V I S I T O R S -- DownStream – Part 4

V I S I T O R S -- DownStream – Part 4

Link to part 3



Along the shore line, in the over bright moonlight, salmon-colored slugs slithered up on the rocks. Red fins and spines bristled from the creatures' chins and backs. Lumps of webbed flesh, some sharply clawed, dangled limply beneath raw orange gills.


There are too many. Must be at least two dozen, I'll never be able to stop them all.


"What do you want?" Alice screamed and pushed herself backwards, crab-like, with bare feet.


The closest creature paused and raised a snakelike snout into the moonlight.  With terror beyond reasoning, Alice saw Frank Long's face above the bristled chin. "We want you, babe," the Frank-slug hissed. "This joint could use a smart chick like you."


Another slug slithered from between the leaves by Alice's left foot. Inky black eyes gazed sadly from the wart-freckled face of little Melanie Thomas. "We need you, Miss Carson. Please come with us," the childlike voice rasped at her.


A slimy circle formed quickly around Alice. Her frightened eyes moved from one ghastly creature to another as more than two dozen slick pink tadpoles closed the circle.


With mounting apprehension, Alice also recognized the faces of the other members of the Thomas family and Duncan's friend, Jimmy Gordon--complete with deformed nose. Most of the creatures were faceless blobs, however, with bright red eyes and pursed pink, rubbery lips.


They don't have to kill us, just to steal our lives!


This was the last thought to spring into Alice's tortured mind before the first numbing sting of a bristle edged appendage sank into her skin. Unable to cope with the cold sliminess that crawled over her flesh consuming her body with sucking pink mouths and sharp claw-like flippers, her mind closed in on itself--refusing to be absorbed.

~~~


Alice woke with a start, the pain of her hideous nightmare still gouging new wounds. As she leaped from her desk and ran to the window to look out at the river, her reading glasses smashed to the floor. Fully expecting to see her back yard swarming with snail-like creatures from some Black Lagoon, Alice's breathing slowed considerably at the sight of the peacefully gurgling and blessedly empty Rove River.


How incredibly real the dream was!


What an overactive and completely deranged imagination I have.


Relieved to be awake and to discover that the entire experience had been but another bogus nightmare, Alice stooped and collected the broken shards of her reading glasses with trembling fingers.


The trembling of her hands eased a little as she collected the scattered drawings of her students and stuffed them back into her briefcase.


If she hadn't broken her glasses, Alice might have noticed the subtle changes in each drawing she had just collected.


And since her glasses still were not repaired when the essays and their accompanying drawings were issued back to her students Monday morning, she never did catch the mutations cleverly inserted in each childish drawing.


Residents of the town may never know if any of the students receiving these individual art works happened to notice the tiny engraving next to the circled mark in each upper right-hand corner. The engraved caricature resembled a bright pink bookworm wearing overly large glasses. If any of the students did notice the mark, would they wonder at all why the worm in question closely resembled their teacher, Miss Alice Carson?


Would any family proudly displaying their children's latest creation on refrigerators all over town guess that the town elementary school had a new visitor?

End

V I S I T O R S -- DownStream – Part 4

V I S I T O R S -- DownStream – Part 1

V I S I T O R S -- Downstream -- Part 1

DownStream
By
Louise Dragon

Alice tossed and turned. Ghastly images flitted across her brain and crouched on the edges of her mind, like children playing hide 'n seek. In light of recent events, sleep was becoming a dreaded chore, but Alice's waking hours were even worse: much worse.

Listening to Joanna and Duncan at recent town meetings had been mere confirmation for Alice. She'd known all along that something was in town.
 
She'd known, because Alice knew things.

It wasn't an enjoyable gift and she'd always kept it well hidden--fearing ridicule and hostility from small-minded neighbors. Once, just once, Alice had tried to use her gift to help the police locate a missing child . . .

But that was in the past, a different time, different town, and a lifetime ago. One thing that Alice had learned from her experience, however, was that despite what she was supposed to teach the children, police aren't always our friends . . .

Best not to dwell on the past. In truth, Alice had a difficult time trusting anyone and everyone. That was why she'd purchased her cute little house at the bottom of the dead end street known as Wooded Gully. Her job, as third grade teacher, was a mere fifteen minute walk through the woods to the elementary school playground beyond. Other than fellow teachers, Alice spent her days talking with eight-year-olds. Why little Melanie Thomas had been in Alice's class until . . .

"I heard my dad say that when he found them, they were all black and charred, like burnt toast," little Nate Birdsong bragged to a circle of wide-eyed children in the playground.

"Where?" piped up little Crystal Rogers.

"I know where," said Eddy Parker.

Frowning, Nate bellowed. "You don't know everything just cause you live up there on Wooded Hill by the Thomas place. Let me tell the story."

"Well just cause your father's the sheriff, it don't mean that you know everything either," Eddy said. "They were right there--in their house."

Eddy looked around the circle from one shock-filled face to another as if expecting some negative noises.

"I looked in the window. There they were all laying--like they were just sleeping, you know--on a big pile of leaves in their living room."

"Leaves?" little Crystal questioned, wrinkling her pug nose. "Leaves in their living room?"
"Yup, black leaves like maybe they all got burnt up together," Eddy said.

"Cept the leaves where there before. I seen 'em a couple days before the Sheriff came and looked in at the dead Thomases. Seen that mean old man raking them out of the house before, too."

Carefully listening around the edges of that strange little conversation, Alice heard the children talk about how Melanie's uncle -- that awful, mean old Man -- was missing; only his gun had been found half-submerged in the shallows of Black Lake. According to little Nate Birdsong, bullets had been fired from the gun and Mr. Long's car had been all shot up, like gangsters had gotten him.

"There now, that'll be enough of that, Nate Birdsong," Alice had said, her voice shaking slightly as she broke up the morbid circle. "You'll be giving this class nightmares for sure."

Continued in my next post.

V I S I T O R S -- DownStream – Part 1