Underwood Creek

In my entire life, I had never understood Underwood Creek. In Hillsbourgh, North Carolina, if you mention the name to any adult, he will bulge his eyes and awkwardly stare at you. They immediately change the topic of conversation with something like: "Hey, the weather is good today, isn't it?". And if you insist, they will get mad. And i'm not talking about getting annoyed. Really mad, to the point of raising their voice and telling you to shut your mouth.

Obviously, we, pre-teenagers, refused to remain ignorant to this matter.

Me and my innermost circle of friends loved to openly talk about Underwood Creek, theorise about whatever happened, is there, or is happening in that location. We just needed to know, because even if an adult considered talking about it taboo, it was a desire to discover what was so disturbing about that place.

One Friday me and my friends had arranged to meet at my house and visit the Creek. I was checking my e-mails when I casually mentioned it to my mother, who was cleaning a delicate vase which she absolutely loved. It had been given to her by my father when they became boyfriend and girlfriend, and considering my father could barely afford something like that at that time. She obviously had a thing for that porcelain vase.

As I checked my Inbox, my mother cleaning the object, the casually asked me where we were going tonight. Uncounsciously I mumbled:

-Underwood Creek.

She dropped the porcelain piece and went alabaster pale. Her blue eyes went glassy and she slowly said, so firmly I myself got scared when she spoke:

-You go to your fucking room right now. You're grounded. For a month.

This was obviously not the time to bitch about. Shocked with her actions, I obeyed like a pup. If she had shattered the vase by dropping it, she could easily stab me if I argued. I closed my computer, got out of the living room and ran to my bedroom, locking the door after I came in.

I only heard my mom calling someone on the phone and start crying and sobbing while she spoke to it. I resumed checking my Inbox and got the notice from my friends: all of their parents had discovered what we were going to do and they had grounded their kids too.

Needless to say, this only fed our flaming curiosity, because one month later, Saturday morning, we secretely escaped the prison of our houses and got together on the entrance to the little path that took us there. Just a pathwway made from a few stone slabs here and there.

As teenagers, this was a time of enthusiasm and euphoria. Lined up, the six of us chatted while we grinned and imagined what the Creek would surprise us with. The closer we got, the faster we walked, enthusiasm shaking within us, and our chat diminished, eventually dissapearing and leaving a silence.

Finally, after almost half an hour of boring walk. We arrived at a small fence gate.

Our problems started before we came into the Creek.

For some reason, the gate had a keyhole. From within it, leaked a black, viscous slime.

Altough I lead the group, I first didn't notice it, but then I gasped and took a step back.

Like a mirage, as soon as I stepped back, the goo immediately dissapeared, leaving not trace or evidence. Somehow I laughed. Not a grin, but an aching, breath-taking laugh that neared mania.

I turned on my heels, supposedly to make a joke and, to my strange surprise, it came in another burst of laughter.

All my friends were sprinting back the path, screaming. In the middle of psychothic laughter I shouted:

-''Hey pussies! Come back! We didn't even go into!''

I watched, still under that funny sensation. I stopped laughing, but a smile remained plastered to my face. I immediately kicked the gate and came in, closing it after me.

I continued walking, under that enchantment. It was like being stoned with mystical, esoteric herbs. I don't know how I knew that. I arrived into the creek. It was an uninteresting place, just a straight, shallow river and some mossy trees that arched above the water, making a leafy, branched roof. Perhaps that was the "Underwood".

Suddendly, like a veil being lifted, that funny enchantment was gone. It now seemed like a toxic gas, a nausea and a disorientation.

The place didn't seem uninteresting. The river flowed slowly, the tress were uncomfortably menacing. It almost seemed like they were too close. Like a tight, claustrophobic room, full of asphyxiating smoke. Ready to suffocate me in this damp, doomed place.

The sun barely shined behind the warped, contorted branches above. I was petrified, held there by the same spell that brought me here to begin with.

Fear filled me, like a hand gripping my heart, slick fingers around my throat. I really needed to go now, but somehow I stupidly stumbled foward into the river and looked down to my feet.

The river wasn't water. It was filled with the black, slimy liquid that I saw on the gate. It flowed sluggishly around my shoes, like a long black snake.

And then I looked up to the other side of the river.

Standing about ten feet away from me, there was a woman, completely covered in black save only her hands, which were reptilian, covered in scales. Her face, thank God, was covered in dark cloaking, but I knew that she was looking at me with eyes that I did not dare picture.

With her serpentine hands, she slowly pulled her clothing away from her front, revealing her bosom and breasts. My stomach curled, my head spinned and the black water below mixed with my vomit.

Her stomach was open, revealing not entrails inside, but something that was plucked from right from the core of a nightmare.

Cockroaches.

Vermin skittered inside her, falling and crawling in her interior.

I fell down, covering my trousers and hands in dark, filmy liquid, but I managed to scream and run. My legs weighted like iron, but I stumbled towards the gate. I didn't look back, not because of what I had seen, but because I heard a long, raspy, cold cackle of whatever I came to encounter in that dark place. If I had turned myself to look back, I cannot fathom what would become of me. And I wish never to know, just as I wish that I had never gone to Underwood Creek.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Those friends never talked to me again, and I made new ones. To these I made sure not to reveal this episode.

Only when I was 20 was when I asked my mother, during a cheesy horror film, so it was a good excuse:

-What happened in Underwood Creek, ma?

At first it seemed like she was going for the standard reaction, shushing me and refusing to speak about it. Perhaps she thought I needed to know, to be indoctrinated in that tradition about never mentioning the Creek, so she started crying profusely. After all those tears, in the middle of sobs, while we hugged, she said something that transported me back to that damned place, my head spinning and disorientated:

-It's named Underwood because...because children went there and... turned up filled with cockroaches!