The summer of ’84-Preview

Chapter I and II

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Table Of Contents

Prologue-Page 3

Chapter I:Two weeks later-Page 6

Chapter II:Into the woods-Page 9

Chapter III:The body-Page 15

1

              He stood there looking at the sky, a storm was coming, that he could tell, except the storm had red lightning and looked like a black spider.

              Was he the only person who could see it?He wasn’t sure.He wasn’t exactly thinking about it at the moment either.He was thinking about the storm.The freakishly large storm.The storm that felt like an eye watching him.That storm

2

              “And one!’

One of the kids yelled as he pushed through his friend towards the basket, sweating beading on his forehead and shining in the streetlight.

“Man, it’s almost 9:30, i gotta get home”

The other player wiped the sweat off his forehead as he spoke.ON the other side of the court an asian kid named Jimmy Hong jumped up, throwing the novel he was reading into his backpack.

          “Ay, JJ, you ever gonna actually play?” 

The tallest of the three teases Jimmy, who has never played a sport in his life, and never touched any sports equipment, at least not on purpose.

              That wasn’t what he was for, nope.LIke every other middle school friend group in the country, theirs had a nerd, Jimmy.

              How Jimmy actually became friends with Finn and Trae, the two basketball stars, is a story for another time.What matters is that he Is friends with them, fate has made sure of that.

3

              Normally, there would be three people playing hoops on the court while JImmy sat on the sidelines engrossed in his novel.This summer was different.Markus, the fourth member of the group, and star quarterback of the Clanton Cavaliers football team, was currently working a night shift job at the towns Dairy Queen, leaving his friends to hoop by themselves.

              The four amigos were quite the group.Jimmy was asian, Markus and Trae black, and Finn white, not that skin color mattered to any of them.

4

              As the three teens were exiting the fence in court, Finn tripped.

He fell for what felt like a decade to him, as if he was living in slow motion.

He hit the ground, but it wasn’t the ground.Not the ground.It was so cold.Like ice.It all felt like ice.His whole body.

.

              He struggled to get onto his knees then stand up, brushing some white dust like residue off his shirt.Where was he?He didn’t know the answer to his question.

              It looked like he was at the court, but he wasn’t.He thought maybe he had passed out, maybe it was all just a dream, sadly for him, things didn’t go easily like that.Not in the real world.Not now.Not ever.

          “Hello?”

He shouted, but there was no answer.Then he saw it.

              He turned around to face E street, and his jaw dropped when he saw the massive storm that covered the town, almost looking like a black mountain made of dust.He tried to scream, but no words came out, but he heard his voice, but not him speaking.

              Now, in front of him stood a carbon copy of himself, with a wicked evil grin on his face.Or it.He didn’t know what exactly it was.It surely wasn’t him.But it was.

              Finn tried to speak, but instead the other finn spoke.

“I want you to build” It told him, then he blacked out, slipped out of the vision.

1

              In its whole 118 years as a town, Clanton had yet to see a violent murder.Chief Dave wanted it to stay that way, but of course the world had other plans.Other plans being to let a family of four be murded.Murded, and then the bodys disappeared from the morgue. “Disappeared”.

No one got an examination on the bodys, in fact they could have even still been alive, but somebody decided to steal them, keep them as a souvenir maybe, that’s what the government had told him, but the Chief had other ideas as to what had happened to said bodys, and he had an idea that the government knew to, they weren’t going to say anything about it.

              What did Chief think had happened to the bodies? He wasn’t sure, but the current story concocted for the press surely wasn’t logical to anyone who had all the facts, not logical at all.

2

              Jimmy and Trae hadn’t been to Evers park to hang out in two weeks.Not since Finn stopped hanging out with them.Or even talking to them.It was pointless since Jimmy didn’t even play, Markus was at his job, and Finn was always in the woods now.

              What was Finn doing in the woods? That’s the other reason Jimmy and Trae stopped hanging at Evers, Finn was acting weird, very weird.

              Finn had never cared much about the outdoors, then the day after he fell at Evers, instead of coming back to play the next day, he went into the woods, and the day after, and every day since then.What exactly was Finn doing? Trae and Jimmy were trying to figure that out.

              They started investigating by discreetly following Finn after they watched him leave Andy’s hardware with a bag of what looked like duct tape and rope.Finn had ignored them both the entire day, so they assumed he was sick or something, but when they watched him  walk out of the hardware store, their opinions quickly changed, and they left the arcade following their strange friend.

              So they followed him on their bikes, followed him all the way from main street to the edge of Mirkwood forest.Then they watched him get off his bike, let it drop to the forest floor, take the bag and walk inside, the whole time wondering what in the world he possibly could be doing in there with duct tape and rope.Just what the hell could he possibly be doing?

3

              What was Finn doing in the forest? The next morning Jimmy and Trae still did not know the answer to the question, what they did know was Finn was acting weird.Real weird.

              Jimmy called Finn’s mom, and she told him that she hadn’t even seen Finn all day.She asked if he knew where he was, and he told her he didn’t, but promised that if he did see him, he would tell him to get home and that his parents were worried about him.

              After saying that he hung up the house phone and placed it back into its cradle on the coffee table sitting in front of him.Trae sat next to him, a confused look on his face.Somethings really weird was going on.Really weird.They had to solve the mystery of what Finn was doing, and also why he was doing it.

              “What should we do?” Trae asked as the two of them walked towards the door to Jimmy’s garage.

“We should confront him” he responded as he swung the door open.

“And then what?” Trae said as he grabbed his bike and started pushing it out of the garage and onto the Hongs driveway

“I don’t know” he replied and shook his head “I really don’t know”

1

              The ride to Mirkwood only took about three minutes on bike, and when Trae and Jimmy reached the edge of Evers park and Mirkwood in the spot that they had seen Finn originally entering the woods, he was no longer in sight, although Jimmy didn’t know why he had expected him to still be there.He’s probably inside the forest Trae thought to himself as they both stood there looking into the woods.

              Jimmy jumped when he heard the crinkle of leaves on the forest floor, and then saw a strange black cat appear in front of both of them.

He assumed that the feline was chilling in a tree, although that seemed weird since the branches of all the trees were at least twenty feet in the air.Way too high for a cat to climb up, at least in Jimmys opinion.

              “Nope, that’s not creepy at all” 

Trae and Jimmy both stared at the cat, which was also staring at them with piercing green eyes.It creeped Trae out.

              “It’s just a cat” Jimmy told him and they both set their bikes against one of the trees on the forest’s edge.Trae looked nervous.

“We gonna go in there?” Jimmy shook his head.

“We aren’t just gonna wait for him to walk out.We could be waiting for hours” And they both started walking down the path.

2

              “Finn!Finn!” Both of them called out into the woods as they walked through it.There was no response.

“Are we sure he’s even here?” Trae stopped and leaned up against one of the tall trees, sweat beading on his forehead now.

“He’s gotta be here.We saw him only thirty minutes ago walking in here, he couldn’t have possibly left that fast ” Jimmy responded and kept on walking.

              The trees were so thick overhead that only a little bit of sunlight reached the inside of the woods.That creeped Trae out.Finns strange actions also creeped Trae out, he thought that coming into the forest was a stupid idea.A very stupid idea.Jimmy didnt really care how stupid Trae thought it was.He wanted to figure out 

3

              Chief stamped out his cigarette as he got out of his police cruiser.

He had spent the last half hour watching the southside of Mirkwood forest, looking for any suspicious activity after one of the neighbors had reported some weird going ons.He thought at first it might just have been a nervous old woman making something up, but when he saw a hooded figure carry a bag into the woods, his opinion quickly changed.

               Chief himself had been serving the town since ‘82, and he planned on serving for many more years to come.The small town police work was much easier than the work he had done in St.Louis, and he liked when things were easier, although this case did not look like it planned on being an easy one.At least not to him.

              He patted his holstered revolver as he walked across the street towards the grassy field.Hopefully he wouldn’t have to use it, but it was always there for him just in case the moment called for it.

               He listened to the crunch of the leaves under his boots as he entered the forest, and took off his aviators placing them into his shirt pocket.The inside of the woods was much darker and cooler compared to the summer weather outside.The darkness made him shiver as he walked.

              “Anyone in here?” he called out into the woods.No response, although he knew that there was definitely someone in here.Probably hiding he thought to himself as he continued to walk.

              Crack-k-k.He jumped and turned around, revolver in hand to see a black cat watching him with a strange green gaze.He relaxed and reupholstered his pistol, sighing and chuckling a little while looking at the strange feline.

4

              When he tried to approach the cat, it recoiled and began hissing, and immediately Chief stopped and backed up but the cat kept on hissing with it’s back arced into the air.

              It only took him a moment to realize that the cat wasn’t hissing at him but rather at what was behind him.He spun around and drew his revolver to face whatever was behind him.

              He stumbled backwards, unloading the revolver into what looked like a massive spider, but the bullets had no effect and just made the monster angrier.

Seeing the gun’s failure to harm the beast, Chief chose his next best option of survival.run.

              He ran like hell, not bothering to look back at the monster which was now roaring like a lion.He could hear its many feet pounding on the forest floor, and feel the adrenaline flowing through his veins.He jumped fallen trees and rocks, not bothering to slow down until he was out in the sun.Out where he could yell for help.

              He didn’t stop running until he reached his cruiser, and he quickly jumped in and locked the doors.He sat there panting sweat rolling down his face.At the forest’s edge he saw the creature staring at him.Its eyes were all black, and shined in the sun.After a moment it turned around and went back into the woods.He sighed a sigh of relief, thanking god that whatever the hell that was hadn’t caught him, and contemplating what his next course of action should be.

5

              Deep in the woods Trae and Jimmy heard the monsters roar, and turned around to face where it was coming from.They were both wondering the same thing.What the hell was that?

              The only “person” who knew the answer to that question was Finn.

But Finn was gone now.Gone like yesterday, although his body remained in clanton, Finn had been gone for days.What remained was simply a reflection of what used to be, now under the control of the sandman.

              “Maybe we should go back,” Trae pleaded to Jimmy.

“Maybe-maybe you’re right” Jimmy replied still looking towards the direction that the eerie roar had come from.Jimmy shivered just thinking about it, knowing that there wasn’t a native animal in clanton that could produce such a roar as the one that they had heard.Not a single animal.

              Quickly, they began the trek back to the edge of the forest.They jumped over logs and rocks as they walked, being extra careful as not to step onto any fallen debris or into any little crevice that could injure them.They were both extremely freaked out by the roar, and it scared them to think that it was in the woods where Finn had been going.Where it could possibly hurt him.What they didn’t know was that the monster was living off of Finn.Living off of him like a parasite, a vampire feeding off the emotions of its host until there is absolutely nothing left except an empty mind.An empty mind that is perfect for possession.

6

              Ten minutes later Chief still sat in his cruiser, now smoking a cigarette and questioning reality.He wasnt stupid, but for some reason his mind just couldnt comprehend what had just happened to him.

              He had decided that he couldn’t tell anyone.At least not yet.The other officers would all think that he’d gone ******* crazy if he told them he got chased through the woods by a giant spider.Hell, he thought he might be ******* crazy himself so surely everyone else would too.But that didn’t change the fact that he was chased through the woods by a giant ******* spider.Didnt change it at all.

              He shook his head and wiped his brow, going over what he should do next in his mind.Trying to figure out a plan.A solution.None came to him.

              He was about to light another cigarette when the cruiser’s walkie talkie started screaming.It was his deputy officer Tylers.

Chief came in, we have a 10-54 and suspected 187, Clanton High School.

Reluctantly he picked up the radio and answered.

10-12, I’m on my way. He grumbled into the microphone wondering what the hell could have possibly happened that involved murder at a high school, and why in gods name did this day just keep getting worse.He wouldnt get the answer to either of the questions.At least not for a while.

7

              He arrived at the highschool ten minutes later.There were three crown vics parked by the football field, all three had their lights flashing and several reporters and civilians were surrounding whatever was over there, trying to take pictures with their massive cameras and asking annoying questions.As he pulled closer to the field Tylers flagged him down, and he saw what the 10-54 was.Oh god did he see it.