Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27007772-20150202214631

(Notes: This is part one of many, many parts. The story will not be simple, either. It involves paradoxes and more psychological horror and suspense elements, starting more at part 2. This being the beginning, only has a purpose as to set up the rest of the series. Any criticism is loved.)

Freezing rain and snow blew in the strong winter wind, through the thick of Cook Forest State Park. Trees, lacking all leaves, moved and swayed with the wind, as the snow and freezing rain pushed forward. The cold elements started to reflect the light polution of a small town, Marienville, as they began to brush up against a white, seemingly 1950's era home. The snow and rain were halted, but the chilled wind carried on through the cracks in the window frame.

The chill pushed its way into the bedroom of Jackson Wilkerson, as he pulled the blankets even higher to his ears for warmth. While his eyes were closed, Jackson began to hear a creaking noise in his darkened room- his door.

The creaking sound of walking came into his room. It sounded like to many footsteps to be a normal person. The lights flicked on just as he opened his eyes. It took a few seconds, but his eyes adjusted. There stood Natalie Sutton and Joseph Kaufman, long term friends of Jackson's.

"Wake up, lazy bastard. Just because school's canceled doesn't mean you get to sleep until 4pm." said Joseph, stepping closer to Jackson's bed. With a comical sigh, he stood up slowly from his bed, stretching out his back the second he stood up. He was fully clothed, excluding a shirt.

Joseph tossed him one he had laying on the computer desk to the side of his room, and he caught it, throwing it on right away. With slightly dropped eyelids, Jackson spoke up.

"I should probably catch a shower before we go anywhere."

Natalie cocked her head to this. "As if not showering ever stopped you before. Come on, you promised we would get outside today, and Joseph and I waited for like, 15 minutes outside your door. It's not even noon yet" she exclaimed.

Jackson stared forward for a second, before walking forward and grabbing his hoodie that he had hanging on his door, and putting it on.

"Fine. Let's go, then" he responded, more annoyed.

The trio walked down the stairs to the living room, and opened the front door to leave. As the door opened, it allowed a small gust of freezing wind to brush against them. Joseph gave a small shiver before allowing a small laughter to escape him. They closed the door behind him, and started to walk off the porch. A small metallic cling ticked under Joseph's shoes, which he responded too by lifting his right foot and looking for whatever he stepped on.

A shimmer of light reflected off whatever he was looking at. Bending down, he picked it up. A seemingly brass, flat object sat in his hand, roughly the size of his palm without the fingers. He studied it, while Natalie and Jackson stood beside him.

"It kinda looks like a face, right?" Natalie asked, confused.

Joseph responded with the same tone. "I don't know, but I swear it wasn't here when we were waiting on the porch."

Jackson came and grabbed the object out of Joseph's hands, and tossed it as far forward he could, down the long road.

"Whatever it is, it's just litter someone tossed from their car. It happens here." He seemed unamused.

"Strangest piece of litter I've ever seen" corrected Joseph. "So, are we going to Natalie's place, or mine?"

"Your's. It's less of a walk" added Jackson added with a smirk.

The trio stepped off the porch, and began to walk down the stone sidewalk next to the only main road in sight. The walk was mostly silent, with Jackson occasionally stretching, and Joseph and Natalie talking about another one of their friends, Richard, behind his back comically.

They took a left to the dirt and cobblestone path that acted as a shortcut through the entrance of Cooks Forest to Natalie's house.

Amidst their laughing and joking, a light clink sounded beside their feet. A ringing, metallic sound clicked beside Joseph's shoes. Looking down, there it was again. The bronze face, mocking him.

"Jackson, what the hell?" He yelled, annoyed.

Jackson spun around. "What the fuck are you blaming me for now, Joseph?"

Joseph bent down and grabbed it, holding it up over his head. "Look what found its way back to us. Why would you keep it? Thought it was just stupid litter".

Jackson seemed even more angry. "I'm in front of you, genius, you would have seen me throw it backwards, you dip-"

He cut his sentence off halfway through the incoming insult.

"Jackson?" Natalie questioned, turning to see what he was looking at that was apparently so important. Nothing caught her eye, so she turned to ask what was so shocking. Before you even could ask, Jackson opened his mouth.

"The sun is setting? We left no longer than 15 minutes ago!"

Joseph and Natalie had the same idea at once, and pulled their phones out to check the time. Joseph threw the small bronze face to the ground to reach into his pocket.

"7 pm exactly" Said Jackson, with a traumatized tone.

Still looking at her phone and not knowing how to respond, Natalie looked around confused. "There is no possible way, guys."

They stood there thinking about the last 15 minutes, or 7 hours according to the rest of the world, until the silence was broken by the sound of snapping twigs. Joseph twitched his head to the sound, feeling extremely uneasy.

There was an echo in the woods, that sounded like wood being struck with more wood. The echo sounded one more time, followed by more twigs breaking. Looking down, the bronze face was gone yet again from were Joseph had dropped it. Natalie was the first to sight the strange man in the woods. He wore blue jeans with a varsity jacket, and a silver mask resembling that of a Halloween costume. It looked like a hockey mask in a way, but with prison cell-like bars covering the mouth and eyes of the mask. The man said nothing.

Jackson and Joseph both saw him at this point, and slowly started to back away, step by step. The man raised his right hand, and threw something into the sky, which all three raised their heads to look at. When the object started to come down, they lowered their heads and notice the man was gone as well. The object hit right were he was standing.

Joseph was the first to walk forward, the other two only moving behind him. Observing the spot, he sighted the same bronze face item as two times before, on top of a wood board. Joseph decided the item was obviously worth keeping due to it's continued appearance, and placed it in his hoodie pocket.

"Jackson, help me move this board" He demanded.

Jackson didn't even question him, and they stood on opposite ends of the board and began to lift. Lifting as hard as they could, they noticed it wasn't lifting off the ground, it was tilting backwards. Rattling metal also created a sound during this.

"Guys! It's not a board. It's an entrance to something. There are two chains connecting the front to the ground, but they leave enough room to go through." said Natalie, as she watched.

"So, a trap door?" Questioned Jackson.

"I guess you could say that" she added.

"I just want to leave right now" asserted Joseph, yet again with his demanding tone.

Jackson responded. "We all do, but where should we go? Back to my place? It's only 15 minutes away."

"Yes! Lets go!" Rushed a panicked Natalie.

Jackson and Joseph dropped the entrance back to the ground, creating the same echo they heard earlier. a bear-like deep growl came from across the dirt road, with a very low definition of sound.

"Is he coming back? Questioned Natalie.

"Shut it" Jackson said to Natalie.

A loud screech filled the air across the dirt road. The screech was so animistic it caused the three to scream out in pain. Jackson opened his eyes only to see blood leaking from his nose, dripping unto the ground.

The noise caused Natalie and Joseph to panic extensively. Joseph raised the trap door entrance, struggling to do so, and Natalie crawled in. Joseph jumped and dived in, and Jackson caught the door before it closed behind him. Not wanting to be left alone, Jackson jumped in as well. The door slammed behind him, and Jackson fell down into a roughly 6 foot tall concrete room.

Natalie had the light of her phone out, pointing it around. Before them was a single large, concrete hallway, with two wooden, decaying doors ahead of them, and other hallways splitting off of it. It resembled an underground house and a cave both at once.

"This place is built like a cave" said Jackson in awe.

Natalie simply put her finger over her mouth and turned off the light of her phone. The three sat still and quiet under the trap door, not walking down the hallway, attempting to keep noise to a minimum. What seemed like an eternity passed, and no sound was heard from above at all. Jackson stood slowly and carefully, and placed both hands on the trap door, as he was just tall enough to reach it.

Pushing as hard as he could with both hands, he couldn't get it to budge.

"What's the matter?" Asked Natalie.

"It seems two thousand times heavier than it was when we first lifted it" he responded.

"Let me see" said Joseph.

The two of them worked together to try to lift the trap door, only getting it to open about a split inch before it weighed itself back down. All they saw through the small hole was blackness.

"That's just fucking great!" Joseph exclaimed kicking the wall in anger. He stayed silent for a second, before coming up with an idea. "Look, there are rooms like, right down this hallway that we can see the doors too. Jackson and I can go check them out. You just wait here and call somebody. Jackson and I as a pair could overpower someone if we aren't alone. I think this is the best plan we got so far."

"Why not take here with us?" Questioned Jackson.

"If something does go wrong, and we can't handle it, then all three of us would be screwed over. We at least need one person to lay lookout." Answered Joseph.

Natalie shook her head, and began testing for a connection. Jackson and Joseph walked forward, talking about possible ideas on how to open the trap door, whispering.

They went into the first door to the right, roughly 40 feet ahead of the entrance. Looking around, there was an old, torn up couch, a rotted table, split pipes, and some empty pill bottles, as if this was a hide out for drug addicts at one point.

"Useless crap" said Jackson.

His voice echoed through the metallic pipes, and they both listened to it. Natalie alarmed them by shouting.

"Guys! I hear a voice up in the woods!"

The two ran over to her and instantly asked her about it.

"What did he say?" Questioned Jackson, while Joseph yelled "Help!" as hard as he could, hoping whoever was up there would hear them.

"Something about something being useless, but it doesn't matter, there's people!" She answered.

Jackson's face dropped and he stared forward in shock.

"You might have just heard us over the-" Joseph began to speak, before Jackson grabbed his shoulder and held him.

"Joseph. Those split pipes. My voice echoed through them, and Natalie heard it come from up there, at a distance. Right across the road, most likely. That screech we heard before had a metallic ring to it as well" he explained, in a panicking voice.

Joseph responded. "So something tricked us by screaming into pipes, knowing it would scare us at the right moment, just as we found the door, to enter it?"

Natalie began hyperventilating. "We need out of here right

now!"

Joseph attempted to make light of the situation. "It could be some prank! That guy from before, who threw the bronze face!"

"What about the phone reception, Natalie?" Questioned Jackson.

"It didn't work- completely cut off somehow! Look!" She answered, raising her phone to Jackson's face.

Jackson could hardly mutter the words he was about to say. "..7 am. Monday"

"That can't be true. It was still dark when we tried to open the trap door, I saw through the small slit we made. There is no way we've been gone two days. How wouldn't we be hungry and thirsty right now?" Joseph said, once again trying to shed light on the situation.

Joseph looked to reassure Natalie, then went to look back at Jackson. Jackson was gone. Joseph looked down the hallway to see Jackson was walking toward the doors, and was almost there. Grabbing Natalie, Joseph caught up with him.

"You can't just leave like that, Jackson! He asserted.

"I'm not sitting around waiting for us to waste from whatever the fuck is going on. I'm going to fix it, and we'll see it's all just a coincidence. A prank gone wrong, like you said. A sick, idiotic joke by some other teenager."

Jackson went to the door to the left this time, across from the one they already visited. Opening it, he let out a terrified scream. Joseph let out a small scream too, and tightened his grip on Natalie's hand, and now Jackson's shoulder.

Natalie moved her head to see what the big deal was, and lost all color in her face.A rotten body, nearly a skeleton. Long since it lost all color. Blue pants and gray shirt both rotted away long ago, hardly able to tell what their original color was. A silver mask, with bars over the eyes and mouth, covering the face of the corpse.

A head-hurting screech filled the cement cave system of twists and turns, and Jackson's nose started to bleed like a running sink. Joseph panicked and dragged the other two into the room, and slammed the door behind them.

An old metal locker, rusted to all hell was to the right of the entrance, and a bed was to the left. Jackson and Joseph instinctively went under the bed, hardly able to both fit. Natalie ran for the locker, closing the rusted door that made snapping sounds as you moved it. The shutters allowed her to see out of it.

The door creaked open, and she had to fight back the tears and will to scream by biting her own finger. The smell of filth filled the room as an unknown being crawled into the room on all fours. First, only the hands were visible. Long claws that she estimated to be around a 5 inches long stretched off of them.

The head was next. Black, beady eyes, and a slot nose plagued what should have been a face, and the mouth had teeth so out of place and jagged, some of them prodded out of the closed moth.The creature was fully in the room now. It's back legs were exactly like the from arms, but with two joints, like a dog. The pale-white skin was covered in peeling points and brown spots, present in skin diseases. It's tail looked as anyone would expect, but with a single, long, thin barb at the end.

The creature twitched it's head, looking directly at the locker. 