The School Bus

It was raining hard that Saturday morning-the morning Sean saw the yellow school bus buried deep in the soft, wet earth. He was miles deep into the forest behind Sean's back yard, with his best friends Chris and Trip-aged eleven, all them-staring at a bus in the early morning August heat in east Texas. None of the three wide-eyed boys had ever seen the bus before. The three boys were taking their usual Saturday morning hike through the woods, stopping by their tree fort to look at old, moldy playboys before continuing deeper into the forest.

They mostly followed animal trails through the deep wood, on their way to the fort, never losing their way, having crossed these paths many times in their young lives. Chris and Trip were both boy scouts and tied bright plastic ribbons around branches at regular intervals that radiated outward in a circle, never in a straight line, to mark their trail. They also knew many of the trees by sight including the old, Bald Cyprus trees marked the eastern territory, near the river, and the bulging large Live Oak tree, with the bulging disk in its trunk that reminded Sean of a wooden version of his dying grandpa- with his hunched back and rough skin-which squatted neatly three miles north into the wood and served as their tree fort.

Sean's family moved to the small town deep on the eastern Texas border, known as Uneasy, when Sean was nine. They came from Denver. Sean's father was a biologist and, having grown up in Tyler, Texas, was a lover of fried foods and swampy environments. When a position opened in Caddo Lake State Park, he put in his application immediately. He was going home.

The first thing Sean noticed about east Texas was the humidity. Next were the mosquitoes. They bit his skin from every direction as they unloaded the truck when they arrived the previous June-just after the school year ended-and they didn't stop biting him until his family finally finished moving everything inside late in the evening. Sean collapsed on the couch, exhausted, scratching his red and sweaty skin, and wondered what he did to deserve the hell he'd been thrust into.

Their house sat on 500 acres of land, which was the largest backyard Sean ever saw. Behind his backyard, though, was the real treasure:Caddo Lake, the lake of Cyprus trees that straddled the Texas-Louisiana border and stretched for endless miles to the southeast of his home. Sean never got used to the mosquitoes, but he forgot all about Denver.

The lake served as sport for the boys’ favorite activity: taking Trip's canoe into the shallow waters with nothing but flashlights to shine on the millions of tiny specs of light reflected at them from the surface of the alligator infested swamp. This both thrilled and terrified Sean: the murky water always calling for his life; the sharp eyes of the gators staring silently at him, waiting; the unexpected shove from behind from Trip, Chris urging him on, the clenching of his heart as he plummeted through the surface of the water, his eyes opening as large, pointed teeth pushed through the murk, his lungs filling with water as he attempted to scream, a second gator grabbing him by the neck, ripping and tearing at his body.

Sean met Trip and Chris the day he moved in. He was older by three months than Trip and a year and a month older than Chris, although they were all in the fifth grade. Chris, just two months shy of his tenth birthday at the time Sean met him, was a chubby kid with dark curly hair, glasses and constant sinus infections who loved hiking back into the woods to look at his older brother’s playboy stash. It was hidden in an old tree house five hundred yards into the forest from the back of Sean’s property. Sean met Chris as he was crossing their yard that first day-Sean’s parents unloading the truck as Sean inspected the yard-and Chris had run right up to Sean begging him not to tell his older brother, Wes, that he’d been back in the woods. Sean had no idea what the kid was talking about but said that he wouldn’t tell anyone. Within the hour Sean had permission to ride bikes with Chris down the long, narrow street lined with grape vines and oak trees that led to Chris’s house a quarter of a mile away.

Trip, a stocky ten-year-old three months younger than Sean, who lived down Boulder Street nearly a mile away, was on his way to Chris’s house when he saw Sean and Chris riding from the opposite direction. Nobody used phones back then-the boys just rode to one another’s house and if they happened to not be home, well, it was still a hell of a bike ride down winding dirt roads,through the branches of overhanging oak trees with dew berry patches filling out on both sides and banana spider webs crisscrossing the wood.

The three boys would spend the rest of the summer together, riding bikes outside until late into the evening, or swimming at Chris’s house or riding Trip’s horse around the three acres of land his father owned. Life was good for Sean; in fact, it was better than he could ever imagined before his family moved away from the only home he’d known in Denver. Living in Texas, he quickly realized, was going to be just fine. He wouldn’t be as lonely as he imagined when his family moved after the school year ended in May.

And now here he was, miles deep into the national forest behind his back yard, with his best friends Chris and Trip, staring at a bus in the early morning heat of August-a bus none of them had ever seen before. The three boys were taking their usual Saturday morning hike through the woods, stopping by the tree fort to look at the old, moldy playboys before continuing deeper into the forest. They mostly followed animal trails through the deep wood, occasionally losing their way, but never worried that they’d stay lost. Chris and Trip were both boy scouts and knew how to mark trails...besides, they explored this area of the woods so often that they had an instinct for which way was home.

Yet today, of all days, they’d gotten distracted by the puddles that began to accumulate near the trails due to the early rainfall. Trip’s dad told him last summer that there was a deep, wide pond somewhere in the forest and he was never to go looking for it. Trip hadn't stopped looking for it since. Naturally he told Sean and Chris about it the first time they went hiking together. He wasn’t sure where it was, as his father wouldn’t tell him; nevertheless, they went off again that Saturday morning splashing through the puddles to find the fabled pond. They carried small day packs with flashlights, snacks and Marlboro Red cigarettes that Trip stole from his dad. Chris kept his inhaler in his right pocket and a pocketknife in his left hand. He liked to carve his initials in the trunks of trees. Trip carried a slingshot that stuck out of his belt and a pellet gun slung over his shoulder. Occasionally he'd kill a small bird or even a rabbit. Sean had a bag of potato chips stuffed into his bag, along with a coke and a snickers bar.

None of them knew how they came to the bus. One minute they were trudging through ankle deep mud on a familiar route next to some grape vines and the next they were staring at the peeling, yellow paint of a half sunken school bus. It sat on the edge of a large, circular meadow the boys had stumbled into and never seen before.

The black letters on the side read “Sparrow Elementary” and they were remarkably preserved compared to the rest of the bus. Most of the windows were broken; the few that remained were a milky stain. Cataract eyes. The giant, gnarled tires were sunken into the ground up almost up to the wheel wells and the entire bus leaned toward its right front bumper, which was sharply sunken into the earth. The sliding door of the bus was torn from its hinges and lay cockeyed in the door frame. Vines protruded from the windows and door. One windshield wiper was missing. The other stuck out away from the window as if pointing toward a destination never reached and from long ago, when men and women now old as trees traveled to places with no memory.

The boys stared at the bus in silence, Chris with a stubby walking stick in hand, his knife pushed into the palm of his other hand, shoes muddy, mouths agape. Sean wiped his sweaty, wavy brown hair out of his eyes and slowly walked around the bus into the clearing, weeds slapping at his thighs, trying to keep distance from the vehicle like it was a snake. Trip took out his slingshot and grabbed a handful of small stones from his pocket, intent on knocking out the remaining windows. He had his eye, particularly, on the windshield-one half of which was still perfectly intact. Chris’s hands sweated n excitement as he circled around to the back with Sean, hoping one of the tires were still inflated so that he could stab it, but he was disappointed, and he mopped to his friends about it.

Silence followed them around the bus as they inspected it for other threats. They found a daddy long-legs next under one of the wheel wells and backed quickly away. Locusts shells clung to the vines protruding from the windows. Chris saw a small green snake shoot out from underneath the rusted hood of the bus and he tried desperately to stab it with his knife. He only managed to scuff more paint off the bus.

None of the boys spoke. They didn't need to. They knew an opportunity for destruction when they saw one. Trip stood in front of the bus and began flinging rocks at the windshield. Every shot hit its mark, rain drizzling down from his buzzed haircut and into his eyes. He wiped it away with his sleeve and kept firing. The cracks rang out through the early morning heat. Chris and Sean jumped at the first crackling explosion of the windshield, eyes darting around the clearing, expecting an adult to come charging at them through the woods any second.

The grass in the clearing was knee deep and wet and the ground sucked at their shoes. The area was clearly man-made, or at least Sean thought so. The trees made an unnatural ring approximately fifty yards across. Sean’s mind wondered at the clearing's purpose and came up with nothing; nor could he come up with an explanation as to how the bus got where it was. They were miles deep into the forest with no road in site. No grass was flattened in any direction as far as Sean could determine.

Trip threw his last rock at the shattered window and then noticed the short nose of the bus, the engine bay tucked close to the windshield. It wasn't like his school bus with the big engine bay protruding outward several feet. In fact, this bus seemed to be much older. He trudged through the sopping wet ground, brushing the increasing drizzle out of his eyes and found Sean and Chris near the back, peeping inside the blackened window. Sean and Chris couldn't remember seeing a bus quite this shape either. It was like something out of an old photograph- a bus belonging to children no longer of this earth.

The sky crackled and rumbled, and the clouds sagged, pregnant. A clack split the day and the water broke as the boys, stunned by the flash of light and sound, ducked their heads in unison. Trip was the only one with a poncho and he swiftly took it out of his back pocket, unfurled it with all the grandeur of the American flag and popped his bulbous head through the hole in the top. It was camouflaged in color and with Trips fat head sticking out of it, Chris thought he looked like a bullfrog. Sean and Chris belly laughed while Trip stayed warm.

None of the boys wanted to hike home soaking wet, so they made the quick decision to pry open the sliding door of the bus and take cover. Besides, as Chris stated enthusiastically, maybe there were more playboys inside. Curiosity is what really drove them inside the dilapidated bus.

The boys ran trudged through the deepening mud toward the sliding door at the front of the bus, rain pelting them harder with every suctioned step. Trip grabbed the door handle and pulled with all his strength, wrenching the door free and busting loose the top hinge. He fell backwards, the door wrenched from the one hinge still attached to the frame. He fell ass first into the mud with a splat and a thud, the door flying from his hands and nearly taking Sean's head off. He flinched to his left and nearly fell over Trip but caught his balance just in time. Chris held his sides, cackling with laughter, then jumped inside the bus before Sean could help Trip off the ground.

Sean staggered inside after Chris, who was crouched down on the top step of the bus, heaving from high pitched laughter. Sean pushed toward him, his irritation at almost getting creamed by the metal door giving way to hysterics. He put his head on Chris's shoulder and laughed like he never had, the awkwardness of physical contact with another person forgotten.

Trip stumbled inside, pushing in close to his friends, barking at them to move out of the way. Chris and Sean complied and took a step toward the front row of seats. Their laughter died. The bus was dark, dank, a maze of jungle inside an old, rusty container for memories. The sky felt a thousand miles away to the boys, the darkness inside the bus imposing, flowing outward toward them. Storm clouds deepened into purple-black bruises outside and the rain shot down from above in heavy bullets of water.

The inside of the bus smelled of mold and sour earth, causing the boys to pull their shirts over their nose while blinking back tears. Chris wondered aloud what had died. Trip was sure it was a skunk. Sean wanted to run back home and almost said as much but didn’t want to look like a chicken in front of his friends. He stood in the middle, peering over Trip's shoulder, who had taken the lead. Chris fumbled with the pocketknife in his hand, dead last in the single file line, bumping up against the steering wheel.

Trip took a step forward and heard a crunch underneath his muddy boots. He took the flashlight out of his front pocket and trained it on the floor of the bus. It was covered with tiny, shining shards of glass, vines snaking and twisting and jumbled up along the floor and through holes punched into the backs of seats. Seat cushions were torn apart like an animal had been inside. A large animal, claw marks shredding down the back of the seats, the cushion darkened from mold, black guts spilling into the isle.

Chris began rummaging through the seats for any hidden artifacts, chubby hands pealing back the leather shreds in the first seat to his right, mumbling to himself about hopefully no longer needing to look at his brother's playboys. Trip sat in the driver’s seat, which was intact, the black steering wheel jutting out toward his chest. Sean thought Trip looked tiny in the seat, like it was made for someone much larger than a human. An old rusty gear shift looked dangerously heavy, with the knob broken off and missing. Sean noticed the dash did not have a radio-or even a space for a radio. Again, he wondered how old this bus must be.

“Look at these pedals!” Trip guffawed as he stomped on the large metal pads, mashing them to the floor. He tried turning the steering wheel but it wouldn’t budge. Sean tried to help but it was stuck solid. Trip smashed his hand against the center of the wheel, disappointed when the horn didn’t blare into the wilderness.

Sean turned to watch the rain out of the door frame as it slashed downward, visibility to the outside world washed. He peered up at the sky through the cracked windshield. He frowned, worried, as the clouds loomed above them, blocking sunlight. He could barely make out the trees beyond the circular field, the forest black like the weather. Lightning flashed over the trees and the bus lit up like a Christmas tree, light bouncing off shards of glass and smoky windows, the booming sound of thunder clapping inside the doomed container carrying the boys to a midnight sea.

All three jumped and Chris gave a nervous squeal and ran to the back of the bus, hiding in the last row. Sean couldn’t recall ever lightning quite this severe-it was flashing almost non-stop now- and he suddenly wanted to be at home.

“We should leave, guys,” he said, in his quiet but commanding voice. The thumber rumbled into echoes as the flashes finally faded. Sean’s hair was matted against his forehead from humidity and stress. His washed-out blue t-shirt was stuck against his skinny ten-year old body and his shoes squished every time he took a step. His toes were cold and soggy.

“Aww! Look what I found!” Chris’s high-pitched voice cracked through the air, startling Sean. Trip twisted his body in the driver’s seat, craning his neck to see what Chris was yelling about. Chris was crouched down in the back seat, the top of his curly black-haired head poking up, his hand shot up in the air with what appeared to be a faded notebook. He was frantically waving it around like he’d found buried treasure.

Trip shoved Sean out of the way and scrambled back to Chris. Glass crunched under his feet. Sean watched from the front before curiosity got the best of him and he staggered to the back of the bus to join his friends. He welcomed the distraction from the storm.

Chris plopped himself onto the seat, the only one that wasn’t shredded to pieces, making room for Trip and Sean, his blue jeans dirty with green stains from kneeling on the floor of the bus. He was flipping through the book, the pages yellow and stiff, his mind for the moment no longer concentrating on nudy mags.

The three boys huddled in close to view the contents of the notebook, the rain pounding the bus and slipping through the broken windows. Lightning lit up the sky again, flashes of yellow in a green soaked sky. Sean wiped the sweat from his brow-the inside of the bus was terribly humid-his shaggy brown hair plastered to his forehead-dared a glance outside, the jagged edges of glass jutting out from the broken windows like shark teeth. The window next to their seat, fortunately, was unbroken. A thought stirred in the back of his mind, a thought on how odd it was that they found this book in the one unmolested seat with the one unbroken window...but before the thought could take hold in his belly, Chris and Trip gasped aloud, and whatever warning stirring inside Sean was shoved deep inside his guts again.

Sean looked down at the book, Chris and Trip staring in amazement. On one of the torn, yellowed pages was a drawing, the ink smudged and soaked to the edges of the paper. At first Sean didn’t see what his friends were gawking at. It just looked like a giant ink blot. But slowly a shape in the middle of the page began to come into focus. He could see the dirty, broken windows and ripped up seats and the grungy floor of the bus begin to take shape on the page, as if it was coming into existence as he was staring at it, the ink swirling slowly within the page. The drawing was done from the vantage point of the seat they were currently sitting in. A lump formed in Sean’s throat as he looked closer.

In the foreground of the drawing three figures emerged, nothing more than shadows upon darker shadows. They were sitting in the seat that, it appeared to Sean, was the same seat he and his friends were sitting in now. His eyes scanned the drawing, his breath catching in his throat. Chris and Trip were silently staring at the photo as well and then Trip’s forefinger slowly traced the drawing up the page and rested at the top, where a large, shadowy figure sat in the driver’s seat.

All three boys’ heads jerked up at once to peer at the front of the bus. The sky had grown darker, though, and no light entered through the windows. The bus was deep in shadow. They were frozen silent.

Lightning flashed, illuminating a large figure sitting in the driver’s seat, and a thunderous crash enveloped the bus. And as quickly as the lightning lit up the front, it was gone, leaving them in darkness again. Sean wasn’t even sure he’d seen anything it happened so fast. Trip let out a short Yip! and grabbed his slingshot for protection, ready to shoot at whatever moved. Chris ducked under the seat again, eyes wide. Sean clasped his hands over his face, watching through his fingers, petrified.

Silence, except the fast, shallow breathing of the boys.

At first.

And then a deeper sound. A guttural purr came from the area of the driver’s seat. Shadows flittered along the bus, dodging in and out of shiny droplets of water and glittering glass. The low sound emitting from the front of the bus sent tiny vibrations through the floor, vines twisting amongst the glass on the floor. The vibration sent a slight tingling sensation up Sean’s toes and he shot his feet up to his knees, crouching low into the seat, his body shaking.

They stared at the driver’s seat, afraid to move, afraid to breath, waiting for another lightning strike so they could see if the figure was their imagination or the real thing. They prayed it was. Shadows inside the bus began to shift, to move like living things, searching along the floor and walls, black slithering shapes. A soft glow began to emerge from up front, as if from the dimmest light bulb. A cloaked figure began to emerge out of the darkness. The figure was larger than any man Sean had seen. And Sean could feel the thing breathing even more now. It’d somehow become lower, darker, and less a purr and more of a growl.

The boys couldn’t move, their bodies stuck to the seat with fear. Sean’s inner thighs were getting chapped from the sweat pouring down his legs. It wasn’t until the smell hit that he realized it wasn’t just sweat. He looked down at his crotch and even given the circumstances he was embarrassed that he’d wet himself. He glanced over at his friends and, judging from the looks on their faces, he was quite sure they’d also pissed themselves.

Suddenly movement from the front caught his eye. A giant claw slowly reached out and rested itself on the gear shift, swallowing the object in its giant clasp. Talons extended themselves from the hand as if flexing after a long sleep. The movement woke Sean out of his fear, and he grabbed the black book from Chris, who was still huddled beneath the seat, his pants also wet from fright. Trip kept his sling shot ready in shaking hands.

Sean reached the page with the drawing of the looming figure in the driver’s seat and flipped over to the next page. It had the same inky drawing on it, except the claw of the shadowy figure was now touching the gear shift. Just like in whatever hellish reality they were trapped inside.

Sean managed through his fear to reach over and tug on Trip’s arm, trying desperately to get his friend’s attention. Startled half to death, Trip let loose the small stone in his sling shot. It ricocheted off the top of the bus with a loud ping. Sean’s fear caught in his throat and he groaned softly, ready to flee if the figure moved. But flee to where?

Trip peeled his eyes off the figure long enough to glance down at what Sean was desperately trying to him to look at. He saw the drawing and his eyes met Sean’s eyes, wide with fear. Sean looked down again and turned the page. The drawing was still there but now it was blurred, as if the ink wasn’t quite dry. It looked like someone had smeared the ink with their hand.

A deep, low rumbling came from under the bus. Chris jumped off the floor of the bus and back into the seat with his friends as the rumble shook the bus. The boys screamed, all at the same time, as they realized that the rumbling was the engine coming alive, shaking the entire bus. It was at this time that Sean decided it was time to run for his life. He stood up and turned to the back door of the bus to grab the emergency handle.

But the handle was gone. He banged on the door with his shoulder, feeling the bone crunch under the force. He cried out in pain. Chris and Trip were right behind him and they joined in trying to bust through the door. But it was sealed shut from rust and no matter how hard they tried it wouldn’t budge.

The bus continued to rumble. Gears slowly grinding, screaming alive. Sean turned around to face the thing that was sitting in the driver’s seat. He rubbed his bruised shoulder, carefully rotating it, wincing in pain as he tried to rotate his arm upward. He wasn’t sure if it was broken but he knew it wouldn’t slow him down when it was time to run.

Having realized the emergency exit was not actually an exit, Trip flopped back down into the seat, his hands flipping furiously through the book. Chris was next to join him, and upon seeing the page Trip was staring at with wide, worried eyes, Chris’s mouth opened wide in an O, drool forming at the base of his lip.

Sean sprinted back into his seat and looked at the new page. The ink was now in a furious swirl, wisps of black tails whipping in all directions on the page. The bus began pushing through the grass now, picking up speed as it made its way through the field. Trip dropped the book to the floor and grabbed the seat in front of him to hang on, Chris and Sean following suit. They dug their nails into the seat and screamed as the bus lurched forward, dragging its insect body on four deflated tires toward the far end of the clearing. The bus chugged along through the field, exhaust fumes sputtering out in thick black plumes.

“Turn the page!” Sean screamed, wanting to see what was next before it happened, hoping that it would lead to some clue as to how to escape this madness. Trip let go of the seat long enough to grab the book off the floor and flip the pages. The three boys looked down into the drawing and screamed. Trip shut his eyes and dropped the book again. Chris threw his body back down onto the floor of the bus, emptying his bowels. Sean moaned and dropped his head into his hands but then forced himself to confront the shadow figure.

As the sluggish yellow bus moved through the grass, grinding ever closer to the trees, the shadowy figure began to move. It stood up, steady on its thick legs as the bus lurched through the forest and stretched itself to its full height. The creature’s head was only a few inches from the ceiling. It was almost as wide as the aisle, and it slightly stooped. Its hands swung low toward its knees. The fingers weren’t fingers at all, but shaped more like a spade, with giant glistening talons on the end, and the thumb was a short, sharp dagger. Its body was covered in a cloak of some kind. It looked leathery, with hair or fur covering most of it.

It took a step toward them and Sean saw that its feet were cloven, like a ram’s hooves. It stomped rather than walked. Lightning flashed and Sean saw with horror that the coat wasn’t a coat at all but was flesh. He saw a face not human but beast. Its jaw was low and swollen and its nose was smashed in. The eyes were too wide and were shining a strange yellow in the gloom of the bus. It heaved a deep, growling sigh as it slowly marched toward them, unaware of the chaotic motion of the bus.

Sean could not take his eyes off the thing, but part of his brain wondered how the bus was still moving. He looked out the window and saw the trees closing in and braced for impact, momentarily forgetting about the monster. He shut his eyes tight, his friends already having done the same.

But the impact never came. Sean looked out the window and saw the trees pass by, his ten-year-old brain full of wonder and terror. The trees were swallowing the bus. The shaking and rumbling of the bus began to grow quieter and Sean risked a glance back up at the fiend in front of him.

It was closer to them now, its talon-hands ripping through the seats, the nails on its feet scraping against the metal floor. Sean looked around at the windows and made a decision: he was getting out of there. He shouted at his friends to follow him, but they wouldn’t listen. Chris and Trip had a death grip on the bus seat, their foreheads pressed against the back of the seat, eyes shut. Chris had taken his pocket knife out and was clinching it in the palm of his left hand. Trip’s sling shot was on the ground, forgotten.

Sean tugged at his friends, but it was no use. He was about to leap out of his seat when he remembered the book. He quickly bent down and flipped through the pages. He found the last drawing they had seen-the one that showed the creature beginning its slow trek to where they sat-and flipped the page.

Scrawled in crooked black ink were the words, The End.

Sean’s eyes went wide. He risked a glance at the creature. It was standing in the aisle in the middle of the bus, head lowered, claws on the seats. Like it was waiting for something and had all the time in the world.

Sean began tearing out the pages in the book. He tore out all the ones with drawings and then all the blank ones and when that was finished, he tried to rip the cover off the book. The cover was leather and tough, and Sean couldn’t rip it so he through the book down on the ground, forgotten. His focus was now solely on the creature only feet away, looming over them like a demon.

Maybe it is a demon¸ thought Sean, his skull rattling with the idea.

The bus suddenly stopped, pitching the boys forward into the seat in front of them. This broke Chris and Trip out of their terror and they all looked outside. They were surrounded entirely by trees.

Sean glanced up just in time to see the creature lumbering toward them, towering above them, not more than ten feet away. Sean screamed and jumped into the seat adjacent to them and scrambled up to the broken window. He forced his body over the jagged glass, feeling it dig into his stomach and thighs. He winced with pain but continued to wiggle his bloodied body through the window. Chris and Trip, seemingly for the first time, saw the creature approach and scrambled after Sean. Trip jumped up to the window and shoved Sean’s legs through and Sean hit the ground with a loud oomph. Trip then began pushing his body through, but his shoulders were too wide, and he struggled to fit. He twisted and turned and screamed as Chris backed up against the back of the bus, no longer capable of fleeing. He watched as the thing approached him, its yellow teeth glistening in early light streaming in from an unknown source in the forest. As the creature passed Trip it grabbed his leg and yanked him back into the bus, the child letting out a blood curdling scream. The creature pulled Trip out of the seat, his head thumping against the floor of the bus, the breath knocked out of him. Chris fainted as the creature approached, its breath ragged and foul and hot.

Sean picked himself up off the wet grass and, out of a desire to help his friends even though he was putting himself in danger, grabbed hold of the windowpane and lifted himself up. He peeked over the lip of the window just in time to see the creature lean over Chris-one clawed hand wrapped around Trip’s leg- open its mouth to expose ridges of sharp, yellow teeth, and then bite down on the top of Chris’s head. The sound was a loud pop followed closely by a crunch and Sean vomited in his mouth as Chris’s head exploded like a ripe watermelon.

Sean dropped back down to the ground and began to run. Before he gotten feet through the thick grass, however, he heard a loud rip, followed by a yowl! from Trip. Sean stopped and heaved his guts into the ground, his heart beating so fast that he was worried he’d faint.

As soon as he was able to stand up straight again, Sean began to run. He hadn’t taken two steps when something big and wet smacked him on the back and he went sprawling into the grass. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and looked next to himself at what had hit him. He found himself staring at the shredded remains of Trip’s leg, the jeans soaked through with blood, the shoe still attached to the foot. Sean fought back the bile in his throat and pushed himself up to his feet and began to run through the trees.

Branches slapped at his face. Roots threatened to upend him. The darkness in the forest was complete, causing Sean to lose all sense of direction, of purpose. He blindly fled from the creature pursuing him. His ears picked apart every sound, listening for the rumbling footsteps he was sure were following him. The forest, though, was quiet and the rain and lightning had suddenly vanished. Sean was alone in the woods, chased by a monster.

Sean was so blinded by panic that he didn’t notice the ground began to get softer. He didn’t notice his shoes sink into mud. Before his mind could register any change in environment, he was face down in cold water, his arms and legs splayed out to his side. He groaned from the impact and lay motionless trying to clear his head.

That’s when he heard the crashing coming through the woods. He looked back over his shoulder but all he could see was the faint movement of the limbs of nearby trees shaking and a large, dark object moving toward him. Sean screamed and thrashed in the water. His body was exhausted, battered, bruised, but he fought into the deeper water-anything to get away from the creature chasing him.

It only took him a few brief seconds to find deeper water. He began kicking his legs and slapping the water with his arms, desperate to put distance between himself and the creature. The water began to get colder-an icy cold that sent bursts of sharp pain throughout Sean’s body. He swam for what felt like an eternity, until he was too tired to swim any farther. He began treading water and risked a look behind him. The creature stood at the edge of the pond, its massive body heaving in the strange blue-green glow that surrounded the pool. It wasn’t following him.

Maybe it can’t swim, Sean thought, hope filling his heart for the first time since the ordeal began. He turned his head and after letting his eyes adjust to the eerie light, he found the other side of the pond. It was at least fifty meters away, but Sean felt he could make it.

It was then that he noticed the light source. It was coming from underneath him, radiating out in small ripples at the surface of the pond. Sean stuck his face down into the water to see if he could locate the source. At first, all he saw was the light radiating up from the black depths of the water. His heart sank as he realized he couldn’t see the bottom of the pond and he wondered just how deep it was.

Then he saw the light move. It was almost indistinct, and at first, he thought it was just the movement of the water. But then he saw the light move again, a slow, swirling, deliberate movement like a flashlight in a dark wood. The light was coming toward him. He popped his head out of the water and took a breath and looked to the shore. The creature was still there, waiting…. breathing...and smiling?Sean squinted, trying to get a better look. If the creature was capable of smiling, Sean was sure that’s what it was doing.

Sean took a couple of deep breaths, his stomach dropping as a thought dropped into his consciousness. He pushed his face back into the water. The light was closer now, swimming toward him, and he could see a figure attached to the light. It was enormous, its arms and legs pushing itself upward with slow, powerful strokes. As the creature swam closer, the light parted and became two distinct lights. Sean realized it was coming from the eyes of the creature-eyes too wide for its head.

Sean screamed under water and then threw his head up into the air in panic, water spewing from his mouth. His eyes wide with fear, he began to swim toward the opposite shore. He looked back, once, and saw that the creature that had chased him through the forest was staring at him with the same blue-green glow of the creature that was swimming toward him. And it was smiling at him.

Sean turned his head and swam faster than he ever had before. The exhaustion in his body was gone and his mind was clear:Swim, damnit, swim! Sean picked up speed and made for the shore.

Behind him he heard something break the surface of the water. He refused to look back. He could see the shore approaching, the detail in the trees becoming clear. He could see the mud now, a faint, dark outline against the lapping water. His knees hit the soft bottom of the pond and he struggled to his feet, splashing through shin-deep water.

Sean was panting, his breath ragged, his arms flailing as he reached the shore. H dropped to his knees as his feet hit solid ground and looked back. The creature on the other end was gone, nowhere to be seen. He looked out over the water, but the light was gone. He couldn’t detect any motion in the water.

Sean turned around to run through the woods when something clamped onto his ankle. He screamed in agony and looked down. The creature lay there, half of its enormous body in the water and half of it out onto the bank. It’s giant, smashed face looked up at Sean in a grin, its mouth widening.

Sean collapsed on the outer bank of the pond, desperately clawing at the mud as the creature pulled him toward the water. Off in the distance, he saw a green light shining through the trees, making its way around the pond. Sean’s’ screams fell into a gurgle as he was dragged beneath the gentle waves of the pond. The last thing he saw was the light from the forest sink into the water near him, a large, heavy body swimming toward him as he was dragged down into the abyss by the other creature.

…

The boys’ parents searched for 12 days for their children. The search party was large-most of the neighborhood turned out. In the end, the authorities believed the boys must have gotten lost in the woods because of the storm. They surmised it was possible they were swept away by a flash flood.

Several days into the search, a small party came upon a clearing deep in the woods. They didn’t find anything. Trip’s father was part of this party, and near the edge of the clearing his noticed some tire tracks….old, cracked, faded. He did not know what to make of it as no vehicle could possibly move through the dense forest. He decided he’d imagined it and continued.

As they left the clearing, though, a memory-ancient and buried-sparked to the surface. He told the search party that once, long ago, he’d found a pond out here, somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where it was. He thought the clearing looked familiar, that maybe the pond was nearby. He wanted to find it, certain his boy was down there, floating in the abyss. They searched the area another two days but found nothing. No pond. And no more tire tracks.

It gnawed at him for the rest of his days.