The Monster of Creasy's Hollow (Defenders of the Rift Book 1)

The Monster of Creasy's Hollow

Copyright
©
2014

N.C. Reed

All rights are
reserved.

This
is a work of fiction. All characters and locales in this story are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or deceased, or actual places of business, in
entirely co-incidence.

“
Are you sure this is gonna work?”

Alvin’s question was a good one, but no one in the
group knew the answer.

“
Look, I found this old book in my dad’s
closet,” Chip said, holding up the cracked leather tome. “He’s
always been into that occult type stuff. And there’s a page in
here about re-animation. I think it’s more for people than
dogs, but if it’ll work on people, why can’t it work on
Waldo?”

The five teens looked down at the body of poor Waldo, a
mixture of no telling how many breeds of dog. The mutt had been the
neighborhood dog, always friendly, tail wagging, hoping for a treat.
Never bothered a soul, never offered to bite anyone. Not even the
mail man.

Yesterday, Waldo have been hit by a car that had ran up
on the sidewalk near Chip’s house. The car never slowed down.
It could just as easily have been one of the gang.

The ‘gang’ consisted of five teens who lived
in the same two block area and attended the same school. Alvin
Thomas, who’s parents owned the hardware store. Chip Douglas,
the son of the local insurance agent most everyone in town used.
Angie Harold, her mother owned the ‘Creasy Spoon’
restaurant, and Donny and Donna Craig, brother and sister twins, who
lived with their mother and step-dad. Their father had died in Iraq
when they were still very small.

The five of them were almost always together, somewhere.
Doing something. Usually something that would get them in trouble.

Not serious trouble, of course. They weren’t
hoodlums or anything. Just curious, rambunctious kids who prowled and
prodded, always looking for something to lighten up the day. The five
of them had been friends all their lives, their parents all good
friends who visited all the time, having the occasional party. Always
adult parties, of course. These ‘parties’ always resulted
in a ‘sleep over’ for the teens at another home, with a
babysitter.

Waldo had been ‘their’ dog. And they were
all heartbroken when he’d been run over. The boys had carried
Waldo into Mister Jamison's backyard, since Mister Jamison was in the
nursing home and no one was staying at his house at the moment.

Now, the five stood around the dog’s body, already
beginning to swell, looking at Chip.

“
Look, what have we go to lose?” the
fourteen year old said. “If it works, we get Waldo back. If it
doesn’t, then. . .well, we haven’t lost anything else.
But if you guys don’t wanna. . . .” he trailed off,
shrugging.

“
I say we try it,” Donny shrugged. “Can’t
hurt. And if it works, we can use it on other stuff.”

“
I don’t know, man,” Alvin scratched
the back of his neck. “Pastor Samuels says stuff like this
happens for a reason. Maybe we should just bury him and be done with
it.”

“
Pastor Samuels says a lotta things,”
Donna’s tone was sharper than she meant it to be, but Angie
snorted in agreement. Both had caught ‘Pastor’ Samuels
giving them a more detailed look than a man of the cloth should be
giving a teen-aged girl in his ‘flock’.

“
Well, it’s all or nothin’, cause the
book says we need all five of us,” Chip pointed out.

“
Well, let’s put it to a vote, then,”
Donny suggested. “All in favor of trying to get Waldo back,
raise your hand.” He raised his own as he spoke. Chip was a
close second, followed by Angie, and then Donna. They all looked at
Alvin. He sighed.

“
Yeah, okay. What the hell,” he half-raised
his arm.

“
Cool,” Chip nodded, opening the book.
“Okay, we got all the ingredients, and we’ve got a bowl,”
he pointed to the box of ‘ingredients’, including one of
his mother’s favorite mixing bowls. “Now, all we have to
do is make a circle around us with the salt, combine the stuff, mix
it up, and hit it with the match, and presto! Waldo’s back.”

“
I got the salt,” Alvin volunteered, taking
the large box of rock salt. “How big a circle?”

“
Well, it’s gotta be big enough for all of
us to fit in,” Chip said. “I guess just make it wide
enough around Waldo that we can all stand inside it.” Alvin
nodded, and started spreading the rock salt on the ground.

“
Donna, Angie, you guys wanna start adding the
ingredients as I call’em out?” Chip asked. The girls
nodded, and knelt down to take the bowl from the box, and started
organizing the ingredients.

“
What you want me to do?” Donny asked.

“
Well, someone needs to be a look-out, I guess,”
Chip admitted. “I mean, we’d probably get in a lot of
trouble if we got caught.”

“
You mention this now?” Donny asked,
eye-brow raised.

“
Look, all we’re trying to do is get our dog
back,” Chip pointed out. “But how do you think this is
gonna look to anyone else who sees it?”

“
Like a satanic ritual,” Alvin said from
where he was spreading the salt. All eyes turned to him.

“
What?” he asked. “You know it’s
true. Heck, for all we know, it is one.”

“
Chip,
is
this some kind of satanic thing?”
Donna asked, now leery.

“
I don’t think so,” Chip shrugged.
“There no pentagram or anything on the book,” he pointed
to the cover.

“
Pentagrams aren’t satanic,” Donny
replied. This time everyone looked at him.

“
I learned that on
Supernatural
. Don’t
any of you watch TV?”

“
I got better things to do,” Alvin shrugged,
finishing the salt circle.

“
Like play Call of Valor,” Angie snorted.

“
Call of
Duty
,” Alvin corrected. “And
yeah, I consider that better than watching TV. I’m done,”
he added, setting the salt aside.

“
Okay, good,” Chip nodded. “Let’s
get started.” He began calling out the ingredients, and the
girls dutifully added them to the bowl. Some of them were strange,
and Angie’s curiosity finally got the better of her.

“
Chip, where did you get something like a
chicken’s foot?” she asked.

“
My mom cooked chicken for supper the other night,
so I got it out of the garbage,” he told them.

“
Ewww,” the girls both said at the same
time.

“
Oh, stop bellyaching, you already got it in
there,” Chip snorted. “All right, that’s all of it.
Give it a good stir, while I get the candles. Donny, give me a hand,
will you?” The two boys took five candles from the box and set
them at five different points around Waldo’s corpse.

“
Why five?” Alvin asked.

“
One for each of us,” Chip shrugged. “All
I can guess. Okay, let’s see,” he looked again at the
book. “We need to get into position around Waldo, inside the
salt circle. . .no, wait. Outside.” Everyone moved to their
spots. Chip looked at their places and nodded his approval.

“
All we need now is a little flash powder.”

“
What’s that?” Donny asked.

“
Stuff magicians use to make smoke and fire,”
Chip replied, opening a small packet and pouring the contents into
the bowl. “It’ll make the stuff work.”

“
How?” Alvin wanted to know.

“
I dunno,” Chip shrugged. “Just will.
Okay, everybody take your spots.” The five teens all moved to
different spots around Waldo’s body, each taking the candle
sitting there. Chip made the rounds, lighting each candle. Once he
was done, he took his own spot, his candle already burning. He also
had a long kitchen match held in his hand.

“
That for the bowl?” Angie asked, pointing
to the match.

“
Yeah. Once we get done with the chant, I have to
throw it into the bowl, and then we’ll see what happens.”

“
See what happens?” Donna asked skeptically.
“I thought Waldo comes back to life, that’s what
happens.”

“
That’s what we
hope
happens,”
Chip corrected. “Like I said, the way this reads, it’s
more for people than dogs. I’m just hoping it works.”

“
I don’t know about this, Chip,” Alvin
said, suddenly concerned. “What if something goes wrong?”

“
We did everything according to the book,”
Chip shook his head. “It’ll work.”

“
What if it don’t?” Angie challenged,
also uneasy now.

“
Then Waldo is gone, and we’ll bury him,”
Chip sighed in exasperation. “Now, it’s time we do this.
Sun will be down soon. I’m gonna call out each line, and you
guys repeat it. We only get one chance to get Waldo back, so don’t
mess up, okay?” The others nodded, though none of them looked
as confident as they had just five minutes ago.

Chip began the incantation, speaking slowly as the words
were in some foreign language he didn’t know. Each time he
managed to get a line out he nodded, and the others stumbled through
the repetition. It seemed to take forever, though in reality it was
only about five minutes. Finally, Chip touched the match to his
candle, lighting it, and spoke the final words. As the others
repeated them, he dropped the match into the bowl.

There was a flash of fire, but the only sound was a
slight sizzling. Each teen backed up a step at the flash, but no one
ran away.

“
Nothing’s happening,” Donny said.
Then, before anyone could agree or disagree, there was a loud whoosh,
the ground seemed to thump beneath their feet, and a blue light shot
out from the bowl along the ground in all directions. All five
teenagers were swept off their feet, knocked flat by either the
shaking beneath them or the light shooting through where they were
standing.

For a second no one spoke or moved. As they stirred from
their places on the ground, Chip shook his head.

“
Wow,” he said softly. “I didn’t
see that coming’.”

“
What the heck was that?” Donna demanded,
getting to her feet, dusting herself off. She turned to help Angie
up, then checked on her brother.

“
I guess we did it right!” Chip enthused,
grinning broadly. “How ‘bout that!”

“
Uh, guys?” Alvin’s tone brought
everyone’s attention to him. He was staring at the ground
between them.

“
Guys,” he repeated. “Where’s
Waldo?”

Everyone looked to the ground.

Waldo’s body was gone.

*****

“
Okay, let’s not panic,” Chip said,
his voice a little shaky.

“
No one’s panicking,” Angie pointed
out. “We’re wondering what happened to Waldo.”

“
I dunno,” Chip admitted. “According
to this, he should have come back to life.”

“
I think re-animated was the term you used
before,” Donna pointed out, eyes narrowing. “Now that I
think about it, that doesn’t exactly mean ‘come back to
life’, now does it?”

“
You mention this now?” Donny asked, looking
at his sister sideways. “Where was that little tidbit
before
we did this crap?”

“
I just thought about it,” Donna admitted,
shrugging.

“
It’s a good question, though,” Alvin
voiced. “And we still don’t know what happened to Waldo.”

“
Maybe he got up and ran off while we were on the
ground?” Chip said/asked hopefully.

“
And none of us saw him?” Angie scoffed.

“
Well, we were all a little shook up,” Chip
defended. “I wasn’t looking at him. Were you?”
Angie shook her head.