Goldbrook Part 1

November 13th 2003 Midnight


The storm struck in the very early morning hours of November 13, a time when most living creatures are in a deep slumber within their dwellings. A cold front moved down from the North and a warm air system had moved up from the South, both systems met over the northwestern part of the state of Washington.

Unknown to the people in the Pacific Northwest, this storm was going to be one for the record books.  As the snow began to fall, a massive ball of light with various colors pulsating within, glided silently above the evergreen trees in the forest of the Mount Baker National forest.

Periodically, the light would settle upon one of the old growth trees for but a moment, seeming to rest, then move on, leaving the once glorious and grand old tree dead and withered from its touch. 

An old gray timber wolf, foraging for food for her litter, sensed the approaching light before she saw it.  She stood silently still listening to the familiar sounds of the night but heard nothing that would have alerted her to the coming danger. She raised her cold sensitive nose in the cold brisk air, sniffing for a scent of something, but she smelled nothing. 

The light, sensing the animal below, ceased its movement and hovered just out of sight of the she-wolf.  The wolf, not picking up a scent but sensing something was not right in the forest this night, stood still, muscles tense, staring out into the pitch-black night, her black and gray fur standing on end. 

The light continued to hover.  Inside the light there was movement, a shifting of colors, then it darted swiftly toward the unsuspecting animal. 

The she-wolf saw the approaching danger and tried to flee from it, but the light was too fast.  The light moved with unnatural speed and settled upon the frightened animal as it tried to flee the oncoming danger, but it was too late; the struggle was over in a matter of seconds.

Where the wolf once stood, now stood nothing.
The light glowed brighter for a moment and then slowly rose until it was just above the tree line, leaving behind no sign of the struggle that took place below that ended in death. 

Once again the night grew silent. The light hovered for but a moment and then slowly continued toward its destination.  Less than a mile away, a litter of six young wolves waited hungrily for their mother’s return.

The town of Goldbrook stood eerily silent at 2am, most of the inhabitants were sound asleep in their beds, except for a few who worked late into the night, such as Belinda Jorgenson. 

“I hate this job,” Belinda said aloud, as she closed and locked the doors to the Oak Tree Tavern after ushering the last customer out for the evening. 

It had been a tasking day, she thought to herself, while gathering up dirty ashtrays and empty bottles of beer.  At one table she found cigarette butts in a beer bottle; she sighed and wondered why she even bothered putting ashtrays on the tables, the drunken fools never used them anyway. 

When she had arrived for her shift this afternoon, Earl, the Oak Tree owner, told her she would be working alone tonight; the other barmaid, Kathy, had called in sick.  From then on, it was balls to the wall to keep up with customer orders and cleaning spilled beer at the tables. By the end of the shift, she could barely stand on her two aching feet; she definitely was not looking forward to the walk home tonight. 

Although she only lived four blocks away from the tavern, just the thought of walking home sent streaks of pain shooting through her swollen ankles and tired feet.  After finishing the clean up of the bar, she sat down wearily and sighed as she slipped her feet from their eight-hour prison, and began to rub them vigorously to ease the pain.

Belinda had lived in Goldbrook all her life, thirty-nine years to be exact.  She attended all three schools starting from elementary and on through high school.  She got married when she was twenty-one and divorced before she turned twenty-four.  The man she was married to enjoyed drinking excessively and flirting openly with other women.  Belinda knew she was not the greatest catch in town or the prettiest, however, compared to some of the other woman in town, she would have rated a strong six on a scale of one to ten. 

Thinking back, she remembered it was on a day that was like any other, she had awakened with a single thought in her mind, “I must get out of this marriage.” 

While her husband was sleeping off his hangover,  from the drunken stupor from the night before, she quietly wrote him a note stating her intentions, packed up her clothes and other essentials and moved back to her parents’ home. 

She never heard from her alcoholic husband again, which did not surprise her.  She figured he woke, found her gone, read the note and returned to the same bar he was at the night before, to brag to his friends how he had thrown the bitch out on her ass. 

While staying with her parents she found a job working in a meat factory as a processor.  The company was called G & G Meats; the running joke between the employees was that G & G stood for Guts & Gore.  Belinda worked hard for the company and made good money; within a year and a half she had moved out of her parents’ home and gotten herself an apartment.  A year later, at the age of twenty-six, she was offered the position of supervisor for the processing floor.  She gladly accepted the position, hoping it would increase her financial status

Less than a year later, G & G went bankrupt and the doors closed.  Again, Belinda, unable to find another job, moved back in with her parents. Over the next six years, she took part-time jobs here and there to make ends meet.  Most of the jobs were at minimum wage, but she was still able to help her parents on occasion with their household bills and other living expenses. 

During the fourth year of her stay, her father suffered a massive heart attack and died while working in their garden.  Belinda’s mother never got over the death of her husband and passed away herself two years later.  After the death of her mother, Belinda was left with the house and a small sum of money to do with what she saw fit.  She sold the house, paid off all her parents’ debts, and rented a small studio apartment above the local Hallmark store for herself. 

Belinda knew the money would not last but a few months, so she began the tedious task of looking through the newspaper’s classified want ads and pounding the pavement in search of a full-time job.  One day while she was out taking a walk, she passed a tavern with a sign posted on the window stating “Help wanted.”  She had never worked in a bar before; however, things were getting desperate and she was willing to try anything different if it brought a decent income home. 

She slowly opened the old, pitted door, and entered her smoke-filled future.

Now here she was, six years older, a little heavier around the mid-section, light crows feet around the eyes and single despite the forward advances of male barflies that frequented the watering hole.  Sighing heavily, she looked around and wondered where all the time had gone. 

“I guess I better get my ass into gear if I am going to make it home before daybreak,” she said to herself. 

She hefted herself wearily from the chair, grabbed her purse, which she kept behind the bar out of arms reach of the patrons of this establishment, and walked out the door.  Her feet were throbbing as she walked toward home.  With each step she swore her arches were falling and would be non-existent by the time she arrived there.

She had not gone more than a block from the bar when from all around her she heard a noise like the sound of rushing water and saw a flicker of bright light off to the East.  She stopped and turned her head in all directions, trying to pinpoint the origin of the sound.  As suddenly as she heard it, the sound slowly faded away until she could hear it no longer. “ I wonder what the hell that was?” she thought to herself.  She stood in place for a moment longer, then continued walking toward home, thinking only of relaxing in a nice hot bubble bath; in tired ignorance of how close she came to never again having to worry about falling arches and wiping up spilled beer from the sloven patrons of the Oak Tree.

Jason Rollins lay in bed staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head, from time to time he would glance sideways at the clock on his dresser to watch the minutes tick by.  He had gone to bed earlier in the evening, just after 10:00pm, when the sound of his mother screaming at his father had awakened him. 

When he first glanced at the clock it read 12:45am, and now it read just after 1:30am.  He assumed his mother was screaming at his father because he had spent all afternoon and evening drinking at the Oak Tree bar.  His father tended to do this from time to time when he had an unfavorable day at work.  However, this was the third time this week he had arrived home late and his mother was letting his father know just how much this perturbed her. 

His father never use to drink very much, it has just been in the past couple of months since he was injured at the mill that he started drinking more often.  Jason did not like when his father drank excessively, every time he did, he would rant and rave about how he was going to sue the Blue Spruce Mill for every penny they had. 

“They’re not going to get away with this,” his father stated angrily.

“Six thousand dollars for the loss of three fingers is bullshit! I will never be able to do anything useful with this hand again”. 

Then his father would sit down and cry and his mother would try and comfort him as much as she possibly could.  However, this time was different, she was wholly pissed off at him and giving him both barrels of her wrath. 

“I have had enough of your drinking John,” he heard his mother say to his father.

“You have got to stop pitying yourself and pull it together, Jason and I cannot continue to see you this way.  You are killing yourself with alcohol and all we can do is stand by and watch, you have got to get some help with your problem.”

“No shit” Jason said to himself while looking at the clock again.

“I’m sorry Beth,” he heard his father sob. “

“It’s just that there are times when the pain in my hand gets bad.  And the thought of the minute amount of money we got from the settlement drives me crazy and, and what was that?”

“What was what?” Beth asked.

“That weird light”

“What weird light?”

“That light that just went by our window” he replied

“I didn’t see no light” she stated.

“Your back was to the window Beth, that is why you didn’t see it”

“Are you sure you are not seeing things John, you have had quiet a bit to drink this evening?”

“No look! There it is again”.

Beth turned to face the living room window, and raised her hand to her mouth in astonishment with what she saw; it was a large glowing ball of light with different pulsating colors within.  The massive ball of light appeared to fill the whole window and light up the entire room the couple was occupying.

“Oh my God John, what is it?”

Jason heard his mother’s surprised outcry and decided to go downstairs to see what was causing the commotion.  He pulled on a tee shirt, an old pair of jeans, and his slip-on sneakers and went out his bedroom door, as he was approaching the top of the stairs he heard the sound of breaking glass and a terrified scream from his mother.  He quickly ran to the bottom of the stairs and entered the family room, what he saw caused him to freeze in place with fear? 

Jason could not believe what he was seeing, his mother and father were engulfed by an enormous ball of pulsating light, his mothers mouth was open in a silent scream, his father had his crippled hand up in front of his face as if to ward off imaginary blows. 

As he looked on he could see the clothes on his parents begin to disintegrate and then crumble to dust.  His mother turned toward him and reached out her hand with the look of sheer agony etched upon her face, as her skin appeared to melt from her body.  His father had slipped from the chair to the floor and was writhing wildly about trying to escape the light but to no avail, as his skin began to melt away as well.  Jason tried to reach for his mother several times, each time drawing his hand back in fear of what the light might do to him. As he looked on, powerless to help his parents, his parents’ continued to scream in pain, what am I going to do? He thought. 

As he gaped in wide-eyed fear, his mother’s body collapse to the floor, the light began to pulsate rapidly and grew in size.  His fear intensified, sweat began to run down his face, but he could still not move.  "Run for god sakes, run," but his feet could not move. 

He looked all about him for some kind of weapon to use but there was nothing within reach.  When he turned back to the carnage, the sight of what he witnessed broke the spell of fear, what was left of his parents was nothing but bones and even those were beginning to disintegrate.  His feet broke free of the floor and he made for the open doorway at a full run not looking back in fear that the light may be right behind him.

Jason ran across the yard and into the woods with tears streaming down his face, he had just made it through the tree line when he tripped and fell over a rotting tree stump. 

He lay there motionless for a moment trying to catch his breath. After a moment he rolled over to peer through the bushes at his house.  The light was now outside and hovering by the broken window, Jason held his breath, fearing the thing would hear him breathing and come and devour him just like it did to his parents.  The light continued to hang motionless by the window as if looking for the boy.  Sensing there was nothing there the light headed off back up into the mountains.

Jason watched the murderess light from the bushes as it left; he lay there motionless for another ten minutes before rising up from the ground.  When he stood, he discovered the stump he tripped over had cut a deep two-inch gash in his shin and was bleeding profusely down his leg.  He tore a strip of cloth from his tee shirt and wrapped the wound to staunch the flow of blood.  With that done, he thought about his options, the first thing he thought to do was too go back into the house and get more of his clothes and then call the sheriff, but he put that thought out of his head, he never wanted to go in there again. The second thing he thought of was to make his way through the woods to the Devean home. 

Mike and Danielle Devean were close friends with his family, they had spent many summers together camping, fishing, and hiking in the Cascades over the years.  Sometimes, it was just he and Mike, but most times it was all five of them up in the mountains camping and enjoying their serene surroundings along the Pilchuck River.

Jason made up his mind and decided to make his way through the three and a quarter mile woods to the Devean home. The forest loomed ahead of him dark and foreboding, he wasn’t sure how long it would take him to get to the Devean home, dawn was still a few hours off, and the clouds hid the moon from giving him any light. In addition, there were no footpaths to follow and he knew the woods were treacherous at night, his father had told him this. 

Jason decided he would have to go on instinct and head in the general direction of the Devean place and hope he made it. After looking himself over for more wounds and not finding any, he turned himself toward what he hoped was the right direction to the Devean’s home, he took one last look behind him at his house and then walked into the woods. 

The light moved swiftly but silently up into the mountains searching for a place to make it’s home, it had fed well recently and needed to rest.  It pondered what had taken place earlier during the feeding, “They always struggle and it never does them any good”, it thought.  It had known the boy was just inside the woods, but it had decided it needed to search for a place to hide and the boy could wait for another night. 

It continued to scour the hills and valleys until it happened upon an entrance to a mind shaft.  The old mine had been closed for three decades or more and had boards across the entrance with warning signs posted to keep out the curious.  Over time a few of the boards had fallen away from the entrance and this is where it entered.  The mineshaft went deep into the earth, the light followed it until it abruptly ended, and here it decided it would rest until tonight when it would feed again.

Mike and Danielle awoke to the sound of someone knocking franticly on their door.  Mike, seeing that it was still dark outside, rolled over to look at the alarm clock on the nightstand, it read 4:34am. 

“I’ll go and see who it is” Mike said. 

“You want me to come with you?”

“No I can handle it, go back to sleep” Mike stated.

Mike sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes to clear his vision of sleep, the pounding continued.

“Just a minute” Mike called out.

Mike reached over, grabbed his robe from the chair, and slipped it on.  He made his way out the bedroom door and down the hall to the front door and peered through the peek hole.

“Jason, is that you?” Mike asked.

Mike could not see the boy’s face because his head was down but he recognized the posture and hair color under the glow of the porch light.

“They’re dead mister Devean, I couldn’t help them, I tried, but I couldn’t.  I was so scared, I ran, I ran into the woods so it wouldn’t get me.”

As Jason crumpled to the porch weeping Mike franticly unlocked the door and took the boy into his arms.