"Catch me if you can, Stevie!" Nicole screamed as she headed further out of site, deep into the depths of the wide open yard of the family ranch home.
The children had been playing all day on their parent's ranch in Northern Arizona. The sun was setting over the mountain tops as the young Stevie scrambled after his younger sister Nicole. The sky was a light pink and visibility amongst the ranch property was dimming. A curl of smoke rose from the chimney of the two story home as dinner was preparing on the stove top for the family of four. The children's parents from inside could hear the children playing tag as dinner cooked on the wood burning stove. The children's mother Janice slipped on her shoes to go outside and call for the children.
"Stevie! Nicole! Come on in now, children!" She walked the length of the porch with her right hand peeled out across the top of her eyes as she attempted to better see the innocent children running around the yard. She walked back and forth, squinting, trying to spot the children, but all she could see is a large empty landscape with light pink skies.
She ran back inside to see her husband sitting in his favorite leather arm chair reading through last night's newspaper and shouted, "Bill, I can't find the children. I heard them earlier, but now they're out of sight and I don't hear a peep outside!"
After rolling his eyes and taking one last toke of his wooden pipe, the middle-aged heavy set fellow in blue suspenders and a red tie and white shirt with black stripes got up and eased his way toward the kitchen making his way to the back door. He flipped the switch for the outside light and opened the inner door, peering through the screen door. His eyes motioned back and forth across the darkening, quiet landscape before him.
His wife, standing behind him, her arms braced on his back spoke.
"Bill, do you hear anything?"
Bill didn't answer, still focusing on the dead silence coming from outside. Janice asked again. "Bill do-"
"Shhh. Janice, I'm listen-" Suddenly, there was the sound of brush swaying to and fro. A perimeter of thin trees and brush make up the outskirts of their extended ranch home, though there was no wind to be had. They both knew that something out there, in the dark, on their very property was more likely the cause of the disturbance they just heard.
Bill turns his head in shock and looks Janice in the eye.
"Run inside and grab the largest flashlight we have; and a baseball bat from the front closet!"
Janice reacted fear, breathing heavy but followed her husbands orders, rushing inside for the needed items.
While waiting for his wife's return, he peeled his eyes, scoping the yard repeatedly left to right, left to right with nothing showing itself no matter how hard his efforts.
"Stevie! Nicole! Get back here now, or face the consequences! Lord knows you know better than to disobey your father! Now get back here!" Not a sound but the echo of his angry and desperate words followed his plea. He could hear the approaching foot steps of his frantic wife nearing the back door. Her hands full, she kicked the screen door open and handed off the items to her husband in a haste.
"Here, Bill. I've got the light and the slugger. Can I please go with you?"
He looked back at his wife. "Nah, Janice. You stay here in case those brats decide to return. I'll be back soon enough. Just keep an eye on things here."
Bill switched on the light and kept it aimed straight ahead with his left hand, the bat over his right shoulder. The further he got from the house, the darker the wide open spaces became. The house behind him grew smaller and smaller as he pressed forward. As silent as a mortuary at midnight, the land around him consumed the night. With no sign of any movement in the distance, he called hysterically for his children.
"Stevie! Nicole! Come out right now! Your fun and games are over! I mean it!"
He pressed on, swaying left, swaying right with his eyes peeled at all times. Prepared for any signs of movement or children's laughter. But aside from the occasional cool breeze in the desert landscape, there was not a peep to be heard.
Meanwhile back at their home, itself surrounded by nothing but dirt, rocks, and cactus the children's mother stood frozen at the back door, worried sick over the welfare of her children and husband, whose whereabouts she can only prey were alive and well. Dinner remained on the stove top, in danger of overcooking at this point. Distracted by the sudden disappearance of her children and now husband, turning down the heat on her stove must of slipped her poor, worried little brain.
Much deeper in the woods now, Bill growing more angry by the second continued his search deep into the middle of nowhere; the surrounding mountains growing larger and larger with the decreasing distance between himself and them. Not expecting to hear a peep from as much as a snake or lizard prowling the ground beneath him, the shuffling of little feet sounded off in the distance. Bill stopped frozen in his tracks, attempting to zero in on the direction from once it came. He turned his head left, and turned his head right, shining the flash light slowly across the entire area around him. Unsure of what to do, he held his ground, ducked down low, hoping to hear it again. A few minutes go by, but there is nothing.
Then suddenly, when least expected, the same shuffling of children's feet sounded as though it were running right beside him. Bill reacted almost immediately, shining the flashlight just beside him, but no one in sight, no foot prints imprinted in the ground justifying the noise in anyway. Bill was frozen with fear.
Back at the house, Janice continued to shout for her husband and children, with no hope for a response. With all the silence, she suddenly able to hear the boiling pot of stew on the stove top, and rushed in to tend to it. "Bloody hell," she yelled as she paced her way toward the stove. In her haste, she snagged her long white dress with her flat dress shoe, and slipped backwards, the pot in hand. In a matter of a second, she was sprawled out on the floor of her kitchen, covered with boiling beef stew, screaming in agony. Helpless to do anything about it. Her screams of agony slowly turned to agonizing soft moans as her flesh peeled away from her face, neck and upper torso.
Unaware of the events that conspired back at his family's home, this father, now more determined than ever decided to cover all the surrounding land he never dared venture out to before, screaming louder and louder for his children the entire way. Once again, he is able to hear tiny footsteps only paces ahead of him on the other side of a patch of brush at the base of the nearest hill in the dead lands. He rushed over, flash light in one hand, bat braced in the other. Using the bat to make his way through the brush, he found nothing. A look of serious frustration now took over his face.
"I've had more than enough of this! You two are such deep trouble when I get you home. This is YOUR LAST CHANCE, or you can spend the night out here, I really don't care anymore. I'm going to count to three, and if you two don't show yourselves, you'll know what wild life is really like. ONE TWO.."
And just as he said two, Bill heard a child's laughter and more shuffling just up ahead coming from behind some brush and trees trailing up the mountain side. He held his silence, awaiting further noise to help explain what he may of heard, but no other noise seemed to emerge. Fed up with all he's been through this evening he decided to barge his way towards where the noise came from, but what he saw, he could of never braced himself for...
