Solitude: Chapter 1

[RETS]

The city was beautiful, Sherice thought wistfully as it rushed by. The only problem with its rushing was that it was rushing by for the last time. All her friends were here, her neighborhood, her boyfriend- Well, not her boyfriend any more. He’d found out she was moving and jumped straight into the arms of that ditsy Melody.

Everything crashed when her parents announced they were moving, including her world. However, did that matter to her parental units? Oh, no, of course it didn’t. They were right as rain, sitting up front talking about how wonderful this place was supposed to be. Yeah, right! Sherice thought.

She hated hating her parents, all though she’d grown used to it. They just didn’t get her, at all! Every argument she’d given them to stay, they’d shot down with some asinine reason to go. She didn’t want to leave her friends; she’d make new ones. She didn’t want to move in the middle of a school year; no problem, they said- Your transfer already took place. You’ll start as soon as we get there.

Therefore, here they were, leaving her city, her friends and her hood behind. Where were they moving? To some insignificant hick village in a state best known for its rocks, she thought. The Granite State. It was even their motto, for crying out loud!

Nonetheless, they were headed there, to Solitude, New Hampshire. Oh, the joy of it might kill her.


The landscape passed by quickly. Had Sherice had been awake; Marie would have pointed out some the beauty of the land. However, she had fallen asleep shortly after they’d passed Jackson City. Probably just as well, thought Marie to herself. She suspected Sherice had been up all night talking with her friends. This move was for far more reason then a better job position, but Sherice had taken it personally.

Marie was a regional forestry warden. A fancy name kept her at a desk more then in the forest anymore, to her dismay. She’d loved working among the woods and the wild. She’d loved the outdoors from the time she’d been a little girl, camping with her daddy. When she’d chosen forestry service as a career, not one person in her family had been surprised in the least.
Afterwards, came the years of training and experience. Living through a blizzard in her junior year of college, and keeping a pregnant woman alive as well, had attracted attention. By the time she graduated, she had a forestry position waiting for her. The post had been a dream turned reality. She was out in the mountains for weeks at a time, getting to test herself against the elements.

Then came the reorganization of the forestry service. It was deemed by the fat cats in the capital that there were too many rangers. Not wishing to lose her, the service sent her back to school, this time training for a job as a game warden. Two years later, she graduated with honors, and a higher paying job as one of three game wardens.

Four years into her new position, a zoo transport was involved in a tragic accident that killed the driver of the truck, as well as the new mother in the wagon with which it had collided. A full investigation established that, sadly, the mother was the first casualty, as she had suffered a freak brain aneurism. Her car had drifted into the path of the transport with no time for the truck driver to react.

The case involved her when they discovered that a pair of mountain lions had been the cargo. The cats were now loose in a city of one hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children. Not a good thing in the best of situations, but this was especially dangerous due to the lions being male and female.

One week later, the first resident attack took place. Marie had been on the scene at the same time as the police, and seen the same thing. A dead pet, and a nearly dead owner. The warning went out all over the city: “Big cats on the loose; Keep pets indoors!”

Two weeks after first attack, a second and third took place. The second attack had been in a residential neighborhood, and the third took place in the expansive public park. The city was in full panic mode, but Game Warden Lopez had remained calm. She was able to plot the attacks out on a map of the city, and pinpoint their probable location.

A barricade was set up at all park entrances. Hunters brought in had express orders to shoot to kill. The game service could not be certain which of the cats was the man killer, and after consulting with the intended home of the two lions, came to the decision to put them both down on sight. The zoo could not afford to have a lion that had the taste of human blood, as it would endanger their staff; the city couldn’t afford to allow the threat to continue.
Their sweep of the park began at dawn. One hour into it, a hunter was able to take down the first lion. It was carefully bagged, then sent back to the lab to discover if it was the killer. The hunt began again, from the west wall and headed east. About two hours afterwards, there was a shout and screaming heard throughout the entire park. A mauled hunter was found in a shallow gulley, and sent back.

This time, commissioner changed tactics. Hunters, paired up, now had orders to shout and shoot on sight. Within a half hour, Marie and her partner, Louis, found themselves attacked. The cat swiped their guns from their hands in one hit. Louis tried to wrestle the beast to the ground, but found himself fighting for his own life instead. Marie managed to get the cats attention, and was able to squeeze off two shots before it was upon her. She heard two more shots, and the world had faded away.

The autopsy on both lions indicated that they both had been responsible for the multiple attacks. The press hailed Marie as a heroin, a view certainly helped by the high praise of the commissioner and Louis himself, who doctors stated, survived solely due to her actions. Unfortunately, it also had injured her to such as degree that she was no longer able to work in the forest. The mayor had instituted the Regional Forestry Warden specifically for her. Now, she was on her way to her new job as Forest and Game Commissioner for Reeves County.

Marie sighed. Greg looked at her quizzically. She just looked back, smiled at her husband, and kept driving. Greg had been the absolute dream for whom she’d been hoping. He knew how to stand up for himself, but let her have her way with the small things. He had no issues telling her when she was out on a limb, but let her discover things on her own, if necessary. He had been so supportive of her decision to take this job it was almost sickening.


In all reality, Greg could work anywhere, at anytime. He was an acclaimed author whose work on the paranormal bordered on genius. There had been quite a few naysayers when his first book came out; they were shushed soundly. When it became apparent that his subject, a town in the Rockies, was not only real, but also functioning, his critics came to realize that his research was impeccable. Now, very few critics dared to say anything against his work!

Truth be told, Greg was just as excited to be going to Solitude as his wife was. The town was full of ghost stories; a veritable hub for UFOs during the sixties and seventies; and better still, it held a mystery of supernatural occurrence. A pact of cultic origin that no one had been able to verify, yet still bore the unmistakable scent of truth.

He was just as excited about their new home. An old hotel dating back to the Civil War era, they’d gotten a very fair deal on the property. Many of the old ghost stories that Greg was so wanting to research began in that hotel, or the hotel played some part in them. It was so exciting, that he knew he’d neglected Sherice. He hoped to make up for that once they settled into their new home, however.


Solitude, New Hampshire was nestled at the heart of Reeves County, at the foot of three mountains known as the Mephistopheles Triad. There had been more yearly deaths in this small mountain range then in the much better known White Mountains for the past five years. Of these deaths, seventy-five percent were caused by what appeared to be animal attacks. Considering the possible PR issue this presented, the Governor of New Hampshire specifically requested Marie Lopez, now known as the ultimate problem solver.

Solitude had its own strange rules, of course. Unlike most small towns, Solitude was fully operational most of the night. There was a daytime curfew in effect from the hours of 11am to 3pm. The curfew dated back to the towns founding. Due to its physical location, daylight lasted from 11am to 3pm year round. The curfew, established because the founders had discovered it was easier to work the mines at night when the bats were gone, was intended to provide a period of rest for its residents.

This daytime curfew also made the town the absolute best spot for partiers. They could come in late on a Friday and get trashed in every bar, and then sleep all day. This thanks to a grandfather clause allowing the town’s five bars to remain open till 6am.Of course, the high volume of “weekend” partiers also led to higher crime rate for a town its size. As well as more unexplained animal attacks.



Sherice was dreaming of her friends back home. Her whole life in the city was playing out within her mind. She remembered meeting Anya and Raquel in fourth grade. At the time, they had not gotten along. After about two months, a boy named Russell began picking on Raquel. Anya tried to step in, but was pushed down the stairs by Russell, breaking her arm in the process. In spite of their animosity towards each other, when Sherice heard what Russell had done, she met him at the top of the same staircase he’d pushed Anya down. Sherice stared at him, and then out of nowhere, she dropped him down the stairs with a right haymaker. He broke his arm, she was suspended for a week, and the three girls became fast friends.

Two years later, a reformed Russell asked Sherice to a benefit dance. They’d been an item from that point on. Every dance, every concert, every movie premier, they were a regular sight. It had actually become a bit of a joke around the school- To the point that they were voted one year “most likely to be conjoined.”

Her dream now changed to her receiving the news of her impending move. Her parents told her about it on a Monday, thereby cementing its infamy in her mind. It was as if her world stopped then crashed around her. She felt all that she knew falling away, and replaced by… Nothing. She saw a sign that read, “Welcome to Solitude, New Hampshire: Voted the Best Place to Die. Population: 0.” Then, out of the darkness, she saw a pale face, eyes closed, mouth a tight line. It drew closer, and at the last possible second, opened its eyes and mouth in a horrific mask of torment, and its scream was from the depths of hell itself!

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This material is copyrighted​

If there is any interest, I will continue to post chapters of this story. Just respond and request. Thanks for all comments and thoughts.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I'd give the work a proofread look, since there are some typos that got under the spellcheck radar, like heroin being confused for heroine. Other than that, I suppose it gives us a good background, though admittedly I'm imagining other critics might observe that you're potentially leaning more towards telling than showing, but there's a delicate balance between them that exists. You give us backstory here and then hopefully will give us physical descriptions, maybe implied personality, that sort of thing. And the ending is what is good for showing, not telling, as to what the subject of the story will be.

 

[RETS]

I'd give the work a proofread look, since there are some typos that got under the spellcheck radar, like heroin being confused for heroine. Other than that, I suppose it gives us a good background, though admittedly I'm imagining other critics might observe that you're potentially leaning more towards telling than showing, but there's a delicate balance between them that exists. You give us backstory here and then hopefully will give us physical descriptions, maybe implied personality, that sort of thing. And the ending is what is good for showing, not telling, as to what the subject of the story will be.

Yeah, I hate that spell check!

The next chapter introduces Rockford, brother of Sherice, and gives his own backstory. Their own descriptions are shown from that point forward, as the rest of the story unfolds. I've always disliked stories that immediately start out with physical descriptions, because it always struck me as a waste of time. Instead, I've opted for this work to describe them as the story itself unfolds.

Thanks for the read, my friend.