Misgivings: Day 10

Word Count: 62,051

Summary of Events:

Greyson fought a very strong temptation to go snooping around the property as he headed out for his morning run, not wanting to know how Mr. Fransbergen would react to his nosiness. In the afternoon, Greyson was invited by his boss to a Friday night wiener roast and determined he'd need groceries, so he went to Grande Prairie on several errands on Thursday, including paying a visit to the gym, which he hadn't done since moving. He was jolted out of bed after dark by the air horn of a semi tractor and watched by minimal light as a skid steer went from the quonset into the long, low building, fetched out the body of the vehicle that had arrived under its own power not all that long ago, and placed it onto the flatbed trailer behind the tractor…

Excerpt of the Day:

In moments the skid steer — whose pilot Greyson supposed was either Ayers or Mr. Fransbergen, considering it’d been his observation so far that Andy opened the doors — backed out of the building and set another frame for a different type of vehicle on the trailer bed behind the one that the shadowy men were chaining in place. One of them stopped that work to help guide the skid steer’s operator in placing the second body.

It looked like there was at least two, but maybe three people working on chaining the bodies of the two vehicles down onto the trailer.

Greyson anticipated a third body to next be placed on the trailer, but instead the skid steer returned out with a pallet loaded down with stuff that looked to be shrink-wrapped into place, or at least wrapped around with some sort of cling wrap that was clingier, stronger, and more durable than the plastic wrap sold at the grocery store for covering over leftovers.

Another pallet was brought around to the other side of the trailer before straps were passed around both of them together. Another two pallets were loaded on the back of the trailer before one of the shadowy men hopped off the trailer and jogged over to the cab.

One of the other shadowy figures turned on a cell phone flashlight as the truck started easing backwards, a similar beep to that of the skid steer’s, but not quite so shrill, indicating what it was doing.

The person with the phone flashlight stood behind the second row of pallets and waved what Greyson presumed was his hand with the cell phone in it up and down in long, exaggerated waves at first, that eventually got smaller and smaller until the hand no longer moved.

At that point the truck stopped and the brakes were reset before the driver hopped down and jogged over to the back again as the cell phone flashlight was turned off. Only two further pallets were loaded onto the trailer and secured into place before Greyson observed a shadowy figure that looked the shape of Andy heading back toward the long, low building.

He drew the sliding door shut, leaving the lights to glow around the edges. The glow got a bit dimmer right away, but it took a long moment before the glow ceased entirely.

Greyson also could tell that the skid steer had been shut off, while the engine of the semi tractor still throbbed loudly and powerfully, purring in a way, except that Greyson felt a cat that would purr like a semi tractor’s engine would have to be the size of a blue whale in order to have such a big, deep, and resonant vocal box.

After a few moments Greyson noticed that more shadowy figures were moving about the trailer loaded with its cargo, with a couple wearing headlamps that, along with the light from the quonset, revealed that a large, heavy-duty cargo tarpaulin was being drawn over the whole load, hiding it from sight.