The Old Chancey Barn

“Have you heard? They say someone moved into the old Chancey house. Seen a lot of odd lights down by the old barn.”

Hanging around the corner diner in Monroe, the old timers of the town spent their day discussing events of interest. In such a small town, such events were rare, and often times a topic of interest long outlived the amount of attention it deserved. When Frank brought up this newest topic, in the midst of a repeat discussion of the lack of good fishing places since the power plant upstream started up, no one had any real objections, as it was indeed time for something new.

“Says who? And what do you mean by strange?” Earl was in the midst of saying his piece in the continuing fishing debacle, that the rest of the group had already heard for roughly three weeks now, and was more than a bit disappointed in the way that he had been talked over even if he was more than eager to discuss something new as well. “

Says Welsh. He was in his back field and saw lights coming from the old thing. Odd lights, all green and blue he said, didn’t make any sense but there they were.” “Old Welsh favors taking his nightcap in threes and closer to mid afternoon if you want my opinion,” Earl responded, still not over being interrupted. In truth too, Old Welsh still owed for the coffee Earl had bought him a few months ago, and Earl was more than a bit perturbed he hadn’t been paid back by now.

He prepared to continue discrediting this conversation, really just to make it last longer, a service to his fellow cohorts, when the door to the diner opened and out stepped Walt Chambliss, duly elected sheriff of the fine town of Monroe going on twelve years now.

“There’s a man in the know,” cried Howard, the man who had brought up this newest topic with much enthusiasm. “Come on sheriff, tell ‘em the truth. Has someone moved into the old Chancey house?”

The sheriff took a moment, in the midst of fishing a stubborn bit of hash brown from between the back of his teeth with a toothpick. His waiting audience patiently allowed him to finish. This was part of his appeal to the sleepy little town. Chambliss may have come from the big city, but he had adjusted quickly to the slower pace of life, and the town loved him for it.

After a successful excavation, he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’ve heard the same,” he replied, the r in heard all but disappearing in his accent. “Plan on heading that way myself to greet the newest owner. Word says he’s some former big to do from the city, come here after a disagreement at university.”

Earl snorted at that. “Likely gonna come along and try to tell us all the ways we should be doing our crops and livestock out here. Last thing we need is some city slicker to try and tell us how to do our jobs.”

The rest of the men in their assigned places nodded sagely at these words of wisdom. Present company excluded, all city folk seemed a bit too high and mighty when they came to Monroe. Thankfully it didn’t have the influx of tourists of the larger towns around, so exposure to such insulting behaviors was limited.

“Easy there Earl, easy. Let’s not get too many ideas before the welcome wagon has even reached the man’s stoop.” Sheriff Chambliss tossed his toothpick into a nearby cigarette tray before turning to meander toward the town’s one and only patrol car, taking the time to return each man’s goodbye nod. “I’ll be sure to let you fellas know the facts when I swing by tomorrow.”

The driveway up to the Chancey house was a nasty affair, full of countless tall roots and washed out potholes that had accumulated over the years since last someone had lived there. Chambliss himself hadn’t seen the house lived in all the years he had worked here as sheriff, and he was slowly going over in his mind a list of people who could assist the new owners in at least making the drive up a bit more tenable. He even had a business card in his glove compartment; he could give it to the owners while he was there. He rounded a corner and there it was; the Chancey house. A three-story affair, many shutters hanging askew in front of dark windows, mostly intact. The peeling white paint along its wooden exterior gave an impressive picture of a thing diseased, and the wrap around porch had no two boards that had warped in the same direction. Despite this, the old red barn across the yard had signs of life.

Parked in front was an old work van, rear doors open, currently empty of contents. The door was open, and lights shown within, not odd colored ones like Old Walsh had reported, but good old incandescent. Chambliss called a gentle hello and made his way inside the barn. He blinked against the harsh light inside and as his eyes adjusted, and had a brief moment to see a bizarre device suspended from the barn rafters, a twisted construction of gleaming steel and rubber hoses, and within a dark glass container where something seemed to move and shift-

A hand grasped his shoulder and spun him around with frightful strength, and he came face to face with who he assumed was the new owner. An austere woman, short, with dark curly hair framing a thick pair of glasses that caused her eyes to almost seem to bulge. She looked angrily up at Chambliss with fury, shaking with indignation. Before he could stammer out an apology, she smoothed her expression away in a flash, replacing it with a friendly half smile. Chambliss began to question what he had even seen, but the hand on his shoulder pulled him toward the exit, away from whatever he had seen in the barn.

“The local constabulary, I assume?” She said in a friendly tone as she continued to move him away from the barn. “I suppose I should have expected such famed small town hospitality to make its way to my door. This is just a courtesy visit, correct? Nothing amiss?” C

hambliss slowly shook his head. “No, no problems ma’am, you’re just the first we’ve seen in this place in a long time.”

She nodded politely. “Well I appreciate the visit, but I’m afraid I’m not quite ready for such guests, as you can see from the state of the house. By all means, give me a call next time and I’ll try to have the place a bit more presentable.”

Chambliss nodded in confirmation, and by now they were in front of his patrol car, the door already open, and he was halfway inside before he remembered his manners and muttered a hasty goodbye that he doubt was even heard. The lady nevertheless nodded goodbye, politely making sure he backed out okay so he could turn and leave—that or she was making sure he didn’t return to peek?

He drove away, picking up a bit of speed without consciously intending to as he raced back down the drive, bouncing his way along as the last of the evening light faded away. He was all the way to the main road before he remembered he had meant to drop off the business card. With a fretful sigh, and more than a moment of thought, he resolved to be as neighborly as possible and turned to go back up the long, twisting drive.

He was most of the way back when he began to see it; strange lights flashing through the trees. At first he thought it was the lights of an emergency vehicle but they were too irregular, too bright, and the colors began to diverge the longer he looked, blues and purples and greens, bright bursts of red, other colors oscillating back and forth, many of them difficult for him to rightly name. The drive was too narrow to turn around, and oh how he wanted to, something felt wrong to continue to approach, but the only place to go was forward.

Reaching the yard, he slowly opened his door and returned to the barn, its own doors now shut, and from within came the inhuman squeal of some strange machinery at work. He slowly opened it, stepping inside, and his eyes locked on the contraption he had seen before. From the holding tank in its center something moved, something writhed in the light, a dark form, its shape somehow wrong that twisted and moved as the light surrounding it burned brighter and brighter, all the colors of the spectrum and then some.

The business card dropped to the ground, sliding out of numb fingers. His stupor was broken as one sound broke the din of the machine, that of the barn door slamming shut.

He turned with a start and a scream that barely reached his own ears, and there was the same lady as well, the new lady of Chancey house. Her eyes seemed to bulge even further, disappearing for seconds at a time as the light behind him reflected off her glasses before returning, the fury behind them burning as bright as the lights themselves.

“You just had to come back, didn’t you?”

Earl sighed impatiently as he kept a lookout from his favorite spot at the corner diner. “Where is that sheriff anyway? City folk don’t ever have an appreciation for an agreed upon meeting.”

The others nodded along with his tirade. Earl would be Earl, and he was right after all, Chambliss had only been here for about fifteen years total, more city man than local townie still.

Howard was the only one to shush him. “Just give it a rest, Earl, he said he would be along and he will be. It’s Monroe for crying out loud, he probably had to get a cat out of a tree somewhere. Give the man time, he’s fine. We’ll know all we need to about that Chancey house soon enough.”