Speaker 1: 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 no
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, O, mine is as white as a piece
of cotton. As I write 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 well think I am, and
you'll say so in your comments. I watch 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 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 deesel 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 me 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 and want to horn in. But they
had gone to all that trouble, so I went 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 back
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 Popo 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 condition. He 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 him 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 rowed 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 signed
the papers then. But the landlord 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 of 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 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 Pauppall 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. A way down the road before
I understood what he had been 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. My
pup 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
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 loaded into his wagon and drive it all the
way to town to 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 gest your
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 longer, and he got
himself up. He found a long piece of wood and
set the end on fire so it 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 into 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 and
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 Johnny 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 a 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.
Sometimes 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 married.
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
off his 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 is at
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, and
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 proof 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 uncomfortable. 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. He just looked off in the head or something.
I pulled at Josie's hand and cross 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 sha should do, and that hound
just kept getting closer, and 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 right
until we had our heads leaned 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 lubed up rednecks 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 mainly 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 to run to where the flying
dog had been. We stood right where we had been standing,
and 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 spotting 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 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 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, 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