Simon started running toward his car. “Something is out there,” he yelled waving his arms like a crazy man. Charles stopped the car and Penelope rolled down the window.

“What is it?” she asked. Simon barely heard her over the large beats of his heart. He took a moment to look behind him and saw the shadow approaching. It was difficult to judge its speed. When he looked at it, it did not appear to be moving at all, the same way as a train did not appear to be moving when directly approaching you. Simon continued running toward the car.

From the look on Penelope’s face, she had realized that something was wrong. Simon felt his button-down shirt flapping free of his pants. He did not worry about it as he ran toward his car. He did not bother looking back. The path of his flashlight, which zigzagged around the ground as he pumped his arms trying to get his legs to move faster was mesmerizing to Simon. He did not realize how quickly he covered the ground until he was standing at the car door. Penelope had opened the passenger-side door and had jumped into the backseat. Simon slid in to the seat.

“Go!” he yelled before he was fully in the seat. He heard the front wheels squeal as he knew Charles had slammed the accelerator to the floor. The car accelerated from a complete stop and barreled down the road toward town.

“What is it?” Charles yelled over the roar of the engine.

“Concentrate on driving,” Simon said. “We’ll talk when we get to town.” Simon was looking out the window for the dark shape he had seen. It was more difficult to see into the distance hat he was inside the car. It did not surprise him that Penelope had not seen the shapes in the distance. Simon rolled down the window and continued looking, going as far as sticking his head outside the window. They were passing cars pulled into the ditch at a surprisingly fast rate. He did not, however, see the large shape that had appeared to be moving toward him earlier.

When Simon saw nothing in the distance, he began to doubt whether he had seen anything at all. It was dark and he knew that the night was apt to play tricks on someone who was as stressed as he was. He had been looking for something, he knew. Perhaps it had been a figment of his imagination. The large shape could have been a barn or house. He tried to remember how it moved. How it appeared to grow as it approached him.

The engine sounds as quieted as the car cruised along at a rapid seventy miles per hour. Simon searched through the windows in the car but was unable to locate any large masses moving toward the car.

“Can you tell us what is going on?” Charles asked. He had one hand on the steering wheel, and his body was turned almost completely to the side. At this speed, Simon was not sure he was comfortable with Charles not watching the road. He had driven with Charles often enough to know that this was ordinary for him. He was a good driver who did not think much of other people’s lives. At least, that’s what Simon had always told Charles about his driving habits.

Simon continued to stare out the windows. He kept his focus completely on searching the darkness for any movement. He knew he should try to explain, but he was not comfortable yet. He needed to ensure his quickly beating heart that this was really over. That he had not seen what he thought he had seen. That his car was not about to be inside the jaws of an oversized beast of unknown origins.

“I saw something,” Simon said simply.

“You will have to do better than that,” Penelope said. He felt her hand on his shoulder, and it was clammy and shaking. Then he realized that it was not her hand that was shaking but his entire body. He took a few calming breaths, but before he was calm, he again stuck his head outside the window, looking in vain for any movement that would explain what he had seen earlier.

“There is nothing there,” Penelope said. “I was looking where you were looking earlier, when you freaked out. I did not see anything.”

“You did not see that large thing in the distance?” Simon asked. “The monster—because I do not know what else to call it—the monster that looked large enough to take a bite out of a car? It is funny, because I did see it. And it scared the crap out of me. Now do not go and tell me what I did or did not see.”

Penelope seemed taken aback by his speech. Before she responded, Charles chimed in with calming words. “Simon, calm down,” Charles said. “She was just trying to help, and trying to figure out why we are driving eighty miles an hour down this one and half lane country road, surrounded by ditches on both sides, with cars pulled off to the road. It is almost as if those cars were driving eight miles an hour down this country road and lost control. Perhaps that is it.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Simon responded. “You saw the bite mark at the front of those cars. You know something strange is out there, something that can drag cars into ditches. Why is it so strange when I actually see that thing? Now, let me continue my watch. I want to make sure that whatever it is I saw does not follow us. I do not want our car to end up in the ditch like those other cars.”

And with that Simon jumped into the backseat. Penelope switched to the front seat. Simon rolled down the two windows and moved frantically between them, looking for his imaginary monster. He was not sure what he expected to find anymore. He barely registered the discussion between Charles and Penelope in the front seat. They spoke in a whisper, and Simon was sure it was about him. The air did not seem to fill his lungs and he breathed deeply trying to fill his lungs.

“Can I slow down now?” Charles said, clearly not for the first time, as the volume was above what was necessary to hear over the sound of the screaming engine.

“What?” Simon asked. “Yes, sure, slow down. We should be getting close to town.” Simon looked out the window, and saw that cars were no longer pulled off into the ditch. There was not much of a ditch left on either side of the road. The road expanded, as Simon remembered it would, as the road grew near to the town.

Lights appeared at the side of the road, and the asphalt was illuminated. Charles released the gas pedal and the car slowed to forty miles an hour, which seemed a crawl after the high-speed run it had had. The lights of the town appeared off to the horizon. Signs for turn offs to the road appeared, and small roads, some dirt and some paved, veered into the dark distance. The lights continued along the road, but the smaller roads were not illuminated.

With the town still a few miles away, Simon felt the car slowing suddenly. Simon was intent on looking outside the windows for signs of the monster. While he was moving way beyond where he originally saw the monster, he had not given up on the thought that at its size, it would not take it long for it to catch up with the car.

“Simon,” Charles said from the front seat. “You need to see this.”

Simon turned to the front and looked out the windshield. On the side of the road was a large red contraption. He did not have another name for it. It was huge. It was some sort of contraption. At first he thought it was the skeleton of a building. It was only when he saw the wheels that he realized it moved somehow. Parked next to the contraption was a small truck. It did not look like a real truck. Instead, it looked like a small toy, perhaps a child’s pickup truck. From the size of the contraption, the first thought that came into his mind was the Transformer movie that he had recently seen.

“What is it?” Simon asked.

“I think we found the monster that was moving those cars,” Charles said. “Do you see the arm coming from that vehicle?” Charles pointed out of the windshield. Simon looked beyond the oversized wheels and building-sized frame. Nearest to their car, he saw what Charles was talking about. A large hooked arm came out of the contraption. The arm itself looked larger than a small building. It looked large enough to pick up a car and move it.

“That thing is huge,” Penelope said, stating the obvious. She opened the door and stepped out of the car. It was impossible to see the entire contraption from inside the car.

“We should be careful,” Simon said. “We don’t know if those cars were voluntarily moved by that contraption.”

“I am supposed to be the paranoid person here,” Charles reminded Simon. “I do not see any people around. It is night time. Whoever drives or moves or directs that thing is probably safely in bed. I need to get a closer look. What does it look like out there, Penelope?”

Penelope did not answer.

Simon opened the door and found Penelope staring slack jawed at the contraption. From inside the car, the contraption had looked big. But from outside, standing near it, it was huge. It was as large as a house. It was also moving slowly. It had two large arms. The one Simon had seen from the car was not moving. There was another one on the other side that was moving very slowly. At first, he thought it was moving in the wind. It took him a while to realize that it was not the wind that was moving it. It was moving of its own volition. The contraption rumbled loudly. It was not the sound of a construction engine. The rumble included a high pitched whine along with a heart thumping rattle.

They heard Charles’s door open and heard him exclaim. “That thing is huge.”

“And it is moving,” Penelope said, breaking her silence.

“It is not particularly fast,” Simon said, realizing as he did that not only the arm but the wheels were moving very slowly. “I have seen these large vehicles in the past, like the one that moves the space shuttle to its launch pad. It moves very slowly, sometimes a few feet in an hour. This must be something similar. It seems strange that it could move those cars along the road at this speed.”

“I think we have found your monster,” Charles said. “This should put your mind at ease. There was nothing back there.”

“This does not explain the cars on the side of the road,” Simon said. “Why would a perfectly good, new car be moved by this contraption and dumped in a ditch a few miles away? My mind is not at ease. My mind will not be at ease until we know what is going on in town. What would a contraption like this even be doing in this town?”

“The mysteries keep building up,” Penelope said, agreeing at least in principle with Simon’s statements.

“I do love a good mystery,” Charles said. “Even if it is as poorly planned and written as this one. I am not sure why you even go on with the telling.”

“Sometimes you need to move forward to see if what you are aiming for is something that you really want. For me, right now, I cannot say it is so or not so.”

“Then let’s get back in the car and head to town,” Penelope said, breaking into the weak dialogue. “We will find out what is going on in there once we are there. Perhaps we will move forward with this.”

Word count: 2,048

Total words: 24,812

Words remaining: 25,188

I am rapidly approaching the midway mark of this year’s marathon. Things happen regrettably slow in my story. At this stage, I don’t have much hope for what I have written or what I will write. I guess at a certain point, value or content doesn’t mean much. I am way passed that point. I will keep pushing forward until the end. It’s the least I can do.