Wellline

Wellline

         Five, she thought to herself as a semi hauling a load of lumber rumbled past. This is ridiculous. Counting the red cars passing by turned to counting any cars, and that soon turned into counting any human activity as she drove further and further from Interstate 35. The endless wall of trees stood watch over the county road, split only occasionally by four wheeler trails. A gray sky supplied little light of its own, and amongst the towering pines it was easy to lose track of time.


         The days were getting shorter, and although she had only left her home at around noon, she felt as if the day was almost over. Her hand sat on the roof of the car through the window, the wind causing the printed directions on the passenger seat to occasionally rustle. Her black hair whipped about the cool air, the loose strands around her ponytail and bangs flailing uselessly to escape her head. The blaring music came to a sudden end, and she reached down to switch her Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness tape side for the 3rd time.


         The volume had slowly risen over the last hour and a half, a feeble attempt at drowning out her own thoughts. I should have just cried or something, she thought, he better be worried about me.


          Just two hours before, in an argument she could not remember, she hastily printed off the directions to Wellline, a town in the seemed void forests of central Minnesota, and left. Besides feeling stupid, she felt guilty, but there was really no turning back now.


          “Come on Becky,” he had said ”What the hell are you doing?”


          “You’re an asshole,” was her only response as she defiantly walked out of their new home. Cutting around the SOLD sign still posted near their mailbox, she got in her car and pulled away. It wasn’t until Mora and her first flip of her only tape did she realize what she had set out to do. Drive two hours to pick up a piece of furniture. It was beautiful, at least according to her lifelong friend Anne, and all hers if she went and got it herself. Finding proper furniture for a new home is not always easy, or cheap. Not that he would understand that. Apparently owned by some grandmother or great grandmother, the rustic solid wood secretary was in great condition, serving loyally for years until the last of the family moved away or died. Now kept at an aunt’s, or great aunt’s, in storage, Becky was looking to claim it as her own.


          It’s going to look great in dining room, unless it’s not wide enough, then maybe it would fill the space in the living room…


          Carrying and lifting it into her station wagon being anther issue, simply finding the secretary in a town she had never been would most likely prove to be a problem. But she would cross that bridge when she came to it, as thinking first and acting second was not the maiden sentiment of this
journey.

#

          A new problem began to arise as she drew closer to the town; she was running out of gas. She had simply driven past every station because she was worried that if she stopped, she would turn around. If the directions were accurate, then she would have enough to arrive and refuel there. If they have any cars to fuel out here. It had been twenty minutes since Becky had counted 6, and an unsettling feeling filled her stomach.


          She turned on her phone to find no service, and to her sadness, no ability to read any texts she may have received. She had not bothered to flip the
tape again, so she listened to the sometimes maddening hum of the road.


          Finally, her act of defiance paid off. The sign “Willline / Pop. 302” came into sight. Thank God. Sure enough, the wall of trees spread out and after crossing a small bridge over a very small stream houses and businesses came into sight. The town was as gray as the sky, and although no one was to be seen, a few cars were parked on the main drive in front of the various stores. She immediately signaled and pulled into the gas station on her left, not noticing the darkness behind the cigarette advertisements on the windows.


          She pulled up to one of the two pumps and got out of her car, digging in her purse for her debit card. She felt foolish to look up and see that it had no “pay at the pump” feature and hastily put it away so no one would see. She felt even more foolish when she attempted to fuel her car, a cursory act she had performed a thousand times, to no avail. The digital numbers did not change from their preset zeros, and no “click” allowed the fuel to pour forth. What the hell, she thought as she put the pump back in place. Maybe I have to pay first.


          She began walking up to the door when she stopped suddenly; the door was chained shut. Her view panned out as she noticed the lights were off, and the general look of the station was, gross. She cautiously continued and pressed her head against the glass to peer inside. It was intact, the products inside sat on the shelves undisturbed, beef jerky filled the bins, and the coolers seemed stocked even though they were not lit.


          God I’m thirsty, she thought as she stood back. The store wasn’t looted or emptied, just abandoned. Like the owner locked the door one night and never looked back. She turned to look at the town with hopes of seeing another gas station.


          Nothing was in sight except for the few surrounding homes and shops about halfway down “Main Street”. The gray of the town was overwhelming, and it matched the sky with postcard precision. No people walked its streets, at least as far as she could see. All in all it was your average tiny Minnesotan town, sans its inhabitants. Becky had grown up in a town like this, until she was thirteen or fourteen, but had no sense of nostalgia as she surveyed Willline. She remembered friends biking, families eating out, or going to work. She remembered the people.


          Debating whether to drive or walk into town she choose the latter, the gas was low enough as it was, and the temperature was unseasonably comfortable. She noticed a large amount of litter as she walked to and then down the highway she had grown so familiar with, and sneered at the thought of driving down this road every day. With her hands squeezed into the small pockets of her jeans she approached the first business, a car shop, and looked inside as she strolled past.


          Empty.


         Now she began to worry, where was everybody? Her dangerous imagination began coming up with its own explanations as she approached the next building. Empty. The town seemed to be designed so the main road split off into a perpendicular road, nestling a post office and what seemed to be a drug store in the only two corners in town. She walked along the undivided side and more shops appeared as the view down the other street opened up. Douglas Ave, the sign read as she approached. Douglas Ave and… Oh my God. “Main Street” filled the sign labeling the road she walked on now.


          “Hello?” she said out loud, in a voice that was much quieter then she had first attempted. For the first time in years, she had gone two hours without talking, and her voice was hoarse. God I wish Brian was here. The cars that filled the occasional spots looked relatively undisturbed, only occasionally speckled with a small layer of dust and a few leaves. She stopped for a moment, more suddenly than she planned, and startled herself. Fear filled her heart now, as it had been filling ever since she left the interstate. Her stubbornness and guilt over her actions masked it, albeit poorly, but now it was time to face the truth. She was scared.


          She stopped moving completely, and wrapped her small undersized sweatshirt around her. It was colder as the wind picked up, much colder, and she debated going back to the car.


          What the hell am I doing out here? She thought. “What the hell am I doing out here?” Her voice was soft, and her own tone worried her. She had lost sense of herself, and she was not paying attention to her instincts. Her imagination filled what her ignored senses could not tell her. Visions filled her thoughts and a ringing filled her ears. I am in the middle of nowhere, in a town with no people. The truth was crushing. I need to go home. Her lungs resisted her breath. I need to go home.


          I need to go home.


          She turned and walked briskly back towards the car, and found the gas station was out of sight for another six businesses. How far did I walk? Her mind had not stayed with her body, where it was needed. She had ventured much further into the town then she had thought she did. She tried to pick up her pace, but only frightened herself in doing so.


          I have no gas, I have no gas. She would cross that bridge when she came to it, for now, all she worried about was leaving. The ringing in her ears was louder now, and her pace was involuntarily picking up speed. She felt as if she was running from something. Why are you walking so fast? Slow down. She broke into a jog for the rest of the way.


          The gas station felt like it took forever to get in her vision, and when she saw it, she stopped to breathe. It’s going to be ok, she assured herself, waiting for the ringing to die down. You will find gas. You’re going to make it home.


          She naturally reacted to herself speaking, and covered her ears. What the… Fuck? To her astonishment, the ringing stopped. She unplugged and replugged her ears, making the high pitched buzz pulsate to her whim. Her face contorted with confusion, as the ringing was much louder than when she first heard it. Looking up at her car, she raised her hand over her eyes to feel sweat beading on her forehead. I’ve got to get out of here. The car sat where she had left it, with one difference; the passenger door was ajar.


          Oh my God, oh my God, her mind repeated as looked on. The car sat there, beckoning her, promising her escape, but she hesitated. Go, just go to it. She whimpered as she walked towards the car, swearing she would do anything if her boyfriend could be there now. Her eyes started to swell with tears as she slowly walked closer, counting the steps like she had counted the passing cars. Eleven, twelve…She had not noticed it before, but the gas station was slightly uphill from the rest of the town, which cut off her vision so she could not see beyond the closest pump. Nineteen. The ringing turned to a droning buzz, and it got louder.


          She only made it to thirty seven paces before she regretfully wiped the emerging tears from her eyes. The car shook. She almost let out a scream before raising both hands to her mouth, and breathed into them heavily as she watched the car move in a way so slight she had not noticed with her teary eyes. It had gotten dark quickly, and her range of vision was dropping rapidly.


          Oh my God, no… No… She could sense a presence behind the car, and as she squinted she saw the back hatch of the car was open. A towering black figure riffled through the back of her station wagon, a figure too big to be a man. Even her thoughts stammered with fear as she gawked on, unable to even formulate her feelings.Her fear drained into her gut, the icy cool burn filling her stomach in the most painful way.


          Somehow she knew that the ringing came from the figure. Its buzzing dominated her thoughts, like a hive of bees trapped in her skull. The tears streaming down her face started moments before her gentle sobs; her hands held over her mouth, her feet planted solidly on the thirty seventh pace.


          Oh God, what… I… What… Oh God Brian... Please. I… I need to run. I need to…


          To her utter horror, the beast suddenly stood erect, looking directly at her. Its head sat at almost eight feet tall, while the two large appendages rising from its shoulder blades nearly scraped the fueling island ceiling. It was black, and seemed to drip its soulless, haunting color. The face she could not make out, not with the tears that hesitated now in her wide eyes, but she could just make out what seemed like tentacles hanging from its face.


          ... … R… Run.


          Almost as soon as the beast saw her, the buzzing it emanated elated from its apparently relaxed drone. The pitch soared higher, and paralyzed Becky with urgency. The ringing now filled her thoughts, and echoed off the walls of the gas station.


          Run… Oh G… God…


          Her heart rate went up, her sobs turning to deep breaths. The beast walked around the car in two strides, and began walking slowly towards her.


          Please.. Run…


          She couldn’t move a muscle, her legs turned to stone beneath her. The buzz blared like a siren.


          Now..


          The beast kept its slow pace, his horrid features emerging before her. She felt dizzy.


          Please run… Go… GO… Please


          Like a nightmare she had no control over herself, over her own body. It was his body, his to feast on. As the beast came within ten feet, the stench hit. It was the smell of a grave. The raw earthy smell of soil and dirt and rotting flesh filled her nostrils, and like a smelling salt they returned her to the conscious world.


          Now.


          She gasped, and, turning from the beast, she faced towards the town and began to run for her life. The sound of a solid THUD hit the ground behind her, the beast having taken a strike at her with the crane like arms hanging above his head. Her own breathing began to drown out the buzz as she sprinted as fast as she could down the middle of the road. Tears streamed back to her ears as she made her way past the first shops, not turning or stopping until she was out of sight of the beast.


          She turned the corner onto Douglas and stopped for a moment. The buzz had not only quieted, but the pitch had lessoned to a more ominous level, somewhere between the first and second she had heard. Where do I go… Where should I go. She quickly and as quietly as she could turned to the door of the post office. Locked. The droning got louder. She ran down to the next store, a florist. The dead flowers in the display did not look promising. Locked. She ran to the next building and found it locked as well. Fear began to consume her again.


          As the droning got even louder, she knew she had only mere moments before she was trapped in his gaze again. She ran past a small alley to the next building, a bar. Oh god please, Oh god please.


          The door was sunk into the building slightly, and a small area where the patrons must have smoked dipped into the front of the establishment. She ran to the door and, when pressed against it, felt she would not be seen by the thing that chased her once it turned the corner. Despite this small
comfort, the noise grew only louder. The door was locked.



          She scraped at the door and pounded it once before resting her head against it to cry. Why did I come here. This was the last store on this side of the road. To try another door would mean to run across the street, past the demon. “Let me in,” she whispered, sobbing “Oh God please let me in….” Her voice cracked as she drew in her deep breaths, and her lungs and legs burned. What is that… thing? A splitting headache was birthed somewhere along the run there, and it pounded with her heart into her temples. “Please, let me…,” she pounded on the door “Let me in.. LET ME IN!”


          Her scream ending in a whimper, she lost almost lost all hope, but something in her drove her into a frenzy. “LET ME IN! LET ME… PLEASE!!” she screamed banging harder, ending her shrieks in sobs. The buzzing grew much louder now. “OPEN THE DOOR.” She pounded “OPEN THE… OPEN IT!!” Her head was killing her when she finally squatted in front of the door, and laid her hands flat against it as if she was worshiping. Oh no… Brian, Brian please…


          Her heart leapt out of her chest when the door swung open, and two warm hands grabbed her wrists and pulled her inside. The hands belonged to a woman, and once she was thrown in, she let go to lock the door with the padlock that was in place. She turned and squatted, and a dirty, tired face looked at Becky with wide eyes.


          “Thank God, someone else… anyone else. I have been here for so long. Do you have food?” She trembled and was frantic, perhaps even more scared then
          Becky. They stayed on their haunches, near the entrance, as if hiding from something in the building as well. The buzzing was momentarily gone.


          “I Don’t… I don’t have anything, I just came here…”


          “Is it coming? Is it coming here?” She interrupted, shaking Becky with every word.


          “I… Think it may be, it was following…”


          “You brought it here?” She shrieked, a look of confusion on her face.


          “No, no… I don’t think it saw me… come here…. just down the… street” She was still out of breath, and not ready to help a woman as scared as her.


          “I have a gun.” The woman said, and with a frightened look pulled it from the back of her waist. “It was in the bar. We can kill it now. We can kill it.” The sight of the gun scared Becky almost as much as the beast. The woman was not right, she seemed dazed, and her sudden twitchy actions were ten times more noticeable with the gun in her hands. “We can kill it!” She said again, pointing the gun at Becky.


         She closed her eyes and fell back, as if accepting death, but no gunshot was fired off.


          “I’m, I’m not going to kill YOU,” she said, pointing the gun at Becky for emphasis. “We’re going to kill IT. I came here, five days ago, and have been trapped here.” She was breathing heavily. “and I’m going to die if I don’t leave soon. I’m STARVING.” She looked off at a far off noise for a moment, and then turned her attention back.


          “What… What is it…” Becky finally asked, watching the gun with its every tremble.


          “It… it…” The woman’s eyes opened wide, “It’s the Devil… it’s the fucking Devil”


          A moment of horrid silence filled the bar, when the door behind the woman was ripped off its hinges by the beast’s monstrous upper arms. The woman screamed and whipped her arms around to fire at the monster, but it was too late. The thing had whipped the door halfway across the street before the woman managed to even turn around, and one of the long crane like appendages grabbed the woman by the leg. His body unmoving, he lifted the screaming woman in front of his face, the tube like cilia dripping the black goop that covered its body. The screaming buzz that filled the air almost managed to drown out the woman, but as the ringing hit perhaps the highest hearable pitch, it began to pulsate. The hungry pulse started slow, but began droning up and down faster as the woman struggled and squirmed.


          Becky was knocked back in horror as she watched the beast turn its full attention to the woman, and again she was paralyzed. The sight of the beast so close caused bile to rise in her throat, and the intoxicating stench only sickened her worse. She turned and vomited on the floor and in her own hair, but still couldn’t look away at the horrors before her. The pulsing hit a steady pace. Becky watched as the two small arms on the beast’s sides extended bonelike knives from their tips.


          Still holding the woman high, the thing drove the knives in and out of the woman’s chest, spraying blood onto its slimy, black exterior, quickly absorbing every drop. The blood began gushing onto the floor, and after a final stab into the woman’s torn chest, the squirming stopped.


          The beast did not, however, and soon the frenzy of stabs and slices was joined by the other upper arm, its leftmost upper arm still holding the woman in place. Only the sounds of snapping bones and the sloppy thuds of the woman’s organs could be heard over the drone now. Becky watched on in utter horror, blood occasionally spraying onto her own face, until the sight of the gun beside her reawakened her.


          With a surge of adrenaline, she picked up the gun and approached the beast. Kill it. The monster still worked hard on the woman’s dangling corpse, and had not moved from where it once stood. Hoping the weapon would simply work as she would assume it would, she raised the gun to the monsters face and squeezed the trigger.


          Indeed the safety was turned off, and she fired a round directly into the creature’s brain. A high pitch scream was released from the monster, and its buzzing tacked in confusion. With the black liquid spattered onto the woman’s face, she opened one of the eyes she instinctually closed and fired again. And again.


          The Creature dropped the woman’s mangled body and stepped back, its small arms too short and its long arms too long to reach its own face. It attempted anyway, and as it backed off it was greeted with the rest of the clip being fired at its chest. Becky knew she couldn’t kill it now, not like this. I need. BLAM. To run. BLAM. Run. BLAM. RUN.


          The gun started clicking with every squeeze, and Becky ran. She ran toward the woods.

#

          The droning had stopped. The creature was nowhere in sight when Becky finally collapsed in exhaustion. She struggled to breath, she struggled to see, and perhaps at most she struggled to think.


         I… I… I Can… Can’t… I can’t… I can’t stop.


          Her hair was pinned to her face by the sweat and tears and vomit. She laid on the forest floor, on her stomach, and moved only to pull an uncomfortable stick from underneath her. Her legs and lungs, her heart and stomach, burned. She rolled over to look at the red orange sky above her. The other woman’s jacket, which was lying beside them when they were attacked, now warmed her fragile body. She had grabbed it without thinking, and ran freezing with it in her hands until only about a half hour before her collapse.


          Let it… let it kill me… I’m done… let… I’m sorry… I’m sorry Brian…


          She laid there for some time, twenty minutes, an hour. Impossible to know, but in that time the sunset only intensified. Her breathing returned to normal, and she stood up. Her head was splitting. Wandering, she continued on into the wood, with nowhere else to go. The sun was very bright, and the dying trees let it shine through, deep into the forest. I can’t stop.


         Her thoughts wondered to the life she felt more and more detached from, until an odd, and horrible, totem came into view. A spike emerged from the ground, apparently carved from a piece of wood, and from bottom to top held in place a column of human skulls. She looked at the fresh, fleshy skulls in disbelief. However, she did not turn to run, and after a moment of motionlessness, she pressed forward. A beast in her had been unleashed, and she followed the skulls in a broken, morbid curiosity.


         The totems appeared, more and more often, leading her to an answer she now sought. It’s kind of beautiful, she thought, and she brushed her hand on the poles as she walked by. She did not wipe the blood off her hands. She did, however, hold them up to the sky, and almost smiled.


          Finally, her walk came to an end. Before her was a fence, and in the fence was an arched opening. This must be his home. Our Home. The bones of hundreds were stuck into the ground and tied together to make the border around this monstrous pen. It was nearly fifty feet across before the fence circled around. She began to walk inside, at her own pace, and saw that many totems populated the grisly lair. Stacks of rib cages, skulls and pelvic bones rose as high as the beast would, skewered on the great spikes. It matches beautifully with the sunset.


         She let out a gasp as she walked further in. Amongst the gruesome pillars and bloodstained leaves, was a beautiful, hand crafted secretary desk. As she approached it a little further, a dull buzz compelled her to turn around, and, blocking the exit, was the beast.