X Files - Cryonic - Chapter 1

Chris Carter, 1013 productions and the Fox Network are all big companies. I am just a small person. So don't sue me.

1

Trenthill Farm, Aurora, Buffalo

11:33 p.m., Monday

Gregory Knight dipped his small paintbrush into the jar of water and shook the paint out. As he screwed the top back onto the small tube of paint, he looked up at the clock on the wall. He hadn’t realised it was so late. Time flew when he was painting.

The night was silent. Everywhere was still - something you never got in the city. Gregory never noticed the unnerving silence of the night - thirty four years of living in the country was enough to see to that. His life suited him. It may have seemed unusual to some, as it was rarely necessary for him to leave his farm, and when such an occasion arose, a visit to the nearby town saw to every need. Of course, his wife had been different. Why she had not felt content on Trenthill Farm, he never understood. He often wondered whether they would still be married, had she still been living.

Greg rose from his chair sluggishly. He had better get to bed - he had to be up early to see to the animals. He turned back for a last look at his finished painting, and a smile crept over his face. It perfectly captured the mood of the hillside next to the farm in the morning, the haze on the hillside sparkling in the faint sunlight.

A thud at the small uncurtained window made him look up. A shadowy - but unmistakable - face loomed in the darkness. In contrast to the surrounding blackness, the lights from the farmhouse shone in the woman’s eyes, giving her the appearance of a wild cat.

Gregory’s heart leapt, and his mind spun. He tried to reason with himself, but could find no satisfying answers. Flustered, he raced to open the window, momentarily forgetting that it had been jammed shut for years. With a startled look, the face disappeared as the woman fled into the night.

He ran into the cluttered kitchen and took the hefty torch from on top of the fridge. Opening the heavy back door, Greg plunged himself into the night. Despite it’s size, the torch shone a remarkably helpless beam a few metres ahead of him.

“Rachel? Rachel!” Gregory shouted, running along the side of the farmhouse. There was no sign of the young woman, and as he approached the chicken shed, Gregory came to the disheartening conclusion that the figure had only been a momentary disillusion. His heart sank.

A black patch on the dusty ground made him stop, and as he cast his torch down, he was horrified at what he found.

A chicken carcass lay in a pool of it’s own sticky blood, chunks of it’s body torn out. It was too late to go for the rifle, the fox would already be long gone. The new latch on the pen had obviously broken already.

He walked over to the shed and shone his torch on the latch, checking the screws on each corner. They were intact.

In a last attempt at glimpsing the female figure, Gregory cast his torchlight into the blackness, but it was no use. He desperately sought movement in the night, but all was still.

“Rachel!” Gregory howled into the darkness, “Rachel!”

For the first time in thirteen years he noticed the deafening silence.

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