“Look out the window,” I said to the boys.
“Wow!” Kevin yelped with joy. “Look at it!”
Within minutes the few flurries had turned into an all out blizzard. The sky, which had been bright an hour ago, was inexplicably dark. I don’t know if it was just my gut feeling at the time or not, but the storm seemed to take on an almost…supernatural feeling to it.
Elaine stopped by our table. “Oh boy,” she sighed, “Looks like the weatherman was wrong again.”
“It would appear that way,” I agreed. “I better pay the bill now so I can get these boys home before the roads aren’t accessible anymore.”
“Oh sure,” she replied, handing me the bill. “Be careful out there.”
“You do the same,” I said in return.
“You bet,” she said and turned to give another bill to the only other customer, Harry, at the counter.
“You boys ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” Brad said. “And thanks for this.”
“Yeah,” Kevin echoed. “Thank you!”
“The pleasure was mine,” I replied truthfully as I stood up. Mr. Meadows was just finishing paying for his bill when we reached the cashier. “Be safe Harry,” Elaine said to the man. “And enjoy that new grandson.”
“I will,” Harry grinned with pride. “Thanks.” A tremendous gush of frigid air met us as Harry exited the diner.
“Here you are,” I said to Elaine, handing her a twenty dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you Mr. Harrison,” she smiled. “Get home safe now.”
“We’ll try,” I said as I put my coat on. “Come on boys.”
As I pulled open the door and stepped outside, Harry slammed straight into me, knocking us both to the frozen ground.
“Help me!”
he screamed and before I could even blink, he was violently yanked feet first back around the corner of the diner into the blizzard.
I could hear his high-pitched screams and as I struggled to stand I turned and yelled, “Boys-back in the diner now!” The kids did as they were told. Now on my feet, I started in the direction that Harry had been dragged off in. “Harry!” I yelled. There was no response. The sidewalk which had been relatively cleared of snow was now fully covered again. Straining through the flurries and the darkened sky, I spotted the drag marks and began to follow them. They went down Main Street a little ways and then turned sharply into a nearby alley.
I entered the alley and stopped dead in my tracks. Harry Meadows was right in front of me, his face forever frozen in a scream. Both his legs and left arm were missing. I could see steam rising from his carcass in the ice cold air. It’s funny, but the first thought that had entered my mind at that time was how astonishing the color contrast was between Harry’s crimson blood and the freshly fallen white snow. The mind works in strange ways I suppose.
It was then that I noticed the snow drift. It was a few yards away from the body, leaning against a nearby trash dumpster. It was about four feet long and about two, maybe three feet wide. It struck me as odd that a snow drift would have formed in that particular spot. There were snow drifts all around, for sure, but they were against buildings and other structures that didn’t get moved on a regular basis.
This morning was trash day, and I knew that the dumpster had been lifted and emptied only a few hours ago. The rest of the area was fairly flat in comparison. That same feeling that I had on the hiking trail started to overwhelm me once again. Suddenly something grabbed me from behind.
Spinning around, I was stunned to see Stephanie Adams and Billy Wilson standing there. “Mr. Harrison,” Stephanie said. “Are you alright?”
“What are you kids doing out in this storm?” I asked impatiently.
“We were just going for a walk outside of town when the storm suddenly started,” Billy explained. “We made our way back as quickly as we could and was heading to Steph’s house when we heard a scream.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie continued. “We were taking a shortcut to my house down Main Street. Then we heard a scream, turned the corner and well, here you are.”
“Listen,” I said. “You need to get out of here.”
“Oh…” Stephanie suddenly gurgled. She had spied Harry’s remains. “What-what happened?”
“No way,” Billy said, taking a step forward. “Is that Mr. Meadows?”
“You have to leave,” I exclaimed. “Something…is here.”
“What?” Billy asked. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “But…” I stopped mid sentence and stared. The snow drift that had been lying against the dumpster was gone. “Run,” I mumbled.
“What?” Stephanie said.
“Run!” I yelled and grabbed a hold of her arm. “Now!” Without hesitation, we started back toward the diner, with Billy only a few steps behind us. Upon reaching the entrance, I flew open the door and shoved Stephanie inside. “Come on Billy!”
Billy stumbled toward the entrance, slipped and fell. I let go of the door and grabbed a hold of his arm. “Get up!” Abruptly Billy’s eyes opened wide and he let out an ear-piercing scream. I looked behind him and gasped. His left leg looked to be simply covered by snow. But after a moment of staring, I could see that something had attached itself to him. It was the snow drift from the alley, except it was…writhing.
“Get it off!” Billy screamed, snapping me out of my momentary daze.
“Stephanie!” I yelled. “Help!”
She quickly came to my side and we both grabbed a hold of Billy’s arms and began to drag him into the diner. As we crossed the threshold of the building, I heard a sharp snapping sound and then we were able to easily bring Billy in. “Oh no,” I groaned, looking down at the young man on the floor. His left leg was simply gone, all the way up to his buttock.
“Billy!” Stephanie shrieked. “Help me turn him over.” I kneeled down and helped her gently turn Billy over, so his head was now resting in Stephanie’s lap. At that moment the kitchen door swung open and the cook, a large, middle-aged man with a receding hairline appeared.
“What’s going on out here?” he barked.
“Ted!” Elaine cried. “We need help!”
Ted Felts spotted the fallen young man and froze.
“Towels!” I yelled at him. “We have to try and stop the bleeding.”
Ted stood there a moment longer, quickly snapped out of it and nodded. “Right away,” he said and hurried back into the kitchen.
I turned and saw the Connor boys. They were huddled together behind Elaine, staring horrified at the dreadful scene in front of them. A moment later Ted appeared, carrying a handful of towels. “Here,” he breathed, tossing them to me. I quickly started to wrap the towels around his wound as softly as I could.
“We need to call an ambulance,” I said.
“I’m on it,” Ted said, reaching for the phone behind the register. After picking it up, he tapped the receiver several times and then hung it back up. “Line’s dead.” I half expected that to be the case. With the way the wind was whipping around outside, there was probably a downed line somewhere.
“I have a cell phone,” Elaine said, pulling it out of her apron. Flipping it open, she frowned. “No signal. It must be the storm interfering with the reception.”
“This young man needs medical attention immediately,” I said.
“What did that to him?” Ted asked.
“We don’t know,” I answered. “Some kind of…animal is using the snow as camouflage.”
“Huh?” he gulped.
“Look,” I said. “We have to get him to the hospital. Where is your car parked?”
“Out back,” Ted replied. “But I’m not going out there if that thing is still around.”
“This kid needs help!” I exclaimed.
Ted simply looked down at the floor. I turned and looked at Billy, who was sweating profusely and mumbling. “Stephanie,” he managed to say.
“I’m here,” she sobbed. “I’m here.”
“It’s…it’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You are gonna be just fine,” she replied, cradling his head. “We’re getting help.”
“I’ll go get my car,” Elaine volunteered.
“No,” I said. “I’ll get mine; it’s only a few spots down right here on the street. I want you to watch after the boys while I’m gone.”
Elaine nodded and turned to Kevin, who was crying heavily. “It’s going to be okay,” she said in a soothing tone of voice. She reached out and pulled them close to her. “You’ll see.”
I stood up and made my way over to the glass door. The blizzard was so fierce that I couldn’t make out a single thing outside. I had never seen in my entire life a storm come on so fast and furious. “Here,” Ted said, handing me a large butcher’s knife.
I thanked him and turned back to the entrance. With some force I pushed the door open and squinted into the storm. The sky was abnormally dark, but not dark enough where it would be considered night. The real problem, however, was the howling wind and the snow. I literally couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me.
I looked closely around the entrance to see if there were any snow drifts nearby. Of course there were now three of them within twenty feet of me. One of them, if not more, might be something other than just a snow drift. I also reasoned they certainly may have been there when we arrived, but I wouldn’t have had any reason to pay attention to them. I turned and glanced back at Billy, lying motionless on the floor. “Here goes nothing,” I muttered, and stepped out into the storm.
The wind nearly took my breath away as I took my first step out onto Main Street. As fast as I knew I needed to go, I found that my legs would not cooperate. They seemed to know that I needed to be cautious. I neared the first snow drift which was leaning against the restaurant on my right hand side. It looked natural and was in a place that I thought a snowdrift should be. I passed quickly by it.
The next one was against someone’s car directly in front of the entrance to the diner. This seemed odd and I almost came to a complete stop a few feet from it, terrified of moving any closer. I willed myself to move, I told myself that young Billy needed me to move, but again my legs did what they wanted, which at that moment was absolutely nothing.
“Come on old man,” I mumbled. I took a step forward and I tightened my grip on the butcher’s knife. As soon as I was close enough, I lunged with all my might and brought the weapon down into the snow drift. The blade went through effortlessly. The small mound fell apart….just snow.
The third one was a few yards down from the mound that I just decimated. It too was leaning against a car. Just past the car with the snow drift was my car. I started toward it and stopped short. The third snow drift seemed to…shift ever so lightly. I blinked and strained to get a better look at it. It most certainly could have just been the onslaught of flurries distorting my view, but I thought…. Suddenly the drift shot forward, rippling under the snow.
I screamed and ran back toward the diner. Luckily I wasn’t far from the entrance to begin with and I yanked open the door with all my might and slammed it home again. A split second later there was a loud bang against the glass door. Everyone screamed at once and I turned back toward the door that I had narrowly just made it through.
Plastered against the glass was something straight out of a nightmare. A circular, suction cup shaped mouth was pressed against the door. The mouth was over two feet wide, with ragged pointed teeth going completely around the orifice. It didn’t appear to have a tongue, however. All I could see for certain was the creature’s pink colored throat. It looked as though it was sucking on the glass, sort of what an algae eater would do in a fish tank.
“What is it?” Stephanie shrieked.
“It’s an alien!” Ted exclaimed.
I turned and looked quizzically at Ted, then back to the entrance. It was then that I noticed that a small piece was missing from one of the creature’s teeth. I was positive that I had found Spike’s killer. “I don’t know what it is,” I confessed. “It looks like some type of…”
Just then the creature started coiling itself and slid up the glass until it reached its max height of about four feet. It was a ghastly sight to be sure, but at the same time we all seemed to be in awe at what we were seeing as well. Again, the mind is an enormous computer with which we still know very little about, especially during horrific circumstances. Abruptly it then slithered down the door and vanished back into the storm.
“We…we’re trapped here, aren’t we?” Elaine asked.
“We can’t be,” I replied. “We need to get young Billy to the hospital.”
“No you don’t,” Stephanie announced, barely above a whisper. “He’s gone.”
I turned and kneeled down by the young couple. Billy was still staring up at the girl of his dreams, but there was no longer any life in the gaze. I leaned over and closed his eyelids. “I’m sorry Stephanie.”
As hard as she tried to hold it back, the floodgates burst open and she grabbed onto me and buried her head in my shoulder. “I know,” I whispered as I hugged her back. “It’s going to be okay.” Then, I motioned for Ted. “You wanna give me a hand?”
“With what?” he asked.
“I think it would be best if we move Billy to another location,” I answered, motioning to the kids. “You have a walk-in freezer back there, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Ted replied. “But I don’t want a corpse in there…that’s disgusting. It’s plenty cold outside.”
“I don’t think we should do that,” I continued.
“Why not?” he snapped.
“Because I think Billy’s dear mother would like a body for the funeral,” I answered honestly. “If we put him outside, there is a good chance that our new visitor will take him.”
“Good!” Ted exclaimed. “Let it chow on him while we escape.”
At this comment, Stephanie started to bawl all the more. Giving Ted a disapproving look, I said, “Number one that was a horrible thing to say. And number two, we don’t know if there is more than one. Suppose you put Billy out front and then went for your car out back to find three more of them waiting for you. What then?”
“Are you kidding?” Ted scoffed. “There ain’t another one of those things out there. Trust me, that
thing
is one in a million.”
Ted’s comments actually did make sense. The chance of there being more than one was slim. On the other hand, what were the chances of this creature being here at all? Moreover, I had known Billy’s mother since she was a little girl. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I fed her only son to a monster so I could save my own hide. I guess it does come down to character. I was brought up a certain way and I tried to live my life that way, for better or worse.
“Are you willing to take that risk?” I asked him. “And are you also willing to tell Mrs. Wilson what you did to save your own butt?”
Ted looked down at the floor for quite some time. Finally, he raised his head back up, looked me in the eye and said, “Come on. I’ll help you move him to the freezer.”
I nodded my approval to him and said to Stephanie, “We’re going to move him now.”
She nodded and slowly laid his head on the floor. “Please be gentle with him.”
“We will,” I assured her. Elaine walked over and helped Stephanie off the floor and the two of them went and sat down in the first booth, Elaine trying her best to comfort her.
Brad and Kevin had taken up residence in the booth behind them. They seemed to be okay. I silently prayed that they wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives in therapy. “Okay,” Ted sighed, walking over to me. “Let’s do this.”
***
After taking care of Billy Wilson, I came back out and tried the telephone again – it was still dead. I suspected it would be for some time. I made my way to the front door again. Cupping my hands to my face, I peered out into the pure white wasteland. I knew it was Main Street, but at the moment you could have told me it was Antarctica and I would have believed you. Never in my whole life have I ever seen a storm come on so suddenly and violently; it had an overwhelming ominous feel to it. Was there something special about this storm in particular?
After another few minutes I turned and went to take a seat with the boys. “How are you guys holding up?” I asked.
“We’re okay,” Kevin said. “I think mom is probably worried about us by now. We told her that we wouldn’t be gone very long.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to leave soon and you’ll be home with your mom in no time.”
“Sure,” Kevin nodded, not seeming to believe a word I just said. Kids nowadays are very perceptive.
“Mr. Harrison,” Brad cut in. “Earlier you started to say something but stopped short.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you started to say what you thought the thing outside looked like,” he responded. “What were you going to say?”
“Well,” I said. “To me, that…creature outside most resembled some type of worm.”
“Oh here we go,” Kevin mumbled.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, perplexed.
“Stow it,” Brad elbowed his younger brother. “Anyway,” he said, looking at me intensely. “I think that you are exactly right.”
“Oh?”
“Have you ever heard of the Mongolian Death Worm?” he asked.
“Um,” I answered. “No.”
“It’s a worm that lives in the western half of the Gobi Desert,” Brad continued.
“Supposedly,” Kevin chimed in.
“It
does
,” Brad insisted. “Eyewitnesses describe it as being two to five feet in length and it being of a dark red color.”
“Really?” I asked. “How did it…”
“How did it get over here?” he finished my question.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“This…thing isn’t actually a Mongolian Death Worm,” Brad continued, his fear temporarily replaced by his enthusiasm to be able to contribute to an intelligent conversation. “However it is part of the same family as the Mongolian Death Worm.”
“The Amphis…” Kevin cut in. “What is it called again?”
“The Amphisbaenidae Family,” Brad answered.
“The what?” I asked, perplexed.
“The Amphisbaenidae Family,” he repeated.
“Worm Lizards,” Kevin said.
“Exactly little bro,” Brad said. “They are indigenous to North and South America.”
“Don’t forget the Caribbean too,” Kevin added.
“Correct again,” Brad said.
“If
you believe in this stuff,” Kevin replied.
“I believe what I can see with my own two eyes,” I said. “So…Worm Lizards, huh?”
“By definition they are limbless, burrowing lizard-like worms with a carnivorous diet,” Brad said. “Plus, if they are related to the Mongolian Death Worm then their size isn’t out of the range of possibility.”
“Except the Death Worm is red,” Kevin countered.
“Only because the ones that have been seen are in the desert,” Brad retorted. “Who is to say that a family of them living up in the Rocky Mountains wouldn’t adapt to their environment and become white to blend in with the snow?”
“Hold up,” I said. “How is it that you know all this stuff?”
Brad looked surprised. “Don’t you watch the Nature Channel?”
“Or the Science Fiction Channel?” Kevin asked.
“It’s not science fiction,” Brad said defensively. “Its fact—just ask the people of Mongolia.”
”No,” I answered. “I don’t have those channels; I only have the rabbit ears.”
Brad narrowed his eyes. “The what?”
“Never mind,” I smiled. “Well boys that certainly is an interesting theory.” I suddenly remembered what Dr. Kline said when the sheriff and I had brought in Spike’s remains. “
You’d be surprised by what these mountains are home to sheriff,”
he had said.
“New species are still being discovered to this day.”
As far as I was concerned, it was as good a hypothesis as any.