The Battle of Hyannis

The Battle of Hyannis

  an emergence of corpulent beings from out of the sea

  by

  Larry S Gray

  Copyright 2013

  Lucky Lamb Publications

  Lambertville, NJ

  Port Orange, FL

  Est. 2002

  All rights reserved

  First edition 1976

  Ghost-Hunter edition 2000

  The Battle of Hyannis

  East Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

  October 21, 2013

  There was a day, not so long ago, when frogs took over a small portion of eastern Massachusetts. Quite a large portion of land, actually, small only in comparison with the area of the rest of the state.

  How could simple frogs take control of a respectably-sized chunk of America the Great? one might ask. Well, I have my own ideas and theories on the matter, me being an Abnormal Psych major at the University of Rhode Island, and I will reveal some of them later on in this short account of what happened on that fateful October afternoon. However, no one knows for sure exactly what caused it. But first, I want to relate exactly what went on during that time.

  Folks around these parts don’t speak of it much, as the blight came and went within a few hours. Some folks refuse to even admit that it really happened, although they know deep in their inner beings that it did, having seen it with their very own eyes. On the other hand, very few people saw it actually begin and end, and most of those few (except me, of course) became hopeless headcases after witnessing incident. You see, only if one happened to be at one of a handful of beaches on either side of the Cape, would one have been able to know what was beginning to take place. And not a whole lot of people just hang out on a windblown beach on a cloudy October day and wait for frogs to emerge from the sea.

  But they did. They came right up out of the water. They covered a path of about eight to ten miles across, from East Sandwich to Barnstable on the Cape Cod Bay side, from Hyannis to Cotuit on the Nantucket Sound side. A total area of approximately eighty square miles.

  Here is what happened on that fine day.

  I was alone at my parents’ summer beach house on North Shore Blvd in East Sandwich. North Shore is about a mile and a quarter long, a dead-end at both ends, connected to state highway 6-A by Ploughed Neck Road. Our house is about 300 yards to the left of the Ploughed Neck intersection, up on the hill facing the beach as are most all the houses on this street. These homes are all summer dwellings with the exception of a mere handful. Most are, by this time of the year, uninhabited and battened down for the coming winter, the winters being somewhat rough out here. They are nice and big, roomy houses with private beaches and rising (finally…) real estate values; the ideal place to get away from it all, especially towards October’s end. I came here for the weekend, just to be alone, to relax, to indulge in a little post-season baseball and catch up on some of my writing. I was working on a composition which I had titled The Dangers of the Cydronium-240 Project. It was a bitch. I just couldn’t seem to get my ideas translated into the proper wording on the paper, couldn’t get the science of it to make any sense. I ended up writing this tale instead.

  I walked out onto the deck that faces the beach and looked out over the water. It was a sparkling blue, like raspberry Gatorade, despite the overcast sky. It was a bit more turbulent than usual, and it seemed to be brimming with life, but I attributed that to the wind. It was really quite windy and, though the sky was peppered with cottony cumulonimbus clouds, the air was unseasonably warm. I decided to roost out on the deck for awhile, and so I settled back into a large slatted deck chair made of pine. The waters of the bay took on a greater turbulence as I sat upon that cedar deck my father had built way back in ‘75. I was alone except for the wind, the dunes covered with long billowing beach grass, and my own thoughts. I looked out over the waters. Unbelieving, I looked again.

  I saw a great multitude of frogs ascending up out of the sea.

  I stood up to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t; they were there. Good God, yes they were. They proceeded to come up onto the beach. Some were bigger than others and as they emerged from the deep blue sheen of Cape Cod Bay onto the beach, my beach for God’s sake, their croaking reached a deafening crescendo. My initial feeling of disbelief was cascading into fear. What in the hell…. And, good Christ, as they came upon the beach, they developed legs. They were rapidly evolving into something right before my eyes, right there on my beach! They rose up, now standing erect. They began walking. Slowly. And they were shouting now instead of croaking. They were shouting and pointing. At me! And why not? I was the only human being around except for Mr. Morrison or maybe Jimmy Sanderson, but Mr. Morrison’s house was across the road and down the street, away from the beach. Jimmy seldom ventured out to the beach unless it was sunny and warm enough to swim and, around these parts, those days are done by Labor Day weekend. I was the only person those frogs could see, and they were coming closer. They were smiling. Yes, I could see that they were literally smiling, and then they started laughing. They were laughing out loud in great bellows and guffaws, in great spit-spraying cackles, because they could. Because they were taking over, and nothing could hold them down.

  My thoughts were flying in numerous directions, my heart slamming. I thought that I was losing my mind, dropping my brains, going stone cold crazy. The pressures of life, and school, and what I was witnessing at that moment, had destroyed me.

  The frogs were coming closer.

  I retreated into the house, wondering what was to become of me. I shut the door that opened onto the deck, locked it up tight, and drew the shade. What now? Call the doctor, I thought to myself, for I was definitely beginning to feel a little sick, like I might spew lunch any second. No, that’s no good, I thought. What would I to say to him? “Hi, Doc, how ya been? Gary Lay here, guess what? There’s about a million frogs strutting across my beach shouting and pointing and laughing and I think I’m gonna puke. What should I do?” For the sake of the Christ, I couldn’t tell him that. He’d probably recommend that I swing by Bellevue on my way back to Jersey on Monday morning. I imagine that he’d also recommend that I check in and spend some quality time there.

  No, I couldn’t call the doctor.

  I looked out the bedroom window that gave onto the beach and saw that they were all over the area, all about the house and the beach and the yard; even then they were reaching the street. They were in my driveway, probing around my little black Chevy as if it were some alien chariot they were sent to demolish. And, oh man, they were getting bigger. This is not good, I thought. They were still coming out of the sea. My mind raced against the tide of these events, and I felt positive I was cracking up.

  I then thought to call Mr. Morrison on the phone, but would he listen to me? Probably not. He’d more than likely think I was stone drunk and rush right over to see if I had any booze left to share with him. Could I ask him if there were frogs? If he had seen any frogs? If he said no, then I would know that I had definitely gone over, and that I was ready for the loony bin. I guess I could just call and chat; ask him how everything was going, that sort of crap, and see if he said anything about frogs. But either way he’d think I was nuts; I don’t think I’d spoken to the man more than a few times all summer. Besides, I didn’t even know the old croaker’s telephone number.

  I went back into the kitchen and dumped a near-lethal dose of Jack Daniels into a water glass. Without bothering to look out the window again to check on the progress of the frogs, I quaffed half the glass in a singular swallow.

  My rapidly derailing train of thought was interrupted by the jangling of the telephone. I jumped in my skin, spilling the rest of the bourbon to the floor, shattering the glass. I g
rabbed the offending instrument and barked “HELLO!” It was Mr. Morrison, scared pissless, babbling and gibbering about legions of frogs in his backyard. Frogs. The frogs were big, super-frogs he called them, and they were speaking in some weird and cryptic dialect he’d never heard before. Speaking in tongues, he said. The man sounded on the verge of hysterics and, in my humble opinion, rightfully so. I attempted to stammer out a few comforting words to the old duck, then I hung up. I took a seat at the kitchen table. Outside, the racket of the super-frogs was becoming unbearable to the ear. After hearing from Mr. Morrison, though, I knew that it wasn’t just me; that I still clung to my sanity, but that something terrible was indeed happening here. I though it might be the