Fig Street
The year is 1969: In the city of Glennville the streets, even in the poorest of neighborhoods are safe for children to play. But the city has its secrets, and those secrets have their dangers. #Horror #Crime #Fantasy #DellSweet #Series
A free read from the novel:
FIG STREET
Fig Street is Copyright © W. G. Sweet 2020
All rights foreign and domestic reserved in their entirety.
Cover Art © Copyright 2020 Wendell G. Sweet
Some text copyright 1984, 2010, 2014, 2015 W. G. Sweet
LEGAL
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s places, situations or events is purely coincidental.
This novel is Copyright © 2020 Dell Sweet. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author’s permission.
Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.
November
Sisters of Mercy Hospital: Room 357
Becky Miller smoothed the sheets that covered Johnny, careful not to disturb all the wires and tubes that were a part of who Johnny was now. Her brother spoke from the doorway behind her and she turned and gave him a strained smile.
“Sorry,” Dell Anders said. “I thought I would offer to sit for a while… Let you get a break… Some sleep.” He moved from the doorway and hugged her to his chest. He felt her chest hitch, once, twice and then she began to sob. He eased her over to the chairs and sat her down, pulled another close and held her as she cried.
Over her shoulder the local news came on: A long shot over a body of water somewhere: Scarred, rock walls lifting from the surface. A bar appeared on the bottom. Sickler’s Quarry, it proclaimed, and the local news person, a young, petite blond, who in Dell’s mind didn’t look old enough to be a news anchor, began telling the story as the video to her right turned into a tow-truck; cable straining, and the rusted remains of what looked like an old truck emerging from the water’s surface.
Bobby Weston
…Johnny was walking the tracks that split the neighborhood behind Fig Street: It was night… Silent and he was not alone, a young boy walked beside him. Talking quietly as Johnny listened: leading him forward; guiding him through the darkness…
“…It’s me; it’s Bobby,” the dream boy told Johnny Miller.
Johnny stared at the kid as they walked the tracks. He had noticed something was familiar but he hadn’t been able to place what that was. He looked down at himself. He was the same. An old man following along as a little kid walked the tracks, balancing on the rails. He stopped, lost for a second.
“You okay?” Bobby asked as he stopped and turned back to face him.
“Yeah… I think, but why are you in my dream? I didn’t know you then… This place… Did I?” Johnny asked.
“Yes and no. We share certain things.” He walked back and looked up at Johnny; his face serious.
“Will you come with me?” Bobby asked urgently.
This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had, Johnny thought. He stared around at the dark trees; the cold moonlight glinting off the steel rails. The young boy faced Johnny where he stood in the road.
“It’s no dream, Johnny, no dream at all, honestly. You can’t think of it as a dream either. If you do it’ll kill you, man. For real, I swear… Will you come?” Bobby asked again. His bright blue eyes seemed to glow as they locked on Johnny’s own.
“Where?” Johnny asked. The sound of his own voice startled him. It had changed. Become a child’s voice. A voice locked on the edge of change. A voice in between man and boy. He glanced down at his body and was not surprised to see that it had also changed. What he saw was a child’s body. And not just any child, but the same child he himself had been so many years before. The same wash faded jeans, with the same patched knees. He clearly remembered those jeans. Clearly remembered his mother carefully mending the knees. The same scuffed high top sneakers, with the same knotted laces. He raised his eyes and stared back at the small boy.
Bobby moved closer, seeming to float above the surface of the road. “Now. We need to go now. There isn’t much time,” Bobby told him.
The darkness split apart, and gray rock walls sprung up where the trees had been. In the distance Johnny could hear the laughter of children echoing against the cold stone walls. The laughter turned to screams. Shrill, panicked and growing closer, the low bass growl of a wolf mixed in with the screaming. Johnny started to move towards the sound.
“No! Bobby told him. “You’ll die. Not yet. We have to be first, see? We ain’t yet. It’s too early, man. Too early. You’ll die if you try to stop it now.”
“But?” Johnny asked aloud in his child’s voice.
“Home, man,” Bobby told him. “Home first, then here, after.”
The rock walls suddenly faded, replaced by a night darkened and quiet street. Houses lined one side of the street, a huge gravel lot filled the other side. Beyond the edge of the gravel lot long rows of leaning, crumbled buildings stood outlined in pale moonlight. The remnants of a chain-link fence ran partway down the street, still enclosing the buildings in places, overgrown and fallen in others. Johnny turned toward the houses and began to walk
“Here. Right here,” Bobby told him as they walked towards one particular house.
Johnny skirted the dirt front yard of the run-down old house behind Bobby. Peeling gray paint clung to the weathered clapboard, glass from the shattered windows lay glittering in the darkness. The few that remained were filthy yellowed panes set in crumbling frames, impossible to see through. Flecks of gray littered the hard-packed dirt yard. He rounded the side of the house and stopped. A long rope dangled from a broken second floor window. “Here?” Johnny asked.
“Here,” Bobby agreed. He began to climb the rope to the window that stood open above it. He paused part way up and stared back at Johnny where he stood watching. “Climb it, man. That’s my room up there.”
The rope was not nearly as hard to climb as Johnny had thought it would be. He made his way quickly to the top, and eased over the sill into the small room. The room was dark and quiet. He made his way to a narrow cot in one corner and sat down next to Bobby. “And?” he whispered.
“Morning. We gotta wait for morning. Then we can start. Then we can do something, see?”
“No,” Johnny whispered, “I don’t see… Start what? Do What?”
“We all gotta meet,” Bobby told him. “It’s hard to explain. You see, I was here. I lived here, and there are two other kids here. They live close by. We gotta do something important, see? And we need you. We need your help, man, get it?
“No,” Johnny replied honestly, “I don’t.”
“You will. Go to sleep, man. In the morning we’ll start. In the morning. It’ll be different this time. It will.”
Johnny lay down on the narrow cot and closed his eyes.
Sleeping in a dream, he thought. A dream about sleeping. Weird.
“Not a dream,” Bobby reminded him as he spiraled away into darkness. “Not a dream.”
Click below for a additional Amazon free read or get the book #Free with your Kindle Unlimited account.
Home: https://www.sotofo.com
Discover more from SOTOFO
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.