This Neighborhood of Mine: Tales from Springvale Volume 1

Chapter 1 - Beautiful Lights Follow

October 9th, 1996

Somewhere Down South

ZZTT...ZRRT

ZZTT...ZRRT

"Hello?"

"Damien, where the hell are you?" Silence. "Damien! Answer me!"

"It's all going to make sense soon, Sarah. The dreams, the voices, the nightmares—all of it!"

"You need to come home now, Damien. You don't have any idea what tomorrow is, do you?"

"I just need a few more days. I found the town! It's real, Sarah. I found the town in my dreams. It's all coming together now. You'll see."  Silence.

"If you miss your son's birthday tomorrow, I want a divorce. Mark and I will not be here whenever you come back. This is your last chance."

"When I come home, you will see I did all this for us. Me solving this mystery is our ticket to being happy. Don't you see? If I don't fix this now, our son will eventually have to do it. I can't do this to him." Silence.

"Damien, have you been drinking again?" Silence. "Goodbye, Damien, hopefully not for good."

Click!

Relentless rain battered against the hotel windows, making it hard for Damien to hear his wife. However, he knew this was likely the end of a thirteen-year marriage.

Damien peered between the tattered blinds, as he had every fifteen minutes since he arrived at the rundown residence. His watch told him he had maybe half an hour before they would come. His paranoia wasn't new; he just never thought it could be this bad.

He frantically sifted through the seemingly endless papers strewn about the bed. One picture of a missing kid, another of an abandoned train tunnel, and four autopsy photos, none of them bringing any connections. Damien thought there had to be a reason a box filled with things like this was left on his front doorstep. The only thing that made sense was getting to the town in his dreams called Springvale, which was still a loose connection.

Suddenly, the clock radio on the nightstand turned on to its loudest volume, causing Damien to fall off the bed. He shielded his ears from the news anchor roaring on about a recent bill signed by Bill Clinton.

None of the buttons would turn the radio off, leaving Damien no choice but to rip the device from the wall and slam it on the ground. Despite now being scattered into a thousand pieces, the news anchor's voice continued, although now distorting into something else:

Damien...Damien...Have we found youuuuuuuuuuuuu?

The laughing voice gargled and faded out as the electronic pieces finally gave out. Damien stood over the radio remnants, stunned. He reassured himself that what he had heard was not real and that there was still work to be done.

A cigarette tried its best to calm Damien's nerves, as did the paperwork he had bored his attention into. He rechecked the blinds, seeing that the rain had moved on, signaling he should do the same.

Damien stacked his papers, stuffing them into his worn-out backpack, along with his camera and voice recorder. He took the liquor bottle from the bathroom counter, filling a paper cup for one last drink, but paused.

He was sure he had locked the door, which he now saw in the mirror was wide open behind him—open for the things that followed him to rush in and take him into the night. Damien spun around, pulled the gun from his belt, and held his breath. He was holding his arms rigid as he aimed at the doorway. The wind howled from outside as if to mock his terror.