Pain pulsed through Fleet's head as he woke up. He wasn't sure how awake he was because of the dark. As he laid there, the memory of his problems came back. Old straw and wood splinters jabbed into the skin of his backside. Waking up came faster.
He listened for any signs of his attacker. All he heard was the soft sound of the wind through the cracks in the barn walls. That reminded him that he was frozen to the bone.
Rolling over, he saw his flashlight on the floor on the other side of the wall of the animal pen. He needed to get the light and then get back to help.
Trying to stand, he realized two things. First, his wrists were still tied. The second: his pants were still down.
He reached down to grab his pants and pull them back on. He could only get them a little way over his knees before the angle of his bonds kept his hands from moving further. Nevermind, good enough, time to get out.
Standing didn't work yet, and he wasn't sure how to get out of the pen. Without a light, he couldn't check for a latch of anything else helpful.
He stared at his light just out of reach. The space between the bottom slat of the pen and the next was wide enough, he could probably roll or crawl through. A minute later and he was dirty, splinter-filled, and out.
He grabbed the flashlight and a sense of hope flushed through his being. He showed it around the barn as best he could, looking for any threats. He couldn't see all the places, but the ones he could see were enemy free.
Good, good, time to stand up. He rolled closer to the pen. Trying to maintain his grip on the light, he used the slats to gradually pull himself into a standing position. Hurray, progress!
Another quick look around showed him the path to the door. He headed to it.
As soon as he took a few steps, his pants fell to his ankles again. He stopped abruptly, almost falling over. This was going to be an issue.
He reached down to adjust his pants. Last time, the rope on his wrists kept him from pulling his pants all the way up just because he couldn't hold them and twist his arms enough. This time, he had the added challenge of holding the flashlight.
Still, he got them just over the knees and decided it would be good enough. He needed to get out of the barn.
Holding the waistband of his sweatpants and the flashlight, he waddled as fast as he could to the door. He found that placing his feet as wide apart as possible added extra friction to prevent his pants from sliding. It slowed his progress but not as much as having his feet tangled in sweatpants.
Through the door, the sight of the van renewed his run. Waddling as fast as he could, he made it across the hard ground. The autumn wind wrapped itself around every uncovered part, stealing the heat from his body, what was left of it.
Nearing the van, his right foot caught on a weed, sending him down on the remains of the gravel. With his hands holding his pants, he couldn't break his fall. He closed his eyes tightly, anticipating the collision with the ground.
His face skidded across the dirt and rocks, shredding skin. As he laid there, the pain in his shoulders flared, letting him know that they hit hard too. He let out a moan and rolled over.
The pain temporarily muted his terror. Still, he was almost to the van.
From the barn, he heard a sound. It was a grunt, the grunt of a huge animal.
The terror flooded back.
Rolling back over, tried to stand. He couldn't hold his pants and use his hands to push up at the same time, so pushing himself up won. In a moment, he stood again and started toward the vehicle.
With one step, his trousers dropped again.
As close as he was, he decided to leave it. With all his concentration, he hopped the rest of the way to the van and around to the back.
With his hands tied together, he pounded on the door of the van. "Matt, let me in. It's Fleet. Let me in. I've been attacked."
He heard the shuffling as Matt moved from his monitoring station and toward the door. The van opened up and Matt's very concerned face appeared. "What happened?"
"I got attacked. Some old guy. He tied me up and hit me. He pulled my pants down and said he was gonna do butt stuff." The story rushed out of him.
"He tied you up?"
Fleet held up his hands. "Yeah, see?"
Matt looked at Fleet's hands. They showed no signs of being tied.
Fleet saw it too. No ropes. No scarring from the rough fibers. No bruises.
Shock and confusion filled his face. "No really. There were ropes around my wrists. I couldn't move. I don't know."
Matt started back to his station. "Ok, we'll document it. Just pull your pants back on and get in."
Beta Team
We sat at the bottom of the stairs trying to get ourselves straightened out. Being knocked down by the slamming trapdoor was bad enough. The memory of the piggy picnic was going to take some time.
The lights came on in the basement. They were just a couple of kerosene lamps, but it was a shock. We could see the whole place.
The farmer from the pig feast stood by a shelf near the stairs. He did something with one of the small boxes. At the far end, by the crates with the rifles, another man sat on the ground.
It took a moment, but I thought I recognized the second man as the one who shushed Danny before the, well, the incident. He seemed unconscious. His clothes looked like they were from the thirties just like the others.
As we watched, the young guy seemed to wake up. He slowly looked around, first just with his eyes and then by moving his whole head. When he got to the farmer, his face decided anger was the way to go.
He reached slowly toward his foot. I wondered why. Pistol in an ankle holster explained it.
The guy stood up, pointing his pistol at the farmer. He yelled, "Get your hands up where I can see them."
The farmer raised his hands part way up, maybe shoulder height and a little to the side. As he did, he turned to look at the man. "Well, look who's up. Now that you're up, what do you plan to do about it?"
"I'm going out those stairs," he said, pointing the gun our way. Motioning away from that line, he said to the farmer, "Get over there. I'm leaving and you aren't going to stop me."
The farmer started walking in the ordered direction. "You think you're leaving? I don't think you'll get very far."
"I'll get far enough if I shoot you."
The farmer chuckled. "If you shoot me, boy, you better hit me square. If you don't, I'm gonna mess you up."
The sound of the pistol shot blasted through my ears, deafening me as it rang through the whole basement. At the same time, I watched the pistol eject its shell casing. The shiny brass casing tumbled through the air, hit the floor, bounced a few times, and rolled to a stop where it sat until it was kicked a little while ago.
The farmer spun with a bit of blood flying out of a chest wound. As he crumpled, his body fell onto the blood stain we found earlier. I watched as he collapsed, and all rigidness left his frame.
The young guy ran past us, starting up the stairs, then he stopped. He looked back at the body, up the stairs, and then back at the body. He furrowed his brow and pursed his lips, deep in thought. Then he made up his mind and went back to the body.
Grabbing the farmer's shoulders, the guy flipped the farmer over and out of the pool of blood. Bracing himself, he pulled the body over to the stairs and then underneath.
The spectacle drew us in and all three of us moved around to see better.
The man settled the corpse under the stairs and reached past it to grab a tarp from the top of a box.
In a flash, the farmer opened his folding knife and ran it into the young guy, just under the ribs and upward.
The young guy made a gulping sound and collapsed on top of the farmer.
The farmer whispered, "Mess you up." A smile took his lips. Then the farmer went limp again.
The lantern lights faded to dark.
From the top of the stairs, we heard a clicking sound. Danny and Sarah turned to look, shining their lights in that direction at the same time.
The trapdoor opened.
Alpha Team
I started by jumping out of my skin, figuratively anyway. Whatever slammed the door sounded solid enough, and somehow not. I turned and pointed my camera rig toward the second floor balcony.
Turning to check, I say Emily and Mike sitting where they had been in their corner. Mike stared at the balcony, a lost and frightened expression filling his face. Emily seemed to have curled more tightly as though trying to disappear inside him.
A bright light pulled me back to the balcony. It was the light we had been getting all night, that damned combine out there somewhere. Now was not the time to be dealing with that, but a little light might show us what was going on. I'm not sure we really wanted to see that.
The light died to be replaced with the sounds of a scuffle. Shoes scraped across a floor. Muffled grunts and groans came from upstairs. Something large slammed against one of the wooden doors. A couple more grunts came, then another slam.
The door flew open.
"You should have drugged him more," complained a voice. It wasn't a voice I heard before and it seemed to come from some man struggling to do something.
"Nevermind that, just get him to the rail before he wakes up anymore." It was a different voice, a different man working just as hard.
I looked back at my sister and her guy. Mike had dropped his face into her shoulder and neither of them was looking at the balcony. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I was sure they were shaking.
Looking at my hands where they held my camera rig, I saw that I was shaking too.
I squeezed my eyes shut and thought, "I really need to calm down. None of this can hurt me. Just stay focused and keep the camera pointed the right way. Focus on the camera."
I don't know how much that helped, but I gripped the camera rig more tightly. The solidness of the metal pipes fought against the unreal nature of what I heard.
The lights came back, but not just upstairs, they came through all the windows. Someone's headlights flooded the house from the driveway. I turned to see who it was, looking out the window to do so.
Outside, all was dark. There were no headlights, no cars but ours, no magic combines that could explain everything away.
A deep, roaring voice bellowed, "Help!"
Spinning back to the balcony, I saw three men fighting. One wore old style striped pajamas and a rope around his neck. He was a large man, struggling against two others, one in overalls and another in a police uniform. The big guy was giving his all, but was out numbered and it looked like his hands were tied behind him.
To my left, the front door burst open. The front door with no actual door in the opening. Some people ran in. I couldn't see anybody, but I just knew that some people came in. They were in a hurry and full of action. They just weren't there.
The flashes and bangs of gunfire filled the room. The sound filled my ears and me, like it had something extra to it. Those bangs were something else. They were memories.
Looking at the balcony, I watched bullets rip through the bodies of the two men, the one in overalls and the cop. They fell backwards, bits of spray erupting from the holes in their bodies. Other bullets blasted holes in the wallpaper and the plaster behind, adding little clouds of powder to the scene.
Then everything slowed.
My cinema professors would have approved. The two gunshot victims continued falling, just more slowly. The blood spray and the plaster dust blossomed gently in their previous directions.
The large man, without the other two attached, lost balance. His eyes and mouth widened as he realized his situation. He struggled, trying to find any way to hold on with his hand still behind his back.
Gravity won and he fell off the balcony.
Only to stop a couple feet from the floor.
The rope pulled. A sickly noise, like a chicken being cut up for cooking, resonated through the room. The sudden tension on the rope caused the balcony to shudder.
The body swayed in the headlights that weren't headlights, at least not anymore. As it spun around, I saw his face more clearly. With its eyes wide open, he looked at me with his last bit of life like he wanted me to remember something.
Then his eyes faded to blankness like they weren't really eyes at all.
He disappeared. The rope disappeared. The two men on the balcony disappeared. The headlights, nope, they were gone too.
That's when I recognized the face of the hanged man. It flashed back into my head as bright as a silver screen. The man was Bud, the old farmer who showed us around earlier.
Nope, couldn't be it. Bud was probably the adult son of the hanged man, or some other relative.
Then everything stopped. The house calmed down and everything was done for the night. I felt like the house had told us everything it had to say.
I didn't believe it for a minute. It was time to get my two stars and get out before the house or whoever was in it, changed its mind.
Going against training, I turned off my cameras. The next part didn't need to be recorded.
"Emily? Mike? I think it's over. We need to get back to the van. Are you ok to walk back to the van?"
I think the normality of my voice shook them out of their fear funk. I was going to have to remember "fear funk" for use in a script or something later. Whatever it was, it combined with a great desire to leave. They stood quickly and, as fast as they could while still holding each other, they got out the door and headed toward the van where Matt monitored everything and dispensed the coffee.
As I stepped off the porch, I turned for one more look. Yep, it was just a desolate old house, neglected until decay tore it down. Soon, it and its memories would be bulldozed away and there would be nothing left beyond a few legal deeds and some small articles at the local Historical Society. The way things had been going in the state, the Historical Society and its small town would probably follow in the next fifty years or so. Not super duper at all.