Terror in the Woods
J C Lephew
Copyright © 2020 J. C. Lephew
All rights reserved
First Edition
Fulton Books, Inc.
Meadville, PA
Published by Fulton Books 2020
ISBN 978-1-64654-239-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64654-240-6 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
EARTHWORMS
They had traveled all over outer space for millennium, battling each other. Each trying to defeat, outwit, and eventually trying to outrun the other. It was inevitable that they would eventually crash land somewhere, which was what they did. They slammed into dirt of planet Earth approximately two feet apart from each other and were promptly buried where they landed from the running of wild animals, the weather, and eventually humans that would settle nearby. There they lay, dormant but waiting.
* * * * *
They were simply walking through the woods one day, talking, laughing, kicking whatever they came across—rocks, stones, branches, if they were big enough, and occasional litter. They were a small group of three sixteen-year-old boys and Abbie. Abbie was two years old, and she was a German shepherd collie mix. Abbie had long, soft, white fur with large tan-and-brown patches spread throughout. She was the medium height of a collie with a long, narrow snout of a collie, but she had the brown eyes of a German shepherd. Abbie had a sweet disposition and was loyal to the boys. She would walk with them without a leash and stay by their side and would usually try to lure them away from danger.
Abbie had been walking with the boys in the woods once when she suddenly ran in front of them and started barking and growling at the boys and wouldn’t let them past her. She turned and started barking at a spot under a bush that they were planning to walk through when a copperhead slithered out from underneath the bush. After that incident, they always took Abbie with them, and they would usually listen to her. The boys’ names were Tony, Grog, a nickname—his real name was Griffin, he preferred to be called Grog—and Mike.
Technically, Abbie was Grog’s dog. She lived with Grog, but they all considered Abbie to be their dog, and she considered them to be her owners, her humans. Grog lived in a log cabin on the outskirts of the woods that they were walking through. Grog’s Peruvian family was considered moderately wealthy, and Grog’s father had always wanted to live in a rustic log cabin right by the woods, so he had one specially built for them. It was a large, two-story cabin complete with an in-ground rectangle eight-foot deep pool surrounded by a small chain-link fence. The pool was closed down now considering it was early fall and beginning to get a tad chilly, especially at night. Grog was the tallest of the group at six feet one inch, and he was slender. He had straight, thick, black hair which he kept long but slicked straight back and round, black eyes fringed with thick, black eyelashes.
Grog had dark brown skin due to his Peruvian background. He had a round face and a rounded small nose set above full lips. Mike was the shortest of the group at five feet four inches, and he was also slender, almost scrawny. He had brown hair which he kept in a professional haircut, a long, thin face, and he wore thick glasses with designer frames over heavy lidded brown eyes. He had a rounded nose slightly larger than Grog’s and thin pink lips. Mike was also very pale skinned. Mike split his time between his divorced parents. Sometimes he lived in his father’s two-story, white house, and sometimes he lived in his mother’s luxurious apartment. Both of Mike’s parents worked hard at their well-paying jobs, and Mike wanted for nothing.
Tony was the medium height of his friends at five feet eight inches tall, and he had a stockier build to him due to lifting weights and doing the more physically demanding chores to help his mother. Tony had thick, copper red hair which he usually kept buzzed down to his scalp. Tony had an oval-shaped face and dark blue almond-shaped eyes fringed with thick, super long lashes. His nose was straight and masculine with a small splattering of freckles across his nose and lips that always seemed to curve up in a ready smile. Tony’s personal life was much more modest than his friends. Tony lived in small single-wide trailer with his mother and fourteen-year-old sister. His mother worked two minimum-wage jobs, was hardly ever home, and had a lot of trouble keeping all her bills paid on a monthly basis and being able to afford food for them to eat. Around Christmastime, Tony’s mother usually had to take out a loan to pay for their meager Christmas which consisted of two presents each for Tony and his sister, Charlotte, and that also counted as their school shopping.
Tony hadn’t seen his father since he was a young child. Tony couldn’t remember a lot about his father, and what he could remember, he tried not to think about. Tony’s father was an alcoholic who would come home drunk and fly into rages over nothing and physically take his brutal rage out on his wife and young children. Tony’s mother finally left and took her two children with her. Tony’s father tried to get them to come back home once. Tony remembered it very well. His father found out where they were and came to their new home drunk. He had gone after Tony’s mother, hitting her and threatening to kill her and the kids if she didn’t come back home.
Tony saw his mother snap and fight back for once. When his father grabbed her, she hit him in the chest and ran from him, throwing whatever she could pick up until she grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen. Then Tony saw a look in her eyes that he had never seen before, and it terrified him. It was that look that chased his father out of the house as she ran after him holding the knife up. When Tony’s father ran out of their mobile home, Tony’s mother screamed that if she ever saw him again, she would kill him. She shouted it twice to make sure he had heard it. They had never seen him again. But Tony’s worst nightmares were his mother coming toward him and his sister with a butcher knife and that terrifying look in her eyes while they screamed and pleaded for their lives.
What Tony lacked in monetary value, he made up for in intelligence. Tony and his friends had taken IQ tests once, and Tony had scored the highest at 145. Yet despite all of the differences between the boys, they were best friends and almost inseparable outside of school.
They continued walking through the woods. They hadn’t realized that they had wandered fairly far into the woods when Abbie suddenly started whining, acting anxious, and wanting to turn around and go home.
“What? What is it?” Grog asked, annoyed. They walked further with Abbie becoming more and more anxious. She gave a small bark and stopped walking. The boys turned and looked at her.
Mike turned back around and kicked a small rock with his sneaker. It landed hard and a puff of dirt flew up. “What is that?” Mike asked, pointing at something in the ground.
The boys slowly wandered closer to investigate. It almost looked like it was just another rock, but on closer inspection, they saw it was a dark red crimson color, like the color of a pool of blood, and it was pockmarked. It was still mostly covered by the dirt. Abbie kept whining and wanting to go back, but she wouldn’t leave without her humans. It didn’t look like it was very big, and the dirt was kind of loose, so they dug around this object with their hands. It didn’t take too long to dig it completely out. They dug it out and looked at it. It was the size of a cantaloupe, completely round, but pockmarked and rough all over.
Tony’s eyes grew wide. “Do you guys know what this is?”
“What