Infinity Lanes
by LD Jacobson
On Halloween night in 1994, four childhood friends followed some older kids out to a party spot in an empty field by an old train bridge in Northern Michigan. They were going to spy on the partiers and use what they saw to gain favor in return – something to hold over them for pizza or beer. Instead, they watched the older kids walk into a building – a bowling alley – that had no business being in that old field. A bowling alley that just appeared…
The kids walked into that impossible building – and they never walked out.In moments, the bowling alley – which should have never been there in the first place – had simply slipped back into oblivion, taking Miranda Berry’s older sister and her friends with it.
The term ‘infinity’ means: an unlimited extent of time and space. And the bowling alley’s name was Infinity Lanes. So, where did it go? Why was it there? And what happened to the kids that went inside it? Most of all, will it ever come back?
The Soft Cloth Biscuit
by LD Jacobson
In 1979, Evan King’s life changed when a strange girl walking down the road told him to stop singing a particularly bad song. And into his life, walked Dana Elizabeth Marchant – the lead guitarist of a fabulously talented local garage band called the Soft Cloth Biscuit. A garage band that just happened to be looking for a new singer…
For the next few years, Evan and Dana were inseparable – forming a bond built on their growing love for each other and the greatest rock and roll music ever made. But every soundtrack has a haunting ballad, something just a little bit darker than the others, and for Evan and Dana it featured a violent and abusive neighbor whose treatment of one of their friends brought the ugliness front and center.
‘How do we help her?” Evan asked one night. “How do we stop him?”
‘Easy,” Dana said. “We kill him.”
Dana Elizabeth Marchant was a lot of things – whimsical and mercurial – but at times she carried with her a level of understanding and experience far beyond what her tender years would suggest.
Those few years would leave an indelible mark on Evan’s life – a mark made of equal parts love, pain and even betrayal. But to Dana, they were merely a drip in an infinite ocean.
‘Know that we are the timeless ones…’
Forty years later, he receives two pieces of news.
DUMPSITES
Dyson’s Dinosaur World – Michigan’s Prehistoric Wonder – was a destination hot spot for thousands of children and their parents every spring, summer and fall. The roadside park echoed with the giggles, the laughter and the jubilant screams of a generation of smiling faces and animatronic dinosaurs.
Dean Dyson, son of the owners, spent his entire childhood with the park as his own personal playground – a playground he shared with his best friend, the troubled Jody Gattis – until it succumbed to advances in technology and shifting interests and ultimately closed for good.
But it wasn’t all laughter and smiles at Dyson’s Dinosaur World, oh no. There was something else there, something ugly and dark and vile. And there it remains, even after the park’s closing.
Twenty years later, Dean is back at the park after buying it in a tax sale with ideas of somehow bringing it back to life. Before he can even get started, however, a team of paranormal investigators lowers a camera into an old well on the property and discovers, not ghostly orbs or disembodied voices, but ‘lots and lots of dead bodies.’
Jody Gattis is back, as well – to bury a father she spent most of her life hating.
Dean and Jody always knew they’d have to return to Dyson’s Dinosaur World to deal with something they did when they were kids. But if only one of the bodies at the bottom of that well was put there by them, where did all of the other ones come from? And what sort of real-life monster is responsible?
What haunts this old park isn’t the supernatural or spirits from beyond, but rather the evil and darkness hidden in the souls of humanity and the men – and women – who embrace it.
THE SPRING CREEK EVENT
Spring Creek, Missouri – October 1, 1991 (8:07pm): Population 756Spring Creek, Missouri – October 1, 1991 (8:15pm): Population 0In a matter of minutes, the town of Spring Creek ceased to exist. Every man, woman and child blinked out in what investigators would call ‘An Event of Unknown Origin.’Local authorities received a flurry of 911 calls about a strange weather event, a blood-red sky and then silence… Sullivan County Sheriff Ken Lampley was there that night – the leader of a group of first-responders who descended on the town to help. Instead of finding people needing assistance, they found nothing. They heard, however, voices – voices of town residents calling out ‘help us! We’re here!’ over and over again before they faded away and the town was sealed off forever. Thirty years later, Ken’s daughter Lindy – who succeeded him as sheriff – hooks up with the Crazy Quest Divas, three sisters who’ve found a way into the haunted town to shoot a video project for their web channel. Together, they will learn that the ‘Event of Unknown Origin’ wasn’t an isolated incident and that town isn’t quite so dead after all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF DOORWAY FICTION
LD Jacobson once ran over a raccoon by accident – only to paralyze it. He then attempted to finish it off with a baseball bat – out of mercy – before that failed, as well, and it crawled off into a field. Some say it’s still out there – waiting, plotting – and it haunts his dreams. He lives in Michigan.