Welcome Home Alex Thurogood

Sitting on the Greyhound Bus for nine hours had been brutal. The combination of anticipation and the suspense of what he would find upon his return home was turning his entrails to ground meat. His disappointment when the bus driver revealed that he could only drop him off a few miles from Clive Haven must have been visible. The walk would not be an issue though, the Marines had trained his body to ignore pain and keep moving. A two mile walk with a 20 pound duffle bag would be nothing in comparison to a 20 mile run with a 50 pound rucksack. Something had seemed strange about the bus driver, he had been a little too nice, a little bit too cheery. This only added to Alex’s suspicion, ever since he had stopped receiving letters from his home town, he had worried that something was wrong. In the six months before he was honorably discharged for the shrapnel that was trapped in his abdomen, when he was in the medical treatment he had expected countless letters. Everyone in Clive Haven had written to him in the beginning, but when he needed letters most of all none came. He was sure everything was fine. He would have heard the news if his home town had been flooded or something like that, but in the back of his mind there was a little seed of doubt and as he neared the small towns limits the little seeds roots dug deeper and deeper into the forefront of his mind.

Alex couldn’t see much of the town as he got closer. Fog and lack of sun light weren’t helping. He tried to put all the doubt out of his mind, everything was fine. Soon enough he was going to see his mom and his younger sister Sara. Hopefully they wouldn’t make his return into a big deal, he hoped there wouldn’t be a party or something foolish like that. He would prefer his return home be a more private affair. He tired to focus his mind on going to one of Sara’s volleyball games, he hadn’t been to one in her high school career.

Navigating the misty streets was no big deal for Alex. After all he had grown up here, he recalled running around with his friends, playing cops and robbers, when they were little. He wondered what had happened to the guys he used to be friends with. They had stayed tight throughout high school, but he hadn’t heard from them since he left for boot camp. The streets were somehow different. At first the reasoning behind that idea eluded him, and then it came into focus. There wasn’t anything happening. Before he left the streets had always been busy, not with traffic but with people walking, or kids on bikes. Now there wasn’t anything…

He continued down Green Avenue, it was anything but green. Before he left it had been bordered with flowers. Now there was just brown grass and empty flower beds. He reasoned that it was so desolate on the streets because of the inclement weather, but the grass and flowers were never neglected before. The story was the same as he entered “the market district”, if you could call it that, it was never anything more than a few little shops, but for the people of Clive Haven it was all they needed. He thought back to when he was in grade school and going to the little comic book store and looking for hours and the brightly costumed heroes on the glossy pages, he had idolized them, they were the reason he had joined the Marines. Then when he got older, taking girls to the ice cream shop on the corner of Green Avenue and 3rd Street. Now those stores were dark and void of movement.

He was getting close to home now. The suspense was almost unbearable. He went a block past 3rd Street and took a left on Washington, leaving the shops behind along with their desolation. One more block and he’d return to the home he hadn’t been to for 3 years. It was hard to believe things had changed so much since his last visit on leave. He passed the houses of his neighbors. Breaking into a slight jog, his dog tags made a jingling sound that broke the silent tension of the ghost town. He wanted nothing more than to turn the next corner and see his mom and sister standing on the front steps of the house with open arms. The corner was nearing, he jogged faster. He willed with all his might that nothing was wrong, that today was just a day with bad weather and nothing more. He rounded the corner hoping he wouldn’t see his house dark and desolate just like everything else in the town. It’s true that he didn’t see his house dark and desolate, in fact he didn’t see his house at all. He saw a burned out husk of his childhood home. Nothing but ash and a foundation.

Alex could do little more than blink 2 or 3 times. He rubbed his eyes and blinked again. This wasn’t happening. He had the wrong town or the wrong address. Where had he made his miscalculation in navigation? Then something clicked. With a blinding blow reality sunk in. This was his house, there was no mistake, no wrong turn. He staggered across the street and stepped up on the curb. He opened up the once white fence’s gate and stepped into the yard he knew so well. The countless hours he had spent running around, or playing catch all flooded back to him. He fell to his knees and a reassuring sight came into focus. The garage, detached from the house had survived the fire.

The garage resided on the right side of the house, it had been built when he was just a little boy. He remembered watching his uncles and cousins building it. At first he thought they were making another house, a little one to go along with the big one that he lived in. When he had asked his mom who would be living there she just responded with a laugh and explained to him what a garage was. After that he stopped watching the build it had lost its magic. Although once it was built and he was a little older he made his unofficial club house. It had been built to hold 2 cars and then some, but for most of Alex’s life it had barely held their only car. His mom usually parked on the street or just inside the drive way. It didn’t house a vehicle regularly until his was 17 and had bought his own car.

He stood up and moved to the driveway. It was eerie seeing the garage in its current state. He had trouble taking in the sight of his childhood haven in this decrepit state. The shingles were patchy leaving bare spots where the water had damaged the roof, it needed some paint badly, and the garage door had all of its little windows broken out. Alex moved closer, he passed by the blackened skeleton of his former home. The property looked like the final resting place of some large long forgotten beast, whose remains had been burned by the restless natives who feared the beast would come back from the after life.

Alex griped the handle of the garage door and heaved it upwards. The door ran along its aged tracks and sent out a screech fit for two cats in a moment of passion in a back alley somewhere. He stepped into the gloom of a former castle. Nothing had changed as far as he could tell. The layer of dust that had coated everything even back then was thicker, but everything else remained. He flipped the switch on the left wall expecting everything to be basked in the yellow white light of a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. That was not the case, no light turned on. “The bulb must be burnt out,” he thought, “I’ll check that later,” He set his duffle bag on the ground and undid the zipper of a side pocket and grabbed his flashlight. He hefted the bag back onto his shoulder and flicked on the light.

The beam of light illuminated the garage. He glanced quickly about, nothing much had ever been kept in here, a few tools, boxes of Christmas decorations, things one could find in any American home’s garage or basement. Things hadn’t changed since he left, the decorations still remained in the back left hand corner, taking more space than anything else. The work bench he and Sara had made when they were younger took up the whole back wall. It was strewn with various tools and small boxes of parts. A few of Alex’s model air planes still hung from the ceiling. In the middle of course was Alex’s car, the tan sedan had needed work. He had been happy to service the vehicles needs the summer in between his junior and senior years. It had taken him a better half of the summer, but Alex got it to run and from there on out he had been a man of the road. He had given Sara permission to use it as long as she took good care of it, but it didn’t look like it got too much use in the three years he was gone. It was covered in a layer of dust not quite as thick as everything else’s. The right hand wall was occupied by hooks and nails, hanging from which were yard tools. A rake, a hoe, a shovel, and a ladder, nothing in this garage explained why his house was gone. Alex never really thought it would, he guessed he was probably just desperate for a place to be. As he was about to test the car doors handle he heard a scream. Not a child’s squeal of glee, or a soccer mom’s gasp of surprise. This was a full on scream from Hell, he was familiar with it, it was a repeat visitor to the urban combat zones of the Middle East. Alex grabbed the shovel from the wall and ran towards the sound he knew all too well.

Alex flew out of the garage and into the mist strewn street. He followed the screams left and ran at full speed. The shovel felt good in his hand, it reminded him of P.T., when they would run with rifles in hand. It was a bonus that the shovels sharp blade would make a formidable weapon against an enemy should it come to that, and at this point Alex wasn’t going to say anything was impossible. He continued the run down Maple St. in the direction of the scream. It came again, along with a noise that had not been audible when the first guttural scream was released. It was a noise the likes of which Alex had never heard before. Somewhere in between the shrill screech of a stray cat and the screams of an ape. The sound was closer now, as Alex neared the terrifying noise, he grew more and more nervous. There it was again that noise the shriek. Alex had never heard an animal make a sound like that, and it was too big to be some poor lost kitten.

Alex was right on top of the noise now, it had turned from an infrequent yelp to a lower groan. Alex trusted his ears and they told him the alley just ahead would contain whatever manner of creature he was hearing. He turned right and dashed into the alley, among the garbage bins that had been crushed and thrown about the alley there lay a woman. As shocked as Alex was to see another person the beast pinning her to the ground was more of a shock. The figure that looked like it could have been a person at one point had now lost almost all of its humanity. The tiny marble sized black eyes flicked up and took Alex in. Surrounding those eyes were sunken, waxy, red eye sockets that belonged perfectly on a head of the same color. The veins popped out of its neck and forehead, it lifted its arms that had been pinning the woman’s shoulders and reached for Alex. Alex jumped back and observed the arms, like nothing he had ever seen before.