The Orchard

He pulled off his jacket, tossing it into the rental car’s passenger seat. The breeze against sweat made him shiver even as the humidity threatened to choke him.

The car door slammed shut.

He paused long enough to light a cigarette with a battered zippo lighter. He scratched the back of his neck and got moving.

Off the road.

Into the trees. 

–

The fire came first.

A shack in the Pine Barrens went up in an explosion that started a small forest fire. Only a minor incident. The Fire Fighters got it under control quick.

Moonshiners, they said. Their still blew.

People moved on.

None of what the Fire Fighters found in the remains of that Shack went mentioned in the news. They never breathed a word of it to anyone. Too shocked. Too scared.

Didn’t stop the feds from finding out.

–

He paused at a set of tracks. Putting the cigarette in his mouth, he knelt down to get a better look. He clicked on his flashlight for only a second.

He hummed and moved on.

–

There were lights–red and a black so bright it burned–but only in dreams.

–

The fed never returned from the shack’s corpse.

Then it was like blood in the water.

A poked hornet’s nest.

The deaths came one after the other after that. 

Druid stalled the press.

Two more feds came.

Two more feds never returned.

–

He found the shack at two to 3:00 AM, according to his watch. But he couldn’t say how long the minute hand had sat frozen before he noticed.

He picked passed burned trees. Their jagged, twisted shapes each a monster in his mind.

The cigarette went out at the edge of the wreckage. His boot connected with a bone. It vanished when he tried to dislodge it for a better look.

–

A teenager crouched in the dirt. The sun glared against the back of his head.

He picked up a stick and poked the half buried thing.

He doesn’t remember what happened next.

–

After the feds, came the insects. Frenzied. With a will to eat everything.

–

The scent of rotten eggs replaced the bone. He dropped to the ground. Something passed over where he had stood. He pulled out his gun and fired.

A garbled scream answered. In rage, not pain.

He dropped his gun as he rolled to his feet. He brought his hands together. The light went out his veins and into the open. It lit up the clearing, allowing him to see it hanging suspended above where the shack once stood.

He tried to establish a Connection, but it flickered through his grasp. Here and not here.

It took another dive at him. He moved out of the way at the last second, leaving a Gate in his place. He closed it the second it went through.

A smile found its way to his face. That wasn’t so bad. It’s Psi Resistance gave him a worry there for a second.

He started to walk away and stumbled, falling to his knees.

A bloodied hand of black light pulled away from his stomach.

He launched up, hearing the body drop behind him. He grabbed at appendages that felt like leather to these hands and tore them away even as the thing continued to claw at him in a blind fury.

He got his hands around its head. Blue warred with black until the latter faded for the time being, leaving him alone in the forest.

When he turned, he screamed.

–

Next came the ghosts. People who never were, past, present, and future could be seen for the briefest of seconds on the streets. They’d stare at you and point to the sky.

They’re coming. They’re here.

Two more feds arrived.

They left with an unconscious man covered head to toe in dirt and blood.

It all stopped after that.

Most people forgot. As people do. The few that remembered…well, they already had a usual suspect for strange occurrences.

And to everyone else outside ground zero? A whole town disappearing? That’s the stuff of myths and monsters.

–

A teenager wakes on a familiar bed. Bandaged around his torso. Without an ounce of energy to his false name.

“What…happened?”

The man in the room set a bottle of vodka down on the table in front of him.

“Jersey Devil got you, didn’t he?” the man slurred.

“What?” He struggled to sit up. A lance of pain put a stop to that.