Hello world!

Hey, guys. Sorry I haven't been posting as much as I usually do. But I have a good excuse.

I finally got cable TV! LOL (That means "Laugh Out Loud.") I just learned that in a chat room.

Anyway, while I was looking at the TV Guide channel, I got to wondering. Where is Channel 37?

Does anyone else remember that crazy storm we had in 1984, I think? The lightning was all purple and pink and the power went out all over town. But then my TV turned itself back on after a few minutes when we regained power and it was tuned to Channel 37.

It was static, as always, but it looked different. It felt different. I can't really explain it. I swear I could see something behind the static like it was swimming in it and trying to surface. The static moved all weird-like. Like it was rippling and wriggling and slithering and ... I don't know ... blinking, almost. But not like cutting to black. More like an eye. Or lots of eyes. I felt watched ... observed. It almost felt like it has always been observing me.

Does anyone else remember that storm? Did anyone else's TV turn on and tune to Channel 37? I'm going to make a guestbook, so let me know!

I remember the next evening when I turned on the TV to watch Wheel after dinner, it was back on Channel 37. I know I didn't do that because I was watching The Price is Right during lunch. The show was bizarre. Like one of those weird arthouse films that The Majestic loves to show every now and then. But I don't even think the cinema would go as far as this.

The show depicted a man, kind of. He seemed doughy and oddly proportioned. Think of something like a moist loaf of bread standing on end with thin legs, small eyes, and large crooked teeth too big for its mouth. I think he was naked, but the room he was in was dark. It was hard to tell one way or another with the shadows. The only other thing in the room with him was a chair. When he approached the chair, it shivered. Not the man, the chair! Then the cushion of the chair opened up in the middle like a mouth and the legs split apart into something like spider legs, all spindly and covered with bristles. The "chair" was quivering and shaking in ... anticipation? And then a tongue lolled out of the mouth in the chair and the man just ... smiled. And took a step forward.

And I had to shut the TV off!

What was that?! I went to the library the next day and Milton pointed me toward some periodicals after giving me a look like I was crazy. I don't blame him, but I know what I saw.

Do you know what I found? I found articles from the 1950s and 60s about scientists at the University of Illinois building a radio telescope at the Vermilion River Observatory. And this telescope observed cosmic frequencies at the range of UHF Channel 37! So what did I watch if that channel can't exist?

And what was watching me? What was that thing that felt like it's been always observing me.

I'm not an artist, so this is the best approximation I can make for what I think I saw behind the static.

I don't know what it is. I don't know what it wants. But I think it's been watching me for a long time.

I think the best thing I can do is try to take some control back so I'm going to make "Always Observing" my own motto. I started this website because I thought I saw something weird in the first place. It just makes sense.

Have you seen anything like this?

Do you play the trombone? My band, Occam's Shaving Kit, lost our trombonist not that long ago. We wish him the best as he pursues other musical endeavors, but it's really affected our sound.

The Childresses have recently been using the floor space for their little coffee/café inside Dog-eared Books for local bands and open mic nights. We really want to play!

So, if you can play the trombone, get in touch. You know where to find me.

I’ve finally made it home.

Everyone, if you’re seeing this, STAY INDOORS!

Keep your doors and windows shut and locked!

If you still have power, which I’m assuming you do if you’re reading this, turn off any lights and pull your blinds down.

I’m not joking. This is serious. I know I’ve been wrong before, but I’m not wrong this time.

This is legitimately deadly serious.

I’ll tell you everything that’s happened, that I’ve seen and experienced. I’ll try my best not to ramble.

I had just survived the corn maze at Millard’s Farm and was dropped off at the front of the maze by the tractor that does the hay ride, since it just goes in a loop. I was enjoying a freshly-dipped caramel apple rolled in crushed nuts when something crashed deep in the field.

The blast was something else! I was lucky to stay on my feet. Others weren’t so lucky, but I don’t think anyone was in the field when the thing landed and no one in the crowd outside of the maze seemed like they were too injured. Nothing beyond a few scrapes and bruises.

No one really wanted to go into the field to check and good thing because it wasn’t long before Sergeant Baxton and some of his officers showed up. They immediately started asking questions and getting statements and setting up police tape. None of us knew anything, of course. Just that something fell from the sky and landed hard enough to make the ground shake.

The Channel 4 news van showed up not long after. I saw Dave Onsen talking with Baxton. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but after a few minutes they went into the field with a couple of officers. I’ve seen them around town, but I don’t know them that well. Their name badges read Rourke and Velez.

The rest of us were just milling about, unsure what to do. Some people just got in their cars and left after they told the police that they didn’t know anything. Some said they’d just read about it in the paper or see what Dave had to say about it on the news tomorrow. I was a bit unsure of what I wanted to do.

I was doing my best to tell anyone who would listen that they should be here, I mean here on this blog and reading everything I’ve been noticing for ages. I was starting to gather a small crowd when I got a little animated and accidentally dropped my caramel apple on my shirt. No one really wanted to stick around after that and some moved closer to the edge of the field.

That’s when we heard the first noise.

It wasn’t overly loud, but it was shrill. It sounded like metal on metal. It reminded me of when the lid on my canteen is too tight and scrapes as I force it open.

Then it happened again. And again, continuously. It legitimately sounded like something was unscrewing. More people started edging towards the field again and just as many, myself included, started edging back. Whatever we were hearing, I couldn’t imagine it could be anything good.

A few minutes later the air started to smell really acrid, like urine. It was much stronger than that, though. The smell was like pure ammonia. A black smoke started to creep out of the field. The folks closest to the edge started to hack and wheeze and cough. I saw them squint their eyes closed and rub at them while shouting about how it burned. They staggered back, blinded. The coughing got more chesty and … wet. It sounded like when my Grandma had pneumonia. Some men and women collapsed as they coughed until the coughing became choking and the black smoke covered them.

After snapping out of our shock, many of us rushed to pull back the others who were choking. I did my best to keep my eyes shut and hold my breath while I scrabbled at someone’s arms. My eyes still stung and I still felt the tickle in my throat. I felt my quarry move past me, still wheezing and choking. I went back in and blindly felt around. I felt a hand and pulled. I must’ve plunged my hands into the smoke because I felt my hands start to tingle and burn. I yanked hard and dragged someone back. When I felt confident I was far enough away from the edge of the field, I opened my eyes.

I’ve never seen a dead body before. I hope that’s still true.

It didn’t take long for those who could run or those who brought their cars to leave. I didn’t bring my car with me. I had gotten a lift from a friend and once the initial panic had subsided and the majority of us were able to form some rational thoughts, I realized they had left me behind.

Thanks.

I’m not going to name names. You know who you are. You’re lucky tampering with mail is a federal crime, but don’t be surprised when you start getting your letters late.

I had only just stepped onto the road at the end of the Millard’s driveway when there was a sound like a blast or a laser. I heard two screams in unison, but they were quickly cut short.

I didn’t stick around to see the cause. I just ran. Some sounds aren’t worth investigating. Especially screams preceded by a caustic black smoke.

The smoke was billowing into the streets as I ran. The rain had started to pick up and was keeping the smoke off of my skin, but the scent, the fumes wafting off of it burned my nostrils and stung my eyes. I had to change course and get off of the road. It felt too open. I felt too exposed. And the black smoke had nothing to stem its flow. I ran away from the smoke more than following the road. Behind me, I could hear something large, heavy, and metallic followed by more blasts.

I ran into the woods. I hoped that the trees would slow the progress of this thick smoke and hide me from whatever was making the loud stomping sounds. I heard another crash from deep, deep in the woods. Maybe it was another one of those meteor-things. I’ll never know. I have no desire to go in search. It sounded heavy, but distant and in the direction of Cranberry. Do the residents of Cranberry even know what’s happening across the Deepwood from them? For our sake, I hope they do. But for theirs … I hope not.

I don’t know how long I stayed hidden in the woods. The smoke found its way into the trees and I thought to climb up into a deer stand I saw while working my way through the forest. It didn’t offer much protection from rain, but it kept me above the smoke. Whoever built this stand left a pair of binoculars in a dry bag. I mention them because of what happened not long after.

There was a noise.

The noise was metallic like before, but not nearly as heavy. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw something glinting, like it was reflecting the moonlight coming through the trees when there was an occasional cloud-break.

How can I even describe what I saw?

I picked up the binoculars to get a closer look. Picking its way through the trees was something like a metal basin on three legs. The legs were tubular and flexible. They reminded me of Doc Ock from the Spider-Man comics. The legs didn’t lift the basin or seat … compartment? … very high. Maybe four feet above the ground. Possibly five, it was hard to tell. But it’s what I saw sitting in the compartment that really distressed me.

Imagine an oyster in a half-shell. What I saw sitting in this open-top compartment was a gelatinous mass of some kind. It had at least two large eyes sunken deep into this flesh. The flesh itself was mottled and colored like a dark copper with splotches of deep purple. The basin expelled more of the black smoke and as the smoke crested over this creature the splotches moved and changed shape. The smell of ammonia stung my nose, but I held back a sneeze. Thankfully.

An odd number of tentacles hung down from this formless mass. Some manipulated controls to operate this little tripod thing. Some of the tentacles that didn’t have any tasks either hung limply or slithered around the lip of the compartment. There were far too many of them, I can tell you that for sure.

I have never seen such an ugly creature. I found myself hoping these woods did house a Sasquatch and he would come and deal with this alien thing getting far too close to my perch. Cryptid serendipity was not on my side, sadly.

This ugly thing passed by the deer stand without noticing me and I exhaled a breath that I didn’t even realize I was holding. My good fortune didn’t last long, though, as a towering tripod ripped through the trees not long after. This … vehicle, I guess … seemed nearly as tall as the trees and had a hell of a time maneuvering. There was suddenly a cacophony of sounds all around me. I might’ve shouted, but I doubt it would’ve been heard through the heavy metal bending and the snapping of tree limbs. I hastened to get away before either this tall tripod or the small one with the thing in it came back to break my limbs as well. Or worse.

I got out of the woods without being seen, but not everyone was so lucky. I could see bodies on the street and more of the smaller tripods down the road. The storm was keeping the black smoke down and it wasn’t irritating me as much. Not for lack of trying by the things operating the tripods. They were still expelling the black smoke even though it only billowed for a moment before becoming laden with rain.

The Martians (I saw the EAS after I got home. I had been calling them “oysterheads.” I know that sucks, but I never claimed to be good at naming things.) were using some of the leg-arm things on their vehicle things to pick up bodies and cram them into metal cages that had been attached to some of the taller tripods. One of the grabber-legs arched down and hoisted a woman off of the street. She started screaming. She continued to scream until it became a hacking, sputtering cough. The Martian operating the little tripod dragging her to a cage didn’t seem to care when she passed over its body while screaming and coughing and spraying its ugly jelly body with spittle.

I almost wish I hadn’t remembered that I still had the binoculars in the deer stand. I further wish I didn’t use them. I still couldn’t recognize the woman. She had chemical burns on her face from the black smoke, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as that person I pulled out of the smoke by the cornfield. I hesitate to record what I witnessed. But I must if there’s to be an account of what’s been happening in our sleepy little town tonight.

The Martian stabbed the screaming woman in the throat with a tentacle and began … sucking. I saw the tentacle bulge and the bulge moved like a cartoon straw. It was drinking her blood and it shone as it drank. The copper and purple splotches moved with a fervor and the whole creature glistened like when sunlight catches the crushed glass in asphalt.

I have to believe it enjoyed what it was doing. It made me sick and I threw up the funnel cake I had at Millard’s farm. When I finished and composed myself, I saw I had alerted the Martians to my whereabouts so I quickly made a mad dash. I trampled through the daffodil field and slid down the bank to Sycamore Creek. I managed to slow my descent enough to enter the water without making a splash. I stayed below the surface of the creek for as long as I could hold my breath. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and surfaced, the Martians weren’t there. They left their black smoke, though. It tingled my skin and tickled my sinuses, but it was nowhere near as potent as the first time I encountered it. I do believe, now, that it’s been diluted by the rain. I had no desire to test this hypothesis, so I ducked below the surface again and tried to swim. I didn’t get far because I had to swim upstream so I wouldn’t get carried to Mënëpèkw Lake. My arms and legs and lungs were burning, so I had to haul myself out of the creek. I could still hear the calliope of the Harvest Festival and the echoing strain of the metal from the lumbering tall tripods, but I felt safe enough to try to make my way through town and toward the residential area.

Towards home.

BANG!

A gunshot rang out over the screeching metal of the tripods, the screaming of the captured, and the cacophony of cheerful music crashing out of the Harvest Festival in Founders Square.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

I didn’t know who was firing the gun and I kept my head low. I crouched-walked along debris, trying to keep myself covered from … everything, I guess. There was a clatter of metal on asphalt. I chanced a glance toward the sound and saw a bedraggled silhouette loading a fresh magazine into a gun. As I squinted to try to see things better, I recognized the shape of a smaller tripod in front of the silhouette. The tripod wasn’t moving. In fact, it looked slumped and tumbled on the ground.

I wanted to make myself known without finding myself on the receiving end of the gun. Nobody that I knew in town owned a handgun. There was too much rigamarole around owning one. The same wasn’t true for hunting rifles and shotguns. Even I own a hunting rifle. I saw the amount of hoops you had to jump through for that alone and got a taste for just how much more of a headache the paperwork for a handgun would be if I were so inclined.

This left me with three thoughts. Either this artilleryman was someone with the wherewithal to obtain a handgun, someone who found a discarded gun, or a police officer. I chanced another look and the silhouette had let more light illuminate things that were previously obscured by shadow. I saw the torn pant leg was a navy blue with a gold stripe. I saw the untucked shirt with three gold chevrons on the sleeve. I saw Baxton’s face. And he saw mine.

I won’t repeat the conversation we had over the bleeding (was it the Martian’s blood or the blood of its meal? Or both?) corpse of the Martian lying lifeless in the crumpled tripod. A good share of what Baxton had to say was, crazed, to put it politely. This was the first Martian he had killed, but he told me how he witnessed his officers, Rourke and Velez, get vaporized by some kind of a heat-ray from a tall tripod that hatched from the thing that crashed in the field. He was with Dave Onsen from Channel 4 News and they both escaped into the corn maze. They tried their best to stay together to get away from the ray and the smoke and the sounds of even more things climbing out of the vessel. They got separated, though. For all anyone knows, Dave is still lost in the corn maze. It’s honestly not surprising, but hopefully he is so very lost that not even the mindless meandering of the black smoke can find him. We can only hope.

Baxton carried on talking about how we had to take the fight back to the Martians. We had to get any weapons available and fight them. Shoot them. Beat them … beat them. We had to beat them and save the town, save the planet. I told him he was mad. I told him he would be no good as a one-man army and we had to wait for the actual military to come to our aid. Surely, someone higher up knew something, but his eyes held the haunted look of a man who saw far too much and didn’t know what to do about anything. Shell-shocked, I think is the term. I did my best to keep Baxton calm, but he was in a right state and waving his pistol around like he could shoot the next meteor to breach our atmosphere straight out of the sky.

In the distance, I saw the familiar shape of one of Corner Lunch’s large windows turn black. Someone had shut off the light. Someone. People had to be there. Perhaps someone that could help me talk Baxton out of this suicide mission he was planning. I told him what I saw and he seemed interested in more people, at the very least. So we made our way to Corner Lunch. It was slow-moving, though, because about that same time we saw a tall tripod lumber down the road. It seemed attracted to the flashing lights and sounds from the Harvest Festival. Corner Lunch isn’t all that far away from Founders Square, but it was our only chance.

Getting to Corner Lunch was a hassle. At least three times, I had to grab Baxton’s arm and pull him into shadows or stop him from trying to take on a Martian. The man is incensed. I promised him I’d treat him to a strawberry shake when this all blows over (I didn’t have the heart to say “if this all blows over” and ruin any chance of compliance).

A lot of people were huddled up in Lunch. Marge was doing her best to maintain some kind of creature comforts by providing people with hot coffee and tea. I recognized Father Brennan sitting at table with his hands wrapped around a steaming mug. He has always been such a calm, stoic man, and even in the face of this alien invasion no emotions betrayed his demeanor.

A small crowd had gathered around Father Brennan and I got the feeling that I had interrupted some kind of a sermon. After I asked Marge about some strawberry ice cream for the Sergeant and got a funny look (understandable), I joined the crowd to listen to Father Brennan.

He was silent for a long time. Someone at another booth on the other side of the room sneezed and the sound was so loud that I feared it would shatter the windows. Everyone turned to look at him, except for Baxton who was slowly pouring a little cup of coffee creamer into a dish with ice cream and was absent-mindedly mashing the two together with a spoon. The person that sneezed profusely apologized and said they were getting over a cold.

Eventually, the panic subsided and Father Brennan cleared his throat to speak. It wasn’t too different from the sermons I’ve heard when attending church. He spoke of hope and faith. He told us that he had heard from the powers that be that this was not our time to perish. I didn’t know how much I believed him, but plenty of others seemed to take the words to heart. Who am I to judge? I’m just the local postman that has been trying to warn everybody about the weirdness in town for a long time.

That sounds bitter. I’m not bitter. I know most of what I write about on this site is most likely nonsense and I’m overenthusiastic about things. But, that said, Martians have crash-landed tonight. So, who is really to say what’s real and what’s not. I have my beliefs and so does Father Brennan. And so does everyone else in town.

That said, my faith isn’t so strong that I was willing to go along with Brennan when he suggested a pilgrimage from Corner Lunch to the Church of the Living Word. A good plenty of folks were on board for that trip across town, though. I didn’t want to tell Brennan that he was crazy and putting people at risk. I thought it really hard, though.

About half of the people in Corner Lunch picked themselves up to follow Brennan when it looked like the coast was clear. I wished them luck and told them everything that I already discovered from my time out in the fray. The other half, Baxton included, opted to stay in the relative safety of the diner.

I decided to make my way home and went on my own alone once more.

The trek home was strange. I avoided the tall tripods fairly easily by keeping to shadows. I got out of the town center and began making my way into the residential area. My house isn’t a far walk from town, but I was making painfully slow progress.

As I neared Towhee Lane and my house, I saw another small tripod. It was in the middle of the street beneath a streetlamp. Rainwater was filling the basin and poured out over the side as it lay toppled on the ground. I considered that maybe this Martian was from a scouting party and had ventured away from town center in search of more humans to dominate, capture, and consume.

But what happened to it?

Why wasn’t it moving? Why was it on the ground like the one that Baxton had shot? I had to know more even though I knew it was foolish to get close.

Like an idiot, I approached it. It’s large eyes, now cloudy and rimmed with red, turned up to stare at me as I got closer. Tentacles reached up feebly before slapping back down with a wet thwack against its body. The color was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Where the first one I had seen had rich colorations, this one was remarkably pale. Even more disgustingly, the mottled colors moved in a sluggish, erratic display underneath what seemed to be a sheen of some kind of mucus-like substance.

In a wretched attempt at gaining the upper hand—tentacle—it managed to engage a lever that dispelled more of the black smoke as it stared up at me. But the smoke first had to force its way through the water pouring over the edge of the basin and was then further battered by the torrential rain. The smoke barely lifted past my ankle and I felt a sense of pity for this creature.

How curious the pair of us must have looked staring at each other beneath that streetlamp in this downpour. The black smoke all but washed away. Its clouded eyes held my gaze. Its tentacles lifted less and less until they little more than trembled across the lip of its carriage or over its body. The pulsations of its mottled flesh quivered and the shapes moving across its form slowed and paled even more. I only heard it ever create a single noise from some kind of damnable internal organ or vestige of its anatomy. Slick and wet, stifled under its mass and, quite possibly, only a phantom of a sound created in my own mind to make sense of what I was witnessing. But it appeared to sneeze. The body wracked and convulsed in tandem with the slick stifled noise. And then it lay still. I took a tentative step closer. I leaned in. Its clouded eyes held no sight. The mucus-like substance covering its body sloughed off in the rain and flowed with the rain water into a nearby drain. Its body did not replace this viscous coat. It was dead. It appeared to sneeze by my human approximations. And then it died.

I really wish I had bought a camera.

I left the body in the street and returned home. As much as I would like to have brought it with me for some kind of proof of the event, beings that I still don’t own a camera, I know that would be foolish. I might have some out-there ideas, but I’m no fool.

This brings us to the very present. Once I got inside and dried and changed, I ensured everything was shut and locked and that the lights were all off. The only source of light is the glow of my monitor and I’m sure it can’t be seen from the outside. If you have read this far and haven’t heeded my advice at the beginning of this record shut and lock your doors and turn off your lights!

I don’t know what’s going on with Sergeant Baxton, but I hope he and Marge and the rest of the survivors are safe in the Corner Lunch. Likewise for Father Brennan and his flock. I hope they made their way safely to the Church of the Living Word. I can assure you all that I am safe at home and I hope the best for everyone else in town. I wish there was more I could do, but … really … what could I do? I’m just a postman.

Moreover, I think I’m starting to come down with something. I don’t know if it’s from swimming in the creek or being out in the rain all night or what. But I feel the coming of a headache and my sinuses hurt. I have to hope that word got out about what’s been happening in Yellowshade tonight. I think that might be the case because either whatever is starting to drag me down is affecting my hearing or I might hear the hint of jets in the distance. Maybe our salvation is truly at hand.

But I don’t feel well and I need to lie down. With any luck, I’ll have something to post tomorrow.

Good night, good luck, stay safe.