So after these events, I hung out with Ben through most of the morning... He cooked us up a damned fine breakfast, we all chatted, Molly played with Julian, we had lunch, and I headed for home... On the way home, I saw Deacon had posted this thread, and, as you can see from reading the thread, I knew the parents of the missing teen... I gave them a call, and they agreed to talk to me on Saturday evening.

Well, I drove all the way home, got some sleep that night, and headed out the next day, up to Crystal Lake (seems like it's always Crystal Lake...except for that thing with David Hawk's flunkie in Diamond Lake, recently). Well, I was on Barrington Road, driving north towards where it merges with and becomes I-59, and something runs out in the road in front of me. I tried to swerve to miss it, thinking it was a squirrel or something, but I ended up running right over the top of it... I glanced in my rearview, and didn't see it in the road, so I thought maybe I'd either hallucinated it, or it had gotten out of the way in time... (Yeah, I know, folks don't normally include details like this in these kinds of stories, so you already know it's important. Hush.)

Well, I make it up to Crystal Lake, I talked with the girl's parents, tried to console them for a while, and headed home.

I made it into Cary before my car started overheating and smoking everywhere... I pulled into a gas station along the way, and got water and coolant. Made a call to Lex, warned her I'd be home later than expected, having car troubles. She was as perplexed as I was; the car was barely 13 months old, far too young to be giving me radiator problems. I agreed, and told her I kinda suspected someone messed around with my car while I was in Crystal Lake...

It was about an hour before my car was cool enough to add the fluids, and I'm on my way home again. This time, it made it a fair distance down US-14 before it died... Five minutes away from the nearest gas station...but for walking distance, that translated out to half an hour. Great, I thought, by the time I get back to my car, it'll be cool enough for me to add the water again.

So I did that... I walked to the gas station, filled the jugs with water, and got back to my car, thanking all that was holy that I'd had the foresight not to throw away the jugs I'd bought back in Cary. Started it up, and took off down the road... By the time I turned down 59, it was already getting hot again. I was gritting my teeth, and I tried harder to keep everything cool... I would accelerate to 5 over, then ride the clutch until I was going about 15 under... If I had traffic behind me, I'd pull over. I knew it was going to be a looooong time before I got to the next gas station.

Well, by the time I got to the place where I thought I'd run over the squirrel, it was getting dark, and there was a semi behind me... I pulled over, let the semi go past, and started watching for an opportunity to pull back onto the road. Then I hear a clunk. When I got the chance to get back on the road, my car wouldn't move... I mean, at all. The engine was still running, but my gearstick was slipping around from gear slot to gear slot with no resistance and no clutch. I killed the engine, swearing, and reached for my phone...

It had a full charge when I'd left home, but it was dead, now.

Well, I got out my flashlight from the glove compartment, and popped the hood... I turned on my hazards, got out, and checked the engine. I'm a fair hand with mechanics--not an expert or anything, but I can tell when things've been ripped out, and things had, indeed, been ripped out. I haven't been under my hood enough to tell what was missing, but I knew from shining my light around that I was missing some hoses from my radiator system. I was missing several other components. I had a hunch that the connection between the gearstick and the transmission had been severed. I started to suspect gremlins...

Deacon pulled up in his rental car about then. I didn't know, at the time, that it was Deacon... I just knew a car pulled up behind mine, put on their flashers, and the driver got out. I tried to figure out a polite way of getting him to just go, but he struck up polite conversation. He seemed nice enough, and I kept glancing around for the gremlins, but in the darkness, I couldn't see them...

I don't remember a whole lot of the initial conversation, but I do remember he'd arranged for a hotel in Woodstock, and they'd booked him in a hotel in Bloomingdale--over an hour away from Woodstock... He was going to let me use his phone, when we suddenly heard a loud ker-thunk from the general direction of his car...

Less than half a minute later, I found myself chasing a muffler through the woods.

Sorry about the absence, folks. Publisher was pushing me to get my article written, and that little bump in Illy didn't help matters none.

I was wondering how best to get this poor fella some help and get on my way. I'd spent the last week hunting down several witnesses of a ghost sighting and their credibility. Like Pa Murphy would have it, they all ended up as known hoaxers and hoodlums, and when I caught this UPS guy running into the trees after my -------- muffler, I was thinking this must be my night. First the "ghosts," the candelabra crime wave, the drug epidemic, the missing girl, and the known posse of bored teens vandalizing the landscape, I thought I'd have myself a story.

If I'd a known what they needed my muffler for, I would have donated my damage deposit to Saint Mary's Church, instead.

There you are, Deacon. ^_^ I'll post the next bit tomorrow night... Tonight, I'm fighting the grip of exhaustion...which is about as paranormal as having peanut butter on bread.