In Viridis

Bethany Wilkins was beginning to get nervous. It had been two hours since Ricky and Hunter left to investigate the strange noise; surely they should have been back by now.

She wasn’t sure what to do, and certainly wasn’t going to venture out after them alone, so she called her brother Casey to come over. What if a tree had fallen on them, or they had run up on a bear or something? She would be no help, but Casey was an EMT and handy with a gun. He could cover all the bases.

By the time he arrived, it was almost ten thirty and Bethany was feeling positively frantic. Something had happened to them, there was no other explanation. Casey loaded up Ricky’s rifle and they took off into the woods, towards the direction of the strange sound.

Their house sat on forty acres, a nice piece of woodlands just outside the small town of Waller. They trudged through the cow fields behind the house, guided easily by the light of the full moon. Out here, away from the lights of the town, every star shined with an almost supernatural clarity.

As they neared the tree line, Casey stopped abruptly, signaling for Bethany to do the same.

“Do you see that?” He asked her.

“What is it?”

He pointed into the woods. “Looks like a light back there.”

Bethany peered into the thicket of trees, and sure enough, she did see something. A dull green glow seemed to be emanating from somewhere within, hard to see but unmistakably there.

“Let’s check it out, could be them,” Casey said. He and Bethany ambled over the barbed-wire fence separating the field from the wood line and walked towards the light. As they approached, she saw what looked like two people standing there, outlined starkly against the strange green glow.

“Ricky!? Hunter!?” Bethany called out, but the figures did not move. One was tall and skinny, the other short but just as thin; Ricky and Hunter’s silhouettes. Casey put an arm out to stop her, but Bethany brushed it off and ran up to them.

“Ricky, what the hell are you doing?” Bethany asked her husband. He did not respond, nor even look at her. He was simply staring, slack-jawed, straight ahead. Hunter was doing the same thing, neither had even acknowledged her. She gave Hunter a strong shake, but he gave no reaction.

“What’s going on?” Casey asked as he walked up. “What are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” Bethany responded in a quavering voice. “Casey, I’m scared, what’s happening.”

He nodded towards the green glow, which seemed to be coming from a hole just below the ridge they were standing on. “What’s happening down there, what are they looking at?”

Bethany peered down into the light. She couldn’t quite make out what was down there, but now that she was looking, she realized how beautiful it was. She tried to turn back to Casey, there was something she was going to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

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Three hours after Casey left to check on his sister, his wife Liz hadn’t heard from him and was starting to get nervous herself. Whatever Ricky and Hunter got themselves into, Casey would have updated her. That he had not was of great concern to her.

She hopped in her car and drove over to Bethany’s place, thinking maybe they had all just got to talking and lost track of time. All the cars, including Casey’s, were still in the driveway, so they couldn’t be far, but the house was completely empty.

She felt a stirring deep inside, some dark intuition telling her something was very wrong. Her stomach felt as though a pit of vipers had taken refuge there. She dialed 911, her fingers trembling as she held the phone. She told them what was going on, and they promised to send some officers to investigate.

Twenty minutes later (entirely too long in Liz’s opinion), a single cop car slowly rolled down the driveway. Liz was already waiting for them as the two officers stepped out of the car. The older one, an incredibly large man with the name Esposito printed on his badge, stepped forward.

“We received a call about a possible missing person?” He said, his drawl unusually slow and pronounced.

“Yes, that was me. My husband and his sister, and her husband and their son. They’re all missing,” she replied.

“Any idea what happened to them?”

She explained that no, she had no idea where they were, only that Hunter and Ricky were investigating something and had gone missing. Casey left, and now they were all gone. The younger officer suggested they look around. They examined the house, to no avail, and moved back outside.

“You say they were investigating something close by?” Esposito asked her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what they were doing,” Liz said, trying to calm her nerves and failing miserably. She took the bottle of Valium from her purse and popped one in her mouth, her second of the night. The cops looked at each other but said nothing.

“You say all their cars are here, so let’s take a quick look around. If we can’t find anything, we’ll give them until tomorrow morning and then we’ll organize a search,” the younger officer said. “Most people turn up within the night.”

The trio walked to the back and split up, walking the tree line in opposite directions. Liz lingered behind, feeling frightened and useless. After a few seconds of walking the fence line, Esposito called out to them.

“Over here, I see something,” he yelled.

Liz and the younger officer walked over to him, he was shining his light into the thicket of trees nearby. He clicked his light off and turned to them.

“See that,” he said. They all did, a dim green glow was coming from somewhere within. They went through the fence (Esposito needed them to hold it open for him) and walked towards the light. Standing in front of it were four figures, all looking intently at it.

She recognized Casey right away. She grabbed his hand and said his name, but he didn’t even look at her. The look on his face was horrifyingly blank, like he was in some sort of waking coma. The others, Bethany, Ricky, and Hunter, all of them, were just staring at the light.

She heard something and looked down, the green glow giving her plenty of light to see by. A thick stream of urine was falling from the bottom of Hunter’s shorts, pooling beneath him in a steaming puddle. He did not seem to notice, or care. She looked away, the green glow catching her eye. She stared into it. The officers arrived and said something to her, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

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Two days later, Meghan McAllen drove into Waller, freshly arrived from a trip to her mother’s house and eager to get home. Her father had left her his cabin here when he died, a little place just outside of town he’d stay at every now and again.

The gravel road to her house took her past the Wilkin’s place, and she stopped there as she pulled by. Several cars were parked outside: personal vehicles, cop cars, even an ambulance was there. But not a person to be seen.

She got out of her car to look around. It was eerily quiet, the place looked like something out of a zombie film. Then she heard something, a strange rustling sound coming from somewhere in the back.

Meghan slowly walked behind the house, a little scared but too curious to stop. She saw movement from the backyard, back near the tree line. It was a group of people, at least twenty, and they appeared to be fighting over something. A large group of people were standing in a line in either direction, forming a small circle around something, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around them.

She yelled out to them as she approached but slowed as she saw what was on the ground. People, several of them, were sprawled out on the dirt, trampled and bleeding. The ones nearby were clawing and scrapping with each other, it looked as though they were fighting to get a view of something, whatever everyone else was looking at.

She stayed clear of them, and circled around, where she found more people standing around looking inward. She noticed a thick green glow coming from the ground beyond them, and something else, some rotten smell. It smelled like a giant outhouse out here, most people’s clothes smeared with obvious stains.

What the hell happened here? She thought to herself. She gingerly squeezed between two people, so she could get a look at whatever had captivated this audience. Something was nestled in the ground, the apparent source of the green glow. She shielded her eyes, trying to see what it was, but couldn’t make it out. She wanted to look away, but the glow was oddly captivating, and she decided to take it in just a bit more. Before long, she too was lost in it.