Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

—

REX HELD TIGHT to his hammer—continuing to chip away at the last of the spring wall holding Leif in place—as the spirit tried to rip it from his hand.

He and Ben had been dealing with this near-constant interference the entire time they’d been digging, the spirit seeming to get stronger and more focused as time passed. Their bags of pig’s blood were now empty, but they’d nearly finished the job.

Rex tore away one last particularly large rock and felt a burst of joy as Leif’s body sagged forward. Rex reached out to hold him, grabbing the rope that Ben had already tied around Alicia and gently looping it around his best friend’s waist.

Gotcha, buddy, Rex thought as he looked at Leif.

Leif’s eyes were open but unfocused, his jaw agape.

I know, Rex thought. I missed you, too.

Ben double-knotted the rope around Leif and Alicia and tested it with a few sharp tugs. He pointed toward the side of the spring opposite Whitewood and the cult, grabbed the rope close to Alicia, then began kicking his fins, pulling their helpless cargo along. Rex understood: since they had no pullers waiting on the shore to haul them in, they’d have to tow their friends back themselves. Rex grasped the rope and started kicking.

They hadn’t made it five feet before the darkness engulfed them, violently dragging Leif and Alicia—and Rex and Ben with them—back to the spring wall.

Rex’s hopes came crashing down as he realized just what the spirit was capable of. He and Ben stared at each other, both obviously thinking the same thing:

How the hell are we going to do this?

There was a splash from above.

About fifteen feet away, Rex saw a young boy in a jumpsuit plunge down into the water.

The spirit left the four of them immediately, darting to the boy and enveloping him.

Rex was thinking they should go help him before he realized:

This was their chance.

He and Ben began kicking their fins again, moving Leif and Alicia through the water as fast as they possibly could. They made it a little less than ten feet before they saw the boy in the jumpsuit launched out of the spring, as if the spirit had decided it had no use for him.

Moments later, the spirit returned to them, Rex and Ben kicking with everything they had, barely making a difference as the frenzied shadow towed them back almost to their starting point.

Another splash.

Then another.

A teenage boy and girl came plummeting down together. Rex suddenly understood that the cult was throwing these kids in, offering them up to “the One Below.” Insane.

He couldn’t think about it too hard, though, because the spirit sped away again, and he and Ben resumed their exhausting rescue. Rex was running on sheer adrenaline at this point; he wondered how much longer he could keep it up.

The spirit, meanwhile, bounced between the boy and the girl, seeming confused as to whom to engulf first. It finally settled on the girl, wrapping her up in its blackness.

Rex and Ben made it back to the spot where the spirit had last stopped them and kept going, Leif and Alicia still drifting behind them.

The girl was propelled toward the spring wall.

The spirit had decided she was worth keeping.

Rex and Ben kicked harder.

By the time the spirit was violently ejecting the teenage boy from the spring, Rex and Ben had managed to get Leif and Alicia a few feet from the shallows. Just a bit further and they’d be able to walk out of this hellscape.

But the spirit had other ideas, wrenching them back toward the wall.

Rex was ready to concede defeat. There was no way he’d be able to swim all the way across the spring again.

Before they’d even been pulled halfway, though: another splash.

Then two more.

And another.

Whitewood and the cult must have been getting desperate, throwing in several students at a time. Ben and Rex took full advantage of the diversion, somehow finding the energy to zoom forward.

A young blond boy was accepted and pulled along to the wall, the three other students ruthlessly catapulted to the shore, all of which gave Rex and Ben more than enough time to pull Leif and Alicia all the way to the shallows.

As their heads broke the surface of the water, Alicia and Leif lurched to life, coughing and gasping like newborn babies torn from the womb.

They’d made it. Rex wanted to pass out.

—

“WHY IS NOTHING happening!” Whitewood screamed. “The Keeper has accepted two more! That makes eight!”

On the opposite side of the spring, he saw the reason his math was wrong: two of his rebellious souls were no longer with the Keeper.

Ben and Rex were helping Alicia and Leif to shore, where the two freed captives both collapsed onto all fours and began, with a series of terrible retches, to purge the spring water.

“Get them!” Whitewood yelled. “We only need one more Lost Cause!”

Mary Hattaway, Travis, Dr. Bob, and Shackelford raced toward the escaped Lost Causes, abandoning Janine and Donna. Seizing the opportunity, Janine immediately ran to help the tied-up kids. Donna followed.

“Well, this isn’t good,” Ben said, seeing the four adults headed in their direction.

Rex knew neither of them had the energy to fight off the cult members. “Do you have a plan?”

“Let me think,” Ben said, silent for a few seconds. “No.”

This definitely wasn’t good.

But then Rex heard something. A sound both foreign and familiar.

Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh

“Do you hear that?” he asked Ben.

They looked across the spring, where the Horn-cart was barreling through the grass toward the cult, and suddenly Rex knew what he was hearing.

New Kids on the Block.

Mark Hornhat sat behind the wheel, one triumphant finger in the air, nodding his head to “Hangin’ Tough” as it blasted from the golf cart speakers. He was upon the cult in a matter of seconds, not slowing down before crashing into two of the robed figures holding torches.

They fell to the ground in a daze, and Hornhat steered the still-speeding Horn-cart toward Sheriff Lawson, who was unable to dodge it before his legs rolled up under the bumper, the electric vehicle running him over, knocking him unconscious.

“Don’t cross our path ’cause you’re gonna get stomped!” Hornhat sang along with NKOTB as his back wheels made a speed bump of the sheriff. He drove over to the line of students waiting to be thrown into the springs, where Janine and Donna were already untying two kids.

“Now you guys untie the others!” Janine told them, and the students sprang into action.

“Stop them!” Whitewood screamed, spit flying from his mouth as he watched his plan unraveling. A small crew of cult members who had been tossing students into the water ran toward Janine, Donna, Hornhat, and the newly unbound kids.

“Here!” Hornhat parked his cart and passed two golf clubs from the back to Janine and Donna. He then grabbed more for the students who’d been freed before reaching into the cart one last time and emerging triumphantly with his nunchucks. “Time to party,” he said, swinging them around indiscriminately in the air, just barely missing Donna’s face.

The small group of cult members was closing in, led by C.B. Donner of C.B.’s Auto Parts. “Get yer hands off the Candidati!” he shouted, charging straight at Janine, an unhinged look in his eyes.

Janine reared back with Hornhat’s Big Bertha driver—accessing the one golf lesson her dad had given her when she was eleven—then swung the club around at full force, the bulbous metal head connecting with C.B.’s “fuzzy dice.”

“Fore,” Janine said as the howling man fell over.

The other cultists were upon them, trying to restrain whomever they could, but the kids held their ground next to Janine and Donna, wildly swinging their clubs. None of them was really hitting their targets, but they were still enough of a threat to keep the cult from tying any of them back up. And they were more effective than Hornhat, in any case, who was currently doing nothing but grimacing after having nunchucked himself in the thigh.