Shadow Creek

The barn was in the middle of the woods. It wasn’t just surrounded by trees, there were trees growing through it too. Dark, twisted trunks and branches, bursting through spots of rotten roof and squarish holes that had once held windows.

It was as ancient as it was inexplicable.

“What’s it doing in the middle of the forest?” Jones’ lips were puckered around his cigarette.

“Iono,” said Derek, arms crossed. “Maybe this used to be farmland.”

“Impossible!” Janice pushed them both aside like she was opening the double doors to a grand landing. “This thing is old, but it would have to be dirt and rubble if it were around before this forest. These trees have been giant since our parents were kids!”

Jones stepped out of the tiny patch of light filtering through the canopy and back into the shadows. He squinted past the burning tip of his smoke. “Hm.”

It’d been a long time since the three of them had combed the forest outside Shady Falls—a long time since any of them had been back in this town at all. They were twenty years removed from their final young and wistful days in the foothills.

“Seems I remember us ‘venturing through every square inch of these woods,” Jones said. “Don’t ever ‘member no barn.”

“Yeah, can you imagine if we’d found this as kids?” Derek let out a muted laugh. “Pro’lly woulda gone in!”

Janice pressed out her lips. “And why shouldn’t we now?”

“‘Cause there’s prolly broken glass and—” Derek started.

“Damn it, Der’,” Jones hit him in the shoulder with the back of his hand. “You know she already gone.”

Jones was right. Janice had traipsed right through the hole in the wall, skipping like she used to when she was twelve. It was weird seeing a thirty-year-old tomboy skip. But that was Janice.

Jones stamped his cigarette out on the forest floor. “Best go see this thing for ourselves.”

Derek didn’t really want to. Strange thing, because he used to be the leader of this merry band, if they ever did have one. But adulthood had stolen away his boldness—made him more cautious in a way he often despised. When had he become so boring…so safe?

It had happened without his permission, and when it happened, he couldn’t really say.

He marched forward, squashing his feelings like leaf litter underfoot. He made a point to duck into the corpse of a barn before Jones could, and let his eyes adjust to the dim light filtering in through the holes in the wood. There was a lot more dark than he’d expected.

“Janice?” Derek asked.

There was no reply.

“Uh oh.” Jones grinned alongside him. “The first has fallen.”

Derek wouldn’t admit it, but the comment chilled him even as he laughed. “Don’t say that!”

Jones just kept smiling, and the comfort of old comradery gave Derek the resolve to push onward. Besides, the old barn wasn’t quite as black anymore. He could make out shapes on the walls, rusted equipment, and…eyeshine?

“What the—!”

Jones stiffened, spooked. “What?”

“Nothin’…nothin’.” Derek said, touching his hand to Jones’ chest.

The eyeshine seemed to fade away like an after image. But it’d been yellow. The day terror had been so vivid he’d perceived the color. Did that mean it was real?

“Dude, don’t freak me out like that,” Jones groused. Then to the blackness, “Janice!”

Still no reply.

Derek could see everything now. Though it was all gray shadows, there were definitely no bodies. Had Janice traipsed her happy butt right out the back?

He patted Jones on the shoulder. “Let’s go around. It’d be dumb to walk through there—you know she’s wreckless.”

“Yeah,” Jones said. “I just hope she ain’t layin’ on the ground out cold or nothin’…”

“No way, my eyes are still killer in the dark. Remember how I used to own you all at dark tag? Haven’t lost a bit of it!”

Derek and Jones backed out of the crumbling barn and circled around. Still no Janice, but they spotted a white and green sign, carved and painted on wood, and dressed with stone like it was announcing the entrance to a fancy suburb at the edge of a small city.

Shadow Creek, it read.

“God that’s creepy,” Derek said.

Jones scratched the back of his head. “It just don’t make no sense. Looks new. What are they…developin' out here? Out in the woods of Shady Falls? Makes no sense. None!”

The population of Shady Falls had been in decline since before the two of them were born. It was a blip in the valley of the Shenandoah that had grown out of an old factory that used to produce radon, back when America still cared about factories. Derek couldn’t even remember what radon was—it’d been a while since he’d read the plaque outside the factory-turned-industrial-complex.

Nowadays people just came out here to hike and sip coffee at bed and breakfasts. Maybe golf. Or take a trip down memory lane, like they were. The dead factory was just a wistful backdrop—a rusty orange thing against the thriving forest threatening to take the whole town back.

The shells of several mansions looming up ahead—perhaps the first of their kind here?—were in shocking contrast to the rotting barn, and if anything, made it more perplexing than before. Also, there was no road. Just a sign.

“She pro’lly went in one o’ those things!” Jones pointed.

Derek sighed again and marched forward. “Com’on.”

None of this felt right.

The first level of the place was just concrete and wood, like an unfinished basement. There was a bath half-filled with brownish water and something that looked like snakeskin hanging over the side—another bizarre twist. It didn’t look like the roof had leaked, so it wasn’t rainwater. Had someone filled it? Where were they getting the water from?

“This is…all, so weird.” Jones cupped his hands around his mouth. “Damn it, Janice! You up there?”

“What the hell, we’re already trespassing right?” Derek led the way up the skeletal, wooden stairs. It was dangerous, yes, but he had just about shaken his scared and unwanted city-dweller spirit by now.

The fear came racing back, though—faster than it had faded. He and Jones stopped cold behind a figure dressed in a suit. The man's hands were clasped behind his back.

Derek barely had time to mouth the word “who” before the man turned around slowly, yellow eyes glinting. He smiled with teeth filed to blades. “Hello there.”

“Uh…hi,” Derek said. “Who are you and what are you doing out here in the woods? What is all this?”

“My name is Lionel,” he said, suave and raspy. “I am a nakatu.”

Jones pursed his lips to one side. “A na-what?”

“A nakatu.” He said again. “Someone once called me a…what was his phrase? Ah, yes...soul sucker.”

Derek gulped. It felt like a stupid cartoon, but apparently that actually happened to people when they were scared. He was about to crap his pants.

The man slithered forward on suited tail. The friends just now realized that the lower half of his body was like that of a giant serpent, because such a sight was hard to comprehend. It was easier to imagine he was standing on two legs, like an owner of this kind of house should have been. Likewise, they didn't recognize the furry black face until he was out of the shadows.

“I ain’t never heard of no nakatu,” Jones managed, though his voice quivered.

“Oh we’re all over America, been here since your father’s grandfathers settled on this land,” Lionel said, still slithering. “We’re just…good enough at what we do to keep it quiet.”

By now the serpent had coiled around them both, smushing them together. Derek realized then that they hadn’t turned to run, not because they were dumb, or like deer caught in the headlights, but because they physically couldn’t move. The nakatu had paralyzed them somehow. Was it his eyes? No, Derek had seen the eyes in the barn. The bizarre after-image and the snakeskin in the tub downstairs suddenly made all kinds of sense.

“So, what?” Derek trembled. “You just wait for people to stumble out here and suck their souls out?”

“Nono, nothing like that.” The nakatu was looking at Derek as he spoke, coiling tighter. “People don’t have souls, places do. Ya’ll are just canisters…or generators...maybe a little of both. This place had a soul once, but it’s nearly dead now. Oh, but it was delectable!”

“That’s a buncha bull. You didn’t kill this town—it died when they closed the factory!” Jones snarled.

“Oh, I didn’t say I killed it—greed did it in, absolutely. Those suits of yours could've kept paying these factory workers, given the people here an honest living, but they just had to make every cent they could, now didn’t they? Gotta love those kindsa people. It’s why I use the energy of their victims to make homes just like theirs. I aspire to that level of evil, banal though it may be! How they convince you people that ‘business is just business’…it’s brilliant really.”

“I mean, they gotta compete, don’t they?” Jones sputtered.

Lionel laughed, casting black blots of venom from teeth that had become fangs. “Really! Now? You’re still defending them now? They could’ve competed without inviting the nakatu in, don’t you think? Coulda just gone with a wee bit less profit? Not that I’m complaining. But no, no dummy. This world is just black and white to you, huh? They either sink or swim? I’mma eat you first, before you kill your dying bit o’ soul on your own accord!”

Lionel plucked him from his furry scales with his teeth, tossed him into the air, and swallowed. Whatever venom the nakatu struck him with made it so that Jones couldn’t even scream. Derek felt Jones' limp corpse brush up against his own from the inside of Lionel’s heaving torso.

“Got to that one a little too late.” Lionel flicked his rough tongue against the top left corner of his mouth. “There’s a whole country out there to feed on, but I do love to finish a job, and you three—well…just you, now…are the only bit of dyin’ soul left in this decrepit place. I was about to move on when I felt your presence….your return. Shoulda stayed in the city, pretties. Moved on and left this place dead in the dirt!”

Derek let out a little gasp of terror.

“You were just too cowardly to stay after your friends all left, weren’t you? You didn’t really want to leave! Why, you were the last light and soul of this li'l town. The last boy that made this place feel like it had some wonder and adventure left in it… You’ll be the decorations!”

Derek searched for a way out, and realized that the mansion around him wasn’t just wooden frames and concrete anymore. It was gaudy walls, giant leather couches, and marble floors. Beyond the window, the barn had shriveled and collapsed in on itself. Nothing remained but bits of wood poking through the trees and grass.

The suited snake bit him in two, leaving his weak bladder and bowels for scavengers with less discerning taste.

Lionel would move on tonight, leaving this ritzy neighborhood behind as tribute. In the woods just beyond the soulless, tourist-trap-of-a-town called Shady Falls, no human would ever find his masterpiece. There would be no pithy kids, or adults longing for their childhood, to explore here ever again.

Shadow Creek wasn’t for people to see, anyway. It was a message to the other nakatu that this town had been sucked dry, and a monument to the corporatists they worshipped as gods. But there were so many more places to go…

God bless this wasteland of dying souls!