by Adelle Gray
from The Haunt
Ms.
Emmit was a woman of almost eighty years, crumpled and weather-worn with the
distinct ravages of age. Her husband, Barrett, long since dead, smiled at her
from the portrait over the fireplace, where she sat rocking with her new
bloodhound puppy, Colt.
She
lived, like most folk on the outer part of Newton, in a smallish house that was
almost like a cabin, set up on its foundations a short distance from the
pervasive East Texas-Louisiana bayous. Her particular house sat off a tiny dirt
road, where her Model T sat in the driveway, long since used. Behind lay what
she affectionately referred to as her backyard; an expanse of swamp stretching
out for miles into fair-to-moderately thick trees and clumps of high-growing
swamp grass the Clemens boys liked to use as duck blinds, when that particular
time of year rolled around. As it was, a cold December wind had crept in from
the north, and Ms. Emmit wrapped her shawl tight around her. All that could be
heard was the wind howling, the crickets singing, and the fire popping.
Until
she heard Colt bristle, and looked down to see him sit bolt upright, facing the
back door. He whimpered, then trotted over there to stand by it. Ms. Emmit rose
from her chair with her standard difficulty increased only slightly by the
chill weather, and joined him.
“What’s
the matter, Colt? You hear one of them night gators?” Often restless gators
would creep up to her back porch in the night, sniffing the unfamiliar smells
coming from the house. Every dog she’d ever owned had hated them. But Colt
looked up at her in such a way, it made her wonder. So she walked over to the
nearest window and peeked out.
About a
mile off in the distance, too far away to imagine the size or shape, a faint
green glow seemed to be coming from the woods. As soon as she laid eyes on it,
Ms. Emmit noticed something else; the crickets had gone dead quiet. Not a chirp
could be heard. Now that she strained her ears, however, she could make out
some kind of high-pitched whistle, a kind of whistle totally unfamiliar to her.
It sounded almost like a radio tuned to static. As soon as she put a finger on
it, however, both the glow and the whistle faded. She looked at Colt, and he
looked back at her, then back to the door, then walked over back to the fire,
casting an occasional glance behind him.
Ms.
Emmit went to the house’s sole phone, right on the opposite wall of the
fireplace, and had the operator connect her with June Hodges, her oldest friend
and closest neighbor.
“Hello,
June?”
“Clara?”
said June, quizzically. “Everything all right? It’s almost nine o’clock.”
“I know.
I was just wondering if you hadn’t seen anything over near your place, out in
the swamp a ways.”
“No...
but I ain’t been payin’ attention. Bill and I were just gettin’ to bed...”
Ms.
Emmit sighed. “Did you hear anything, like a whistle?”
“No,
ma’am,” said June. “Are you all right, honey? You sound a little scared.”
“I’m
fine, June. Just seein’ things is all. Imagine I’ll be gettin’ to bed, too. You
take care, now.”
They
said their goodbyes and hung up.
Ms.
Emmit went back to her chair by the fireplace and stared into it. Colt once
again curled up at her feet, the evening’s excitement already forgotten.
Soon,
they heard it again.
Ms.
Emmit’s head snapped up as if she had been dozing off, and she looked over to
see Colt already at the door, whimpering, his fur bristling. She got up and
crossed to the window, and her breath stuck in her throat.
The
whistle was closer, louder, and so was the glow. It had moved from being about
a mile away to being a little more than half that distance from her house. It
appeared to be slowly drifting in her direction. It was about the size of her
house.
Colt was
growling.
Again,
with no warning, the whistle and the green cloud disappeared, leaving only a
furious dog and a shivering old woman. Quickly she went to the phone and dialed
June’s number.
“Clara?”
June asked, without even waiting to hear her speak.
“Yes,”
said Ms. Emmit. “I saw the cloud again. It’s, it’s this green cloud, big as my
house, and it keeps coming toward my house and whistling...”
“Wait,
Clara, slow down, now. Start over. Go slow.”
Ms.
Emmit did. She described the whole evening’s happenings to June. When she was
finished, June chuckled.
“Clara,
my little boy sees a light kinda like that every time he goes frog-gigging at
night. It’s just the swamp. Won’t hurt you. Now go to bed, OK?”
Ms.
Emmit felt a little relieved and soothed. “All right, June. Sorry to bother
you.”
As soon
as she hung up the phone, a chill ran up Ms. Emmit’s spine. She had never felt
so alone. June lived nigh on four miles away, nearer to town than she. It was
possible she couldn’t see or hear this thing even if it was...real.
Ms.
Emmit shook her head and hurried back to her chair and Colt, petting his shiny
fur. This relaxed her a little. It was good to have another heart beating in
the room.
She had
almost drifted off again, when the whistling started up again, shrill and
sonic. She sqwuaked in surprise; Colt ran to the door and started barking and
growling, scratching at the wooden door. Ms. Emmit got to her feet and hurried
to the window, where she saw the cloud again. This time it was so close, she
was sure she could have hit it with a thrown stick, in her younger days,
anyway. She hurried to the phone, as Colt barked madly.
“Clara?”
“June!
June, it’s back, and it’s closer, can you hear it?”
“All I
hear is the dog barking, Clara! Calm down!”
As soon
as June had said that, the whistling stopped. Ms. Emmit couldn’t see out the
window, but she felt fairly certain that the green glow would be gone, too.
“It... it stopped again.”
“Clara,
do you want Bill and I to come over?”
“I, I
don’t know, I don’t want to be here alone... I-” Ms. Emmit was cut off when the
whistling started again. Colt, running around in circles, finally got it in his
head to jump out the window. The green glow shone into the house.
“Colt!
Colt come back!”
June
could hear the whistling through the phone; it was like nothing she had ever
heard. “Oh my Lord!”
Colt
stopped barking.
“Sweet
Jesus! Oh, sweet Jesus, they're coming inside! Clara!”
And the
phone line went dead.
After
rousing Sheriff Buckner from his bed, he and two deputies made the trip out to
Clara Emmit’s house. But she was gone.
Sheriff
Buckner half-expected to find her wandering around in the woods. After all,
there were no signs of struggle, and the phone was neatly placed on its hook.
Sheriff
Buckner walked out onto the back porch and looked out into the bayou, when he
felt something warm drip onto his shoulder.
He
looked up, and there was Colt, butchered and strung up in the rafters.
No one
ever saw Ms. Emmit again.
