Apologies for the length of this story. It needs to be told in full, if I'm telling it at all. My nephew has persuaded me that this is worth posting, though I don't particularly want to go into it. The names have been changed.
At the time these events occurred, in January 2011, I was living in Inverness, in Scotland, owning and operating my own lorry as part of a fleet that I co-owned. I was recovering from New Year's Eve, which was far more enjoyable now that I lived within driving distance of my extended family. The fleet consisted of six lorries - we'd just split from a larger Edinburgh-based company - and the area in which we operated was small because of this. Obviously, I didn't exactly rush to accept a job that involved a week away from home in a part of the highlands that I barely knew. But it paid well, and I decided that it was my last assignment of that kind. From now on, as far as I was concerned, we operated in the Inverness area only. The other co-owner, my closest and oldest friend Euan, agreed on both counts.
All six of our lorries left Inverness to load the haul from Beauly on January 9th. Our group consisted of me, Euan, and four other drivers - Will, Iain, Mark and Stuart. All good friends of ours. In Euan's cabin was a representative of our client, Walt. He was an experienced driver in his own right, there to give advice. It was a round trip of several days - Beauly, Ullapool, a remote town called Tongue - I wish I was joking - and then back down across the Bonar Bridge. 250 miles, all told.
The first two days passed without incident. On the night of the second day, our troubles began.
A few hours' drive out of Ullapool, I realised with a jolt that it was night-time. Darkness had arrived unnaturally quickly, and the temperature had dropped again. Even in my cabin it was only around 8 degrees, with the heating cranked up. Snowfall started for the first time that day at about 10PM. According to Walt's map, there was a place we could stop half an hours' drive away. We never found it. I think we took a wrong turn, and so did Walt, but he couldn't be sure. It was too dangerous to press any further with the dire weather, so when we failed to find that place - or any sign of civilisation - we decided to start up a generator in the back of Will's lorry and pile in there, since it had the most room and no frozen goods. All seven of us sat there shivering all night. We didn't get much sleep, even before what Iain later referred to as "the incident".
It was 2 in the morning. I'd just made some soup for Stuart and myself. We were the only ones awake. Mark and Euan woke up and asked for some. I obliged, since we had more than enough to last us for the rest of the journey and we could always buy some more in Tongue. If they even had proper shops. For all I know, it's just a farm complex whose residents survive on shipments like ours. We never made it, so I don't know.
We left Walt, Iain and Will asleep and climbed out of the back of Will's lorry. They were actually too tired to notice the door clanging open and shut. We had to start the generator up again too; the stuffy atmosphere of body heat drained away in seconds when we opened the doors.
I had trouble negotiating the snowy ground on the path back to my lorry, where we kept most of our food, seeing as its contents were kept refrigerated anyway. I think that it was mostly stuffed chickens and peas in there. It was pitch-black, freezing cold and still snowing. Will and Mark's lorries were closest to the road, creating a kind of wall. Mine and Iain's lorries were the furthest from the road, arranged parallel to Will and Mark's. Euan and Stuart' s lorries were parked vertically in a line between the two, creating a kind of "H" formation. The lorries occupied a sagging, damp patch of turf by the roadside. On all sides but the road was a high, bare ridge. Further towards my lorry, it sunk a little to reveal a steep, rutted track that a tractor had used recently. By the light of day, you could see a tangle of bushes and trees that sloped quickly downhill. There was also a wide creek in that direction. Frozen over, of course.
My torch gave me a few metres of vision clear ahead. Euan was ahead of me. Stuart and Mark were behind. We occasionally staggered into patches of mud or broke through the ice into shallow puddles. By the time the beam of Euan's torch glanced over the side of my lorry, we were caked in filth and soaked to the bones.
That was when I heard a thumping noise from the rear of the trailer. I ran past Euan, who stood stock-still, and rounded the end of the trailer. One of the doors was open. I took stock of the contents inside the trailer - quickly and sloppily, given the circumstances - and found that one of the chickens was missing. Mark ran back and woke Walt, telling him about the missing product. Walt didn't seem particularly interested in this. He went straight back to sleep, but the rest of us sat in silence in Will's trailer for an hour after we finished our soup.
I heard the banging again in the morning - it woke me. At first, I thought that the mysterious thief had returned, but it was Stuart, and he was trying to start his lorry. We'd refuelled the day before. Something had gone badly wrong with the engine.
Euan took charge and tried calling the AAA, but there was no signal. The snow had stopped overnight, but the temperature remained dangerously low. Stuart suggested after an hour of waiting for nothing in particular that we follow the track, seeing as it was the only way our thief could have come from and escaped by. Me, Stuart and Will walked for an hour. The forest it led into was deathly still, and silent as well. Something was very subtly wrong, but we couldn't quite say what, even though we all felt it.
The trail went on for miles. Eventually we decided to turn back, as it was getting hard to negotiate and the frozen puddles were getting deeper. Most of them were concealed by snow. I had lost all feeling in my fingers by this point, so I happily agreed to turn back.
We were most of the way back to the road when Stuart stopped suddenly, and said, "Something is following us."
I span round. There was nothing behind us at first glance, but then one of the low-clinging, twisted trees moved and I realised that someone had just been standing there. I jogged over, and called out for them to show themselves. Needless to say, they didn't. I caught another glimpse of them, or at least of them moving. I couldn't describe what they looked like, but I was profoundly disturbed.
When we got back, Euan looked very scared. I asked him what was wrong and he wordlessly gestured to my lorry. The door was open. I looked inside, and Walt was in there, looking terrified. Euan climbed in and showed me the ransacked contents of the refrigerator units. A chicken had been stripped apart and lay next to where Walt was sitting.
The bones were left, splintered and broken, in a trail leading from the back of the trailer, round past the cabin, and up over the ridge. Snow had not yet fallen that day, so the footprints that accompanied the bones were clearly visible.
They were several pairs of them, and they were all barefoot. At least one of them was missing a few toes.
Submitted December 23, 2014 at 10:34PM by TheGeckoGeek http://ift.tt/1whMkg1 nosleep
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