A Car, A Torch, A Death

I moved to Summerhill, Vermont near the end of the summer. Just in time for school, I was ripped from my hometown and plopped here. And let me tell you, this place is weird.

I moved here from Brooklyn. More people lived in my apartment building than this entire godforsaken town. I look out the window on every side of my new house and all I see is corn. And the people are weird, too. You can't walk down the street without being stared at by everyone who passes you. Now, I don't know if that's just because I'm new and this entire town is like a clique, but it starts to get to you.

So there I was, a few days into my sophomore year at a new high school, suffering through some major culture shock, and already people had started picking on me.

At first I thought people were just genuinely nice here. I heard that small towns can be like that. By the second day, I already had made what I thought might be some new friends. But then they started making shit up, like they were trying to play a prank on me. They told me this town was dangerous. It's definitely weird, but absolutely nothing about this town seemed dangerous. Especially not after moving from Brooklyn. But they told me things. Stories and such. Stupid things at first. They said the town's standard time is a few minutes ahead of all the surrounding towns and no one quite knows why. They insisted if you crossed the town line while the sun was rising or setting, you could just see it shift back a few inches. I thought this story was kinda cool, but they slowly got creepier.

They told me that every night at 11:23 sharp, everyone in the town could hear a faint scuttling in their wall, like something with claws was scurrying through it. Every house in the town. They insisted it was in a different spot in every house, and sometimes difficult to find, but I knew this was just because they knew I wouldn't hear any scuttling in my house.

As the days and weeks went on, they told me more stories. You could hear what sounded like construction through the open windows at the school several times throughout the day. Whenever this sound of heavy machinery happened, every set of eyes in the class turned to me. Just briefly. But it happened nearly every time, so often that I decided to ask one of my new friends about it. Her face went pale when I did.

"You don't have a lot of time left, man," she said vaguely, creating more questions than she answered. "You gotta do the ritual."

A wave of exasperation washed over me. They were going to make me do some stupid initiation or whatever. If I had to eat something weird or go streaking or something like that, I would gladly accept social condemnation. I wasn't dealing with that bullshit. I don't know how she managed to make herself look so convincingly scared.

"Or what?" I questioned.

"Or bad things."

I frowned at another vague answer. "What the hell is the ritual?"

"You have to say that you'll do it first. I'll walk you through it when you do."

This earned a giant "No way" from me, despite my friend's pleading to follow through with it. I wasn't going along with their stupid prank, not when I didn't even know what it was.

So I didn't. I ignored my friends when they begged me to perform the "ritual." But I have to admit, that conversation did freak me out a little.

One day, I was feeling a little bit extra on edge. Every day leading up to this one, the construction had gotten progressively louder and louder. Sometimes not noticeably so, but I always did seem to notice.

This town was weird and it was starting to get to me. I stared out the window, trying to locate the source of the construction. It sounded like it was close, but I didn't see any sign of it. There was a parking lot that lead around the corner of the school. Beyond it was a steep incline about twenty feet high with a forest on top of it. Peeking through the trees, I could just see a huge, tall, wooden structure built into the trees, with ropes hanging along it. The school's "ropes course." I couldn't help but think that it looked like nooses. Just nooses, and no construction.