The Van Meter Immortal

The records are clear. In October 1903, the small mining town of Van Meter, Iowa, found itself besieged by an entity that defied every known law of biology and physics. Early reports, meticulously documented in the local newspaper, the Van Meter Free Press, relayed accounts from numerous credible witnesses, including the town’s bank manager, a store clerk, and the local physician, describing a colossal, bat-like creature. It possessed leathery wings, a single horn, and menacingly glowing orange eyes. The entity was invariably accompanied by an overwhelming, noxious odor, a blend of chemicals and putrid decay.

But it wasn’t merely the monster’s horrific appearance that captured my attention. It was its terrifying invincibility. Townsfolk, armed with rifles and shotguns, fired at it repeatedly. Bullets reportedly had no effect, often flattening against its body or seemingly passing through empty air. The collective efforts of the town, culminating in a prolonged shootout outside an old gypsum mine, only succeeded in temporarily driving it underground. It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind only flattened bullet casings and a chilling question mark that lingered in local history. This wasn’t a campfire tale; it was a series of documented, communal experiences, a physical anomaly that the town could not explain, only endure. My investigation began a century later when a subtle, almost subliminal tremor was registered on seismographs near the old mine entrance—a geologically stable area.

The path to the abandoned gypsum mine west of Van Meter was less a trail and more a memory, overgrown with sumac and wild grapevines, barely a trace remaining. The air here, even on a clear autumn day, held a damp, mineral-rich chill, and a persistent, cloying scent of decay emanated from beneath the surface. The town itself felt less empty than deeply asleep, held in a breathless hush. Equipped with a high-intensity headlamp, a sensitive audio recorder, and a geological hammer, I pushed through the overgrowth towards the main mine entrance – a gaping maw in the earth, once supported by timber frames that had long since rotted and collapsed.

Immediately upon entering, the air became colder, denser. My boots crunched on loose shale and fallen rock. At first, there was only profound silence, broken solely by the drip of water from unseen fissures above. The headlamp beam carved a distinct tunnel through the absolute darkness, revealing rough, mineral-stained rock walls. This was no ordinary cave system. It was clearly man-made, a relic of past industry, but it felt… older. As if something else had occupied it long before human ambition burrowed its way in. The first anomaly I encountered was auditory. My distinct footsteps on the loose debris seemed to be absorbed meters ahead, only to return faintly, off-kilter, a delayed echo as if the sound waves themselves were warped or swallowed by the oppressive air.

Deeper into the labyrinthine passages, the subtle anomalies intensified. The air was unnervingly still—not the slightest breath of wind—yet localized, intense cold spots would unexpectedly bloom, chilling me to the bone, only to dissipate seconds later. The headlamp, despite fresh batteries, seemed to struggle. Its light didn’t pierce the darkness as far as it should, the beam itself appearing frayed at the edges, absorbed by the overwhelming blackness.

Then came the smell. Initially a faint metallic tang, like old blood mixed with rust, but it gradually intensified into that described 'noxious odor.' A sharp, acrid chemical smell, overlaid with something indefinably organic and putrid. Not rot, precisely. It was the smell of something 'wrong.' My skin began to tingle. Not from the cold, but from an almost subliminal vibration in the air. A low hum that the audio recorder picked up, but my ears struggled to consciously process. When I ran my hand along a section of damp rock wall, my fingers brushed against something crystalline, almost translucent, growing in thin, irregular stalks. It was impossibly hard, yet brittle. A geological aberration that shouldn't exist. My primitive brain screamed for retreat. My body's alarms were blaring, not from a visible threat, but from the sheer oppressive weight of an environment fundamentally out of alignment with reality.

I passed through a particularly narrow passage into a large chamber. Here, the dripping sounds were replaced by an unsettling, complete silence. In this room, the air felt heavy. As if an invisible hand pressed down. Then, a low rumble. Not from above, but from deep within the earth beneath my feet. A section of the passage behind me, stable moments before, collapsed with a sickening grinding of earth and rock, blocking my retreat. I was trapped.

In the absolute darkness across the chamber, two incandescent orange lights coalesced. They weren’t reflecting my headlamp. They emitted their own silent, hateful glow. The noxious odor intensified, choking my breath, burning my nostrils. And around those lights, a form began to coalesce. A vast, leathery silhouette. It wasn't flying. It was simply 'elsewhere.' One moment, a vast, indistinct shadow cast far on the wall; the next, a suffocating presence mere feet in front of me, without any perceptible movement. No flap of wings, no scuttling sound. Just a violation of distance itself.

A silent scream seemed to echo directly within my skull. It vibrated through my teeth, stripping away all capacity for rational thought. The impossibly vast, leathery wing brushed past my left arm. There was no physical impact. No sensation of being hit. Instead, it was an 'absence.' The air around the point of contact was impossibly cold and dense. As if something was being 'pulled' from within me. My arm went numb, then tingled with a deep, nauseating chill that penetrated to the bone. My skin was intact, but the flesh beneath felt hollowed out. Instinctively, I swung my geological hammer. A desperate, irrational act. The tool passed through the creature's form without resistance, without sound. Like striking thick fog. But the pressure on my arm intensified. A silent, draining horror. The glowing eyes fixated on me, radiating an ancient, alien intelligence. Panic seized me. A primal animal instinct more than a thought. I stumbled backwards, my eyes frantically scanning the edges of the room. A faint current of air, a sliver of uncorrupted atmosphere, drew my attention to an almost imperceptible fissure in the far wall. It was a gamble. A desperate, undignified scramble, but I forced myself through the gap. The strange, draining cold lingered on my skin until the passage sealed behind me.

I clawed my way out into the relative calm of the early evening twilight, gasping, limbs scraped raw. The nauseating stench clung to my clothes and hair. But it was my left arm, the one the entity had brushed, that offered the most unsettling evidence. The skin was miraculously intact, no scrapes or tears. Yet the flesh beneath felt alien. Like a limb subtly restructured, with an everlasting phantom chill embedded in its bones. The cold, once localized, had now seeped inward, occasionally blooming into a deep ache that no warmth could dissipate.

The world outside the mine now felt different. The natural silence of the night was no longer empty. It was 'waiting.' Every shadow seemed deeper, every distant sound a potential harbinger. The soft rustle of leaves in the wind sometimes sounded like the whisper of leathery wings. As if teetering just on the edge of audibility. And the smell. It would return without warning. Not clinging to me, but emanating from within. A metallic, burning stench that no amount of fresh air or scrubbing could fully erase from my memory, or my body.

The Van Meter Visitor wasn't just a legend from 1903. It wasn't a creature to be hunted or captured. It was an inherent flaw in the place. An anomaly that could manifest when the conditions were… 'right.' And those conditions, I now understood, had always been 'right,' just beneath the surface. Sometimes, when the wind dies completely and the air grows unnaturally still, I think I see it. Not a form or shape, but a deeper absence in the twilight sky. A tearing rift in the darkness that shouldn't be there. And the cold in my arm blooms. Like an eternal reminder that some truths are never meant to be uncovered.