Series By: deathfox919
A couple of days ago, I posted something here about my hometown that technically doesn’t exist, and may be under threat from an external force now. Well, in terms of the events that have transpired over the past couple days, I have some stories to tell.
It was raining on Friday. The rains came sporadically throughout the day; sometimes it was no more than a light mist or maybe a bit of a drizzle, sometimes it would be a heavy downpour. I was stuck in my apartment for most of the day, so I mostly just watched Netflix and such. Evidently, the fifth season of Arrested Development was split into two parts. Either way, I didn’t enjoy it all that much.
That is not the point of me writing this, though. I would’ve been on a completely different forum if all I wanted to do was discuss that show (which I did go to at one point).
One of the vans showed up across the street from my apartment building. I had no idea why and not even a clue as to why they were here. The oddities of the town had been dying down as of recently, so I had no idea as to what prompted their sudden reappearance.
Around six o’clock in the evening, I got a text from Victoria. She was hiding in her closet because someone had come out of the can parked by her house and broke in the back door. I instantly called the police, but apparently, all circuits were busy. At that very moment, I heard my entry door being tampered with, and I went to hide in the crawlspace behind my bed. I must’ve been there for ten minutes before the door actually opened and two men dressed completely in black came inside. They came right over to the crawlspace and began speaking to me.
“Mister Benson, we are not here to hurt you. We just want to talk about the event that occurred last Thursday at the Sullivan baseball diamond,” one of them said.
I was so confused. I hadn’t heard of any event that had happened at the Sullivan baseball diamond. Hell, I didn’t even know this town had a baseball diamond to begin with. That’s exactly what I told them once they convinced me to crawl out of my crawlspace.
Turns out, that’s why they were here.
The taller one introduced himself as Davis. He said he and his partner, Krasinski, were both here searching for the employees of one Bob Valerio (my boss at the grocery store). They were told by their superior to retrieve them by any means necessary and were happy that they got me to cooperate. After that, Davis told me to grab a coat, my keys, and anything else I absolutely need for the next couple days before he and Krasinski escorted me to the black van parked outside.
The rain had frozen in mid-fall, something that happened about once a year in my town. What made me unnerved was the fact that Davis and Krasinski seemed completely unphased by this. They barely noticed that raindrops were just suspended in mid-air.
Once I was inside the van, I heard Krasinski’s phone ringing. He answered, and for the first time I heard his voice. It was deep, gruff, and he had a thick German accent.
“Do you have Victoria?”
On the other end of the line, I heard a voice say, “Yeah, we got her. Although Simpson and Duvall are having a tough time with the one on Baxter Street.”
“Tell them to do what they have to do.”
James Duncan lived on Baxter Street. He was the only survivor of his mentally-ill father slaughtering his entire family with a hatchet when he was nine years old. Evidently, his father claimed that all of his family members had been possessed by the woman in black who lived at the edge of the woods, but the penal system in my state doesn’t really recognize just how odd our town is. James inherited the house but had to work full-time at the grocery store to keep it. I also knew he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
When we all arrived at the grocery store, I was right when I saw that James had a large gash on the side of his face. We also saw the men in the vans had managed to get our co-workers Katie, Oz, and Lily. We all took a seat in the back room before Davis and one of the men that had escorted James in ushered the other men back outside.
“What the fuck is going on here?” James asked, “Why are you here?”
Davis turned to the other man as if asking for permission to continue non-verbally. Then he began to explain our situation with, “My name is Davis and this is Langdon. We are from a special government agency that monitors towns like this across the United States that have certain...oddities shall we say.”
“Oddities like kids going missing every April 23rd or the things in the woods on Mulberry Lane?” Lily asked, “Or what about the radio station that announces when celebrities are going to die three hours before they do? What about the hellhound in the basement of the library? What about the fact that fucking rain stopped falling in mid-air!?”
“Oddities like all of the things you just listed,” Langdon interjected, “Now would you let Davis explain what is going on and kindly shut up?”
Langdon gets very sassy like that. I like him.
“Thanks, Langdon,” Davis said, “Well we’re here because of the event that took place this past Thursday, at the Sullivan baseball diamond.”
“Hold up,” Oz began, “This town has a baseball diamond?”
“No it doesn’t,” Davis explained, “And that’s why we’re here. We’re aware that your boss, Bob Valerio, went missing around the time this baseball diamond appeared-”
“Wait, that’s wrong,” Katie interjected, “Bob went missing Tuesday. Him and eight other people. I think Linda Atkins was one of them. Her cats got out of her house yesterday and the black one got into my pantry. She never lets her cats out.”
Davis and Langdon both looked at each other. They were petrified by what Katie had just said. Davis turned back to Katie and asked, “Are you positive it was Tuesday?”
“That, or very early Wednesday morning. He was supposed to open up the store at five in the morning and he never showed up. I got here at six and the place wasn’t even touched, besides the jar of fingers popping up on aisle four again.” She paused for a moment. “I mean...I’m guessing Tuesday because that’s when a bunch of people started going missing. He left around one in the afternoon and no one saw him after that.”
Davis and Langdon turned to each other again and began whispering to each other. After that, Langdon rushed to the door and called for Krasinski and one of the other men. He told them to go to the baseball diamond and start digging.
Victoria then asked Davis a question to something she’d caught on to earlier. “There are other towns like us?”
Turns out, there’s one on the west coast and one in some of the northernmost regions of Alaska. If you’ve ever heard stories about non-natives coming up to Alaska and going crazy before wandering off into the wilderness and never being seen again, they’re most likely from this town.
It also turns out that all of the missing people were found in a mass grave under the baseball diamond, right under the pitcher’s mound. Their rate of decay was startling, and their bones were sent to a laboratory in rural Montana that this agency owns. Davis and Langdon are awaiting the results.
I went back to my apartment around three o’clock this morning after we were all forced to stay in the fallout shelter under the town hall for six hours (according to the protocol Davis told us about). When I came home, I found Roland, a man who believes he is a vampire, sitting in my recliner chair and drinking a bottle of Nesquik.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked him, irritated and just wanting to go to bed.
“You remember the bobbing head in the pond back behind the apartments?” he asked.
“Is it back?” I asked.
“Yep,” he told me as he rose to his feet and walked out of my apartment, “Lock your windows.”
“Yeah yeah, I know what to do.”
I locked all my windows and then crawled into bed. I’ve had to deal with the bobbing head before, and it is not anything I was up for after this day. It had been very long and very rough for a lot of reasons, and now I wasn’t sure if I had a job or not.
I woke up about an hour ago and saw that my phone was dead. I went out to the kitchen and plugged it in before I poured myself a bowl of good ol’ Lucky Charms and sat in my recliner while aimlessly browsing the endless selection of shows Netflix had. I eventually settled on just rebinging American Horror Story for the second time this year.
Now I am writing this.
I know you guys want me to tell you some more shit that has happened over my twenty-one years living in this town, I feel like you guys would love the shit out of the Strawberry Man, but I don’t have time for that. After I post this, I need to go to the grocery store.
Evidently, Bob is back, and he’s acting very strange.
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