The painter Kyle Brooks, known to most as Black Cat Tips, and his wife, Maria, decided it was time to get out of the city, so they moved to a small piece of land about 20 miles east of Atlanta. Their property, with its house and small barn, sits on a long, straight road that leads to Arabia Mountain — a 954-foot-tall migmatite monadnock, aka a giant rock that comes out of the ground. It's Georgia second largest monadnock, after Stone Mountain.

For more than 10,000 years, Arabia Mountain has attracted people. First, there were Native American travelers and traders. Then, settlers came and drove the Creek Nation out. Then came freed slaves, and in the mid-1940s, a group of Trappist came to Arabia Mountain and built their Monastery of the Holy Spirit.

As for Kyle Brooks, he says Arabia Mountain has been calling him since he spotted it from the back seat of his aunt's Camaro back when he was only 6 or 7. But since moving there early this year, Kyle and Maria have experienced "strange things." They've also learned a bit of history about the stretch of road in front of their house. For years, it seems, the road has been plagued with single-car accidents. Typically, no one is hurt, but almost always, the driver explains this way:

Something came up out of the road.

No one ever finds evidence of what that "something" is. The road is dead straight, but the story is full of twists and turns.

Kyle Brooks did hear Arabia Mountain calling. But now that he lives there, he wonders who (or what) has been doing the talking.