The Vendeleer Brothers Book 4: The Plagued Forest
Chapter 9: Deja Vu

“Ian? Is your watch working?”

Ian looked down at his watch.

“Uh… Yeah. Why?”

“How long has it been?”

“A few hours.”

“Then I don’t think the water is going to make us sick anymore.”

Ian stopped walking and looked over at Brian, who was actually starting to dry off now. It was true, he hadn’t slowed down or started throwing up or anything-and he had been completely drenched. This was some very good news. It meant that they had one less thing to worry about.

“We’ll let the others know when we get back.” he murmured. In response, Brian opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again. He gave a disgruntled ‘ok’, and followed him with his head down. He was trying very hard not to freak out about the circumstances, and how he had slipped up and landed in water a few minutes after being outside. If this had all been a video game, he would be kicking butt right now. But instead, he was with his best friend’s brother who he was sure didn’t like him that much, and already screwing things up.

This was real life.

And he was such a noob at it.

They reached the hospital without any further incident, where they could see that their group of coma patients had grown.

“You can talk to everybody. I’m going to do a bit more reading.” he grumbled, taking the books from Ian and walking over to one of the couches. He didn’t even bother avoiding the puddles and then settled down in between the vines so he could try to read. He could vaguely hear some of what was going on, and how Ian told them the water was most likely harmless now. He could also hear them discussing how they had only found coma patients thus far.

Everyone else was still missing.

Brian closed his eyes and tuned out all the sound, trying to clear his mind. He wished he could call one of his siblings and ask what to do. Especially his younger brother Dustin. He always seemed to know what was up. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there with his eyes closed, but eventually, he could hear someone coming his way. Not wanting to seem weird, he immediately started flipping through the books like he was busy.

Ian stood there a little awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Uh… are you ok man?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just in the middle of a freaking plant apocalypse.” he said bitterly. “I mean, seriously-why aren’t you freaking out more?!”

“Of course I’m freaking out!!” Ian bit back a bit angrily. “Why would you think that I’m not freaking out?”

Brian shrugged, not liking the bitterness he was feeling. He took in a deep breath and attempted to smile.

“Well, I bet some pizza and ice cream would help calm our nerves-.” he laughed.

“Would you just shut up about pizza?” Ian hissed. “Instead of constantly thinking about video games and crap, why don’t you just read like you said you were going to do?”

Brian felt his face grow hot, and he buried his head in the book he was holding.

Man he wished Roderick were here. Ian could sure be difficult sometimes.

Ian snatched up one of the books and plopped down on one of the other chairs so he could do some research as well. Brian wanted so badly to have some alone time at that moment, to either go for a walk by himself or to just chill in a room and play a single player video game, but with the coming night and the unknown dangers that could possibly be outside, that was probably a bad idea.

He turned his attention to the book, which he finally realized was the one that Roderick had been writing in, the one with all the pictures of the thing in the woods. As he continued to read, it became even more confusing. Many of the accounts of the thing contradicted each other. For instance, in one passage, it said that the monster ate babies, and then in another it said that he preferred teenagers who bad mouthed their parents. Then, it would say that the plant demon would bring in a flood every two years, or that it would make the sky rain blood during a solar eclipse, or that it would steal your pets and wear a necklace out of their bones.

Something didn’t make sense about all of this.

If any of these things had happened, wouldn’t there have been news articles or media coverage of it? Wouldn’t have these things made it online to all of the paranormal websites Brian had visited over the years? This town was not on the list of haunted places. After all, he should know. He had gone around for a couple years as a videographer for ghost hunters.

So why was this thing attacking now? And why was there no record of happenings before? And why could they only replace coma patients?

Brian thought back to before all this happened, to how that vine had been reaching out for him. Then he thought to the vine that had gathered all of these books for them. Was it… trying to tell them something? Was there more to this?

“So um…” he started to say, already starting to forget the disagreement he had just had with Ian. “Here’s a thought… what if… this thing in the swamp… isn’t bad?”

Ian paused and then looked up from his book to stare at him skeptically.

“What?”

“Ok-here me out.” Brian said, putting the book down. “So, there’s information about this thing for, hundreds of years right? But it hasn’t done anything until now. What if-something just happened, or a spirit got involved, or, I don’t know, something, and it…”

“Brian. You’re crazy.” Ian said flatly. “Have you seen the state of this town? I’d say that’s bad news right there.”

“But I mean-think about it. Isn’t it weird that all of these coma patients seem to be fine? And the water doesn’t look like it’s changed, and yet it’s not affecting us anymore.”

Ian seemed to be ignoring him at this point, so Brian decided to give up. His words were probably falling on deaf ears now anyway. With a little grumble, he went back to reading his book.

However, his words were not actually falling on deaf ears. He was really considering what Brian was saying, but unsure of what to do with that information. Some of the things he was saying did make sense… He glanced up at Brian, who was concentrating on the book again. A few feet away, he could hear the others talking about the thing in the swamp, and how they could kill it.

He recalled what Joey had written in the book about how they could kill it, and wondered if something had gone horribly wrong.

He didn’t want to think about it.

The next morning, the group headed out into the town to get some weapons to use against this creature. They had to do a bit of maneuvering and wading through water, but they found themselves at the police headquarters, were they loaded up on guns. Lori’s husband, Keith, had kind of become their leader, and Brian and Ian found themselves simply lost in the crowd of other survivors. Brian didn’t say anything all morning, and Ian found himself kind of feeling bad about that. It wasn’t that he hated Brian, he just didn’t understand him.

Someone that he didn’t know handed him a gun that he really knew nothing about. He wasn’t very fond of guns. And for the moment, he was so confused and disoriented, that he found himself simply following Keith’s orders.

He especially found it strange that nothing seemed to be trying to stop them as they made their way to the woods and to the boardwalk where he and Ian had been infected. What was this unsettling feeling?

The swamp seemed hot and empty. Things were too silent, as they had been when they had come their before. The only sounds to be heard were from the group of coma patients that were carefully stepping over the breaking boardwalk and over the vines as they ventured deeper and deeper into the woods. A fog arose from up out of the water, and Ian glanced over at Brian walking beside him, who seemed pretty unhappy to be holding a gun.

The boardwalk reached an end, but they didn’t stop there. Ian found the group going off of the walk and onto a dry path surrounded by vines. Why did he have such a bad feeling about this??

Soon they reached a clearing, and in the middle, was a large heap of sludge. It was breathing steadily, and Ian guessed that it could have been asleep. Ian looked around in curiosity, and then almost dropped his gun in complete utter shock.

He almost didn’t recognize him with all of the mushrooms growing out of him, but there was no doubt.

It was Roderick.

Brian heard Ian about lose it, turned, looked, and then lost it himself.

“HOLY BARF NUGGETS!!!” he screamed, actually dropping his gun. Luckily, the gun didn’t go off, but everyone still cringed in the following silence. Somehow, the monster remained asleep. Keith turned to Brian and Ian with an angry glare.

“What is wrong with you?!” he whispered harshly. Brian simply pointed.

“Um… My friend is currently… covered in mushrooms?” he squeaked, trembling a bit. Roderick looked similar to the coma patients, his eyes glazed over and milky, and it kind of looked like he had been impaled by a vine against a tree. He hung up there like he was dead, and Ian wanted to look away from it, but he couldn’t.

“If you just calm down, I’m sure that once we kill this thing, we’ll be able to figure out how to get things back to normal.” Keith told him authoritatively. “Everyone surround it. Fire on my command.”

Ian gripped his gun tightly and found himself pushed into position around the creature. So Roderick was here, but where was everyone else? Had they tried to fight this thing before? Why were they just charging in with a bunch of guns?

“Ready…”

Ian shakily aimed the gun at the hulking sludge before him, still battling within himself, thinking about what Brian had said.

“Aim…”

Was this really the right thing to do? They really didn’t have enough information… He glanced over at Brian, who was wincing a little as he pointed the gun at the monster.

“Wait!!” he suddenly called out, pulling his gun away. Everyone jumped a little at the loud noise and looked over at him. Keith did not seem happy to have someone else make a lot noise, and he came over to Ian, looking rather annoyed.

“What?!” he whispered furiously. Ian gulped, looked over at Brian, who was looking at him curiously, and then turned back to Keith.

“I uh… just don’t think we have enough information.” he squeaked. “I mean-what if this isn’t really the monster causing everything? Or what if there’s something else we-.”

“You’re telling me that you have a friend covered in mushrooms on that tree-.”

“Brother actually.”

“Whatever, on that tree, and you want to wait and talk about whether or not we should kill this thing?”

“I agree with him.” Brian piped up, coming over. “What if there’s something else going on? We just don’t know enough.”

Keith rolled his eyes and pushed the two of them away.

“Well you two can watch then. We’re actually going to get something done.”

Brian and Ian stood off to the side, helplessly watching as the others started to get into place again.

“They aren’t going to listen to reason.” Brian whispered.

“They might listen to something else though.”

Brian looked at him in confusion as Ian nodded towards the gun he was holding.

“Are you saying we should shoot them?!”

“What?! Heck no! I’m saying we should shoot up in the air you idiot!”

“Oh. That sounds better.”

So without any further conversation, the two of them shot several rounds into the air, causing the other survivors to jump in surprise.

“What are you doing?!” someone yelled at them.

Ian and Brian took a step back as an abnormally long arm shot out from the sludge and clawed at the remaining dirt, and a face ascended from the depths with dark hollowed eyes and a large screaming mouth.

“This may have been a bad idea…” Brian gulped.