Discovery of Humanity

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November 1946

     An angry 11-year-old Thaddeus Millan shirked his morning chores while wandering the periphery of the moonshiner's camp. The older men drank too much 'shine the night before and looked poorly, and Thaddeus knew well enough to avoid them in the mornings. A dull gray light clawed its way over the cloud-covered mountains to the east, bringing a soft, secretive glow to the surrounding forest. Breakfast would come soon, so he passed the time listening to crackling sounds made by his hand-me-down boots as they shuffled through the crisp foliage that covered the ground. Tall for his age, his pants and shirt were well patched, but the wool coat, buttoned up to his neck against the chilly fall weather, kept him warm. Squirrels foraged in the late fall leaves, and chirping came from the few remaining birds perched on bare branches. 

     Something changed, drawing his attention back to the woods. He stopped moving through the leaves and held his breath, concentrating intently. A quiet had fallen over the forest, which he knew was the sign of a nearby predator. Strange noises came from the trees; scraping, hissing, and hushed squawking. He was young but had been taught well by his father and knew forest sounds. These were not normal.

     His bright green eyes panned across the trees, expecting to find a hawk or owl. Instead, he discovered a faint shape perched on a branch in a nearby maple. The form showed the contours of the tree's trunk and limbs, but they were distorted, fuzzy. He watched the strange shape move to a higher perch, arms, and legs pulling it upwards.

     Thaddeus returned to the camp, moving quickly through the leaves. 

     "Where've you been?" his mother chided softly but with an undertone of malice. 

     Thaddeus did not look at her. Instead, he stepped up to his father and tugged on his sleeve. "Pa," he said, "there's something in the trees."

     "What you talking 'bout, son?" His father did not turn to look at him, just stared into the campfire while brushing his long, scraggly beard with one hand.

     "In the trees; there's something up there."

     "What's up in the trees?" his cousin Marne asked. At five years old, she was the youngest of the family.

     Thaddeus turned to her. "Some kinda shape. I can't make it out, but something's up there."

     Uncle Caleb was massaging his temples. "Quit lying, boy, or you'll end up in jail with your Uncle Jerry. Frank, set your boy straight."

     "That's right, Thaddeus," Uncle Daniel chuckled, "Your uncle Jerry's in jail cause he lied about stealing a man's automobile."

     "Don't tell me how to raise my son, Caleb," his father replied, still staring at the fire. It became dangerous when Frank Millan spoke like that. His father did not look over at the rifle lying next to him. He didn't have to. His Pa was the eldest, and what he said went.

     "Boy never did have no sense, Frank," Caleb protested, not making eye contact. "Something up in the trees? This time of year?"

     His mother looked concerned and waved for Thaddeus to come to her. "Best you not bother them," she whispered. "Go gather firewood."

     "That's right, boy," his cousin Jackson said. He was three years older and always trying to boss Thaddeus around. "Go git that firewood."

     Thaddeus walked away from the warm campfire and began snatching branches from the forest floor, but he continued to hear the strange sounds. They now came from three different locations. Again, he looked for the vague shapes and spotted two more perched up high in the trees. When he returned with an armload of wood, his father and uncles stood, listening. 

     "You see where it's coming from?" his father asked.

     "Nope," Uncle Daniel replied, eyes sweeping the forest. "What do you think it is, Frank?"

     His father looked towards the trees, eyes squinting. "Don't know. It should be over there, but I can't see it."

     Thaddeus dropped the armload of wood at the camp's edge and pointed. 

"One of them is in that big maple," he called out, "half-way up. The other two are behind it."

     Everyone looked where Thaddeus pointed. 

     "I don't see nothing," Caleb declared and began to sit down.

     His father squinted. "I think I see... Wait... What in the name of..."

A streak of white light flew from the maple tree, punching through his father's chest and then into the ground behind. The only noises were a muffled thud, the sizzle of burned flesh, and the wheeze of air escaping from lungs. Pa looked over at Thaddeus with surprise, then tumbled backward. There was a pause as everyone looked at what had happened, then his mother screamed. Chaos followed as the others ran in different directions, shouting, cursing, crying. Thaddeus was frozen with fear.

     A second band of light came out of the trees, tearing through Uncle Daniel's thigh, who cursed and then dropped to the muddy earth. A third bolt drilled into the wounded man's forehead, silencing him. Uncle Daniel rolled onto his side, his dead eyes wide with shock—the light streak left a round, bloodless, inch-wide hole. 

     Hide, something screamed from within. 

     He unfroze, and the urge to flee took over. He turned and started to run, unsure where to go. He spotted the roof of the log enclosure where the two large, copper moonshine vats lay hidden. Others screamed as he ran. A glance behind showed his cousin struck through the abdomen by a light beam. 

     Thaddeus' knee collided with the log benches by the fire pit, and he stumbled. A streak of white light passed over his shoulder, crackling and snapping as it went by. It exploded in front of him in a cascade of dirt and dust. His shoulder began to ache, and he had trouble moving his arm. There was the smell of burned skin as he crawled the last few yards to the edge of the enclosure with one limb. He rolled down its low embankment just as another white-hot bolt of light landed behind him. The shoulder injury throbbed, but it was tolerable. He rested for a moment beneath the log roof that covered the two copper vats, eyes wide, searching for a place to hide from the killers. The nearest copper tank lay on its side facing him. It contained a small amount of cornmeal mash, still hot from the last batch.

     The narrow hole at the top of the tipped-over tank was open, and Thaddeus tried to crawl in, but the sides were too hot to touch. Despite the pain in his shoulder, he covered his hands with coat cuffs and squeezed through the hole into the large, shiny pot. Two inches of warm mash sloshed against his thick boots as he crouched low. An overpowering stench of alcohol vapors permeated the tank. He hoped he was well enough hidden.

     With dry, terror-filled eyes, he watched through the hatch as bolts of light came out of the trees and murdered his mother, Uncle Caleb, his aunts, and cousins. His entire family. He bit down on the coat cuffs to keep from screaming.

     When the massacre was over, two of the ghost shapes descended from the trees and approached the camp. The ground trembled when they walked. Now that he knew what to look for, and it was easier for his eyes to pick out the strange outline of their bodies. As one of them moved in front of a tree, the shape distorted the trunk, a little like the way mirrors in the Funhouse at the county fair made you look fat or thin, tall or short. The ghost shapes had arms and legs and a head. And they were big. Huge.

     The log roof began to creak and moan under the weight of something heavy, then a dull thud came from just outside the enclosure as the shape of a third ghost dropped to the ground. It stood a few paces before the boiler's opening then moved towards him with slow, deliberate steps. Its torso swiveled left to right, visually sweeping the enclosure. It paused at the open hatch, and Thaddeus held his breath. It made clacking sounds interspersed with a gentle hiss. The creature stared at him yet did not see him. He leaned further back until he rubbed against the tank's sides. The heat through his wool coat was barely tolerable.

     With a mind numb with shock and woozy from alcohol vapors, Thaddeus' thoughts began to drift away from the present. He found a strange fascination with the odd shape. Now that it was up close, he could tell it was a giant man in a suit that showed what was behind it. He wanted to reach out and touch the thing. Through the alcohol vapors, he was able to smell mint. After an eternity, the ghost moved away and searched elsewhere. Thaddeus began to breathe again, slowly in and slowly out. 

     He spied through the vat's hatch as the ghost-men finished searching the camp. The mostly invisible monsters grabbed each corpse and dragged it into the forest. The creatures squawked and hissed as they worked. They seemed much louder than before the attack. Were they bragging to each other, celebrating a victory? When they were out of sight, he counted to one hundred, then clambered out of the vat. He staggered as he attempted to stand, still wobbly from the tank's vapors.

     The wind came from the west and brought the sounds of the creatures, so he hid under the enclosure behind the vats, waiting for the killers to leave. His mind revisited the sights and sounds of his family's murder, and he felt a tremendous guilt at not being able to help, at having survived while the others did not. 

     After an hour, the wind began to make violent whooshing sounds. When it stopped, the pristine silence of the forest returned. He was sure the ghost-men had left the area. 

     Holding his injured shoulder, he crept out from under the enclosure roof and approached the source of the sounds. The killers left behind a trail through the leaves, which he followed. Crows cawed from over the crest of a slight rise. With dread and curiosity, he headed towards the clatter, picking his way through trees and brush. He crested the top of the slope where blackbirds fluttered above a vertical shape strung from a thick branch. Something gnawed at the pit of his stomach. The crows squawked and squabbled, lunging at each other, greedily pecking away. 

     He moved closer and recognized the shape as a strung-up carcass. It hung inverted, head hanging down, skin stripped away, exposing muscle and rib cage. Beneath the form, a mound of offal hardened in the crisp leaves. He approached further, and as the trees gave way to a small clearing, he saw that the carcass wore boots. Other bodies, hidden from view behind the first, hung from a rope strung between two trees. They were lined up in a row. He counted ten. His family. They were strung up, stripped, skinned, gutted, flayed.

     Thaddeus fell to his knees and wept for the first time since it all started. Great torrents of pain welled up from deep within, and he began to scream. He raged at the ghost-killers for the slaughter they had wreaked, at his father and uncles for the abuse they had inflicted on him and his cousins, for the mother who loved him and was taken too soon, for the mindless murder of his family. The rage poured out, expelled from him in a torrent of wailing.

     When finally exhausted, he shook his head and stood, turned away from the atrocity, and headed back to the moonshiner camp. He knew what he had to do. 

He would get a shovel and start digging.