The Dudleytown Curse

© 2003 Athena Workman
All rights reserved.

"No," Sheila said suddenly, hanging back, tugging on her boyfriend Rich's hand, forcing him to also stop.

"What now?" Steve muttered, smirking, and John exhaled and turned around, meeting the girl's hesitant yet defiant gaze.

"Why? What's the problem?" he asked. He was a tall boy, made muscular by the high school wrestling team, and his loud, strong voice could be very intimidating. He knew this, and applied it now.

Sheila, much smaller and more slender, downright skinny, balked a little, flinching, but she pointed with a quick jerk of her head over her shoulder.

"That's the problem," she answered. "Her."

The three boys looked past Sheila and saw what they could of the house sitting across Bald Mountain Road and behind a sloping yard purposely planted with a thick barrier of secluding firs. The clapboard house's true color was indistinguishable in the heavy shade, but the elderly woman on the porch was easily seen. With long white hair unbound and clothed in an ivory dress, she seemed ethereal, like a ghost in an unlit corridor.

Sheila jerked in an involuntary shudder. "God, she's creepy!"

"So?" John boomed, and this time, Rich gave him a glare.

"Creepy or not, she sees us, man. What if she calls the cops? None of them out here want people going in."

John chuckled, unkindly.

"Do you really think the cops are gonna go in there?" he asked, leaning forward, cocking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the narrow brush wall; a wall so snarled with Virginia creeper, holly and forsythia that at first glance the dark opening would be missed with a blink. But John had been out here before, and had marked the opening with a tall, straight branch, spiked in the rocky ground.

"The cops'll just look at her like the nut she is and leave," John continued. "Now, are we gonna go in, or do you wanna run home to Mommy?"

"Nice," Rich snapped, sarcastically, but he gave Sheila a look and shrugged while tugging a little at the camera strap hanging round his neck. She slumped dejectedly.

"Don't be a follower," she pleaded, quietly.

"Just say no!" Steve boomed, and was the only one to laugh at his joke. John waited expectantly, his thumbs hooked over the straps of the pack that hung low on his back. Inside were a couple of bottles of water, a notebook, pencil, and a mini tape recorder.

Rich glanced back and forth between girlfriend and old friend, silent beggar and intimidator, until the prospect of being repeatedly named a wuss won out, and he loudly barked, "Well, let's go!" He snapped his fingers impatiently toward the opening.

"All right." Immediately, John turned around, but not before seeing Sheila give her boyfriend's hand one last tug, and seeing the way Rich ignored it, pulling her along.

"Are there any thorns in there?" Sheila whined.

"A few," John answered. "Just be careful where you walk."

But Steve said, worriedly, "You sure you know the way? It doesn't look like there's any room for us ... we might get lost."

They were all gathered around the entrance, and John exasperatedly asked, "Are you pussying out now, too?"

"No," Steve answered, firmly. "I'm just saying—"

"Look!" John interrupted. "I checked the path the other day, and there's enough room if we walk single file. The sun's out, it's a nice, fucking sunny day, and nothing's gonna happen to us! O-kay?"

"You da boss." Steve shrugged, and after an impatient snort, John parted the spindly forsythia branches and entered the forest.

The sounds the kids made as they traveled over the rocky ground, carpeted with dead leaves and fallen branches, were brazen and jarring, and alerted any wildlife in the forest long before they were visible. But the forest was quiet, lifeless like the foliage beneath their sneakers, and normal, expected sounds from rural Bald Mountain Road like passing cars, or perhaps squawks from birds flying overhead, could not be heard. Rich glanced up, and even though the sun still beamed onto their heads, he had to make sure he could still see the azure of the sky, the wisps of the few clouds.

"What're you looking at?" Sheila asked, traveling behind him, still clinging to his hand.

"It would make a nice picture," he murmured, and was tempted to stop, focus the camera, and snap away at the silhouette of branches against the sky. But he didn't want to spend any more time than was necessary in there, and neither did Sheila, so he kept on, walking five feet behind Steve's lanky form, pushing aside bushes and low-hanging fir branches as they tried to bar his way. Once, Steve nearly fell, tripping over the stub of a white rock hidden beneath some leaves, and another time, the soft hiss of "Motherfucker!" could be heard coming from John as he was smacked in the face by a cedar branch.

"Ha ha," Sheila whispered, and Rich gave her hand an empathetic squeeze. He could feel the nervousness emanating from her like cold ocean waves, and he began to wish she hadn't come along. But it was his own reservations about accompanying John and Steve into Dudleytown that had caused her to call him up that morning and make him promise not to leave her. Although she was the one to volunteer, freely, of her own will, he felt it was his fault that she was now scared. All over a group social studies fair project.

"Damn," he muttered, and called ahead, "Why couldn't we have done the Revolution or something?"

John snickered. "Fucking boring, man! Who wants to see that for the millionth time?"

Steve whirled around, hunched over, and hissed, "Yeah, fucking boring, man! Fucking boring!" He bared his white, even teeth and wrinkled his nose as he spoke, looking like a pale, rabid badger. It was such a comical expression, something that Steve was so good at, that both Rich and Sheila started laughing. Pleased that he'd alleviated the uneasy mood, Steve nodded and again faced forward. A minute later, brighter light poked them in the eyes as John parted the final branches, and a few moments after that, they all stood at the edge of Dudleytown.

Over one hundred years ago it had been a bustling, if not prosperous, town. Now it was the tattered remnants of a tale mostly lost to the ages. The forest once more inhabited the land that had been razed and built upon by the first settlers, with trees and brush stolidly rooted where there used to be buildings and barns. But the roads that used to carry coach and man were still evident, dirty and plain, although they had been made narrower by the passage of time. And though the dense forest now ruled, bits of the town still valiantly clung to the earth, like evidentiary proof that Dudleytown had been more than just a pipe dream: four pairs of eyes took in broken stone foundations and barely guarded cellar holes.

Steve, normally happy-go-lucky and careless, shivered and looked around. "It's dark," he commented, and looked up, unaware that he was mimicking Rich's earlier action. The sky was still blue, but the entire area was cast in shadow.

"It's not dark!" Sheila retorted, in an unnerved way.

"I mean—" He floundered, looking for the word. "It's ... not sunny. It was sunny back there. It's sunny up there, but ... not here."

"The mountains." John pointed at the outline of the jagged peaks and ridges in the distance, beyond the opposite edge of the town.

"It's usually shadowy here ... that's why the settlers couldn't grow anything. Not enough sun."

Steve stared at them, absently scratching his thick mane of blonde hair, and realized that they'd all been whispering, as if not to disturb....

He broke off his fear-laced thoughts before they could reach around his neck and throttle him, and straightened up. Not a minute inside and he already couldn't stand being there, and that in itself was unusual, for he was a horror movie freak and wasn't scared of anything. Normally.

"Can we do this now?" he asked, and was embarrassed to hear how high-pitched and squeaky his words had been.

"In a minute, Stephanie," John answered, and despite the fact that it had only been a good-natured, familiar joke, Steve suddenly wanted to haul off and hit him. The uncontrollable, black urge that surged through his bloodstream like a ravenous disease, and he turned away before John could see the fury in his eyes. What the hell? he thought wildly.

"You okay?" Rich asked, concerned. Mutely, Steve nodded, his hands bunched at his sides, his shoulders hunched inward, and after a moment, motioned Rich and Sheila away.

John shrugged off his pack, unbuckled it, and withdrew the tape player. Slinging the pack over one shoulder, he pressed the Record button and held the small machine a few inches in front of his mouth. "April fifteenth, 2003," he began, his voice changing, taking on a professional manner. Sheila watched, always amazed that despite being a jerk and jock, John cared about being a good student, and always made the honor roll at school. But her nerves were jangling like a banjo being picked at top speed, and he was talking too loudly.

"Shh!" she hissed, and he stopped and stared at her. Rich did, also.

"Huh?" John asked.

She cast a furtive glance around. Trees, brush, and speckles of muted, flat daylight met her gaze. "You're too loud," she told him.

"Who am I bugging?" John asked. He gave her a bothered frown before redirecting his attention to the recorder. Checking the digital watch on his wrist, he said, "Three-thirty-four in the afternoon. Subjects present: John Lewis, Steve Danvers, Rich Young, and Sheila..." He looked at her. "What's your last name again?"

A branch had snapped, and her head had whipped around to stare at the brush they'd just left behind. She saw nothing. "Bergeron," she whispered.

"Bergeron," John repeated, and began walking slowly, like a musing reporter. "We have entered Dudleytown, and found all reports to be true. There is nearly nothing left of the town that was founded in 1745 by Thomas Griffis, and deserted by 1899. Nothing left but a few crumbling foundations and cellar holes. We hope that from these artifacts we can find out exactly why Dudleytown died ... and if the legends are true."

Grasping one of Rich's hands in both of her own, Sheila gasped and twisted around, staring into the forest to their left. She'd heard two quick, loud snaps! followed by a swift crackling crash, as if someone had stepped on several branches, and then fallen.

"What?" Rich asked. Her fingernails were biting painfully into his flesh.

"Didn't you hear that?" Sheila asked him, her eyelids flung as wide as they could open, her breath shallow and as quick as her stammering heartbeat. "Didn't you hear that?" she repeated. "Someone's in there!"

"I didn't hear anything," Rich answered, and when she looked at him, amazed, he quickly added, "Really! I didn't hear a thing!"

John had stopped to watch.

"Maybe you shouldn't have brought your girlfriend along," he said, unaffected. "She's freaking out. She's gonna ruin the project."

"Didn't you hear it?" Sheila cried, looking past Rich to Steve, standing several feet away. His head was bowed, and again, he soundlessly shook his head. She grimaced, and glanced at John. "I know I heard something," she told him.

"You probably heard a rabbit," he said. "Or a bird."

"It was too big to be a rabbit or bird!" she cried.

"Okay." Rich interrupted them, holding up a hand. "Whatever. She heard something—leave it at that. Let's just do this and get it over with so we can go!"

Immediately, John turned away, again lifting the recorder to his lips. In Rich's ear, Sheila hissed, "I did hear something!"

"I believe you," he muttered back, but he really didn't. He hadn't heard anything. In fact, they were the only ones making a sound in Dudleytown, and even those were eerily flat, echoless, as if they had entered a two-dimensional realm-and figured her frazzled mind was just playing tricks on her ears. Extracting his aching hand from Sheila's—and she replaced his grasp by hanging onto the back of his t-shirt, bunching the fabric in her fists—Rich lifted the camera to his face, peered through the viewfinder and focused on one of the foundations. It was down to its last layer and nearly swallowed by weeds. Click went the shutter.

"Rich has just taken our first picture," John commented, taking a few steps away toward another of the foundations further down the old road, now nothing more than a wide path. "Only processing will tell if they actually turn out, because everyone else who has ventured into Dudleytown and taken pictures reports that they turn out fuzzy or muddy, and one report claims that upon opening their camera, the film looked like it had been chewed." He stopped, glanced at Rich. "Hey, buddy—hear anything chewing away in there?"

Rich held the camera up to his ear. "Nope ... no chewing." He grinned, but it faltered a moment later.

"No joking," Steve whispered. They all glanced at him, dumbfounded by the eternal prankster's statement. Slowly, he lifted his head, revealing hollowed, hooded eyes and a grim mouth. Sheila gasped, pressing closer to Rich. "I think I'm sick," Steve said, wiping the back of his hand slowly across his mouth. "I wanna go."

"In a few minutes, bro," John answered, and turned away.

"You look like you're gonna throw up," Rich commented. "You're all pale."

"I feel like it. I—" Abruptly, Steve turned and stalked away, hands on hips, legs stiff and jerky. He headed toward one of the cellar holes and stopped, staring into it.

As John began speaking again, wondering exactly where the Dudley brothers had built their homes, Rich felt a hard shove, and stumbled forward, righting himself before he fell onto his face. "Hey!" he said, angrily spinning around and glaring at Sheila. "You didn't have to push me!"

"I didn't!" she protested. When he'd staggered, she'd been forced to let go, and now she held up both hands, as if she was being held up by a bank robber. "I swear, Rich, I didn't touch you! You just shot forward!" Suddenly, she whirled around.

"Did you hear that?" Again, she was staring into the forest to their right; her body bent forward, her eyes narrowed. "I swear, there's something in there!"

"Could you two shut up?" John asked, distractedly. "I'm trying to finish here."

Rich faced him, his camera forgotten. "Something pushed me," he told the bigger boy. His skin was crawling from the touch; a cold, violent push that seemed to come from hands of mightily restrained strength.

John's eyes flickered over the air around him before saying, "Maybe your girlfriend accidentally pushed you. You wanna take some more pictures now?"

I think I wanna go crying home to Mommy, Rich thought, rubbing at the spot on his back, jerking his hand away when he thought of how it had felt. But he only glared and lifted the camera, snapping away without focus or reason.

"Rich," Sheila whispered, miserably.

"Take a picture of me up here," John instructed, walking ten feet up the path, stopping next to another foundation. Jauntily, he crossed his arms and posed with a big cheesy grin. Rich took the picture, loathing the subject in the viewfinder; loathing himself for always going along with whatever John suggested. Demanded. Again, he heartily wished they'd chosen something not quite so intimidating, terrifying ... like the Boston Tea Party, or the history of campaign buttons.

"Standing here in the shadows—because it is darker than the rest of the area, and colder, like the weather's out of whack—it's not difficult to realize how the citizens of Dudleytown must have felt," John said into the recorder. "How scared they must have been, trying to live their lives normally, all the while wondering who was going to disappear next ... who was the next person to go insane ... what mother or child would they say hello to in the morning, only to find slaughtered in their beds that night."

Steve looked aside and watched with bleary eyes as John kicked at some loose rocks next to the foundation. He was no longer dwelling on why his limbs were trembling, and his mind was a dense miasma of scarlet jibberings; it just was. It was this place, this ghost town, and it had begun the second he'd stepped within Dudleytown's borders.

There was a large rock three feet from his feet. He stared at it, and its crevices and sharp edges became a nose, a set of eyes... a face. And he imagined that it had a neck, and a body, and he saw his hands, made strong by an invasive force, wrap around that neck ... and begin to squeeze....

A finger, as slender as a reed, as cold as a sliver of ice, caressed the back of Rich's neck. He twirled around, nearly losing his balance, unwanted fear closing his throat, but again, Sheila was six feet away, her stare still intent on the forest, her arms hugging her torso for warmth and reassurance. As his eyes searched for the unseen culprit, he felt the edges of his mind begin to fray, his throat itch to scream.

"Hey." There was a soft click from behind as John shut off the tape recorder. Anxious to think of anything other than the insanity worming its way into their minds, the rest of the foursome looked at him. His gaze was pensive, but greedy mischief coursed underneath. "No one's ever gone down in these holes, right? They all just took off?" he asked. Rich shook his head, although he wasn't sure. The research he'd done hadn't said if the ones who'd fled Dudleytown—the people who apparently had better sense than they did-had left everything or packed all.

John stepped over the foundation and took a few steps, stopping next to a cellar hole. Silently, blackly, it awaited him. "What if there's stuff down there?" he asked, quietly. "If there is, we could get it and take it back ... we'd get a better grade."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Rich said. John blinked, surprised.

"Why not?"

"You don't know how deep that hole is," he pointed out, although he was not trying to be sensible. Fear still gripped him in a stinking embrace. "What if you get stuck, and we can't get you out? What if it's really deep, and you fall and break your leg? What're we supposed to do then?"

"Okay, Ri-chard," John drawled. "It's a cellar, not a fucking mine shaft. They didn't dig them that deep."

"They dug them deep enough to need stairs," Rich pointed out. "You see any stairs down there?"

"Oh!" Sheila clapped her hands over her mouth. "It's closer," she mumbled, behind her hands. Rich glanced at the forest, still saw nothing, but the hairs were standing at attention on the back of his neck, and he believed.

John exhaled at her, exasperated, and said, "No, I don't see any stairs. Come on! I'll jump down there, have a quick look around, and if I can't haul myself out, you all can make one of those chains and pull me out!"

"No!" It was Steve who yelled, and he rotated slowly, all but his feet moving, until he faced John. He was panting, unable to control his quickened breathing, but he made himself focus, although it was still through a deep red haze. "You motherfucker," he managed, hissing. "Don't you see what's going on? Don't you see what's happening? We want to go." He swallowed hard, in one last attempt to will down the hellish, bloodthirsty urges that had almost overtaken his young body. "Let's go, John."

John took them all in, one at a time, while they waited on the edge of panic. To their amazement, he slowly lifted his right arm, and folded back all his fingers except one-the middle one. Flipping them off, he shouted, "Fine-you go! I'm staying!" And with that, he quickly sat down, scooted onto the edge of the cellar hole, and dropped inside, disappearing from view.

"John!" Sheila screamed. "John!"

"Let him go," Rich said, then jerked and ran forward a few steps as a hand brushed his side. "God!" he yelled, feeling tears spring into his eyes, tears of anger and blinding fright, and scrubbed at his face until his skin felt raw and burned. Changing his mind, he yelled, "John, let's go!"

John didn't answer. Rich glanced at Steve, who'd ceased paying attention and was staring at a large rock, and Sheila, who was taking slow, careful strides away from the forest, backing down the path.

Again, Rich yelled, "John, it's enough! We gotta go!"

A scream, so tortured and terrified that it would have remained imprinted on their minds until their natural dying days, burst from the hole.

Sheila shrieked and stumbled backward, her fingernails digging red grooves into her cheeks as John's shriek split the stagnant air of Dudleytown.

"John!" Rich screamed, and took a few steps forward before skidding to a halt. John's scream was cut off long before it should have ended, as if someone-something-had made him stop.

"John?" Sheila cried, weakly. There was no answer.

"John?" Rich tried again, tentatively, but he would move no closer to the hole.

"Is he okay?" she asked. Her boyfriend shook his head.

"John?" Rich asked, a third time, and shivered. "I don't ... I don't wanna look."

"I'll look." The words came out as a growl from Steve's mouth, raising Sheila's hackles, sending her heartbeat into a tempo more thunderous than it had been while staring into the forest, trying to find the maker of the sounds. And before she could speak, could raise the warning that her instincts assured her were real, Steve had stalked across the clearing, grabbed the camera strap around Rich's neck, and brutally pulled.

"NO!" she shrieked, so hard that something in her throat tore. Rich gave a strangled, surprised squawk and began beating the air around his head, but Steve leaned his head away, yanking more viciously, his wrists crossed, the camera strap bunched in his fists. Rich's feet beat ideograms on the path, his body jerked and heaved, but still Steve clung tight to him, strangling him, choking the life out of him.

Sheila's horrified trance broke, and she took a step forward, meaning to run over to them, jump on Steve, do everything in her meager power to tear the boy off Rich. A sharp crack, followed by a rapid rustling, sounded to her right, and Sheila saw the branches part at the edge of the forest. What emerged ground her feet to a halt, made all the strength in her legs seep away in an instant, and suddenly the shadowy world grew even darker.

The thing was black, hairless, leathery, without face or sex. But it moved with incomparable speed, and although it had no mouth, it shrieked with a hunger and malice that only the bowels of hell knew. It shrieked, and it was coming for her.

A second before her mind gave way, and all conscious thought collapsed, Sheila thought, This is what they saw. This is Dudleytown's curse. She collapsed into a merciful faint that she would never awaken from.

Steve never heard, lost in the demonic grips of possession, and several long, violently pleasurable moments later, Rich's feet ceased their stamping, his hands fell limply to his sides, and his head lolled lifelessly on its stalk. Panting, rasping, slippery with sweat, Steve threw the body to the ground. The camera split open under the body, the lens cracking.

"Uh! Uh! UH!" He could say nothing more, and began to back away, his fists rhythmically punching his face, the skin around his eyes and upon his cheekbones swelling with each blow. He could not talk, the formerly carefree boy wholly lost, but the urges that had overtaken him upon entrance to Dudleytown still pulled at him like the tide to the moon. He wanted more. He needed more.

His bloodshot eyes frantically rolling, he spied the way the demon had gone, his gaze honing in on the broken branches, the stamped underbrush, and with a mighty howl of bloodlust and rage, Steve ran into the forest.

Five minutes after Dudleytown had returned to the silence it had grown accustomed to—for rarely did anything living venture into the area, and even birds had the instinctive sense to take a wide detour—two white hands emerged over the lip of one of the cellar holes. Slowly, grunting and heaving, John pulled himself up and out of the old cellar, sliding forward on his belly across the dirt until his legs were free and he could turn over. Standing up, he brushed tan dust from his hair and clothes, wiggling his back some, hearing dirt sift from his pack. Without a look at Rich's still-warm corpse, without a glance at the part in the forest that Sheila and Steve had disappeared into, John left Dudleytown.

His great-aunt Adelaide was waiting for him on her porch, sitting in her rocker, two glasses of iced tea and a small plate of dainty cookies on a standing tray beside her. As John crossed the darkened yard, he realized that she did look like a ghost. But she wasn't, she was his flesh and blood, and she greeted him with a sweet, loving smile as he stepped onto the deep porch.

"All done, dear?" she asked. There was another wooden rocker on her other side, and he sank into it, dropping his pack on the floorboards.

"Yeah," he answered, wiping sweat off his neck. As soon as he'd stepped onto Bald Mountain Road, the normal heat of the day had reappeared and assaulted him. "It happened fast, like you said it would."

"It always does." Adelaide nodded, taking her eyes off him to peer out of the yard and across the road. "The visitors are so few and far between now ... the demons get so hungry they can't wait."

"I wish I'd seen it," John commented. He'd heard it all from within the safety of the black cellar, but it hadn't been enough to satiate his curiosity.

Adelaide shot him a sharp look. "No, you don't," she snapped. "You may be one of the Dudleys, but that's not enough to save you."

He frowned. "It saved you."

Her face, full of bottomless wrinkles and weathered with age, softened some, and she patted his hand. "Because I gave," she reminded him. "If they'd caught you before you gave, you wouldn't have been safe. But ... now you have, and everything's fine." She nodded, her gaze again drawn in the direction of Dudleytown, where their cursed ancestors had settled more than two hundred years ago. Cursed for eternity ... but not every moment of it. Sometimes ... sometimes the Dudleys were granted a temporary reprieve.

"They are appeased," she whispered, speaking of things dark and demoniacal.

"For now," John said.

Her smile slipped.

"For now." Adelaide straightened, forcing up some sunny cheer. She picked up the china plate and held it out to him. "Cookie, dear?"

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