Ep.42 – Suffer the Little Children - Don't Go to the Haunted Quarry at NIGHT!

Episode Notes
A group of kids decides to whip out their Ouija board at the old rock quarry after dark, what could go wrong? More importantly, what is after them?!
Suffer the Little Children by Dennis Freeman
Music by Ray Mattis
http://raymattispresents.bandcamp.com
Produced by Daniel Wilder
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Transcription:
1
“You’re not goddamn going,” Anthony said, trying his father’s favorite epithet on for size. He was only twelve but, thanks to Jacob Anderson, he had quite a colorful vocabulary for his age. He surveyed his little brother’s face and saw no sign of shock at the use of “the GD word” but only a solemn, pouting lower lip.
Greg was eleven and, even though they both went to middle school, there was an unspoken but well-defined hierarchy. Anthony hung out with kids from his class who were mostly twelve and thirteen and despite being only a year and nineteen days older than Greg, he knew his little brother would be categorized as a “baby big kid” by his friend James.
“Come on, Tony!” Greg whined. “All my friends are gone for Thanksgiving break. Let me hang out with you guys.”
“Can’t do it, sprat.”
“I’ll tell mom you and your friends were playing at the quarry!” Greg exclaimed.
Tony was momentarily worried by this threat but let it slide. He knew Greg would be upset he couldn’t go but he’d never endanger his own well-being by telling their mother something that would surely land Anthony in his room with no Xbox One and the cable disconnected for no less than two weeks.
“Do that and you’ll never get to hang out with us,” Anthony said. “What am I supposed to do, Tony?”
“Stop whining for starters.” He said it much more harshly than he intended. Greg cast his eyes down at his feet and Anthony sighed. He put his arm around Greg after checking around the street to make sure nobody was watching) and tried to comfort his brother. “If you get hurt playing at the quarry with us mom would shit a bird!”
Greg giggled at this like Anthony knew he would. The mental image of their mother shitting feathers tickled Greg and the first time Anthony had said it his little brother had nearly died laughing.
“I guess I’ll just play Xbox. You better be home by five though. Mom and Dad will be asking where you are, and I hate pretending like I don’t know,” Greg said.
“Promise!” Anthony raised a three-finger scout salute.
“Look, I’ll talk to James and the guys and see if I can’t get them to let you come with us next time. Okay?”
Greg smiled and nodded. Anthony would probably mention it to the guys but he knew he wouldn’t put up to much of a fight if they said no. Anthony wasn’t a mean brother by any means, but he was a follower by nature. Greg knew this even if he didn’t know exactly how to articulate it. He watched as Anthony mounted his big red Mongoose and took off down the street to meet the rest of the “James Gang” as they called themselves. Once his brother was out of sight Greg sighed and went inside to get a soda and retire to his room to play Xbox.
2
Greg sat in the floor by his bed surrounded by a plethora of empty soda cans and candy wrappers. Had his mother walked in at that exact moment she would have “shit a bird” at the sight. He turned off his console and began to stuff the wrappers into his already overflowing waste basket. He took the cans downstairs and put them in the recycling and plopped down onto one of the bar-stools in the kitchen. It was only eleven-thirty and Greg had already exhausted his patience at the new Madden game.
“It’s going to be exactly the same as the last three,” Anthony had said one day when Greg had excitedly described the commercial to him. As usual his brother had been correct in his assumption. Great graphics aside, the Xbox wasn’t keeping Greg’s attention and he started to think about what Anthony and his friends could be doing down at the quarry. Anthony was only a year older than he was and Greg couldn’t imagine that he and his friends were doing anything that he himself couldn’t do.
“Fuck it,” Greg muttered under his breath. His cheeks flushed hot at the vocalization of what his mother called “the really bad word” and he went into the garage to grab his bike. He would ride down to the quarry and see just what his brother’s friends were up to. He would go what his father called “incognito” and watch from afar at first.
He grabbed the backpack his parents had bought him for hiking trips and put on his khaki Brahmas which clashed with the black athletic shorts and orange Clemson basketball jersey, but he wasn’t out to win any fashion contests. He pulled his curly locks back out of his face and put them into a ponytail. He had had long hair since he was a baby and with exception of a handful of trims he had always worn his hair long. The older he got, the less serious the teasing about his hair got, and now he even received a few compliments. Mostly from girls.
Greg mounted his blue Huffy and started off down the street. He rode down Alberta Street and took a detour between a pair of houses on Jackson. The trip itself only took about ten minutes but it felt like forever to Greg, whose mind wouldn’t stop speculating as to what he’d see when he got there. He wondered if the James Gang would be doing dangerous stunts on their bikes or perhaps they were wrestling by the scummy pond that was in the pit left over from the rainy weather they had had.
“They may be hanging out with girls.” He thought.
This brought a fresh flush to his cheeks. He was eleven and his “girls are icky” stage had been over for almost a full year but he still wasn’t sure about the fairer sex. He had a basic grasp on what boys and girls did together when they were older but the thought of it still caused a weird mix of emotions he wasn’t able to understand. He felt his pants begin to tighten in the
crotch and forced himself to think of something else. The last thing he needed was to run into his brother and his friends with a raging hard on. He wouldn’t live that down in this lifetime.
The next one either for that matter.
Greg dropped his foot down and drug it through the gravel as he decelerated . He approached the edge of the quarry warily. He saw Anthony’s bike parked by some bushes among four others and left his own a few feet away. He adjusted his backpack and crouch- walked down the narrow path beaten down by adolescent foot traffic and made his way to the edge of the pit. He looked down and saw the five boys who made up the James Gang laid out on the rocks by the water that was pooled down there. He didn’t see any girls, but he did see that two of them were smoking cigarettes. He did a double take when he realized that his brother was one of the ones smoking. A cigarette hung lackadaisically from the corner of his mouth and his eyes squinted against the smoke as he skipped rocks across the surface of the water.
Mom would shit a bird. He grinned maniacally at this. Two of the kids looked like they were playing a board game, checkers it looked like, and James and another boy that Greg didn’t recognize were talking next to Anthony.
Not talking, Greg thought. Arguing.
A little shoving match broke out between James and the other boy and Anthony moved to in between them to break it up. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and moved it nimbly between his fingers as he did this. Greg noted that it probably wasn’t the first time his brother had smoked. Greg couldn’t tell what the boys were arguing about, so he decided he was going to try and sneak to a pile of broken stones about ten feet away from the boys. He once again began to crouch walk but avoided the path. He would be too easy to spot.
3
“You’re a fucking liar!” Charles exclaimed.
James regarded him menacingly, but Anthony held him back to avoid a full-on fist fight. “I am not! My dad told me the story himself! You calling my dad a liar, fat ass?” James
shouted indignantly.
Charles cast his eyes down not wanting to meet James’ angry gaze. He was thirteen and although the jibe about his weight hurt, he was still young enough to believe that everything their parents told them was the truth. He was okay with calling James a liar but to call his father, an ADULT, a liar was an entirely different animal.
“Sorry James,” Charles said, his face glowing red.
James blinked at the sudden shift the conversation had taken. “Me too.” His face softened a bit. “I’m sorry I called you a fat ass.”
“It’s okay.”
Anthony, sensing the drama was over, moved back over by the water. He flicked his cigarette into the scummy pond and went back to skipping rocks.
“He told me that back then the water was a lot higher and kids would jump off the rocks and into the water,” James said. “He said after a couple of guys died that they closed the place up. Some of the kids that did sneak in said they saw ghosts or some shit.”
“That make sense,” Charles said. “It’s the other part that sounds weird.” “That’s what he said.”
“Maybe it’s true though. Like a horror movie or something,” Anthony added.
“Dad said that some of the kids kept coming down here even after they closed it up. They saw things. Like, weird things,” James said.
Anthony nodded as if this were to be expected. The idea of ghosts was not unfathomable for his twelve-year-old mind. “If they died suddenly, like, broke their necks when they dove in or drown or whatever they probably stuck around. Unfinished business or to try and keep other people from dying,” Anthony offered.
He spoke in a scholarly tone like a professor teaching the ways of the worlds to his pupils. Even Eddie and Tim had stopped playing checkers to regard Anthony with intense, wide eyes. Anthony looked up and saw that all his friends were staring at him now.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Tha