Frozen fear, p.12
Frozen Fear, page 12
Chapter Eleven
An emergency town hall meeting was held that night. Mary Hill Elementary was the chosen spot due to its spacious auditorium and the generosity of its staff. Cars jammed the parking lots and filled the streets for blocks. Citizens fleet-footed from their cars to the school, ready to speak their minds, and they had a lot to say. Police were called in to direct traffic. A dozen officers in fluorescent yellow vests holding flashlights managed the chaos outside. Inside, was a different matter. Angry citizens had questions they demanded answers to. Another teenager was dead, and three more children were freshly bedridden with severe sudden -onset comas- unresponsive, wide-eyed, lying in hospital beds being fed by tubes, inflicted with an odd condition newly-coined as “The Frozen Fear.”
Sweetville was reeling from so many tragedies at once. Five teenagers were missing and left behind a blood-soaked scene and few tangible clues. Casey Dawson, a Straight A student from Higgins Junior High was found dead (possibly a suicide?) in a neighbor’s pool. Small children all around town were bedridden in vegetative states and others were sporadically terrorized by hallucinations and night terrors.
Local businessman, and questionable human being, Edward Janick, was found dead of a heart attack in the middle of his living room of his lake house. The details concerning Mr. Janick weren’t as widespread as those affecting the children. But lots of people knew. The homicide division was baffled. Something huge had crashed through Mr. Janick’s living room. It seemed to be a small plane of some sort, yet they found tire marks on the carpet. Eight dead employees and his young nephew were found in Mr. Janick’s basement rec room, electrocuted due to faulty wiring in a hot tub. Three more dead employees were found down at his dock, but only certain parts of them. Body pieces were strewn everywhere. There’d been a massacre by Jasper Lake. Surely, there was a connection between these deaths and the frozen horror of the bedridden children. Everyone wanted to know what their pale bugged-out faces had seen and who was possibly next.
The air conditioner system in the Mary Hill Elementary auditorium could barely keep the temperature down. Emotionally distraught parents crowded in. Some people had to stand in the hallway outside and peek through the doors.
The police chief leaned over the wooden lectern fitted with a microphone. Chief Joe Danberry was only forty-two, but he looked closer to sixty-two. His pink balding scalp glistened with sweat as he tried to answer questions over hostile shouts and near pandemonium. To make matters worse, there was a short in the microphone that made his voice flicker in and out, squealing obnoxious feedback over the P.A.
All these people dead and no leads? Are the police sleeping on their jobs? What the Hell’s going on? Tell us! Tell us! Tell us!
Chief Danberry knew the police force were eating a shit sandwich over this. They were in over their heads. It was all too much, too fast. Sweetville was, normally, a small sleepy Georgia town with very few homicides. Its crime rate was well below the national average. It was recently rated one of the safest communities in the country. This kind of carnage was unheard of. Normally, Sweetville was a real-life freaking Mayberry. Police Chief Danberry had spent most of his career in high-crime urban areas. Sweetville had been a much-needed respite until now.
“Our courageous police force is working nonstop, around the clock,” said Chief Danberry into the microphone, “We will find out what’s going on. Everyone needs to be patient, go about their daily lives, and keep their heads calm. We will get to the bottom of this.”
The angry murmurs and shouts got louder.
“But when?” shouted someone.
“You keep calm!” shouted another.
“Our kids are in danger!” said someone else. Heads turned to one man in the back. He apparently had said something important.
“Excuse me, sir,” spoke Chief Danberry to this man. “Speak louder, please.”
“Find those Satanists,” the man explained. “Then you will find the culprit!”
Applause surged from the audience.
“They brought this on,” he continued. “Those teen devil worshippers burned a pentagram into the ground at the park. Then this nightmare was unleashed upon us! We are being torn apart by Wicked Demonic forces!”
“Okay, okay,” said Chief Danberry trying hard not to roll his eyes. A few more people clapped. Thankfully, some intelligent people in the crowd groaned audibly at this suggestion. ‘Superstition,’ thought Police Chief Danberry. ‘That’s all we need now.’
“It’s a new kind of drug,” suggested another. “People are hallucinating and going insane. They’re killing each other!”
“Yeah,” agreed a portly, graying-haired man, standing up, “Have you received any information on any new-fangled narcotics or bath salts stuff entering our community?”
Some supportive claps. More people continued to trickle through the doors. All those imploring eyes and intense faces bored into him.
“Don’t you agree, Chief, this public welfare crisis is drug-related?”
“We are looking into that angle,” he replied. “However, we haven’t received any concrete information pointing to that yet.”
“Sounds like you haven’t received much information at all!” spat someone from the very back.
“Yeah. He receives a paycheck!” shouted someone else, “All the way to the bank! For doing nothing!”
“While our kids are dying!”
“This situation is very complicated” he started to say, then his microphone started to short out and squawked. Making me look foolish! Can’t they get better equipment here? “We are collaborating with the medical community to get to the bottom of...”
Crack, crack, sizzle, feedback.
“You can’t even work the dang microphone, Danberry!”
Rising shouts and curses blasted from the crowd.
“Hey, hold on, now,” said council woman Judy Monaghan, leaning over to the Chief’s microphone. “Let’s be calm about this, please!” A horrible popping sound emitted over the PA. “...slinging insults and accusations needlessly isn’t getting us anywhere,” snap, crackle went the mike, “Thank you!”
“How about Mister Yum Yum?” shouted a woman from the crowd, “Ever heard the name Mister Yum Yum, Chief?”
A murmur of interest. Some people in the crowd started chatting to each other about this subject. “My son had a nightmare about him!” someone said. Another mother commented that their kid had dreamt about Mister Yum Yum, too. There were groans and complaints from the crowd. “This is crazy hysteria...”
“We’re not going to solve this by talking about monsters and Yum Yum people,” remarked someone else. Chief Danberry couldn’t agree more.
“You’re a flake!” shouted someone. “That’s the candy store in the mall. Not a person!” Someone else shouted: “Sit down, you lunatic!”
“But, but,” a woman continued, red-faced. “Another friend of his dreamt of this Yum Yum character, too. Or that’s what they said. I’m just throwing it out there. Maybe they heard the name somewhere. It could be a lead. Some sort of I dunno−a homeless man, a drug-dealer, a predator on the streets.”
“Mister Yum Yum, you say?” asked the Chief, secretly thinking she was nuttier than Janick’s premium ice cream.
“Yes,” answered the woman.
“We will ask around and run that name through the system. Thank you for your help.”
On and on it went. The room overfilled with people, noise, and unease. It was a long hot night for city officials. The summer heat, for them, was just getting started.
***
Frankie Parker, a second grader from Grace Elementary, sat silently among a busload of kids that Wednesday morning. He usually wasn’t this silent. Two of his friends were no longer taking the bus to school per mommy’s orders. Frankie was nervous and shut-mouthed in his seat. Something strange had just happened. Something inside his lunchbox kicked.
It could have been his imagination. He was drowsy. Sometimes he hallucinated when he was sleepy. The bus could have hit a bump. It kicked again when he was walking from the bus towards his classroom. He stopped walking and flattened himself against the wall. Kids scurried by. He looked at his lunchbox. He felt the front, sides, and back of it. Something scratched from the inside. A rat had gotten into his lunch box. He stooped down and put the lunchbox against the wall. He hated to lose that lunchbox. His Robo-Monkeys lunchbox was currently his pride and joy. The Robo-Monkeys were the most popular cartoon show on TV, the all-American media marketing saturation. All the other kids were envious. He’d gotten the lunchbox early.
He heard his name called. His friend, Gavin, was winding through the flurry of kids. They were in the same homeroom. Frankie turned and they began walking to class.
Gavin said, “Hey, don’t leave your lunchbox, Frankie.” He picked it up from the floor and held it for a second, “Man, Robo-Monkeys! So cool!”
He placed it back into Frankie’s nervous hands, then they walked to class.
In his first-period art class, the thing in the lunchbox was getting restless. It rattled and shook the metal cubby under his desk. Kids flashed him angry glances and mumbled mean names. His teacher, Mr. Colson, was quick to blow a fuse.
“One more time, Frankie! You do that once more you’re going down to the principal’s office! Got it?”
Little Bethany Rosen turned and stuck her tongue out at him. Frankie took out his lunchbox and put it under his feet. When the bell rang, he scooted it further under the desk and gathered up his things.
“Frankie!” shouted Mr. Colson when he was near the door. “You forgot your lunchbox.”
During his next class, he put it under the desk seat in front of him. He kept the tips of his shoes over it so it wouldn’t move. His feet got tired so occasionally he took them away. Every time he did it, every single time, it rattled crazily.
Curtis Cresswell was sitting at his desk trying to concentrate on his assignment and didn’t like the disturbance one bit. He had a hair-trigger temper. He was also almost as big as a middle schooler. He was probably the biggest kid in the lower grades. He’d been left behind to repeat when he moved to Sweetville last year. The first two times it banged the bottom of his desk, Curtis merely turned and sneered at him. The third time was the clincher. He stood up and leaned in very close to Frankie while the teacher was writing on the white boards.
“I’ll be waiting for you after school, pissant,” he growled. “You’re dead.”
From the next row of desks, Todd sniggered at him. Frankie flipped him the bird. When the bell rang, he tried to leave his cursed lunchbox on the floor again. Just as he was making his way towards the door, a gruff voice said: “Don’t forget your little baby lunchbox,” said Curtis, then briefly reminded him how dead he was going to be after school.
***
“Aren’t you going to eat your lunch, Frankie?” said Gavin.
They were in the cafeteria. Everybody was chowing down on their lunches except for Frankie. He just sat there with a hangdog look, wondering how the day got so peculiar. And scary.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
He could have ditched the lunchbox already (what was in it? A mouse?). He had different plans for it now.
“He’s not hungry because of Curtis Cresswell,” explained Todd giddily over his lunch tray, mashed potatoes smeared over his teeth. “I think he’s scared.”
Everyone knew this already. News about fights traveled fast.
“That guy’s enormous,” said Gavin. “Fake being sick. Pronto. Go see the nurse.”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Call your mom right now, dude.”
“Leave town,” said Todd with a gleam in his eye, “Go to Alaska or something.”
“Shut up, butthole.”
“Oh, Todd’s mad!”
“So, you’re not going to eat your lunch, huh?” asked Todd.
“You want it?” Frankie asked.
“Sure, I’ll take it,” said Todd.
What a banner day for Todd Gleason. Not only does he get to joyfully wallow in Frankie’s bad luck, but he also gets to eat more. ‘His mood is about to change,’ thought Frankie.
The opening was already facing Todd. If he didn’t actually take the lunchbox, Frankie planned on just clicking it open and tossing the rat (mouse or whatever was inside of it) at stupid old Todd. He’d get into trouble and get detention, thereby avoiding Curtis Cresswell.
“Okay then,” said Frankie as he put both hands on the latches of the lunchbox.
“I’ll count to five, Todd,” Frankie explained, “Then, I’ll pull the clips back. Ready?”
“Why are you counting to five?”
“I don’t know,” Frankie said. “Just because. I’ll give you the lunchbox, too.”
“Really? You’ll give me your Robo-Monkeys lunchbox?”
“Yes, dummy. I said so, didn’t I?”
Gavin and Danny whispered to each other. They suspected a trick was being played on Todd and, boy, was he due for one. Everybody was sick of Todd. Frankie counted. At five, he pulled back the clips. Todd flipped open the lunchbox and his eyes widened, “Oh, my God! An Airhead!”
He also held up a cellophane-wrapped PB&J sandwich and a green delicious apple.
“I can have them?”
“Sure,” his heart was sinking. ‘Doggone it!’ he thought, ‘My Airhead!’
He rarely was allowed to eat candy, but once a week, his mother placed a surprise treat in his lunch box. Todd spryly tossed Gavin the apple and then he unwrapped the little candy with gusto. He plopped it into his mouth.
So, it was now empty? Frankie spun the lunchbox around and was faced with a shocking vision. It looked like a rat inside, long, and furry but the rest of the feature were wrong like a very curious science experiment. It had a rodent’s body but with a beak. Some sort of fluid trickled out of its discolored bill. One leg looked similar to a grasshopper. The other leg was torn off, a bloody hole remaining, leaking pale guts. The intact leg shot like a spring then it slammed against the side of the lunchbox. The body leaped up, banging against the plastic wall. It was in its death throes, a wet blood stain dripping on the plastic ledge from inside the box.
The bright red backdrop of the lunchbox expanded like a movie theatre. A colossal dark head emerged, something with multiple eyes like a spider, but this thing would not be found in nature. Its mouth was a rectangle full of spinning metal blades and as it came forward, it sucked in the weird, wounded creature, releasing a spray of blood into Frankie’s horrified face. The little creature was ground up. Frankie was frozen in place as the huge monster, ten times his size now, inched slowly towards him.
Gavin saw oily spiked tentacles springing out, each ending with round gaping mouths of sharp yellowed incisors. Gavin sprung backward, crashing into the table, tearing off in a blind panic. He went fleeing down the halls, whining, arms flailing at his sides. He saw tentacles like dirty filthy worms, jutting out from under doors and classroom windows, a greenish secretion dripping down the walls like sticky infectious phlegm. He was found later, comatose and shuddering in the janitor’s storage room.
Danny saw a decapitated clown’s head spurting blood from its neck stump on the lunch table. Its hellish red eyes grew from their sockets like small arms, wrapping around his head while the mouth spewed wet maggots into his face.
Todd Gleason merely saw three of his school mates bugging out and one ran off screaming. The two at the table stopped screaming and slumped against their chairs, staring blankly at nothing, comatose like so many others.
***
All seven elementary schools in Sweetville had incidents like this on Thursday, simultaneously. “The Frozen Fear” was spreading. The hallucinogenic terrors that week weren’t confined to schools. Three young children were in a Playland at a local McDonald’s when a great white shark with red eyes suddenly appeared in the ball pit. Ben and Jessica watched Tucker get eaten first as they frantically escaped up the orange tunnel slide. Then the slide became a mouth; wet, fatty, and was trying to swallow them. Their parents found them all alive in the ball pit, non-responsive, peeking up from between the plastic balls.
Desmond Neely, aged four, was at a local park when the play structure came alive and attacked him. He’d always expected it would happen. He’d always been afraid of the play structure. He’d throw a crying fit if his mother took him too close to it, so she usually sat him down in the sandbox at the edge near the picnic tables, far away from the dreaded thing. Two ladders jutted from the sides looked like hunched legs to Dezzy. The blue planked chain bridge, connecting to the second part, looked like a segmented back. The ladders on the second part looked like back legs and the orange slide on the far end resembled a tail.
That afternoon, Dezzy heard an ear-piercing screech, felt the ground shaking, and dropped his toy cars in the sand. He watched the creature break off its steel legs from the ground. As it advanced towards him, all the bolted metal and rigid plastic pounded and creaked like a menacing clunky dinosaur. The red slide-tongue shot at him like an ant-eater scoping for prey.
Dezzy’s mother, who had been pleasantly chatting with another parent by the water fountain, discovered her young son, eyes bulging, clinging to the leg of a bench. He was in a coma before the ambulance arrived. “The Frozen Fear” struck again.
During that week stories like these were everywhere: action figures and dolls came alive and attacked, toy cars twisted into metal-teethed faces and chomped at children, sugary cereal became milky maggots and ice cream turned into snot, pus, and diarrhea. A child jumped into a swimming pool and the water transformed into live scorpions the size of small dogs. Red-eyed alligators and a barracuda invaded another family pool party. A young girl threw a Frisbee to her father then watched it transform into a circular saw blade mid-air and slice her father’s head off.
