The Terror From Beyond the Void

WE ALL GATHERED back at our camp. The boys, Macie and Hadley were in the back of the camper when I arrived with Natalie. She was shook, barely with it after witnessing the unexplainable terror in the woods. Macie tried to comfort her by sitting next to her and cuffing her own hands around one of hers. It was a trick she used on me when I felt overwhelmed or upset, and it always worked. I hoped it would work for Natalie too.

“A deer?” Kevin asked. “So it’s not picky with what it eats.”

“Doesn’t appear that way,” I said. “Definitely a meat-eater. Which means we’re all in danger if we can’t find a way to get out of here.”

“The campers won’t start. The phones don’t work,” Wes said. “We have to walk.”

Natalie came out of her haze momentarily to grit her teeth at Wes. “We’re not walking. Not with that thing out there.”

Wes threw his arms in the air. “Then what?” he said, loudly. “We certainly can’t fly or burrow our way out.”

Natalie chose not to respond, but instead looked away from Wes. I couldn’t help but notice how she hadn’t removed her hand from within my wifes. It must have been working to a certain extent for her too. I always believed my wife to be a magical force on this earth, creating a happiness within me that I never thought possible. Whomever she touched, always felt safe, comfortable and understood.

“It’s not a carnivore,” Kevin said out of nowhere. We all turned to him. “You said it turned Mr. Saunders and that deer into some sort of green substance before it ate them?”

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly realizing what Kevin was getting at. “It reminded me of that stuff we logged into Nature’s Identity last year.” I turned to Macie. “What was that weird green stuff we found in the yard?”

Macie thought for a moment. “Star jelly,” she said with a smirk, remembering how baffled we both were after first seeing it. It was a strange gelatinous substance that couldn’t be completely explained by science. Theories ranged everywhere from some sort of space residue to regurgitated frogs. The spectrum of possibilities was endless. But that is what it reminded me of; what had become of Duke and the deer—an unexplained, gelatinous mass, vacant of any hint of its original form.

“Walking is the only option,” I finally agreed with Wes. “Natalie, Duke mentioned cabins on your way up. Is that true?”

Natalie had fallen back into her own grieving thoughts. She was upset and unresponsive. Hadley spoke up instead.

“There were two,” she said, dryly. “Down the hill a bit.”

“Were they occupied?”

“Maybe. I think I saw one car, but I don’t remember which cabin it was parked by.”

“Okay,” I said. I grabbed Duke’s shotgun and stood up. Kevin stood up as well.

“I’m coming with you,” he said. I nodded and then turned to Wes.

“Keep everyone safe,” I said to him. He gave a half nod in response, and Kevin and I left the camper.

—

Kevin was fairly quiet as we began to walk down the dirt road opposite of the one we came up on. We stayed close to each other, never straying more than a couple feet at any given time. I kept my ears peeled and my eyes open. The birds continued to sing in the trees. A squirrel leapt out of a bush and scurried across the road ahead of us. I could feel Kevin’s nerves. His silence gave them away.

“I’m going to make sure we all get out of here alive,” I told him.

He nodded. “I feel bad for Hadley and Natalie. I can’t imagine losing you, Dad.”

“I’m not going anywhere. We’ll make it through this. It’s one of those bizarre left turns life likes to throw at you when it doesn’t think you’ve suffered enough yet.”

“It’s quite the unbelievable left turn,” Kevin said, trying to make his growing discomfort sound like just a passing joke.

“That it is.”

We continued for about five minutes, the road we traveled becoming steeper and harder on our legs and balance. A sudden rustling in the trees made us both stop and put up our guard. When any movement had failed to show itself, we continued on.

Another handful of minutes passed and we hit a somewhat sharp turn in the dirt road. Around the bend, we saw it. A cabin with a white car sitting out in front of it.

“I was starting to think we went the wrong way,” I admitted. Relief flushed through me and I’d hoped to God that whomever was occupying that cabin had a working phone, computer or car.

As Kevin and I picked up our pace, I felt a sudden head rush. There was a soft ringing in my ears, reminiscent of buzzing bugs. It was fairly quiet, but noticeable. I tried to shake it off, but that’s when I felt slight pressure form on my temples. My ears popped and my head felt heavy. The pressure on my head was uncomfortable and made my stomach turn. The buzzing sound grew louder and each step I took was heavier than the last. My muscles felt like they were tightening up, and finally I just stopped, crumbling to my knees.

The droning buzz in my ears was so loud that I barely heard Kevin drop down right next to me. I looked over, a painful grimace on my face, and saw he was holding both sides of his head. He felt it too. I reached over and put my hand on his back, startling him. He jumped up and shouted something to me, but I couldn’t understand what he had said.

I struggled to stand, my body feeling like it was magnetically drawn to the ground. Once I was upright, I felt something warm in my shorts pocket. I reached it and grabbed my phone; it burned my hand as I yanked it out of my pocket and instinctively threw it. In mid air, right in front of us, it exploded into a silent shower of sparks; the charred carcass of the device dropping to the dirt.

Beyond the mid-air destruction, I saw movement up ahead. A man had emerged from the cabin. He was waving his arms wildly as if to warn us of something. I fought the throbbing pressure ravaging my headspace and squinted to see if I could notice the man trying to say anything. He was shouting, it appeared, but over the ear-splitting buzzing, I couldn’t hear him. He stopped a good distance away, not far from where his car sat, and put both hands up like he was a policeman trying to abruptly stop traffic.

I tapped on Kevin again and pointed at the man. Together, we studied the strangers’ frantic gestures, trying to figure out what he was trying to tell us. I tried to lift my foot again to take another step forward, but I couldn’t. An overwhelming force was keeping me from moving any further. Kevin slapped me on the arm to direct my attention back to the man. I looked ahead to see him patting thin air with his raised hands, like he was slapping an invisible wall. He then transitioned the hand movements into making a giant square shape with his fingers, followed by presenting his property like a showman.

Square property? Invisible wall? What was this man trying to say? Kevin reached and tugged my arm again, motioning for us to fall back or retreat. As we turned around, it was like fighting against restraints. The pressure that surrounded us was unreal; it was wearing on the body and made it hard to move. We struggled, but were able to make a couple of successful—although slow—steps back. When the third step came easier, the pressure began to subside. A few more steps and the constant buzzing sound started to fade.

By the time we reached the bend in the dirt road, we were walking normally and the droning sound was nothing but a lingering afterthought.

“What. Was. That.” My heart was pounding after the experience. It was something surreal; something not of the ordinary world. Like an out of body experience, or some kind of paranormal confrontation.

Kevin looked back down the road, still seeing the man near the cabin. He wasn’t waving anymore, but just standing there with his arms crossed. There wasn’t anything physically blocking the road, but the unknown force that prevented us from crossing on to the other property clearly argued that fact.

“What was he trying to say?” I asked, hoping Kevin picked up on something that I hadn’t. Square property and invisible wall didn’t make much sense. Kevin usually had a keen eye for puzzles and such, so a sudden game of charades in the wilderness might not have been that far-fetched for him to decipher.

“An invisible wall,” Kevin said to my surprise. “Squared off,” he added with the same finger gestures as the man had.

We were thinking along the same lines. Either that meant something more to Kevin, or we were both stuck with the same vague interpretations. He thought for a moment longer while I watched the man casually turn around and walk back to his cabin.

“A forcefield,” Kevin concluded. His eyes rapidly darted back and forth as he continued to finalize his theory. “Squared off, like a grid, maybe. That buzzing sound could have been static, or radio waves, from some unknown electronic source that’s powering the grid.”

Kevin looked at me, my full attention on his words. “That thing that fell from the sky,” he said, “it didn’t kill our electronics first. It just rerouted all the energy to form this grid. That guy is trapped in one. I bet we are too.”

“But why?”

“It’s hunting us,” Kevin said, seemingly very sure of himself. “We’re like rats in a cage just waiting to be consumed. But for a ritual, a survival tactic, for sport or dominance—I don’t know why.”

I looked back down the road. The man had entered his cabin and closed the door. If he was stuck within some sort of enclosed space, and we were too—

—how far did this “hunting grid” stretch?