The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  Rex gave a few last, desperate flails.

  It worked.

  The spirit was gone.

  He pushed through the water, only to feel it return moments later, surrounding him once again.

  This time, though, Rex had a minor revelation: the spirit was in distress. Maybe the unusual amount of blood is overwhelming it.

  Whatever the cause, the presence around him seemed fragmented somehow, there one moment and gone the next. He felt the water squeezing his face, desperately pushing on his regulator and mask, then relenting.

  It was almost as if the spirit couldn’t find a way in.

  Screw you, One Below, Rex thought, realizing it no longer had enough of a hold to keep him from moving. I’m saving my best friend, whether you like it or not.

  He battled forward through the water—finally, the fins were helpful—until he caught sight of Ben next to the spring wall, where Alicia’s head was sticking out just as it had on the video.

  They could actually do this.

  He expected Ben to immediately start digging her out, but instead he was pointing emphatically past her.

  Holy shit.

  Leif’s head was sticking out of the wall too.

  Rex felt a billion things at once, all of which he pushed aside in order to begin using the back of his hammer to hack away at the rocky mud wall holding in Leif, as Ben did the same for Alicia.

  The rocks were loose enough to dislodge, but most of Leif’s body was covered.

  This might take a while.

  * * *

  —

  THOUGH JANINE WAS considerably caught off-guard by the turn of events their night had taken, she wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Mary Hattaway was part of the cult.

  “Was my message on your grandmother’s car not clear enough?” Mary said brightly into Janine’s ear, gripping her right arm so she couldn’t go anywhere.

  “Oh, it was perfectly clear,” Janine said. “I just don’t take orders from human sludge.”

  Mary reached toward Janine’s left arm—the one Travis was holding with a firm but gentle pressure—and yanked the camera out of her hand.

  “Give that back,” Janine said.

  “I don’t think so.” Mary looked into the lens as if she was testing it out. “Might give it to my Tammy—she’ll think it’s a riot. Or maybe…” Mary let the camera slide out of her hand and clunk onto the dirt. “Oopsy.”

  Janine wanted to scream, but she didn’t want Mary to see how much anger she was inspiring.

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that, dear.” But instead of bending down to pick it up, Mary stomped on the camera three times with her white Nike running shoe.

  “No!” Janine said, feeling like she’d lost a limb.

  The VHS cassette fell out, raw tape spilling on the ground in chaotic coils.

  “Oh, come on, Mary. You didn’t have to do that,” Travis said. “That camera wasn’t hurtin’ nobody.”

  “Shut up, Travis!” Mary snapped.

  “You are a terrible fucking person,” Donna said, restrained by two other men next to Janine.

  “Your mother would be ashamed to hear you talk like that,” Mary said.

  “My mother thinks you’re a bitch.”

  Mary lost her fake smile.

  Whitewood, meanwhile, seemed euphoric. “We have been blessed tonight!” he proclaimed. “Those boys offered themselves to the purifying waters without us having to lift a finger. If the One Below accepts either of them, the seventh Lost Cause will have been delivered and the Prophecy will be fulfilled!”

  The cult members shouted in celebration, several of them beginning to cry. This was even more screwed up than Janine could’ve guessed.

  “Thank you, Master!” one of the men holding Donna shouted, causing her to turn her head in recognition.

  “Dr. Bob?”

  “Hi, Donna,” Dr. Bob said, pulling off his hood to reveal his glistening bald head and round, frameless glasses. He had the same caring face he’d had during each of Donna’s appointments over the course of her lifetime. “I know it’s hard to understand, darlin’. But this spring is gonna save our town.”

  “You’re right, I don’t understand,” Donna said, remembering the darkness she’d encountered under that water. Her muscles tensed under Dr. Bob’s grip. “I don’t understand why my dad had to die.”

  “Oh, Donna,” Dr. Bob said, reminding her of his response years ago when she’d gotten up the nerve to tell him that she thought she was depressed. “That was just a car accident. And I’m still truly sorry for your loss, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart.” Donna jerked her neck back, slamming her head into Dr. Bob’s nose.

  As he cried out in pain, Janine took advantage of the brief commotion, jabbing her elbow into Mary Hattaway’s stomach, knocking the wind out of her.

  Janine was just about to use her free arm to bury a fist in Travis’s stomach when Leggett Shackelford—who’d been restraining Donna along with Dr. Bob—folded his monstrous arms around her, and Donna, too, effectively locking them both in place.

  “Don’t try anything like that again,” he said.

  Mary stood up slowly, gathering herself. “Down here,” she said, bringing her face close to Janine’s, “we teach our girls not to hit.” She spit, the viscous substance reeking of stale cigarettes as it streamed down Janine’s cheek. “You’re lucky the One Below isn’t interested in Lost Causes your age. Because if He was, I’d throw you in that spring myself.”

  Janine squirmed in Shackelford’s vise-like grip, wishing she could get loose and knock Mary in the stomach a couple dozen more times.

  “What’s takin’ so long?” Whitewood said, seeming slightly panicked as he leaned out over the wild, bubbling water. “Those boys should have been accepted or rejected by now.”

  The cult was silent, watching their leader like a hawk, absorbing his anxiety as if it were their own.

  “Master,” Mary Hattaway said after a long moment, “do you think their masks might be…preventing the One Below from his evaluation?”

  Whitewood’s head jerked toward Mary, his eyes trembling in their sockets.

  “Or maybe not,” Mary said, bowing her head.

  “Dammit!” Whitewood screamed at the spring. “We’re running out of time! Start untying some of the Candidati.” He gestured to the line of terrified kids. “We must have one more accepted before midnight, or all of this will have been for nothing!”

  * * *

  —

  REX HELD TIGHT to his hammer—continuing to chip away at the last of the spring wall holding Leif in place—as the spirit tried to rip it from his hand.

  He and Ben had been dealing with this near-constant interference the entire time they’d been digging, the spirit seeming to get stronger and more focused as time passed. Their bags of pig’s blood were now empty, but they’d nearly finished the job.

  Rex tore away one last particularly large rock and felt a burst of joy as Leif’s body sagged forward. Rex reached out to hold him, grabbing the rope that Ben had already tied around Alicia and gently looping it around his best friend’s waist.

  Gotcha, buddy, Rex thought as he looked at Leif.

  Leif’s eyes were open but unfocused, his jaw agape.

  I know, Rex thought. I missed you, too.

  Ben double-knotted the rope around Leif and Alicia and tested it with a few sharp tugs. He pointed toward the side of the spring opposite Whitewood and the cult, grabbed the rope close to Alicia, then began kicking his fins, pulling their helpless cargo along. Rex understood: since they had no pullers waiting on the shore to haul them in, they’d have to tow their friends back themselves. Rex grasped the rope and started kicking.

  They hadn’t made it five feet before the darkness engulfed them, violently dragging
Leif and Alicia—and Rex and Ben with them—back to the spring wall.

  Rex’s hopes came crashing down as he realized just what the spirit was capable of. He and Ben stared at each other, both obviously thinking the same thing:

  How the hell are we going to do this?

  There was a splash from above.

  About fifteen feet away, Rex saw a young boy in a jumpsuit plunge down into the water.

  The spirit left the four of them immediately, darting to the boy and enveloping him.

  Rex was thinking they should go help him before he realized:

  This was their chance.

  He and Ben began kicking their fins again, moving Leif and Alicia through the water as fast as they possibly could. They made it a little less than ten feet before they saw the boy in the jumpsuit launched out of the spring, as if the spirit had decided it had no use for him.

  Moments later, the spirit returned to them, Rex and Ben kicking with everything they had, barely making a difference as the frenzied shadow towed them back almost to their starting point.

  Another splash.

  Then another.

  A teenage boy and girl came plummeting down together. Rex suddenly understood that the cult was throwing these kids in, offering them up to “the One Below.” Insane.

  He couldn’t think about it too hard, though, because the spirit sped away again, and he and Ben resumed their exhausting rescue. Rex was running on sheer adrenaline at this point; he wondered how much longer he could keep it up.

  The spirit, meanwhile, bounced between the boy and the girl, seeming confused as to whom to engulf first. It finally settled on the girl, wrapping her up in its blackness.

  Rex and Ben made it back to the spot where the spirit had last stopped them and kept going, Leif and Alicia still drifting behind them.

  The girl was propelled toward the spring wall.

  The spirit had decided she was worth keeping.

  Rex and Ben kicked harder.

  By the time the spirit was violently ejecting the teenage boy from the spring, Rex and Ben had managed to get Leif and Alicia a few feet from the shallows. Just a bit further and they’d be able to walk out of this hellscape.

  But the spirit had other ideas, wrenching them back toward the wall.

  Rex was ready to concede defeat. There was no way he’d be able to swim all the way across the spring again.

  Before they’d even been pulled halfway, though: another splash.

  Then two more.

  And another.

  Whitewood and the cult must have been getting desperate, throwing in several students at a time. Ben and Rex took full advantage of the diversion, somehow finding the energy to zoom forward.

  A young blond boy was accepted and pulled along to the wall, the three other students ruthlessly catapulted to the shore, all of which gave Rex and Ben more than enough time to pull Leif and Alicia all the way to the shallows.

  As their heads broke the surface of the water, Alicia and Leif lurched to life, coughing and gasping like newborn babies torn from the womb.

  They’d made it. Rex wanted to pass out.

  * * *

  —

  “WHY IS NOTHING happening!” Whitewood screamed. “The Keeper has accepted two more! That makes eight!”

  On the opposite side of the spring, he saw the reason his math was wrong: two of his rebellious souls were no longer with the Keeper.

  Ben and Rex were helping Alicia and Leif to shore, where the two freed captives both collapsed onto all fours and began, with a series of terrible retches, to purge the spring water.

  “Get them!” Whitewood yelled. “We only need one more Lost Cause!”

  Mary Hattaway, Travis, Dr. Bob, and Shackelford raced toward the escaped Lost Causes, abandoning Janine and Donna. Seizing the opportunity, Janine immediately ran to help the tied-up kids. Donna followed.

  “Well, this isn’t good,” Ben said, seeing the four adults headed in their direction.

  Rex knew neither of them had the energy to fight off the cult members. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Let me think,” Ben said, silent for a few seconds. “No.”

  This definitely wasn’t good.

  But then Rex heard something. A sound both foreign and familiar.

  Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh

  “Do you hear that?” he asked Ben.

  They looked across the spring, where the Horn-cart was barreling through the grass toward the cult, and suddenly Rex knew what he was hearing.

  New Kids on the Block.

  Mark Hornhat sat behind the wheel, one triumphant finger in the air, nodding his head to “Hangin’ Tough” as it blasted from the golf cart speakers. He was upon the cult in a matter of seconds, not slowing down before crashing into two of the robed figures holding torches.

  They fell to the ground in a daze, and Hornhat steered the still-speeding Horn-cart toward Sheriff Lawson, who was unable to dodge it before his legs rolled up under the bumper, the electric vehicle running him over, knocking him unconscious.

  “Don’t cross our path ’cause you’re gonna get stomped!” Hornhat sang along with NKOTB as his back wheels made a speed bump of the sheriff. He drove over to the line of students waiting to be thrown into the springs, where Janine and Donna were already untying two kids.

  “Now you guys untie the others!” Janine told them, and the students sprang into action.

  “Stop them!” Whitewood screamed, spit flying from his mouth as he watched his plan unraveling. A small crew of cult members who had been tossing students into the water ran toward Janine, Donna, Hornhat, and the newly unbound kids.

  “Here!” Hornhat parked his cart and passed two golf clubs from the back to Janine and Donna. He then grabbed more for the students who’d been freed before reaching into the cart one last time and emerging triumphantly with his nunchucks. “Time to party,” he said, swinging them around indiscriminately in the air, just barely missing Donna’s face.

  The small group of cult members was closing in, led by C.B. Donner of C.B.’s Auto Parts. “Get yer hands off the Candidati!” he shouted, charging straight at Janine, an unhinged look in his eyes.

  Janine reared back with Hornhat’s Big Bertha driver—accessing the one golf lesson her dad had given her when she was eleven—then swung the club around at full force, the bulbous metal head connecting with C.B.’s “fuzzy dice.”

  “Fore,” Janine said as the howling man fell over.

  The other cultists were upon them, trying to restrain whomever they could, but the kids held their ground next to Janine and Donna, wildly swinging their clubs. None of them was really hitting their targets, but they were still enough of a threat to keep the cult from tying any of them back up. And they were more effective than Hornhat, in any case, who was currently doing nothing but grimacing after having nunchucked himself in the thigh.

  Across the spring, Alicia and Leif were still retching. Rex and Ben removed their tanks, fins, and masks, preparing themselves to become a human blockade as Travis, Mary, Shackelford, and Dr. Bob stepped toward them.

  “I hate that it turned out this way, y’all,” Travis said, placing his head in his hands. “I really do.”

  “Shut up!” Mary said. “Just throw them back in!”

  Travis took a reluctant step forward, followed by the less reluctant Leggett Shackelford.

  Rex and Ben raised their hammers.

  “Don’t do this, Travis,” Rex said, still out of breath.

  “I’m sorry, bud,” Travis said. “You’ll thank me one day.”

  He lunged at Rex, who immediately swung his hammer down. Travis caught his arm, and the two of them tumbled to the ground, Travis easily pinning Rex and prying the hammer away.

  Ben was only slightly more successful; he struck Shackelford’s shoulder, but it bar
ely slowed him. The huge man knocked the hammer from Ben’s hand and wrapped him in a bear hug. “Get it done,” he said to his fellow cult members.

  Rex writhed in Travis’s grip as he watched Mary and Dr. Bob run to Alicia and Leif, their path clear.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN SHERIFF LAWSON regained consciousness after his dance with the Horn-cart, he saw the brawl unfolding between the cult and the now-weaponized golf gang. He was astounded that the kids seemed to have the advantage over the adults, who cowered as the metal clubs whipped back and forth, some of the students loudly chanting “Don’t follow!” over and over again.

  This ends now, he thought, reaching into his robe and pulling out his service revolver.

  “Gun!” Janine shouted, seeing the sheriff’s six-shooter glinting in the torch light as he pointed it at them.

  “Drop the clubs, kids,” Sheriff Lawson said before aiming his weapon at a terrified Hornhat. “You’re gonna regret driving that thing over me, you little punk. This’ll teach y—”

  From behind the sheriff, a teenage girl with freckles swung her pitching wedge up into his hand.

  The sheriff screamed, grabbing his stinging knuckles as the gun flew through the air and landed in the thick grass.

  The girl with the freckles directed a second swing to the back of the sheriff’s head, the club catching his robe but still delivering a dazing blow.

  Across the way, Shackelford locked Ben in his firm grasp.

  “Ain’t gettin’ away this time,” he said, hoisting Ben over his shoulder and stepping off the bank into the shallow water.

  Ben flailed his limbs madly, making himself a perfectly uncooperative payload. As Shackelford adjusted his grip to steady himself, Ben grabbed the hood of the man’s cumbersome robe and yanked it down over his face.

  “You little bastard!” Shackelford slammed Ben down into the shallow water.

  Mary and Dr. Bob had been struggling to lift the limp, barely conscious bodies of Alicia and Leif, but they’d each finally found a good hold and were starting to drag them the few steps to the water.