The Scales

by Paul Sating

  A few mouths shared the terror under the noise of the truck. Two women in the corner of the bed held each other, both crying. Some looked dazed, unaware of the world around them. But then one of the crying women screamed, the pitch rising over the ruckus of a speeding truck heading down a mountain road. One of Serenity’s classmates, a football player, thrust himself to his knees, pointing back up the mountain. She didn’t need astute observations skills to note instant terror. Mitzie’s fingernails dug into the top of Serenity’s hand, until a sharp pain caused her to yank away. As she reached for Mitzie’s hands again, an apology forming on her lips, Mitzie’s eyes bulged.

  Serenity turned, half expecting the source of terror to be lingering over her shoulder. Up the foothill of the mountain, Serenity saw it—the creature from The Scales that made sleeping difficult and changed her refuge into a place she never wanted to visit again.

  Rising out of the rocky mountainside, the massive creature reflected sunlight as it twisted, forcing Serenity to squint as a wave of nausea hit her. It thrashed, kicking up dirt, rocks, even medium sized boulders, spraying them in every direction. Serenity ducked instinctively as a basketball sized rock flew past the truck, striking the ground not too far from them and eliciting screams from her fellow passengers.

  “What is that thing?” the football player yelled. No one answered.

  The thing had no arms or legs. She couldn’t tell if it had any appendages. As it twisted, bending its body to attack, the sun caught it just right, so blindingly bright. Or, at least, that’s what she thought at first. Watching it more closely, Serenity couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t emitting light. But that was crazy. Nothing, no living creature created its own light, did they?

  Amidst the creature’s tumultuous thrashing and growing cloud of dirt and rock, Serenity saw something else rise into the air. At recognizing it, she wanted to believe it wasn’t real. To squeeze her eyes shut and reopen them to the foothill site as pristine and untouched as it had been when they’d arrived this morning.

  But this was real. Too real.

  The monstrosity dove towards a fleeing man—Lance, it was Lance! Much faster than he, in one impossibly fast and fluid motion, the beast wrapped its snake-like body around Lance, snapping him in half. Then it rose back up, towering above the bottom half of the truck that hadn’t pulled away yet, and tossed his upper torso through the air. Serenity’s lunch deposited itself onto Ricky’s work boots. She didn’t even bother to wipe away the dribble of vomit from her chin. Instead, she looked at the vibrating tools in the truck bed and cried.

  The truck bounced around the sharp corner of the mountain road, back to town, cutting off her view, taking them back to safety.

  8

  Landscaping tools rattled in the truck bed; the only sound that dared accompany the constant droning of the truck’s tires on blacktop. The engine sounded exhausted, if the sputtering sounds from the exhaust were an indication of the laboring toll it endured for the sake of returning them to Rotisserie. They were only a few more minutes from town, from the safety of their homes, near the police.

  Long before leaving the mountains, the truck’s occupants stopped talking. It continued all the way back down to the desert floor.

  Mitzie held hands with Serenity. Serenity held hands with Mitzie. Neither willing to let go of the other. The physical connection comforted Serenity. If comfort was her only companion, she’d take it.

  One of the three men packed in the cab, the burly one whose cheeks were still blotchy from adrenaline or being in the sun too long, was on his phone. From his gesticulations, his aggressive head nodding and flailing arms, she guessed he was relaying what just happened. Thankfully, he was smart enough to make a phone call as soon as they were back in cell range. The thought never popped into Serenity’s clouded mind.

  She couldn’t keep a thought, except Lance’s half torso, trailing entrails, flinging through the air by that incomprehensible monster.

  Serenity reached into her pocket for her own phone. Her fingers gripped nothing but cloth. The phone was gone. Cursing at her stupidity for not checking earlier, she grimaced. It was somewhere on the side of Warbler Mountain.

  “Great.”

  “What?” Ricky asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Serenity patted her pockets. “Lost my phone.”

  Ricky offered his phone to her and Serenity gratefully took it. She needed to hear her mother’s voice. Punching in the number, Serenity slapped the phone against her ear, desperate to hear the voice that would make everything right in the world again. She waited.

  And waited.

  Nothing.

  Not even a ring. She pressed the END button and re-dialed. This second time she carefully entered each number as slowly as her trembling hand allowed.

  Still nothing.

  A small x where the signal strength icon should have been mocked her. Releasing an exasperated sigh, Serenity handed the phone back to Ricky. He took it without a word.

  Dusk continued its march forward, casting long shadows across the desert sands, suddenly dancing with blue and red light. Two police cruisers headed in their direction from the other side of the highway, slowing to a controllable speed and crossing the dirt median. The two pickups carrying all the volunteers—all the volunteers who survived—pulled over to the wide shoulder and the sheriff cruisers pulled behind them within seconds.

  A deputy with close-cropped hair raced to the lead truck. “Are you folks all right?” He was the same deputy she’d spoken to after the incident at the Scales, Rodgers if she remembered correctly.

  For the first time since leaving the foothills, the trucks emptied of their occupants. It started with two women clutching hands that encouraged everyone else to do the same. They grouped together around three sheriff deputies.

  We’re tricking ourselves if we think it's safe here.

  “What happened?” Rodgers asked.

  The floodgates opened. Everyone released their stress and fear on the deputy, flooding him with accounts of the tragic events.

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said, “We can’t help until we know what’s going on, and we can’t do that with people talking at once. Jones, Peters, split up. Take a third of the witnesses each. I’ll keep the rest right here. Get good notes.”

  Mitzie didn’t move. Serenity stayed beside her, the only person she felt comfortable around.

  The deputy gave everyone a moment to disperse before turning back to the smaller group.

  “Folks, I understand something happened, but I need useful information so I can figure out what’s going on and what we can do about it. I can tell by looking at you that everyone is upset, but I need one person at a time to speak. Please.” He nodded his head toward a man in a blood-spattered, white t-shirt. Against his directions, people talked over each other in an instant. Even when he raised his arms for quiet, the group continued its concert of panic. Deputy Rodgers shouted over the noise loud enough to gain control but not become too aggressive.

  Mitzie clapped her hands, twice. “All right everyone, that’s quite enough!” She scanned the group, waiting for a challenge. When no one did, she crossed her arms, the tucked hands expanding the flabby skin. “Now this young man has asked us nicely, multiple times I might add, to speak one at a time. Let’s please show him half the respect he’s shown us. We’re scared, but be civil.”

  A few nodded, one or two of the guilty throng lowered their eyes to the pavement.

  “You look familiar.” Deputy Rodgers’ voice broke the tense silence, calling everyone’s attention to Serenity.

  Oh, no.

  His eyes narrowed. “Where do I know you from?”

  Her face heated at the simple question, and she nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said, aware of the eyes on her. The focus was almost corporeal. “I came in with my mother and brother two weeks ago.”

  Deputy Rodgers slapped his hand against his notepad. “I knew you looked familiar. You thought you saw something out at The Scales.” Realizing t
he inappropriateness of his excitement, he collected himself and cleared his throat. “From the call we got, sounds like today was as strange as what you told me. Any of this” —he waved his pen in the air— “like that?”

  Serenity tipped her head to the side, slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “What about this thing? Same animal you saw that day with your brother?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ve seen this before?” Mitzie asked.

  Rodgers laid the pen against his pad of paper, looking every bit the paragon of patience. “I know this is frightening, I can see it in your eyes,” he said to the collected group, “and I want to help. But I can’t do that without information.” He said the last part like he was begging.

  Serenity drew a deep breath. “I think it was the same thing. I can’t be sure. It was so difficult because the…animal…it’s bright. Very bright. It was hard to make out a lot of details.”

  Several people around her nodded.

  “But when you were with your brother—”

  “Same.” She hated not having answers, but she would not fabricate details to mollify him. “Just like I said last time, it’s massive. I don’t know. Maybe twenty feet tall and—”

  “It was definitely taller,” a scraggly white kid said.

  “Noted.” The deputy nodded. “Continue, please.”

  The interruption threw her off, and she struggled to capture what she’d seen this time compared to her first run-in. Inconsistencies fought to come out, and she fought to contain them.

  You can’t trust people who aren't consistent with their stories, Jerry Johnson’s voice tormented her from memory. One of his repeated lessons was to be consistent with the police. They weren’t trustworthy; always looking for an excuse to squeeze information. Jerry was wrong about a lot of things.

  “I don’t know how tall it was.” Serenity forced herself to continue. “It was big. And clear. Almost. Like sapphire…just clearer. Kind of see-through, but not quite. I don’t know.” She winced at how stupid she sounded. “I didn’t see it until we were driving away. I shouldn’t say any more.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie.” Mitzie moved closer. Comfort returned with Mitzie’s presence.

  The only way to get this over with was to share everything, even though she’d already talked once, and that led nowhere. She just wanted to go home. “It was translucent. Semitransparent. Sapphire-colored. I could see its insides. They were cloudy. Huge too, about twenty feet.”

  “How can you describe it as semitransparent when you said earlier that you couldn’t make out details because of the reflection it gave off?” Deputy Rodgers raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s just it,” Serenity said. “Today I was too far away to see any cloudiness like I did the other day. Portions of it weren’t moving, but its reflection obscured anything that did. At The Scales, I was closer, so it was easier to make out. Today it looked…different. Like it’s two different creatures. I know it sounds crazy but—”

  “It does.” Rodgers said.

  Ricky stepped forward. “She’s not lying.”

  “I didn’t say she was, young man,” the deputy said in a measured tone.

  “It didn’t sound like it.” Now Mitzie spoke up. Serenity’s stomach fluttered at the pair defending her. “Now, I’m pretty sure all of us want to get home to our loved ones and these children” —she reminded not-so-casually— “need to get to their parents. It’s been a strenuous, upsetting day of strange and horrible events, and we all need help feeling safe at the moment. So, unless you want twenty sets of parents in your station later this evening, I’d suggest you ask questions and take notes of what we give you and then let us go.”

  “Y-yes, ma’am.”

  With that the deputy jotted down their observations and collected the other witness accounts. Each person described the horrific scene from their varied positions, and, worryingly, describing the creature differently. Some of them couldn’t even agree on the color of the damn thing! Like they all saw a different animal.

  As one after another gave a new description, Deputy Rodgers looked increasingly frustrated. “Some of you say it was sapphire, some say it was green, and some of you are saying it was red or even orange. I’ve got heights between ten feet and over forty feet. And some of you are telling me it was metal, like a robot. Folks, I’m scratching my head here. So, what I’m going to do is get with the other deputies and compare notes and see what we can piece together.”

  Serenity regretted opening her mouth. Rodgers bit his bottom lip and shook his head sharply. “Thank you for your time.” The deputy walked around the small group, handing out business cards. “And for helping us. If there’s anything you need, please call us.”

  When Serenity moved to take the offered card, the deputy’s fingers lingered on it. “If something comes up, please contact me personally.”

  She nodded toward the deputy's card.

  He moved past her, clearing her view of their surroundings, and Serenity gasped.

  Across the highway divider, standing on the shoulder of the oncoming lane, was the old man with the spotty beard from the sheriff’s waiting room. Hands tucked into the pockets of that slipshod, brown jacket, he watched.

  Mitzie grabbed Serenity’s hand. “What is it, honey?”

  Serenity glanced at Mitzie and then back across the highway. The old man was gone. “What the hell?” she moaned.

  “Sweetie?” Mitzie stepped closer.

  Serenity scratched at the bite that still had not healed, faking the most confident smile she could muster. “Nothing, I’m just tired.”

  Mitzie, to her credit, was gracious enough to pretend everything was okay. “I think we all are, sweetie. I think we all are.” With a last squeeze of hands, the older woman walked after the deputy.

  Serenity’s eyes returned to the barren desert landscape.

  “Every time I see it, he shows up,” she whispered.

  “What’s that?” Ricky was beside her.

  “Huh?”

  “You were mumbling to yourself.” His eyes danced back and forth across hers, wide with worry. “You okay?”

  Her words were empty. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  But she wasn’t and didn’t know if she ever would be again.

  9

  The town of Rotisserie never mobilized for anything, not even for annual Fourth of July fireworks, the single event that could unify all the outposts around the thousand square miles of desert that made up the Tri-Counties. So Serenity didn’t expect much when the Mayor, Starky Henderson, announced a town hall meeting.

  “Darn right he’s going to do something,” Ida said as they circled the parking lot outside the VFW, looking for a spot to park. They’d been circling for at least one full song on the radio and with each loop, Serenity sunk in her seat, hoping to avoid anyone she knew from school. Ida didn’t walk a foot more than necessary, blaming it on her job at the grocery store. They ended up parking across the street in a department store lot where more cars lined the edge closest to the VFW leaving only a smattering to dot the rest of the hundreds of other spots. By the looks of the parking lot and the stream of people standing in line, a huge portion of Rotisserie was in attendance.

  Ida walked straight across the road and to the front of the line. Serenity wanted to die. Jerrod didn’t seem to have a clue, mindlessly following her toward the door.

  “Excuse me.” A burly man, who looked like he’d just fallen out of the cab of a semi stared down at Ida. “There’s a line, lady.”

  Her mother briskly stared the man up and then down. “Thank you,” she snapped before squeezing into the building between door frame and human beings. Humiliated, Serenity lowered her head and followed, trying her best to ignore the shouts from behind. The noise inside drowned the bitterness outside. Half of her couldn’t believe her mother’s audacity; half of her was surprised that she was surprised.

  “Can we please have calm?” Sheriff Tony Bitterman stood behind the p
odium at the end of the room. Sheriff’s deputies squeezed around the room. Between everyone seated in the metal folding chairs and others crunched together against the walls, little room allowed the deputies to move. They did what they could to encourage quiet.

  From looking at him, the sheriff didn’t need the strain. He had to be in his later fifties and his hair, mostly vacant, formed a silver horseshoe around his head. A stump of a man, Sheriff Bitterman would never be in danger of seeing the other side of six feet tall, but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in weight. His cheeks were an interesting combination of shades of pink. As he struggled to speak over the crowd, even with the aid of a microphone, the pinks deepened toward red. “Please! The sooner everyone quiets down the quicker we can get to why we’re here.”

  Serenity leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. This was the last place she wanted to be. From her mother’s bullish behavior to the fact she didn’t want to think about the attack, nothing was right in the world. Her bedroom beckoned, and she wished she could disappear into that haven and not come out until someone corrected it.

  The rough brick surface dug into her back, forcing her to fidget to find a comfortable stance. It soured her mood further. What possible answers could the sheriff give? If any of these people experienced what she did, they wouldn’t be so damned eager to have this conversation without action. They wouldn’t wait for a meeting to be called. But none of them understood, because they hadn’t seen it and, if they had, this wasn’t what they would have wanted, because no one enjoyed reliving a nightmare.

  Ida patted her leg. “They need to pipe down,” she growled.

  Serenity grunted in reply, scanning the room until her eyes locked on Ricky, sitting on her side of the room, toward the back. She didn’t realize she’d been staring until Jerrod pushed her shoulder.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Huh? Oh, no one. Nothing,” Serenity said, looking away from Ricky and staring at the floor.