Ghost Creek, Episode 1

A New Year and something different with this silly blog. (Less eye-straining look, too.) The sporadic attention I've paid to this thing has been in part because there's not much I want to say ABOUT my writing that I don't already say THROUGH my writing. In that spirit, here's some actual fiction output; an on-going serial that is very representative of my work. I promise I will be dilligent about posting episodes, and that I will do my best to keep them short. Please post comments (the course of the story may be influenced by reader input) and, if you like it, tell yer friends already!

This is very much an experiment. I'm not sure if anyone will even read the thing and, truthfully, I have only vague ideas about where the story is heading. But, writing "without a net" is also exciting to me. So, as my good friend The Lash might say . . . come weez meee and I vill take you on an exciting journey . . .

BAKERSFIELD, IL. JUNE 1981-

Sean Preston, ten years old, squinted at the twisted rusty remains of the derailed train. The accident had been three years before. Everything valuable or dangerous had been removed in the days following the wreck, but the rest of the stuff was just left here to rot. Misshapen tadpoles swam in the pools of orange rusty water which had formed about the train detritus. Sean had caught a few to keep as pets in his bedroom. They grew into five and six-legged frogs which never lived very long.

“It is so muggy,” Bobby said. “I swear, I’m going to wilt.”

“Quit your bitching,” said Marcy. “God, you complain so much.”

Bobby Dent and Marcy Rollins, Sean’s two best friends. He had brought them along because they had been in his dream. It was important to remain as true to the dream as possible.

“Where are you taking us?” Bobby demanded.

“Down to the creek,” said Sean.

“Come on,” said Bobby. “I just got ‘Asteroids’ on my Atari. And my house has air conditioning.”

Sean walked down the tracks away from the site of the wreck. A few moments later, Bobby and Marcy followed.

“You had a dream about the creek?” Marcy asked. “That’s why you’re taking us down there?”

“I remembered something about what happened to me and Wilson,” Sean said. “I remembered where we were kept.”

“Kept?” Bobby gulped.

“Yeah,” said Sean. “In the dream, Wilson was still there. We found him.”

Marcy stopped. “You mean we found his body?”

“He was still alive,” Sean said. “Actually, he was still seven years old.”

“OK,” Bobby said. “Is anybody else freaked out by this? We should not be going down there by ourselves. If you really remembered something, you should tell your mom. Or the police.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Sean said.

“They’d believe you, freaky dream boy.”

They had come to the point where the creek ran under the tracks, through the big concrete pipe.

“There’s the creek,” Sean said. “When we get down there, we’ll see a snake swimming in the water.”

“Oh good, a snake. That really makes me want to go,” Bobby said.

“Come on.”

Without waiting for his friends to follow, Sean slid down the rocky hill. At the bottom, he saw the curving ‘S’ of the swimming snake slip from the mouth of the pipe.

“There it is,” he noted.

In his dream, it had been a milk snake, with colorful bands of red, black and yellow. This was just a common garter snake. The dreams often worked like that. Correct in the general but off in the particulars. Like when he had dreamed of buried treasure in his backyard, and had dug up the exact spot only to find a cache of old nudie magazines.

“All right,” Bobby said. “So you were right about the snake. That doesn't mean you're right about everything else.”

“We just follow the trail beside the water for a while.”

They walked down the wooded trail beside the gurgling creek, deeper into the timber than they usually went. Their heads were up, attuned to danger. Older kids, teenagers, also hung out down here and sometimes tormented the younger ones just for sport. There were whispers of darker things, too. The stream was called ‘Sugar Creek’ on all maps but among the children it was known as ‘Ghost Creek.’ Schoolyard rumors told of haunts roaming these woods at night, though anyone who claimed to have been down here in the dark was certainly a liar.

The creek forked and they made a splashing cross to follow the Southward tributary.

“God, are we almost there?” Bobby cried.

“This is where we get off the path,” Sean said.

Marcy looked at her watch. “I have to be home for dinner. It’s almost four now. It’s going to take us at least an hour to hike back.”

“It’s just a little further,” Sean said. “I promise.”

Sean led his friends off the path into the crunching undergrowth of the deep woods. Walking faster as the sights became more familiar. Every tree, every rock, every call of every bird was exactly as he had dreamed it.

“Just over this hill,” he called, breaking into a run.

Bobby and Marcy caught up to him just as he crested the hill. In the clearing below was a house.

“I knew it would be here,” Sean said. “I knew it.”

“That’s where,” Marcy swallowed dry spit, “you were taken?”

“Yes,” Sean cried. His eyes gleamed with tears of joy, or of terror.

The badly dilapidated two-story farmhouse had once been white, but the paint was flaked almost completely away, exposing weathered grey wood. Half the shingles were missing from the roof and a few gaping holes were visible. Every window had at least one pane busted out. The driveway led to a rutted, grown-over trail which might have once been a dirt road. Trees shrouded the property so completely it was not hard to imagine the house staying hidden for years.

“We are not going inside,” Bobby said. “Now that you know this place is here, we should just go home and call the police.”

“I hate to say it, but I’m with wuss-boy on this one,” Marcy concurred.

“You guys can wait outside if you want.”

Sean ran down the hill. His friends called after him, but he barely heard them. The old house held the answers to questions which had tormented him for three years.

Who had taken him?

What had they done to him?

What happened to Wilson?

Why couldn’t he remember anything?

The thirst for revelation outweighed everything else. Before Bobby and Marcy could catch him, Sean had stepped onto the rotting wood of the front porch. His hand was on the knob. He knew the door would not be locked.

From inside the house came a sound which Sean could not recall from even the darkest of his dreams.

A boy was screaming. Screaming for his life.

NEXT TIME- An unusual method for rodent control. A discussion of the weather. Why the caged boy screams.