It happened in Ashbrook - Chapter Five: The First Experiment

After the Harvest Festival, Ashbrook was never the same. The parents whispered about leaving, but the sheriff’s barricades still blocked the roads, and rumours swirled of soldiers stationed just outside the county line. Whether to contain the threat or to prevent word from spreading, no one knew.

The children no longer slept. At night, their bedroom lights stayed on, but when parents checked on them, they found their sons and daughters sitting upright in bed, eyes open, pupils dilated, lips moving silently. Sometimes they hummed. Sometimes they scratched the same circle-symbols into the wallpaper with fingernails worn down to raw stubs.

Then came the first public experiment.

It happened at the school gymnasium. Classes had been suspended for weeks, but the building was used to distribute supplies. On a rainy afternoon, several families gathered there for food and blankets. The storm outside drowned out conversation until suddenly, the rain stopped mid-fall. Not slowed—stopped. Droplets hung in the air like beads of glass.

Everyone froze. The children stood immediately, as though receiving an unseen command.

Timothy Hale, the boy who had once declared “You’re already inside the circle,” stepped into the centre of the gym. His body convulsed, his spine arching until bones cracked audibly. Gasps echoed through the crowd, but no one dared move. His chest expanded unnaturally, and then, with a wet tearing sound, the skin split open.

There was no blood.

Instead, a glowing filament extended outward, like a thread of liquid light. It pulsed, and the other children followed suit, their bodies opening in grotesque synchronicity. Filaments stretched across the room, weaving together into a lattice of shimmering lines. The air buzzed, the walls vibrated, and the smell of burnt ozone stung every nose.

Parents screamed, rushing to pull their children away, but when hands touched the filaments, flesh blistered instantly. A mother’s palm blackened as though dipped in acid; she shrieked and collapsed, clutching the charred remains of her hand.

The sheriff drew his revolver and fired at Timothy. The bullet froze midair, suspended a few inches from the boy’s forehead. Slowly, impossibly, the round reversed course, zipping back into the barrel of the gun. The weapon exploded, shredding the sheriff’s hand into ribbons of flesh.

As he fell screaming, the children’s voices rose in harmony.

“We are seeds.”

“We are becoming.”

“He watches through us.”

The lattice of filaments shifted, aligning into circles upon circles, until a massive eye bloomed in the air above them—an eye not made of flesh, but of pure light. Its lidless gaze swept the room, piercing every soul.

One by one, the adults collapsed. Some fainted, others convulsed, foaming at the mouth. A few simply stopped breathing, hearts arrested by the unbearable weight of the gaze.

When the eye blinked out, the filaments withdrew. The children collapsed too, but only momentarily, rising again as though nothing had happened. Their wounds sealed shut, leaving behind faint scars in perfect circles.

Timothy smiled at the shattered remains of the gymnasium. “He is pleased,” he said.

The survivors stumbled into the rain, dragging the wounded, carrying the dead. No one spoke. No one dared.

The following morning, the bodies of those who had died were gone. Their graves dug empty, coffins splintered from within. Some whispered that the Tall One had reclaimed them for study. Others said the children themselves had moved them, though no one had seen it happen.

The doctor, desperate, compared the survivors to earlier patients. The same lesions appeared along their spines, the same silver flecks in their eyes. Whatever had been done to Caleb and Emily was now spreading across every child in Ashbrook.

It was no longer just experiments on the few. It was becoming systemic.

Late that night, the doctor found a note slipped under his clinic door. Written in a child’s handwriting, jagged and uneven, it read:

“The First Phase is complete. Prepare for Harvest.”

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model