When a billion year old creature decides its time to come to dinner … and the entire population of the Earth is on the menu.     Who do you call??

Short Fat Stubby Finger Stories PRESENTS:

THE Night OF the DARKNESS

By Tony Stewart

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PRESS HERE TO GO TO EPISODE 24 chapter 22 PART 1

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LEGENDS: LINKED TO EPISODE 19 (3) THE TRIP TO TRENTHAMVILLE

As the two cars, still travelling side by side, reached the peak of the short hill the sight that confronted their disbelieving eyes sent shivers down their spines.   An almost cloudless blue sky ran from left to right and almost as far as the human eye could see in a straight line to where they were heading.   But in the middle of the sky, directly above the motorway; directly above where they would be in a few seconds sat a single, humongous, dark cloud … a cloud as black as black could be.   Not a normal storm cloud, but a swirling dark mass that seemed to be almost alive – stretching out as if it was going to completely engulf both them and the sky itself – then just as quickly snapping back into a tightly knotted mass with savage streaks of lightning spitting out of it with the regularity of embers on a burning fire.   Inside the cloud proper a continuous series of spasmodic bursts of yellow and reddish tinged electrical discharges gave the cloud an even eerier appearance.

   In the Mini Jimmy felt the sweat pouring from his skin.   Andrea Jorgenson, the young woman in the Mercedes’s passenger seat, was having trouble with her breathing; her heart palpating like it was going to burst, while the Merc’s driver found himself becoming  unsettled and confused as simultaneously, a strange, unexplained foreboding began penetrating their collective minds.   A primitive in-built warning of unspoken endangerment, a warning of the approach of a danger that they were not in a position to handle by themselves, but with no clear definition of what it was that they should be afraid of … just the fear.   Confused in their thoughts all three individually tried to make sense of what was happening , their confusion further aggravated in their collective minds by a feeling of certainty that the cloud was turning blacker by the second.   Blacker … and becoming closer and much more powerful by the second.

   Furthermore, as the wheels of the cars following the Mini and the Mercedes finally made contact with the motorway some distance behind, they also began to notice the strange apparition in the sky – an apparition they also quickly became convinced was not just hovering in the sky … it was moving towards them.

   The lightning blasts from the cloud began to intensify in both quantity and volume.   Rumblings from the approaching storm could be heard by the occupants of all the cars that travelled the southern lanes that fateful Friday, even those with their windows locked tight and their car radios belting out songs at full belt … and every car felt every rumble from the cloud as the vibrating noise rolled down to the ground and along the motorway.

    The drivers of both the Mini and the Mercedes, still at the  front of the pack, as if in a pact, planted their feet and within seconds they were a further thirty lengths in front of the nearest vehicle … and increasing their lead by the second.   Their sole justification for the dangerous speed they were travelling was they knew they had to out run the storm in order to survive … and the warning inside their minds was telling them that time was running out for them.

   It took the drivers of the following cars several precious seconds before they realised the two leading cars were disappearing out of sight, and then panic began to envelope every one of them as remnants of the ghostly thoughts that had been transmitted to Jimmy and the driver of the Merc from an unknown source, still lingering in the air, now entered the minds of all that passed through them.   Suddenly all lanes were occupied and every accelerator pedal placed firmly on the floor as they attempted to emulate the leaders and get past the cloud as quickly as humanly possible.

   At the front of the pack Jimmy and the driver of the Mercedes were at their wits end.   No matter how fast they travelled the cloud seemed to be getting closer to them, yet it was always in front of them – never above.   They did not seem to getting past it … no matter how fast they went.   And to Jimmy’s dismay the cloud seemed to be intent in down-loading its massive liquid content directly onto them – and that was not something that he was looking forward to.

   Jimmy was feeling unsettled as a result of the way his brain seemed to be working at the moment, and the presence of the cloud itself.   Not knowing how to deal with his on-coming depression he had decided that he would make his brain explain the strangeness of what he was feeling and was in the process of implementing the thought when something made him look in his rear vision mirror – and what he saw put despair in his heart.   The pack was approaching,   Bigger, faster cars, with more aggressive drivers were fast on their way.   This was the part of driving on the motorway that Jimmy feared the most.   In the little green Mini he was like a squirrel amongst elephants on the motorway.   He now felt danger from several corners: aggressive, bullying drivers, cars so big they may not see his car, and a storm that threatened to drop so much rain in such a short time it was almost guaranteed to result in accidents … and most likely he would be a statistic in such an event.   But there was nothing that he could do.   Nowhere to pull over and let them pass, nowhere to hide, nowhere was safe.   All he could do was keep up this speed and hope for the best.

   As the seconds passed, the light on the motorway became darker and darker to the point Jimmy and the driver of the Mercedes were forced to turn their headlights on for safety reasons.  The vibrations on the road from the violence of the thunder from the cloud increased to a point where the roadway actually began to shake intermittently as the cars drove on it … and at the speed those following were now travelling at they were moving way too fast for the new road conditions.   In his mirror Jimmy could  see the cars swerving in and out of their lanes as the vibration rolled irrationally under their vehicles and he prayed as hard as he could that the rain would not begin to fall while he was still under the cloud.   Judging by the thickness and darkness of the cloud the density of the rain that would fall almost guaranteed instant blindness for the drivers, and that, along with the current road conditions would guarantee carnage on the road.  

   Jimmy was now becoming more petrified of the oncoming traffic than he was by the strange, fear inducing cloud that was still getting closer and closer to him.   But it still unsettled him.   For a second he raised his eyes to face it, as if in a vein hope that he could  simply will it away.   But as his eyes made contact with it, without any warning, a brilliant light exploded across the darkness and all eyes were lifted towards the large, dark, storm cloud that hovered above them … and every single occupant of a vehicle on the southbound lanes of the motorway felt a fear like nothing that they had ever felt in their entire lives.

   In the middle of the storm cloud there now appeared the image of a gigantic, surreal image of something part human – part god knows what: an evil, frightening image that seemed to project the oncoming of death and despair.   Somehow the drivers of the small green Mini and the grey Mercedes managed to steer their cars without incident regardless of the sudden, unexpected appearance of the grotesque apparition that appeared before their eyes.   The image, they co-jointly thought, was simply an illusion caused by the unusual light conditions, but by now they were convinced that the cloud, and its artificial occupant, was definitely heading towards them.   No matter what speed they were reaching, the cloud was keeping pace with them … and still heading directly towards them.

  Jimmy felt both frightened and helpless in the situation.   Frightened, not because of what he saw, but because of what it made him feel .   He had no idea what was happening, or why.   Whatever was happening  in the sky – it was unnatural … and whatever was going on in his head was making  him resigned to the inevitable.   Finally he began to concede that this was possibly going to be the last few minutes of his life on earth and he resigned himself to joining up with his father in a matter of seconds, minutes or hours.    Then, for a reason that he could not fully understand, he turned his head towards the Mercedes and was pleasantly surprised to find the young girl looking in his direction … not just looking, but, with contradictory tears in her eyes she was smiling at him.   Not just smiling, but emitting radiant happiness through the tears and at that moment Jimmy had never felt so close to somebody in his entire life.   He smiled back and her smile increased even further.

  Jimmy turned his head back to the road, shook his head in disbelief at his own inane thoughts of life and death and began to calculate how much more he could get out of his little car in a last ditch effort to get past this obnoxious situation, when, suddenly, the Morrison Street overpass appeared before him, albeit a little over four hundred yards away, but importantly Jimmy saw the sign that stated there was an emergency lane ahead and he remembered that it was directly below the overpass.   He immediately decided that he would be much safer parking under the overpass, out of danger from the storm … and the crazy motorists behind him who weren’t far away.   Jimmy flicked on his hazard lights then slowly began to reduce speed, and although it was a little earlier than needed for the hazard lights to come on, he knew for a fact that the lane itself was not that long, and he didn’t want to park outside of the cover that the overpass offered which is what would happen if he was going too fast when he arrived at lane entrance.  But he was also aware that all three lanes behind were now occupied by the cars that he had left behind earlier … and they were all travelling at speed.   Jimmy did not want to be travelling at a speed that would make it hard to stop safely in a short distance, but he also didn’t want the car in his lane to accidentally run into him.   He wanted to give the driver as much warning to his intentions as he possibly could.  

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   By the time he was around one hundred and ten yards from the overpass Jimmy had managed to slow down to fifty miles an hour and applied more pressure to the brakes.   He was more than wary that dropping from a speed of seventy five miles an hour to zero in a relatively short distance was not going to be an easy achievement in these circumstances.

   And as he drove, Jimmy kept one eye permanently flitting to his rear vision mirror, becoming slightly worried about how fast the other cars were travelling towards him while he was dropping back, and the other eye on the road ahead.   And it was during this repetitious motion that his mind began wandering to the image of the girl in the Mercedes.   Feeling a bit more relaxed now that his turnoff lane was clearly visible to him he turned his head in the direction of the car and for the first time realised the Mercedes, still occupying the middle lane, was trying  to drop back in speed, presumably to emulate his movement onto the emergency lane.   However the driver was having trouble dropping in behind  him in to the left lane behind him because Jimmy was continually dropping his speed back. 

   Jimmy’s only thought, once he realised what the Mercedes driver was trying to do, was for the young girl’s safety.   In his mind he decided that the driver must have realised what he was up to and decided that parking under the overpass would be a better option than the pandemonium that was about to occur once the bulk of the traffic caught up with them and the rain began.  Perhaps he had even come up with the same thought.   Or perhaps the girl had seen the hazard lights on his car and they were going to see if they could help him.   The latter seemed the best reason, Jimmy decided.   It would give him a genuine chance to talk to her  … if it wasn’t her boyfriend that was driving the car.

    But, at the moment, Jimmy knew that he had to do something, but he had only had a split second to come up with it … and the driver of the Mercedes would have had to act on it immediately.  “What?   What?   What?”   Jimmy screamed out loud in his mind… and suddenly he had it.   He wound down his window and put out his arm, using it indicate for the Mercedes to overtake him and pull over as they were approaching the lane which was around eighty yards further up.    The driver appeared to understand what was required and the Mercedes, which had a much quicker acceleration than the low cylinder Mini, suddenly screamed past Jimmy, but he was no more than twenty five yards in front of the Mini when he pulled across into the left hand lane that Jimmy was travelling in prior to accessing the emergency lane which was a further twenty five yards up the road … and began to slow down.  

   The Merc had pulled into Jimmy’s lane a tad earlier than Jimmy had been expecting.   He had been expecting the Merc to accelerate and go straight across his lane and turn into the emergency lane just before the emergency lane lines began, not force the Mini to slow down even more by coming in too early.   He had deemed it necessary for both cars to have the full length of the emergency lane to safely pull up safely under the overpass, but circumstances had suddenly changed for him.   Jimmy had known that both cars needed to accelerate at a speed that would keep them safe from the oncoming traffic, but slow enough to move into the emergency lane when they arrived at its starting point and pull up safely within the confines of the overpass.   Now everything had changed … he was now travelling too slow for the motorway and too fast for the emergency lane… and he was in trouble.

    Jimmy had managed to drop back to thirty five miles an hour when the Mercedes had pulled into the emergency lane twenty five yards in front of him, which would have been an easy speed to control when he too reached it, but suddenly he was forced to press as hard as he could on his own accelerator, barely managing to move over into the emergency lane before jumping between gears and hitting the brakes to slow down as the first of the approaching cars flew past him, quickly followed by another six cars travelling head-to-tail at high speed.

   The force of the wind created by the cars that passed by Jimmy at a breakneck speed was enough to rock the car several times as he struggled to steer it in the short distance he had to bring it to a halt, avoid accidentally ending up back on the motorway, and avoid hitting the Mercedes which had come to a stop and was now parked parallel with the pylons that supported the overpass six feet inside the safety of the huge concrete and metal structure that crossed the motorway.

   Jimmy wrenched, struggled and fought with the steering wheel as he tried to retain control, while his feet, planted hard on the brakes, added smoke and burning rubber to the air which suddenly dissolved into complete darkness.   The limited sunlight that had previously filtered into the underpass from both entrances and exits, was now non-existent, momentarily rendering the parked Mercedes all but invisible.  

   Unexpectedly one of the front wheels of the mini become stuck on an unseen foreign object and it caused the car to spin around and around in never ending circles, the cars still turned on headlights of no use in the otherwise pitch black for Jimmy to obtain any orientation.   All he could do was hold tight to the steering wheel … and pray.

Suddenly, for just a nano second he had the weirdest feeling of being trapped in a freeze frame.   Everything around him seemed to stop: the sound of his car stopped.   The motorway went silent.   There was no sound, no movement to be felt or heard … there was nothing.   Outside the encasing of the underpass the rumblings that had run repeatedly along the motorway momentarily ceased.   The streaks of lightning that emitted from the black cloud seemed frozen in the sky, as did the intermittent flashes within the cloud.   Then Jimmy felt the car rock gently, followed by a slight bump.   Suddenly a small light emitted in the darkness to Jimmy’s right and it took Jimmy a couple of seconds before he realised that the two cars were parked side by side, and in the eerie glow that came from within the Mercedes the girl was looking him – her face showed fear, but suddenly she recognised him; the glow to her face returned … and she smiled.  

   But before Jimmy could reciprocate, he saw something out of the corner of his eye that made him look towards the front of the car, and as he turned to face the front, out of nowhere a black hooded figure appeared; a black hooded figure that, in his current mind setting, Jimmy assumed to be death approaching.   In the limited light from the reflection of the car lights against the retaining wall at the far end of one side of the overpass that the two cars now faced, Jimmy watched, fascinated as the strange apparition seemingly floated towards them until it reached a point between the front doors of the two cars where it did something with his hands that Jimmy didn’t understand.   The unexplained dark cloaked manifestation that appeared between the two cars raised its arms upwards, and in the unnatural translucent light of the semi-darkened underpass he moved his hands in a motion that reminded Jimmy of magician’s performing their illusions on a semi-lit stage, something that he had seen dozens of times over the years.  But, for the life of him, he had no idea what the apparition was doing.

   Suddenly Jimmy heard a series of strange clicking  noises coming from somewhere in the darkness above them.   The apparition stopped what it had been doing and began to reach forward towards the closest occupants of both cars with both its hands.    Jimmy’s window was still down following his hurriedly given hand signals to the Mercedes, but the window for Andrea’s side was still raised.   However, as Jimmy watched on in complete surprise and awe, the window began to wind down so fast that Jimmy thought what he was seeing to be impossible, and before the window had completely wound down, the strange creature that stood beside them reached into both cars simultaneously touching each of  them gently on the head.

   And the minute the hand made contact with Jimmy’s head his world exploded as a massive explosion brought a huge chunk of the overpass crashing down on the southbound lanes, including the emergency lane where the two cars were parked, smothering the traffic lanes – and all vehicles that were travelling on them at the time with debris, dust … and concrete.

   Outside the enclosed area of the motorway the second wave of cars had not been far behind those now trapped within the framework of the overpass when the ball of fire had flown down from the creature’s open hand, and they had all been travelling far too fast to stop with care for safety.   Some ran directly into the massive pile of debris from the fallen overpass.   Others crashed into each other trying to escape the carnage forming in front of them.    Some cars had exploded, while others had flipped onto their sides or bonnets.

   On the other side of the overpass, the seven vehicles that had passed Jimmy in the underpass had exploded with so much force they had melded with the boiling tar beneath their wheels.

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   The initial reports on the radio, television and even twitter were sketchy to say the least, but they indicated that at least ten cars, perhaps more had been completely destroyed by an explosion on the motorway overpass.   Authorities were reluctant to place the blame on terrorists until the investigators made their report which could take up to a week considering the damage that had been done to the overhead support.   And the ensuing carnage the debris from exploding vehicles had caused to other vehicles was immeasurable at this stage. 

   An unsubstantiated figure of an additional twenty five vehicles had been reported as being damaged beyond drive-ability, while dozens of vehicles had some  minor damage done to them.   The force of the initial explosion, and the immediate domino effect that resulted from it, was so strong that bits and pieces of glass, plastic and metal were strewn across the motorway for hundreds of yards back from the point of impact for the initial vehicles.   On top of the carnage on the out-of-London lanes where the explosion had occurred, at least ten vehicles on the inward lanes also had had some damage done to them by the explosions and the following spate of accidents that had resulted from the debris that had landed on those lanes.    

   The final death toll was still unknown, but it currently stood at twelve.   However, the first seven cars that had exploded were now nothing but melted, charred blobs – all permanently indented into the heat melted road.   Now so much as one with the bitumen the road itself would have to be dug up to remove them, and it would, most likely, take some time to retrieve the bodies, or at least ascertain how many life forms were on board.   It was entirely possible that the heat from the explosion of these cars had been so fierce it may prevent D.N.A testing to be ever carried out.  At least a dozen badly injured victims had already been taken to various hospitals by helicopter and ambulance, and rescuers were still trying to gain access to over half a dozen vehicles to release those still inside, dead … or alive.   There was also an unconfirmed report of two cars parked on the emergency lane beneath the overpass where most of the damage was done.   Judging by the huge chunks of concrete that now cover the emergency lanes the authorities give no hope for any survivors, but this will remain unconfirmed until the site can be cleared … and that could take several weeks.

   The authorities were at a loss to understand what had happened to cause the situation, and exasperated by the surviving victim’s version of events.   According to what eventually became the classified official records, whatever had happened seemed to have created a mass hysteria amongst the victims, for every single conscious survivor reported the sudden appearance of a creature appearing in the sky above them just before the front cars and the overpass exploded into a ball of fire and smoke.  

   ‘A huge creature, half man – half devil like in appearance, partly enshrouded in an almost completely black cloud that glowed like embers in a fireplace appeared at the very second the fireball was released.   Its arms stretched out in the direction of the oncoming traffic, it had released a fireball at the leading cars… the cars and the overpass exploded – and then they saw nothing more’ was the story that each and every one of the witnesses told the investigators.

   Virtually to a man the survivors swore they heard the sounds of several more enormous explosions, but they couldn’t be certain that what they were hearing  wasn’t the sound of one of the cars exploding.   From the moment of the first explosion on they were blinded.   They were still travelling, but could no longer see the road, or the cars in front of them.  The combined light of the fireball and the subsequent explosion had been far too bright for their eyes … it temporary blinded them.   They had had no choice but to apply their brakes and pray that they would survive.  Some did … many didn’t.

   They had no idea how long they were blinded, it felt like hours, but it could easily have been only minutes; they had been panicky; they had been frightened and time was immaterial to them.   Many said their vision returned to them around the same time that they heard the sounds of their rescuers approaching.   Many said once their car had stopped moving, either by the application of their brakes, or by crashing into another vehicle, they had thought about getting out of their vehicle, but were prevented from doing so for various reasons:  injuries, too frightened, locks broken, air bags preventing them from moving …and so on.   They were the lucky ones.   Several who did manage to get out were rewarded with the wheels of another vehicle taking their lives.

   A representative for the government indicated to the press that the wreckage on the freeway was similar to areas of London during world war two.   It was horrific.   He had no doubt that it would have been the most traumatic thing that any of the survivors had ever encountered in their lives, and perhaps one of the traumatised victims may have had a hallucination and convinced the others that they too had seen something he had imagined.   ‘After all,’ he had laughed, albeit with a nervous tremor, ‘a giant devil in the sky …”

   The media did not seem to agree with him, pointing out the damage to several large road guide signposts that had hung across the start of the motorway which were now twisted and heat buckled beyond use although they had not shown any signs of damage just prior to the explosion, but the representative merely placed the blame on an errant semi-trailer.   And then changed the blame to a crane driver when the hecklers pointed out that the signs sat at least ten feet higher than any semi-trailer, and promised a full report on the events would be forthcoming as soon as possible … though, as the camera that should have shown exactly what happened was also a victim of whatever had attacked the cars, there was no guarantee of the accuracy of the report.

   The police and authorities finally got traffic moving again by using one lane of the London bound lane for southbound traffic to reach a feed-in lane that would give them full access to the correct lanes, however the pass-over was not expected to reopen for at least six months and the repairs to the damaged part of the southbound lanes would reopen within a time somewhere between one and two months, albeit with constant interruptions to follow as required for the repair of the overpass.  

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Seven and a half hours after the policeman fired his speed gun in pure frustration at Mary as she drove past him, the first car to arrive after her rolled up in front of Trenthamville’s only hotel, ‘The Rat and Mouse’.

   Standing behind the reception desk inside the ‘Rat and Mouse’, William Jones, manager, owner and publican of the hotel scratched his head in disbelief at the growing number of cancellations for the weekend’s bookings that were being rung through.   The cancellations were coming in so thick and fast that at first he thought it to be some kind of practical joke somebody was playing on him.   ‘Perhaps the chef,’ he wondered … ‘wanted the day off to go fishing.’   However, when several of the callers mentioned the incident on the freeway he reluctantly began to accept the loss of trade he would suffer as a result, and when he saw images of the carnage on television he immediately regretted his selfish thoughts as he could imagine in his mind the sadness that so many homes would be feeling at that very moment.

   But it was not until his head began to pound, not until he went into the quietness and solitude of his private room, not until he sat quietly in the subdued light with a tall whisky in his hand, absently sipping on it as he reflected on the communication he had just had with the Guardians, did he begin to fully realise the consequences of what had really happened at the motorway on-ramp … and then he too found himself becoming helplessly entangled within the web that was beginning to be woven tightly over the village and inmates of Trenthamville.   And all William could do was hope and pray that the guardians were right … that he was on his way.  

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