There are very few things that are certain in this world. Among them are death, and taxes. Thing is, I can honestly tell you that the former of those, it’s not exactly certain. Truth be known, there are times when the dead, don’t particularly like the idea of…well staying dead.
I’m not talking your run of the mill ghosts, things that go ‘bump’ in the night; or even the odd vampire out there brooding over how movies never get them right, or why everyone thinks they always wear black. Yes, they’re a thing. Yes I’ve worked with them in the past… but no I’m not one. My aversion to sunlight is just an allergy. I also adore garlic, and dear reader I’m a vegetarian, so no blood feast for me.
Whatever the case, moving on from that tangent, I can honestly tell you that there’s a shit ton of things out there that are bad, worse than most anything you could ever imagine. However in with that, there’s also people whose lives are spent trying to keep you safe from that. If you guessed I’m one of those, you get no bonus points. Granted, I didn’t always start out this way, but that’s another story, one far more… well honestly, boring. It’s a job, pure and simple, and while I don’t exactly clock in at nine and out at five, I’ve long since had any sympathy for those I deal with burned right out of my mind. That may be a side effect of just what I do though, so who knows.
Without going into much detail, I’m what the division calls a “Afterlife Control Specialist.” Fancy way to say Necromancer. I’m the guy they call in to figure out what went wrong, and how best to send it back to whatever pit of hell it started out in, or send it to one if it needs to go.
Trust me, everything I deal with… it needs to go. Though, more often than not, they just want my advice to figure out what they’re dealing with. Is it a demon, or some spirit just tied to this world? Maybe some granny with a ouija board has opened up a portal, and now there’s a sex demon running wild in the old folk’s home. Yes, that’s actually happened. We decided that the old folks were having fun… and the fact that ninety percent of them couldn’t do anything the demon wanted, was a kind of hell for it. I remember it begging to be sent back, and laughing as I left it to its own little hell, but I digress.
One of the most unnerving cases I know of, is one that I’ve worked off and on for several years now. It’s one that has become almost the stuff of legends, and generally it’s harmless. Well… sort of. I’ve been lurking here on reddit, reading through various other subreddits, and from time to time I’ve seen stories, some talking about odd glitches, others talking about the unexplained, that I am reasonably certain are talking about Pine Valley.
Pine Valley is a town that, honestly speaking, time just forgot. That’s the best way to describe it. Ever been driving along a long and winding road, and found yourself in one of those little ghost towns that nag at the back of your mind? Where something is certainly off, but you can’t quite place what’s wrong? Pine Valley is like that, but it’s more devious about it. Most people that stumble across it, they get out just fine. Others though, they’re never able to escape.
Have I been there? Yes, a couple times. I have to do a good bit of protective spells prior to it, and make damn certain I’m out of the town before the sun sets, but other than that it’s not really a threat…yet. Truth be known, I’ve had to limit my visits, as it’s getting harder and harder for me to leave every time I visit.
If you were to go there today, you’d find a quaint little town, with a diner that looks like it’s pulled right out of the 1950’s. Right down to the cars parked out front. There’s a small brick post office, a school, and half a dozen streets with houses (complete with white picket fences and manicured lawns). There’s also a gas station, where the price for gas is stuck at .27c a gallon. There’s even a pharmacy, with a fully stocked soda fountain in the back, where you can get some of the best sundaes ever made.
It sounds idyllic, and in a way, it kind of is. Well when you get past the fact that every single person stuck there, is dead. Not zombies, per se, but… how do I explain this?
Okay, so on the surface, the people you see look fine. They’re solid, they talk, and they don’t actively try to do anything to you. They’re not going to turn into some kind of ghoul and drag you off to your doom. Thing is, if you catch their reflection somehow, say in a window, or mirror, you’ll see their true selves. Rotting corpses, grinning skulls, and everything you might expect from a horror movie.
You might be wondering just how this came to happen. How is it a town got effectively deadlocked in time, with every last citizen in it being stuck in this kind of beautiful (in a way) peaceful existence.
We’re not totally sure. I mean, we have some ideas, but even the citizens of the town, they aren’t telling. They seem to remember regular visitors like myself, or others from the division… but they don’t seem to remember. There’s this collective ‘hole’ in their memory that every single one of them has. Doesn’t matter whom you talk to, they all say the same thing. It’s 1950, Halloween is coming up, and the Korean war is just starting, but the boys will be home by Christmas.
We’ve tried everything to figure out details, even trying to take one of the citizens, an old drunk named “Uncle Bill” out of the town for further questioning… but to no avail. I remember that day like it were yesterday. They’d plied him with some strong alcohol, mixed with some of that popular date rape drug. Once he was out cold, they quickly put him in the back of a car and drove to the city limits. When he crossed over the city limits, he let out this blood curdling scream, and turned into dust. It was as though he aged 100 years in a few minutes… and was gone.
Strangely, none of the citizens even noticed he was gone. That’s another odd thing to that town. It’s like they had simply forgot he even existed in the first place.
You may have your own ideas about what’s going on in that town, and you’re probably right on some level, but I can’t be certain. I have my suspicions, naturally, but we really don’t know all that much. The best I can tell you, honestly, is that in 1950… someone did something that was, to put it simply, damning. Damned the whole town. If I had to guess, based on what I know of the dead, of demons, and of necromatic spells… I think someone in that town tried to do something without the proper protection, and in doing so pulled that little town right out of time. It pops back in every so often, and like a glue trap, snags anyone who stays there a bit too long.
We don’t know why it happened, or who did it, or even what they hoped to do. All the years this place has been studied, and the most we… the most I can tell you is that if you ever find yourself driving, and you stumble across a town that just “doesn’t feel right”… your best bet is not to hang around long. Otherwise, I fully expect to see you wandering around Pine Valley at some point. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and live in one of those cute little houses, or get a job at the diner where coffee is still 5 cents, and the burgers are hand made. Then again, they’ve not replaced Bill yet. Maybe you’ll end up there. Who knows. Take this warning, or ignore it, that’s up to you.