The Call For Help
In the winter of 1978 I lived in an old farm house on a 80 acre
farm, I was 15 years old. On Friday night I liked to stay up late
and watch the Horror shows that came on after the tonight show.
It was late at night, just before 1Am. There was about 12 inches of
snow on the ground already and it was still snowing. The
temperature was in the low 20’s, but the wind was whipping and
very strong at times.
The old farm house where the family and I lived, was built about
the start of the 1900’s It was basically a wooden box without
insulation. We heated it with two wood stoves, one in the living
room and one in the kitchen. Each room had a light switch and a
light fixture. There were not any electrical outlets in any of the
seven rooms in the house.
We were about 12 miles from Grayson, Ky. population 2300. The
closest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away, further than that if
you went by the way of the road. The snow plows never plow on
our road and the way the snow was blowing and still coming
down, I doubted if they could even keep I-64 clear enough to
travel. If you didn’t have a four wheel drive or a set of tire chains
on your truck you wasn’t going any place. The snow already on
the roads would get underneath the cars and they couldn’t get
themselves out of the driveway. They would just sit there spinning
the tires, the packed snow underneath the body of the car was like
a jack holding the wheels off the ground.
I was keeping a good fire going in the wood stoves, the house was
cozy. I was lying on the couch in just my Jeans, waiting for the
horror show to start at 1:00Am. The dogs outside started barking,
they only barked when someone comes around. I went to the door
and out onto the porch in my bare feet and without a shirt on. I
could see someone walking up the road towards the house. The
dark color of the coat stood out against the white snow that
covered everything else in sight.
Even at night with out moon light, or an outside night light, you
could see quite a ways when a snow is on the ground. I went back
inside for a few minutes. I knew it would take longer then I was
willing to stand on the porch for them to walk close enough to the
house to see who it was.
I watched them get closer through the window. I was wondering
what anyone would be doing walking this late at night in the cold
and the snow. When they got in front of the house I turned on the
porch light and went back out on the porch. He called out, "Who
is yelling for help?" I recognized the voice, it was Virgil, our
neighbor. Virgil lived about a quarter of a mile away.
I answered and said, "No one is yelling for help here, everyone is
in bed except for me." Virgil said, "Stand there and listen a
minute, I heard them yell for help twice before you came out of the
house." I stood there trying to ignore the cold long enough to
listen for a yell. I was just about to give up and go back inside for
a coat. Then I heard "Help!." Someone was calling for help.
Virgil said, "You see, I told you someone was calling for help."
I said, "Let me grab my coat and shoes and real fast." Virgil said,
"Bring a flashlight too." The call for help sounded like it was
further on up the road past our house, opposite from the direction
Virgil had just come from. I couldn’t see how he could have heard
it all the way to his house. It sounded faint to me standing here on
our porch.
I quickly through on my clothes and got a flashlight. I didn’t wake
anyone else up, because it would take too long to try and to
explain. When you wake someone up, they want to ask you a
million questions, stalling for time while they are trying to wake
up. You have to repeat yourself over and over until they do wake
up and understand "it’s an emergency."
I ran outside to where Virgil was, still standing in the snow in the
road. He was yelling back at who ever it was that was calling for
help. He said, :Where are you? Yell again so we can find you."
We both stood there listening and turning our heads in all
directions. Nothing but silence. Virgil said, "They could be lost
and can’t hear us yelling to them. Lets go up the road and try and
find them or find the car they were driving. It may have slid off
the road and they were thrown out and got lost."
I said, "There hasn’t been anyone drive by the house for hours."
Virgil said, "They might have been outside for hours or knocked
out for hours and just now come to."
We started wading the snow to go further up the road in the
direction that we heard the call for help. The wind was blowing
the falling snow in our faces, we were walking west. I used the
flashlight to look for any signs of tire tracks or foot prints in the
snow. The wind was blowing the snow that was already on the
ground around too. If a person had walked in front of us five
minutes ago, the blowing snow would have wiped away the prints
on the ground.
Virgil kept calling out every couple of minutes for them to yell out
again, so we could find them. The next house up the road was
about a half mile from my house. We had walked about a third of
the way to it, when we heard the call again "Help!" This time it
was coming from behind us now. I said, "We passed them
already." Virgil said, "They are not on the road, I know we didn’t
pass anyone, they must be off in the woods and can’t find the
road." Virgil yelled out "Stay where you are, let us come to you."
We heard no reply. Virgil yelled,"You have to keep yelling or we
won’t be able to find you." Still there was no reply. Virgil said,
"When we yell, they stop yelling for some reason?"
We started back the way we came. The last call came from the
South side of the road. That side was down hill from the road, and
had heavy brush. At least the wind was to our backs now, I caught
a glimpse of Virgil’s face while turning with the flashlight. His
eye lashes were white with snow, I’m sure mine was too. Our pant
legs had gotten wet from wading in the deep snow and was frozen
with ice and snow, up to about our knees. We were chilled to the
bone. We had already been outside in the cold for 30-40 minutes
by this time.
Virgil said, "If they would only stay in one place and quit moving
around, we might find them. I’ve followed them from my house to
yours and now up here and now they are going back the other
way." I said, "It looks like we are going to have to go off the road
to find them." Virgil agreed.
Over the hill we both went, fighting the snow and the brush. We
heard the help!! call again. Virgil said, I’m not going to yell back
this time, it seems to confuse them and they stop yelling. It
sounded like they are down by the creek, or maybe starting up the
hill on the other side. Some of the snow had blown into snow
drifts three feet deep.
We continued wading South through the snow, down hill towards
the creek. Virgil said, "When I was in Europe during W.W.II,
they had us stay in a barn and wouldn’t let none of us go on pass.
Me and a buddy, climbed up in the top of the barn, where there
was a small window. I jumped out of it and landed on the ground.
I tried to get my buddy to jump out too and go with me. He
wouldn’t jump out so I went alone." Virgil turned and looked at
me, I guess he had forgotten how old I was. He stopped telling the
story. Virgil was the "Mountain Man type". He would tell you
what he wanted you to know, and thats all. He wasn’t the type to
answer nosy questions.
The story was taking my mind off of how cold it was. So after a
couple minutes I asked,"What happened after he wouldn’t go and
you had to go alone?" Virgil looked at me and smiled, he said, "I
came back the next morning before role call." I knew there was no
need to ask again. When we got to the creek we heard the call
Help!! again. This time it came from the Northeast direction.
Virgil said, "I think its someone running around playing a game
with us, they don’t need nothing but a good beating. I’ll teach
them to play games out here in the middle of the night, in a foot of
snow, if we catch up to them."
Northeast was in the direction of my house and the barn. I said,
"They may have seen the porch light, I left it on when we started
out looking for them." Virgil said,"Well, lets go to your house
and get warmed anyway." We headed Northeast up the hill
through the snow and brush to get warm. We went the way that
would bring us up the hill behind where the barn was. Our legs
felt like lead. They were weighted down with ice and tired from
wading through the snow. Each step had to be forced by
will-power alone. When we got behind the barn, We heard help!!
again.
It was real close this time. It sounded like they were just around
the corner of the barn. Virgil said, "It’s about time we caught up
with him. I’m going to ask him why he ran all over the woods
making us chase him around." We both dashed around the corner
of the barn, so he wouldn’t escape us again. We rounded the
corner for quite a shock. We stood there and just looked at him
for a moment. He looked back at us and said Help!!!!!
It was one of my Dad’s goats, he had three of them. This one was
by it’s self. The goat had been pulling hay out through an open
space between the boards on the side of the barn. He had pulled
out a hay string too, and had gotten it around his neck some way.
He was caught and couldn’t move or get away. The pressure of the
hay string around his throat, caused his normal goat noises sound
like a human yelling Help!!
We cut the string loose, and he continued pulling out the hay and
eating as though nothing had happened. We figured out that
depending on where we were when the goat called out, the echoes
made it sound like he was here and then there. When all along he
couldn’t move an inch. We just thought we were chasing
somebody all over the place.
We left him alone, he had earned what little bit of hay he could
pull out through the crack in the barn. When we had got back on
the road in front of the house. I started towards the house and
Virgil kept going down the road towards his house. I said, "Aren’t
you coming in to get warm?" Virgil said, "No, I don’t want to take
a chance of anyone finding out that a goat got the best of me, and I
spent half the night running around in the snow because of it."
Virgil said,"You better not tell either, at least not that I was with
you. If you tell anyone you say you were alone." He left and I went
in the house. My Horror show was just going off. The fire in the
wood stove was almost out too. After I got warm I could see the
humor of the event. The next morning Virgil came to the house
before I had gotten up. He told the whole family everything that
had happened, right down to the last detail. We all got some good
laughs out of it for a long time. It took a long time to talk Dad into
getting rid of the goats.
Written by; Johnny lee Hall
