It began in July of 1968; on a warm summer evening in rural
Texas. Mrs. Macready was sweeping the
dust out of her house when she heard a scream. She runs over to find her
daughter Betsy crying over her dead dog. Mrs. Macready said: “It was probably
coyotes.” Betsy asked: “Why did it have to happen to spot? He was a good dog.”
Mrs. Macready responded: “Sometimes bad things happen to good people, or
animals.” She then asked Betsy to come inside and wash up for dinner.
The next day Mrs. Macready went into town. She met up with
Mr. Jenkins the town’s prosperous farmer. She asked him if he’d been having
trouble with coyotes recently. He responded with: “No ma’am I think this is
something much larger then coyotes, some of my cattle has been killed off.” She
said “Well what could it be?” Mr. Jenkins said “I don’t know, but whatever it
is, it’s big. I’m going to be waiting in my field with a shotgun in case it
shows up.” Mrs. Macready bought her groceries and headed back home. She got
Betsy ready for bed and tried to dial out the telephone to reach her husband.
The town’s phone lines were never very reliable when making out of town calls.
Mrs. Macready turns on the radio to listen to music. The
announcer says “…And that was ‘tip toe thru’ the tulips with me’ by Tiny Tim at
number seventeen on the popularity charts as of June 29th. Now for a
quick update on the weather. For the next few nights there will be a few meteor
showers visible over some parts of Texas for the next few nights and the next
few days are looking very clear. Now here’s ‘2,000 Light Years From Home’ by
The Rolling Stones.” Mrs. Macready checks out the window, sure enough she could
see those beautiful streaks of light in the sky. She goes to her room, sets out
her clothes for the next day and goes to bed.
Mrs. Macready heads into town with Betsy, she looks for Mr.
Jenkins who’s always there on Friday. And more importantly it was the first
Friday of the month; he always delivered some form of food to the town market
on the first Friday of every month. Mrs. Macready went over to the town’s
grocer, Mark Gutenberg an immigrant from Germany during the Second World War.
He moved here when he was young but despite that he still talked with a slight
accent. He told Mrs. Macready that Mr. Jenkins had not shown up today. After a
few hours of waiting Betsy was getting restless, she went off to play in the
forest. Mrs. Macready thought it was okay because the creature seemed to only
come out at night. She goes in the forest; after about half an hour she runs
out screaming. Some of the town’s folk come running. Betsy points at the forest
and then starts crying. Some of the men grab their rifles out of their trucks
and head into the forest. There’s a dead cow, and bloody shoeprints heading off
into the forest. The men follow them; they see old Mr. Jenkins Lake. It was
completely empty. They notice that the blood tracks turn off around the lake
and back into another part of the forest. The men follow them a ways until they
find a pool of blood. One of the men notices a drip, and looks up. He looks
frightened and stares, the other men look up and see Mr. Jenkins body mostly
ripped up and hanging on a tree branch.
The men head back to town and get a bag to bring back the
body, they tell the news to Mrs. Macready. She was a good friend of Mr. Jenkins
and she was stunned with disbelief; but when they brought back the body she
started crying. The men decided to call a town meeting at the rec center. One
of them said “we need to find this creature and kill it.” A few others agreed,
while yet a few others were afraid to find out what it was. The town members
eventually decided to go after the creature; and a group of men began gathering
weapons and flash lights. The men split up into groups of four and go out in
the forest. Some bring their dogs and have them sniff the cow hoping they’ll
track the creature down. The dogs pick up a scent and begin to run away in
cowardice. The men don’t bother chasing the dogs; they’re just determined to
kill this creature. One group heads off in the opposite direction the dogs had
run. They travel a while and then stop. They hear a noise that sounds like
something eating. They see a creature with bluish-green reptilian skin with
patches of bonier looking skin bumps around the joints on the limbs. The
creature had dark black eyes and a row of two inch spikes going along its
spine. When the creature sees the people it raises its spikes the way a cat
hunches its back before it pounces on a mouse. The creature takes a tremendous
leap towards the people, slashes the throat of one of the men and bites the
throat of another. One of them hides behind a tree as the creature pounces on
the third guy and starts eating out of his stomach as he’s screaming for help. After
the creature catches a scent of the other group it heads runs over there. The
guy waits until he can’t hear the creature anymore and leaves. He runs towards
the town, he hears screaming behind him. “There was nothing he could do” he
told himself. He ran to the town and told the people what happened.
The men go after the creature with their hunting rifles. By
this time it was almost daylight, the find the mangled bodies of their friends
that went out before them. They follow the path the creature left in blood, and
find it resting on a rock. One of the men takes a shot at it; the bullet
shatters. The men look worried and run. The creature chases after them; two of
the men make it to town just as the creature catches up to them and notices all
the other people around. The creature begins massacring the townspeople. Mrs.
Macready takes Betsy and hides in Mr. Jenkins storm cellar. She goes up into
his house and locks the doors, she looks out the window. She looks at the tree
line and notices a shadow moving over them. She thought it was strange because
there were no clouds. She looks up and sees a giant metal saucer flying over
the trees. It was heading for Mr. Jenkins’ lake. She notices the creature run
toward it. She unlocks the front door and heads towards the ship leaving Betsy
in the house. The ship lands at the dried up lake bed; and she sees the
creature walk into an open ramp on the ship. She sees a group of black
creatures that look like men stowing the creature away in a cage. After the
ship flies off Mrs. Macready had no idea what to make of the events that
happened that day. Six months later Mrs. Macready was institutionalized for
delusions of an alien attack.
By: Kylan Walker
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