This week’s prompt was: Write a story that takes place in or involves somewhere you lived or knew well as a kid.  Try to use description to bring the place vividly to life.  REMEMBER, this should be FICTION, not memoir.  Have fun with the idea - maybe imagine what your best friend's life was like growing up, or what would have happened if your hometown had been invaded by aliens, or invent a character and give them an adventure to have in this place you knew, etc.

Feed the Yuggothi

Statement of Brian Stegner, age 10, 15 Read Road, Morris Township, NJ 07961; taken by Detective Earnest Mitchell, US District Attorney’s Office, at home of the attester.

I’m going to come clean and just want to say that it was my idea.  Frankie went with me but he never would have gone if I hadn’t called him a pansy for not wanting to.  Yeah, that’s Franklin Doherty, my best friend.  Anyway it was my idea.  Well, not the camping thing, exactly.  At least, not the first night.  Zack—Zackary Plimpton, jezz are you annoying with that!—Zack said we should go camping on our own and I thought that was cool and even Frankie was willing to go without crying but we all knew our parents wouldn’t let us so we came up with a plan.

We’d all gone camping a bunch of times before, you know, but always with someone’s parents.  And this one time it was with both my parents and Zack’s and his dad brought a bottle of hooch and he and my dad got wasted on the stuff and Mrs. Plimpton called Zack’s dad an asshole and made him sleep outside the tent.  It was hilarious.  I tried to get a taste but they wouldn’t let me.  I found the bottle the next morning before Mr. Plimpton threw it into the woods and sniffed it; it was nasty.  Boy, it smelled like the paint thinner I use for model airplanes.  Anyway, so we had the stuff for going camping—including my hat, a really cool camouflage hat dad bought me at the Army/Navy store in Chester.  All we had to do was get out of the house at night without anybody finding out.

So, we told our parents that we were all going over to Todd’s—before you ask, that’s Todd McNealy—Todd’s house for a sleep over.  Todd’s parents are divorced and his mom works super late so she’s always beat when she gets home and passes out on the couch and doesn’t care who’s there.  But after we’d told our parents, Todd texted us that his mom brought some dude home from work for dinner and that there was no way he could sneak out, which is stupid because she wouldn’t have any time for him with some dude over, unless she wanted him to “bond” with Todd.  Anyway, he said he wouldn’t go but that we could come over and stay in the basement if we wanted.  Lame.  Next, Zack says his parents made a big stink about him going to Todd’s because of the “home environment” so he couldn’t go either but he also said we could come there.  Lame, again.  I think they’re both just a couple of pansies and were scared because their parents spank.  Whatever, my parents don’t spank and I wouldn’t care if they did.  So I told Frankie we’d just go ourselves; I had the tent, after all, so we didn’t need those two pansies.

We wound up going to Zack’s anyway—but just for a minute—because his house is closest to where we wanted to camp.  See, it’s only cool to camp in the woods where there aren’t a bunch of jackasses around or families or hicks.  The whole area around here is forest but a lot of it is park land, which is kinda stupid because Mr. Plimpton said that all the trees were cut down in olden times and it wasn’t until the Depression when nobody had a job that the trees were replanted.  So, if all the trees were cut down, how’d they know where to plant the parks?  Did they just say, screw it: that’s a park?  It all looks the same but it isn’t.  Some of the parks have cool wooden climbing things and these trails with weird signs that tell you to exercise as you walk in the woods, but that’s dumb and only for fatties.  If I’m running around in the woods, why would I want to stop and do pull-ups or sit-ups or something stupid and pansy like that?  But that’s not why we went to Zack’s.  We went there because of those bastard boy scouts.

See, Zack lives on the other side of 510.  Down here where I live, we’ve got park land everywhere: there’s the historical park with the Wick Farm (where mom has to buy cider every year or the world will end) and next to that is Lewis Morris, which is actually kinda cool because they have Revolutionary War log cabins that Todd said Lincoln built but he's a moron on top of being a pansy, and then there’s Elmo’s Park or something and Jones’ Park and every-damn park all over the place.  There’s even a girl’s Catholic school down there but their field hockey team chased us away the one time we went down there after Zack said he and Mike Furrow spied on them in the gym shower but he’s full of shit.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah: the boy scouts.  You see how complicated it can get?  All you want to do is go out in the woods and run around and camp and not have to put up with a bunch of parents and stupid older brothers and your friends’ fat sisters and there’re all these complications.  I just wanted to camp!  But if you go to one of those parks, see, you always run into the stupid boy scouts.

They’re everywhere around here!  You can't swing a dead ferret without hitting a boy scout.  Actually, if I had a dead ferret, I’d go to that stupid meeting hall they have down in Mendham and smack the piss out of all those pansy boy scouts: bam!  Dead ferret, jerks.  Every time me and the fellas go out into the woods that’s a park, the boy scouts are out there and give us a hard time.  The older ones think they’re so cool because they’re Eagle Scouts and chase us and one time they caught Todd, because he’s fat on top of being a pansy—and a moron—and gave him a black eye.  And this one time, Frankie and me were in the woods—not even that far from my house, though I guess it was on the other side of Western Ave—and it was getting late and these boy scouts started shouting at us to go home to our mommies.  We went home alright: we went back to my dad’s shed and got this big bucket he had tar in when he was finishing the driveway and went back and filled it at a stream near where those boy scout jerks were camping and then snuck in while they were telling ghost stories and dumped the water on their fire.  Ha ha, jackasses!  They were pissed off.  Even their scout master was pissed and told them to find us and kick our butts but it was too dark and they were stupid.  He called us bitches but he’s the bitch.

Anyway, so we didn’t want the stupid boy scouts to ruin our camping trip so we decided to go to the other side of 510, up where Zack lives, and onto the Marsh property.  You’d think it’d be marshy up there but it isn’t; that’s just their name.  They own, like, a million acres or something.  It’s big and because it’s private property they don’t allow hunters or boy scouts or anyone on there.  They have barbed wire running around the property—right through the woods!—with signs on it.  It’s pretty cool.  We play war on it.  You got to be careful, though, because it’s rusty and if you get cut then your mom will have to take you to the pediatrician and he’ll jab you with a needle because of tetanus.  That sucks.  But the Marsh property is huge and there are no pansy boy scouts to mess with us.  So me and Frankie went there.

He brought a bunch of Lunchables for us to eat and I stole my older brother’s left over Halloween candy that he thinks is hidden with the dirty magazines he stole from Uncle Jake’s fishing cabin but everyone knows where it is; I even caught mom stealing Kit Kats when she was pretending to be on a diet again.  With that for food and the tent and my camo hat, we were all set.  We walked up to Zack’s but stayed in the road until we came to the stream that runs under the pavement and dropped down into that and followed it the way we do when playing war.  It’s pretty cool down there: the trees curl over the top of the stream so it’s like a green tunnel.  You have to hunch over sometimes and you always get muddy so it’s basically like Special Forces training.  I’m always out there training.  I bet they won’t even make me go through boot camp when I join the Army, not after all the experience I have.

We followed the stream for a while and then climbed up the bank and headed out to the barbed wire.  It was only about six o’clock so it was plenty light out.  The trees get closer together as you come to the Marsh property, though, and it’s always a little darker there.  Once we found the barbed wire, we knew we were almost far enough to make camp.  Frankie tried to chicken out for a minute when we saw one of the signs.

He was like, “The sign says trespassers will be prosecuted, wah wah wah, they could tell on us and I’d start crying like a little girl.”

I told him, “You better leather up or I’m going to take your Lunchables and leave you here.”

So he came around and stopped being a pansy for a few minutes.  We climbed over the barbed wire by laying a big fallen tree on it and then walking over like a balance beam.  On the other side, we decided to go a little ways further so in case boy scouts or anyone came by near the fence they wouldn’t see us.  It was pretty cool over there, at least at first.  The ground isn’t trampled like near the paths in the parks.  There are ferns and huge patches of sticker bushes.  It must have been so cool as a Revolutionary War soldier hiding in the bushes, taking shots at those stupid British jackasses walking around shoulder to shoulder.  Frankie and me crept through there, playing and enjoying ourselves until it started to get dark and we knew we needed to stop and make camp.

So I set up the tent and told Frankie to gather some firewood but he was next to useless at it.  He’s kinda small for his age and cries all the time and he got a splinter and cried like a pansy.  I got a little wood, though, and we made a fire but the big log I brought over wouldn’t light so we had to use the flashlight Frankie brought to see the Lunchables and candy.  We ate and then sat back against some trees and looked at the sky feeling comfortable and satisfied.  We talked for a bit, mostly about how it sucked that we were going into middle school next year; going from being the biggest kids in school to the youngest and smallest.  Total suck, especially for Frankie who’s small for his age.  I told him all the things the eighth graders are going to do to him like pushing him into lockers and giving him wedgies and stealing his phone and calling phone sex so he gets in trouble when his mom sees the bill but he said it would be easy because Zack and I are much worse than eighth graders.  He’s right about that.

It was starting to get a little chilly but we didn’t want to go to sleep and anyway we didn’t realize until then that we forgot to bring sleeping bags.  I didn’t care: my hat was plenty warm.  We just stayed up and ate candy.  I’m not sure what time it was but I know that Frankie had fallen asleep because I could hear that big nose of his honking like a tug boat.  Whoooooong, whuuuuung.  Then, later on, off in the distance—farther onto the Marsh property—I could hear what I thought was singing.

I kicked Frankie in the knee and he woke up and shouted.  I told him to shut up and listen and he heard the singing, too.

He was all like, “Shit, there are boy scouts out here.”

But I was like, “No way, man: can’t you hear the voices?  Those are chick voices.”

There were definitely chicks singing.  You can totally hear the difference.  The girls down at the Catholic school sing on Sundays and you can totally tell there are boobs involved.  You have to have an ear for this sort of thing.  Frankie said the boy scouts must have brought girls with them but that’s stupid.  So we just sat there and listened a while and the singing got louder and louder and the people doing the singing were carrying on making more and more of a ruckus.  Some of them were just shouting.

Frankie started to cry again because he thought we’d get caught, so I had to slap him to bring him to his senses.  After that, though, because he was scared, I said, “Okay, we’ll go home.”  I didn’t really want to go, though, and got a little mad once we’d packed up the tent.

I was like, “Frankie, you’re such a pansy.  Those people singing out there aren’t going to care if we’re on their property and they don’t know were here anyway.”

And he was like, “Shut up, Brian.  If they find us, they’ll throw us in jail and my mom will be pissed.”

His mom would be pissed if we were in jail but I said, “They’re not going to find us if you’d quit your crying.”

He said he wasn’t crying and then said it was my idea to leave.  I told him he was a goddamn liar and was about to punch him in his big nose but didn’t want him crying too loud or else the singing people might hear.

So, I said, “Fine, if you’re not scared anymore, let’s go sneak up there and see what’s going on.  Or are you a chicken-faced pansy?”

He tried to tell me I was the pansy for packing up the tent but he knew he was the pansy.  Anyway, now that he saw he’d have to go with me or I’d tell the fellas how chicken he was, Frankie came with me and we snuck toward the ruckus.

It was a pretty far way and we had to take our time or else all the sticks and bushes and things on the ground would have given us away.  Good thing I had all that training—and had made Frankie train, too, so he wasn’t completely useless at sneaking—although I was worried that his allergies would act up and he’d start sneezing or wheezing and give us away.  As we went on, we could see a light through the trees.  It was a huge bonfire.  The people on the Marsh property had built a bonfire in the middle of this clearing in the woods.  It was really bright and so we thought we were close but it took almost twenty minutes to sneak up to the edge of the clearing to get a good look.  What we saw was freaking awesome.

There must have been, like, twenty or thirty people there and every single one of them was completely naked.  There were dudes, it’s true, and I didn’t want to look at them, but there were plenty of chicks, too, and they were totally naked.  No underwear or nothing!  They were jumping around and shouting and we could see their boobs.  It was better than the internet; better than that time we found Todd’s older brother’s laptop left on and found his porno file.  You’re sure you’re not going to tell my mom this part?  Because they put those damn parental controls on my computer, which sucks—you can tell them that part—and they check my browser history and crap.  You're not going to tell?  Okay.  So the people were dancing around naked and Frankie and me just crouched at the edge of the clearing and watched.

I remember there was a big stone slab in the middle of the clearing, too.  It was weird and black, like a blackboard, but shaped like a door only thicker.  On top of the slab thingee was this butt-ugly statue about a foot tall.  I couldn’t see it very well because the flames of the bonfire were in the way but it kinda looked like a dragon with a squid head.  I didn’t like that thing at all.  It almost ruined looking at all the boobs.  What actually ruined watching all the boobs was Frankie, though.  Of course.

He started to get scared again and kept moving around, making noise.  I took him by the collar and whispered that he needed to shut the hell up or these wackos would hear us but he was too scared to listen to reason.  I can’t tell you how often he’s messed up a good time with his pansy-assing and sissy-crying.  I didn’t want to get caught but how often were we going to get a chance to see this many boobs dancing around?  It was like a strip club.

But then, we heard some louder screaming in the distance and that screaming wasn’t the same kind as the naked people.  This screaming was from someone as scared as Frankie.  I kinda thought maybe there was a group of boy scouts on the other side of the fire who’d sneaked up like us and were watching until one of them lost his cool and freaked out.  I didn’t want Frankie to catch the pansy-ass cooties, so I said we could go.

Once we were about five minutes away, we heard the screaming again, the scared kind, only this time the guy who was screaming was shouting, “No, no, please no!”  Okay, I’m not a pansy, like Frankie, but that was pretty scary so I was glad we’d left by then.  Frankie totally lost his shit at that point and took off running.  He’s small but he’s fast and I had to haul ass just to keep up with him: I was carrying the tent, too!  That’s the only reason he was ahead of me.

We ran like crazy and the only thing I could hear after a while was Frankie crying and the leaves and ferns and things on the ground crunching beneath my sneakers.  I was breathing hard by this point, harder than in gym.  I was just about ready to call out to Frankie to stop—because I didn’t want him to run straight into the barbed wire fence and get cut up; that’d be tough to explain—when this weird thing flew overhead.

I know what you’re thinking but it wasn’t bats or an owl.  These things were huge!  I saw the first one pretty clearly because it turned its head as it flew over me and looked back.  It was all white and it kinda glowed a bit, you know?  More than the moonlight, which was hard to see under the trees.  The huge white thing also had a red eye—just one, in the middle of its head.  The thing was more like a Predator Drone than a bat except that it didn’t make a noise like a jet but sounded like a jar of mayonnaise jerking off.

I slowed down to a walk, just looking at the thing.  Then a bunch more of them when squishy squashy overhead and I guess Frankie saw one because he fell down and started screaming.  I ran up to him and covered his mouth because I didn’t want the crazy naked people to hear him.  Also, I didn’t know if those flying mayonnaise monsters were carnivores, you know?  Keeping my hand over Frankie’s mouth, I hauled him up and we ran for it again.

After we got back to the stream behind Zack’s house, we sat down and took a breather, eating a little candy to steady our nerves.  It was then that it really hit me that we saw some crazy flying things, like mutated bats or something.  Frankie was talking his sciency mumbo jumbo, like he knew what they were, like he wasn’t scared the whole time.  Yeah, right.  I should have made him check his shorts.  While he was shooting his mouth off, something crept up behind us and we heard some brushes move.  It was probably a deer or something but I knew we weren’t sleeping outside that night.  We hauled ass down the stream and back to Zack’s house.

He has a tall, gnarly tree in his backyard and if you climb it you can get on the roof.  We went up and tapped on Zack’s window and he let us in.  It was really, really late by this point and he thought we had only come back because it was dark and we were scared.  We set him straight but he wouldn't believe us: we told him about the singing and the weird flying things and the screaming and he said we were full of shit.  Then I told him about the boobs and he wanted to go see.  No way; after all that running, I was beat.

The next morning, Zack started right in on us being liars and chicken for not staying out camping all night.  I told him to shut his face before I slapped him with a ferret but he just kept on.

He was like, “I can understand a pansy like Frankie chickening out but I thought after all of our Special Forces training that you wouldn't wet your panties just ‘cause you had to sleep outside without your mommy.”

I told him, “It’s easy for you to talk: while we were out there sneaking up on crazy people and dodging flying albino dong bats, you were safe in your bed spanking it.”

And he was like, “Really?  You’re going to make up stupid stories just like some little kid?”

So I told him if he wasn’t a pansy he’d come with us and we’d go back out to the Marsh property and we’d show him the clearing.  The bonfire would still be there; it’s not like even crazy people are going to sweep up in the woods.  Zack tried to play it cool but he knew if we dared him that we were telling the truth.  So he got dressed and—and this point proves he already believed us—he snuck his dad’s dive knife that he carries when scuba diving.  I left the tent and Frankie left his backpack with the flashlight and Lunchables but we all jammed some candy in our pockets before heading out.

It didn’t take nearly as long to get there in the day time as it did the night before.  I guess when you can see where you’re going you don’t have to be as careful.  Anyway, when we got to the clearing, Zack was like “Whoa, dude,” and finally admitted what we said was true.  There was the burned-up logs of the bonfire and the crazy-ass stone thing like a blackboard and all the ferns and stuff was smashed down from all the jumping around.  There weren’t any people there but when we got close to the stone thing, we saw that there was a huge dark stain on the ground.  Frankie nearly peed himself; he said, “That’s blood.”

I don’t know how he knew that’s what it was but it did explain the guy screaming his head off the night before.  The only thing was, if those crazy naked people killed some guy, where was his body?  And what did any of it have to do with the flying things?  I figured they had to be connected.  They always do that on TV: two things that happen right after the other but you don’t know why and then they’re connected.  It was so obvious, you know, except for how.  Anyway, I jumped up a few times but I couldn’t see that ugly-ass statue thing and no one really wanted to hang around there, especially if the crazy naked people came back and wanted to off some more dudes, so we left.

As we walked back, Zack made us retell the whole thing from the beginning.  I guess me and Frankie were arguing about something because we didn’t even hear the guy come up to us until he was right freaking there.

I guess you know who he is.  He didn’t tell us his name or anything.  At first we thought maybe he was a bum.  He was in a suit but it was kinda wrinkled and stuff.  He had the jacket over his arm and a big muddy streak down one leg, from where he must have fallen.  Probably didn’t have as much experience in streams as we did.  Anyway, he walked up to us and asked us some stuff.

He was like, “I heard you boys talking.  Did you say you saw a strange group of people out here last night?  Dancing and chanting, maybe?”

Now, in school, they warned us about weirdos.  They told us about perverts who only want to get into your pants and Zack was obviously worried that this guy was one of those types but I wasn’t so sure.  Of course, even though he had his dad's dive knife, Zack was too much of a pansy to pull it out so I had to take charge and handle things.  I figured the guy was a bum but you never know and so I didn’t want to tell him too much.

So I say, “No, we were talking about a TV show we like.”

And Frankie, genius that he is, says, “Yeah, yeah, an episode of Power Rangers where they find this group of devil worshipers in the woods.”

Idiot.  Fear makes Frankie extra stupid.  So there’s some wackjob asking us questions; maybe a pervert—a pervert would know there aren’t any devil worshipers in Power Rangers.

So the guy says, “You’ve got guts, kid.”  Talking to me, you know? “You’ve got guts and aren’t afraid to lie in a tight spot.  I respect that.  Grownups will tell you not to lie but it’s a useful skill.  Only problem is, you can’t have Orphan Annie here trembling and getting misty-eyed when you’re lying, it gives you away.  What did you see?”

I could have kicked Zack for sniffling and dancing about like he was about to piss himself.  It was broad daylight and we outnumbered the guy—and we had the dive knife: what could possibly happen?  Anyway, since the guy knew we lied and seemed cool, I decided to tell him what we really saw.

He listened and didn’t interrupt the way the teachers always do, which makes conversation a pleasure.  I told him the whole long story, just like now, and he just nodded and pinched his lower lip like he was thinking.  When I was done, he asked about the flying albino dicks and I told him I didn’t know anymore than I told him and so then he asked if there were any caves around there.  How the hell would I know if there are any caves around there?  It’s private property.  I told him the only caves I knew of were in Lewis Morris Park by the waterfall, which is a really cool place to go climbing and training.  He tapped on his smart phone and then shook his head and said, “Something closer.”  Then, and I can’t believe this, he asked: “Are any of you boy scouts?”

I’m like, “Hell no!”

Zack admitted that his stupid older brother was a boy scout, though, and the guy says can Zack call and ask.  So Zack does and tells his brother that he forgot he had a homework assignment and that he needs a little help; his brother—Roger Cockbreath—says he won’t do Zack’s homework for him; so Zack says he just needs a topic and that he’ll do the research himself and asks if there are any caves near the Marsh property.  Roger says there are a few caves from some unknown tribe of Native Americans that have stumped historians for like a thousand years or so because the caves have paintings that are super old.

Zack tells the bum and the bum taps on his phone some more and then finds the caves on Google maps.  He tells us to get out of the woods and to stay out for the next few days.  He doesn’t even tell us why.  I’m thinking, why is this bum so interested in caves instead of naked people dancing around killing dudes?  Whatever, I thought, and then Zack and Frankie and me go back to Zack’s and then later to our own homes.

From all that running around and not sleeping, I was beat.  My mom threw a fit when she saw how muddy my pants got and said I had to take a bath or no dinner.  Yeah right.  She’s always saying stuff like that and never follows through on her threat.  It’s a good thing I’m naturally awesome or this upbringing would never instill a proper work ethic in me.  And aren’t I supposed to not like stuff so I build character?  That’s what Zack’s dad tells him when he has to mow the lawn.  I say, break the lawnmower and go play.  Anyway, I took the bath but mostly because my shoes smelled like butt from walking through the stream so much and then mom threw another fit because of that!  Well, where the hell else am I going to wash my shoes?  And then to top it all off, we had mom’s famous “white wine chicken,” which is code for dehydrated Styrofoam in pee-pee sauce.  I wish I had been sent to my room without dinner.  Luckily we also had that Italian salad with the raw garlic in it, which tastes like rotten snot but gives me wicked nasty farts.  I was farting up the living room so bad after dinner that they sent me to bed early.  Ha ha.  Serves them right.

I tried to go to sleep but when I lay down, I started thinking of the crazy naked people and the guy screaming the night before.  I mean, we didn’t actually see him get killed, you know?  But he sounded really scared.  And then there was that big puddle of blood near the stone thing.  You’d think, lying there in bed after all the training and seeing all those boobs, I’d be nice and comfortable and satisfied but I wasn’t.  I thought about how scared the guy must have been and wondered what it was like to be dragged in front of that stone thing and have some crazy naked people stab me or cut my throat.  But that didn’t make sense to me: I mean, if you’re going to kill a guy, why would you be naked?  You can’t fight properly if you’re naked; there’d be too many bits dangling out.  So then I thought, if the crazy naked people were Satanists, they’d be sacrificing goats, not people.  I stayed up late this one time, when my parents had gone into the city to see some stupid thing on Broadway, and the baby sitter was giggling in the kitchen, talking on the phone, and this super cool movie about Satanists came on and they sacrificed goats.  It was awesome, it had this chick who took her shirt off.  Never mind, though.  You’re not telling my mom, right?  Okay.  So, I was thinking about the crazy naked people and figured they must have sacrificed a goat and that probably the guy who was screaming was the farmer and he’d started to think of the goat as his pet like that talking pig from the movie with the spider that writes things in its web—what’s it called?—and when it came time to kill the goat and have barbeque he lost his cool.  I figured that had to be it and so then I wasn’t worried about the guy or the blood anymore, because who cares about goats, and started to remember all the boobs.  There were a lot.  And I couldn’t get to sleep, laying there thinking there were all these boobs out in the woods to look at and I was stuck up in my room.

So, I went and put on my camo hat and got back into bed and sat there thinking it over some more and then decided I wanted to go back out to the Marsh property and sneak another look.  I didn’t know who the bum was, remember, so I figured why not?  So I texted Frankie and told him to sneak out and meet me at the corner near his house in ten minutes.

I’m going to be real honest here, now: Frankie didn’t want to go.  It was my idea.  If I knew how things would turn out, I wouldn’t have gone.  And Frankie wouldn’t have gone at all if I hadn’t called him a pansy a bunch of times when I called later and said I’d tell his mom what we’d done if he didn’t come with me.  Zack wouldn’t have gone by himself, either, but was ready to go as soon as I called him.  I went to Frankie’s first and he’d already snuck out and then we ran all the way to Zack’s and he’d snuck out, too.  It was about eleven or so when we went out into the woods.

It didn’t take as long to get to the clearing this time, I don’t know why.  It was darker than the night before but I guess since we knew the way, we moved faster.  We didn’t try to keep quiet until we heard the singing.  After that, we snuck along, hunching over and being careful.  We saw the bonfire again through the trees and kept as quiet as we could.  Before long we were at the edge of the clearing.  There were naked people everywhere, just like the night before.  We stayed quiet and low and just watched.  They were dancing and screaming and after a while I could kinda make out the words.  It was something like, “Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn,” over and over again.  There was a longer bit, too, but it was like gibberish.  All that nonsense made it tough to enjoy the naked ladies but it was still pretty cool.  Until were heard the screaming in the distance, again.

It was off a ways, someone started screaming, “No, no, please,” just like last time.  I looked over and the fellas had heard it, too.  Zack’s eyes were bugging out and Frankie stuck his fingers in his ears.  We didn’t dare move.  We couldn’t creep away because the circle of dancing people had pushed out from the bonfire and was now only a few feet from us.  Some of them looked off into the woods as they passed by.  If we’d gotten up, they’d have seen us.  So we were stuck.

I wanted to tell the fellas that it had to be that poor farmer about to have another of his pet goats slaughtered but I couldn’t without hollering because of all the yelling the naked people were doing and they’d have heard me.  I wasn’t a goat, though.  On the other side of the clearing, two guys who weren’t naked were dragging another guy by the arms.  The dragged guy was fighting hard to escape but the other two dragging him were much bigger: like high school seniors dragging a preschooler.  They could have been WWE wrestlers, you know?  Then, all the dancing people started shouting that “Cthulhu fhtagn” thing together like they do at church and one of the naked ladies walked up to the stone thing and kneeled down in front of it.  She held her hands up to the ugly statue on top and said a whole string of nonsense.  She had a knife in her hand.

While she was carrying on, the two huge wrestler dudes tore the other guy’s clothes off.  He tried to fight but one of the dudes had him in a headlock.  Once they had him naked, they dragged him over to stone and the naked lady stood up and pointed at the ground, right where the puddle of blood was that we saw that afternoon.  The screaming guy completely lost it now and thrashed like an angry cat but it didn’t do him any good.  The huge wrestlers held his arms out to either side and had him sitting with his back to the stone.  The naked lady then walked up real slow and put the knife to his shoulder.  Man, it was awful; she just held it there a second and said some more gobbledygook.  Then, she cut him.  Real slow like and mean, like she wanted him to scream, and drew a line of blood from his shoulder down to his leg.  That’s when Zack lost it.

Zack started screaming, too, and—I almost crapped my pants—stood up and pointed at the naked lady.  The circle of crazy naked people jumped toward us before Frankie and me could get up and run.  They dragged us forward to the bonfire and I thought they were going to throw us on it for trespassing.  Frankie and Zack were balling and I was so scared I barely remembered to kick shins and bite.  I bit one guy, though, and he popped me in the side of the head and then forced me down on my knees next to the fellas.  The naked lady then came up to us real slow with this look on her face like I don’t know what; freaking scary and nuts.  She had the bloody knife in her hand and she pointed it at Zack’s face and said something crazy like, “You, too, will feed the Yuggothi.”

I don’t know what the hell that meant, man, but it didn’t sound good at all so I was plenty happy when that bum showed up out of nowhere and shot her right in the face.  Yeah, bam!  I looked over from where the blast came from and there was the bum in his wrinkled blue suit holding a shotgun.  It was dead silent for a second or two but it seemed like a year and a half without weekends.  All the naked people just stared at him or the dead lady with the knife—even the guy she’d cut stopped screaming.  Then the bum opens up with the shotgun and blasts the two huge wrestlers and shouts for me and the fellas to get down.  I dove onto my face and the other fellas did, too.  I couldn’t see much but didn’t have to.  That bum went to town on those crazy naked dickheads, first with the shotgun and then with a cool pistol.  Bang, bang, boom, boom!  It was awesome.  My first firefight.

The crazy naked people tried to charge him and he had to buttstroke some of them with the shotgun and pull his pistol.  He dodged this way and that, blasting and kicked one dude into the fire and stuff.  Frankie and Zack were screaming the whole time the bum was shooting and when he stopped I had to slap them so they’d shut up.  Then it was quiet again.  All you could hear was the bonfire burning and the bugs.

Me and the fellas stood up slowly.  I was pretty sure the bum was on our side, seeing as he didn’t shoot us and all, but the other two looked like they didn’t trust him.  Heck, they were practically holding hands, the pansies.  The bum picked up his shotgun then and reloaded it and his pistol and then walked over to the dude the naked lady had cut and knelt down in front of him.

I walked over but the other two just stood near the fire, being chicken.  When I got close enough, I could hear the bum say something like, “Didn’t seem like quite as much of an honor once it was your turn to feed the hell moths, huh?”

The cut guy shook his head and for some reason seemed more scared of the bum than of the naked lady.

So the bum said, “You know who I am, don’t you?”

And the cut guy said, “You’re Solomon Kayne.  You’re a Venator.”

I didn’t know what that meant but that Solomon guy nodded his head like it meant something.  He said to the cut guy, “That’s right.  Sometimes coming face to face with the reality of the cult can scare a man straight.  Venators have been made that way.  You don’t look like you have the mettle for it, though, bud.  Tell you what: if you’re out of these woods before I’m done with what I have to do here, you live.  If you’re not—or if I find you’ve gone off to join another franchise—you’re dead.  You got me, Yin-boy?”

Scared as that cut guy was, and even after his friends tried to slice him into French fries, he looked more scared of what Solomon told him.  His eyes bugged out worse than Zack’s and he started breathing real hard and then he screamed and reached for Solomon’s throat.  Solomon blasted him.

He stood up then, mumbling something, and then reached up and took the ugly-ass statue off the top of the black stone.  He looked at it for a second and then smashed it against the stone until it was in little pieces.  I don’t know why but I felt better when that thing was broken.  He picked up the pieces and put them in his pockets and then turned around and saw me.  He put his pistol away and leaned his hands on his knees, to look at me.

He said, “So, you’re going to have a nice, normal childhood now.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not; I said, “I’ve got guts.”

He smiled and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Yes you do, kid.  Come on.”

We went over to the other two and he told them we were safe now and that he’d make sure we got out of the woods okay.  First, though, he said—since we were there—we had to help him.  He took us out of the clearing and in the direction of the Marsh mansion.  Zack said we shouldn’t go that way because of the house but Solomon said there wasn’t anyone there now, not anyone alive.  About a hundred feet from the clearing there was a big stack of satchels and drums with shoulder straps.  I don’t know how he did it, but Solomon had been lugging all that crap with him through the woods.  I guess the crazy naked people’s screaming drown out the noise.  He told us to each grab a satchel or drum and come with him.  We walked back to the clearing and through it and up toward the hill at the edge of the Marsh property.

All those dead people.  It isn’t at all like in video games, you know?  Todd’s mom doesn’t care what video games he buys so we have a lot of cool games over at his house like Fallout 3 and Black Ops and stuff.  Those games are cool and are probably really good training for when I go into Special Forces.  I used to think all the blood and gore in those games was just like real life.  I know better now.  All those people shot up.  They smell, you know?  You can’t get that from a video game.  The ones with their guts shot up, they smell the worst; they smell like poo.  Frankie puked as we walked through the clearing and the sound of it made me sick, too, but I didn’t barf.  Zack said he didn’t but he was behind me and I think he waited until we were in the dark under the trees before he upchucked.  It was gross.

So, anyway, we followed Solomon up the hill carrying all this crap and eventually we came to this opening in the ground, a cave.  It was spooky looking and I thought maybe he was going to go down there and the satchels and things had climbing gear and food and those plastic sticks that glow in the dark but they didn’t.  He opened one satchel and took out a fan, like you’d have in a hot room.  He set it pointing down the entrance to the cave and then pulled out a big battery from another satchel and hooked it up and turned the fan on, blowing into the cave.  Next, he took one of the drums, pulled up the plastic spout and opened it.  He brought it to the edge of the cave and poured it in.  One after another he poured all the drums down into the cave and the whole time we could hear something inside making this weird sound like a cat sneezing and occasionally that flying mayonnaise noise.  After he’d finished with the drums, Solomon started opening the satchels.  Inside each there were bottles of bleach.  He told us to stand back and poured the bleach into the cave, too.  I asked him what he was doing.

He said, “Don’t they teach home economics anymore?  You’re never supposed to mix ammonia and bleach, kids, remember that.  If you do, you create chlorine gas—the world’s first chemical weapon.  It burns the hell out of your lungs and displaces the oxygen.  Just a whiff of it is often enough for some people to pass out.”

Frankie asked, “So why are you filling the cave with it?”

Solomon was like, “Because I want to kill all the Yuggothi in there.”

Those are the Predator Drone, flying dick things—and they were making a hell of a racket once he started pouring the bleach in.  He said they live in the cave and that when the crazy naked people sacrifice someone, it’s so those things can come eat him.  Gross.  Actually, it’s kinda cool but the things are gross to look at.

After he let the chlorine gas blow through the cave for a while, and the screaming mayonnaise noise died down, Solomon took the last big drum and poured it into the cave.  This one was gasoline.  After a few minutes, he took us back a ways and then threw a match into the cave: there was a “whomp” sound and you could feel the ground move a little.  Then he took a roll of dynamite from his jacket and lit it and threw it into the cave entrance.  That part was really cool!  We had to run, just like in the movies.  When it blew, you could hear the rocks and stuff falling down, blocking the cave forever.

We walked out of the woods and Solomon made sure we were back on Zack’s street before he ran off.  He said we should try to forget what had happened and that we’d probably never see or hear about those crazy naked people—he called them cultists—ever again.  I hope he’s right.

I wouldn’t have told you or anyone else about this but, of course, Frankie’s mom freaked when she found out he’d sneaked out at night.  He probably held out as long as Todd faced with a slice of chocolate cake.  He better hope he doesn’t ever get interrogated by terrorists: he’d give everything away!  But I guess it’s not his fault, really.  Like I said, it was my idea to go out there.

So, there you have it.  I know you guys said you wanted to get your hands on this Solomon Kayne guy but come on: that bum saved our lives back there.  Maybe we should have come forward after the first night but we didn’t want to get in trouble for going camping by ourselves.  That doesn’t seem like such a big deal now.  Anyway, so this is going to go on my permanent record, right?  Is there any way you could see that Special Forces gets a copy of it?  They need to know how badass I was fighting the cultists.  You think they’ll make me a colonel right off the bat?  I should at least be given my own A-team for this.  And a few medals, too.

Thanks for reading the above short story; if you enjoyed it, I also have a fantasy novel you might like available in Amazon’s Kindle store called The Adventurers.  It follows four young friends on the eve of adulthood who decide to leave their sleepy village to find a life of adventure; but before their training and preparations are complete, adventure finds them.  Imagine, The Sword of Shannara meets Stand by Me.  Don’t have a Kindle?  No problem: Amazon provides free apps to view all of the great—and inexpensive—Kindle content on your phone, PC, or Mac, here.  Thanks and happy reading!