I spent last summer backpacking and hitgehiking from Knoxville to New York. Having just
finished my sociology degree, I figured i'd do something bucket listie before starting my
new job in early September. I've always loved spontaneous travel, to just go
where the wind takes me, and that summer was the first time I had
the money to do so. With some comfort, I could stay at the
occasional motel, hop on a train. I'll just take a cab every now
and then. I had options, and I wanted this to be my final
youthful adventure before I got stuck in the rat race. I made my way
up through Kingston, Princeton, and Beckley, heading northeast. I hedgehiked most
of the way, but I sometimes had to walk for hours before someone pulled
over to give me a ride. I even had a cardboard sign saying New
York, New York. But man, it gets rough out. There nothing
to protect you from sudden rain, and there's no guarantee you'll find a place
to stay before it gets dark, and you don't want to fall asleep when
you're getting a ride from someone. Safety first. By the time I got
to the small town of Juniper. I was exhausted. I stopped at a
cafe to get some directions and a bite to eat, got myself a smiling
little blue sunflower pin some kind of local charity thing. I can I say.
The thing was next to a wanted post of two kids. I felt
bad, as I didn't know a lot of the people in the area and
I've been walking for the better part of the past two days. I decided
to catch a greyhound going north, not too far, just enough to get
me to Morgantown. I knew some people there and figured a shower and a
warm, home cooked meal would turn my frown upside down. I asked the
cheer for directions past this don't stop in Juniper. She said, we don't
get those strange. I stuck around for a couple of hours before I got
back on the road. No one was looking twice at my cardboard plea,
so I just had to keep going on my own. By that time,
I learned exactly one thing about Juniper, that buses don't stop there, and
I was about to learn a second thing that the roads are concrete garbage.
I'd been walking for about two hours. It was getting dark I was following
the main road out of town when a piece of concrete got loose, causing
me to slip and twist my uncle. I fell over by the roadside,
clutching my foot and already seeing some bruising. Now there was really no other
option but to get a bus. I backtracked to a covert down the road
and found myself a piece of rebar that I could use as a walking stick.
As the street lights turned on, I was annoyed. I thought about
calling for a cab, but I was in the middle of nowhere and didn't
know how to describe it. I get anxious on the phone. Finally,
just around the bend, I could see a bus stop, just this little
sign by the side of the road, not even a bench or anything.
But there was already a guy standing there, so I figured I was on
the right track. I hobbled up there and plopped down at the side of
the road. I tried to bandage my ankle and give it some support,
but I'd have a hard time walking for the next few days either way.
There was no getting away from that. All the while the other guy kept
staring at me. I had no idea what kind of bus went through there,
but I figured if someone else has waiting for one, it couldn't be
too far out of line. But judging from the way the other guy looked
at me, something was off. At first look, there wasn't anything inherently
strange about him, just some guy in his early forties, dirty jeans,
rolled up flannel shirt, and a gray baseball cap. The only thing that
kind of stood out was this scarf. It was this yellow, pastel fleece
type scarf which covered most of his neck. He looked a bit out of
place, but not so much that I initially even thought about it. But
the guy kept staring at me. There was something off about the way he
looked at me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Excuse me,
I said, do you know when the next bus gets here? No
response, no acknowledgement of any kind, no nods or headshakes. Excuse me,
sir, I repeated, is there a bus coming? Still nothing,
I shrugged it off. Maybe he didn't speak English, but even then he
ought to have said something. I waited for the better part of an hour,
the sky grew dark, and always slowly coming to terms with having to
sleep outside for the night. If need be I had a tent, I'd
be fine. Still, the creepy guy was still standing there, staring at
me. He wasn't even checking his phone or anything. He just kept looking
my way, pacing back and forth. I tried to put into words exactly
what bothered me about him. The first thing I noticed or his eyes.
They didn't seem to blink in unison. He would close one, open it,
and then close the next one, and it wouldn't be a pattern.
It was seemingly random but quick. You wouldn't catch it at first glance.
Secondly, there was his chest. When he stood still, I could see
him take very shallow breaths. There was this faint noise coming from his nose,
like micro whistles. At one point, there hadn't been a single car
passing by for fifteen minutes. Suddenly the strange man walked up to me.
He looked at me with those wild, random eyes. Can I help you?
I asked, Do you? Before I could finish my sentence, he
grasped the bust up sign and tipped it over. He barely made an effort.
An uncomfortable thought washed over me. Maybe he put that sign up in
the first place. I took out my phone, as if to show him
that I was ready to call for help if need be. I got up
on my feet, leaning against my rebarked crutch. There's no bust coming,
is there, I asked. There was no response. Instead, he stopped
pacing. Not just stopped, as in stopped moving, but it's in stopping
so completely that it looked like he wasn't even breathing. The only thing moving
was the size of his pupils, slowly growing wider like a cat ready to
pounce. Something in the back of my mind screamed at me to run,
but my ankle didn't let me. I got about three steps down the road
before he tackled me, sending us both reeling down a fifteen feet slope.
All the while he kept taking these shallow breaths like an excited dog. I
found myself face first in the dirt with the strangest body next to me,
a dense pine forest stretching out for miles ahead. Head was spinning trying to
figure out what was even happening. As I scrambled to get back on my
feet, I couldn't stop focusing on this one stupid detail that his body was
incredibly light. It was like getting tackled by a water balloon. By the
time I got up, my attacker was ready to pounce again somewhere down the
slope, and must the drop to my phone. I swung my piece of
rebar in a wide arc, smacking him on the side of the head.
It was like hitting a sandbag. It didn't even slow him down. Before
I could build up the momentum to swing again, he grabbed me. It
surprised me, making me trip over my own feet as he pulled me into
the woods. He had this grip like a goddamn vice that just dug into
my clothes, and he was much stronger than I anticipated. I was dragged
along by my backpack. I managed to get it off and escape his grip
for a moment, but before I could get away, those hands got me
by the neck of my jacket. No matter how much I kicked and screamed,
I could see the lights by the road disappearing further and further away.
I got dragged through bushes, saplings, and branches. Things were poking into
my skin, tearing at my clothes. I could barely breathe, but I
kept struggling. The man in the yellow scarf just kept pulling me further away
from the light, all the while panting with rapid breaths. It didn't matter
how much I screamed, squirmed, or twisted. Those hands weren't letting up.
We battled for what it felt like ours. I got out of my
jacket and he grabbed me by the foot. I got my shoes off,
but he just grabbed my belt. After a while, I was just too
tired to fight. I resigned to just holding onto whatever I could reach To
try. I slowed down, but all it did was bruise my hands.
At some point, I just laid there, exhausted, as he dragged me
further into the woods. The rough forest floor turned to soft grass. As
I was pulled into a field. The full moon was out and I could
see all the way through the clearing. The man in the yellow scarf suddenly
stopped and inhaled a deep breath, his torso swelling up like a balloon.
It was a faint crackle as his ribs readjusted. He was smelling something.
I made an attempt to get up, but he just kicked me back down
and put a foot on my torso. At the slightest movement, he would
press down to keep me in check. There were others there. I could
hear them shuffle through the tall grass from where I lay, I could only
see the top half of them. There were three of them, into two
men and a woman. Two of them were carrying their own bus signs.
All three of them were wearing scarves similar to that of my assailant. One
of the men hissed, actually hissed with his mouth wide open. He made
this threatening stance and stepped forward, but my attacker didn't flinch. Instead,
he hissed back. It was an a normal sound. It was like someone
desperately trying to cough, but never quite getting the flam out. I felt
like prey. As they non verbally argued about who gets the two, something
grabbed to me by the neck, a fourth one still wielding a bus stop
sign. I was pulled away, and as my attacker flinched, they pounced
on him. It escalated into a full on brawl, but not like any
fight I'd ever seen. They were contorting their bodies at impossible angle. They're
torso swelling and shrinking like blowfish. They kept thrusting their necks forward while their
heads just bobbled back and forth in the confusion. I started crawling. No
one was looking at me. I crawled at my belly, trying to get
away. My ancle was killing me. Every little bump sent a joulder pain
up my leg all the way through my spine. Suddenly they all stopped at
the edge of the forest clearing. I could see yet another one. This
one was much larger, a woman easily six eight. She was carrying a
bust up sign, this one of a slightly different model, and she had
someone thrown over a shoulder, another victim. Before I could react, hands
grabbed me my arms, my legs, my clothes, and they had to
drag me through the clearing. Whatever disagreements they'd had must have been cleared up
by the presence of this leader character. Out of reflex, I tried to
talk. I demanded that they listened to me, that they explain themselves anything
I could hear, my voice breaking as I got nothing but vacant expressions in
return, these dumb rolling eyes, all of them blinking at random, all
of them taking shallow breaths. But this last one, the large one,
she was something different entirely. She moved like a joint, didn't matter.
She bent her arms back and forth, and she kept swiveling ahead like an
owl. Her mouth was wide open, like she was constantly screaming, but
she didn't make a sound, just a completely vacant expression. We got to
a mound at the edge of the clearing where they'd made a makeshift shelter.
They dug into the dirt and covered it in branches and moss. It was
also a sort of storage, with at least a dozen different signs, stop
signs, bus stop signs, and even a couple of simple benches. This
was some sort of tactic to catch people who were either on their own,
lost or desperate. They utilized anything that could make a victim change their behavior
to stop for a moment or wait. A large one dropped a person next
to me, an overweight, balding man in his late twenties with some of
the bluish eyes had ever seen. He was nodding in and out of consciousness,
and I could see deep bruises on his neck. He must have been
choked out. As our five attackers started going through the collection of signs and
symbols. I try to wake the other victim. He was completely out of
it, muttering something about white doors and gardens. I couldn't make sense of
it. When he finally came to, he could barely form a coherent sentence.
My first thought was that he needed medical attention. He was clearly unwell.
Still he was coming to they. They got me at a red light.
He wheezed, pulled me out of the car. They got me at
a bus stop, had a fake sign. Do they want money? I
got money? I don't think so. There was something deeply inhuman about these
people. If they wanted money, they would have just killed me. No,
they wanted something else, and that worried me. Before we got a
chance to talk, they grabbed him by the foot and dragged him along the
ground. The large woman didn't even flinch. This guy was easily three hundred
pounds, but she pulled him along like he was a bagg of chips.
He flailed and protested, the sleeve of his shirt getting stuck and pulled off
on a sharp root. They all helped each other, holding him down as
he looked at me, calling for help. Those desperate, pale blue eyes
never seen anything like them before. The large one took off a scarf,
revealing a massive wound in the middle of her throat. It still looked red
and fresh, a throat wound leading all the way into esophagus, showing the
contracting grown musculature. That's where the whistling sound had come from. I could
see it now. They weren't just taking shallow breaths. It was hycling their
lungs well. One lung breathed in and out, the other did so at
a different interval, like when you peddle a bike. One foot goes up,
one goes down. That's why the chest moved so much. They were
constantly taking breath. The whistling came from them inhaling and exhaling, seemingly simultaneously
and continuously. These was something different entirely. The large woman leaned in close,
hugging her victim, putting their neck against one another. Crunch, crunch,
crunch. I had to do something, anything. I grabbed the sharp
roots with a ripped off shirt sleeve. I intended to use it as a
weapon, swinging it wildly, but I couldn't get over the pain in my
leg. There was no way I'd get away from them. They were fast
and unharmed. I could do things that I just couldn't, So I just
sat there with my roote, watching the large woman undulate, with something large
moving in and out of the wound in a throat, still with that expressionless
face. I put all the things I knew together. They displayed a kind
of social structure. They had an alpha, they had tactics, they needed
victims alive for something, and all other people I was looking at were just
people. There was no pattern, just broken, twisted people. So I
had to try something anything. Using the torn off sleeve, I tied it
around my neck, using the blue sunflower pin to hold it together. This
was a rudimentary scarf in a way. Then I got up, and before
the rest of them caught on, I walked up and stood next my attacker,
the man with a flannel shirt and yellow scarf. I tried to mimic
their expressions. There was an immediate reaction. The man with the yellow scarf
looked at me, then back at the others. They in turn, just
looked at the alpha. She leaned her head back, leaving the exposed wound
in a victim open to the air. I could see something white moving in
her throat, like a long white tongue retracting into her chest. There was
a moment of silence as she observed us she seemed confused. I tried to
blink seemingly at random and take shallow breaths. I could feel something wet on
my throat. Apparently there was a little blood, probably from my hands.
The Alpha got up, her head bobbing back and forth. She hissed.
There a vibration of something rattled in a chest. My attacker seemed agitated,
and he pushed me away. I fell over next to the signs as the
Alpha stormed forward, first the discipline my attacker with a show of force,
and then to inspect me. I grabbed to stop sign and got up,
letting the adrenaline flow through me. I couldn't show pain. I just couldn't
rapid breaths, blink at random, head on a swivel. I had to
look like them or this was doomed to fail. The Alpha looked me over,
making her rattling noise. She smelled the blood, poked at me,
and presented her neck. I could see the wound just inches from my face
and all the way down a throat. I saw something bone white, rattling
back and forth like a stick in a barrel. She reached from my sleeve,
scarf held together by that pin as her cold hands touched my neck and
her fingers started to bend into a grip. She suddenly stopped. The other
victim was moving. I could have sworn he was dead, but now he
was moving. A long white branch like appendage was moving out of his open
neck, reaching for open air, and for a moment, the group just
looked at him. His body screamed, not him as a person, but
his body, a long, drawn out shriek, a growing body crying like
a newborn blood still spurting from his open wound. They all gathered around him,
but as my sailant stepped forward, the alpha hissed, causing him to
retreat. Then looking at me, it hissed again. It didn't like me,
and it wanted me to leave. Both me and my sailant still holding
the bust up sign, I try my best to confidently walk out of there.
The sign had this heavy lead pipe that I could use to defend myself
if need be. I got about forty feet before I realized I was being
followed. The man in the yellow scarf was still coming for me, and
he seemed angry, but this time I had a sturdier weapon. I tried
to gain some ground to get away from the others. Whether they had been
tricked by my antics or just didn't like me, didn't matter. It was
just me and this outcast. And as he charged me to wrestle me down
again, I was ready. This time. I swung the bust up sign
in an overhead arc like I was chopping firewood. I closed my eyes,
held my breath, and hit him square in the chest. This was much
more effective, and he doubled over. I just started beating him over and
over and over. As his chest expanded and shrunk, As his scarf fell
off, I could see something poking in and out of his neck wound,
something white, looking for an opportunity to escape. It pressed against his throat,
making it bulge like a snake thrown up an egg. I just kept
beating him. I beat him until the white thing stopped moving, until I
was covered in blood, until the shrieking died down, until the fingers stopped
twitching in different directions, and until the head stopped swiveling back and forth.
I beat him until my muscles burned and my breathing turned rapid from exhaustion.
When I finally wiped the salt from my eyes, I was looking at nothing
but broken bone and a yellow scarf. I barely remember making my way back
to the main road. I remember collapsing as the sun rose, and a
man in a pickup truck calling for help. I remember her familiar face,
a white door, something blue. Later on, my friend drove down from
Morgantown to see me, and I got a dozen calls from my friends and
family asking if I was okay. They also had me take a drug test.
Apparently I acted irrationally, so just be careful. They can easily be
identified. They wear something to cover their necks, and they travel one by
one. They use something to get our attention or to separate us from others,
stop signs to catch lonely drivers, bust up signs to get drifters.
They probably have a dozen other similar tactics. I think they're learning about us
with secondhand information, testing and adding to see what works. They don't talk,
and they can be very patient. That first one stayed with me for
a long time before he attacked. Maybe he was just making sure I was
alone. Looking back at it, I can barely even believe it happened.
Have you ever had that one day that is just so different from anything else?
You've ever done that. One day that just feels like another life.
Another time, that was one of those days. Sometimes I even managed to
convince myself that it was all a lie, a nightmare, something I cooked
up in my sleep deprived brain. But then I look at that blue sunflower
pin, the one that held the sleeve together, and I know they're still
owed. Theres