The Effect - Part II - The Way To Go

Photo: Stanford Overpass - Springfield, Illinois - Looking West Toward Jerome

At least for a time I felt like I knew just what I should do. There was however one important obstacle to my plan. I had measured out exactly how many steps to take, how long it would take me to execute each step. Knowing the cost of failure I had planned carefully. I had however failed to take into account one minor detail - one little detail which would very likely cause me to lose my life.

As the effect slowly crept across the Village of Jerome I could hear the screams - the blood curdling screams of those under its grip. The sound of gunfire, cars revving up, tires screeching, cars crashing, and the howling of a fierce wind.

All hell was breaking loose just blocks away. Those poor souls had no way of knowing where to go, or what to do. They were running blindly in panic for their cars, or scampering to their basements to hide, not knowing that they had only moments to live.

But I had listened to the old woman's stories when no one else would. I had listened to her, and believed. She had grown up in Jerome before it was Jerome, when Jerome was just farm fields. Her parents farmed the land, and her grandparents before them. She had first heard the stories she had shared with me when she was just a child. Stories which were handed down quietly, which many denied had any truth to them, but stories which never seemed to disappear - not entirely.

The stories were ancient. They had in fact predated the first log cabins in Sangamo. They were told even before the first french traders made their way here.

It was in the details of the mad ramblings of a woman who had been found dead only one night before that I was venturing out into the raging insanity that was now Jerome, Illinois to seek refuge in the only place refuge could be found.

It was a small unassuming house. So small in fact that many made jokes about it, and questioned why such a small house rested within such a large field surrounded by so many trees. Few had ever seen its owner, and over the years many stories sprang up that the small house was haunted.

To be continued..,