Dont Go TO Jeremiah Georgia Pt 3

Terry watched the town slip into darkness through the tinted windows of the Fill N Go.

It was heading towards full dark, the squirming terror in his guts fighting with the meal bar he had brought for dinner.

The store was beginning to slip into shadows, the only light coming from the laptop Scully sat behind on the front counter. Wayne was checking his phone in the corner, sleeping bags already unrolled and waiting though Terry doubted they'd be doing a lot of sleeping. Watching the sun sink behind the brick edifices, he remembered coming into Jeremiah around this time once before. They had assumed the activity would be higher at night but had gotten far more than they had bargained for.

When the street lights came on outside the Fill N Go, it wasn't a huge surprise.

They had come on the first time he'd come here and had been on in Heather's Tiktok, so he'd figured someone had to be keeping the lights on. It seemed odd to keep the power on in an abandoned town, but maybe it had something to do with its historical status. Perhaps, Terry thought, there was some kind of standard a town had to maintain to keep its status. Maybe the council from Cashmere or Clayton kept the lights on for their own reasons.

Maybe some of them remembered seeing shadows of their own here when they were kids.

"Hey, Wayne," Terry asked, coming to sit next to him as he monkeyed around on his camera, "do you still have the tape from the last time we were here?"

Wayne froze in his work, side-eyeing Terry, "No, I just couldn't stand having it around. That old VHS sat on my shelf for six months before I finally threw it out."

Terry wanted to give him some empty platitude about how that was too bad or that maybe they could have used some footage from it, but he found himself nodding, knowing what Wayne was talking about.

"Good. I think I was worried you might still have it somewhere."

"When I saw that video thing you showed us, the one Heather made, it reminded me a lot of it. Terry, we could have been that girl. You know that, right?"

Terry nodded, "Trust me, I am very aware."

"Then why are we here?"

Wayne sounded like he had wanted to ask it before now, but he'd been holding back. It suddenly occurred to Terry that neither of them were here for the money. They had haggled and bickered because that's what industry people did, but they were ultimately here because Terry had brought them here. They wanted to make sure that he was okay, that he didn't go alone and end up as a statistic, and that the realization made him feel more than a little dirty.

"I dunno, Wayne. I guess when I saw that video, I thought that maybe we could make a difference for this girl and her friends. If anyone would know a way to escape this place, it would be us. We escaped it, after all. We survived, and I thought that we could make a difference somehow.

Wayne was still holding the camera, but he wasn't really doing anything with it.

"I've dreamed about this place every night since we escaped, Terry. The older I get, the harder it is to keep telling myself it was real, but I know what I saw. WE know what we saw, Terry."

Wayne looked up at him, the last rays of the sun turning his eyes into a kind of reverse mask as they cut through the crack in the nearby brick buildings. Terry didn't have to look at Scully to know that she was listening too, listening and agreeing. They had all seen something here, something that no one had wanted to talk about for two decades, but it seemed they were in a palace where talking about it wouldn't seem so crazy.

"I hope we were wrong." Terry said, knowing he hoped no such thing, "I hope we were just dumb kids who got spooked one night. I hope that Scully is right, and it's just a bear that was bothered by some kids."

"We should try and get some sleep," Wayne said, putting his camera away. "I assume we'll be snoozing in shifts?"

"I think that might be best," Terry said, "Scully, do you want me to take the first watch?"

Scully shook her head, the smoke making a ghostly ring as it was lit by the computer screen, "No, I'll take the first watch. I want to keep an eye on things here, at least until midnight. I'll wake you up if anything changes before then, but you can take the next watch at midnight, and Wayne can have it till morning."

"Sounds fair," Wayne said, crawling into his sleeping bag as he tried to get comfy on the tile floor, "till then, I'm gonna try to snatch a little shut-eye. The hike took more out of me than I thought it would."

Terry climbed into his own bag, Scully's bag between them like a barrier. He hunkered deep but was left with little, but the click of Scully's keys and the bear-like snores of Wayne as sleep eluded him. Despite his best efforts, his mind kept chasing its tail back to that evening in October, two thousand two. The harder Terry tried to push it away, the more it sank its teeth in and held fast. He found himself replaying it again and again, the events flash burning across his memory like an old bit of film.

As his mind slipped off at long last, the memories followed him and played their hellish movie for him as he slept.

No matter what he did, he couldn't escape the folly in Jeremiah.

* * * * *

"How are we looking, Wayne?"

"Looks good to me," Wayne said, playing with some dials as he got the camera just right, "this things heavier than I would have thought."

"Better get used to it if you're going to work in TV, bud. I'm sure they're only likely to get bigger."

Wayne scoffed, hefting the heavy camera as the three trekked toward the mines. They had pulled their van right up to the barricade, and Terry had paused as he went to take his first steps into Jeremiah. This had been a dream of his, a dream he never quite had the guts to realize, and the feeling of writhing eels was back again. How often had he stood right here, trying to work up the courage to go in? How many times had he simply turned around and left again, cursing himself for his cowardice?

"What's wrong?" Scully asked, her red hair less gray now, her face less seemed by years of chain smoking. There was a cigarette perched there, the coal winking as she looked at Terry with concern, but they were still the short menthols she had favored back then, not the cowboy killers should later adopt.

"Just," Terry tried to summon up something that didn't sound lame and failed, "never made it beyond this point before."

"Really?" Scully laughed, "You talk about Jeremiah the way some of those meatheads talk about girls they've been with. I expected you would have explored every supple inch of this beauty."

Terry laughed, "I guess I was just waiting for someone who wanted to come with me. None of my friends ever wanted to make the drive out here."

"Well, here we are, so let's see what all the fuss is about." She said, linking arms with them and leading them into the dead town like Dorthy leading her friends to the Emerald City.

Terry smiled, but he felt bad about lying to her. Friends? Terry had never had any friends, adventurous or otherwise. Terry was a weirdo who had spent most of his school years sitting alone with his books. He had developed an interest in journalism in high school, but he lived amongst the AV club outcasts like a pariah amongst leppers. He didn't think anyone had even known his name until his senior year when he'd stood in for Brad Cox and hosted the morning announcements on the student-run news show. His personality had really come out then, and he'd been called on to read the news more and more as his final year progressed. Terry had discovered that he could do this, that his shyness melted away when he was in front of the camera. It had been a no-brainer what he would study once he went to college.

Now here he was, with friends to follow him and a scoop to cover, and Terry wasn't going to waste the opportunity.

He was here to cover the disappearance of Megan Bradly and Chad Lawson, a hot-button topic considering they had been their classmates until about a week ago.

Everyone just thought they had eloped when they had suddenly gone missing. It was common knowledge that Megan's father didn't like Chad, and they had been going off to canoodle secretly for the last few months. When Chad's truck had been found on the outskirts of Jeremiah, the town had been searched by the police to no avail. They had opted not to go into the mines, probably not believing the two would have gone down there for a little heavy petting, and had declared the two missing.

Terry, however, had been studying this very thing for years and believed there was a bigger story here. The town had disappeared more than a couple of horny college students, and Terry had delusions of discovering something big here that he could report on and make a name for himself. What news outlet wouldn't want him once he blew the lid off whatever was here? He might even get invited to work for one of the big Atlanta networks, something that could rocket his career damn near to the moon.

He pushed the fear and uncertainty down as they came into the town, replacing them with excitement and dreams of things to come.

Wayne had been an obvious choice for cameraman, but Scully's offer to come had been a little surprising. Scully wouldn't even be able to cut the footage till they got back, but she had insisted on coming anyway. It had sounded like an adventure to her, and she wanted something to tell her grandkids one day when they asked what she had gotten up to in her youth. Plus, as she put it, they might be in for less trouble with three as opposed to two.

"Two guys alone in an abandoned town might give your serial killer the wrong idea, ya know?" she had ribbed.

Neither of them had taken much convincing. Scully was a good hang, and though she had told both of them a hundred times that she wouldn't date them, Wayne and Terry held out hope that her mind might be changed. She rounded out their group, making up the majority of their editing team, and Terry was glad she had wanted to come. People might not be so quick to believe Wayne or Terry, guys who had a reputation for following spooky stuff, but Sandra Louis had more sense about her.

If she saw something weird here, people might be more willing to accept it.

It was getting dark, the sun setting behind them as they wandered into the town. Wayne was shooting stock footage, something for Terry to talk over later, and the whole place just looked so unreal to Terry. It was like a living time capsule, some of the buildings being refurbs from the early sixties and some still being wood and brick from the turn of the century. It was like some strange fake town plopped down in the middle of a strange old town, like a tourist trap within a dated real town. As the trio walked, Terry pointed out buildings he had only seen in photographs or heard about from accounts. The Buck Star saloon, the old town hall, the general store with its broken windows, and when Scully stopped them to point out a weird little figure, Terry realized where they were almost at once.

It would seem weird to him later in life, but at the time, he thought it was kind of funny.

"Do you see that?" Scully asked, and Wayne swiveled a little as he tried to find what she was talking about.

"What?" Terry said, playing along as he pretended to look.

"Over there. It's like someone squatting down to stay hidden."

The trio took a few more steps in the direction of the little Formica booths, and when Wayne saw it, he took a quick step back as he adjusted the zoom on the camera.

"What the hell is that?" he whispered, Terry already creeping up behind them as they tried to make sense of it.

"Its head looks off, lumpy somehow," Scully whispered to herself, Wayne still trying to see it in focus.

When Terry grabbed their shoulders and yelled BOO, they both jumped as Wayne tried to juggle the camera to stop it from falling.

"What the hell, man?" he cawed, startled and angry.

"Sorry guys, couldn't resist," Terry said, his smile large and disarming, "lemme introduce you to Mr. Freezy."

He had seen pictures of the weird little ice cream man, and as they approached him, he could see the peeling paint and saccharin colors of the parlors mascot as he held up his tower cone in an extended hand. Wayne laughed when he saw the thing, reaching out to touch the smooth head of the peeling creature, but Scully socked Terry in the arm, telling him how it was a jerky thing to do. Terry took the punch good-naturedly, but as the street lights began to come on, all three looked up in confused wonder.

Terry hadn't expected that but who exactly expected an abandoned town to have working electricity?

"You think someone lives here and maybe turned on the street lights to scare us off?" Scully asked, looking around distrustfully.

"Doubtful," Terry said, "The last full-time resident of Jeremiah left in nineteen eighty-two. He'd been staying to take care of the old records room in the town hall, but he got spooked and cleaned out the records before moving to Cashmere."

Terry had talked to the guy, and his story had not been cheery.

He had locked himself into the record room every night for a whole week as something tried to come in after him, finally leaving once it became apparent what it was after.

"Come on, let's get mine. I wanna shoot some footage there before it gets too dark."

With the street lights to cut the encroaching darkness a little, the three had gone off towards the Gouled Mining Company.

The mine had been just as creepy that night as it was earlier that day. The mouth had been dark and brooding, a hole that could very well go straight down to hell for all they knew. Terry had squinted at it, thinking he saw something, but shaking it off as nerves. Terry told Wayne to get the mouth in focus, and as he moved into the shot, he felt a lot like Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries. He had loved that show as a kid, and he wondered if Mr. Stack had felt the same sort of creepy crawling on his neck when he put his back to the darkness?

The creeping dread he was feeling now made him want to run, but he forced himself to press on.

"Behind me is Jeremiahs Folly, the largest mine in the region. It produced some of the most unique gems ever seen until nineteen eighteen when the mine collapsed, killing hundreds. The mine lay dormant and brooding for the next four and a half decades until the Gouled Mining Company took it over and began trying to reopen the tunnels."

There was a sound behind him, but Terry squashed the urge to look. Mines made noise sometimes, he assumed. It was likely just some rock that had shifted as his voice echoed down there. There was nothing to be afraid of here, the town was abandoned, but Terry couldn't quite make himself believe that.

Not after the stories he'd heard.

"Mr. Gouled would never find the success of those early miners, however. In the twenty years the mine operated, they never pulled a single gem from the earths,"

Terry could see the eyepiece slipping from Wayne's face, and the look of horror that lay behind it was enough to make creeping dread spread up to his scalp.

"Okay, Wayne, haha. I said I was sorry for spooking you. I'm trying to do an intro here, and your joke is really," but Wayne's scream cut across him, and he was jerked forward as the big boy grabbed the front of his jacket. Scully was already running, clearly having seen something too, and as Wayne pulled him along, Terry couldn't help but glance over his shoulder to see what all the fuss was about.

Something crashed harshly against the bubble of his dream but not quick enough to save him from another look at what had come charging out of the mine to get him.

The grinning shadow had opened its mouth full of perfect teeth as it roared at him, and Terry had run flat out as the three of them headed for the van.

* * * * *

Terry opened his eyes grumpily as he glanced around. There was a less-than-random pounding, the glass shaking a little with every hard chuck. Terry felt his blood freeze as he looked at the front door. Wayne was sitting up, the bag pulled against him, and Terry could just see the top of Scully's head as she hid below the lip of the counter. The peek of her dull red hair was quivering a little as she hid, and when Terry looked back at the glass, his first thought was that they had been busted.

A lone figure was at the door, a silhouette in the dim bulbs of the street lights, his fist banging on the glass.

Terry was scared, but not because he believed it might be some boogin coming to get them. He thought it was probably a cop who had seen a little glow inside and found three journalists hiding in an abandoned gas station. He'd probably seen Scully before she could get down, and now he wanted to ask them what the hell they thought they were doing here? Terry rustled up out of the bag, realizing the jig was up and walked confidently towards the door as he pulled out his press badge.

Might as well try one last gambit before it all fell apart.

"Hey there, officer. I'm Terry Flowers with Channel 12 out of Gainesville. We're researching the disappearances of the six teens. We didn't mean any harm; if you'll just let us gather our things, we'll gladly," but as he got closer, Terry realized something was off.

When the thing smiled at him, that great big grin that seemed to stretch across its featureless face, Terry backpedaled and almost tripped over a fallen magazine rack. It had stopped banging, but now it was just standing there, grinning from ear to ear, and Terry could see others beginning to crawl closer as they strayed away from the harsh street lights that might reveal them.

Scully had come out from behind the counter, gibbering at Terry as she asked him what they needed to do? Wayne was with her, breathing very fast as he silently threatened to hyperventilate. This was much worse than last time, and Terry had no idea what to do. Their only hope was to get out of there and get to the van, but would these things allow them to get away? Would they follow them into the woods, or would they be stopped by some strange barrier that held them within the town?

It was worth a shot, Terry supposed.

"Let's find a backdoor or something. Leave the gear for now. We can come back in the morning for it if we really want to. Right now, we just need to get the hell out of here."

He had expected Scully to argue, not wanting to leave her expensive gear behind, but for once, she just nodded and followed behind him.

There was a backdoor, but as Terry pushed it open, he saw a dozen of the shadow creatures turn to look at him from the empty parking lot.

"RUN!" he yelled, grabbing Scully and taking off towards the old school. He felt ready to run all two miles in a matter of minutes, and he could hear both of them gasping behind him as they followed suit. Something shrieked from the dark store, and Terry didn't dare look back this time. He didn't want to know how many there were and didn't want to think about them, just overtaking them and throwing them to the ground. The school came into view at the end of the road, but Terry could almost feel all those dark feet rushing up the pavement after him. He put on a burst of speed, the others panting behind him, and he charged into the trees as he passed the old school fence.

They had run for a few minutes when Scully wheezed ominously and fell over on the leaves and pine needles. Terry stopped to help her up, frantically trying to get her to her feet, but when they weren't immediately torn to pieces, he looked back and realized that no one was coming after them. The forest was as silent as the town had been, and Terry laughed as the tears flowed down his face.

They had made it; they had gotten out again!

"We gotta go back," Scully croaked, sitting up as he tried to catch her breath. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out an inhaler, triggering it as she slid the end into her mouth. Terry looked at Scully in disbelief, unsure what to make of her statement, before asking why they would do something like that?

Then he looked around, realizing the answer a moment before she said it.

"They got Wayne."