The Locust Man

Chapter One

Every town has their own version of 'The Boogeyman'. A monster, cryptid, phantom, whatever you want to call it. It's all essentially the same thing- just a scary story they tell kids to get them to behave. An urban legend is just a life lesson disguised as a horror story, after all. For us folk living up in the tiny and once prosperous gold-mining town of Trillium, ours was called The Locust Man.

Now, let me start by saying that I fully realize how ridiculous that name probably sounds to you. The Locust Man? Pfttt. What's he going to do besides get stuck in the grill of someone's pickup truck? Destroy some crops? Oooh, he sounds real scary... yeah, I know. Stupid, right? That's what I thought, too. Yet, here I sit nearly twenty years later, still trying to reconcile with what happened. A grown-ass woman who's wiser, stronger and even more grounded in reality than my adolescent self, and still... I find myself hesitating to even write that name down.

I suppose, as with all stories, we should go back to where it all started. I remember, as a young child I had always thought it was rather strange our town was called Trillium, considering I had never come across even a single one growing there. If you don't know, a trillium is a small white flower with three petals and a bright yellow center. They sort of look like if you took a lily and tore off every other petal playing 'he loves me, he loves me not'. In elementary school, around 2nd grade or so, we were taught all about this elusive flower I had never even seen in real life, and how very proud our town was to be named in its honor.

Trillium, Colorado was established in 1922. A new town born in the wake of a tragedy that had struck the previous town, which had once sat in the same location. A 'rebranding' tactic, I suppose one could say. For us, and those that came before us, the trillium blossom was supposed to be a symbol of hope and rebirth. Knowing all that I know now, that sentiment feels morbidly absurd.

Growing up in a small and mostly isolated town like Trillium, there really wasn't much for a kid to do. You'd have to drive almost an hour to get to the closest mall or movie theater, so those trips were reserved only for special occasions. The high school kids would all go hang out at the roller rink downtown, or in the parking lot of the old run-down diner called Slim's that sat across it. My friends and I weren't allowed to go downtown without a chaperone yet, and by that age, going with parental supervision was both inconvenient and embarrassing, to say the least.

My neighborhood consisted of a row of modest homes situated on a long dead-end road called Rain Street. There was a patch of woods at the end of our road that separated the abandoned mining system from the main part of town. The old trail that the minors used was still easily accessible, for the most part, so we spent a lot of time in those woods after school and on the weekends.

We had a 'secret spot' which, what we thought at the time, was about halfway through the woods and ten steps away from a small creek that ran the length of the area. 'Rain Creek', we used to call it. There was a small circular clearing there and we had created our own little clubhouse in the center of it, using old milk crates for supports, half-broken wooden pallets as walls, and a few old lawn chairs one of the neighbors had thrown out. I made my contribution by bringing an old tarp we had lying around in our basement, which found new life by serving as the roof of our arboraceous establishment.

Our parents weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of us running around in the woods by ourselves, but as long as we stayed within earshot and made it back before the streetlights came on, they probably figured it was still safer than letting us run around with all the hooligans downtown unsupervised. They picked their battles, I guess, choosing what they thought to be the lesser of two evils.

It was me, Lacey, Devin, Mikey and Michelle. We were all best friends- pretty much inseparable, except the boys weren't invited to the girls' sleepovers, and vice versa. Everyday after school we'd all get dropped off by the bus at the very beginning of our street, and it became a running joke between the Rain Street Gang (as we liked to call ourselves) to all run and try to get off of the bus as quickly as possible. Me, Lacey and Devin would all yell out, 'Last two home are some rotten eggs!', while Mikey and Michelle tried to push past us to get a head start.