-Prologue Part I
Burgess City-2013
Jackson Overland came home late. He parked his beat-up red pickup in the driveway, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment. His exhausted eyes watched the full moon in the dead of night at Burgess. He took the keys from the ignition and looked sadly at the dark house in front of him: a two-story house on a half-acre wood-paneled lot. A rocking chair sat on the narrow porch by the front door. He grunted opening the truck door and getting out.
It was another exhausting day at work for him. The crew was now down to five and six weeks ago. And the client, now at the end of his rope, was threatening lawsuits.
As he lumbered to the front door, his cell phone rang. He picked it up and saw on the display the number that was calling him at 11 pm and cursed himself. More trouble. It felt like this day would never end. He shook his head as he answered the call, "For God's sake. What now?"
Was Hiccup, his best friend.
"I just got off the phone with Dennis," Hiccup sighed, "whatever is going on, apparently he has it too."
"So," Jack said, his blood pressure rising. "No tile guy."
"No tile guy." Hiccup confirmed.
"That's just..." He was on the verge of cursing, but he didn't have the energy. Instead, he fumbled with keys in hand, "All this work is going south, Hiccup. And the damn contractor is nowhere to be found."
"If he's sick, he's sick. There's not much you can do-"
"Hiccup," Jack interrupted opening the front door and walking in, "He's the contractor." He caught his temperature rising and lowered his voice. "He's the contractor, okay? I can't lose this job."
"What is it about 'sick' that you don't understand?" Hiccup asked.
Jack glimpsed a twelve year old girl sleeping on the couch, "I understand."
"Look, I'll try to find someone."
"Let's talk about this tomorrow morning, okay? Good night." Jack hung up the phone. The girl stirred as a soft glow of light filled the room.
Jack tossed the keys onto the coffee table.
Yawning, the young woman sat up on one elbow, "Hey," she said, squinting at him.
"Hey." was all he managed to say. She made room for him to let his body collapse on the leather cushions.
"Fun day at work?"
Jack took a long look at her. She was in her red plaid pajama bottoms and had a purple shirt over a white one. Leather bracelets circled her wrists and she wore star-shaped earrings. Her name was Emma, and she had a style all her own. Chocolate hair like her eyes, which she preferred to keep to her shoulders, an aversion to makeup, boys and especially dresses.
Her older brother gave her a sidelong glance, "What are you still doing awake?" He rested his head upright with his fingers tired, "It's late."
"Oh, what time is it?" She turned and looked at the clock on the wall above the couch.
Jack knew exactly what time it was, "It's past your bedtime." he told her.
"But it's still today!" She stated it clearly, as if it were an indisputable fact. She always had a way of turning things in her favor, a trait she definitely didn't get from him. Maybe from Mom, but not from him.
With an energy that made Jack jealous, she crept to the other side of the couch and reached for something hidden in the shadows.
Jack had a vague idea of what was to come, "Honey, please, not right now. I don't have the energy for this." Jack ran his hands through his brown hair in a vain attempt to adjust it into place.
Ignoring her plea, Emma appeared beside her on the couch with one arm outstretched. "Here."
In her hand was a square blue box.
"What is it?" Jack reached out and took it.
"Your birthday." Emma replied, again stating the obvious.
Your 20th birthday
He opened the box. An overwhelming feeling of appreciation washed over him and he fought hard to contain it.
"You keep complaining about the broken watch, so I figured, you know…" She finished her sentence with a shrug.
He took off his watch and placed the box on the coffee table. He was too exhausted to deal with the feelings that threatened to reveal themselves, and to avoid them, he concentrated on strapping his watch to his wrist.
"Do you like it?"
The truth was, he loved it. But with the loss of his parents, Jack got a little bad with feelings, sometimes not knowing how to show them. He then tapped the glass of his watch and grimaced "Emma, that's cool, but..."
"Which?" There was a trace of panic in his voice.
He pulled the watch up to his ear, "It's good, but I think it's stuck..." He shrugged helplessly.
Emma panicked, "No, no, no..." She grabbed his wrist, her face pale. A second passed. One second she noticed by the tickswipe of the hand of Jack's watch, and his color returned.
She then turned to Jack who had a smirk on his face, "Oh ha ha." She scoffed pulling his arm away, scooting away on the couch away from him.
"Where did you get the money for that?"
"Drugs!" She said sarcastically over her shoulder, "I sell hard drugs."
"Oh, good," he settled on the couch and grabbed the remote, "you can start helping out with the mortgage then."
She huffed, "As you wish."
*
After more than an hour of changing channels, decompressing from a whole day of putting Band-Aids on a sinking ship, Jack turned off the television. His worries had eased, thanks to Ice Men's midnight marathon episodes, but some worries still surfaced. His earlier joke to Emma about helping with the mortgage had a grain of truth. He was late on the mortgage, not to the point of imminent foreclosure, but being late on the house payment was never a good thing.
And this deal with the construction crew was problematic. Never before had he encountered so many setbacks related to team non-attendance. A typical nail folder like him knows you only get paid if you do the job. Construction workers are not salaried and not protected by the union. If a guy called saying he's sick, you can bet he's lying at home and coughing up a lung. One, two guys on a sick crew? He guessed it was possible.
But five? Six? Not. There was something else going on. Something serious.
If you listened to the news, with your tendency to exaggerate everything, you would think the world was coming to an end. Queues at hospitals, people dropping off at bus stops, in check-out lines, at the post office. There was even a local story of a woman who passed out behind the wheel of her car and hit a school bus full of small children. Thank God the children weren't hurt, but Jesus...
And there were other news articles lurking among the flu epidemic headlines. These were much more problematic. Jack then diverted your attention from them, but you couldn't get some of them out of your head, like 'mass hysteria' and 'brutal family murder' and worst of all, 'man kills wife before feasting on family dog.'
'Christ...' Jack thought, watching the scribble at the bottom of the screen before turning off the television for good. What is happening in the world?
He looked at his sister sleeping peacefully beside him and fought for some comforting thoughts, thoughts to replace the disturbing images that swirled in his head. Tomorrow was Friday, thank God, that meant the weekend was near. He was looking forward to Emma's hockey game in the afternoon. She was the star of the team. Seeing her shine on the dance floor would do a lot to ease the worries off her shoulders.
He struggled to his feet, scooped Emma into his arms and carried her to the bed.
After Jack tucked Emma into his bed, he went downstairs to complete his nightly routine, turning off the lights and locking the house. It was well after 1am, a little later than usual. First he turned off the TV with the remote and threw it on the couch. Then he made sure the front door was locked, then went to the kitchen to check the sliding glass door, followed by his office before heading back to bed.
Upon reaching the glass doors of his office, his eyes caught sight of a shadow moving in the darkness. He got close to the glass and squinted. Someone was searching his 1972 El Camino truck, which was parked a few feet from his house.
Jack unlocked the door and opened it. The car was facing the house, where behind it was a wooden tool shed with the doors open. He stuck his head through the open door and yelled, "Hey! Can I help you with something?"
Whoever it was jumped in fear. Jack passed through the door, and as he approached, he realized that the shadowy figure was none other than Nicholas St. North, his neighbor. Norte was a tall man in his mid-fifties with an easygoing disposition. He was wearing a red golf shirt and black pants, his salesman's uniform at the biggest toy store in town. At the sight of Jack, Norte's face filled with relief.
"God Jack!" Norte took a breath, his face pale. "You scared the shit out of me."
Jack looked at his watch. "Kind of late, isn't it North?"
"I didn't mean to alarm you, Jack. It's just, Khaterine, well, she went and locked herself in her room and," He chuckled and shook his head, "she's not going to open the damn door."
Jack placed a work boot on the bumper of his truck, causing it to sink under his weight. He leaned his elbows on the back door, "Did you guys have a fight or something?"
"No, no, nothing like that. I called her from work and said I'd be home late, she saidThat was fine, and when I got home the bedroom door was locked. I knocked on the door, but she didn't answer."
"Are you sure she's home?"
"Yes, I can hear her heavy breathing through the closed door."
"Hmm." Jack muttered, the gears turning in his head. He was thinking about the baby, but he didn't say anything.
Norte gestured to the iron crowbar in his hands, "I thought I'd borrow this to try and break down the door."
Jack reached out and took his crowbar, "How about we find something that might do a little less damage?" He tossed the bar back into place, where it bumped against rusty chains and saw blades. He looked around before finding what he wanted.
"Here we go." He said, holding a long, thin nail that gleamed in the moonlight, "That should do."
"Ah," North said, smiling in approval, "perfect!"
"Come on," Jack called, motioning for North to lead the way, "let's have a look."
As they passed the fence that surrounded Norte's house, a gunshot echoed through the night. It was some distance to his left and it made them both freeze.
"Someone is having a block party and hasn't told us?" Norte teased nervously, but Jack could hear the fear in his voice. And the fact is, Jack felt it too.
Screams followed the shot, which was followed by more shots, followed by more screams. "Lets go in." said Jack, leading his neighbor to quicken his pace. A growing sense of dread filled him, like the shadows that surrounded them as they moved through the darkness.
They hurriedly entered the house through the kitchen door. Jack closed it and locked it behind him. The kitchen light was on. Jack looked around and saw half a dozen used baby bottles in the sink. An open can of powdered milk was overturned on the counter. Once again dread filled her insides. This was not Katherine's kitchen, neat and tidy.
"What the hell is happening?" Norte asked in a panicked voice as he peered out the window.
"I don't know." Jack answered honestly. He felt a disconcerting tug in his chest, urging him to return home, but he resisted. He put his hand on North's shoulder, "Let's check on your wife."
They then left the kitchen and walked down a dimly lit hallway to where the master bedroom was. At the entrance to the hall, the door on the left was open. Jack saw a strange blue light glowing inside. It was the room of Nick, son of Norte, a young man in his early twenties whose job in the city required pants and a tie.
Jack stopped at the door to take a look. He noticed with no particular interest a collection of glass containers scattered around the room. They all seemed to have a fungus growing inside them. The strange glow came from a black-light fluorescent lamp hanging from the ceiling. The room itself looked like a deep cavernous room; thick spores hovered in the air, strangely visible in the black light. Jack reached out and closed the door without thinking, driven into action by a primal survival instinct that defied explanation.
Jack's heart was beating fast now. His mind struggled to understand everything he'd seen and heard tonight—the gunshots, the screams—and now this. North, his well-mannered neighbor was masking a growing terror within him, that was for sure. The hairs on the back of Jack's neck stood up, as did his neighbor's.
"Oh," North muttered, hearing the door close and seeing the expression on Jack's face, "Nick's been bringing these things home from town in little glass jars to study. He says they're some kind of fungus or fungus." other."
The fungus growth in Nick's room had triggered a connection inside Jack's head. He remembered seeing those orange finger-like images before, in newspaper headlines and on the evening news.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea…" Jack reasoned.
"Yes. That's what I told him." North shrugged, "Do you think he hears me?"
They moved to the end of the hall, to the closed door to the master bedroom.
"That's it." North said, sucking in a deep breath. Beads of sweat formed on the deep lines of his forehead. He put his ear to the door, "Listen... you can hear Katherine breathing in there."
North stepped back to let Jack hear. Jack put his ear close to the door - it was surprisingly cold - but just as Norte had said, he heard a deep, husky breath inhale and exhale on the other side.
To Jack it felt like labored breathing, not from sleep but not fully awake either. He paused.
"Do you think the baby is in there with her?"
When Norte registered the question, his eyes widened. "It better be!" he replied. Jack could tell from the panic on the man's face that he'd said the wrong thing.
"I'm sure it's okay." Jack calm downor North's concerns. He then took the nail out of his pocket and inserted it into the small hole in the doorknob, finding the latch and opening it. What Jack saw next would haunt him for the rest of his life...