The Pit in the Woods: A Mercy Falls Mythos Read online

  THE PIT IN THE WOODS

  NATHANIEL REED

  A MERCY FALLS MYTHOS

  THE PIT IN THE WOODS

  NATHANIEL REED

  A MERCY FALLS MYTHOS

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 by Nathaniel Reed

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States.

  Reed, Nathaniel

  The Pit in the Woods- 2nd edition

  Summary: A group of bullied teens become close friends, but a rash of disappearances and strange events has them facing something greater and more sinister in their home town of Mercy Falls. It all begins with a strange girl and a sudden attack that leaves them all jolted, and searching for the truth. Then a mysterious “hunter” appears and they are forced to confront the evil in their town, and become the fighters they must be.

  Thinking they have destroyed the evil for good, they live their lives normally. But decades later, with the threat still present and their former leader at death’s door, they must face the evil once again, but this time without guidance.

  Book design and cover photography by Ulises Mazorra

  Printed in the United States of America

  Second Edition

  This book is dedicated to all those who believed in me. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Prologue

  MERCY FALLS, MASSACHUSETTS 1958

  This story starts innocently enough with a birth. In a sense all things do. A boy sits on his bed, head down, waiting for his mother to come into his room. We can hear an argument down the hall, a man and a woman. We assume the boy’s mother and father. She opens the door, and the boy looks up.

  “Your father and I have discussed this,” she says, “and we’ve agreed she’s going to put the baby up for adoption. We’ve already discussed it with Samantha’s parents.”

  “What? You can’t! I want to have this baby! We want to have this baby!”

  “Fulton, you’re a teenager! You’re just graduating high school. What are you going to do with your life?”

  “I’m going to marry her,” he says. “Take care of our baby. I can be a responsible father!”

  She laughs. “Sure. Like you were responsible when you got her pregnant! It’s not up for debate Fulton! I will not have you bring shame to this family.”

  He turns his head away. “I’m sorry you’re ashamed of me mom.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that guilt trip Fulton. Consider what you’ve done.”

  “I have! Don’t you see? I want to take care of this baby. And I love Samantha. I want to be with her.”

  “Love. Do you even know what love is? What about college?”

  “I can take night classes. Work during the day.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out don’t you? Do you think this will be easy?”

  “No, of course not. But at least I’m willing to try!”

  “My mind’s made up. Your father’s too…”

  “Fine!” he gets up angrily. “You know what? That’s just great! The baby hasn’t even been born yet, and you want to hide it away like its some monster!”

  “I never said…”

  “You didn’t have to! But you know what? By the time our baby is born I’ll be eighteen and I can legally make my own decisions. So guess what? I’ll be moving out, and getting married. And you have no say in what I do with my life. This baby is my responsibility. Not yours!”

  “Fulton, are you intentionally trying to hurt me?”

  “That depends. Are you intentionally trying to ruin my one chance at getting things right?”

  “You’ll ruin your life Fulton.” She begins to cry.

  “Maybe ma. But it’s mine to ruin. Why won’t you believe in me? I know this is my responsibility, and I’m not going to burden you with it. Once I graduate and turn eighteen I’ll move out. And Samantha and I will get married, with or without your blessing.”

  He walks over and hugs her. “I’m sorry mom. I really am. But I can’t let you make this decision for me. It’s too important.”

  She lets him go. “You talk to your father. I can’t deal with this anymore.” She raises her hand as if to ward him off.

  He nods, but once she is out the door, he is out the window. He doesn’t want to talk to his father. His father is even more unreasonable. He wants to talk to Samantha. He already knows she feels the same, but he wants to talk to her, see her again.

  Fulton Blake has taken the first step toward his destiny.

  PART I

  FIRST DESCENT

  "I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord."

  -Phil Collins

  "Won't you come with me to a place in a little town?

  The only way to get there is to go straight down."

  -Silverchair

  CHAPTER ONE

  RULE OF THE DRAGONS

  (1985)

  1

  He was having a great dream. He was sure of it. But now he was being rudely awakened. The persistent nagging was breaking through whatever peaceful utopia he’d created.

  “Jeremy! Jeremy! Wake up! You’ve got to go to school!” Mrs. Daniels called from downstairs.

  “Aww mom, let me sleep,” he countered.

  “You can’t miss your first day of school,” she argued. “Come downstairs and have breakfast with your family.”

  Even yelling from downstairs that breakfast was ready was unconvincing. But then his father cut in. “You listen to your mother Jeremy! Come down right now! Breakfast is served!

  Somehow his father made everything sound much more urgent, if he wanted to avoid an ass whooping that was.

  He grumbled and left the cozy warmth of his bed, hands clinging to the rails as he went downstairs so as not to topple over. The bright and cheery faces of Roberta and Martin Daniels greeted him at the table, and the not so bright and cheery one of his little sister Rebecca, who also had to go to school.

  “Sit, son, sit,” Martin said, holding out a chair for him.

  “Dad, do I ha…”

  “Yes!” his father barked. “Now I don’t want to hear any more of your belly-aching.”

  “Your father’s right,” Roberta added in her Betty Sunshine voice. “Stop talking nonsense and eat. A boy needs a good breakfast before he heads off to school.”

  Thank you mother, he thought. As he looked up from his meal of pancakes and hash browns he noticed his sister staring at him.

  “What’s up Becky?” he asked.

  His seven year old sister pointed shyly at his plate. Afraid to but unable to stop himself Jeremy looked down. And there it was. Swimming in his maple syrup. Doing huge spasmodic backstrokes. A huge black roach.

  “Aw Jesus!” he screamed. “You eat this!” he said to no one in particular, as he shot up from his chair and ran toward the bathroom. His father looked on in disbelief.

  “I thought you got rid of all the roaches,” he said to Roberta.

  “So did I,” she replied, stunned. She grabbed the plate by the edge, looking away as she lifted it, and dumped all its contents into the garbage.

  They had all lost their appetite. When Jeremy returned from the bathroom his mother asked if he was all right. She knew he had a weak stomach.

  “Yeah mom, I feel just dandy.”

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. I thought they were all dead.” She looked really distraught. “I’ll whip you up something else.”

  “It’s okay mom, really. I’m not hungry.”

  At least if he had been, he wasn’t anymore.

&
nbsp; Jeremy arrived at school with three notebooks, pen and pencil poking out of a white dress shirt, jeans and sneakers. The notebooks, shirt, and writing utensils were his mother’s idea. He had to compromise for the rest, although the jeans and sneakers were brand new.

  The first ten minutes of homeroom were bland. The students were assigned lockers and handed out schedules. It was the last five minutes that were different. A few kids were shooting spitballs through straws. Apparently Jeremy was deemed to be the lucky one to be the recipient of these. The first couple missed. The next hit him in the back of the head. Jeremy didn’t even turn around to see who the giggling culprits were, denying them that at least. The homeroom teacher caught on and gave them detention. Although he was unsure who they were, he left pleased. In the next few minutes he would know.

  He examined his schedule as he walked into the hallway. Period 1, Economics, Room 224. No sweat. Just then a hand slapped the back of his head, hard.

  “Owww!”

  He looked behind him to see three boys. He knew they’d been the ones who had hit him with the spitball.

  “You got us in trouble you jerk,” one of them said.

  “What? You got yourselves in trouble,” Jeremy replied.

  “Don’t smart mouth us,” said the tallest of the three, a blonde

  haired boy about 5’11” wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and black leather jacket. He shoved Jeremy against a row of lockers. The others, similarly dressed, but with blue denim jackets punched him. One of the dark haired boys hit him in the stomach; the other struck him a painful blow to his right eye.

  Jeremy Daniels attempted to ward off the next barrage of blows. He couldn’t dodge the blow to his ribs or the one to his chest by Blondie. But he did manage to duck under the fist of the other guy, which would have struck him on the forehead, but instead hit the tiny grate at the top of one of the lockers.

  “You little shit!” he cursed, clutching his hand which was badly scraped and bleeding at the knuckles. He backed off, tending to his hand.

  Then Jeremy noticed for the first time that a large amount of people had gathered in the hallway to watch the fight. He saw his notebook and writing tools on the floor. His head spun looking at all the eyes watching him. Lost in his thoughts, the two unwounded tackled him, knocking him to the ground and proceeding to beat him. He was whacked across the jaw and hit square on the nose. Blood spurt from his nostrils dousing his white shirt.

  The sight of his own blood angered him more than anything, motivating him to fight back with all his might. He let out a yell as he brought his knee up, and struck the tall kid in the balls. The kid sucked in air, trying to hold back the pain, rolling off Jeremy. He landed at the feet of Bloody Hand. The crowd roared with approval.

  The other kid was still on top of him, trying to choke him. Jeremy didn’t trust his fists so he raised his elbow and clouted him on the side of the head. The boys grip loosened but now he was more enraged than before. Jeremy slid out from under him as the burly kid raised his fist for another assault. Jeremy ran.

  Although injured the three gave chase. He was bashed up more than they were, after all. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to let them through. There were some stairs, six if he counted right, going down. Jeremy clutched the top of the railing and vaulted himself to the bottom of the stairs. He turned a blind corner and collided with someone. He bounced off, falling on his ass, and sliding backward rather comically.

  The kid was tall, about six feet. He was blonde and muscular. The first thought Jeremy had was that he was one of them. But oddly enough the boy held out his hand and offered it to Jeremy. He took it and picked himself up. He could see the kid’s veins bulging in his forearm.

  “Come on, hurry! Before they catch up!”

  Jeremy found himself being dragged by this giant. They burst through the double doors of the school’s front entrance and ran down the flight of stairs to the sidewalk, Jeremy panting and sweating up a storm along the way.

  The others were at the top of the stairs now as they began to cross the street. They stopped at a car parked there, a 1960 Ford Thunderbird. The kid pulled him over to the passenger side and opened the door with one of the keys dangling from the clip hooked to his jeans.

  “Get in,” he said, almost shoving him inside. Jeremy understood the urgency, slamming the door shut behind him. The boy ran around to his own side and did the same, turned the ignition, leaving the three bullies in the middle of the street with their fists raised, cursing as Jeremy and his rescuer pulled out.

  He gulped. They were going almost sixty. The boy slowed it down once the bullies were out of sight. It took a lot longer for Jeremy’s heart to slow down.

  “So I see you met our local assholes.”

  “What?” Jeremy said. “Oh yeah. Guess so. You know them?”

  “Not intimately. I fought them once, way back in ninth grade. Gave them a run for their money. It looks like maybe you did too, from all the cheering I heard. Not many people get that chance.”

  “I didn’t do anything. It was like, hit and run.”

  “Hey, at least you got to run. You’ve made some powerful enemies today my friend. These guys are loco.” He twirled his index finger around his temple in case Jeremy didn’t get just how loco. “They always bully people, but they’re not your typical bullies. These guys are out to really hurt, maybe even kill.”

  “Great,” Jeremy said.

  “So what’s your name?”

  “Um, Jeremy. Jeremy Daniels. I’m new here.”

  “Yeah, no shit. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  Jeremy smiled. “I just moved here from New York City over the summer, transferred here as a sophomore.”

  “Well, welcome to our neck of the woods. Nice little shithole of a town, ain’t it? I’m Tony Vincent by the way.” They shook hands.

  “Thanks a lot Tony. You saved my ass back there.”

  “Don’t mention it. They would have demolished you.”

  “Town’s not so bad,” Jeremy said. “It seemed really peaceful, up until today. Maybe too peaceful.”

  “Know what you mean. It’s turds like them that make it suck to live here.”

  “No, that’s not even what I meant. I’m used to the city. This is like Mayberry or something compared to New York. Something straight out of the fifties. And people talk weird here. Like they won’t say car, they’ll say cah. Or instead of paw they’ll say par.”

  Tony laughed. “Yeah, it’s like all the r’s become h, and the w’s become r. Get your pars out of my cah. Oh Lord, I need a drinka watah!”

  Jeremy snorted. “Yeah, exactly. But you don’t talk like that. You have an accent. Italian?”

  “Right you are. My family moved down here from Italy, a year before I was born. So even though I’m officially from Massachusetts, I don’t talk like them.”

  Tony said dem, instead of them.

  “Actually, you talk pretty funny too,” Jeremy commented.

  “Hey, you should be used to Italians, living in New York and all.”

  “I am, it’s still funny though.”

  “All right wise guy. Next time I’m gonna have to consida not savin’ your life.” That’s how he really talked.

  Jeremy surrendered. “Okay. Sorry. Who are those guys anyway?”

  “The tall one’s Maxwell. Max to his friends, which aren’t many. The dumb looking guy’s Carl.” Right, Jeremy thought. The one who hit his hand on the locker. “The husky guy is Jack Farris. Max is the leader, but Farris is the strongest.”

  Jeremy agreed, remembering the constrictor’s grasp on his throat, and how an elbow to the head had only stunned him.

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean leader?”

  “Of the Dragons. They’re a motorcycle gang. At least part of it.”

  “You mean there’s more of those guys? H-h-how many?”

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe ten, twenty. I’ve never seen them all together. And there are guys leaving and new guys joining all the time. So
me of them are from this school, others aren’t. Some don’t go to school at all. But most of them would be seniors like me.”

  Jeremy shook his head in disbelief. “So where are we headed?”

  “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  “Just drop me anywhere I guess. I can’t go home like this. My mom would kill me if she knew I got in a fight.”

  “Yeah, like you had a choice.”

  “She’s going to think I’m still in school now. I don’t want to…”

  “Disappoint her? Hey man, it wasn’t your fault they attacked you. But maybe you should go see a doctor first.”

  Tony stared at the blood on his shirt and under his nostrils. He pinched Jeremy’s nose.

  “Did that hurt?” Tony asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. At least your nose isn’t broken.”

  Jeremy became more aware of the throbbing at his side. He reached down, fearing the worst.

  “Yoooow!! God!”

  “What is it?” Tony said.

  “Fu-fudge! I think that guy Farris broke a couple of ribs.”

  Tony nodded. “Then we better get you to a doctor fast.” Jeremy didn’t argue but he knew for sure now this was going to get back to his mom.

  Of course the doctor called his mother. They found three broken ribs. Jeremy knew he was going to get it as soon as he got home, but Tony told his mother it happened in gym, and Jeremy’s mom believed him. The doctor on the other hand shook his head knowingly, but much to his credit he didn’t say a word. Jeremy knew his mom wasn’t that gullible, that she made herself believe Tony. Being the kind soul that she was she couldn’t conceive of anyone actually inflicting that kind of damage on her boy on purpose. The cracked ribs, the bloody nose, the eye that was just starting to swell. Who knew what else they might have done had Jeremy not gotten away?