own.

"Pain in the ass, ain't it chief? I mean, what the fu..."

"Thats enough, Harry! I know I slipped, I will just have to ask forgiveness I reckon."

(And Sheriff Lamar Willard knew a lot more about asking forgiveness than Deputy Harrison might believe. Particularly where that half-mex Ramirez gal was concerned, oh yes. Oh, yes.)

But for now, the chief could only stare at the grisly scene before him and shake his head. Hell if he knew exactly what had sliced the nuts off the bull that lie prone--and almost bloodless---before him.

He was only a half competent baptist maybe, true, but he WAS a pretty competent cop, and tried his best to make sense of the scene before him. THIS one, the 1000 pound or so hereford was not ripped open savagely like the smaller one two nights before had been, no, no this one looked positively SURGICALLY opened up. He shook his head as Harrison looked on.

"Cults, chief?" The deputy was intently staring at the sprawled animal before him. He was no rancher, and not real familiar with dead things of any kind really, but even he knew the bull had been dead maybe a day at most...

Or rather, maybe, a night.


*7:40pm:sunset

Gina Ramirez opened the Jim Beame and drew hard on the bottle. Straight and warm. And she didn't care.

When sunset fell on this God-forsaken, redneck riddled, holy roller mountain, she HAD to drink, after all.

She tried to tell that fat sheriff about the sky-lights a year or so ago. Had tried to tell him the rest too, the dreams and the screams and the ....the other things. Things she didn't like to admit, things she supposed she could never fully admit or accept. Her feeling , no, her knowledge of being violated, taken.By something in the night.

But Mr. Church man didn't want to hear that, didn't really want to know. What he REALLY wanted, in fact, was the same thing from her that most males wanted. Another drink. Hard.

She shook her head hard, the whiskey burning as she took yet another shot. Afraid to close her eyes, she reached across her kitchen table to the box. The box that contained the only thing her drifter turned corn-picker excuse for a father had left her equally worthless mother. Maybe, she thought, she would just take the bottle and the pistol from the box, lock herself in her room, and shoot the first thing that moved.

22 years old. A broken down box-trailer and a half job in a sock factory, fighting off advances from horny old men. And drinking at night, alone. And afraid.So very afraid.

In fact,( another drink) terrified.


*8:27 pm:somewhere amongst the stars above, but closing fast


The creatures that piloted the craft--if 'craft' was the right word---were arcing from the lunar satellite that orbited the third planet from the star at a speed incomprehensible to any other than they.

They communicated one with the other, abstract mental flashes passed , impressed, upon grim minds---information relayed and passed on.

Not the grazing beasts, not this time. Enough was known. Nor the female hominid, no. That one was barren, although the creatures had felt something like a humor when examining her, granted. Mission failure.

Then one creature moved it's head, slightly. Images passed to another. A clicking sound, smoke and smells. Mental flashes and brimstone.

The male. Take the male.


*8:27.5 pm: Parker

Parker saw the silver light outside his window and knew. He felt it in his very bones...

*8:28pm:Gina

Gina saw a streak of silver light through the sky. Closed her eyes, dropping gun from one hand and bottle from the other. And screamed in horror as the memories of a gray room in hell came flooding back. Releasing.

*8:28 pm:The high Sheriff and deputy Harrison

"Hey chief, dang, you see that?"Harrison swore he saw a streak across the sky.

"Naw, Harry, I didn't see a thing---except the bright full moon yonder."And the Sheriff headed towards the station. With that old familiar lustful feeling for that Ramirez girl building again. Maybe he should stop by her place in a while. Or, on reflection, maybe he just better ask forgiveness.

8:29 pm:full dark, full moon

Parker never saw the four beings that suddenly stood in a deafening silence at the foot of his bead. Not that would have cared if he did. He was contorting, twisting.

And if the creatures who stood watching, patiently awaiting the onset of the fear that ALWAYS gripped the hominids could actually hear, they would have heard the twisting man on the bed scream. Scream and crack as bones reset. And scream again.

And howl.

And the wolfbeast was fueled by the moon, feeding upon creatures from the moon.

And afterwards, neither would ever return.























[edit on 6/14/2010 by Clark Savage Jr.]