Free The Nelson Files: Episode #1 by Ryan Cecere, Scott Lucas

1
     
    Ridgefield, Connecticut
    July 2015
    11:47 p.m.
     
    Every twenty-three years it came out of hibernation and killed during a three day cycle—just like clockwork. Its victims: children. Its hunting grounds: small, quiet neighborhoods. That's where all the children would vanish during the night.
    It was the final night of the cycle. If it wasn't found and killed fast, it would be another twenty-three years before it struck again.
    Lance Chambers, Paranormal Specialist (a small underground group of Paranormal Investigators who vanquish the things that go bump in the night, rather than research them for study and evidence of their existence) was assigned the case after the first victim, a ten-year-old girl abducted from her bedroom a few nights before. The cops were searching for a kidnapper, but the girl’s windows locked from the inside. There was no evidence of entry or an exit point for escape.
    Lance’s mentor, Kurt Nelson, knew better. Anything out of the ordinary that pops up, Kurt is on it like a pack of wolves on their prey. Lance and Kurt had quickly ruled in a supernatural entity.
    On the second night of the cycle, a little boy–same age as the little girl from the night before–was taken from his bedroom. By morning, Lance had approached the house and flashed his badge. Upon investigating the boy's room, Lance found a few strains of hair underneath a T-Rex toy next to the bed. He followed the strain of hair up to the closet. Inside the closet there was nowhere anything could've entered or exited from.
    How could whatever had taken the boy just appeared and disappeared?
    Lance glided his hand around the walls, hoping that there may have been a way it could've entered. Nothing.
    This case was unlike his usual cases of investigating houses haunted by poltergeists, that he could easily vanquish. This case had him scratching his head from the get-go.
    Lance returned to Nelson's house immediately after. Kurt examined the hairs and found that no human nor animal possessed that type of twisty, coarse hair.
    Kurt walked over to the bookshelf in his office and pulled out a large, dusty hardcover book. He dropped it on his desk and thumbed through dozens of pages until he came across one entitled: Bogeyman.
    Bogeymen were ogre-like monsters with large noses, green/gray-ish skin and hair growing out of the warts that grew all over their bodies. They hide out in dark, damp, and abandoned areas. They feed for three nights, every twenty-three years, and their food of choice is kids.
    “I can’t believe it,” Kurt said with astonishment.
    Lance raised a brow and said nothing.
    “Bogeyman are rare creatures, Lance. They’ve been sighted for years centuries ago…but I haven’t seen or heard of anyone who’s encountered one—ever!”
    “How do we kill the fugly bastards?” Lance leaned in for a closer look.
    “Light is a weakness; so is fire.”
    With only one more night to go, Lance knew he had to find the Bogeyman–and kill it–before it found its last victim. Or the next time this thing popped up, he'd be forty-six years-old.
    Lance parked his Ford Ranger at the beginning of the block. He opened his glove compartment and withdrew his Desert Eagle, then slapped in a magazine loaded with silver bullets, the only thing to kill ghosts or monsters. Behind that was his flashlight, and he clicked the button to check the brightness. The light shined brilliantly in his eyes, blinding him for a moment. For the next hour, Lance walked up and down the neighborhood, cautiously scanning each house two to three times. Everything seemed quiet, not a soul in sight. The majority of the families were in bed and on high alert due to the police warning folks about a possibly kidnapper. Lance chuckled and shook his head at that, knowing the truth about what was really out there "kidnapping" these children.
    A half an hour had gone by when he halted at the faint sound of screaming in front of one of the houses. He glanced up at a