It was getting late. The ochre orb of the sun was just hitting the mountains, angling its light towards the small logging company, who took their queue to start packing the only truck up for the night. They were thirty miles from home, down long logging tracks, which meant about a forty five to fifty minute drive to get back. If they were lucky, they would be rolling into town just as the sun was setting and still get a few minutes of light while they each got into their own trucks and headed to their homes for the night.
Mike was the foreman and was friends with all of his crew but probably closest with Caleb. Caleb was quiet and hard working, fearless to a fault. He was borderline reckless, and had made Mike uncomfortable a few times during this operation. One time he hadn’t bothered looking before ripping into a massive evergreen and Marlin had been standing not even fifteen feet away. Nothing had happened, that was just how Caleb was, but if he wasn’t careful, one of these days he was going to get himself or someone else in the crew seriously hurt, or worse, Mike thought to himself. The guys were tired, it had been a long day and they put their equipment in the back of the truck and climbed in.
On the way, Marlin was telling the story about how Caleb had almost killed him, and Caleb was joining in every so often to defend himself. Everyone else was quiet, except to once in a while ask Mike something about the following day. Randy said something quiet to Will about his plan for the weekend, but the group was settling into the evening hush. They weren’t going to beat the sun today. It sank below the pale mountains in the distance, reaching out and pointing its last lingering light golden ray on the group before finally hiding beneath the great expanse of the earth, plunging the group into the darkness of night. Mike flicked on his high beams, and they continued to crawl down the logging trail.
As they were going, Caleb looked up and noticed a glow in the trees up ahead. The blue-white glow seemed to be coming out from a clearing among the trees, but it had its own accompanying feel. Everyone in the truck started to pick up on it, the thrill and electric charge in the air. The hair on their arms stirred with it. “What is that?” Someone asked. Whatever the glow was, whatever was making it, also made the branches of the trees look bent at wrong angles, fingering the air for dangerous purchase. The bark looked somehow off too. Rather than illuminating anything, the light itself was covering and obscuring everything it touched.
The men were familiar with the woods at night and comfortable in it. This was something different, maybe even something dangerous. The truck ambled forward past the thickest part of the grove. It started to pass the clearing where they could all finally catch sight of the source of where this strange glow was coming from. They burst next to the clearing and finally there was nothing between all seven men in their truck and the soundless hovering metallic disc, glowing in the night woodlands. A craft from another world, somehow luminescing their world around them, yet changing it beyond recognition.
Caleb yelled, “Mike stop the truck!” and Mike plunged his foot as hard as he could onto the brake. The truck lurched, pitching all seven men forward in a single motion. Caleb opened the door and jumped out. He stopped and looked at the craft, staring at it as he would if it were an elusive predatory animal watching it for a second before deciding what to do. He started running towards it on impulse, thinking it would take off the second he got close to it. He had once done something similar when he was confronted with a black bear in his campsite.
The bear had been going through Caleb’s garbage with abandon, spreading chaos, old fruit, and coffee filters across the campsite. Caleb saw the beast, it looked up at him and stopped. They stared into each other’s eyes before Caleb took action. Yelling, he picked up a stick and started running towards it. The bear saw this crazed thing headed right for it, and so it turned and ran, rolling its enormous flanks in waves across its back in a hurried ramble to get away.
Now he found himself running towards this glow encompassed disc, in the middle of a clearing in the woods at night. His hair seemed to stir on its own and an intense feeling passed through his body. He thought the object would shoot off into the night sky as he neared but instead it stayed still, hovering where it was. The guys in the truck hollered after him, “Caleb, stop! Get your ass back here! Are you crazy? Get back in the truck!”
As Caleb neared the object he started to get close enough to it to be able to notice more specific things about it. It was pale gold in color and light refracted out from it onto the trees and area around him, but at the same time, he could see the trees were reflected against its metallic crust. Suddenly the spell was broken and he heard the guys yelling at him from the truck to get back there and get in the truck so they could get the hell out of here.
He stopped in his tracks and started being more aware of what was going on. Although he started to realize he was completely terrified he couldn’t let his friends in the truck see that, as they yelled and cussed at him to get back to them. And then he noticed the hum. It was a complex mix of a high pitched frequency and a low bass thrum that seemed to vibrate the air around him. It surrounded and penetrated everything. He could start to feel that even his cells seemed to be responding and vibrating to and against its call. The sound started to increase and in that moment Caleb jumped down for cover behind a log and stayed there, waiting for there to be a space in this strange moment where it would be safe enough to head back to the truck.
Finally he decided to make a break for it. He stood up and started to run towards his friends in the truck but as soon as he did, something hit him from behind. An electric surge struck him, lurching him into the air and when he hit the ground, he stayed stunned where he lay. The force and pain of whatever it was that struck him, knocked him out cold then and there. At that point, all light, all sound, was shut off in that instant of pain.
His friends still in the truck saw their friend stand up and run towards them. Then they saw a blueish green flash of light and the body of their friend shot twenty feet into the air and then lay where it landed, unmoving. The six men in the truck yelled for their friend but when they saw his body not move, Mike thought he was dead, and in a panicked rush for self survival, he reached over his men, slammed the door to the truck closed, punched the accelerator down to the floor and sped the truck out of there as fast as he could go. The tail lights dwindled in the distance.
Suddenly, Caleb’s unconscious body was lifted, limp as a rag doll, into the craft which took him in. The craft stayed motionless for what seemed like a second or two, and then noiselessly diminished, disappearing into the night sky.
I didn't make that connection, but he is that kind of guy, you're right!
this guy kind of reminds me of Nick.