Ghost Creek, Episode 2

PREVIOUSLY- Ten-year old Sean Preston has been subject to prophetic dreams since an abduction experience three years before. Now he has dreamed of finding his friend Wilson, who was abducted at the same time but was never returned. Following the sign-posts of the dream, Sean leads his friends Bobby and Marcy to an abandoned house in the woods near the rumored-to-be-haunted Ghost Creek. From inside the house, they hear a boy screaming.

BAKERSFIELD, IL. JUNE 1981-

Hands were on Sean’s shoulders. Bobby and Marcy each had grabbed him and were trying to pull him away.

“Let go!”

“You were right, OK?” Marcy said. “But we have to call the police.”

“Didn’t you hear? He’s in trouble. We have to help him!”

“What are we going to do?” Bobby demanded. “If we go in there, they’ll just get us too.”

“Dammit, let me go!”

Sean swung out blindly. The punch landed on Bobby’s soft sweater-padded belly. It was not delivered with much force, but Bobby doubled over with a comical-sounding ‘oof.’ Marcy let go and Sean bolted forward, through the unlocked door.

The light inside the house was dim and oppressive, filtered through shrouding trees and dirty broken windowpanes. The air was heavy with hot summer dust and the smells of old wood and rodents. The screaming had stopped. The dead silence was so absolute it was difficult to believe the sound had ever existed.

His friends were behind him in the house, Bobby red-faced and sputtering anger.

“You hit me!” he whisper-hissed.

“Sorry.”

Missy looked around, surveying the gloom. The room was bare of furniture except for an ancient, cabinet-style television with a tiny round screen.

“There’s nobody in this house,” she said. “You can tell.”

“You heard the screaming,” Sean said.

“Maybe that was just . . .”

The front door slammed shut with a sudden burst of wooden thunder. All three kids jumped, grabbing each other tight.

“Just the wind,” Bobby whimpered.

“Oh, yeah, it was blowing like crazy out there, wasn’t it?” Marcy said. She ran to the door and rattled the knob. “Locked.”

“No.” Bobby bubbled tears.

“It’s all right,” Sean said. “That happened in the dream, too.”

“Yeah?” said Marcy. “Thanks for warning us.”

“Come on,” said Sean. “The basement stairs are just off the kitchen.”

“Basement?” Bobby’s voice had degraded to a squeaking rasp, like an oil-parched hinge.

Sean led and, rather than being left alone, the other two followed. Through a swing-hinged door into a dirt-crusted linoleum kitchen. The light in here was even dimmer.

“There’s a back door, isn’t there?” Bobby said, blinking behind his glasses. “Please tell me there’s a back door.”

Darting movement caught their attention. A small rat scuttled across the counter. It ran smack into the protruding tongue of a fat bullfrog squatting motionless by the sink. The twitching furry thing was pulled into the amphibian’s mouth with a squealing shriek. Two grasping bites and a gulp and it was gone. The frog let out a burping croak and licked its lips. The creature had a disturbing profusion of mutant legs, more than could be counted at a glance. Like some abominable cross between frog and spider.

“OK, I did NOT just see that,” said Marcy.

“Was that in your dream, too?” Bobby asked.

“In my dream, it ate a little bird,” Sean said. “Come on.”

There was a door in one corner of the room. Sean opened it and they all looked down at stairs leading into utter darkness.

“Got a flashlight?” said Marcy.

Sean reached over and flicked the light switch on the wall. A line of bare hanging low-watt bulbs filled the dank concrete basement below with dusty yellow light.

“I didn’t see any power lines outside,” Marcy said. “Must be a generator.”

“No,” Sean said. He descended the stairs.

The basement was empty except for some scraps of wood along the walls. Across the room was a door, painted a lurid red which seemed to glow with a light of its own. They were halfway across when the boy’s scream came again, bouncing about the concrete chamber with ringing echoes.

Bobby shrieked. Marcy grabbed Sean’s arm hard enough to bruise it. Sean pulled from her grasp. He ran forward and opened the red door.

At first all they saw was the blood. It was everywhere. Great red splats covering the walls and the floor. Ribbons of gore dripping from the ceiling, into their hair.

Bobby tried to step back out of the bloody room, but smacked the back of his head on the door frame. He collapsed to the floor with a hiccupping moan. Marcy threw her hands over her face and screamed.

“Not blood!” Sean had to shout to make himself heard over his friends’ terror. “Paint! Smell it! It’s just red paint!”

After a few moments the adrenal spiking of their hearts subsided enough for them to understand. Marcy reached a hand down and helped Bobby up off the floor.

Now they could see the room. It looked like somebody’s Dad’s garage workspace. Tool shelves and work benches. Fluorescent lighting. Another door on the opposite side of the room. In the center was a table with a portable stereo. As soon as they saw this item, the boy’s scream came again, issuing from the speakers.

“It was just a recording,” Marcy said.

“Great,” Bobby said. “So I pissed my pants for nothing.”

Sean went to the stereo. He pushed a button and a strange silver disc was ejected. Black letters on the front read: “Hollywood Sound Effects, Volume 6: Sounds of Terror.” Sean flipped the disc over. The back side reflected sharp lines of brilliant rainbow color when held at an angle to the light.

“What is this?” he said.

“Some weird kind of record maybe,” said Marcy.

“It’s a CD,” came a man’s voice from the opposite door. “Compact Disc.”

The three children looked up. The man was about thirty, not very tall with a mass of uncombed dark hair. He was eating what appeared to be chocolate pudding from a small plastic cup. The resemblance was immediately remarkable. He looked enough like Sean to be his Uncle, though Sean had never seen him before.

“Hey, you kids want a pudding cup?” he asked. “I got a whole fridge full of them. My favorite food in the world, and in here I can eat whatever I want.”

Their gaping jaws could issue no speech. Sean finally recovered enough to say: “Who are you?”

“Well, Sean,” said the man. “I . . . am you.”

He chuckled at their looks of identical stupefaction. “You sure you don’t want that pudding cup?”

NEXT TIME: Sean at twenty-eight. A proposition. Sean’s first kiss.