The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  In his exhaustion, Rex had given up fighting against Travis, who still had him pinned, but seeing his best friends being carried back to the spirit’s lair gave him a second wind.

  He twisted his body, retracting his legs beneath Travis and kicking out as hard as he could.

  “Oof!” Travis said as he was knocked to the ground.

  Thank you, scooter leg, Rex thought, scrambling to his feet and charging toward Mary and Dr. Bob. He made a mad leap, tackling their ankles just as they were about to drop Alicia and Leif back into the water, all five of them landing in a tangled heap.

  Wayne Whitewood looked to both sides of the spring, years of careful plotting culminating in this utter fiasco—the inept pile-up happening on the far side of the spring, his usually subdued students ruthlessly attacking his followers on the near side. He needed just one more Lost Cause for the Keeper, or else he would never be reunited with his sweet Ruby. The real Ruby. In the flesh. Emptied of that terrible spring water and no longer in the menacing grip of a dark spirit.

  If you wanted something done, sometimes you just had to do it yourself.

  Whitewood pulled out his large ceremonial knife and walked toward the few students who remained tied up. He quickly assessed them, choosing a boy with a crew cut, who, even though he was shaking like a leaf, seemed to have a rebellious look in his eyes.

  “Your time has come,” Whitewood said, cutting through the boy’s rope with a swift flick of his blade and bending down to lift him up. “The less you struggle, the easier this will—”

  “Stop!” someone shouted from behind him.

  Whitewood turned. Donna was about fifteen steps away, pointing the sheriff’s gun at him.

  He stopped.

  The entire cult did too, even those across the spring, all eyes on their Master.

  Hornhat and the other students also stopped, their clubs frozen in the air.

  “Okay now, little lady,” Whitewood said, slowly raising his gloved hands. “Why don’t you just put that thing down?”

  “No,” Donna said, the gun trembling in her hands.

  “All right.” Whitewood shifted his eyes from the gun to her face. “Hey, now, aren’t you…one of my first students?”

  He took a step forward.

  Donna said nothing, instead taking a shaky breath.

  “Yes!” Whitewood said. “I know you! My very first Lost Cause. Well, I’ll be.” He smiled at her, as if this were a friendly run-in at the dry cleaner’s. “Except the One Below didn’t agree, did he? He knew the truth about you.”

  He took another few steps toward Donna.

  “He knew you weren’t really a rebel. You were a good little girl. A girl who does as she’s told.”

  He was now only feet away from Donna, the gun bouncing in her quivering hands.

  “You’ve hurt so many people,” she said, on the verge of tears.

  “That’s not true,” Whitewood said, just a step or two away from being able to rip the pistol from her hands.

  Donna cocked the gun.

  “You’re just confused. And listen: This isn’t you. Pointing a gun at your old headmaster? Come on now. You’re still a good girl. A follower.”

  “Follow this,” Donna said.

  The barrel flashed like a firework.

  Whitewood grabbed his chest, staring in shock as a bloodstain blossomed on his robe.

  “No!” Mary Hattaway shrieked, madly dashing to Whitewood as he fell to his knees.

  “But Ruby,” he said, looking toward the spring. “I was…just about to…finally…” He struggled to his feet, blood already dripping from his mouth. He reached the spring’s edge, barely able to keep himself upright, then stumbled in, tripping over his flowing robe and dropping on all fours in the shallow water. As the bloody fabric touched the water, the spring—which had been calm for minutes, only lightly glowing and bubbling—began to gleam brightly. Whitewood continued his labored crawl, eventually reaching deeper water and doggie-paddling toward the center.

  “I’m coming, Ruby!” he strained, blood pooling around him, causing the spring to bubble even more fiercely, the surface of the water like a wind-whipped lake. He gurgled one last time before his face fell under the water. After a few weak strokes, he stopped struggling, his motionless body floating in place.

  “We have to save him!” Mary said, running out into the spring, Travis and Dr. Bob right behind her.

  They didn’t get far, though, before the water whisked up ferociously, waves splashing about, knocking the three followers down. On the far side of the spring in the shallows, even the massive Shackelford, somehow still holding Ben after all this, was blasted over by a wave. Ben was finally able to break free and began to shuffle his way back to the bank.

  Rex saw what Ben didn’t, though: an especially dark wave rising high above the surface of the water, accompanied by a loud, buzzing scream.

  It darted furiously across the surface, spiraling toward Ben, who had just placed one foot on the shore.

  “Ben!” Rex yelled. “Behind you!”

  Ben turned his head in alarm right as the black wave engulfed his body, streams of gravity-defying water wrapping themselves around him and dragging him along the surface of the spring.

  Ben screamed.

  The black wave rocketed to the center of the spring, where it enveloped Whitewood’s body, then suddenly dove down, sucking both Whitewood and Ben beneath the surface.

  A second later, the spring went dark and calm.

  No blue glow.

  No bubbles.

  Not even a ripple where the wave had descended.

  Everyone standing on shore—Janine, Donna, Hornhat, the remaining students, the cult—stared in confusion at the now placid water. Even the low hum of the cicadas sounded perplexed.

  Rex knew what to do.

  He picked up his hammer and dug its sharp end into his left palm as hard as he could, then once again for good measure.

  When the blood came, he dove in, hammer in hand.

  He made his way through the darkness, waiting for the water to start glowing.

  He wasn’t sure why it was taking so long.

  His hand had definitely been bleeding.

  Dismayed, he jabbed the hammer into his palm again, ignoring the searing pain. The fresh cut streamed more blood into the spring.

  Nothing. It wasn’t responding.

  He swam desperately to the side of the spring, then dove down, feeling the rocks, frantically running his hands across the wall.

  No signs of Ben.

  No signs of anything.

  A horrifying thought occurred to him:

  What if the spring never opens again?

  What if the gateway is closed…forever?

  He pushed the thought away, trying to will the spring back to life.

  Any moment now it would start glowing.

  Any moment.

  Rex gripped his hammer tight.

  He waited.

  26

  “IT’S VERY CLEAR now,” Sheriff Lawson said, speaking to a crowd of reporters and concerned citizens outside the Bleak Creek Police Station, “that Wayne Whitewood was not the man we thought he was.”

  “Well, that’s for darn sure,” Martha McClendon said, her arm wrapped tightly around her son as if she intended to never let go. She sat with Rex and her husband on the couch, all eyes glued to the television screen.

  “After a tip from an inside source at the school,” Sheriff Lawson continued, “we were able to uncover the truth about what Mr. Whitewood had actually been doin’ all these years, taking certain students captive and, in some cases…”—the sheriff shook his head, seeming genuinely mournful—“murdering them.”

  Rex’s mom clutched him tighter, her lower lip trembling. “I just can’t believe it,” sh
e whispered.

  “I made the same mistake as everyone else,” Sheriff Lawson said. “I trusted this man.” He grimaced, like he had a bad taste in his mouth. Rex was impressed; the sheriff’s acting chops were nearly as honed as Whitewood’s had been. “That won’t happen again. Even though Mr. Whitewood was able to elude our grasp last night, I have full faith that we’ll find him. Justice will be served.” Rex wondered how long Sheriff Lawson would be able to sustain a fake manhunt. He pictured concerned Bleak Creekians combing the woods around town, destined to find nothing. “And I do have some good news,” the sheriff continued. “Mr. Whitewood had announced Alicia Boykins to be deceased—with a cover story just like the ones he’d concocted for his other victims—but that turned out to be another lie. Last night, we were able to save her.” He nodded solemnly as some of the crowd applauded. “Don’t get me wrong—he put that girl through hell, keeping her isolated and carrying out his sick ‘punishments.’ That poor young lady is still in a place where she doesn’t know fantasy from reality. But now she can start to get better.”

  “I’m sorry, son,” Rex’s dad said, the first words he’d uttered to Rex since they’d driven him home from the Whitewood School the night before (after having been awakened by a call from Sheriff Lawson himself). “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you. I might never forgive myself.” He put his arm around Rex and kissed the side of his head, something he hadn’t done since Rex was little. “From now on, whatever you tell us, we will take you at your word. I promise you that.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Rex said, still numb as he continued to watch Sheriff Lawson lie on television to thousands of people. There was, of course, a ton that he wanted to tell his parents. And maybe they truly would have believed him, but he cared about them too much to take that chance.

  By the time Rex had finally emerged from the spring—once it was obvious that there would be no more glowing and bubbling, that Ben and the others were just…gone, Sheriff Lawson had started to explain to everyone gathered on the shore what was going to happen:

  Whitewood would be blamed for everything.

  All the students—minus the Seven Lost Causes down in the spring—would be returned safely to their homes.

  The Whitewood School would be shut down.

  None of them would ever again speak about the cult, about the spring, about anything other than Whitewood being a mentally unstable murderer.

  “But…we can’t taint Master’s name like this,” Mary had said. “He’s with the One Below now, but what if he comes back?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Sheriff Lawson insisted.

  “Can’t we at least wait for the Seven Shepherds to come out before makin’ any decisions?” Travis asked. “I mean, the One Below’s got all the Lost Causes He asked for. It should happen any minute. Everybody will be thankin’ Mr. Whitewood once they understand what he did for all of us.”

  “Master never told us how long the Purification would take,” Mary said. “It could be days. Weeks.”

  “Right,” Sheriff Lawson said. “Which is why we need to stick with my plan.”

  “You can’t stop us from talking about this,” Rex said.

  “Oh no?” Sheriff Lawson took two menacing steps toward him. “Who do you think people will believe? A bunch of kids who have been tortured and brainwashed by a psychopath, kids who were already troubled to begin with? Or a dozen respected pillars of the community?”

  “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Janine said.

  Sheriff Lawson looked to Mary Hattaway. “You destroyed the tape in that camera, right?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Good. Now, if any of you want to challenge me on this,” Sheriff Lawson had said, staring deep into Rex’s eyes, “I promise: I will make life very hard for you. For your friends. For your families. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  As Rex now felt the warm weight of his parents’ arms on his back, he knew for sure he couldn’t say anything. Sheriff Lawson and his crew had killed Donna’s father, and even if they weren’t willing to murder again, there was no shortage of horrible things they could do. They held such sway in the town; who’s to say they wouldn’t come up with a reason to encourage everyone to boycott his parents’ funeral home, crushing their livelihood in one fell swoop? No. Rex couldn’t do that to them.

  “Unfortunately,” Sheriff Lawson continued at the press conference, “four students are still unaccounted for: Patrick Small, April Li, Josefina Morales, and Ben Merritt.”

  Rex took deep breaths through his nose.

  “Oh, baby, are you friends with any of them?” Martha asked.

  Rex nodded. His parents held him tighter.

  “We believe that Mr. Whitewood snuck these four students out of the school sometime in the past month,” the sheriff said. “He had been keeping them captive somewhere off the premises. They may still be at that location, or he may be moving them as we speak.”

  “Sheriff Lawson,” a tall woman from the Raleigh News and Observer asked, “was the school staff aware of what Mr. Whitewood was doing?”

  “We will be thoroughly questioning everyone who worked at the school,” the sheriff answered. “For now, though, Wayne Whitewood is our only suspect.”

  The brazen lying was hard to take. Rex wished he could go back to the spring right now, this time with more blood, tons of it, to again try to activate the spring and dig out Ben and all the others. But it would have to wait, at least a day or two.

  “I assure you,” Sheriff Lawson said, “we have our entire squad, as well as several in neighboring towns, scouring every square inch until we can find these kids and return them to their families.”

  Rex desperately needed to talk to his best friends. He’d called Leif twice that afternoon; both times he’d been sleeping. He’d called Alicia and was told by Mrs. Boykins that she hadn’t started talking yet, “but Lord, wasn’t it a miracle that she survived?”

  “And then,” Sheriff Lawson said, his tone more dramatic, “we will find this deranged killer and put him where he belongs: behind bars. We’re gonna find these kids, and we’re gonna find our suspect. And once we do, we can all move past this terrible stain on our town’s history.”

  Rex extracted himself from his parents’ embrace and walked out of the room.

  * * *

  —

  JANINE SAT IN the darkened theater, incredibly nervous.

  Donna was to her right and GamGam to her left, which was a definite comfort, but she knew that once their movie had finished screening, her and Donna’s lives—possibly GamGam’s, too—were very likely to change.

  And not necessarily for the better.

  Though Mary Hattaway had destroyed the tape from that awful night, Janine still had the other ones—including evidence of Alicia being held in the bubbling, glowing spring—stored back at GamGam’s. Almost immediately, she and Donna had thrown themselves into sifting through the footage. Janine had worried it might be too much for her cousin, but, weirdly, it seemed to have the opposite effect, giving Donna a project, a distraction from the reality that she’d taken a man’s life. A very evil man, yes, but a man all the same.

  And this project would, for better or worse, reveal to the world the truth about what had happened.

  So Janine had stayed in Bleak Creek, taking regular trips with Donna to Raleigh, where one of Janine’s NYU friends had a friend who had a friend who had a hook-up with the NC State film department, which gave them access to an editing bay. They’d worked nearly nonstop, their old teenage rhythms reemerging—cutting together footage, writing and recording voiceover, grabbing talking head interviews with Rex, Leif, Hornhat, and even a quick one with Alicia—until they’d finished a cut, just barely making the deadline for the Durham Film Festival.

  Sitting in the Durham Arts Council theater, Janine couldn’t tell what the audience of about seven
ty people was thinking. No one had walked out, which seemed promising.

  Whatever happens, she reminded herself, we’re going to be okay. In less than a week, she’d be heading back to New York City, and Donna was coming with her, finally escaping that mess of a town. They would live together in her tiny East Village apartment and make more movies with their newly formed production company: Donnine.

  As the large screen filled up with the image of Alicia underwater in the spring, Janine heard several gasps, the loudest one belonging to GamGam. Donna reached over the armrest and took Janine’s sweaty hand. Janine squeezed tight and didn’t let go the rest of the movie.

  As the final, eerie shot of the spring faded to black, Janine’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. She wanted to sprint out of the theater and not stop running until she made it to New York.

  Then the applause started.

  And it wasn’t just the polite kind.

  Janine and Donna looked at each other in shock as people all around them got to their feet.

  A standing ovation.

  Tears sprang involuntarily to Janine’s eyes.

  They’d done it.

  “Wow,” the emcee, a balding man in glasses, said into a microphone at the front of the theater as the applause continued. “Just…wow. I’d love to invite the filmmakers, Janine Blitstein and Donna Lowe, up here for a brief Q and A.”

  As Janine and Donna side-stepped out of their row and headed up the aisle, the clapping surged even louder. Janine felt completely out of body.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the emcee said as Janine and Donna sat down in folding chairs. “I present to you the directors of The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek.”

  Janine nodded and smiled politely through a final round of appreciation, her heart still thumping in her ears.

  “First of all, congratulations,” the man said. “We’re honored to be debuting this stunning work.”

  “Thanks. Thank you,” Janine said quietly.