Spring Park

(6)

I did it! I turned it on by myself! Anyways, recently a very disturbing event happened and due to recent discoveries, I am recording this before I record the last part of the story. I went out of my house, which was just a small, cheap, apartment that we'd have to live in until someone moved out of another house, and out for a stroll when I saw Delma on top of a car screaming at people about how we need to burn the forest down, and that there are no grizzly bears in the South West part of Idaho. Before people came to drag her away she yelled about how Spring Park would overtake us and that it would take everything from us. One thing I immediately noticed was that Mallory was nowhere to be found, which was odd because she almost never went to town without them. She came over to me and told me that she was leaving the town and told me she was moving to the coast and that I should come with her, but I denied her request because I had to take care of Aaron and Stige and I had a job in Spring Town. She told me where she was moving and that I was always welcome to come to live with her, and then she left. I haven't seen her since. The police arrived a few minutes later, but weren't able to find her or Mallory. I later learned that she had burned down her house and that they had to put out the fire that was consuming the forest. They gave me what they recovered, which was a cassette tape in a fireproof bag. I'm going to play it now. "I leave this message for Aaron, Stige, and Janus. I know that you have realized that Mallory digs holes at night. I had to stay awake all through the night to make sure he didn't hurt himself. On day, he didn't come back for hours later than he usually did. After ten minutes of him not returning, I grabbed a flashlight and went out to find him. I found that he had dug one deep hole instead of six three-foot-deep holes. At the bottom, there was a metal trap door. I walked into the hole, pulled the trap door open, and peered down the hole. Light poured out from within the tunnel. I don't remember what was down there, but I can only give you a warning. Don't go into the forest, don't go into the tunnel, and stay away from Lilith." That's where it ends. The first thing I did was go into the towns archives and search for any records of Lilith. I found no records of anyone ever living in Spring Town named Lilith. I decided to start digging through any books that looked like they hadn't been touched in years, and found a record of the murders of James Parker. He killed four people, and then killed a lot more people. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was a child, and that had driven him to madness. He feared the voices which plagued his life, but the more he killed, the more he came at peace with the voices in his head. He joined a society with the goal to create weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War. He would take living people and the bodies of the dead and combine them together to make monstrosities. After many successful attempts, they realized that they could not control what they had created. James Parker helped create one more creature, their fifty-first test subject. He left immediately after. The creature did what it was supposed to do, it began to destroy what they had created, but it turned on them, and destroyed every last one of them. James then got his name change, and then went through gender reassignment to hide from the government. She disappeared and had no more records of what she changed her name to, or where she went. There were no more records on the this foundation or their creations. I couldn't find any of these documents anywhere else, they had been tucked between the pages of a "Moon People" which had years of dust on it. There was one more thing I had to do, which was go to the tunnel. I hiked up the hill and to my second childhood house. All of the memories of my childhood, all the memories of my friends and of Aaron And Stige. All of the memories of Delma and Mallory, and with them all the memories of the gas man. I looked toward Stige who had agreed to come with me to the tunnel. He scanned the area and pointed toward the small shack which was the only thing still standing. Stige kept his hand on his gun which was loose and ready to be drawn on his belt. He had become a police officer in hopes that he could save people from both the creatures and the maniacs of Spring Park, but was off duty today. We headed toward the large hole on the side of the yard. Ashes filled the air as we walked through the burnt remains of the house and surrounding trees. The hole was at least twenty feet deep, and we had to carefully step down to the metal trapdoor on the floor of the hole. I pulled the door open and descended into the darkness below. Stige passed me a flashlight before climbing down himself. He drew his gun and silently commanded me to point my flashlight down the hallway. The damp tunnel reminded me of the bunker, which this place was most likely connected to. Every now and then, a light bulb would flicker on. I accidentally kicked over a pile of papers. I reached down and picked one up. It read "#32: Test subject made from 23 year old Sam, 39 year old Peter, 51 year old Patrick, 27 year old John, 44 year old Patric, and 35 year old Dave. The two living subjects used in the experiment were 18 year old Helen and 26 year old Tom. Experiment successful. Experiment 32 released into the containment area." I folded it and shoved it into my bags, and then grabbed the other 50 pieces of paper and put them into a folder before sticking it all into my bag. I needed proof that Delma was not crazy and that there was something to fear in the depths of Spring Park. We continued deeper into the tunnel. I recognized the hallway we were in as the one where the creature had come from, and I recognized the doorway from which it had emerged. We walked into the room, which had a staircase that went down. We both descended into the lower level, every footstep on the metal staircase ringing out through the halls. We reached the bottom, and I could taste metal in the air and hear the mush in every step upon the thin scarlet layer that pooled across the floor. We walked deeper into the bunker and came to another door. I pulled the door open, and we walked inside. The wall across from us was lined with human sized chambers, some were open but most were locked shut. I looked into the closed ones. The first thirteen were empty, and then I got to one which still had a light coming from it. The creature within snarled at me, and the sounds of scratching coming from within. I backed up, and accidentally kicked something. The chamber click, and the front unlocked and lifted upwards. The creature grabbed onto the doorway, it's many hands holding it up. The creature had an open rib cage, but no organs, and it's head had three hands on it. It didn't have legs, just hands. Where it's legs should have been were a pair of arms. It had eight arms each with long, clawed hands on them. It began crawling on all eights toward us. I grabbed my switchblade and clicked it open. A hand reached out of its mouth and it sped toward us on all nine of its limbs. Stige shot bullet after bullet into its head, but the creature was unwavering. "Run!" I yelled. I grabbed Stige's arm and we ran back toward the exit, but we couldn't find it. We ran past the creature and further down the hallway. The creature climbed onto the wall and up into the ventilation system, the changing of its feet ringing out through the chamber. I could see a small light at the end of the hallway. We came to a dead end which had multiple cans of gasoline in it. The creatures skutling got closer as I came to the vent entrance that was right in front of us. Stige grabbed my switchblade from my hand and plunged it into the gas can before throwing it in front of us. He pulled my lighter out of his pocket. I wasn't allowed to have my own personal firearm of lighter because my doctor believes that my illness could cause me to resort to doing something rash. He pulled me past the gasoline pool and waited for the creature to emerge from the darkness. The scratching got closer and closer until it stopped. The creature dropped to the ground and screamed at us. Stige lit the lighter and then threw it at the monstrosity. The flaming creature charged toward us as it burnt. Stige shot another bullet into the creature, this time into its arm. It tumbled forward before letting out another ear piercing scream. Stige grabbed my arm and we ran in the opposite direction as it scrambled back to its hands. I still don't understand how this thing was once human. It chased after us, only being slowed down slightly from its missing limb. We reached another room, and a small amount of sunlight leaked in from the next room over. The room before us had a large propane tank in it. The creature tackled Stige to the ground and began scratching and biting him. I grabbed the propane tank and charge the monster, tackling it off of Stige and then smashing the tank onto the creatures head, blood oozing from what remained of its face. The creature wiggled and made a useless attempt at screaming at me again. I raised the metal tank above my head one more time and then brought it down soon the creatures chest. I heard the crack of all of its ribs and some of its vertebrae. The creature gave out one more pitiful squeake. Stige pulled me off of the creatures mangled corpse and we started toward the sunlight. We emerged from a manhole in the middle of the street, and we hurried to the police station so that they could investigate more into the bunker, but when they got down there, the body was gone. We had proof that we had come across the monster, like the blood that soaked my skin and clothes that belonged to David Wilenski who had disappeared twenty years prior. The police were useless and claimed they had better things to do than try and hunt down whoever had made the bunker. I think I knew who. Maybe it was the gas mask and the gear laying around that gave it away, or maybe, it was the abundance of cigarettes.