The Old Mans Message

Playing the message tone, I paused and looked at my phone. The old man had sent a massive message with an attachment of pictures. I just did not have time to look at them right now. I continued to work on the planning. The instructions on how to make the power supply for the Greased Lightning had failed a government inspection. The production of the hypersonic drone was the company’s bread and butter contract. We made one a week, and the government experimented on them at White Sands, New Mexico. The assemblers were doing things, not in the instructions. It had taken all day to collect the notes from the assemblers, and now I had to put them in the planning. When I finished, it was 9:25 pm. I logged out of the computer, locked the area up, and went home.

When I got to the apartment, I put a frozen dinner in the microwave. As my instant meal cooked, I looked at the message the old man had sent me. It was a file spoken into the phone. The app had put the words in a text file.

Hey Julie Bug, I have a slight problem. Listen, this sounds incredible, but I ran into some sasquatches. Unbelievable, it’s like a dream. They looked like they were eating a dead one. I took a picture, and the flash went off. They freaked out. Now they are following me. I’m trying to get back to the cabin. Your boyfriend Jay is in the mine, so I can’t phone him. When I look back, I think I can see them following me. I dare not stop. There I took a picture over my shoulder. They are gaining on me.

Making it to a greenhouse, and I’m hiding in it. I can see the Hairy Men. The monsters are looking straight at me and coming towards the greenhouse. I took another picture. Oh my god, The beasts can smell me like a dog. Sniffing the air, they tore up the door on the greenhouse. I escaped out the back. They are tearing up everything in there looking for me.

I’m running to the cabin. I’ve shuttered the windows and the door. Bam! They are banging on different things. Bam. They’re looking for a weak spot to break into the cabin. Bam! Bam! They are at the fireplace chimney. Crash! They have torn down the chimney and are breaking into the place. I’m trying to unbar the door, but they are in here too quick. I took a picture. Ahhhhhhh.

I called the old man. The phone just rang, and then was my Dad’s voice. He sang to Iron Man,

“I am the answering machine.

There is no one home,

or we can’t come to the phone.

When you hear the tone,

leave your message, please.

Nobody wants him.

He is a part of the phone.

He has not a friend.

He works alone. Beep.”

I said, “Dad, call me,”

Hanging up, I ran the tracking program. The Old man’s phone was at the house. Jay’s phone did not show up.

“Shit! Now what? Jay goes up to help the old man set up the greenhouse for the season, and something bazaar always happens.”

I downloaded the pictures and was shocked. The first picture taken at extreme magnification showed two big hairy lumps bent over some sort of bloody animal kill. They were eating it. That’s when I noticed the big feet on the carcass.

The following picture showed two fuzzies in the forest just off the path. The picture sucked. It was out of focus. Yet, it seemed ominous.

The following picture made my blood run cold. Plain as day, two Big Foots were sniffing the air. You could see their rippling muscles under the hair. They still had blood on their faces and hands. Each one had a crude stone hand ax. To the untrained eye, it looked like a common chipped-up stone.

The last three pictures, taken in rapid succession, showed the creatures come in through the chimney. Charging across the floor, they grab at you from the picture.

I called Jay, nothing. All I had to get done was the planning. Calling work, I said I would not be in tomorrow, and maybe Friday too. I packed some stuff quickly and left in my car.

The Old Man missing was my first family problem. I mean, my adoptive parents and I had issues, but this was a first. I had met my biological Dad about four years ago when a DNA test linked us. I remember our first meeting.

I said, “What do I call you?”

“I was a Captain on a US Navy Reserve vessel, the USS James Doolittle. They always called me the Old Man.”

We met in Seattle, a neutral city. The company that did testing ran the whole experience. At the Pink Door, they videoed us. We talked until they closed. We went back to our hotels, and I awoke early from dreaming about my Dad, the old man. We had our breakfast at our hotels. We met in a park that the company had chosen.

I asked, “How do you live?”

“I have 160 acres in Washington near the border. It’s an old family ranch. On it is a gold mine. When I need some money, I mine some gold.”

“Oh, that would be nice. I’d be in there all the time.”

“I don’t know. It is a lot of backbreaking work. I spent my time in the mine, though, when I was younger. Now the trade of work for extra money is something I think about first.”

“I live at Delta Delta Delta. I’m going to college to get an engineering degree at the U of A in Tucson. I’ve got another year.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I hate the city. I love nature. I have got a few animals that are my pets. The deer will follow you around like a puppy dog. I got some squirrels and a few birds that like to come to see me every day.”

“Oh, that sounds so nice. I’m stuck in a dorm room. Two of us share a restroom. At the table, it’s so crowded. In every class, the boys are always hanging around. They look at me like a piece of prime beef. When they talk, their mouths water. I don’t know. It just turns me off. I want a career, not a family.”

Through the night, I drove. I was too worried to be sleepy. I called Jay again, nothing. I left a message to Jay to tell him I was on my way and call me as soon as he got this message. I drove until noon. I was too tired to go on today, and I stopped after about ten hours at Ogden, Utah. Before I got there, I used the link in my car to search for a hotel that would take me, from now to sometime tonight, when I had rested enough to go on. The Motel Fix agreed, and I stopped there. I called Jay, nothing. Now I was getting apprehensive. I put the phone near me on the side table in case anybody called. I slept until six. The phone ringing with Jay’s tune woke me up.

“Hello, Jay?”

“Yeah, baby, I just got out of the mine. What’s up?”

“Jay, have you looked at the Old Man’s message yet?”

“No. I have not. Why, Babe?” Jay said, “Just a second, I’ll look.”

After a minute or so, he responded, “I’ve dropped everything, and I am running the mile to the cabin. Stand by.”

I waited. I sat in the bed and waited for each minute to drag by me. What was going on there? Was Jay in danger? There was a rule, the guy in the mine gets the gun, a Smith and Weston 4 60. Hey, it was a good gold mine, and you needed to feel comfortable with a load of gold. The Old Man said the 4 60 gave him comfort. My mind drifted, and I did not stop it. I waited. It seemed like a very long time. All I could do was worry.

The phone rang, and I could hear heavy breathing.

“Huff huff. Babe, huff, no one is here. Huff, huff. The chimney is down. Huff, huff, huff. It was amazing the thing has huff, stood this long. Huff, huff, the place is a wreck. I found the cell phone sticking out of the floorboards. The force to throw it through the boards was incredible. The fact the Phone’s Mithril case held up to the abuse, outrageous. Oh, boy. What now? Humm.”

“Jay, you be careful. You don’t know where they are. That picture of the two of them sniffing the air was convincing. I saw that picture and knew they were real. It froze my blood. I’m terrified for the Old Man.”

“Babe, relax. He has an insurance policy, remember. When he was a kid, he had nightmares about the hairy men who would get him and eat him. His Dad, who sold insurance, had a policy for a million dollars done for if he was killed by bigfoot. He said that the company was so cheap that they would come and shoot bigfoot before they paid off. He was now safe. Hey, he still has the policy. The company agents are protecting him right now. I’m sure, relax.”

“Jay, stop it. There are no magic insurance men. You saw the pictures. Those horrid creatures took the Old Man.”

“Babe, there is no blood or body. He is missing. I know it looks bad, but we just don’t know. You can’t lose hope. They left a trail a blind man could follow. I’ve got the gun, and three fast reloads. I’ll call when I find something, bye.”

“Jay? Jay! Damn it.”

I got everything, turned in the key, and left. I grabbed a meal at Greasy Macs with a large, iced tea. Before I got on the highway, I filled the tank at a convenience store and bought a bag of trail mix. Then when I was on the highway, I set the Subaru Outback to cruse the road.

I pushed the listen button on the steering wheel, and the car said, “Please state a command.”

I said, “Set the destination to the Old Man’s house.”

The car said, “The destination is Cashmere, Washington. Would you like to navigate there?”

I said, “Yes.”

I punched Automatic and the Speed Control setting the speed to 80 mph. The car came behind a slower semi-truck and automatically slowed to the truck’s speed. The indicator on the side mirror showed someone in my blind spot. I could not see them. Then the car passed by me, and the lane was clear. I had to signal that I wanted to change lanes, or the car would try to steer back to the center of the lane. It would protest by sounding a lane departure alarm and yellow indicators in the heads-up display. You quickly got used to signaling. When the car picked up the faster car in the other lane, it sped up to follow that car. It was still below the speed I set to 80 mph. The car ahead of me moved over a lane in front of the semi-truck, the lane ahead of me cleared, and the car sped up to 80 mph. It would now cruise down the road and stay between the lines of the lane. A warning sounded if I went over a lane line, if my eyes left the road, or a car pulled into its safety zone.

While I could let go of the steering wheel and it would steer, it would protest by, “Saying please put your hands on the steering wheel.”

It was driver assistance.

In three hours, Jay called. The car had a wireless charger in which the phone sat. Once accepted on the car’s screen, the call was transferred to the car’s sound system.

“Hey Babe, the trail led up the mountain into a box canyon. I could not get up the wall at the end. I could see that the trail leads up the rock face. I’m not free-climbing a sheer rock face of 150 feet without equipment. I am headed back. When you get here, we will climb the rock face.”

I drove another nine hours and got to the Old Man’s property at like three in the morning. I had the car call Jay.

“Hey Babe, I’ll come down and unlock the gate. The old man’s message went to more than you and me. I’ll tell you about it when I get there. I think we are being watched.”

“What? Jay, I’ll be there in about 5 minutes and be waiting for you.”

When I got there, Jay gave me a newspaper, “Read the Bigfoot story.”

It had all the pictures and the transcript. It also had the story on the insurance policy. It had asked if the insurance policy would pay off and who was the payee? They had no comment.

“Jay, how did they get this?”

“The Old man must have hit, Send All, Babe. Everybody on the phone list got a copy. All his friends, the newspaper editor, and he deals with the same insurance company to do his insurance that holds the Bigfoot policy. They want to do an investigation. They said there must be a body. The phone has rung so much, and all the same. How is he? What do you know? Oh, this is terrible. What can we do to help? Then they say, you know I was one of his closest friends. Quite a few said, if that Bigfoot policy pays off, I should get part of it. They insisted that they be added to the list, or they would sue the estate, outrageous. It is incredible. There are just over twenty names on the list, and it only gets longer.”

“Jay, what should we do?”

“We need to go up the rock wall, Babe, and see if we can find anything.”

“What do you think we will find, Jay, the Old Man’s dead body?”

“Look, Babe, I don’t know what we will find, but I do know we must go. There are already charges that we faked this for the money.”

“Jay, that is ridiculous. I am worried sick. Anybody can see this. We have a freaking Gold mine. Why would we want to do that? I want the Old Man back. I could give a shit about the stupid insurance policy.”

Jay had the gap that the chimney was in covered with a tarp. It was still cold. We had our sleeping bags zipped together, and we snuggled. I felt his warm arms around me. I felt so safe, and we fell asleep.

In the morning, I got up and made breakfast. Jay woke to the smell of fried eggs, biscuits, and bacon. He took the biscuits out of the oven and put them on the table for us. I got the fancy paper plates and the high-dollar plastic ware on the table, and we ate.

Jay got the climbing equipment, and we went to the rock face. Even I could see the trail that Jay was following. We came to the rock face. It took us about two hours to climb up the precipice. When we got to the top, we secured the equipment and went down the trail.

“Jay, look at that. The trees have been bent down to form a fence to a compound.”

Jay was looking around to ensure we were alone. A big rock landed between us, and we dove for cover. Another rock flew into our area and land with a loud thunk. Then another rock landed near us. We backed up until we were out of range. There was an ungodly sound, and they came out. Each one grabbed a ten-foot tree and ripped it out of the ground. One made that horrid noise, and they threw the trees at us. The trees landed short. They came at us slowly. Jay took out his cell phone and took a picture. The flash made them stop.

“Babe, take a picture.”

We both took a picture, and the flashes made them scream a noise that sent a cold shock through my system. They did not like the flash. They started to come at us.

“Babe, take another picture.”

The flash made them scream that awful sound. They thrashed the ground and threw grass, sticks, and dirt into the air.

“Babe, take another picture.”

The flash made them turn tail and run. They went back in the bent tree fort. Soon a couple of rocks flew out behind the green wall. They all made that terrible noise. It made my blood run cold. Jay took a big stick and banged it repeatedly on a tree.

“Babe, you get a stick and beat a tree too.”

As they ran from the fort, Jay took a picture. The flash made them run twice as fast. I had never seen anything run that fast. They were terrified.

We walked up to the fort. The enclosed area was messy. There was a couple of bed nests, some large rocks, and a lot of bones. I started to cry.

Jay held me and said, “Babe, calm down. We don’t know anything until we look and see if any of the bones are human.”

I had to wait outside while Jay searched. He came out after about twenty minutes.

“Babe, all the bigger bones have been broken open to eat the marrow. To begin with, it’s hard to tell exactly what the bones were. There seems to be a deer and a bigfoot, but you’ll need to do a DNA test to see what the animals were.”

“No bones from the Old Man?”

“No, Babe, not unless he grew to like 7 feet tall.”

“Jay, what do we do now?”

“I don’t know, Babe. The trail is cold.”

“Jay, do you smell smoke?”

“Yeah, where is it coming from?”

“Jay, look over there. The smoke is just collecting in that wallow. You can barely see it.”

“Babe, that wallow is in the Spotted Frog Reserve. If they catch us in there, it is up to a $100,000 fine, and the max sentence is ten years in prison. I tell you, we are being watched. They will know if we set foot in there and will be most unkind. They hate the Old Man. The Mayor and City Council is always being made to follow some rule that they want to ignore. The police inspect his car every time he comes into town.”

“Jay, I got an idea.”

I got out my cell phone. Having 1 bar, I dialed 9 1 1. It rang.

“Hello, 9 1 1. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Fran, is that you?”

“Yeah, who is this? Your cell phone’s location app is turned off.”

“It’s Julie.”

“Julie, you back in town?”

“Yeah. Look, the Old Man got an ultra-lite.”

“What happened this time, Julie? Dave said it would be a cold day in hell, the day he helped the Old Man. This better be good.”

“Yeah, Fran, I would not have called unless there was a problem. He crashed.”

“Ha Ha Ha Ha Julie, you better know some First Aid because no one will come up there.”

“Fran, he crashed in the Spotted Frog Reserve.”

“He better not be in the reserve!”

“Fran, there is a little fire.”

“Oh, Dave is going to love this, Julie. I’m sure he will be there as fast as he can. You best turn your locator app on and pray he is in a good mood when he gets there.”

In about an hour and forty minutes, you could hear the quads. Within fifteen minutes, they were here. They pulled up, took their helmets off, and set them on the quads.

“Well, Julie and Jay, is it? Do you say the Old Man crashed his new ultra-light into the Reserve? That is too bad. You know, Judge Harper don’t like Environmental Terrorist. He’ll throw the book at him.”

“Look, Dave, it was an accident. For all I know, he’s dead, and you will bring back his body.”

I hugged Jay. He embraced me with warm reassurance. Then, we pointed to the smoke. Dave smiled an evil grin and went back to the quad. Then, he put his helmet on his head. Finally, the men rode away.

Jay and I sat down in the grass and listened to the sound of the engines diminish. We watched as the quads closed the distance to the smoke.

Jay said, “Just a minute.”

He took his phone and said, “Cashmere, Washington Police Department Radio Channel.”

The phone audio had Dave’s voice saying, “We are close now, base.”

“10-4, Dave. Give us an ETA on your 10-23(arrive on scene).”

“Five minutes, base.”

About two minutes later.

“10-33 (Emergency) There was a tree thrown at us. It whizzed at us like some kind of giant spear. I just ducked it.”

“10-00 officer down. It hit Frank.”

“We are behind a big tree. We have a little problem here. Frank sees six fingers on my hand.”

a few moments later he said, “Base two rocks just hit the tree.”

Then the horrible sound that made my blood run cold came over the channel.

Afterward, Dave said, “Did you get that base?”

“In the name of the Dark Lord Satan! Dave, what made that noise?”

“I’m not sure I want to know. Crap, more rocks!”

“We can hear them. They are coming for us, slowly.”

Jay quickly dialed 9 1 1.

“9 1 1, What is the nature ….”

Jay said loudly, “Tell them. Use the flash on their phones!”

“What? Who is this?”

“Fran, tell Dave to take pictures. They are afraid of the flash!”

You could still hear the radio channel over the internet.

“Dave, be advised. Jay says to use your flash on the phone. It scares them.”

“Base you believe him? He’s just trying to get us killed. Another tree just flew by. They are getting closer.”

“Hell, Frank just took a picture, and they screamed.”

“Hold it! It seems to be working. I’m taking pictures, too. They’re leaving. I can hear them run.”

“Hold it. I think I hear another one coming. We’re taking pictures, but that only seems to attract this one.”

“I can hear it growl. It almost sounds human. It’s coming at us fast. It sounds like it’s saying, Ruuaan. Frank and I are back on the quads. Here it comes through the trees.”

“Base, stand by.”

After a long few minutes came the sound of the quads running at full throttle, “Base, be advised that we have the Old Man, and we are so freaking out of here.”