Michael Hunter - Come Get Me

Apparently when she’d been out for her walk Maria had come upon her in a hysterical state saying all kinds of crazy things. When she’d finally gotten her calmed down enough that she could understand her what she heard terrified her. Maria told her that Jim found her and demanded to be taken out to the place Tommy had been killed. Jill thought this sounded funny and said so but Maria explained it away saying that her and Jim had been old childhood friends and that they hadn’t parted on the best of terms but that they had made up since he came back and had come to her for help since she knew just about everything that went on in town. After that the scenario played much the same as it had with Jim. She was taken out to the abandoned house and jumped from behind. Instead of leaving her free to wake up on her own though they drugged her. They used a little more than they should of though which explained why she was unconscious for so long.

Jim and Pete, when asked had just told a seemingly outlandish tale of a lover scorned. They said Maria was crazy and had somehow gotten Johnny to go along with her plan to make Jim lover her. They also made sure that the police understood that part of Maria’s great plan was blaming the local legend for everything that happened. At first they weren’t believed. It was too crazy. Most of them knew Maria. A few of them had even dated her. They were ready to throw the both of them in the asylum until they were finally searched Maria’s house. Then the story was suddenly much more plausible.

Upon entering her home they’d first been confronted by a normal everyday single woman’s home. Then one of the officers had been being a bit of a pervert and was looking through Maria’s underwear drawer looking for a souvenir when he’d stumbled across some pretty damning evidence. A nice hefty stack of pictures was found in the back of the drawer buried under everything. Flipping through the pictures they found little notes Maria had made to herself about when she’d taken them. But that wasn’t all they found. In the back of her closet hidden behind a few old boxes they found notebooks filled with love letters and stories all dealing with one person.

Jim Collins.

Apparently Maria had a very vivid imagination and liked committing most of it to paper for later remembrance. After finding all this stuff it was pretty hard not to believe their story.

Then they found the goat.

In the woods behind her house they found what was left of a rotted goat. After doing some checking, the police found that one had been stolen from a town a few miles away. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The police quickly apologized for detaining them so long and released everyone but Pete. They wanted to know what his part had been in the whole adventure. That took a little more explaining but he too was eventually freed with no charges filed against him. The only thing that was ever mentioned about the creature was how Maria was going to blame everything on it. Nothing about how it saved them. They knew if it was ever mentioned that asylum was still out there waiting for them.

Jim knew why he wasn’t talking but couldn’t understand why Pete didn’t. He, unfortunately, was going to be staying in a mental hospital for a while. Not a full blown asylum, but close enough. With Jim’s help Pete’s parents had finally convinced him he needed to get some help. If nothing else he could rest for a while. Jim kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t have to join him.

When the police and ambulance had arrived at the smoldering ruins and found them, Pete had lapsed back into talking to himself about the damned purple dinosaur again and laughing at a joke only he had heard. Who knows maybe he was laughing at the world around him and the people who thought they were sane. After talking to Pete with his parents Jim didn’t see him again until the day they took him to the mental hospital. Jim went to see him off with his arm in a sling. He tried not to be too sad about the whole thing because he knew Pete would at least have some peace and quiet where he was going. He also wouldn’t have to worry about lighting his nightly fires anymore. But he was still sorry to see him go. Maybe Pete would be sane enough to return to the outside world again someday. Jim wanted to be there waiting for him. He hoped now that Pete knew he didn’t have to fear the creature he would be able to get better a lot sooner than the doctors were telling everyone. Jim wasn’t holding his breath though. This was Pete they were talking about after all. Jim was hoping Pete would say something, maybe act like his normal self, before he left to give everyone a little hope but he didn’t. As he got in the van to leave Jim heard Pete mumbling about the purple dinosaur again and decided he needed to get to the bottom of at least this part of Pete’s problem before he could let them take him away. He walked over to say goodbye and quietly asked what the whole thing with the dinosaur was about. Surprisingly Pete looked at him and smiled like his old self.

“Oh, that?” he said happily. “It was just something I saw on TV one day that bothered me so much I can’t get it out of my head. Kinda like one of those damn jingles you hear on the radio. That stuff annoys the hell out of me.” Then with a wink and a wave he climbed into the van and was off.

Jim couldn’t help but laugh. Something as simple as that and it made him seem like a raving lunatic. He decided Pete really was laughing at the world when he giggled to himself.

He hadn’t seen Pete since that day. He kept meaning to go see him but hadn’t made the time to do it. He scolded himself almost daily for not going but he still couldn’t bring himself to do it. He just didn’t want to see Pete in a place like that. Somehow he thought Pete would understand and not hold it against him. As far as the Goatman went Pete hadn’t uttered a word and if he did there wasn’t anyone that would believe him.

Since Jill didn’t remember anything, Jim chose to wait until they were both out of the hospital to tell her everything that had happened. He figured there was no reason to confuse and upset her when she was being asked so many questions about what happened.

One day while they were still trying to figure out where their relationship was going he sat her down and told her everything that had happened. At first she didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Her initial reaction was that he was playing a joke on her but that night her grandmother sat her down and told her all the legends that had been passed down through the years and had ended up with her. Come to find out what she’d said earlier about her father having died at the hands of the Goatman wasn’t exactly true. It was actually a hunting accident that had done it. The only reason she thought it was the Goatman was because he’d supposedly been seen near his body. Even after that she still wasn’t completely convinced. Finally she said it didn’t really matter because they were all still alive and that was something that everyone should be happy about. With that she ended the conversation and would hear nothing more about it.

Jim, himself, had ended up having three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. It had fallen on Jill and his mother to nurse him back to health. It was the worst time he could ever remember in his whole life.

The two women had hit it off right away and spent most of their time mothering him until he thought he would go crazy. He even thought about going to join Pete until he was better but wasn’t sure he’d ever want to leave so decided against it. Slowly but surely he finally healed and was able to fend for himself once again but through it all he’d ended up growing closer to Jill than he ever hoped to be. With her helping him do almost everything they’d slowly fallen in love almost like it was planned. He finally decided to stay in his home town for good. Except for recent events it actually was a nice place to live. Now that the town psycho was gone there was hardly any crime, just the occasional kid breaking some windows or something equally harmless. That’s what was nice about small, out of the way towns. After thinking about it he realized that was what he’d missed when he was living in the city.