Dark Tales

      It’s odd how things work out. What’s even stranger is how simple things can haunt you and torture your mind until it all becomes a real threat to you.

I was like anyone else. Born to a loving family and brought up to be a good young man. I was even baptized in a Lutheran church. I grew up and met a beautiful woman, like most young men.

She was everything to me, the light of my life. We moved to New York to find fame and fortune. A young couple living in a big city, bad things can happen to innocents. I became a cop and tried to make the world a safer place for my wonderful new wife.

I left her alone for two hours and that’s all it took for my wife’s life to come to an end. Some cracked out junky wandered into our house and made a mess of my bright beautiful wife. After he raped and killed her he went on a killing spree. He killed the neighbors and even killed their dog.

Finally when he was brought down in a hail of police gunfire the truth settled into stay. My wife was dead; my reason for living was gone. What made everything even worse was what we found out later. My wife was one month pregnant.

After the dust settled I moved home to Minnesota. I found a small town where they needed a cop like me, a burnt out remainder of a cop whose only job was to keep the local drunks inline.

After living here in the town of Riverton for three years I’ve learned that running from the past doesn’t work. Running only makes it more painful to look back.

The memories plunged deep into my heart like an ice pick. All the things that I once loved and cherished were now just painful reminders of what I had lost. That’s were the town comes into play.

This small place was like a collective hive of misery and pain. Everyone here had his or her own sad story. Even the town had blood on it.

Back in the thirties this town was just starting out. The bright light of the town was quickly snuffed out by a group of bank robbers who found themselves held up in the new school.

The police finally took the criminals down, but not before they killed twelve students and hung the principal in his office. That was the end of the town of Riverton.

This whole place was one big pit of bad memories. I had no idea that it was all meant to be like this. The pain, the misery was all about to become real for everyone in this evil town. Something was stirring in the bowels of this town, in me, and everyone here.

It had to be at least nine pm when I heard the thunderous moan of misery. It came over the cold night air like a shriek of pure hellish torture. I was on my way home when I passed the old school, that’s when the sound cut into my eardrums. I stopped my car and looked back at the shadow of the tired beast of a building.

The thing was built back in the thirties, which meant that now it’s rusty, dark, sharp, and dangerous. The only people that went there were drunken stupid teenagers. Using it as a party trick or breeding grounds.

I had to go and check it out. It may have been some one who took a little fall after taking a lot of tequila, but it was probably some kids trying to have sex on a broken desk.

I quickly turned the car around and found my way back to the ugly ghost of a building. I shined my lights on it. I didn’t see anything from the outside, which meant I would have to go inside. I didn’t like that idea at all.

I quickly got out of my car and left it running with the lights setting the building on fire with its bright beams. The gun under my coat bumped my chest to remind me it was there.

My battery would die out in an hour or two, but I’ll probably only need it for two minutes. As I came upon the hole in the fence that everyone used to get in I heard some noise in there. Some where off in the back was a faint noise of someone moaning in pain. Maybe my ears where playing tricks on me? Maybe it was some girl trying to muffle her moans of passion?

I walked in the opening of the