INCIDENT AT LEHIGH TANNERY
By Stephen R. Bonniol
Author’s
note: In the summer of ’74, I along with five of my dearest friends, camped out
in the woods of a little town in Pennsylvania. We met up with Danny Baker’s
cousins and hung out with them for the day. At night, after they had left, we
saw a huge bright light in the sky. Something as big and bright as the sun. The
next thing we knew, it was the next morning. The six of us had no memories of
the entire night and in fact had about ten hours of missing time. This writing
is an attempt, however feeble, to recover or possibly unlock those memories or
at very least, provide an account of what may have happened based on the
documented occurrences of others before us.
After driving four or five hours from our
homes in Barrington, RI we found ourselves in the woods somewhere out in East
Fuckwad, Pennsylvania. It was a small township; Lehigh Tannery, that instantly
fostered comparisons to Mayberry RFD or perhaps the movie Deliverance. We drove
down dirt roads for a couple of miles, the houses slowly giving way to dense
forest. This was moonshine country! Without warning, Danny, who we all knew as
“Nutch” proclaimed, “This is it” and veered off the road and straight into the
woods. Wherever “IT” was, Danny was the only one that knew. He drove his
sky-blue Dodge van, a relic of the East Side YMCA slowly into the woods, slowly
running over one-inch sapling trees, that instantly popped back up in our wake.
He explained this was an old moonshiner’s road. It may have been used by an old
family friend named Judd, who made moonshine and brandy that would kick you
upside the head, but that is only a guess on my part.
In any case, after driving a half mile or
so into the woods, we came upon the remains of an old railroad bed, minus the
steel rails. Nutch parked the van and we piled out. Each of us had a sleeping
bag and not much else. We set off down the railroad bed and before long we came
to a steep embankment that led down to the present-day freight line. We
descended the embankment, crossed the tracks, and climbed up the slope to the
other side of the ancient rail bed. This part of the bed ended abruptly
approximately a hundred yards later as the land ended in a steep drop that led
down to what I assume was the Lehigh River. You could see that this place
probably had some serious white-water rapids in spring when the snow melted. To
our left stood the seventy-foot tall remains of an elevated train trestle, now
reduced to concrete pilings that led nowhere. Beyond that was an even higher
trestle that carried freight trains high up into the mountains. This was, or
had been, coal country. Other than that, we were in the middle of nowhere. This
was in fact, a perfect place to goddam disappear and never be seen again. Cue
the dueling banjoes from the movie Deliverance.
As the sun went down and hid its fiery
countenance below the western horizon, we bombed the freight trains. No, not actual
bombs, but rocks which we delightedly rained down upon the freight cars below.
These were trains of a hundred forty cars pulled by four diesel locomotives.
They were still rumbling by beneath us at the same time we could look behind us
and see the headlights of the engines climbing up and over the mountains. Nutch
warned us that we were “BUST CITY” i.e. in imminent danger of being arrested,
or worse.
“Watch out for the railroad guards,” he
warned us. “They don’t fuck around. They shoot first; Ask questions later!”
I think we gave Nutch a unanimous
“PFFFFFF! Yeah ok,” as we let loose with another bombardment of rocks onto the
heavily fortified freight cars below. This done, we headed back to the area
above the river, where we had a campfire and the promise of beans and hot dogs
prepared by “Chef Nutch.” He always did the cooking on the many road trip
adventures we went on. He fed us good and no one complained.
Around 9:00
or 10:00 we saw the light in the sky….
YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER THIS, EVER! YOU
CAN NOT WRITE ABOUT THIS.
FORGET THIS HAPPENED!
Without warning, we witnessed an enormous,
intensely bright light in the sky. It looked for all intents and purpose as if
a star had exploded. It was so bright; we could barely look at it. At the same
time, we couldn’t take our eyes off it. We stared in wild-eyed wonder, not
instantly aware of the sounds of something approaching us from the woods –
something BIG. After the briefest moment, we gained awareness of what was
causing the heavy footsteps and branches breaking, as an eight-foot hairy beast
emerged from the woods in front of us. In its hand it carried a tree, which it
had apparently just ripped from the ground. I was scared shitless. We all were.
I was shaking with fear and wanted to run. I must run, far, far away; to the
safety of my home.
YES. RUN! FAR AWAY AND NEVER REMEMBER
THIS PLACE OR WHAT HAPPENED
There would be no running though. Not this
time anyway. I heard Nutch utter a low growl as he often did when encountering
something sketchy or dangerous. This thing stood on two legs and could be
described with one word; bigfoot! Sasquatch if you prefer or possibly one of
“The Watchers” described in the Old Testament. Whatever it was, it still fills
me with fear forty-five years later.
The thing made it obvious that we were to
follow it. It got behind us and prodded us with the root system of the six-inch
diameter tree it held it its hugely muscled hair-covered arms. Doug took
offense to this and yelled out with righteous indignation, “HEY!” as it poked
him in the back. We were all floored as this strange, scary, gigantic primate
uttered a word in perfect English – “MOVE!” At this, we proceeded like scared little
children, silently submitting to the beast. This was too much for our delicate
brains to handle. We seemed to have no choice but to do as we were told.
Almost in some sort of trance fed by
terror, we proceded down the embankment and found ourselves at the river’s
edge. Up ahead, there was a light, a brightness on the ground set back from the
water in a small clearing that looked to be a campsite. This was what we’d seen
in the sky. God, I’m scared to write of this. Please don’t hurt me again. Please!
As we got closer to the brightness, it
became obvious it was a ship; a spaceship. It looked, to quote The United
States Navy, “Like a giant TicTac.” We were out of our minds with fear yet
proceeded closer and closer to it. The beast nudged us closer and closer to the
light, toward a door which now opened in the side of the craft. As if this
wasn’t enough to assault our reality the bigfoot spoke again, in perfect human
English. “They no hurt. Only test.” With this, it gave us one more nudge with
the root ball of the tree.
Then we were in the ship. My friends,
Nutch, Doug, Harry, Andy, Mike and I were now surrounded by beings from another
world. They were slightly shorter than us, had long spindly arms and legs, and
enormous bulbous heads. They had skin of grey and huge menacing almond-shaped
black eyes. Oh, those eyes! I remembered them. I’d seen them before, when I was
seven years old, in my bedroom. At that time, they had surrounded my bed, and
shined a bright light on me which paralyzed me and prevented me from screaming
as they did stuff to me. And now as these strange beings must have done the
same to all of us. I found I could not scream, but I could hear; not with my
ears, but with my mind. I could hear the whimpering of each of my friends;
could hear their very thoughts from deep within my brain as we were led to
examination tables.
“Thank you for bringing your friends,
Stephen.” A voice said.
“Fuck you Bonniol!” I heard Noonan say.
“Yeah, fuck you Bonn,” I heard Harris say in my brain. Then I heard, “NO, NO,
NO, over and over. I realized it was my own voice, my own terror speaking. They
did terrible, horrible things to us. They stuck needles up our dicks, and into
our balls. These weren’t some sort of pussy needles like they give you a shot
with. These were spikes, like 12 penny nails! They put something in our mouths;
some sort of implants were inserted into the roofs of our mouths. I sensed my
friends screaming in excruciating pain, mingled with terror. It almost makes me
cry, and tremble with fear just thinking of this. I didn’t cause this. Not my
fault.
DON’T REMEMBER THIS. LET IT GO.
“Please don’t do this to my friends. They
don’t deserve this” I said psychically. I heard/sensed my friends, my BROS
crying like babies. Grown men, in the prime of our lives, perched on the edge
of adulthood, reduced to crying little children. They seemed to be paying extra
attention to Mike and Andy. Maybe they somehow knew. Mike would be dead in four
years; Andy in eight or so.
Suddenly all hell broke loose. I heard
Andy scream in a voice that sounded inhuman as they jammed some huge needle
into his abdomen; to sample his liver, a voice told me. Andy was having none of
this though.
“Get the fuck away from me ya bastids!” he
screamed. He kicked out at the closest creature, hitting it square in the
midsection with both feet. These are fragile creatures, virtually devoid of
muscle mass due to living in space. This grey-skinned little freak of the
universe went flying across the room we were in and landed in an unnatural
heap. Its body was bent in half almost as if it were hinged in the torso. It
made no further movement and other beings picked it up and unceremoniously took
it away. Andy had snapped its spine. Go Andy!
Then, in answer to Andy’s violent
outburst, a bright light was shone upon us. As a seven-year-old boy, I had
thought it was a flashlight. It was no flashlight. It was nothing even remotely
benign as a flashlight. It was some sort of paralysis ray. I know now that this
beam; this ray; interfered with the synapses of the brain, effectively blocking
all muscle movement by blocking the very electrical impulses that commanded our
human muscles to move. Our bodies still had the ability to move. Our muscles just
weren’t getting the message. Our human WiFi was on the fritz. You Bastids!
Then I heard/sensed a cacophony of shouts
or silent, brain to brain outbursts from my friends as they gave (silent) voice
to their righteous indignation at being treated as little more than lab rats by
these fat-headed little freaks! Most prominent among these outbursts was the
voice of Danny Lee baker, “YOOOOOOOUUUUU GIIIIIIIIT! GIT, GIT, GIT!!”
Then there was another voice; this one
from deep within each of us:
“In the morning, after we have gone, you
will remember nothing. For your own safety, you will not remember anything from
this night but a bright light in your sky. You will think of it as a supernova.
Nothing more; nothing to be afraid of. We thank you for your cooperation as we
continue to upgrade your species. You are our progeny. We will return at a
future date.”
At this, there was now an incredible
rumbling sound I could feel it within my entire body as if the Earth was
shaking beneath us. I realized that I had my eyes clamped shut, possibly to
avoid the sight of these fearsome monsters. I opened my eyes to see Andy’s face
a foot away from mine. His eyes were as big as dinner plates. As the rumbling beneath
us got louder and more pronounced, he spoke one word, “TRAIN!”
We jumped up from our sleeping bags - no
clue how we’d gotten there; and dressed only in our underwear, we ran the fifty
yards or so to where a massive freight train now rumbled by. We bombarded the
freight cars, almost as if it was our duty to do this. We took no satisfaction
from this. Maybe we were somehow taking our aggressions out from the now wiped
clean memories of the previous night. In any case, we packed up, walked the mile
or so to where the van was and left. There was no campfire breakfast provided
by Chef Nutch. This was highly unusual as this was his self-appointed duty.
Instead, we stopped in the local town at a pancake breakfast sponsored by a
church. We paid two bucks for all we could eat. Usually ravenous, we barely ate
one helping of pancakes sausage links and juice and left. We didn’t speak much
on the way home. There didn’t seem to be much to say. Again – highly unusual
for us loudmouths. Whenever we did refer to this trip it was with one question,
“Hey, remember that supernova?”
We remembered that all right. That was all
we ever remembered.
THE END?
SRB –
7/27/19
