Her thoughts found new focus and she asked, "Oh, how do you want to be introduced?"
"Wouldn’t it be Mister and Misses Stone?"
Her shoulders slumped and a tired sigh slipped from her lips.
"I was thinking I’d like my full name to be used. You know, Ashley Elizabeth."
Richard tried to understand, "So the DJ will introduce us as Mr. Richard Trevor Stone and his wife Ashley Eliza-"
She shook her head ‘no’.
"More like, Ashley Elizabeth and Richard Stone…"
"Richard Trevor Stone."
"No, no, no," she insisted. "That doesn’t sound right."
"But that’s my name. Richard Trevor Stone. I know you might have forgotten since you forgot to put it on the invitations."
She blinked fast, bit her lip, and sniffled.
"Now that’s not fair. I honestly forgot. I don’t know why you’re so upset. I’m under a lot of pressure doing all this by myself."
Richard closed his eyes and placed an arm around her shoulders. She stopped babbling and slumped into his hug.
"You’re not doing this by yourself. We’re doing this together. It’s just that my middle name is important to me. And it’s important to my dad. My grandpa-"
"I know, I know. He fought at Normandy. War hero. I know."
"It’s a lot better than ‘Dick’, don’t you think?"
"Well…" she led.
He tickled her ribs. She giggled to the point of outright laughing, something she had not done in days.
"So," Richard restarted the conversation after she thwarted his tickles, "we get introduced and then all the other couples walk in."
Ashley fidgeted; squirmed even.
"What? What is it?"
She answered too nonchalantly, "I figured we’d just have the DJ introduce us and let the rest of the wedding party seat themselves. That will make things move faster."
His eyes narrowed. The groom-to-be aired the real reason why she suggested such an untraditional change to an otherwise traditional wedding: "You don’t want people to see Dante walking with your sister."
She shuddered in feigned shock.
"No, no that’s not it."
"Then your parents don’t want their daughter walking with him."
"Well, I mean, um, don’t you think he’d be, well, uncomfortable?"
"No, I don’t. And he’s my best man. And he’s my best friend. And I don’t care if some people in your family don’t want to see a black guy walking with a white girl in a wedding. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe your sister cares so why should anyone else?"
"She doesn’t care. I was just thinking…"
"Don’t, Ashley. I’m not asking for much in all this," he swept his hand above the seating chart, "but I’m not going to screw over Dante just because you’ve got bigots in your family."
Ashley squeezed her eyes shut and her soft skin blushed with embarrassment.
Her tone begged forgiveness, "You know it’s not me, right?"
"I know," he hugged her again. "Let’s take a break. We’ve been at this a while."
She agreed, stood, and led him away from the wedding plans and into the lightless living room. Despite the dark, he found the television remote control by instinct and powered on the set. The plush sofa flickered in television light. The couple sunk deep into the couch.
"It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?"
"Sure, as long as I start showing some ambition. We can’t have little Ben and Carol Ann crawling around with dirty diapers, right?"
Her eyes widened.
A voice from the television interrupted: "…State police say it’s as if all the drivers took their feet off the gas pedal at the same time. No skid marks whatsoever."
A camera followed a short-sleeved reporter across a stretch of highway. Red and blue lights flashed off canyon-like rock faces on either side of the road. The reporter stopped and pointed toward a tangled mass of vehicles. Fire trucks and police cars surrounded the mess.
"This is an isolated area. Westbound traffic on Interstate 80 would not have seen what happened here because of rocks, cliffs, and trees. The only evidence left behind is the empty clothes of the victims, who were probably driving along at over sixty miles per hour when something happened. It is an eerie, almost serene sight-lacking the carnage usually associated with highway pile-ups.
"EMS has counted thirty vehicles but no persons, no remains, no blood-not a clue as to what happened. Authorities will attempt to identify the missing persons from license plates and VIN numbers. A command post has been established at the nearby State Police barracks in Milton."
Ashley gasped aloud. Richard shuddered.
They knew Milton to be barely a thirty-minute drive from where they sat.
The news of the weird had reached their corner of the world.
2. Shadows
Rich and his demo car left the suburbs of Wilkes-Barre and headed into the mountains and forests surrounding the valley. The high beam headlights cut through the pitch-black night revealing lonely, boring black top and monotonous double yellow lines encased in walls of featureless woodlands.
Sporadic flashes of light danced behind the clouds overhead. Rich guessed the flashes to be the summer phenomena known as ‘heat lighting.’ Those distant and dull flickers lacked the power to brighten the countryside and served only to heighten a feeling of isolation.
The glow of the gauges reflected off Rich’s tired eyes. The digital clock on the stereo showed 12:30 a.m.
With nothing but trees, hills, and the occasional stream to serve as landmarks most travelers would find the area a bland, confusing maze. To Richard Stone-a life long resident of the "Back Mountain" section of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania-those roads traveled familiar ground. Over the years, he had crisscrossed those roads and the surrounding wilderness on dirt bikes and snowmobiles.
He made his way through almost automatically, concentrating more on watching for suicidal white tail deer than on direction. He could probably drive the route blindfolded.
AM talk radio broadcast from the stereo. The host and his callers fed on the rash of disappearances like frenzied sharks.
"Grant from Brooklyn, you’re on."
"I think the government gots a new ex-pair-mental lazer to keep our population down. We’re using up all da water ‘n stuff, ya know?"
The host responded, "Oh now that’s just beautiful. I guess the Norwegians were overpopulated, too. It’s not a death ray, Grant. I think it’s a bunch of green-skinned Martian-types snatching up specimens for their zoo. I’d even believe our last caller more than you, the one who thinks it’s judgment day and God is just taking his time."
Richard turned off the radio. He had heard nothing other than theories and conspiracies and biblical references since leaving Ashley’s couch.
Enough.
Instead of the radio, Richard selected the CD changer on the stereo. The soothing tone of Patsy Cline’s Walking After Midnight eased through the cabin and filled Richard with a hint of calm.
He listened to a series of her greatest hits, songs his mother and father had introduced to him years ago. Songs that had filled the cabin of their family car during long Thanksgiving trips to Granny’s house across state near Pittsburgh: five hours of Patsy Cline, young Elvis, and Buddy Holly.
What might sound an eclectic cross section of artists to some all held the same place in Richard’s mind. The music conjured more than simple images; it conjured feelings of affection and warmth. The songs served as a reminder of his connection to his family. A reminder of the memories and experiences they shared. He could nearly smell fresh-baked pumpkin pie drifting in the melody.
By the time Patsy finished Sweet Dreams, that monotonous blacktop weaving through those featureless forests arrived at his driveway.
Richard steered on to the partially hidden path cut through those thick forests. The tires of the sedan rumbled over the gravel drive as it ascended a soft slope until reaching the cl
earing surrounding his family’s cedar home.
A simple two-car garage sat perpendicular to the house. A solitary bulb hung between the bay doors and carved a globe of bright out of the otherwise dark lot. Another light joined the first when the motion of his car activated a security spotlight atop the front porch.
He guided the Malibu to a quiet stop at the foot of the steps behind the Blazer belonging to his dad.
His father’s career had changed from truck driver to well-paid mid-level manager five years ago. That had been ten years after founding a private trucking company. A larger conglomerate had bought the small-but-growing company. Dad’s reward had not only been a lump of cash but a desk job with good pay and hours to make a banker envious.
Mom worked part time at the Arthritis Foundation for charity, not income. She made it home by six every night No doubt her Miata rested safely inside the closed garage next to dad’s partially assembled classic Mustang.
Rich swung open the car door, stood, and shivered. The late June night had felt warm when leaving Ashley’s but out there-in the "boonies"-the thermometer read lower.
The heavy thud of the car door closing echoed across the night, possibly the first artificial sound in hours. He took two steps toward the wide, sweeping porch. The stone and dirt mix of the clearing crunched underfoot. Another shimmer of ‘heat lightning’ flickered through the heavens.
He heard a noise. Not quite the noise of thunder, but similar, and it came from the forest. Something out there moved, barely beyond the reach of the homestead’s lights.
Something big. Something gigantic.
Rich’s brain struggled to decode what he saw: a mass of black nearly as tall as the oldest Oak on their property and lurking behind the first rows of trees in the forest.
That slightly chilled June breeze blew through him like a sharp arctic gale. That familiar forest twisted into a strange, warped place.
Most of it remained hidden beyond the screen of trees. He glimpsed only a tiny fraction of the whole. What he saw made no sense: a black, scaly wall.
A feeling of insignificance fell over him with tremendous weight, so much so that his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. Fear kept him in place, out-dueling an impulse to seek a hiding spot. He had become a puny ant in the shadow of a massive elephant, thankfully small enough not to warrant attention.
The intruder grunted a noise-maybe an exhale-low enough to tremble the ground, followed by a muffled crunch as unseen weight stomped on the forest floor. A vibrant crack told of a snapping tree limb. The wall of black faded away with not nearly enough noise to accommodate such mass.
When he finally drew breath again, fear grabbed him by the spine and sent a violent shake from the top of his head to the toes of his feet. Air gasped from his lungs as he vomited oxygen. His legs wobbled.
Richard stumbled backward, unable to pull his eyes from the forest. His feet struck the bottom steps and found footing. Up…up then across the landing. He fumbled the door open and staggered in, still walking backwards; still with his eyes locked on the spot where a living wall of black had touched his reality.
He closed the door, locked it tight, and turned.
Two low, bushy shadows raced into the living room.
Dick gasped in fright…then lowered his head in embarrassment.
The black and gray Norwegian Elkhounds hurried past their best friend and hopped onto the sofa under the bay windows. 'Tyr' and 'Odin' focused their attention on the same stretch of woodland that had served a sight of horrors to Richard.
Nothing outside moved.
After a few moments, Tyr fixed his eyes on his Master. The question in the dog’s expression came across so clear that Rich could have sworn the animal spoke.
What was it?
"I don’t know what it was," Richard replied then grinned to himself for answering an unvoiced question. "But tomorrow morning I’m going to tell myself it was the wind or it was a bear or my over active imagination. But it wasn’t any of those, was it? Because you two heard it and smelled it, didn’t you?"
A clear answer formed in the dog’s expression.
Yes.
– Rich woke early even though he did not need to be at work again until Saturday. Mr. Munroe would have to manage for a day by himself.
He swung his naked legs out from under the cozy comforter, covered his briefs with sweat pants and found a loose-fitting navy-blue T-shirt. He left his small room for the second floor hall then descended the rear stairs to the eat-in kitchen. There he found his father and mother acting out their morning routines.
"What are you doing up?"
The question came from his mother. She wore a big, comfy white robe that dragged across the linoleum floor as she ferried a coffeepot between the counter top and mugs on the table. The fragrance of that fresh-brewed java mixed with the lingering aroma of a toasted bagel to fill the room with a rich, welcoming scent.
His dad asked without pulling his attention from the newspaper, "Not workin' today?"
"No, no."
A yawn distorted Rich’s answer as he shuffled across the kitchen.
"Bagel?" Mom, who prepped her own with cream cheese, offered.
After politely waving her off, he sat across from his father and spied the headline on the newspaper in his dad’s hands: CLOSE TO HOME.
"Strange stuff, huh?"
"Uh-huh," dad mumbled.
"George, your son is trying to talk to you," mom said as she placed her bagel on the table.
"Oh, yes, sorry."
Dad closed the newspaper, scratched his curly brown hair-something he did when perplexed-and clasped his hands atop the table.
"So, how’s the planning coming? Is Miss Ashley’s perfect day coming along as perfectly as could possibly be planned?"
The smile he flashed assured the sarcasm was not mean spirited. Nonetheless, George earned a light slap on his shoulder from the misses.
"That’s not nice," Kelly Stone said. "It’s a big day."
"Oh yes, I know," George reached over, grabbed his wife’s arm, and playfully spun the slender women onto his lap with a laugh. "You were the biggest little princess of them all. The dresses, the centerpieces, even the way you wanted your bridesmaids to carry their flowers. You were absolutely obsessive."
"Well, I," George cut her off by kissing her cheek. Mom blushed and scurried to her chair.
"Actually, this isn’t about the wedding."
No more smiles.
"Last night, when I came home…I don’t know…maybe I’ve got an imagination…"
"What is it, dear?"
"So what was it you imagined?"
"Look, no laughing, okay? When I got home last night, I saw something moving out in the woods across from the front porch. I don’t know what it was, but it was huge. I mean, really friggin’ big."
"So how ‘friggin’ big’ was it?" George took the obvious line but failed to lighten his son’s mood.
"Dad, I mean, you know I’ve been out there and seen bear and deer and everything else, right?"
"Richard Stone," his dad forced the issue. "Tell me what you saw."
The young man swallowed hard.
"I don’t know what it was. I didn’t see all of it. But it was gigantic, like bigger than an elephant or something. Bigger than the house. But I could only see its side-it was like a big black wall of something moving."
They did not respond.
Richard conceded, "Maybe it was a bear."
His father tapped the newspaper. "There’s a lot of strange things going on right now, and some of it is getting close to home."
"The dogs," Kelly Stone stared at her cream cheese-covered bagel as if hesitant to confess a sin. "I let them out the back door this morning but as soon as they were outside they ran around the front. So I walked to the living room to see. I figured maybe someone was out there. They ran straight across the lot and over to the woods. Right where you would’ve been looking, I’ll bet."
George Stone leane
d in his chair and twisted his facial expressions back and forth as if in deep thought.
Rich begged for information, "So? So what the hell is going on?" They were, of course, his parents and no matter how old he would ever get they would know the answers to these types of questions… right?
Mom silently bit into her cream cheese bagel. Dad scratched his curly brown hair.
– Dante Jones drank the last gulp of beer from a frosted mug.
"Are you going to have another?" Rich, who had emptied his own mug a minute before, asked.
Dante did not answer immediately. His attention lay with the big screen TV behind the horseshoe shaped bar. Geraldo Rivera reported from somewhere in the Middle East, but that is not what held Dante’s eyes. He followed the constant crawl of headlines as they rolled endlessly along the bottom of the screen.
…PRESIDENT TO ADDRESS NATION AT 4 PM EST…MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SUSPENDS ALL GAMES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE…FAMILY MEMBERS OF CUBS FANS SWARM WRIGLEY FIELD…
"Yeah," Dante finally answered, embracing the idea of another beer. "Damn straight, man."
"What is this? Is this the end of the world?"
Dante said, "No. Might be the beginning of the end."
"Whaddya mean?"
Rich knew Dante had a flare for the dramatic. Just as important, when it came to their relationship Dante was the one in charge, the one with the answers. Good friends, sure, but Dante played the lead role of Starsky, or Crockett, or Ponch. Rich had to be content as Hutch, Tubbs, or John.
"If this was the end, it’d be over by now. This might be the start, though, you know? Like, before long, we’ll see where this is going."
…WITNESSES AT DISNEY WORLD CLAIM PARK ATTENDANT WAS ATTACKED BY A TEN-FOOT TALL 'DINOSAUR CREATURE'…ORLANDO AUTHORITIES DISMISS EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS AS HYSTERIA AND SUGGEST AN ALLIGATOR WAS RESPONSIBLE…
Dante waved to the bar waitress who approached the table with her head slung low and hints of water in her eyes. Everyone in the restaurant and on the streets shared her solemn disposition, a disposition deepening with each new story of a mass disappearance or strange sighting. Twenty-four hours prior, those stories were oddities but they now rolled in from the media with increasing frequency.
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