Into the Woods (September 2011)

1

Samuel Creede walked slowly through the tangled underbrush, the humid heat of summer still choking the air despite the fact that it was already early September. Perspiration dripped heavily down the seven year old's face as he crashed through the thick plant growth, silent to his little boy ears. Giant mosquitoes droned like jumbo jets around his face. Locked in his hands was a bright green plastic pistol. A few feet ahead of him his older brother Aaron was barely visible through the plants. Normally Aaron played in the Barrens with his friends and didn't like his kid brother tagging along. Today, they had all been busy, so Sam was enjoying some rare time with his brother.

Aaron backed up against a tree and motioned to his brother, whispering "Psst! Stay there Sammy! I hear something moving up ahead, I'm gonna go check it out!" With that the boy disappeared into the tangle of vegetation.

Sam nodded, licking his lips nervously and practically quivering with anticipation. He and Aaron were playing 'Alien Invasion'. A spacecraft had crash-landed in the Barrens, and the alien predators were running free now. Aaron and Sam were the only ones left of their Marine Squadron.

Ahead of him, hidden in the brush, the fading click of Aaron's toy pistol sounded several times. "Come on Sammy, hurry! It's all clear, for now!"

Sam ran and almost slammed flat into his brother. Aaron caught him by his shoulders and steadied him.

"Did you see one of them?" Sam stage-whispered to his brother, and Aaron nodded silently, looking awed.

"Sure did, Little Brother." He answered, and shivered at the memory. Sam's eyes widened.

"What do they look like?" he whispered, leaning close to his brother.

Aaron leaned down, glancing back and forth nervously. "They're huge, and slimy! They have 10 tentacles, and every tentacle has a mouth on it, full of long razor sharp needle-teeth! Plus it has a bigger mouth on its body, full of even more, even bigger razor sharp needle-teeth!" Suddenly Aaron froze, putting a finger to his lips. "I heard something, over there. Wait a few seconds than follow a few feet behind me." Sam nodded and did as he was told.

The two boys slunk farther and farther into the wooded wilderness of the Barrens, the plants cutting off more and more of the sunlight. The Barrens was a track of mostly undeveloped land that stretched between Kansas Street and the Old Cape low-income housing section. Most of it was covered in jungle-like plant growth, but there was also the old stone quarry and the Derry Waste Removal and Recycling Facilities. The entire area was sprinkled with large metal and cement sewage and drainage pipes. The Kenduskeag Stream flowed through the center of it all, cutting the Barrens almost equally in half, and from there flowed out to the Penobscot River, which eventually flowed all the way east into the Atlantic Ocean via the Penobscot Bay. The thick growth absorbed the plastic clicks of the toy guns and the cries and whoops of the boys as the hot late summer day faded down towards twilight.

Sam and Aaron stood panting in a gritty rivulet of water, bent over, hands resting on their knees. They looked up and grinned at one another.

"We got almost all of them now, right Aar?" Sam asked, and his brother nodded and cocked his gun.

"All but one of them, the Leader. The biggest, ugliest, meanest, most dangerous one of them all." The two boys stood up, and Aaron looked toward a large metal cylinder set in concrete a few yards away. "We got it cornered in there. It's hiding. Now all we have to do is sneak up on it and take it out. It's gonna be harder than the rest of them, but we can handle it." The bigger boy winked and smiled at the smaller one. "We're the Creede Brothers, we're Legendary. And as soon as we take out this last one we're gonna go home and they're gonna give us medals, and throw a parade for us, and everyone in the world is gonna know our names. We'll be the most loved people who ever lived. You got that Sammy?"

Sam nodded his head quickly, staring at his brother with the admiration only small boys could give the older brothers they worshiped. "Got it Aaron. Let's take her out!"

Aaron nodded. "Alright, I'm gonna scout ahead, you hide here and wait for my signal. When I give it, you haul over there and spray the whole area with shots, got it? There's no room for mistakes, and it's gonna take both of us, okay?"

Sam grinned and gave his brother the thumbs up before hunkering down behind some brush. Aaron headed off towards the metal tunnel, cautiously. Sam watched him and felt simple love for his brother, love for the entire day, well up inside of him. He watched Aaron approach the entrance to the tunnel slowly, gun ready, and prepared to follow. Aaron would be giving him the signal any second now.

Aaron paused, turning his head to the side, listening for something. His hands dropped slowly from the ready position, holding the neon orange gun to his side instead of ready to be fired. He looked puzzled, and then slowly an expression of fear stole across his face. The ten year old stumbled back a few steps, still staring in shocked horror at the entrance to the tunnel. The plastic gun fell from limp fingers.

Sam watched his brother and knew there was something wrong as soon as the gun lowered. Aaron hardly ever broke character when they played, something that often angered their Mother when she wanted him to be serious and stop or pause the game. Sam stood up slowly, looking, but too frightened by his brother's looks to call out to him. As Aaron turned towards him, it seemed like he was moving in slow motion.

The older boy had turned the pale color of curdled milk. He spared a glance back at the tunnel for a split second before finally finding his voice and his legs. "Sammy RUN!" he screamed, beginning to race towards him.

Sam obeyed immediately and promptly fell on his face, his legs turned to rubber, and before he got to his feet Aaron screamed again. There were no words this time, or if there were they were drowned in the desperate hysterical pitch of the scream. It wasn't even a scream anymore, but a high-pitched shriek. It didn't sound like a pre-teen boy anymore, but like a little girl.

Sam saw why when he got to his feet. His mouth dropped open, and he didn't feel the hot piss that ran down his legs and soaked into the crotch and legs of his jeans, nor did he feel his bladder release. He didn't even feel his legs beginning to run, he was scarcely aware that he was moving, and he didn't realize that what seemed to be the whine of the wind in his ears was actually his own screams.

It had been the alien. The many tentacled, many mouthed alien from their game. A real one. It must have come shooting out of the tunnel, just where Aaron had said it was hiding. It had Aaron wrapped in its many tentacles, and each mouth had appeared to be feasting.

Sam fell only once more, as he reached the top of the steep grade that descended into the Barrens from Kansas Street. He glanced behind him when he did. The foliage was thinner here, and he could see, about 20 yards behind him, his brother. The boy's clothing was ripped and he was bleeding quite badly, but he was still very much alive, moving. The alien was nowhere in sight. Instead, a clown stood beside his brother.

Sam stared at this scene below him panting and quivering. He heard his brother make a low moaning sound. The clown had bright red hair and a bright red bulb nose. The clown's smile was a red painted slash over its mouth, making the smile impossibly wide and fakely cheerful. Black eyebrows were painted high on its forehead in amusing gestures, and the top of its head was bald. Beneath the hair and paint, a thick layer of white grease paint covered the clown's features. The suit was strange, not bright and colorful like most clown suits, but an odd shade of opaque silver with orange pompoms running down the front. On his feet were floppy oversized orange clown shoes.

The clown held Aaron by his hair in one hand, and in his other hand was a bunch of balloons. He caught Sam's eye and smiled disarmingly. Aaron made another sound, this one a long groaning croak.

"Hiya there, Sammy!" the clown called, and his voice was bright and friendly but omehow still ominous and croaking. Sam pulled himself to his feet slowly, his stomach queasy and on the verge of puking, but he didn't answer.

The clown held the hand with the balloons out towards him. There were so many balloons, every color and size. Some were shaped like poodles, some like giraffes, others like swords. Some were even fashioned into pirate hats. "Do ya want a balloon? How about it, Buddy? I have every kind there is, why don't you come down here and get one?"

Sam shook his head no, tears drying on his face but fresh ones still pouring down. His eyes darted to the clown and balloons occasionally but were mostly trained on his brother.

The clown pulled an exaggerated sad face. "Aw, no? Don't worry about him; he's just fine. Just fell down and banged himself up a little is all."

Sam stared at the clown fearfully. He could feel himself already beginning to doubt the alien, everything he had seen. "A-Aaron?" he called out to his brother uncertainly.

The clown flashed Sam another brilliant smile. "I tell you what, Little Buddy; how about we all go to the fair, hm? Me and your brother are going, why don't you come along? There're rides, and games, and treats… Can't you smell it Sammy? Can't you hear it?"

And somehow, amazingly, he could. The sound of laughter and children carrying on and playing, of carnival midway music, of the games and the rides. And he could smell the carnival foods cooking, the funnel cakes and fried oreos, the hot dogs and cotton candy and candied apples. He could smell the acrid scent of the animals from the petting zoo, all drifting up from the Barrens. His eyes widened in surprise.

"What do you say, Sammy? How about it, Pal?" the clown asked in a strangely intense manner. He beckoned Sam forward, and Sam took a slow hesitant step forwards than stopped. "There can't be a Carnival down there, there's no room." He called nervously. "There's just the Barrens, and they go right up against the Kenduskeag."

The clown had a deep penetrating intense stare fixed on him. "It's a floating carnival, Sammy. It floats on a barge on the river. It alllll floatsss."

Sam hesitated once more, than backed up several steps, shaking his head. "We have to go home, it's getting late."

The clown gave Sam a terrible smile, and wrenched Aaron up higher, so that the tips of his sneakers barely drug on the ground. The boy made a slight, weak sound. Then he began to open his mouth. Wide, than wider, and wider, than wider still, like a snake. His teeth were like jagged straight razors set into his gums at strange angles, and his eyes suddenly seemed to glow with a strange animal-like yellow light. He looked straight at Sam, the light of the day growing long but the scene before him still perfectly visible, and he smiled. Sam was frozen with terror.

Like a snake striking its prey, the clown suddenly lunged at Aaron and sank its long razor-teeth into his throat. His body immediately began to jerk and jitter, but that was all Sam saw. His terrified paralysis finally broken, he turned and ran shrieking up out of the Barrens, onto Kansas Street. He continued the same long loud breathless shriek as he raced home like the hounds of Hell were on his tail, nearly getting run over at least three times in the process. He never slowed, never stopped screaming, and did not spare one more glance behind him.

2

Dorothy Creede sat across from her husband at the kitchen table, drinking black coffee. Her eyes were dry, but she was pale, and her skin had a stretched waxy look. Her lips were pulled thin with worry, and when she raised the cup of coffee to take a drink it shook violently in her unsteady grip. She had no idea what time it was, only that it was pitch black outside still.

Her husband fidgeted in his seat at the table across from her, bouncing his leg, absently stirring his coffee repeatedly, worrying at the edges of his paper napkin and fraying them away slowly but surely. Roy Creede was not an overly large man, but he was not tiny either. But just than he seemed very small indeed, hunkered down in his seat. Occasionally he would stand up and begin to pace around the kitchen.

Both of the elder Creedes had been home when Sam had returned. Dorothy had been working on some sewing, and Roy had been finishing up some yard work when Sam had bolted up the driveway. He hadn't been shrieking anymore, he'd run out of too much air by then, but he didn't need the sound effect.

The little boy had been filthy. His hair had been standing on end, almost cartoonish, like on Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry. His eyes had been huge, like tea saucers set into his head, and bulging out. You could smell the fear on him, like strong body odor with a sharp metallic tang. It came off him in waves. His dark blue jeans were clearly soaked with piss in the crotch and completely down both legs. You could smell that on him too, under the fear smell.

Roy had seen him tearing up the driveway and had jumped up, concerned, and ran after him. When he caught him he turned him around to face him.

"What's the matter, boy?" he'd asked, afraid himself at the boy's condition. "Sam, what happened? Where's your brother?"

Sam didn't answer. Instead his body stiffened, his eyes rolled completely back into his head, and he fell away into a dead faint.

It had been several hours before Sam had been able to tell his story, and no one knew what to make of it. They had rushed him to the hospital to be examined, and the doctors could find no evidence of physical or sexual abuse of any kind on him, only the clearly obvious psychological damage seemed to be present. After they sedated the boy they were able to find out where he and his brother had been playing, and the Derry Police had gone out to search and sweep through the Barrens. No one paid any attention to Sam's talk of aliens and clowns and carnivals floating on the river. He had suffered a severe shock, after all, and clearly his mind was playing terrible tricks on him.

After searching for hours, well into the night and early morning hours, there was no sign of Aaron. They had found blood, and they had found a few scraps of clothing. His cell phone had been found, smashed and water logged and bloody. But no Aaron, and no body. They had begun making plans to dredge the Kenduskeag Stream.

Dorothy and Roy Creede sat at the kitchen table and drank bitter black coffee, still in shock, praying and hoping that their son would somehow be found alive.

3

The sedatives wore off at about the time the first reaches of dawn light appeared over the horizon in Derry, and Sam Creede woke up shrieking hysterically from the first of what would be many, many bad dreams.

He dreamt of a terrible alien monster with sharp teeth like razors, dressed in a silver clown suit with orange pompoms. All around it were children, countless children. And just beside the clown-alien-monster was his brother, Aaron. There was a grievous wound in his throat that looked a sore and swollen purple in the terrible dark lighting (deadlights?) of the nightmare. There was a bloody mirthless grimacing smile on his face. His eyes were gone, just gaping bloody hollows left in his head.

"Hey there, Little Brother." Aaron had said, that terrible bloody grin of a mouth not moving, but it being Aaron's voice nonetheless, inside of Sam's head. "You left me Sammy, you left me with It to diiieeeee! And now I'm dead, Sammy, I'm dead! I'm dead, far far below Derry, I'm dead down here, and I float, I flloooaaaatttttt down here, and we're going to come for you Sammy, we're alllllllll going to come for you, we'll follow the trail of fear you left for us, allll the way back home, and then we'll bring you down here with us, and when you're down here with us Sammy, when you're down here with us YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!" The voice of his brother intermingled with that of the clown, and with other children, so many children, until it was a raging chorus of voices.

At the last words Sam was released from the dream, and he sat bolt upright in his bed, a long endless shriek issuing from his mouth. It was well past dawn when his Mother was able to calm him, finally using more of the sedative the Doctors at the hospital had prescribed.

Seven year old Samuel Creede fell than into a deep, restless, mercifully dreamless sleep.

4

From the sewers, deep beneath the streets of Derry, seemingly endless crypts, many of them long forgotten and disused now, a low quiet chuckle echoed through the tunnels, some nearly as old as the country itself. It bubbled up out of drains in tubs and sinks, and out of toilets. And in their sleep, the children of Derry stirred and shivered, though most would not remember the cold feeling of premonition they felt as they slumbered in the early morning hours. Those who did remember brushed the feeling off as bad dreams before breakfast was over. Throughout the city babies and small children woke their parents with terrified shrieks. More than a few of Derry's little ones would only have at most a few months to live now. A sudden high wind blew through Derry, and many old timers rose early, skin prickling with a fear that they did not understand.

… It, was back.