Chain light and flying dogs. I'm writing this not because I'm trying to make
believers out of everyone. Those that would believe what I have to say probably
already believe before I came along, and the ones that don't believe me probably
never will. I can't change that, and I doubt if anything ever will.
But at least I'll sleep easier knowing that everyone, or at least everyone
who hears this, will know to watch out for things. Stuff's out there,
more stuff than you ever imagined, more stuff than I ever imagine.
I'll tell you that I was always slow to make fun of people who told
stories that were hard to swallow. I wasn't there, so I never felt
that I had the right to call any man a liar. I believe some
of those storytellers to be stretching things a little, but I always figured that
something had happened, but over time they just got better at telling about it.
You could see in their eyes as they told these things that whatever they
had run up on had really rattled them. You can make up stories,
but you can't make up the look they had on their faces. It sort
of like catching a really good fish. There's no doubting that the fish was
caught, But the more the story gets told, the bigger the fish gets.
Or it being cold on the opening day of deer season, Sure it
was cold, but after the tenth and twelfth telling of what happened that day,
it'll be nearly below zero with a blizzard on the way. But what
never changes is the way a person looks when they're telling you their story.
The look on their face will tell you whether you need to really pay attention
or not. It won't be the words, it'll be the face, just
so you'll know. Mine is as white as a piece of cotton. As
I like this, it always looks that way when I think about what happened.
I've sat on my story for more than a month now. I've only
told it out loud just the one time. And even though no one at
the time said anything especially ugly to me or just came right out and call
me a liar, I heard those kind of things afterwards from others, or
heard that those things were being said about me. What I had told I
had told in all honesty, and it had been hurtful to know that what
I had to say had been retold for the purpose of making fun of me.
Those that I had told it to I had counted among my friends,
and they used what I had confided in them to have a real belly laugh.
They had always been friends of mine, and someday they might be again,
but they aren't right now. I'm a lot of things, but a
liar isn't one of them. Some of you will think I am, and
you'll say so in your comment. I watched this podcast as often as I
can, and I read what people write about the stories that get red on
the air. Now I can't do anything about how you feel or think about
what I'll say, but you'll at least have heard, and maybe you'll pay
more attention to looking over your shoulder and seeing what is really out there.
That's the only reason I'm doing this. Everyone needs to know. I'm not
much of a drinking man. I never was, and I'm still not.
I always preferred iced tea to most everything else. The occasional beer with supper
wasn't bad. A coal one with a burger when we would eat outside during
the summer was pretty good, but one or sometimes two cans was my limit.
But ever since my wife left to take up with that electrician, I've
started having more than the occasional one, and now it's nearly one a week,
which isn't a lot, but it's a lot for me. Just because
she was getting rewired didn't mean that suddenly I learned how to cook. Dewey's
is a local place just down the road away from where I work as a
diesel mechanic. It's not a fancy place, and only those of us that
live in the town ever go there. The visitors are welcome, but they
don't go there. It isn't much to look at, so you don't ever
see a car or a truck in the gravel parking lot that you don't recognize
unless someone has gone and bought themselves a new vehicle, and that doesn't happen
very often. But they have a fair grill cook there and cold drafts on
tap. So I started making a habit of going there on Friday nights after
work. I could have a good burger and a cool one while sitting with
someone I knew while I ate. It was better than sitting in an empty
house. For some reason, Friday nights were always the worst nights for being
alone. The house was always still empty when I went home, but I
was always so tired after working all day and then going to dooies that I
just went straight to bed and I tried not to think about anything. But
that had been before I heard how my friends were poking fun at me behind
my back. Now I don't go there anymore. I just go home and
heat up one of those ready made things out of the freezer. Like every
other night. Going to doi'es wasn't what I would have had described as being
fun. It was just something I did. But one night a few weeks
ago, I walked in and there was a crowd of four guys that I
knew, all sitting at this one table. A couple of them I had
known since I had been in school. It looked pretty full there, so
I had just waved and I was going to go sit by myself at the
bar or counter, but they started scooting around and dragging up a chair to
where they made room for me. Well, I didn't want to horn in,
but they had gone to all that trouble all one over, and I
joined them. My mama had raised me not to be rude. There was
an empty picture on the table beside one that was only half full. They
were well on their way to a good time. When I sat down,
and when the waitress came over, I ordered a draft and the burger that
comes with the bacon and the barbecue sauce. It always gives me the heartburn,
but it tastes really good. I had been used to the heartburn of
one sort or another every night since my wife had cut and rud, So
I just sat there, waiting and listening while they emptied that second picture and
asked for another one. Johnny Lynton was there that night. We had played
ball together back in school, and he was the closest thing we have in
this town to a local celebrity, or he wants to be that anyway.
He used to race cars on a dirt track, and if you sit still
around him long enough, he'll tell you how he won two races in a
row in August, eight years earlier, during the summer shootout. That was
what made him famous. But the next year he was involved in a wreck
that did some real nerve damage to one of his eyes. His left one
twitches all the time now and he can only see out of it about half
the time. Now. He still builds engines, but he doesn't race anymore.
I figured they were talking about racing and memorable wrecks when I sat down
with them, because that's what Johnny usually talks about, and since he's the
local celebrity, you sort of follow Johnny's lead. Well, Instead, they
were all swapping stories they had heard growing up about hats and ghosts. I
knew a couple that Daddy and Popol used to tell, but I was happy
enough just to listen. Now, these guys were about half lit. The
looks on their faces as the stories were told was fun to watch, especially
with Johnny. I'm not making fun on account of his can you should never
do that to someone. But the more scared he got during a story,
the more that I would twitch. And toward the end of one of those
stories, he had put his hand over it just so it wouldn't beat him
to death. I didn't think the story was all that scary, but those
glasses of high life really had their hooks in him. Being at the table
was like being at a guitar poll on the front porch or out in the
yard. There's one guitar and everyone takes the turns, showing off what he
can do with it. That's what it was like that night. When one
story would finish, everyone would take a deep breath, and then someone would
try and top it. Like I said, I would have been fine just
to listen, but I did take a couple of turns. I had switched
to drinking iced tea after my burger had been eaten, so I took a
big drink, and I told them one Uncle Leander used to always tell us.
I told them the one about Old Whitey because it had always been a
favorite of mine. Uncle Leander had a friend growing up back in the late
fifties. Back then they called it running together. This friend of my uncle's
was the same age as Uncle Leander, which put them both at about sixteen.
At the time, the parents of my uncle's friend had been killed in
an automobile accident, so he went to live with his uncle, being as
the man was his nearest living relative. Everyone always said that the man never
married because he enjoyed doing as he pleased too much, but I never believed
that the man has been dead and gone for years now, so I don't
feel badly about saying this. From what I've heard, he was a likable
man and easy to get along with, but he was lazy, just flat
out worthless when it came to holding down a job. He much preferred sitting
in the sun and counting the cars that went by to doing an honest day's
work. So everyone, from what I've heard, was surprised when he agreed
to take the boy in and support him. But he did, and he
did the best he could by the boy, I suppose Uncle Leander said.
They never did stay in the same place for very long. They were all
the time getting kicked out for not paying. They were in the process of
looking over this new place when it happened the boy's uncle heard about a house
that was going to be rented for a lot less than most houses were going
for, so they hitched a ride down to see the landlord. They rode
them out to where the house sat and walked them inside. There wasn't any
electricity on. The man said he would have it switched back on next day
if they agreed to take the place. Well, they didn't have anywhere to
go, so they told the landlord that they wanted to spend the night there
and if everything was still fine in the morning, they would sign the papers.
Then lord agreed and walked them back to the car to get the sack
that held their belongings. The man drove off, and they went back inside
to unpack. Uncle Leanders said that they didn't really have anything to speak of.
There wasn't any furniture in the house besides a small table and a couple
of chairs. They had a lantern and a coffee pot and a can of
milk to put in their coffee. The next morning, he said, they
filled that coffee pot with water from the well outside while it was light,
and then just sat at that table playing cards all night, since there wasn't
any place to sleep other than the floor. Sometime up in the night they
heard a door opening. They jerked up the lantern and started looking around and
down the hallway that ran off from the room they were standing in, and
the door that had been closed tight was now standing wide open. It was
the door to an empty bedroom. Wasn't anything in it because the landlord had
showed them every room earlier. But when they looked down that hallway they could
see an old man with a long white beard. He was sitting in a
rocking chair, rocking slowly back and forth. They said he had a cat
sitting in his lap, and while he was rocking, he would be petting
that cat. The uncle of That boy bucked up and told the old man
that he had to leave the same way that he had come in because he
was going to be signing a paper in the morning, making this their house.
The old man either didn't hear him or just ignored him, because he
just kept rocking and petting that cat. That boy's uncle yelled at the old
man a couple more times, and nothing ever happened. The boy's uncle finally
got mad and jerked up a can of milk that they were going to use
for their coffee, and he threw it down the hallway at the old man.
Uncle Leander said his friend told him that the can went straight through the
old man and bounced off the wall behind him. That can hit him square
in the chest and passed through him like he wasn't there. The boy and
his uncle bailed out of that house and ran all the way to where the
landlord lived a couple of miles down the road. They beat on the door
until they woke him up, and then they told him that they would never
set foot in that house again. Well, the man wanted to know why,
so they told him what had happened. The man smiled and said they
didn't have any reason to be afraid. That was just the old whiteie sitting
back there. He was the man that had built the house and had been
dead for nearly twenty years. He wouldn't hurt anybody. I don't know if
I ever heard where those two went after leaving the landlord's porch, but they
didn't go back to that rental house. Everyone proposed their theories or misgivings the
way that everyone had already at the end of each story. But they were
all having a good time, even me. So they ordered another picture,
and I had my ic tea refilled and it all started up again. Well,
I didn't have to work the next day, so I stayed and continued
to listen. All of them had about exhausted their supply of stories that they
could remember, and since I only told the one, they all looked at
me for another one. Well, I'm not much for carrying the weight when
it comes to party conversations. I prefer to listen. But I did know
one more. I just wasn't sure if I would get it told before some
of the guys went to sleep or became so tight that we would need to
drive them home. When I was a kid, my Pauppa used to tell
me this. He never smiled when he told it to me. To him,
it wasn't fun telling me this story. It was meant to scare me
into learning something about life and how we should live it. It was a
way down the road before I understood what he had been do trying to teach
me, and I wish that I had picked up on it while he had
still been alive, so I could have told him that I finally understood and
thank him for telling me. I didn't tell any of the boys at the
table any of that. They were getting so right that I figured the point
would just pass by him. My paup Paul told me that his grandfather had
a brother. Actually he had a few, but he had one in particular
that was different from the others. Now, this was back in the days
before there were cars or trucks, and Johnny would have hated living back then
with no engines to tweet this one brother had decided to start making his living
off farming. The nearest town of any size was about a day and a
half ride by a wagon away, and that was where he sold all that
he grew. He lived by himself and did his work when what he had
grown was ripe and ready, he would load it into his wagon and drive
it all the way to town, sell it, and when he was finished,
he would go back home start again. He didn't live with anyone and
had no friends that anyone knew of. Papa said he was not a well
liked man, surly and too rough around the edges for people to tolerate,
and apparently that was just fine by him. He wasn't what nowadays you would
have called a people person. He had gone and done what he had intended
to do and was on his way back home again when the rain storm blew
in on him. It wasn't gesture everyday storm. This one was rough.
It already being night was making it hard for him to see where he was
going, and the rain was coming down sideways, and the storm was blowing
all around him, lightning striking, and wind blowing him all over the place.
The horse that was pulling the wagon was scared and was giving the man
all he could handle, just keeping the horse from bolting away. The man
didn't know what he should do, but then he remembered that there was a
house along the road back that no one lived in. He didn't know anything
about it, just that he passed it on his trips. Each time.
He thought if he could make it to that house, he could at least
duck inside and pass the night dry while the storm played itself out. He
kept driving while all the time looking for that place. He knew it was
on his way home, he just didn't know how far from it he was.
Eventually he spotted what remained of the place. It was all grown over
and parts of it were on a lean because it was trying to fall in
on itself, but it was still standing, and that was all he cared
about at the time. He pulled off the road and he tied the horse
to something that ran up onto the porch. He didn't bother yelling out or
knocking because it was obvious that no one had been in the house in years.
He pushed the door open and he went inside. It was dark as
pitch inside, but all the lightning made it to where he could see each
time it flashed, and there were bits and pieces of floor and wall laying
around. So he gathered some wood up to make a fire in the fireplace,
though that he would have some light and some heat to dry himself out.
Once the fire had caught and was burning well. He stripped off his
wet outer things and laid them near to the fire, and then he laid
down to get some sleep. Sometime during the night he began to hear noises,
sort of scratching or squeaking sounds. The man figured it to be animals
of some sort that had been living in the old house, and that he
had disturbed them by coming in and building a fire like he had. He
didn't pay it much attention, but the noises just kept up. He finally
couldn't take hearing them any longer, and he got himself up, found a
long piece of wood, and set the end on fire so he would have
himself a torch to look around. Storm or no storm, he was going
to run whatever was making the noise out of the house so he could get
some sleep. He kept hearing sounds, but no matter where he looked,
he couldn't see anything nested or running around. Finally, he raised the torch
up and looked up toward the ceiling, except there wasn't a ceiling. There
was a roof, of course, but inside the house was all just heavy
beams and open rafters. He held the torch up higher, and then he
saw what had been making the noises. On one of those narrow rafters,
two children, about three or four years old were running back and forth the
length of that rafter, barefooted and dressed only in their little sleeping gowns.
They weren't saying anything. They were just running back and forth from one end
to the other, and then back again. When they reached one end and
started to turn around, the man looked out further and saw a woman sitting
at the end of that rafter. She was sitting in a rocking chair and
was going back and forth slowly. She was holding a small child or an
infant in her arms, and she had a blood stained rag tied around her
head. She wasn't saying anything either, She was just rocking that infant while
those youngsters ran up and down the length of that rafter. Well, storm
or no storm, he grabbed all that belonged to him, and he went
running out the door. He jumped in his wagon and high tailed it down
the road. After he had finally made it home and the storm had been
long since gone, he rode around and started asking questions about that house that
he had stayed in for a while. The only thing he could find out
was that it once belonged to a family, and the man that owned it
had gone peculiar and had killed his entire family before he just sort of disappeared
and was never seen again. No one knew what had become of him.
But here is what my Paupall wanted me to pay attention to. That man
because of what he had seen, spent every day for the rest of his
life trying to be the nicest neighbor he could be. And when he finally
died, folks all said at his funeral that there had never been a nicer
man to live in those hills. He spent his whole life hating people and
them not caring for him either, And then one thing seen during one bad
night, and all those sane people saying such nice things about him when he
passed away. There wasn't the normal jabber after the story that I had been
hearing all night, where everyone told why it couldn't be possibly true. This
time everyone just sat there being quiet while they were thinking. I even saw
John he pick up his glass of beer and stare at it for a time
and then sat it back down without drinking any of it. It wasn't long
after that when everyone started making excuses about having to leave, and as enjoyable
as the evening had been, I was glad to be leaving too. So
we all met up in the parking lot for that final handshake, and we
promised to get together again soon, maybe even the following Friday night. It
wasn't anything that had been said that night that had started all the ugly talk
and the fun being poked. That all started about two weeks later, and
about something very different and much scarier. A few days later, I wasn't
far away from finishing up my shift. It had been a bear of the
day, and I was looking forward to getting home and doing nothing. Well,
not looking forward to going home. I never looked forward to that anymore,
but I was looking forward to being finished with work for a while.
Some times the days can really drag like they have a piano strapped to their
backs, and this had been one of those. I was putting some tools
I had been using away when I heard her calling out my name. There's
a great big sign over the door between the shop and the desk where you
pay your tab that says that no one other than employees are allowed in the
shop area. Well, people pay about as much attention to it as they
do. The sign that says a speed limit out on trigger road is forty
five miles an hour unless it's a funeral procession. No one ever drives less
than sixty on that long, empty straight Josie Mormon was walking straight toward me.
I can't remember not knowing Josie. She was always friends with me and
my wife. She is as sweet as sugar and still pretty easy to look
at. She has a big scar running down the inside of her forearm that
she got in a wreck that killed a man she was supposed to have.
They were out running wedding errands and the brakes failed on a loaded log truck.
It took him out instantly and landed her in the hospital for a while.
And if the scar bothers joe Sie, she doesn't let it stop her
from wearing short sleeved t shirts everywhere that she goes. I always thought her
to be brave for doing that. I was afraid that something had messed up
on her daddy's tractor already. We just released it from the shop a few
days before, But she was just there to bring a check down from him
to pay office bill, and she's real good about helping mister Mormon in any
way that she can. But she had another reason for offering to make the
trip into town for her daddy, and it shocked the heck out of me.
Some friends of hers were throwing a party the coming weekend. She was
there to invite me. It wasn't to be a fancy kind of do,
because if it was that, she probably wouldn't have gone to it. Josie
isn't home with everybody, but she doesn't do fancy. She told me it
was just getting together sort of thing, not much on food, but there
would be barrels of ice and cold drinks and beer and plenty of music rolling
out of the open windows of the pickup trucks, and a big fire to
sit around and gab all night. Well, I ask her why she was
letting me know, since I barely knew any of the ones that were putting
this thing together, and she said that it was because that she thought that
she would enjoy being there. But she didn't want to go to it alone.
She wanted to go with someone that she liked and trusted. She thought
it was time that I start getting out having some fun once in a while,
and she knew that she should and there wasn't any reason why we shouldn't
do that together. I wasn't sure that I agreed with her about it being
time for me to start going out again. My being alone was that I
didn't have much to offer anyone. But I did agree to take her to
this thing, providing that if things began to get weird feeling she wouldn't get
mad if we ducked out earlier than the rest of the crowd. Well,
she was fine with that deal, and I told her that I would pick
her up Saturday evening about dark thirty. It was a strange thing to go
to a function like that was and realized that you knew more of the parents
of the ones that were there than you did of the ones that were throwing
the deal. But I knew a few people, and everyone was real welcoming
to me. Everyone knew Josie. For someone who seemed to stay at home
most all the time, she sure knew a lot of people. She dragged
me around to speak to this or that person, and I was enjoying listening
to all their conversations. She didn't think I was having a good time,
but I was she thought, because I wasn't saying much that I was bored
or on car comfortable. So after about an hour, she invited me to
go for a walk with her. There was an old dirt road that led
down to the river and we were going to go look at it. I
don't know why she thought it would be interesting to see the river, but
she asked, so I went with her. It was quiet. We were
having a nice time, just talking, not about anything in particular. We
were just talking. She even took hold of one of my hands in hers.
I didn't want to do that. Mine are pretty beaten up and scratched
all over. But I guess that if she could get used to that big
old scar that she has a few callouses weren't going to bother her so much.
It felt nice holding hands with Josie, and I was thinking about how
glad I was that I had agreed to come. And that was when we
saw it. Coming from the direction of the river on the road that we
were walking on was the big, old, goofy looking dog. There wasn't
anything special about him. He was just a dog like you might see laying
in a dozen yards that you would pass on your way home from work.
He was just a big red hound. He was doing that kind of trite
that dogs do when they're feeling good but aren't in any real hurry to be
somewhere. You know. He wasn't walking, but he wasn't running either.
Now, I guess you could say he was prancing. He was just out
prancing in the moonlight. Well, we weren't scared, after all. It
wasn't anything but a big old lazy dog. Josie actually giggled a couple of
times because of the way that he was walking. Well, he was coming
right toward us like we were his owners. But the closer he came,
the more I didn't think we should have anything to do with him. Now,
it didn't look mean or sick. It just looked off in the head
or something. I pulled at Josie's hand and we crossed to the other side
of the road. I just wanted to let that dog have a free pass
to go on about his business, and I thought that to be the safest
thing to do. Since I was out there with Josie, I felt responsible
for her. I had even told mister Mormon that I would take good care
of her when he walked us out onto the porch as we were leaving earlier,
But when we crossed to the far side of that road, that dog
did too. Josie thought that it just wanted to be petted some but I
didn't want either one of us touching it. He went back across the road
to where we had been, and the dang thing crossed over so it could
stay in front of us. I still wasn't scared, but I was getting
a little worried. It kept prancing and getting closer all the time. I'd
always been taught never to turn my back on a dog and run, so
we didn't, even though that was what I wanted us to do. I
was trying to think of what we should do, and that hound just kept
getting closer. Now I could tell by the way Josie was squeezing my hand
that she was starting to worry too. And we were walking backwards slowly,
and the dog was gaining on us. We stopped moving. When it stopped
walking, it wasn't more than a foot or two away from us. It
was just standing there, looking all goofy and droopy. It wasn't growling or
bristling, and most important, it wasn't slobbering, all foamy and white.
It was just standing there, looking up at us with those big, sad
looking eyes. Well this went on for a minute or two. We weren't
making a sound because we didn't want to aggravate it in any way. But
something had to give. We couldn't just stand there all night being hemmed in
by some stray dog. So I kicked it. I wanted to hear it
yelp and run away, but that isn't what happened. I don't think the
dog ever knew that I had kicked it. I know I never felt anything.
By that, I mean I never felt anything when I kicked it.
It was like kicking thin air. It just stood there looking at us.
So I kicked it again, and my foot went right through it, and
I never felt a thing. It just stood there, painting and drooling out
of its big floppy jaws. Well, now I was getting scared, and
Josie was squeezing my hand like a vice. And then the craziest thing I
ever saw up to that point happened. That dog started to rise. I
don't mean that it just stood up straighter, or it jumped. It started
to rise up off the ground. I mean, all four paws off the
ground at the same time. It rose until it was eye level with us
and just sort of hung there for a minute, and its face never changed
and it never made a sound, and then it just kept rising up.
It kept rising until we had our heads leaning back as far as they would
go, and we watched it until that dog went clear out of sight,
and it rose up as smooth and soft as a balloon, and it just
kept going until we couldn't see it any longer. It disappeared from our view
somewhere between that dirt road and the stars. We didn't say anything as we
ran all the way back to the party. I stopped her just before we
got back into where everyone was standing or sitting around. I told her that
I didn't think we ought to say anything about what had just happened to anyone.
There were enough rifles and shotguns in the gun racks of those trucks that
it wouldn't take much for the party to turn into some kind of snipepot.
And as far as I knew, what they would be hunting for was closer
to the moon by now than it was to us. And I told her
that if just one person jumped out of the dark in those woods at the
wrong time, then a dozen of those looped up reds were going to open
up with those rifles that they used so well on wild hogs and deer.
Someone would get killed before the night was over. Those good old boys might
have pulled a few tabs, but they all still knew how to use those
guns. She listened to me and agreed that what I had said made since,
but she still wanted to talk to her best friend and that woman's husband.
They owned the property where this party was going on, and Josie wanted
to know if either of them had ever seen anything of the light. She
assured me that if she swore them both to secrecy, they wouldn't say a
word. She trusted them, and she needed to tell someone what we had
just seen. I didn't like doing it, but went with her to collect
them and drag them off away from everyone so we could all talk in private.
We or mostly she told them everything. I mainaly nodded when they looked
at me. They listened to it all, and then they laughed at the
way that we really had them going. They said they were heading back to
the barrel and we should follow them because the joke, like we had just
told Deserve to drink. They walked away and Josie ran for the truck.
I didn't blame her for wanting to go home, so I hurried to catch
her, but she wasn't climbing in. Once she got there, she reached
into her bag and pulled out her phone. I had just reached the hood
when she came around again and grabbed me by the hand. Come on,
She said, if that dog is back, or if there's another one,
I want pictures of it. She said. I wasn't wanting any part of
going back down there again, and I told her that, but she had
her jaw set on going, and there wasn't any way in the world I
was going to let her go back down there alone. So against my better
judgment, I let her lead me, at almost a run, to where
the flying dog had been. We stood right where we had been standing.
She had my hand in one of hers, and I was holding her phone
with the other one. Neither of us were saying anything. We were watching
and listening for any little something. We must have sat there for half an
hour and never saw a thing. I wasn't gonna say anything, but I
was awfully glad when she suggested that maybe it was time we headed back and
went home. We turned around and started walking back up the dirt road when
we saw the lights. Actually it was just the one light. At the
time, we thought it was her friends coming down to check on us.
We figured they were way smarter than us and had brought along one of those
monster flashlights like some of those good old boys used for spoting deer at night.
As it came closer, Josie called out to them, but no one
answered. That light just kept getting closer, and she kept calling their names,
but not a word came back to us. She finally gave them a
fair chewing out for trying to put a scare into us, and still no
one replied. That light was about the size of a beach ball, and
as far as I could tell, it was perfectly round. It was also
the whitest light I had ever seen. When it was about fifty feet from
us, I pulled her to the far side of the road, just like
I had done with the dog. As we were moving, I could see
that the ball of light was rolling. It wasn't above the dirt and coming
toward us. It was on the dirt and rolling like a regular ball would.
It wasn't making any of the sounds that something rolling on dirt on a
quiet night might make, but it was definitely rolling. I wanted to do
some yelling of my own when it rolled to the other side of the road
so it could be in front of us again. Well, we didn't move.
Moving hadn't worked on the dog, and I felt sure that it wouldn't
work on the ball of light either. We just stood there and we watched
it get closer. It rolled right up in front of us, just like
that dog had walked up on us, and then it had stopped. It
was too bright to see into it, but it only cast light a few
inches away from it. It didn't glow or hum or throb like you might
think it would have. It was just a perfect ball of light sitting there.
I reached out my hand and Josie gave me a hard jerk. She
was shaking her head back and forth. Maybe she had been right to do
that, but I needed to know something about whatever it was, and I
stuck my foot up against it, and I pushed my foot. Disappeared inside
the light, but I didn't feel anything when it was there. I couldn't
see my foot, but it was like nothing was there, and I pulled
my foot out and kicked it the way I used to kick those rubber balls
back in grade school. I didn't feel anything that time, either, but
the light began to change. It split in half and turned itself into two
smaller balls, about the size of volleyballs or those little round watermelons. I
think those are Crimson sweets, but I may not have the right name for
them. They were just as bright as the big one had been, and
they were just as perfectly round. They began to roll toward us, and
we jumped back out of the way. Where one went, the other one
went too, just like they were chained together. They never followed each other.
They always went side by side and down the road a few yards,
they rolled into a ditch, but they just kept on rolling, as if
nothing could block their way. They rolled in that ditch until we couldn't see
the light any longer. I didn't need her to suggest it, and she
didn't need for me either, and Josie and I headed back in a hurry.
We didn't say anything to anyone. We just left as soon as we
made it back to my truck. We didn't say anything to each other on
the drive back to her father's house either. I walked her to the porch
and I told her that I would call her, and she said that'd be
nice, and we both knew that we weren't going to speak to each other
again, not about what had just happened, not about anything. It was
all just too strange. If she hadn't asked me to go to the party,
then I wouldn't have been there for her to suggest taking a walk together.
And if the walk had never happened, then neither of us would have
seen what we had seen. It seemed to make sense for us not to
be around each other anymore. Maybe there wouldn't be any more stuff like that
taking place. So for the next week I tried as hard as I could
not to think about all the things that had happened on that dirt road.
Work helped. Being busy. He meant that I had to concentrate on what
I was doing. But at night, when I was alone, I saw
the dog in those lights over and over again. I just couldn't forget about
them. And I don't suppose you're supposed to forget about things like that.
That next Friday, I went to do Eas to have some supper, and
those same old boys were just sitting down when I walked in. I didn't
make any excuses when they asked me to join them. I was hoping that
whatever they were going to talk about would help me not think for a while.
I wasn't looking to be interested as much as I was wanting to be
distracted. We all had just carried on a normal conversation until the food arrived,
and then Johnny asked if I had any more ghost stories like I'd been
telling a couple of weeks earlier. He said that the ones that I had
told were the best ones. I knew it was a mistake, but I
did it anyway. I told them what had happened the weekend before. I
didn't mention who I was with in case she didn't want her part in it
getting around. I guess any of those at the table could have asked around
and found out who I had been with, but I didn't see them doing
anything like that. After I had told everything, the joshin and joking began,
and I had expected it to, but I had also expected for the
jokes to stay at the table, and they didn't people that I barely do
more than say hello to now go out of their way to come up to
me and ask about the flying dog or the supernatural balls of light. If
a person doesn't want to believe something that they've heard, then that's fine with
me. But now people are making sure that everyone in town knows that I've
started losing it and have started making up stuff to get attention. And some
even said that if I hadn't gone crackers, my wife would have stayed at
home with me. I don't live in a large town, so it didn't
take long for the word to get around. My boss even suggested that I
keep a tighter rein on my lip and my imagination because it wasn't good for
business if the customers knew that someone who was out of their tree was working
on their equipment. Now I've written all this out exactly like it happened,
and the only reason I did it was so that anyone who hears it wouldn't
know to be watchful. And if you've seen things like this, you couldn't
know that you're not crazy and you're not alone. I don't know what was
on that road that night, and I don't guess I ever will But I
know that it was there because I saw it