2 Minutes to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  lightning foot jenkins

  This is the tale of a famous blues man, named Lightning Foot Jenkins from the 1930’s in America’s deep south, and how he came to be.

  Lightning flashed like a divine sword slashing through the midnight sky as rain poured down in buckets, on the night of his birth. Inside a small cabin just outside of Monroe, North Carolina, a young mother screamed as contractions violently seized her. While her mother wiped beads of sweat from her forehead, Laurie Jenkins gave one final push before passing into unconsciousness. Her head, drenched with sweat, fell limp on her pillow as the boy, her most precious love, came into the world. His mother named him Lightning Foot, because as the midwife was holding him high a bolt of lightning shot through the window, striking him in the right foot. That random rod of electricity passed safely through him and into the midwife, sending her crashing into a lump on the floor. She held the baby in her arms, protecting him from the fall, and although she was unharmed her hair turned forever white that day.

  Lightning was a special child and his family knew it from the very beginning. By the age of six he had already learned to play the banjo on his own and was writing blues music. Lightning’s songs entertained the people of his little neighborhood, but his lyrics lacked the hard edge other blues musicians had mastered as they wrote from their pain. In 1929, Lightning became a teenager and many of the families he knew, including his own, had been hit hard by the Great Depression. With no work to be found and no money in his pockets he had to do something to help his mother and little sister, a beautiful baby who had come into the world two years before the bottom fell out of the stock market.

  Lightning struck out on his own traveling by foot from one town to another playing every jook joint and dive that would let him in. Sometimes, he was only paid in alcohol, but when they gave him money he sent it home to help the family. One day, when he came home from a long stint on the road he found out that tuberculosis had taken his little sister. His daddy running out on them when he was a baby had been tough, but Lightning had never known him. Losing his sister at such a young age was a hard pill to swallow. It was the first time he had ever had to face the death of someone close to him, and that was the day he discovered his pain.

  He wrote some songs about his sister called Gone Too Soon, and Lord Help Me. Those soulful, heart-wrenching tunes caught the attention of a man named Gordon Freebush, a talent scout and A&R rep for Deep South Records one night at a small bar. In a strange twist of fate, Gordon’s car had broken down half a mile away, and while he waited for a mechanic, Lightning Foot Jenkins began to play. Gordon waited for Lightning to finish his set, and then walked over to his stool.

  “Mr. Jenkins, My name is Gordon Freebush, and I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  “Mister, I don’t know you, but you can buy me drinks all night if you like. Alcohol helps me play better,” laughed Lightning.

  “I like the way you play, and I want to record your sound,” he waved for the bartender. “Does that sound like something you might also be interested in?”

  While Lightning smiled, and nodded Gordon ordered them two Johnny Walker doubles.

  Lightning recorded Gone Too Soon, and a string of other songs that became instant hits, but due to poor management and a non-existent contract with the record company, Lighting Foot Jenkins only saw pennies to the dollar on what he could have earned if he had only known about legal contracts. He had learned another hard lesson: the world will run you over if you let it. Through the nineteen thirties and early forties he continued to play his music, his way, but never achieved the notoriety he felt he deserved. Lightning Foot Jenkins would, however, become a myth and legend one fateful rainy night in Jacksonville, Mississippi. Three men entered the bar he was playing in and sat quietly in the corner ordering one drink after another. They were dressed in nice suits, and looked like they belonged in a fancy nightclub, not a dive like the Rusty Clam. Dave Keys, the bartender, had been watching them with one eye all night though, and once Lightning finished his set he realized that the only people in the place were he, Dave, and the three mysterious men sitting huddled around their drinks.

  “Hello, fellas. Looks you guys are the fan club,” Lightning smiled, nervously.

  He began to sweat as the three men glared coldly at him, and then turned their attention to Dave.

  “You go on back and tell Big Jim I’m going to pay him. OK. The money’s gonna’ be there next week. Now, can I buy you guys a drink or nine?” Dave smiled nervously.

  “You owe us money right now, Dave,” said the biggest man in a purple suit.

  “Tell Jim I’m good for it next week. I promise. Now please, have a drink. On the house?” Dave was near tears.

  Lightning had never been one for violence, but being a poor kid from the south had taught him that you had to keep your head on a swivel. He carried a .45 pistol in his coat for just such occurrences, and before the man in purple could produce his pistol Lightning stood from his stool, pulled his gun and shot the man one time in the chest. Mr. purple suit fell dead to the floor before his friends could react, and that’s when Lightning let one more rip into the man closest him in the booth. The dead man’s head slumped forward, knocking several shot glasses to the floor in a clatter of broken glass. Lightning almost got off another shot, but the remaining man, dressed in a green suit, had enough time to collect himself and produced a weapon of his own. Lightning felt the hot, stinging burn of a .357 round puncture his abdomen as green suit stood and began rapid-firing. Four shots hit him before Dave Keys, used his shotgun hidden behind the bar to fire both barrels at his remaining enemy.

  The man flew backward like a psychotic marionette, and the back of his head left an indentation on the wall. Lightning fell to his knees and then rolled over on the ground as Dave ran around the bar to his side.

  “They were meant for me. Why’d you do that, man?” Dave cried, holding Lightning’s head.

  The light had begun to take an almost ethereal quality as he lay there bleeding out on the bar room floor. His breathing labored and consciousness flickering like a strobe. Lightning could not answer. Just like the night he was born thunder roared outside and rain poured down in sheets as he drifted away. Lightning left behind a legacy of music that was arguably some of the best blues to come out of the south during that period, and to those who knew him well he was greatly missed. Dave Keys never forgot what Lightning had done for him, and when he turned his luck around and became one of the wealthiest men in the area, he started the Lightning Foot Jenkins Music Foundation for Underprivileged Children. It still exists today.

  up on the mountain

  Two friends spend a fateful night in the mountains, stalked by an ancient evil. Will either survive?

  Ben had broken his foot three weeks before the camping trip with Jacob. Stubbornness and a misplaced sense of adventure would never allow him to cancel a trip they had planned for months. Hobbling around for weeks, and making a point not to walk outside of the air cast provided by the doctor had become a daily grind. He refused narcotic pain pills, preferring instead to smoke the occasional joint for pain management.

  Now, here they were together again after too many years apart, living in separate states. Separation is a natural phenomenon with people, not unlike the natural entropic dissolution that occurs in all manmade structures. Ben felt strange seeing his friend after such a long period of time, but it felt familiar, too. Earlier in the day it had been somewhat warm with the sun shining down on both men as they made camp. But that was a few hours ago and it was technically still winter in the mountains. The wind had picked up, and with a temperature drop of twenty degrees shortly after sundown. It was going to be a long night. After they collected enough firewood for the night and got a decent fire going, and they settled in with a case of beer the two men began to trade spooky stories.

  “You ever hear of the two teenagers parked up on Lover’s Lane making out, and narrowly escaping death?” Ben asked.

  �
�No, what about it?”

  “Well, the story goes like this. There was a runaway mental patient named Raymond Hollie, and because his hand was severely mangled by a piece of farm equipment he had this hook for a hand. So, anyway, these two kids are making out and a report goes over the radio that this guy has just escaped from a mental institution, and he’s on the loose. Well, the last place the police saw him heading was toward Lover’s Lane. The kids, well, they’re kids and sex is more important than some supposed madman running around in the woods, so they ignored the warning. Besides, they were inside a car, what could happen to them?” He shrugs.

  “Right, but if he was in a mental inside a mental institution why would they let him keep the hook?” Jacob asked.

  “Jesus Christ, man. You have got to suspend your disbelief or this is never going to get told,” said Ben.

  “Sorry, maybe he picked it up at a hardware store outside the nut house.” Jacob rolled his eyes.

  “Thank you. So, anyway. The night’s over, they’ve had their kicks and the guy drives his girlfriend home. Well, when he goes around to her side to let her out, there’s a hook hanging around the door handle.”

  Ben sat silently with his eyebrows raised, waiting to see Jacobs’s reaction.

  “Dude, that was terrifying and all, and if I was a fifteen year old girl that shit would have really scared me,” Jacob nodded. “I got one better, you ready?”

  “Go for it. Let’s see what you’ve got.” Ben said.

  “OK, this is the story of Charles Fredericks. He was an old eccentric who liked to dabble in the occult. He also had a fascination for Native American lore. Ritualistic sacrifices were also an interest of his. So, this guy is rich as hell and has the money to take all kinds of vision quests to god knows where. One day he runs into an old Indian on a reservation he happens to be visiting, and they guy begins to tell him about the skin-walkers.”

  “What’s a skin-walker?” Ben asked.

  “It’s a Navajo legend that just gets passed down from generation to generation. They’re large half man, half dog monsters that destroy every living thing in their path, especially campers.” Tony grinned in the campfire light. “This Indian guy hears that there is an old white man willing to give Navajo people lots of money to tell him about occult artifacts he can collect, and that type of thing. So the Navajo dude tells Charles that he can show him how to become a skin-walker. For a price.”

  “OK, why the hell would someone want to become one of those?” Ben asked.

  “I have no idea, I’m not Charles Fredericks. Anyway, time goes on and the man learns the way of the skin-walkers and it’s time for him to complete the transformative ceremony, but first, he has to kill someone close to him,” said Jacob.

  “What like a brother or something?”

  “Right, you must have heard about this, it was big news about ten years ago. He drives to his brother’s house and kills the whole family with a shotgun. When the cops show up this scene is a grizzly nightmare, and the worst crime in the town’s history.”

  “Jesus Christ! Is this just about over? This is kind of creeping me out and it’s damned dark up here.” Ben could feel the cold wind from a valley below gusting up the mountain, and he shivered.

  “I’m wrapping up, I promise!” Jacob laughed.

  A howling wind moaned through the trees as they sat huddled by the campfire, which was their only source of light for thirty miles.

  “Before the police can catch him he makes it back to the reservation, completes the ceremony, and disappears forever.”

  “So, he got what he wanted? He was a skin-walker?”

  “Yeah, that’s the rumor, and people have been mysteriously disappearing ever since. The incident was supposed to have taken place in the town outside this forest, south of here.” Jacob smirked.

  “You mind if we have quiet time and listen to some music?” Ben asked, nervously.

  “Go ahead, but keep it low. I like to listen for animals in the woods. You know coyotes.”

  The air cast offered very little warmth, and although he had doubled up on wool socks, Ben felt like there were spikes of solid ice stabbing his broken bone, which caused an agonizing throb. It was going to be a long night. Damn, it was dark out here, he thought.

  “One more of these and I’m done for the night.” Ben shook his empty beer can.

  “Agreed. It’s gonna’ be a cold night. You sure that bag you brought is warm enough?” Jacob asked.

  “I think so, but this foot’s gonna’ be cold regardless. It hurts like hell from all the hobbling around over roots and rocks.”

  Jacob nodded toward his foot.

  “I’ve got an extra wool blanket you can borrow”

  Ben nodded and the two finished the last two beers in their case. Ben looked up into the night sky and was amazed at how many stars were dotting the black. Billions of tiny lights signaling their position in the heavens. They had been there when the Earth was created. Having lived so close to the city his whole life Ben had never imagined there were so many of them right there, all the time, looking down on his planet. A meteorite flashed through the deep blackness while he drunkenly stared into the void. This brought a smile and became the last good memory from his trip to the mountains.

  “Alright, I’m out. Good night,” said Jacob. He stumbled over to the tree beside his tent and drained his bladder.

  “Night man. See you in the morning.” Ben replied.

  The two crawled into their respective tents and just before he was about to zip his tent shut Jacob appeared with the wool blanket he had promised. Ben thanked him, wrapped his foot and then lay back on the cold, hard ground. There was a root under his back but he was too drunk and tired to move very far, so he dealt with it. Besides his broken foot felt like a thirty-pound weight as he lay there praying for sleep. There was nothing to hear but the howl of the wind now, a lonely whine through the trees, causing them to dance and creak in the darkness. Eventually, sleep crept up on him, but the cold ground, fear of animals attacking him in the night, and the discomfort from his foot kept him somewhere between both worlds for hours.

  Sometime in the night he felt the presence of something in their camp. Ben awoke to the sound of a branch cracking nearby, and in an almost hypnotic state he unzipped his tent and peered out into the campfire area. What he saw took his breath away, and caused complete loss of control of his very full bladder. There was a seven-foot tall half man, half dog thing sitting by the campfire eating something that resembled a human leg. Ben wanted to scream. He absentmindedly put his hand on the butt of his concealed pistol and was about to draw it when the creature turned his way. It had red eyes that glowed with a heat like that of a wood burning furnace, and there was fresh blood running down the creatures fur covered chest. It considered him for a moment, then turned back to the fire and continued to eat.

  “You should get some sleep,” the monster said. It turned back around to eat.

  Ben complied, moved back inside his tent, and zipped it shut. He had been shocked into an almost hypnotic trance, and desperately wanted to erase the image of whatever that thing was out by their fire. He wondered if Jacob knew about this creature, then he thought about the leg the monster had been eating and shut his mind down. The words skin-walker flashed in his mind just before he passed out.

  Ben dreamed that he was alone in the dark forest, with only a small lantern to guide his way. The broken foot was healed, but he had no idea where he was. Ben was looking for someone, but could not remember whom, and then out of the darkness he saw a cabin. Ben’s eyes in the dream world were like camera lenses as he moved with deliberate caution toward a tiny light in one of the cabin windows. He closed the distance as fog rolled around his ankles, and crickets chirped. He could hear creatures of the night calling to each other; nocturnal coyotes were out hunting, yipping to each other across the forest. He came closer. The window was larger now, and he could nearly see inside the dimly lit window.

  The fog grew
thick around his legs and rose to waist height, giving the forest a graveyard-like atmosphere. Ben could see inside the cabin now, and saw a little old man sitting beside the fire reading a book. This man rocked back and forth for a moment, and then something began to happen. The old man jerked in his chair screaming, and dropped the book. His arms grew longer; his legs lengthened, and long sharp black claws extended from his finger tips. When his head reared back in agony Ben could see that his jaw had formed the maw of a canine, and his ears were growing into sharp points. The old man screamed in agony. The transformation complete, he stood, hitting the ceiling with his head, and howled. It was a long, low, mournful howl, like that of the cursed. The skin-walker threw open his front door, and walked right past Ben, vanishing into the nighttime forest.

  The next morning Ben woke to the sound of birds chirping in a nearby tree. His breath chuffing out tiny white clouds in the early morning chill. All memory of the previous night’s horror had been erased from his mind. His foot was frozen, and at some point in the night he had wet himself. He changed into dry clothes as quickly as possible to avoid hypothermia and hobbled outside to greet the new day. Instead, he was greeted by a horror scene. There was blood all over the campsite, and human body parts littered the scene like some kind of macabre junkyard. Ben went to Jacobs’s tent, only to find that his friend wasn’t there. He began to cry in fear for his life and for the loss of his friend. Ben’s limbic instinct kicked in and he looked around in every direction for where the killer might be. That creature was still out there and he had to get away, fast. In moments he was in his car and driving down the mountain, never to return.

  The official police report stated that there was a bear attack because of the massive amount of trauma to Jacob’s body. Ben was cleared of any suspicion after the investigation concluded, and although he never went into the woods again, those flaming red eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  the draco crystal

  When men from earth invade reptilian land on Mars for an ancient relic, will the price they pay for their greed be worth the toll in lives?