Post #340929 by Cammo on Sun, Oct 28, 2007 5:57 PM

Monsters
Part 4

“What do you mean they’ve disappeared?” my brother asked Jim over the phone.

He had explained to Jim about the magazine article, the potential for lots of national publicity, how he was related to Jim’s neighbors, how they had already met more than a year ago, and Jim said basically – you can’t come over here.

Mark was standing there with a loaded Nikon, tapping his foot up and down, asking questions. He had the whole week off, there was no WAY he could go back now with no story to show for it.

“So they’re there, but I can’t photograph them? Can I try?” he pleaded. A long pause. Then Mark hung up.

“He says I can go over as long as it’s not dark,” he told us.

“Why not dark?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we can get better shots during the day.”

“Why doesn’t he want you over there?” I asked.

“Don’t know. He sounds like he’s scared, like he’s hiding something. He says he opened up the hog enclosure to the woods, and they’re all out there somewhere, but he can’t find them I guess.”

“So they’re in his woods?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Let’s go see. Wanna come?”

I nodded my head yes, but my mom shook hers back and forth at exactly the same time.

“I wouldn’t go there if it was the last pig farm on earth,” she said, then - “but you boys go get the story.”

It took a while to get ready, though. First we had to get Mark unpacked and the spare futon moved downstairs, then we all got caught up and ate some three-fruit pie, then we played a round of Password, and finally I drove us over while Mark went through his reported checklist; notepad, camera, extra black and white film all the same ASA, one roll of color.

We arrived at about 5:00. It was still light, but the sun was going. “Best time of the day for pictures,” Mark grinned, “no shadows.”

We knocked on Jim Ducey’s door. No answer. We rang the bell. No answer. We stood there waiting and finally I remembered to just go around the side of the house like we had done the first time. He was probably out there. So we walked around to the left, turned the corner, and

Oh My God. The whole area was demolished. There were strips of broken wood everywhere, the feed troughs had been ripped apart, chain link fence bits and pieces were everywhere. The fence itself was completely changed, it was higher now with supporting poles angled back at 45 degrees, sunk into the ground. The fence was pushed out everywhere, like the fence behind home plate on a ball diamond. At the bottom ran a line of badly pored concrete. Trees had been cut down inside the enclosure. It was a horrible, scary mess, like a battleground from World War One.

“WHAT are you DOING out HERE!” a voice yelled behind us. We both jerked around. It was Jim yelling from the side door of his house.

“We rang the front door, but…” my brother started to say.

“GET IN HERE! QUICK!” he screamed.

“Uh, we were wondering if , ah…”

“NOW! HURRY!”

We ran to the door, squeezed inside and Jim slammed and locked it behind us.

“You were supposed to come when it was LIGHT!” he yelled. He was nervous, sweating and shaky. Totally different than the last time I had seen him. It was frightening.

“It is light out. It’s just that we…”

“It’s almost dark!” Jim said, glaring at my brother and I like we were dangerously insane.

“Well, sorry. I just got in today.”

Jim tried to calm down. “That’s alright. It just means we can’t see them today. Maybe some other time.”

“What? Why not? Are they sleeping?” I asked.

“No. The problem is, they’re waking up now.”

That threw us.

“If they’re waking up, that’s perfect! It’s time, I brought a flash and we can take some shots, that’s all I want.”

“You don’t understand,” Jim said, “they’re … really, ah, EVIL.”

That isn’t a word you hear all the time, you know. ‘Evil’ isn’t an everyday word. People don’t use it a lot. It’s a church word, or a horror movie word, but it isn’t a kitchen table sitting around talking about pigs kind of word.

“Sit down.” Jim said, waving to the kitchen table. “A lot has happened. You guys want a beer?”

So we sat there sipping Export Ale from the bottle and Jim filled us in.

“They got bigger real fast.” He told us, quietly. “Real big. Never seen anything grow so fast. They’re about two, three hundred pounds now. The big males, there’s one that’s real bad, you remember,”

“Yeah, that one that charged us?”

“Him. He’s gigantic now. Maybe five hundred pounds. I think he ate one of the other males.”

“No! He’s a cannibal pig?”

“I don’t know. We found the bones. He’s bad. Evil through and through.”

“Can you shoot them?” Mark blurted out.

“You don’t understand. They’re nocturnal. And during the day they sleep in caves. There’s no real caves around here of course,” he added, “so they build them. They dig out homes for themselves, under the leaves for camouflage. It’s impossible to find them during the day. At night they’re hungry and dangerous, looking for small animals, eating everything in sight. You seen the area around the stream?” he asked me.

I shook my head slightly.

“No, you wouldn’t have. Well, it’s bare down to the soil. They meet there for the water, and’ve eaten every plant below six feet. Not a weed left.”

“Jeez. Is that a new fence?” I was trying to be helpful.

“The fence. Oh, God.” He held his head for a moment, his hands shaking. Wrong question. “They just about got through, see? The old fence was no good. They dig.” He made little digging motions with his hands. “That’s all they do, is dig. They tried to dig under the fence.”

“But I stopped them.” He held his head up now, proud. “They thought they could dig their way out, but I had Hanson build a new fence that ran down under the soil, see?” Jim stared at us hard to make us understand. “It doesn’t stop at the soil, it goes down, down, four feet. And I poured concrete all along it. You can’t dig under it. It’s a sixteen foot fence, but four are under the ground. Twelve feet high. But that wasn’t enough. Cause they started jumping.”

“What?” This whole thing was creeping us out. But pigs jumping was crazy talk. A pig can’t jump.

Jim saw we didn’t believe him. “These can jump. They’re good at it. They’d run at the fence, and crouch down at the last second, and throw their whole body at it. They’d launch. Their hooves would get up to eight, nine feet, just below the top. The big one got closest to the top. I had to build a double-thick fence there by the feed troughs before we built the whole enclosure, and that was the first time those fence contractors had ever done that. Two fences, strapped back to back together with iron rungs. They thought I was crazy too, until they saw them jump. That’s when they suggested the stay poles. And we electrified it.”

Mark was looking over his shoulder at the window, nervously. I was thinking of the eyes on that big one. Red, glowing in the night.

“So kill ‘em. Kill every one and sell the meat,” my brother said.

At first Jim Ducey considered what he said, then he just shook his head and frowned.

“Look, Mister Fancy City Reporter, I don’t know if you’ve been listening for the last half hour, but what I’ve been talking about is that you CAN’T kill them! They hide during the day, they’re dangerous at night, they’re big enough to gore you, they can smell you from….” he stared at us like we didn’t understand.

“I’ve tried, see? When they were in the smaller enclosure, before I opened up the gate to the woods, I tried using an arrow on a sow. It bounced off. You have to get a clean head shot, and that’s what I did when she was sleeping, and it bounced. Pig skulls are thick. I could have got one right in her eye, but they actually got careful after that, and didn’t sleep near the fence.”

“Like I said, shoot ‘em.”

“Tried it, you can use a high powered long range rifle with a night scope, but again you might not get a clean shot. They move all the time, they’re never still except when they lie down and you can’t tell the ass from the elbow with a night scope at long range. If you try real hard for weeks you might get one. One.”

“Uh, poison them.”

“Nope. Illegal to sell poisoned meat in North America. And that means I lose my total investment, and that means even if they die they’ve won.”

“Jeez. Ah, trap them?”

“They have better noses than dogs. They can smell the human on a trap. And you’d have to dig that thing deep, cause they jump, remember. Leg traps won’t work either, the smell again, and even if one gets caught the others will eat his leg off.”

“Yer kidding.”

“Nope. A hunter told me that. I hired him to come out and advise me, he looked around and asked a lot of questions. Big game hunter, been way up north hunting moose a lot. He didn’t know what to do either. Said he wouldn’t go inside the gate for anything, though, and to stay locked in a truck if I do. Haven’t been in there since.”

“There’s got to be a way to get rid of them. I mean, it can’t be that impossible.”

“You got any ideas? I’m listening.” Jim sat back, crossing his arms.

“Uh…” my brother stammered, “um, if we stay in the truck, can we go see them?

Jim considered. Mark must have really wanted some shots, because he actually tried to convince Jim - “Maybe seeing them will give us ideas. Maybe we can think of something you haven’t.”

“I don’t think so,” Jim said, “it’s too much of a risk.” He looked at us, me in last year of high school and Mark wearing ripped hippie jeans and a beat up corduroy shirt. “If we get in trouble it’s my fault.”

“Fifty bucks?” Mark says.

“Okay.”

So we got in the truck, the light gone now and sounds coming from the woods. We took one shotgun, Jim’s Remington 870, a brutal pump action weapon.

We should have brought grenades.