The Harvest and the Slaughter
Hawkins, as it was—a small, bright town with a simple history and close community—was gone. First the creatures appeared, rending tears between dimensions and, bit by bit, inviting the shadow to creep into the world. It came hesitantly, shuddering wafts of depth and darkness into the light; then it inflated, engulfing the trees, the wildlife, crushing over neighborhoods like a black, oily flood, consuming light, saturation and brilliance. In the center of the darkness, the gateway stood deep underground in the lab, pulsing a heartbeat, like the living core of the nightmarish shadow. And from its quivering arch poured the creatures, predators of the Vale, expanding their territory and on the hunt.
Hawkins was gone. It had been smothered by an ancient decay and dark, colorless void. The ones who didn't leave—and there were plenty who refused, who didn't believe the danger, who were too infirm to make the trek—were left in the wake of utter desolation.
First came the slaughter. The creatures fell on the weak, the ones clinging to their IV lines in hospital beds, waking to the flickering fluorescence in their sterile gowns and plunged into cascading darkness of their city; the ones too old to bother finding their keys and opting instead to settle in the comfort of routine until decimation struck its fatal blow; the broken ones, injured in their escape and unable to run; the simple ones, who didn't understand their fate. The creatures rained down on them in a primal fury. Like a feeding frenzy, they butchered their prey and the silence that followed was more deafening than the screams.
Next came the harvest. The creatures plucked away the living, dragged them from their hiding places into the heart of darkness. They gathered the ones who were strong, who fought back, who shrieked and succumbed. They pulled them by their ankles, leaving furrows in the dirt and blood streaks on the ground. They took children, trembling under their beds and clinging to their mothers. They pulled out the ones hiding in trees and basements, wrenched them from the backs of closets and locked cars. They broke bones and skin and, sometimes, aroused by the irresistible scent of fresh blood, they killed their harvest.
For days it continued, until almost every last person had been slaughtered or harvested. The screams were gone. The bitter whimpers of the dying and the hidden were gone. Movement was gone. The Vale was thick with death and silence. And everywhere were the artifacts of vanished life: a hubcap nestled in the weeds along the edge of a sharp turn on a side road; a can of Coke-a-Cola, half full still, sitting on a table outside of a diner; a teddy bear abandoned in the middle of the road; a velvet, high-heeled shoe and string of pearls resting on a manhole cover; a yellow slingshot attached to a wrist brace, lying on the forest floor, feet from the open mouth of a large drain pipe.
And in its cavernous depths, a young boy with dark skin spent his third day alive.
