Gallowwolf
Alright, to start things off, this is my first attempt at making an original story, or any kind of story that goes onto the internet.
WARNING!: Some content of this story may be considered disturbing by some, make sure your parents are out of the room while you read it! As of now, the rating is PG-15 for violence, language (some of which has been censored), and some use of alcohol.
All of the characters in this story are mine, along with certain settings. Do not use them unless I have allowed you, or else I'll have a reason to hire that a sadistic lawyer I have on speed dial for once.
I'm all up for constructive criticism, tips, and all the other what have yous.
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Spoiler:- Chapter List:
Gallowwolf
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Prologue
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Kip Blackburn
Near Eagle Lake, ME, United States
September 13th, 23:46
The campfire crackled as Karl continued his tall tale. Telling scary stories was a camp tradition; it was impossible to go without hearing one fantasy of horror. Terrance was making smores, and Gerald was halfway in his sleeping bag. The fire was soothing, as the air had a icy bite to it, and the night's absence of light rivaled that of a black hole.
The autumn air carried a nip through its clutches, and it hit Kip like an eighteen-wheeler. The scout shivered, as the camping trip for the troop was never meant to be this cold. He pulled up his balaclava to keep his face warm. The forest lacked warmth in any form, shape or fashion. It was filled with deciduous trees still bearing some of their leaves, and the evergreens remained as they always do. The Boy Scouts went out on their camping excursion that included everyone in the troop.
Kip and his friends set up on a hill that was just above the rest of the troop. They had one tent and a fire with stools set up around it; and above the fire hung a used cooking spit that smelled of rabbit. Hunting, fishing, whittling, cooking, and all of the other activities of the busy day easily tired the four Boy Scouts. After such a long day, the whole troop decided to stay for the night.
“Want one?” Terrance asked, handing Kip a perfectly done smore.
“What the heck would make me say no,” he responded, carefully grabbing the staple campfire confection.
As he bit down, penetrating the graham cracker layers, he reached a heavenly combination of melted chocolate and a marshmallow cooked perfectly golden-brown.
“And that’s why they say the house on Fulmer Avenue is haunted!” Karl ended. Kip didn't pay attention to the sad excuse of a horror story the boy had just told.
“That story was lame as my dad’s jokes,” Gerald replied.
“I’d like to see you do any better,” the skinny boy defensively snapped. This was not a wise thing to say.
Gerald had the most abstract and expansive imagination of the kids there. His family was rumored to be deep within the occult, giving him the chance to learn about what most people found unethical.
He saw all the horror movies on the big screen, including the old ones from the 30’s and 50’s.
He cracked his knuckles and said, “Listen, I’ll make you piss your pants with this one.”
“Yeah right,” Kip remarked with a roll of his eyes.
“You’re really brave,” Gerald responded, “maybe you should start to listen and shut your yap.” Kip rolled his eyes again, displaying a sign of confidence that his trousers would be dry at the end of the tale.
Gerald told a story that went beyond the philosophical boundaries that most horror writers don’t dare exceed. The fact that the fire turned to coals as he told the tale added to the effect it had on Kip’s psyche today.
Gerald’s story wasn’t a popular folk tale, but it would make anyone freak out in insomnia for its lasting potential on a man’s brain.
The legend was that strange noises in the forest were caused by a dimensional cross and ricochet of two parallel dimensions, one being the one the boys breathe in; and the other held whatever horrors of boogeymen that went through the minds of people on earth. The tale sent a chill down Kip's spine. There were no ethics involved with it other than those that were broken.
God! Why would he tell us this nightmare!? he thought.
Gerald ended his tale by saying that there was a certain sound that was indescribable through the use of words when it happened.
Despite having said it wouldn’t scare him, Kip’s psyche was reduced to a pulp. He no longer felt the same bold and confident feeling; and he probably never would.
“Really Gerald why did you tell that,” Terrance inquired with a display of fear in his voice.
“Karl wanted to see me out do him, don’t blame me.” Gerald replied, pitying his fellow scouts’ cowardly reactions.
“Maybe you should’ve started out with a softer tale,” the scoutmaster said walking up the hill. The boys opened their eyes in horror and jumped,
Terrance nearly fainted. They did not dare to look at their superior.
“Now look, you guys know you should be in bed by now, it’s almost midnight.”
“Sorry,” Gerald said, “we were just about to go to sleep.”
After a short lecture from the Eagle Scout, they put out the fire and crawled in the tent. They heard a bone curdling cold pitch. They heard it about seven times that night. None of them ever returned to the forest again.
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Thirteen Years Later
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Kip Blackburn
Eagle Lake, ME, United States
December 31st, 20:03
Kip turned the television on, hoping that the cable news was going to talk about something positive for once.
No matter what, the local news channel would lift his spirits in the morning, and when he got home from work, he would go to sleep in a deep depression.
As the screen came on, he quickly changed the channel to the local news station.
There was a report on the various hikers that have gone missing with little evidence, the murders in the ghettos of the various large cities around the state, and another torrent of the usual status of the economy that is waiting to be put out of its misery.
The only thing noteworthy was the mysterious disappearances of hikers. Someone was able to find an audio recording near a corpse of somebody who was apparently made out to be a guy named Hector Shoemaker.
The audio recording was played, and the sound sent a chill down Kip’s back. His spine was ready to snap. That sound had hunted him since his camping trip as a boy scout.
The same high pitched noise that his old friend Gerald described, that they later ended up hearing much more than once.
He quickly turned off the TV and ran into the kitchen to make his dinner. Kip was too afraid of spending too much money to buy any great food; all he had was some store-bought ramen noodles.
After slurping up the last of his ramen, Kip slipped into his pajamas, and went to bed. He was haunted by the scream of the recording, and suffered from a stronger insomnia than he had on average.
Kip was the local gunsmith. In an area with a lot of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities, he was quite busy.
He was a proud owner of many vintage weapons that he spent much of his salary on; some of the weapons he owned were prototypes.
Kip’s skill in his field of work was unrivaled, but his prices were far from cheap.
When he woke up, Kip decided to start his day with a cup of coffee and some toaster pastries. He plopped the pastries in the toaster, and started the coffee pot.
After breakfast, he got dressed, brushed his teeth, and got ready for the Friday he had waited all week for. Kip put on his winter coat and boots, then slipped on a balaclava; which he then topped with a watch cap.
As he trotted on to work, he looked around at the twelve inches of snow that covered Eagle Lake as if it were a quilt on a man with the flu.
Snow, I used to love the stuff as a kid, Kip thought. He still liked the white fluff, but it started to get tiresome after having to walk through it to get to work every day.
Snow covered everything, everywhere, every year. It was like the monsoons that occurred in other areas of the world, just add cold temperatures.
Once Kip reached the structure, he unlocked it, and set up for the day. He still had to repair a Ukrainian Vepr left by a rather shady character.
The Vepr was a bullpup AK-74, and was used exclusively by the Ukrainian military. The man who gave it to Kip paid him extra to keep their business between the two of them.
He stripped the weapon, organizing the parts like they do in the maintenance guides that books have.
The gas cylinder was growing weary and the hammer spring was quite rusty. Luckily, his client came to the right place.
Kip got out his tools and replaced the faulty parts with those of better quality.
He was able to get the blueprints and mechanisms to many firearms that civilians of the US were unauthorized to possess.
The clients he got them from were very secretive indeed, but when someone in possession of military-grade weapons needed maintenance, they would come to him.
After about thirty minutes of maintenance, he reassembled the gun, and it was ready for firing.
The phone rang around five o’ clock. Kip walked over and answered it.
“Do you have it ready,” the man said.
“Yeah, it’s all ready to go,” Kip responded.
“Alright, I’ll be there around six.”
With that, the man hung up. Kip resumed his normal daily schedule until the door swung open.
A man in a black, hooded, leather trench coat and large combat boots entered. He had a thin face, and his stubble was beginning to grow into a short, shaggy, and quite rough looking beard.
“Is it ready?”
“Yep,” Kip replied, “let me go get it.”
After retrieving the weapon, he handed it to the man.
“Excellent work,” he said, “I’m glad I came to the right place.” The thin male figure looked around, relieved that nobody was around but the two of them.
“Look,” he said in a Russian accent, “I’ve got a job offer for you, it’s only for a limited time, so make your decision carefully, but make it fast.” Kip nodded, then demanded that the man tell him what it was.
“We need someone with your skill in firearms, our old guy bit the dust a couple weeks ago, so we need a replacement,” the Russian said trying to draw as little attention as possible.
“We know the secret behind the disappearing hikers.” Kip’s eyes grew wide, “What the hell are you trying to say?”
“Whoa, man, take it easy! What I meant was I think I know how it keeps happening under everybody’s noses!?”
“Okay,” Kip replied with a sense of uncertainty in his voice, “you could’ve worded that better the first time.”
“Now look, you won’t tell anyone about what I speak of here; or I’ll see to it personally that you burn in hell, understand?”
“Calm down man, what is it that can be so bad that nobody can know about but us,” Kip asked. His heart began beating faster with the threat the man gave him.
“All I ask is that you don’t say anything, you don’t have to accept; but I’d rather you do,” the shady character said.
“Okay, j-just tell me what the hell this job is,” Kip fearfully inquired.
The Russian man looked around again, making sure that nobody was eavesdropping before he spoke.
“I want you to join me, or at least the squad I’m a part of. We’ve been hired to search of a team that had the same job as us before, which was to stop the mystery behind the missing hikers. They went missing and now we’ve been hired to go and find them, and complete their mission if we can.”
“Wait, Mercenary work,” Kip asked sounding rather confused.
“Wow, I thought you’d never guess,” the man said, “What else would it be?”
“Isn’t that illegal,” Kip asked. The thought of directly breaking the law in such a way made his chest throb.
“No,” he said with a sense of sarcasm in his voice, “and I bet the fact that you know how to repair and have the mechanisms to repair military-grade firearms like the one I got right here is perfectly legal to!”
“But you must know that the pay is pretty damn generous, and the fact that you’d save a bunch of lives will make you a freaking hero,” he explained.
“You said your other man died on the job, why would I want to take such a risk!?”
“Uh, the fact that this could make or break the future of humanity; if we don’t do anything about it, life on earth will most likely be eradicated!”
Kip thought to himself for a minute before making his choice. Despite the fact that it was December 5th, he began to sweat after about four minutes into deep thought.
“While we’re young, I’ve got a life too you know,” the recruiter said in an impatient tone.
“I don’t want to get on the law’s bad side! I have a right to be suspicious!”
“And I do too after you fixed my friend’s gun! Nobody told you that you had to come! If you want to forget about it that’s your goddamn choice,” he went on, “you can just go back to your miserable life as an underestimated worker, and go out of business when the economy is damned to hell. Or you could be among those who save the whole ****ing world!”
Kip’s heart was ready to jump out of his chest and shoot itself; he had never been pressed with such a matter of choice.
He opened his mouth and raised his index finger as if he had something to say, but no words came out.
“I don’t got much more time, so make your answer now!”
“Fine,” Kip answered, “I’m in.”
“Great,” the man exclaimed, “I’ll tell the boys you said yes,” he said shaking his hand.
“I’m Vodyanoy,” he said with a smile.
“My name’s Kip.”
“Meet me in front of this place at five tomorrow morning,” Vodyanoy ordered, “don’t be late.”
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That's it for the prologue. Please feel free to comment, as I said, I'm up for tips and constructive criticism.
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Originally Posted by pokenutter
