Chapter 3: Saturday Cleanup

Chapter 3: Saturday Cleanup

Saturday nights were the worst. The veil between worlds felt thinnest not because of any cosmic alignment, but because of the sheer, idiotic bravado of the living. Teenagers, fueled by cheap beer and local legends, saw the iron gates of Blackwood Hollow not as a warning, but as a challenge. The "Midnight Run," they called it—a dare to touch the doors of the old pavilion near the North Gate and get out before the spooks got you.

Leo hated it. Each Saturday was a long, eight-hour prayer that he wouldn't hear the telltale snap of a twig outside the walls, the drunken laughter that always preceded a scream.

Tonight, his prayer went unanswered.

The call came through on the dedicated burner phone in the guard shack, a tinny, anonymous voice that belonged to their supervisor, a man Leo had never met named Abernathy. “Code 14. North Pavilion. Bring the kit.” The line went dead.

Leo hung the phone up, his movements stiff. He looked at Thomas, who was nursing a lukewarm coffee, still visibly shaken from his encounter two nights prior. The kid had been a ghost himself, silent and wide-eyed, sticking to Leo like a shadow.

“Kit?” Thomas asked, his voice barely a croak.

Leo didn’t answer. He walked to a locked supply closet, pulled out a large, black canvas duffel bag, and slung it over his shoulder. The contents were grimly practical: a heavy-duty body bag, thick rubber gloves, industrial-strength cleaning agents, and a roll of plastic sheeting. Thomas’s face went from pale to ghostly.

The walk to the North Pavilion was the quietest yet. The usual whispers and spectral phenomena of the Hollow seemed muted, drawn back into the shadows as if in deference to the very real tragedy that had unfolded. The air near the North Gate was always heavy, thick with a palpable sense of physical menace that radiated from the territory of the Horned King. Tonight, it felt cloying, triumphant.

They saw it from a hundred yards out. The pavilion, a simple wooden structure with a few picnic tables, was a wreck. One of the heavy oak tables had been smashed, its thick planks splintered and thrown aside as if by a colossal force.

And in the center of the wreckage lay the reason for the Code 14.

He was just a boy, maybe sixteen. Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, his face frozen in an expression of absolute, mind-shattering terror. But it was the state of his body that made Thomas choke back a wave of nausea. He wasn’t mauled or bloodied. He was… broken. His limbs were bent at angles that defied anatomy, his torso twisted. It was as if something of immense size and strength had picked him up and simply snapped him, like a dry twig.

“Oh, God,” Thomas gagged, stumbling back and covering his mouth. The coppery scent of blood was strangely absent; instead, the air smelled of ozone and raw, primal fear.

Leo’s face was a mask of granite. He’d seen this before. He dropped the duffel bag, his movements methodical, detaching him from the horror. He pulled on a pair of thick gloves, his expression revealing nothing of the cold rage and weary sorrow that churned within him. Another one. Another child sacrificed to a local ghost story. He looked at the boy’s terrified face and saw Mark. He saw the next dozen kids who would try this, and the dozen after that.

“We… we have to call the police,” Thomas stammered, his eyes darting around the oppressive darkness, as if expecting the perpetrator to leap out at them.

Leo turned and fixed him with a cold stare. He shook his head once. There is no one to call. We are the only ones who handle this. The unspoken message was clear. The company that paid them their exorbitant salaries did so for one reason: discretion. Blackwood Hollow didn't have trespassers. It only had missing persons.

Leo unzipped the body bag, the sound obscenely loud in the stillness. He gestured for Thomas to help. Thomas looked from the bag to the broken body, his face a mess of horror and revulsion. He shook his head, unable to move. Leo’s gaze hardened. This was part of the job. You couldn't just face the ghosts; you had to clean up what they left behind. He gestured again, more forcefully.

Swallowing hard, Thomas forced his legs to move. He pulled on a pair of gloves, his hands trembling so violently he could barely work the fingers. Together, in a grim, silent tableau, they lifted the boy’s unnaturally light body and placed it in the bag. The work was awful, intimate. Thomas had to handle a limb bent back on itself, the feeling of shattered bone through the thin fabric of the boy's jeans sending a fresh wave of sickness through him.

Once the bag was zipped, the grim reality seemed contained, but not gone. “Personal effects,” Leo grunted, the first and only word he’d spoken. He pointed to the boy’s pockets.

Thomas’s hands shook as he patted down the corpse through the thick vinyl. A wallet. Keys. And a smartphone, its screen shattered but still clutched tightly in the boy’s rigor-mortis-stiffened hand. Thomas had to pry the cold, dead fingers open one by one. It was the single most horrible thing he had ever done.

As he worked the phone free, its screen flickered to life for a moment, illuminating his own terrified face. He was about to put it in an evidence bag when he saw it. Scratched crudely into the plastic case on the back was a symbol. It was a strange, angular rune, like a stylized, three-pronged pitchfork combined with an inverted Z. It was deliberate, not a random scuff. Something about it felt… wrong. Ancient.

He held it out for Leo to see, his throat too tight to speak.

Leo took the phone. The moment his eyes fell on the carving, he froze. The cold, professional mask he wore cracked, just for an instant, revealing a flicker of something Thomas had never seen before: genuine shock.

His mind was suddenly filled with a phantom echo, the memory of a thousand whispers that haunted the edges of his patrols. The tormented spirits of the Hollow often babbled, their words a cacophony of madness and sorrow. But sometimes, on nights when the air was charged, a single, unifying sound would rise from the chorus. A guttural chant. A word in a language that had never been spoken by human tongues.

A word that, if written, would look exactly like the rune on the back of this phone.

Leo’s blood ran cold. He had always dismissed the chant as meaningless, the raving of the damned. But seeing it here, etched onto the property of a dead trespasser, changed everything.

This wasn’t a random dare. The Midnight Run wasn't just a local legend. It was a summons. Something—or someone—was marking these kids, sending them into the prison like offerings. The entities weren't just passively waiting for the foolish to stumble in. They were fishing, using a lure he had never recognized until now.

He stared at the rune, the sinister truth solidifying in his mind. They were wardens of a prison, yes, but the walls were more permeable than he’d ever imagined. And the real danger wasn't just what was locked inside. It was what was whispering to the world on the outside.