Another 10 week course done and dusted. How time flies. Final course of 2016/2017 will commence after Easter and that will be me completing 2 years of Creative Writing. I would like to say I am well on my way into my first draft, but I have barely scratched the surface. The courses keep me busy and with a 55 hour working week, time is a luxary at the moment. Anyway we finished the course with the mandatory group fiction. Location was a derelict theme park, within a seaside town with a dark secret. We created our own character and had to pick a further 2 characters to interact with. Great stories all round, my character was Rebekah a reporter who was returning to the fictional Mysthaven against her will.
Broken Chains
I scream as the bugs skulk, scratch and pierce my skin, they crawl in my eyes, mouth and nose until I am drowning, plummeting in a sea of black.
I wake up shivering in my own sweat, spots of dried blood on the crisp linen sheets make me shiver more. Familiar angry gashes pepper my pale skin, throbbing a warning as the demons return and descend, bringing faded scars back to the surface.
When my editor called me to his office yesterday morning, nothing could have prepared me for the bombshell.
“Becky, we’re sending you to Mysthaven” as his words sliced my soul, a thousand images tore through my heart, mainly of my beautiful family. Whilst he continued with his empty assurances, I stopped listening.
Suddenly my life spooled five years, the fateful day when happiness and laughter turned to screams of terror. When families were savagely torn apart. Hundreds of innocent lives snuffed out. When I became an orphan. The last place on earth I wanted to be was Mysthaven.
Nana Childs was my saviour, at the ripe old age of seventy-eight she welcomed me with open arms into her home, into her life. She rocked me when I was tortured by nightmares, soothed me when I missed my family so much my heart was breaking. She wiped my tears, tended my cutting and slowly brought me back to life.
The drive to Mysthaven was isolated. Nobody came here, why would they? I spotted the mottled flag depicting the highest point of the now abandoned roller-coaster. Further in the distance was the dysfunctional Power Plant, scapegoat for the monstrosities that occurred five years earlier. I never believed it, still didn’t “Genetic Predisposition” the words caught in my throat and I hurriedly pulled over, jumped out of the car and threw up.
As I approached the desolate town, the familiar bulk of Wilkes (now Mayor Wilkes) blotted the pristine gardens, located just left of the Town Hall. Despite the raging summer temperatures, there he was, full attire, left-foot awkwardly bent inwards, clutching his trusty stick with the serpent’s head close to him. I had an impulse to take his stick and beat him with it. Instead I advanced, slowly.
“Rebekah, long time no see” he sounded jovial, pleasant, however his face sang a different song. I noticed beads of perspiration, slowly rivet down his podgy face, like a cold glass of beer on a summer day. “What brings you here?” he added breaking the stifling silence.
“My paper sent me. So you’re Mayor now?”
“Paper?”
“Yes, I am lead reporter for the Daily Echo, never thought Mysthaven would be making headlines, five years too late if you ask me.”
“What do you mean headlines?”
I revelled in his obvious disquiet. “Seems a lot of folk have been disappearing.”
“Disappearing, don’t be ridiculous. You allegedly disappeared but here you are, large as life, don’t go picking scabs Rebekah, there is no story here, never has been, just an unthinkable tragedy that ruined this town and everyone in it.”
The mention of scabs had me squirming as the scars on my covered arms started crying out to me. Suddenly the superiority had shifted.
“Don’t be going upsetting folk now, there’s a good girl.” He lifted himself cumbersomely from his seated position and just like that he was gone. I suddenly felt like the orphan I was five years ago, my eyes filled and I let the tears flow unashamedly for this godforsaken town and everybody it had taken away.
This was a crazy idea, there was no story here just a lot of theories, innuendos and conspiracies. Jumping in my car, I headed for the road out but once again my eyes were drawn to the summit of the roller-coaster. A lonely skeleton for five long years. The poles jutted into the sky-line no more vibrant than a naked winter tree. Back when I was a young girl it was a promise of the summer to come, but now, destroyed, decaying it was a symbol of death and despair.
“Becky” a familiar voice made me slam on the breaks. A mop of dark hair appeared in my wing mirror and there he was, Keir Massey.
“Keir, you’re still here?”
“Yeah, afraid so. I am so glad to see you Becks, I thought you were gone for good”
“Yeah you and Wilkes both”
“Wilkes?”
“Doesn’t matter, I can’t believe you’re still here after everything”
“No place for me to go Becks” his face darkened and I realized I wasn’t the only orphan in this town.
“I’m going to the fairground Keir, one last look around before I leave here for the last time. I am supposed to be doing a piece on the disappearances but nobody is gonna talk to me are they? Wilkes brushed me off as though I was dandruff.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Yeah, for my sins.”
“Listen Becks, don’t go sniffing around, everyone who does disappears.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, one minute they’re here asking questions, next thing they’re gone.”
“Keir, if you hadn’t shouted me I would be gone too. Could it be that they just did a U-turn out of here?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, maybe, who knows, would hate anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing is gonna happen to me Keir. Do you fancy coming with me to the fairground?”
“Sure, but we had better watch out for Straikes, he still patrols that place”
We link arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I miss them Becks, all day, every day.”
I pulled him to me, I knew exactly how he felt. As we entered the derelict fairground he pulled out his wallet and passed me a picture of his family. I gazed at the happy, smiling faces “that’s the last photo I have of them Becks, took it myself at the flume.”
“Oh, god Keir, I had completely forgot you worked at the booth”
“What? You mean to tell me you forgot our little trysts?” We both laughed as memories of cider-fueled fumbles blanketed the bad. I felt my heart lift a little.
Suddenly a memory surfaced, of my own family plunging downwards into the trench of water, wet faces, laughing faces. Maddie clinging on to our dad.
I looked at Keir smiling down at me. “Keir, we need to go to the flume.”
We stumbled around the abandoned logs, pitted and rotting. “Why are we here Becks?”
“Think about it Keir, my family were on here. Your family were on here. For crying out loud a third of Mysthaven were on this ride. Keir looked at me, realization distorting his features. “You think it was the flume?”
“I don’t know Keir, I’m grasping, do you still have all the pictures of that day?”
“No, everything was left in the booth and I never went back.” We both turned and looked where the booth once stood. Now just a pile of rubble. Coincidence?
I started to furiously scratch at my scars, blood came through my long-sleeved shirt. If Keir noticed, he didn’t comment. “I didn’t go on the ride Keir, afraid of water, but I watched them, they were laughing as they hit the trench.
“That’s what they all do Becks, mouths wide open.”
“Where is the trench Keir?”
“Over there” he pointed.
We walked over to the now defunct trench where the logs landed, it was still attached but the plastic was rutted and cracked. A yellow slime lurked at the bottom. I took out my water bottle, emptied it on the dry grass and with shaking hands attempted to scoop the slime into the bottle. “Jesus Becks, watch what you’re doing.” My arms throbbed angrily and Keir gently took the bottle from me and successfully deposited a small amount inside.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I have no idea, but we need to get out of here.”
Just as we turned to leave a voice cried out “hey?”
I turned expecting to see Straits, but was surprised at Wilkes hobbling over, his stick fighting for even ground. “What are you two up too?”
“Trip down memory lane” I replied sarcastically.
“I would have thought this is the last place you two would want to be?”
“It is and we’re going, right Becks?”
I stared right into Wilkes’ eyes, wondering what secrets lurked behind. The bottle felt like a bomb in my hand and I desperately wanted to put it into my bag, but not wanting to draw his attention to it.
“Yeah that’s right.” I replied, finally looking at Keir.
We started to walk away, “I am sorry to you both for your families, I really am, I wish that things had turned out differently.” I had no idea what those words meant, but neither Keir or I looked back.
If we had, we may have seen him take out his phone, see him banging his stick into the hard earth. Maybe if we had looked back, Keir and I would have made it out of Mysthaven.
The End.
