An Unlikely Ally

Chapter 6 - It never left

John's watched vibrated furiously, prompting the start to what would be a pivotal day he surmmised. "That or I really am blowing things out of proportion and just did a silly project." He shrugged and sat up, doing his usual stretches, and finally started his daily routine.

Once his angler attire was donned, he partially dismantled the device he had constructed last night, and gently placed it in his backpack and layered some clothes on top to keep it padded and protected. "Ok, set it up in the service station, set the time to 12 pm and book it. It is 8 am for me, so I have a few hours to protect myself here incase things get out of hand." John whispered to himself, running the plan over in his mind.

He knew that things could go terribly wrong if he sets the volume incorrectly, it would be especially dangerous if it went off when he is close by.

"The best-worst case scenario is that the creature is still here and I see tracks in the 'pressence-detectors', what I do is wait here for a while longer and hope it looses interest after a few days or weeks." John shiftetd a bit before continuing. "Worst case scenario, it attracts a lot more that I was unaware of in the area. They never leave me alone, and I either starve to death hoping to wait them out, or die at the hands of them."

This realisation started to sink in, which stopped John dead in his tracks. "Should I really do this? This is like Schrödinger's cat, I do not know if there is or isn't a creature here, but would finding out really matter that much at all? Either way I survived, even went outside a few times." John sat back down and started to think this over.

"Pros and Cons. Pros, this will let me know if I need to be extra cautious, or even wait out the creature, it gives me opportunity to lure it away if it is close by, maybe by another lure, a city down. Now the cons, if this goes south, I could starve, or be killed because of it."

The answer is obvious, he shouldn't go forward with this.

"But, the fear of the unknown, is almost, if not stronger then the fear of death itself. I do not know if this creature is slowly creeping in, ready to strike in the dead of night. Or if I am simply giving these creatures too much credit, and that the one I encountered a week ago, lost interest already."

John made up his mind, he would go through with this. "Better to stare death down, then to have death come unseen."

John arrived at the fuel station, apon opening the door, he was met with a strong odour of tomato sauce lingering in the air. However, as he inspected each puddle, they were untouched, reliving some fears of a stalking creature, if it were following, it was not close enough.

He stepped around the puddle and stopped in the centre of the backroom before placing his backpack down and quietly unzipping it, revealing his wrapped up contraption. With steady hands he placed the bundle on the ground, unwrapped it and slide the shirt back inside the backpack. There he laid the chess clock flat and was about to set the player-two timer to 3:45 hours, however, he noticed a slight mistake in his plan. "Shit, the clock can only go to an hour max. Dammit I should of checked that earlier. Well whatever, I will have one hour to vacate and hide in my room, plenty of time."

He twisted the crown on the clock face and set the minute and second hand to 60, before getting another idea. "Well this will switch over to player-one, I could give him 5-10 minutes, then everything will shut off. 5 or so minutes will be plenty if the creature is nearby, and means I could potentially avoid attracting too much attention if I got the volume wrong."

Setting the player-one hands to 5 minutes, John finally wired up the relay and CD Player, twisting the thin wire strands and 'arming' the lure. He rotated the volume knob to zero, and did a quick power on, the CD spin up, confirming it's still functioning. He then shut it off, put the plastic tab in between the battery terminal and contact, and then switched on the chess clock.