Chapter 1
The Beginnings
1
A fright in the night
August 3rd, 1984
It was those damn buzzards again. It seems that everyday now they and the crows were after something in the field. Jake was a bright child, only 8, and he knew how to handle the birds. It was a warm day in August, as usual to Jake and his family as any other day that year: chasing a few crows or buzzards away, watering the crops, and finally ending with a sitting on the back porch, drinking iced tea or lemonade. He knew his family's trade very well; he knew just what to do for every situation out in his family's field. That was the last day Jake knew without living in perpetual fear. He saw the birds circling around the center of the field and knew he'd have to act fast in order to stop them from devouring half a barrel's worth of their crop growing out there.
Oh man, Jake thought. There goes a lot of our crop if I don't stop those things. So he sprinted out from his porch and went into the field. Wow, that's a lot of buzzards, he thought as he saw more and more of them coming seemingly out of nowhere. It must be a deer or something to draw out that many birds.
As Jake drew near where all the buzzards were circling, he was assaulted by a stench of rotting, death and decay so powerful that he literally staggered from it for a few seconds. Man, how long has that thing been out there rotting? He realized that there would be a whole swarm of birds to scare off, so he broke off a dead stalk of grain to use to beat back any stubborn birds.
When he got to where the birds were circling, Jake, as brave a country boy as he was, felt such terror that he later felt was only found in movies. There, right below where the buzzards were grouped tightest was a body. The body was obviously well beyond any recognition: dark, empty sockets where the eyes once were, skin torn off and muscle and bone showing through in some places. Those eyes, those God awful eyes, he thought. And then, like in the greatest and scariest of horror movies, the body started to move. Somehow or another, it got up onto its feet. "Remember this boy," the body said in a ragged southern accent. "Remember me, 'cause you're next." And then, as if from a thousand miles away, Jake heard himself screaming…
And he woke up in his New York apartment, still screaming. After he had calmed down, his heart still thundering in his chest, he looked out the window, towards the stunning New York skyline, a dark silhouette against the bleak December sky. He looked at his clock, a fluorescent green readout, stating it was only four in the morning. God Almighty, he thought after a few minutes, I haven't had a scare like that ever. He lie back down onto his bed, trying to get rid of the haunting images of the body from his mind. He could not go back to sleep. For a few nights afterwards, he could not rest at night; he would constantly tell himself it was only a dream, a bad dream. Or so he thought.