by Tobias Wade
“What—”
“Don’t! Just ignore it! Let’s just go, now!” The Barry next to me said.
“Don’t—” The other Barry from the other side of the fire ring mutters. I turn around to the elevator, noticing the doors opening. I feel as if good luck has hit me fast, grabbing Barry as we both got into the elevator. I press the up button inside the elevator, the doors closing a few seconds later. The last thing I heard from the other Barry before the doors close still leaves a stain my memory. It’s something I can’t stop thinking or hearing in my head over and over, the words being a painful scream that still terrify me to this day.
“Don’t leave me, please!”
***
A few months later, summer break ended and it's time to go back to school. Barry and I had decided to forget about the elevator, and never dared to speak a word about it, even if it comes back up in our minds as an unforgettable memory that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. I still have a few questions about what the elevator was and what its purpose is, which I can’t seem to figure out a reasonable answer. There were other buttons as well, but if they did lead to other floors, what would they be like? There was nobody in town when we went to that one floor, but what was with the clone of Barry? Did it have something to do with the elevator? Has anyone ever encountered it before? And especially, where did it come from? A lot of other questions kept coming into my head, but I just thought about letting everything about it pass. I had my first day of high school, which was actually better than I expected. I got to meet a lot of new people from different grades, I had great teachers, but it still wasn’t the same without Barry. After school, I walk over to the middle school to wait for him. I start to count down from fifty.
50... 49... 48...
In those few seconds, I see Barry run toward me with a smile on his face.
“Hey, man! How was your repeating year in middle school?” I ask him.
“Great, I’m actually doing great in most of my classes! Who knew learning was fun?” he replies, giving me a few school papers of his. I look through each one, noticing all of them have good grades marked on the corner. Most of them are B’s, one of them is an A, and it's rare for Barry to get a grade like that.
“Wow, you actually took my advice!” I said, surprised as I look through the correct answers he got on some of his work.
“Yup! I changed! It’s almost as if I’m not who I once was anymore, the old Barry!”
Those words that came out of his mouth somehow has given me an unnerving chill, hoping it's nothing, but I couldn’t help ask him the question I feel like asking.
“Um, Barry? How do I know if you’re the real Barry?”
“What?” Barry was looking at me with a confused expression.
“... nevermind.”
Ever since that day, I’m starting to question whether or not Barry is who he says he is. The clone from that strange version of our town seemed to be the only person, or thing, there was, and it took the form of my best friend. I am starting to notice a few differences in him, but just hoping for the best; that it’s just a change he’s willing to make to make himself a better person. For example, one time when he came over to my house for a sleepover, he actually had good manners at the dinner table, unlike him usually being a fast eater who would chew loudly and make a few messes. He also seems more nicer than usual; he apologized to every one of his teachers for his behavior from before, which surprised me since he cringes whenever he’s forced to apologize. I don’t know, there’s no way that the one Barry that was left out of the elevator could be the real one, the one I have been best friends with throughout my middle school years, but could it be?
Nick Botic
Don't Go Swimming in Long Lake
After we got our things put away in the cabin, we set out to do what we were most anticipating: swim. We got changed into our swimsuits and walked down the long pier at the back of the cabin, and we each jumped off into the water of Long Lake. The sun beat down on us as we waded around in the unbelievably refreshing lake. It was myself, my girlfriend Kimmy, and our friends Ryan and Alyssa. We swam around for nearly an hour and a half, and the time flew by. Only one thing sticks out about our time in the water, and it’s only in retrospect that it does so. At one point, Ryan said he had felt like something bit him on his stomach. The pain went away almost instantly, he said, so we didn’t worry or even think about it anymore.
After nearly an hour and a half in the water, we were all exhausted and hungry. We swam to the ladder on the pier and climbed up. When my foot touched the pier, I noticed there was a leech on it and I admittedly freaked out a little more than I should have. I got it off, and that was that. Ryan and Alyssa walked ahead of Kimmy and I, and it wasn’t until we got to the cabin and I saw the front of Ryan that I was able to see the trail of blood coming from his naval. It wasn’t bleeding profusely or anything, it just looked like a pin had poked him in his bellybutton. He wiped the blood away and that was that.
We cooked our dinner over the firepit, just burgers and hot dogs, and sat around listening to music and talking. It was too late to take out the ATVs, and we were all tired not only from swimming, but the seven hour drive it took us to get there as well. While sitting around the fire, Ryan began complaining of a sharp pain in his stomach. He put his palm over his navel area and gently squeezed. And as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
Throughout the rest of the night and into the next day, Ryan would intermittently comment on the same sharp stomach pain he’d felt at the fire. It was around noon of our second day there that Ryan got his first nosebleed. I say “first” because they would a mainstay over the following two days. We were sitting at the kitchen table in the cabin playing cards when, out of nowhere, the dark red liquid began pouring out of Ryan’s nose. He assured us that nosebleeds were a regular thing for him, and that it would stop soon. He attributed it to the change in air quality from the city to the countryside.
Nothing truly gave us worry until the last day we were there. Ryan had had nosebleeds and complained of the strange stomach pain throughout the day before, but then, everything came to a head.
It started when blood began leaking from Ryan’s left ear. I alerted him to it, and he just sort of stared at me blankly. I said his name, but got the same blank expression. Then his nose started bleeding again, but he did nothing to stop it. He just stood in the same spot, letting it pour down over his lips and chin, and drip onto the floor. Then his other ear began bleeding. Then, the naval area of his white t-shirt began turning red, spreading outward.
I ran to Ryan and lifted up his shirt, unsure of what to do. What I saw made me vomit. His bellybutton was much larger than it should have been, and on the edges of it were these leech-like things. I looked into the chasm in his stomach, and I couldn’t see any organs; there were just hundreds, if not thousands, of these leeches squirming around inside him. He eventually dropped to the ground, landing on his back. The leeches began squirming their way out of his ears, his nose, his mouth, and worst, his eyes. They chewed their way from under his fingernails, and judging by the squirming bulges in his socks, his toenails.
We called 911 as the leeches ate their way through my best friend’s flesh. He didn’t bleed as much as one would think. I attribute this to the fact that leeches are bloodsuckers, and there were so many of them that they quelled the flow of blood from the lesions they were creating all over his body. From when I noticed his ear bleeding, it wasn’t even 30 seconds before Ryan was dead. It wasn’t a minute before his entire body was mangled and chewed through. He was unrecognizable, both as my friend, and as a person in general. The only thing that would give anyone the idea that the pile of meat on the floor was a person was the shape.
Normally, a completely ravaged human body would be a bloody, red and pink mess, but the thousands of black leeches that covered his cadaver made the whole scene a squiggling tarp of shiny black, and they all consumed the blood that w
ould normally have made a mess of the entire area surrounding him. Me and the girls eventually ran outside to wait for the police and stay away from the leeches. A short time later, a single police car came up the cabin driveway, one officer got out, and retrieved a large bag from the backseat of the car.
Without introducing himself, he simply asked “You got any of them on you?”
We all replied in the negative. He cautiously walked to the cabin door, and we looked past him to see what macabre scene awaited him inside. He inched the door open, and leeches began making their way outside. The officer jumped back whilst simultaneously opening the bag he’d brought from his car. He began pouring out what looked like a white powder, that I soon deduced wasn’t a powder at all, but salt, and covered the wayward leeches.
He then poured a trail of salt to the gnarled body of Ryan, covering all the leeches between it and the dead pile of them near the door. He proceeded to pour the entire supply of salt over what was left of Ryan. When he was done, he walked out of the cabin and up to the three of us, as we stood there dumbfounded.
“Someone’ll come here to clean this up in the next few hours. Don’t go swimming in Long Lake.”
And with that, he got back in his car and backed out of the driveway. We took pictures as evidence of what had happened, and waited around for the ambulance to get there. They cremated what was left of Ryan and gave us the ashes, which we in turn delivered to his parents, who were devastated to hear what had happened to their son. A lawsuit was filed against the town of Long Lake for what had happened to Ryan.
And while I’m glad justice will be done to those that knew about the dangers that lurked within it and failed to warn outsiders of it, I’m even happier I noticed that leech on my foot when I did. It could have been me.
William Stuart
Seeker
Tristan Brewer stepped off the bus, hitched up his pack, and lit a cigarette. After two days on the road, he was finally home. Tristan wasn’t sure he was glad to be back in Spenser Springs. He and his father had moved here about five years ago when his parents had divorced, and his dad had taken a position with the forestry service. It had been the summer before tenth grade. He had been just getting seriously into high school, music, friends, and skateboarding when his father had announced they were moving, “not too far away.”
For not being too far away, Spenser Springs was a tiny blip on the map in the middle of nowhere. It could be called a suburb of Houston if you were a very liberal real estate agent. Otherwise it was the actual middle of nowhere, a tiny town in Texas only visited by hunters and fishermen who wanted to get really far away from everyone and everything.
A few weeks after school let out he’d said goodbye to his friends and come out here, where the kids his age listened to country music, hunted and fished on the weekends, and spoke in a strange accent that seemed to him what someone would sound like if they were making fun of an accent. Yet, that was the way they really talked. Since he’d been in college, he’d caught some teasing for his own accent which he’d never thought was very pronounced, but was apparently hilarious to people in California.
There had been no fellow skaters, no record shops, and the nearest bookstore was a thirty-minute drive into the next town. Tristan had been quite miserable that first summer. Most of his time was spent rereading horror novels and going through the rule books for his favorite role-playing games. He’d left behind a couple of long-standing Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with his old friends, and he’d just gotten a guide for a new game called Seeker before everything he owned went into boxes. By the time school started in the fall Tristan had committed most of Seeker to memory. It was an intriguing game and he’d hoped beyond hope that he’d meet someone here who would want to play it.
Tristan gave his cigarette a final drag and tossed it. He dug in his pocket for another when the rev of an engine grabbed his attention. There they were, his two best friends, Rob and Jen Gooris. They pulled up in their battered old Ford Bronco, its brakes screaming as they stopped at the curb. “Would you look at that!” Rob called from the driver’s seat as Jen hopped out and gave him a hug, “I was hoping you wouldn’t come!”
“Up yours!” he laughed. Jen opened the back door and Tristan tossed his bag inside. Then Jen got into the backseat and yanked the door shut, giving Tristan a cross-eyed middle finger through the grimy glass. He put his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers at her and then climbed in front. He’d barely gotten the door shut when Rob floored it and threw him into his seat. The tires screeched as the Bronco tore out of the parking lot and onto the interstate. Jen reached over and handed them both a beer, “You might want to wait a bit before you open it. Bo Duke here flung the cooler all over the place tryin’ ta make you laugh.”
Tristan held his can over Rob’s lap and cracked the top. “Hey!” Rob laughed but the beer did not foam, and Tristan sat back in his seat laughing and gulped it down.
“Oh, Lone Star, how I’ve missed you!” he said, tossing the can out the window as the Bronco started pushing ninety. If the roar of the engine weren’t enough, Rob leaned up and pushed the cassette into the player and the truck was suddenly full of the frenzied guitars of Megadeth. Tristan smiled. It was just like old times.
“So, nobody knows you’re here?” asked Jen when the song ended.
Tristan lit a cigarette and shook his head. “Not till tomorrow. I told my dad I’d be home late Friday, but I wanted to see you guys and not catch any shit about not spending time with him, so I left a day early.”
“You’re so cool, Brewster!” Jen pantomimed before lighting a cigarette of her own.
Tristan laughed, “You know they’re almost done making part two?”
“No shit?” Rob said.
“No shit. Read about it in Fangoria.”
“Welcome. To. Fright. Night. Part 2,” Rob said, “Has a nice ring to it. Can’t be better than fuckin’ Evil Dead 2, though.”
“Nothing will ever be better than Evil Dead 2,” Tristan agreed, “So what’s the plan?”
The Spenser Springs City Limit sign sped by, barely legible by both the speed of the truck and the number of bullet holes in it. Tristan himself was personally responsible for at least a dozen of them. Rob began to slow down.
“We’re going to party!” Jen announced, “Like we used to!”
“We gotta stop and pick up ice and more beer, then we’re heading out to the spot!”
“No shit? Camping, huh? It’s been a long time.”
“We know, College Boy!” Jen said, her accent effectively masking any guile or sarcasm. She smiled brightly, “But since the weather’s been nice and all, we figured you’d like a place where we could smoke and get high and loud and shit. Liz and Ryan are already out there setting up!”
“Got any good scary stories from that big-boy school of yours?” Rob shouted.
“Maybe so!” Tristan replied, “Maybe so!”
1984
Liz Rankin had actually been the first person Tristan had met that first day at Spenser Springs Senior High. He’d been doodling on his book cover as the teacher passed out calendars and reading lists. Tristan liked to draw and whenever he wasn’t reading, skating, or playing D&D, he was drawing dragons and monsters and such. On this day he was sketching a hockey mask.
“Nice Jason,” the girl sitting next to him had said.
“Thanks. Um, you watch scary movies?”
“I watch everything. My daddy owns the video hut down on Franklin.”
“Cool. I’m Tristan.”
“I’m Liz. I like your jacket.”
Tristan’s denim jacket had patches from different bands and brands that he enjoyed. It was emblazoned with the logos of Vision Street Wear, The Scorpions, Def Leppard, and Iron Maiden. It also had a few autographs written in marker along the bottom—friends of his from home. His jacket was sure to attract unwanted attention from the locals in this new burg, but he couldn’t fathom parting with i
t. He missed his friends and the jacket was a piece of home he could carry with him. The fact that this girl liked it meant that he might not have too much to worry about.
“Tho you might get your ass kicked for wearin’ it. Lots of the rednecks around here don’t go for no faggy hairspray bands.”
At that she’d turned back to her papers, her dirty blonde hair falling over her face, and said no more for the rest of the class. Her statement came true when at lunch he’d been accosted by the Daltrey twins, Butch and Bubba.
“Well lookie what we got here!” said Butch, “Somebody done wrote all over this faggot’s jacket.”
“I’ll get it,” said Bubba who then spit into his hand and wiped it on Tristan’s autographs. Tristan was petrified. These two were each at least six feet tall and two-hundred pounds of musclebound farm boy. And the way everyone moved, the way the cafeteria went quiet when they came in, told Tristan he was in for trouble.
“It didn’t come off,” Bubba called to his brother, “What do you think we oughtta do?”
Butch was just about to answer when a kid ran into the cafeteria, “Daltrey! Coach is looking for you!”
“Which one?” asked Bubba, “We’re busy saying hello to the new kid.”
“Both of you,” said the kid, “He said it was important.”
“You just got lucky, asshole,” said Bubba, “Real lucky.” He reached over and ripped a patch off the jacket. “The damn hell does ‘def leppard’ mean anyway?” He flung the patch into Tristan’s face and walked off toward the door.
