by Steven Novak
“How I am supposed to know?” Tommy fired back, shoving Donald in the chest and pushing him away.
The violent reaction enraged Donald, who ran toward Tommy, pushing him even harder in retaliation, making good use of the full force of his weight. The blow caused Tommy to fall in the grass.
Angry, confused and more scared than he was willing to admit, Donald yelped, “I KNOW I DIDN’T DO THIS, WEIRDO, SO IT MUST HAVE BEEN YOU, FREAK!” The burly bodied boy moved in close to Tommy, poking his index finger against his forehead, pushing forward with a fair amount of force. “You better tell me what you did right now, freak, or I swear to God, I’ll make you pay. Do you understand me? FIX THIS RIGHT NOW! Fix this right now and put us back where we belong! DO IT NOW, OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL BEAT YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE!”
Chunks of whatever Donald had eaten for lunch flew from his mouth with every word, smacking Tommy in the face as the booming sound of his deep voice bounced off the walls of his inner ear. Tommy had just turned his head to the side in order to avoid the onslaught of food bits and spittle when he felt the ground move. It was not a shake, or a shimmy, or a jerk, but a quick rolling vibration. Only moments afterward he felt yet another movement, this one just a bit more violent. He tried his best to focus on the vibrations and get a feeling of exactly where they were coming from, but Donald’s insistent screaming was making the task difficult.
“Donald, shut up for a minute.”
He tried harder to ignore Donald and focus, as yet another vibration - this one smaller but more violent than the previous two - shook its way across the tips of his fingers.
“SHUT UP!? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, TELLING ME TO SHUT UP!?”
Underneath the growl of Donald’s voice, Tommy heard a soft, yet extremely deep boom coinciding with yet another, slightly stronger vibration. “Just be quiet for one second, Donald!”
“YOU’RE DEAD, WEIRDO! DO YOU HEAR ME? DEAD! ONCE WE GET O…”
Finally Tommy could not take it anymore. “JUST FOR ONE SECOND WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP AND LISTEN!”
The look on Tommy’s face and the tone of his voice caught Donald off guard, quieting him long enough to hear the deep rumble for himself. It was coming from somewhere in the forest – somewhere far away – though getting closer. Donald felt the sensation of a vibration travel from the ground up into his legs.
Confused, he looked off into the sea of enormous red trees, but saw nothing. “What was that?”
Standing up, Tommy moved next to him, staring blankly in the same general direction, “I don’t know.”
The silence between the rumbles was getting shorter and shorter. The vibrations at their feet were getting more and more prominent, now traveling all the way up into their heads. From behind came the rustling of leaves and snapping of branches. The boys turned in unison just as something large and white ran out of the dense red bushes not more than a few feet away, colliding with their bodies at full force. All three forms crashed to the ground in a wild, sloppy heap.
Tommy was lying face down in the red grass when he opened his eyes. His entire right side hurt. Something heavy was pressed against his shoulder, pinning him to the dirt. Pushing himself out from underneath the weight, he managed to roll onto his back. Propping himself on his elbows, he reached across his chest and massaged his right shoulder. To his left Donald was sitting with his back toward him, tenderly rubbing what was most likely a large knot on the top of his head. When he turned toward his right, he found himself staring at a pair of oversized bright red eyeballs. The frighteningly red eyes were set in deep sockets taking up almost half of the space on a thin, very pale, nearly translucent wide white face.
Tommy’s body froze.
For an instant, while staring into the massive eyes of something clearly not human, he seemed to have lost the ability to breathe. After slowly managing to get control over his bodily functions, he inhaled quickly before scooting across the grass, bumping into Donald. Annoyed, Donald turned, spotted the odd looking creature and moved back in fear, alongside Tommy.
The bony white creature, with its uncomfortably long limbs sat motionless - staring at the frightened boys with a look of shock and confusion on its strange face. A clump of its long, sporadically placed, stringy white hair dropped in front of its eyes. The odd creature brushed it away before extending one of its long fingers at the children.
With half a whisper, it muttered, “You…you…y…y…you can’t be…can you?”
Tommy saw the creature’s bony arm shaking and realized that the monster seemed to be just as scared of them as they were of it. Before he had time to figure out what this could mean exactly, another large and much closer booming sound filled the air, jolting all three of the confused figures back to reality. The white creature’s head jerked to the right, staring off through the trees and into the forest. The large apple-sized red pupils in its eyes shrunk down to the size of a grape as it focused on something so far off in the distance that the boys could not hope to see it. Another enormous boom echoed through the trees, followed by a violent vibration that forced both boys to steady themselves so that they stayed seated. The creature turned and looked at them. An expression of total and all encompassing fear stretched across its tight, dusty white skin.
As its dry, cracked lips parted, its squeaky voice muttered only one simple word, “Run.”
*
*
CHAPTER 8
HELP IS ON THE WAY
*
“TOMMY! TOMMY!”
It had been almost five minutes since both Donald and Tommy went spiraling into the stream. Five long minutes and neither of them had come up for a breath of air. The moment after the boys had collided and plunged into in the murky water, Staci hurriedly made her way down the fort’s rickety ladder. She stood on the edge of the grass, frantically screaming in the direction of the filthy, barely moving stream, “TOMMY! TOMMY!”
She turned toward the motionless group of kids that made up Donald’s goon squad. They look just as scared, if not more so than she. “DON’T JUST STAND THERE, GO GET HELP!” She screamed.
For the first minute or so after Donald and Tommy had splashed into the murky water, the three boys were laughing their heads off. They pointed, cackled, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the craziness brought on by their faithful leader. As time continued to pass, the laughter was replaced by genuine fear when Tommy and Donald had failed to emerge from the water. They had just wanted to mess around with Tommy, smack him a few times and remind him of his place in the complicated hierarchy of middle school and possibly make themselves feel a bit better about their own lives in the process. The last thing they wanted, or even had imagined was anyone drowning, or the possibility they faced now – that someone might be dead.
The reality of the current situation did not sit well with any of them.
“GO GET SOME HELP, YOU IDIOTS!” Staci yelled again from the bank of the stream.
The boys looked at each other briefly; then, almost as if they had shared a single brain, they turned and ran in the opposite direction. Not a one of them had any intention of getting help. Fear had overtaken them and they simply wanted to get away. They wanted to run and hide and pretend that they had never heard of Tommy Jarvis’ fort in the woods. If anyone asked about Donald or the weirdo or the tiny stream in the middle of nowhere, they would simply look confused and say they had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Looking confused and stupid was something these three did well.
After seeing the three boys run away and believing that they were on their way to get help, Staci turned her attention again to the muddy water, “TOMMY!”
Reaching between her legs, she snatched a long branch from the ground and poked at the top. Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, and maybe it did not make an ounce of sense, but Staci was more scared than she had ever been in her life, and in that moment very little seemed to make sense. So many thoughts were bouncing around inside her skull. She could
not organize any of them, let alone begin to use them to formulate something resembling a plan.
“TOMMY! TOMMY! Please, where are you, Tommy!”
Her eyes were hot and wet, tears rolling from underneath her eyelashes and down her cheeks. Her legs felt shaky – strangely similar to cold, wobbly spaghetti. She found it difficult to remain upright.
“Please, Tommy…please…where are you…” She mumbled in between breaths, the salty tears now trickling into her mouth.
Just as her legs gave way and her body tumbled in the grass, little Nicky Jarvis wedged his own body underneath her, slowing her descent. It had taken him a long time to navigate his way back down the ladder. The rungs had always been too far apart for his short legs so he was forced to move slowly to keep from falling and breaking his neck. Staci had lost all control over her emotions; she tightly wrapped her arms around the spindly body of the eleven-year-old boy. Squeezing his arms and pulling at his shirt, she mumbled something incoherent into the fabric of his sleeve. Very slowly Nicky pushed her off him. Once she let go of his shirt and was mumbling in the soft grass beneath her knees, Nicky stood and made his way timidly toward the water’s edge. He sat on the bank and slowly lowered himself into the murky water while trying to control the fear building in his chest. Even the very simple task of breathing required much concentration.
Nicky had no idea how to swim, but it did not matter. The water looked like a great green monster ready and willing to swallow him whole. Even that did not matter. Despite common sense, despite the better judgment of his eleven-year-old brain, Nicky knew that he needed to get into the water and he needed to do it as quickly as he could.
Tommy had always been there when he needed him and now he would do the same, no matter the cost.
Staci pulled her head out of the grass. Through a pair of hazy, tear-filled eyes, she spotted Nicky lowering himself into the drink. She was keenly aware of the boy’s inability to swim. It was a problem they both shared. All through her youth her father had attempted over and over again to teach her to swim, even to doggie paddle, but the instant she came into contact with the strange weightlessness water created, her body froze. With her limbs useless and her heart racing, more often than not she would sink like a rock. She hated swimming and hated water and there was no way she was going to let Nicky Jarvis get anywhere near it.
Spastically crawling across the grass toward the boy, she screamed so loud that it caused her vocal chords to ache. “Nicky! NO! Nicky, don’t go in there!”
Staci had just seen one Jarvis boy go under and not come up; she could not let the same thing happen to another.
Nicky was chest deep in the murky liquid when Staci leaned over and wrapped her arms underneath his arms. She tried to pull him back toward land. “No! Nicky! Get out! GET OUT!”
Twisting his body to face her, he did his best to push her arms away, but each time he removed one, she clawed at him with the other. Staci was determined to get her arms around the sopping wet boy, who turned out to be surprisingly strong for his diminutive size. Despite her determination, Staci was losing the battle. With each attempt to grab a flailing arm or a piece of fabric she found herself slowly moving closer and closer to the stream’s edge. She managed to grab one of Nicky’s arms briefly, but the boy’s defiant, wild flailing caused her to lose her footing completely; she flipped forward and splashed down on top of him. As the entire weight of her body collided with the top of Nicky’s head, both children began to sink. The dark abyss immediately engulfed them. It folded itself around them, pulled them downward and refused to let go. Like the dark green, hungry monster Nicky had imagined it to be, the water gobbled them up and swallowed them whole. Tugging their thrashing, oxygen-deprived bodies into itself without an ounce of sympathy or remorse, it drew them down furiously and spit them out toward a fate already determined and a world that would change them forever.
*
*
CHAPTER 9
RUN, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN
*
For a creature that seemed so awkward and lanky at first sight, the skinny, pasty-white, red-eyed thing now ran through the forest with incredible speed. It leaped over fallen trees and around bushes with no problem whatsoever and looked shockingly graceful while doing so. It cut through thick underbrush with the speed and accuracy of a housefly slicing through the air. The creature’s surprising speed and mobility was making it difficult for Tommy and Donald to keep up. With every passing second it was getting further and further from their line of sight. Adding to their worries was the fact that whatever was chasing them through the dense foliage was getting perilously close. Behind them the boys could hear the sound of trees being knocked over; bushes, logs and wood snapped to cinders under the pressure of an immense weight. Donald’s body was not exactly made for long distance running. His legs were on fire and the ever-expanding pain in his chest was making it more and more difficult to catch his breath. He could no longer see the strange white creature as Tommy had managed put a fair amount of distance between it as well. When an enormous tree came crashing to the ground not more than fifteen feet away, he leaped to the side in fear, tripping over something buried in the dirt of the forest floor. Tumbling head over heels forward, he crashed headfirst into the ground, the weight of his body sending loose red leaves spiraling like tops in every direction. For a brief second consciousness escaped him.
Almost as if the forest floor had swallowed it whole, the white creature suddenly dropped out of Tommy’s view. As his feet skidded across the dirt, Tommy came to a stop, using the opportunity to catch his breath. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted Donald lying flat on his face, partially covered by a blanket of red leaves. Behind his burly tormentor, the forest seemed to be exploding in the distance. Trees were tipping over in every direction as an enormous dirt cloud expanded across the entire forest like a thick brown fog. The dusty haze parted only for an instant, cut in half by a gigantically thick and dark gray leg as it stepped through the trees and slammed into the ground. In a strange way, the enormous appendage reminded Tommy of an elephant’s foot, only a hundred times larger. The ground beneath Tommy shook violently as another massive foot crashed to the ground not far from Donald, who by this time had managed to pick himself up. Donald was quite shaken and somewhat disoriented. Tommy looked back toward the area where the white creature had disappeared, then again at Donald and the insanely massive amount of destruction that surrounded him.
Despite his reservations, he knew that he could not let Donald get squashed, no matter how much he hated him. There had been times when he would lie in bed at night wishing for the burly boy’s death; but now, with the reality of that moment upon him, no matter how much he despised the pudgy annoyance named Donald Rondage, he could not just leave him.
He was better than that - even if he did not want to be.
Donald had hit his head hard on something when he tripped as it was throbbing and sore. His vision had gone from crystal clear to fuzzy and blurred. When something heavy, huge and gray crashed to the ground not far behind him, the boy, only half-aware, suddenly found himself engulfed in a cloud of dirty smoke that leaked into his mouth and nose and quickly made its way into his lungs. There was so much happening that he was unable to process any specific part of it with even a modicum of success. Sounds, smells and pain were hitting him from all sides at once, each more confusing than the last. The thick layer of dirt that had entered his mouth and nose was now coating his lungs, sending him into a wild coughing fit.
Stumbling forward blindly, he tripped over another branch, but this time he was saved from falling on his face by Tommy, “Come on, Donald! Get up!” Tommy was pulling him in a direction that seemed to be heading away from the noise. Donald did his best to follow, despite the still expanding pain in his head.
Together the boys scurried through the forest with Tommy leading the way as best he could, while navigating the escalating carnage around them. He did not know exactly where he was going, bu
t he kept his eyes on the spot where the white creature had disappeared. He really had no other choice. A monstrous, frightening growl emanated from high above the trees, traveled downward into the forest and rattled the trees around them. An instant after another tree tumbled to the ground, an even thicker brown cloud of dirt enveloped the boys entirely, causing Tommy to lose sight of where he was headed. Now the boys were stumbling blindly, their hands waving out in front of them. Another massive monster’s enormous gray foot slammed to the ground not more than a few feet from where they stood. The sheer size of the beast’s appendage and the force with which it was delivered turned the boys upside down, sending their bodies spinning into the air. Momentarily weightless in the hideous earthen colored fog, their arms flailed wildly in a vain attempt to grab something to stop them from falling. Strangely, instead of hitting the forest floor as one might expect, they fell through it. A thick patch of leaves covering a hidden trap door opened; the pair passed through it and into a dark hole. Their bodies finally came to a stop after splashing down into three feet of muddy water. Tommy lifted his head out of the foul smelling liquid just in time to see the trap door quickly shut, blocking out not only the dirt cloud, but what little sunlight had been able to make its way through, bathing both boys in total darkness.
Still a bit foggy and not quite sure exactly what was going on, Donald noticed the door close above their heads. As the thick blackness enveloped him he attempted to yell something but was stopped when a bony hand, attached to even longer, bonier fingers covered his mouth. He felt the hot, stinky breath of the pale white creature against the side of his face and immediately froze.
“Shhh…don’t speak.”
Both Tommy and Donald went quiet even though their hearts were still racing and their hands were shaking uncontrollably. From above the sounds of falling trees, enormous stomping feet, and the ungodly roar of the oversized creatures continued. With each second the sounds were getting further away. Whatever was chasing them only moments ago, was now passing directly over their heads. With time, the rumbling slowly became less noticeable and Tommy got the distinct impression that somehow they had escaped.
