Dont Go To Jeremiah Georgia Pt 4

Terry stood, looking at her for a few seconds, his head slowly turning in negation as he tried to make his lips work.

"We have to go, Terry. If we hurry, we can get him before they take him too deep."

"Too....deep?" Terry asked, his voice dreamy.

"Into the mines," she hissed, becoming angry with him as she took a step toward him, "we have to get him before they drag him too deep into the mines."

Terry kept shaking his head, the nest of eels beginning the writhe in his stomach. This had been a mistake; Terry knew that now. He should have never taken them back to Jeremiah. They had escaped once before; why had he tempted fate? He was so stupid. They had Wayne, probably his best friend, and there wasn't a God Damn thing he could...

When Scully slapped him across the face, he almost fell over. She wasn't some juggernaut, but she had taken him by surprise. His head stayed put after the slap, his breath coming out in gasps as he looked at her. She was angrier than he had ever seen her, and Terry was suddenly more afraid of her than the shadow creatures that had chased them out.

"Get you're shit together, Terry. We're going back for Wayne, even if I have to drag you back. Come on, move your ass."

She shoved him, but Terry dug his feet in as he turned back towards the shadowy town. He couldn't. He hated his own cowardice, but he just couldn't. It was exactly as bad as it had been when they were younger, maybe worse, and now all the excitement that had once been there was long gone. He was scared. He didn't want to do this anymore, and the trepidation he had felt as a child as he stood at the border of the town made more sense now. His mind had known there was something here that would eat him up, and it had been right. It had gotten those two college kids, it had gotten those six teens, and now it had gotten Wayne. If Terry went back in, it would get him too.

When Scully pushed him this time, he fell on his face in the leaves, her feet crunching as she walked around him.

"Gutless coward," she snarled, "I'll go get him myself. Don't call me again, Terry. I don't have a single thing for you after this."

She stomped off towards the town, the crunching dying away as she disappeared into the woods.

Terry lay in the leaves as his tears spilled down his face. He was useless, a shell of a man. He didn't deserve friends like Wayne or Scully. They had protected him that night, dragging him along as he threatened to freeze up, and this was how he repaid Wayne for his loyalty? Who knew what those things were doing to Wayne as he lay here making leaf angels. He wanted to get up and go after Scully, but his body felt like it was made of lead.

He had felt like this when the creatures had pursued him last time, but Wayne had been there to help him, and now he was repaying him like this.

As he watered the leaves, he tried not to go back to that night, but he couldn't help it.

He was powerless before his own recollections, and he slipped into them like a comfortable glove that holds a spider in one of the fingers.

* * * * *

Wayne had grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him forward, saving him from being buried under the charging thing. When he looked back as the bigger boy pulled him away from the mine, he had seen the gnashing teeth of that shadow horror and felt his legs try to cramp on him. It was something he had sworn never to experience again, working on his cowardly paralysis for the rest of his life, but that night, it felt as if Wayne dragged him a mile before his legs began to work.

It had been after the fall, Terry remembered.

Terry had fallen as they came into the parking lot of the Fill N Go, his cheek scraping against the uneven concrete as he lay across it. His brain was a gibbering mass of sparking wires, the relays severed suddenly and violently, and he felt confident they would have him any minute. This would be it. He had dreamed of coming here his whole life, and now he would be just another statistic of Jeremiah.

When someone grabbed him by the collar and shoved him forward, Terry was aware that his feet were moving, and Wayne was behind him again.

"Move your butt," Wayne gasped, "I'm not leaving you behind."

The storefront slid by on rails as Terry ran faster than he had ever run before. He didn't dare look behind him. It sounded like a runaway zoo was gaining on the two boys as they sprinted, and when the ice cream parlor slid past, the two ran heedlessly for the distant van. The lights were on, the horn cutting through the silence as Scully honked at them. Now they were running past the general store, the saloon, town hall, and when they jumped the barricade, Terry tucked his feet up so they wouldn't catch and trip him.

He slid into the front seat, Wayne bolting into the back, but Scully was momentarily paralyzed as she stared at the town.

Terry looked forward and saw that the headlights had created some kind of barrier for the black masses.

Scully's hand shook on the shifter, but as she slid into reverse, the swarm of dark, smiling shadows watched them as they went.

They had gone a few miles before Terry felt confident enough to look back and thank Wayne for saving him.

Wayne had shaken it off, holding out his fist for Terry to bump, "It was nothing. You'd do the same for me, right?"

"Right," Terry said, bumping his knuckles against Waynes.

He had known then that it was a lie too, but Terry hoped he could make good on his false promise.

* * * * *

Terry climbed out of the leaves on shaky legs, the eels still nibbling at his guts. He felt like he would have rather walked into hell than walk back into Jeremiah, but walk he did. The steps became easier as he took them, and by the time the town came into view, he felt steady again. This was the right thing to do, he felt it, and as he peeked down the street that would take him back to the Fill N Go, he knew this was likely how he would die.

The street crawled with the creatures, their heads lifted as they sniffed the air. Scully was nowhere to be seen, and Terry tip-toed towards the gas station. The creatures didn't seem to notice him as he snuck along, and Terry began to wonder if they were blind? They didn't seem to have any eyes, none that Terry could see, and the way they sniffed the air seemed to confirm that their eyesight was either poor or nonexistent.

He could see the parking lot as he rounded the corner, but he could also see four tar creatures as they scrabbled around on all fours.

The road was narrow, and Terry couldn't risk getting in close. If they heard him, they would jump on him, and he'd have nowhere to run. He took a step back, looking for a new direction to take, and that was when a crystalline sound scratched across his ears. Every one of the tar creatures picked their heads up, listening for the source of the sound, and Terry dropped as he grabbed the neck of the glass bottle before it could give him away.

He turned to stare silently into the inky face of a sniffing creature, its midnight skin mere inches from his.

Terry lifted the bottle slowly, lifting it up as he tossed it back the way he'd come, hearing the glass shatter as it hit a nearby wall.

All four of them turned in unison, and as they lopped off, Terry scuttled away as quickly as possible.

As he entered the convenience store, he saw Scully putting some things in a bag as he pressed himself against the wall, praying he hadn't made too much noise.

She didn't chastise him, but she didn't offer him any sort of greeting either.

She just tossed him one of the LED flashlights she had packed. He caught it as she took out her own, pointing towards the mines as she put a finger to her lips. Scully had clearly determined that the creatures were blind too, and her target seemed obvious as she moved for the back door. He could either follow her or not, but either way, she was heading for the mines.

She would find Wayne or die trying.

Terry turned and crept after her.

He had made the same decision when he left the woods.

The two of them were out the back and heading for the fence before Terry could talk himself out of it. He had to help, they had to get Wayne back, but they were going to the last place he ever wanted to go. The mines represented the epicenter of all this weirdness for him, and he had no desire to go in there.

As they came to the entrance, though, Terry realized this was the only place the monsters weren't gathering, he realized it was the only place likely to contain his friend.

"Let's get in and out," Scully whispered, switching her light on as she walked inside.

"Sandra," Terry started, but she shook her head.

"Later," she whispered, her beam cutting through the blackness as she walked in.

Terry turned his own light on, letting her get a little ahead before he could force himself to follow.

The mines accepted both of them gladly.

* * * * *

It wasn't until they passed the big metal sign that declared they had passed into D level that Terry realized how deep they were.

"That can't be right. C level should still be mostly collapsed."

The tunnels they were in were almost completely intact. The struts looked new, the walls were built up, and the floor was level and free of debris. No tools were present either, so if the shadow creatures were fixing them up, they were doing it by hand. Terry wouldn't put it past them, but it was still kind of odd to think about.

"Where are they?" Scully whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

She moved her light around as if expecting to find one of the eyeless horrors at any moment. Terry was less sure they would encounter any of them down here, but he kept swinging his light, too, for reassurance. The idea of finding one of those things, or having it leap out to grab him from the darkness, made his skin crawl, but given how many they had seen in the town, he wondered how many there could actually be?

"Above ground, likely? If they live in the mines, then night may be their only time to walk on the surface. They live in total darkness, so I guess the light doesn't agree with them."

Scully hmmed, but it sounded forced.

Terry marveled at the work that had been done down here, and wondered how much had been the miners and how much had been the creatures? This would have taken decades after the collapse, and the deeper they went, the more he expected to find a dead end. Even if it wasn’t a dead end, it would be a passage too small to squeeze through, a passage they had to shimmy to get around. The creatures wouldn’t make it this easy for their prey to escape, but then, Terry wondered, how often did their prey escape?

When he stumbled into Scully's extended hand, he jumped a little before seeing her squinting in his flashlight beam.

She pressed a finger to her lips as she cocked her head, listening.

Someone was coughing up ahead, and it sounded wet.

The two put on a burst of speed, emboldened by the silence, as they descended to E level.

They found Wayne leaning against a wall, coughing like someone in the final stages of pneumonia. Scully ran to him, trying to get him on his feet, but Terry had been distracted by something littering the floor. His foot had crunched against something white, and he looked down to find bones in various states of decomposition. While Scully tried to get Wayne on his feet, Terry looked around at the Golgotha they had found themselves inside. The floor was white with bones, some powdered and others whole, but as Terry bent down to inspect some of them, he noticed something twinkling beneath the surface.

Beneath the bones lay a sparkling gem, the greens, and red at odds with each other.

Terry felt his breath catch in his throat as he realized what he was seeing.

He turned and shone the light around the cavern, and the dazzle nearly blinded him. The cavern was full of those gems, floor to ceiling, and the lights made a starburst behind his eyes as the beam hit them. Was this Jeremiahs Folly? Was this the source of the gems? As Terry swung the light around, Scully yelling at him to help her, his light settled on something that wouldn't reflect.

Something that seemed the antithesis of the sparkling chamber.

The pillar seemed to reach the ceiling, the surface undulating like tar. Scully hadn't noticed it yet, but Terry couldn't look away once he'd seen it. It breathed as it fluctuated before him, seeming to roll upward before rolling upward from the base anew. It was too big to be real, too big to be alive, but it was. Terry didn't know how he knew it, but he knew it. It breathed like Wayne, thick and syrupy.

Scully had got him shakily to his feet, coming up to shout at Terry to help her get him out.

She turned to see what he was looking at, and she had a front-row seat for the wide smile that spread across the mouth of that hateful column.

Terry's scream rocketed through the cavern, but when he bumped into Scully and Wayne, he remembered to grab hold of his friend so he could help Scully get him out. They hobbled up the tunnel, Wayne gasping and coughing between them. Terry hoped they hadn't done anything too bad to him. The bones in that place had made it pretty clear what had happened to the girl and her friends. Why had they mutilated the boys, though? Was that part of it? Did they only keep the girls?

He pulled them up short as a rumbling spread down the tunnels, pressing Wayne against the wall as something thundered towards them.

"What are you," but as she felt the ground shake, the three of them pressed as close to the wall as they could as they killed their flashlights.

In the darkness, the shadowy masses came storming in, the tunnel shaking ominously as they descended towards their god-thing. There were so many of them, even though he couldn't see them. Terry could feel their numbers, feel the ground shake beneath them. There were hundreds, if not thousands, and as the last of them filtered through, Terry felt confident in moving Wayne again. He'd put a hand over his mouth as the horde passed by, not wanting to give their position away, and as Wayne coughed against his skin, he felt something wet patter against his palm.

He shook it off as they turned on their lights and proceeded again. Wayne's cough getting worse the closer they got to the surface, and Terry wished he'd thought to bring some water with them. They should have probably thought to bring a first aid kit too. What if Wayne had been injured? He thought about stopping to see what they could do for Wayne, but Scully shook her head when he said as much.

"Do you really want to still be here when those things come back?"

Terry shook his head but hoped they'd be out of the cave soon.

He breathed a little easier when he saw they were nearing A level. He could see a small light beginning to build in the distance and thought they might be coming to the surface again. It was brighter than just the street lights, though. Terry didn't know how long they had been down there, but he thought it might be the first light of dawn peeking into the black depths of the mines.

As they came to the mouth of Jeremiahs Folly, Wayne became dead weight in their arms.

He went down suddenly, his coughing becoming frantic as he clutched his throat. He was hacking something up, something dark and viscous. As Terry pounded on his back, Scully tried to see what exactly was coming up, and she shook the tar off her hands as it pattered against her.

"What the hell is this?" She asked, but Terry could only shake his head.

Wayne gasped as he tried to breathe, but the tar was coming out of him faster than he could pull in air.

He slammed against the floor of the mine with a thump, and as he gasped out a final breath, Terry felt his hands sink into his old friend like a rotten pumpkin. His clothes bowed in, his flesh becoming liquid, as Wayne sank into himself. He left little else but bones and clothes behind as he sank into goopy tar, and Scully cried out as she tried to find some way to stop him from liquifying.

Terry could only watch in horror as the goop his friend became slithered bonelessly back down the way they had come, Wayne's clothes and bones the only evidence he had existed at all.

The two stood framed in the first light of dawn, Scully shaking as she sobbed and Terry unable to believe what he had just seen.

When he tried helped her to her feet, she pushed off the first time, folding into herself as she cried pitifully.

The second time, she let him help her stand, and the two walked out of the mines like mourners at a wake.

* * * * *

The ride back was something silent.

Scully had left all her stuff at the Fill N Go, not having the strength to haul any of it back. Without Wayne, they would have been hard-pressed to get it all home anyway, and Terry felt numb as they walked through the woods. It was Sunday. He and Wayne should have been going over the night's footage while Scully took some of the choicer stills and saved them for later. They should have been shooting more promos. They should have been spending time together as they relived the friendships they'd had in college.

Instead, they had wrapped Wayne's bones in his flannel shirt and were taking them out of the cave and back to civilization.

It didn't feel right to leave them there, not so they could join all the others in that dark place.

He didn't know what to do with his remains, but Terry thought he might bury them somewhere nice.

Somewhere far away from Jeremiah.

"You can drop me off right here."

They were coming up on one of the interstate bus terminals, and Terry insisted he could take her home.

"I need to think about some things. A nice long bus ride would do me some good."

He pulled over in front of the bus stop, turning his lights on as Scully slid out of the front seat.

"What will you do?" She asked, "We left all the footage behind, and you don't have anything for your story."

"Probably for the best," Terry said, gripping the wheel as he stared toward home, "there's only one story here, and it's one I should have known from the start."

"What's that?" Scully asked, looking mistrustfully at him, sensing he was getting ready to flip this tragedy into something to his advantage.

Terry wasn't sure he still had the stomach for anything like this, but he had to put out one last story before he took a long, hard look at his next step.

"That no one should ever go to Jeremiah, Georgia."

He drove away, watching her look after him as he drove towards whatever lay before him.