Young Writers Society

Prologue

Deep beneath the parched, dusty surface of Scientific Research Facility Number 51's outer bounderies an entity long hidden from the world stirred within its confines. As a result of being located so close to the weapons testing facility, radiation and toxic chemicals had eventually uncovered a burried city mostly destroyed, but still partiaully intact. Scientists had flocked to the site, now littered with slabs of million year old stone and wood somehow preserved and an effort was made to expose and understand things that would have been better left burried and forgotten. Hundreds of feet below the most undisturbed building was a subterranean cave in which a presence flexed against its mysterious bonds, awaking from a slumber that was meant to be eternal. Slowly the weakened threads shackling the ancient evil were stretched to their greatest extent and then one by one snapped until none were left. The creature was free. As it lay dormant, collecting energy, it cast out its mind to study its changed world. It began to understand and form a plan as it gained power, watching, waiting...

Chapter One

Slowly, the wavering sun rose until it bathed the little green hill in pale orange light, glimmering off the morning dew. A white bird glided gracefully down and landed on the lone tree on top of the hill, disappearing into its thick green foliage. Suddenly the tree flickered, and the picture dissolved, leaving only a blank white screen and a girl, disappiontment etched onto her young face.

"Mom! The projector is acting up again!" she yelled to her mother, who stood in another room trying to coax a three year old boy to eat his vegetables.

"Get over it!" her mother replied, frustrated by her toddler brother, Jacob, "your father doesn't have time to fix it again."

"Mom-"

"Don't start this again with me, Ashleigh. I just told you that your father doesn't have time to-"

"No. It just came back on again." Ashleigh interrupted looking back toward the peaceful hill and tree. As the sun came up and the bird flew into sight something about the picture started to change. Squinting her eyes, Ashleigh tried to determine what was going wrong, and when she did, sat quickly back up her eyes going wide.

Everything was dying.

Slowly the bright emerald green grass turned yellow, then brown, and then diappeared all together leaving dry cracked earth, the withered, and eventualy barren tree standing forlornly in the middle of a wasteland. The harsh sunlight glared upon the landscape and the bird's pitiful corpse dropped from the tree. Slowly, right in front of the once magnificent giant, the dirt began to buckle and ripple, sending tremors down the hill until, finally, the ground gave way and something truly terrifying emerged.

At first Ashleigh thought that some sort of toxic gas was slowly streaming out of the broken earth, but as it began to take shape she knew that this was something completely different, though she had no idea what it may be. The black ethereal mist seemed to draw light into itself as it swirled and coalesced into a tall column and then attempted to forma human shape, but failing to come anywhere close. Its too skinny body slowly walked, although it never once touched the ground, over to the dead tree and leisurely placed what must be a hand on to the dry peeling bark.

Ashleigh gasped as the entire oak vaporized into dust in an instant, leaving nothing but a flurry of ashes, quickly carried away by a non-existent wind. Without conscious thought she had inched closer to the screen until her enitre vision was the hill and the black creature that had decimated the little world. Ever so slowly the thing turned toward her until its face twitched into view and its glowing violet eyes met her's, somehow making a connection through the screen that forced her to focus only on it, holding her eyes like a magnet. A smile grew and the creature's lips wrinkled back until Ashleigh could see two rows of perfectly straight, razor-sharp teeth.

And then her head exploded.

Screaming, she immediately tasted blood, but that wasn't what held her stiff with fear. Inside her head was replaying every horrible thing that had ever happened to her. Asheigh saw herself falling off her bike and scraping her knees, tripping on stage in front of a crowd of people, and watched, helpless, as her best friend fell into the raging waters of a flood river. She didn't just see it all, she felt it. Every cut, scrape, bruise, and all the mixed and jumbled feelings of the worst moments of her life, multiplied hundreds upon hundreds of times. Then it got worse. She became completely unaware of her body and was utterly consumed as her worst fears were acted out in her head over and over, until she stood on the brink of insanity. The only thing Ashleigh felt was pure unrestrained fear as she saw herself ripped and torn, cut and burned, over and over and over. She died a million times in the span of a second, and then a million more until it seemed eternity would only be content if she suffered forever...

Then it stopped.

Alex and his mother watched helplessly as his sister's thrashings subsided and then rushed to her side. He had been in his room when he had heard the screams over the sound of his blasting radio, and come running. Entering the room to find his mother trying to hold Ashleigh down, he rushed to her side but the eight year old's violent seizures threw them off, their efforts in vain. They hurriedly pushed the coffee table away from her, accidentally knocking the projector to the floor, and waited by her side for the small girl to stop.

After one last peircing scream, Ashleigh stopped moving all together and blood bubbled up from her mouth. Kneeling down at her side, Alex flipped her over, and screamed at his mother, who was still frozen in shock, to call an ambulance, as he felt his sister's wrist for a pulse. He sighed. Even though it was quick and erratic, the girl's heart was still beating. In the kitchen he heard his mother sobbing into the phone and then slowly Jacob's cries subsided as the young boy was quieted. Twenty minutes later, Ashleigh was being loaded, by stretcher, into the back of an ambulance followed by his mother who turned back to him shakily and said, "Alex, you have to stay home with Jacob. I already called your father at work and he's going to meet me at the hospital. I don't know when we'll be back, so if anything happens call my cell phone." The worry lines on her face tightened as she turned back to the ambulance and went to hold her daughter's cold hand, tears rolling slowly, silently down her face. Alex could only stand and watch as the ambulance's sirens and lights faded into the distance, clutching his little brother's tiny hand like a lifeline, while his old life was swepted away.