They Came After Me

by C S Allen

  I looked one more time in the phone book at a realty company’s advertisement, and it read that they were open 24/7. “We are pleased to meet our new friends anytime anywhere,” the advertisement read. So, I gave the phone number a call and got a realtor this time around and his name was Jack Teal. Jack was on the ball and didn’t ask me anything except where I lived when I told him I wanted to sell and buy a home. He asked when I was available, and I told him I was going to a car dealership in about thirty minutes to trade in my mother’s car to buy a truck. We agreed to meet at three o’clock that day so Jack could see my parents’ house and give me an estimate of what it was worth. When I got off the phone, I was excited as heck to get the ball rolling and start my life over.

  With a little bit of pep in my step, I quickly grabbed a winter jacket out of the closet and left the house. I already knew where I was going to get a truck and that was not far from the house. I had my mind set to what type of truck, brand, color, and size I wanted, and there was no stopping a rich kid.

  As I got in my mother’s car to leave, my damn gun fell out of my pocket and onto the driveway. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled and picked it up and placed it inside the armrest. A fifteen-minute drive later, I pulled into the car dealership’s parking lot and drove over to the new trucks. I circled the area and found nothing that I wanted, so I ended up going inside to meet a salesman.

  Right on cue, a salesman greeted me at the door and told me his name, while shaking my hand. I told him what I wanted, and then he said that they didn’t have any of those on the lot so they would have to special order a truck. When I was done circling everything that I wanted on a list, I couldn’t believe that it was going to be twenty-seven thousand dollars. I quickly got a bit depressed with that price and then told the salesman that I should just get the basic package. The color that I wanted was a special color, the rims were special because they were aluminum, and the truck bed plastic protection was extra. I settled on one that was a different color than I wanted, but the price was six thousand dollars cheaper. While I was going through everything, a person was looking over my mother’s car, and it made me mad.

  “Hey, who’s that guy looking at my car? Does he work for you all?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, that’s one of our managers named Richard. He’s looking over your car and will give us a trade-in value on it once he’s done,” the salesman replied.

  “I never said I was going to trade that car in because I won’t get what it’s worth. Now, if I can get three thousand for it, then we can do business,” I stated.

  “If you’re going to purchase that truck, I’m pretty sure Richard will crunch the numbers and then get you a good deal,” the salesman replied with a smile.

  After two hours of back and forth negotiating, I was flustered with all of the so-called number crunching and decided to leave without buying anything. I was mad at the prices on the trucks, I was mad at the manager going through my mother’s car like he owned it, I was mad at the bs number crunching, and then I was mad that they wanted me to finance their truck. On the way back to my parents’ home, I pulled into a burger drive-through and got a cheeseburger with shoelace fries. Once I got my meal, I couldn’t wait to eat the fries at my parents’ home and chowed down as I drove. The fries made me feel happy again, and I couldn’t care less about buying a truck.

  Jack Teal came right on time at three o’clock and knocked on the front door. I opened the door and he said, “Hello, I’m Jack Teal. Are your parents at home?”

  I just smiled and said, “No, they passed away about two years ago. Can I help you with something?” I knew he had no idea who I was, so I just played with him since he thought I was just a kid.

  “Well, this is kind of strange. I was supposed to meet someone at three today at this address,” Jack stated, taking a step back to look at the number on the house.

  “Who are you supposed to be meeting?” I asked, acting concerned.

  “A Mr. Will Reed,” Jack stated.

  “Well, that’s my name, do you want to sell my house?” I replied with a grin.

  “Oh damn, I just assumed with you being so young that it belonged to your parents,” Jack replied.

  “Well, come on in, and yes, this was my parents’ home,” I said, inviting Jack inside.

  Once inside, Jack told me he was fifty-seven years old and apologized. “Kids in their early twenties look like teenagers to me now,” Jack said, as he wiped his feet at the door. Then he asked if we could sit down and go over a few things before inspecting the home. We went over how I had inherited the house and I said I had all of the legal documents to prove ownership. Jack asked how much I wanted to ask for the house, and of course, I had no idea what the house was worth. Finally, he asked what I was looking for in a new or used home.

  After signing a contract with Jack to sell the home, he asked to see every room in the house so he could measure them. The viewing of the house took only about fifteen minutes since Jack already had an idea of everything. Once the tour was over and I had signed off on another form that made Jack my sales rep on buying another house, he left with a handshake. I felt like there had to be something more to selling and buying homes, but Jack said for me to just let him do all of the work. I looked out the front window and saw Jack pound a for-sale sign into the lawn. When Jack was done, he looked toward my direction and gave me a thumbs up with a smile. I reacted by doing the same back to him.

  I felt a bit sad, seeing the for-sale sign on the front lawn. I just stared at it and wanted to go outside and pull the sign up. I was panicking and wanted to do something, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen at the window. Something was choking me, and I wanted to cry and let out the screaming in my heart. “No, I can’t do this,” I said with tears in my eyes. I grabbed hold of the top rail of the window and held onto it with both hands and let out a cry. I was hurting over my parents not being around in my life anymore. I went from the window, crying, to the couch, and then finally sat on the floor, releasing the pain that I was in.

  After ten minutes or so, I finally stopped feeling sorry, got up from the floor, and went into the kitchen to wipe my face down with a cool paper towel. The water on my face and neck was refreshing. The phone rang as I was throwing the paper towel away so I quickly went into the living room to get it before the answering machine picked up. It was my aunt checking in on me and I told her what had gone on during the day. She listened to me yap on and on about what happened with the car, the selling of the house, and crying like a baby for about an hour. I don’t recall my aunt saying much at all except for a few, ‘Right, right, oh yeah, yeah, right, if that’s what you want to do.’ My aunt made me feel good about what I was doing and what my plans were going to be. I was waiting for her to tell me what I should do, but she never did during that time.

  After getting off the phone, I made myself some dinner and thought about going to get my journal to write more. I felt like I wanted to get everything written down, so I grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator and went upstairs. As I was going up, I freaked out for a second because I had forgotten about the damn gun. Jack must have seen it sitting there, I thought. I went into my bedroom and looked at the desk where I thought my gun was, and it was gone. “Wait a minute” I said out loud. I had to think for a second before going nuts. “Oh yeah, phew!” I said, shaking my head as I remembered that the gun was in the car. I tossed the Coke on the bed, turned, went back down the stairs, and went outside to get my gun out of my mother’s car. I took the gun out of the armrest and said, “I’m sick of carrying you everywhere.” Then I returned to the house and went upstairs to my room. I put the gun on my dresser and then picked up my journal to continue writing my story about what had happened while staying at the cabin.

  I wrote for about three hours, remembering everything like it was just yesterday. If nothing had ever happened back then, we all would have graduated and started our adult lives. Steve and Olivia may have lived together because they liked each other very much.
Mike and Emma were kind of shy about things, but they would have stayed together some way. I would have graduated, without a girlfriend, and then moved back home to figure out what was next.

  I passed out while writing on the bed and woke up later at twelve thirty-seven. I sat up and tried to think about what to do next. Should I just go to bed or should I stay up and get some food since I was hungry as hell. I was really hungry, so getting up and going downstairs was the choice that I picked.

  I stayed up for another hour to an hour and a half, eating some very late dinner and dessert. I watched some old classic movies of World War Two and then some coming attractions for the theaters. By then, the food in my stomach was heavy, so I lay down on the couch, and my eyelids shut for the night.

  The next morning, my phone rang, and it startled me out of a deep sleep. I took a couple of seconds to get my bearings straight because I’d forgotten where I was. By the time I got off the couch and took a step toward the phone, the answering machine had picked up. “Hey, Will, this is your aunty. Just checking up on you to see if anything new is going on there. Give me a call soon, love you,” my aunt stated.

  It was pretty nice to have my aunt keeping up with me since I’d been home. I figured I’d call my aunt back, like a good nephew would, after taking a shower and getting breakfast. Just as I was taking my clothes off in the bathroom, the phone rang again. I quickly went over to pick up the phone, thinking it was my aunt calling back, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.

  “Hello, is this Will Reed?” the person on the other end asked.

  “Maybe, who’s calling?” I asked.

  “This is Mark Sevey, Mike Sevey’s father, calling from Indiana. I’d like to speak to Will about my son who died up there,” Mark stated.

  I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what had happened, especially to my friend’s parents. They wouldn’t understand or even think that I was telling the truth to them. “Mr. Sevey, this is Will, you won’t understand what happened to Mike. No one believes anything I say to them about that time at the cabin. It’s just best to go on the way you have been and let Mike rest in peace,” I stated because I didn’t have a clue what to say to Mike’s dad.

  “Will, I know about the rumors that have been going around for three years among all the parents involved. Not one of us knows what you know, and you were the last to see Mike. The stories we’ve heard were that a man killed everyone or some giant spider ran around and killed everyone. But now there’s been a discovery of some type of a shedding from a giant spider up there,” Mark stated.

  “Oh my God, someone found proof that what I’ve been saying all along is really true?” I asked excitedly.

  “Yes, some hikers this past year found a huge shedding from a spider and sent it to a college in New York. The entomologists in the science labs at that college couldn’t believe the size of the shedding and will be going up to that area in the spring. So, that brings me back to calling you because I don’t know what you know,” Mark stated.

  “It’s true, there were spiders up at that lake, and they attacked all of us. No one believed me when I told the law three years ago, and then I was blamed for breaking into a government building. It’s all a bunch of crap, what the government did, and they tried to pin it all on me. I think they tried to kill me with one of those spiders and failed because I’m still here.”

  I stayed on the phone for two and a half hours, talking to Mike’s dad and telling him everything that happened. It was difficult at times because I felt like I was at the cabin again when I tried to answer some of his questions. I told Mark that I needed to know what the name of the college was so I could call the school and give them some answers. This was my chance to prove that what I had said three years ago was true, and that my friends were killed by those damn spiders. Mark told me the names of the two colleges that were involved in dissecting the spider shedding. I wanted to call them right then, when we were talking about the schools, but then Mark surprised me by asking about Mike’s last moments at the cabin. I didn’t want to talk about Mike’s last moments, and I told Mark that the best way that I could. Mark only knew that his son was killed by a murderer, and then his body was burned in a fire. For some reason, he wanted to know how exactly his son died.

  After the long talk on the phone, I was mentally worn out and just wanted to be left alone for the day. My plan was to go looking for a truck, but then I just wanted to stay home. I called my aunt back and told her what was going on and the conversation I had had with Mark. I told her that I couldn’t tell the man what had happened to his son because I knew he wouldn’t believe it. I just didn’t want to waste my time trying to explain everything, with Mark thinking I was nuts.

  “Will, just wait for what those people at the colleges say about that spider stuff the hikers found. Once the findings come out, then you can use the evidence to back your claim. You should call them tomorrow and tell them your story about what you went through,” my aunt stated.

  That was a great suggestion, but I was hesitant to call because I was afraid to get involved again. I wanted to be left alone and live my life in peace and try to move on without worrying about Tom. That bastard was still watching me after all of these years, and I wished that he would disappear. Before getting off the phone with my aunt, I asked her out to lunch on Wednesday, and she accepted. I was happy to actually have something fun to look forward to besides looking for a house and a truck.

  For the rest of the day, I decided to write more in my journal and watch TV. I called the local pizza restaurant for a large, all-meat, thin crust pizza to be delivered to my parents’ house. When the pizza guy on the phone asked if he was delivering to a Mr. Reed, it hit me that I was now Mr. Reed. All of a sudden, I felt sad when I said yes because I was now taking my father’s place. I just wanted to forget that my parents had died and believe that they were on vacation somewhere. I wiped away my tears as I hung up the phone. I took a deep breath, and as I did, I realized that, for some reason, I still hadn’t gone into my parents’ bedroom. I knew why-- because their spirits were probably in there more than anywhere else in the house.

  So, when Aunt Kelly comes on Wednesday, I’ll ask her to help me with going in there, I thought, and then I felt better.

  I turned on the TV and decided to watch Antiques Roadshow until my pizza arrived. Thirty minutes later, I heard a knock on the door, and it was the delivery driver with my pizza. I was so excited about eating my first pizza in over three years that I gave the driver a good tip.

  After eating and watching the TV for a little bit more, I picked up my journal and realized that I was close to being done with writing everything. I figured if I could write for the next couple to maybe three hours, I would have everything written down. I took on my own challenge to get everything done and started after a bathroom break and grabbing a couple of Cokes to drink.

  My mind drifted a few times while writing, and it was hard for me to keep on track. The many ‘what if’s’ entered my mind when it came to saving my friends lives. Could I have done something to at least save one of their lives? The whole story of what had happened read like a science fiction novel from H.G. Wells, and I wish that it was. I wish that I could forget everything that had happened with drinking or taking some magic pill. Why did I have to survive this whole murderous nightmare and not die with my friends? Why couldn’t I have been tougher instead of being fearful?

  I had to stop when my mind drifted off again. I thought I could handle writing it all down, but I was still too soft. Why did Olivia handle everything like a Marine Corps veteran and I second-guessed everything? Why didn’t I do something heroic? Why didn’t I take charge and kill the damn spider? Was it my upbringing and being the only kid in the family? Was it because I never played contact sports? Maybe if I had gone hunting, I would have been used to shooting a gun or a rifle.

  I was mentally drained when nine thirty came around. The cola’s caffeine high had worn off, and I was thirsty for water. I closed the journal
and decided to get up and get ready for bed, while grabbing a glass of water out of the kitchen. When I was done with the glass of water, I went back into the living room to pick up my journal to bring it upstairs with me. I turned on the upstairs hallway light and then turned off the living room lights. At that moment, looking into the dark living room, I felt alone, and it was depressing. I had a quick flash of doing this same thing many times before when my parents were still alive. I looked down at the first step of the stairs and slowly walked up, holding back my emotions the best that I could.

  I looked at my parents’ bedroom door at the top of the stairs and decided to open it. I was hurting really bad inside and needed my parents around. I tossed my journal on my bed and then went over to my parents’ door. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out, and as I did, I started sobbing. I wanted to call out to my mom and dad. I so desperately wanted to open the door to the bedroom and see them. I turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door, while reaching in with my other hand to turn on the light.

  HISSSS!

  “Nooo!” I yelled with fright and backed away. The door was only partially open when I heard that sound, but I didn’t need to see it to know it was the spider. I turned and ran into my bedroom and closed the door. My heart was pounding so hard that I thought it was going to explode inside my chest.

  HISSS!

  I couldn’t call anyone for help since I didn’t have a phone in my room and I was scared to death. I’d left my parents’ door open and that spider could get out into the rest of the house. “I can jump out of my window or I can yell for help,” I said out loud, trying to calm myself down. I went over to my bedroom window and raised it up quickly and looked down. It looked so far down, and I thought about how I could land on my feet.