        Dale froze, all his muscles temporarily paralyzed as his tired brain tried to sort out what it was seeing.  He began to make a low moaning sound, although he was entirely unaware that he was doing so.  Meanwhile, his brain had finally decided that he was hallucinating or still dreaming; regardless, if he were to close his eyes, everything would be back to normal when he opened them again.  This was a very comforting thought.  While he could get as excited as the next person watching a good movie with inexplicable happenings, it was certainly not something he had ever wanted to personally experience, and his sure and certain belief that this was simply some sort of waking dream, perhaps a carryover of his very vivid nightmares of the night before, seemed a perfectly rational explanation for what otherwise was a mystery worthy of the Twilight Zone.