S1:E5 - The Signal, Part 2

October, 2024     An unknown monster had appeared in the water near the fishing boat, the Mary Sue. Another fishing boat, the Reel Deal, arrived with Ethan Graves on board. However, it was attacked by the same monster. Its captain died, and Ethan Graves, who was on board, nearly drowned. Fortunately, he was rescued and, with everyone now on board the Mary Sue, the hunters continued on their way to Signal Island.         The fishing boat, the Reel Deal, emerged from the dense morning fog, blaring its horn.   Suddenly, the water around the boat erupted as the same monstrous creature the others had seen from the Mary Sue attacked, its immense form briefly visible before striking the Reel Deal, sending it down into the dark abyss. Captain Eli Vance went down with his boat. His passenger, Ethan Graves, nearly drowned but was spotted and pulled to safety aboard the Mary Sue.   On board, Ethan explained how he had chartered the Reel Deal to take him to Signal Island. The others on the Mary Sue said they were going to the island too. Skipper tried to radio the coast guard about the Reel Deal, but was unable to send out a message.   "We must be close enough to Signal Island," Eliza said. "There have been reports of interference caused by the signal coming from the island that interferes with other radio frequencies."   Skipper said he would alert the coast guard about what happened to the Wet Dream and the Reel Deal when they returned to Shadow Falls.         After arriving on the island, Eliza joined the Remington brothers, along with Barry and Ethan, while Skipper stayed behind with his dog, Moose, aboard the Mary Sue.   Barry gave Skipper one of his walkie-talkies to keep in contact.   A dirt path through a copse of trees led away from the small dock. The group followed the path that eventually led to a small clearing.   A large square building that appeared to have been built by the government during World War II was visible on the side of the hill. A large metal door served as the building's only way in or out. In front of the building stood rusted playground equipment. Its swings swayed creakily in the breeze. A rusted metal bucket lay abandoned next to the well, the rope long rotted away, leaving just frayed remains. What was once the well's roof sat on top of the well, covering it.   Before the group could investigate further, a single pink butterfly emerged from the dark depths of the well. It fluttered gracefully and landed on Eliza's outstretched finger, a moment of ethereal beauty that seemed to stretch on forever.   The butterfly remained on her finger, unmoving, its delicate form a stark contrast to the rusted playground equipment and abandoned-looking building.   When Eliza attempted to pet it, it finally lifted off and flew back towards the well.   Eliza suddenly felt a tingling sensation on her finger.   A sickening gray spread from the point where the butterfly had rested, and her flesh began to crumble into fine ash. The transformation raced up her hand and her forearm, a terrifying tide of decay.   Eliza screamed.   Just as the gray was about to consume her entire arm, Barry Rhodes, with a look of grim determination, raised his hand axe and, with a single, swift swing, severed her arm, stopping the spread of the strange affliction before it could reach the rest of her body.   Eliza screamed again.   After Barry's brutal, life-saving act, the group frantically administered first aid to Eliza. A makeshift tourniquet was tied around her stump, and a bandage was cinched tight, but the air still hung heavy with the smell of ash and blood. The initial shock began to give way to a creeping dread as they stared at the dark, silent well.   A single pink butterfly, identical to the first, fluttered out of the well's opening to join the first. Another quickly followed the second butterfly, then a dozen more, until a swirling, living storm of iridescent pink wings boiled up from the darkness. The beautiful, delicate creatures from before had become a horrifying, silent swarm.   Panic seized the group! Eliza screamed again.   Barry quickly helped Eliza to her feet, and they all sprinted towards a rusted metal door set into the side of a hill. The hinges shrieked as they fought to open it, their hands slipping on the cold, damp metal.   With a final, desperate heave, the door groaned outward just as the first of the butterflies reached them.   Everyone piled through the narrow opening, scrambling to safety. The door was slammed shut from the inside with a resounding clang, its thick metal sealing them off just as the swarm of pink wings crashed against it.   A single, unfortunate butterfly was crushed in the seam, its delicate body a final, gruesome smear of color against the cold, grey steel.         As the lights turned on by themselves inside the facility, Dean, Sam, and Ethan looked around.   Meanwhile, Barry Rhodes, an initiate of a clandestine order, knelt beside Eliza, his brow furrowed in concentration.   He held his hands just above the raw stump of her arm, his fingers tracing patterns in the air as a faint, ethereal blue light pulsed between his palms. The bleeding slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely as a thin, translucent film of mystical energy sealed the wound.   "How is she?" Dean asked Barry. He and the others had a strange look on their faces as they watched Eliza's arm stop bleeding.   "She'll be fine," Barry said. "But she will need to go to a hospital."   "We'll need to find another way out of here," Ethan said.   The area they were in resembled a lobby of sorts. It smelled of dampness.   Along the walls were old drawings and photos. It looked like the place was built as a hospital initially, repurposed as a military installation, and then turned into a government laboratory of some kind. Proud men and women posed for pictures in front of the entrance in a display of photos.   Ethan also found a framed newspaper clipping from 1983. The clipping was a photo of a man in glasses with a shock of pitch-black hair and an oddly long, pointed nose. He posed for a picture in front of a bank of monitors.   The newspaper headline, published by the Shadow Falls Chronicle, read, "Gates to other worlds unveiled". The caption to the photo read, "Elderman James claims to have unlocked the entrance to another world. Sceptics are calling him a fraud while others believe it could be the most dangerous discovery ever made."   Ethan took a picture of the newspaper clipping and the other photos on the wall.   After several minutes, Eliza began recovering from the shock of losing part of her right arm. With her left hand, she took out a device resembling a large cell phone. She said it was a signal tracker, which confirmed the signal they've been tracking was coming from somewhere in a lower area of the facility.   Before leaving the lobby, the others checked their cellphones only to discover they had no reception. Even Barry's walkie-talkie wasn't working inside the facility.   "The walls are too thick," Dean said.   "Or all transmissions in and out of this place are being blocked somehow," Sam added.   With Eliza leading the way, the group continued further into the facility.         Following a set of stairs leading down, the group found a room, their eyes immediately drawn to what looked like a child's play area, but one frozen in a state of unsettling neglect.   Toys had spilled from a toppled toy box, their colorful plastic and fabric stark against the dusty floor. Among them were several rotting teddy bears and dolls, their once-cute faces now smudged and distorted, with missing limbs scattered nearby like forgotten casualties. A small table in the center of the room held a stack of crayon drawings, their colors still vibrant despite the grim surroundings.   One picture, drawn with a childlike hand, depicted a swirling black hole from which a single pink butterfly was emerging.   In another, a massive, pale monster with a disturbingly human-like face lurked beneath a ship, its cavernous mouth opening wide as if to swallow the vessel whole.   The final drawing showed dark figures made from plant matter climbing out of a deep, dark hole.   Each of these unsettling pictures was signed in the corner, in a shaky, childish scrawl: Frank James.   Ethan recalled seeing the name, Elderman James, in the newspaper clippings. He told the others about it. Everyone agreed that Frank James could be Elderman James's son.   Leaving the playroom, the group descended further into the facility. Each floor had a door leading to a side passage. Most of the doors were swollen shut from the dampness.   The floors below contained rooms that once served as medical examination rooms, while other rooms contained disturbing arrays of metal cages. Some of the rooms looked like laboratories that had human-sized glass containers with nondescript grey shadows floating in their murky depths. Some of the cages and glass containers they saw were small enough to fit a cat or a dog, while others were built to contain a large animal the size of a bear.   "What were they holding in this place?" Sam asked. "And where did the animals go?"   Ethan showed the group a piece of a scale he found inside one of the larger cages. "Looks like something from a snake, but larger," he said.   "I have a bad feeling about this," Barry said.   “According to the tracker, the signal is still somewhere below us," Eliza said.   "Then let's go," Dean said.           A set of stairs at the end of a corridor led to a single room that held a final, macabre scene.   A mostly skeletal corpse was slumped in a chair, propped up against a worn wooden desk.   Patches of dried flesh and tendon clung stubbornly to his bones, a gruesome testament to the passage of time. His right arm was missing entirely, while the other clutched a small, crumpled piece of paper—a child's drawing.   The drawing depicted a small figure holding the hand of a larger one, with several pink butterflies fluttering around them, and is signed simply with the name, Frank James.   The desk drawer was open, revealing an old, leather-bound diary tucked inside. To the left of the desk, a stack of jam jars stood precariously, but they contained a thick, gray liquid instead of their original contents. One of the jars had toppled over, spilling the foul-smelling ooze onto the floor.   The room smelled of rotting matter.   Barry examined the book. He saw the initials EJ on the diary.   Most of the pages were either torn or the entries had been scribbled out violently, making them unlegible. Only the last three entries could be read.   Barry read the first entry out loud.    

I found a way through. I had to turn off the signal before it finally worked.   I expected beings like us, but instead there were monsters.   Oh, such beautiful monsters.   If I could just figure out how to use them to make us stronger. I am sure I can get funding from the military for it.

    "What were the military testing here?" Sam wondered.   "Why would they fund this?" Dean asked.   "You'd be surprised at what the military government is spending money on," Ethan added.   "From my research, during WW II and the Cold War, the military was experimenting on developing a signal they could use to transmit messages to allies while keeping the signals from being picked up by the enemy," Eliza said.   "Sort of like stealth radio waves?" Dean asked.   "Basically," Elisa said.   Barry read the following two entries.    

There have been three deaths now and people are trying to stop me. They are trying to make me turn on the signal.   I won’t!   Never in the history of science has anyone discovered something of this magnitude. I will make it count.

   

How arrogant I have been. I thought I would see death as an old man. But it has come for me today

    The last page was stained with ink and possibly old blood.   Eliza looked at the skeleton with the missing arm. She looked at the stump on her right arm.     Not finding any more clues, they went to the set of stairs in the room that led down to a steel door.   "The signal is coming from behind this door," Eliza said.         The room beyond was lit by a dim light coming from luminescent jellyfish that glided past a massive wall of glass looking out into the dark Pacific Ocean.   “Imagine the pressure that is being exerted on that glass,” Sam said. “Let’s get out of here as quickly as we can. I do not want to be here for long.”   The group looked around. On one wall, they spotted a bank of old computers. In a corner opposite where they entered, they saw a massive, archaic machine that hummed with barely contained power. Its intricate brass pipes and whirring gears surrounded a central containment field, a vibrant sphere of glowing green energy. Within this shimmering prison, a gelatinous, undulating mass of ectoplasm pulsed and shifted, a chaotic life force held captive by the machine's intricate design.   “The signal’s coming from over there,” Eliza pointed to the bank of computers. "A weaker signal is also coming from the glowing energy field in the corner."   "Then let's..." Barry began to say when a hidden door on the opposite wall slid open.   An old man stepped into the room, his movements slow yet deliberate. He was draped in a white lab coat, once pristine, now stained and covered with childish scribbles. The name, Frank James, was scrawled across the fabric in bright, fading finger paint. His face was etched with a lifetime of lines, and his eyes, though old, held a childlike intensity.   Frank James was holding a gun in his trembling hand.   His voice, high-pitched and strained, echoed through the small space. "I won’t let you ruin Daddy's legacy!” he shouted in a child-like manner, his gaze fixed on the humming machine and its chaotic, contained energy. He pointed the gun at everyone in the room.   The signal room erupted into chaos.   Sam and Eliza quickly moved to the computers, their fingers flying across keyboards as they frantically attempted to alter the signal, their faces illuminated by the eerie glow of the monitors. The air was thick with the frantic tapping of keys and the hum of the machinery.   Elsewhere in the room, a desperate struggle was unfolding.   Dean drew his gun and shot at Frank, who shot back at Dean. Dean's shot struck the wall, while the old man's shot grazed Dean's flack jacket.   Barry, his hand axe a blur of motion, attempted to disarm Frank, while Ethan grappled with the old man, trying to pin his flailing arms. Frank's gun went off in the struggle, the loud cracks deafening in the confined space. One bullet ricocheted off a metal console, another grazed Barry's arm, and a third, with a sickening ping, struck the large glass viewing window.   Instead of shattering, a small hole appeared, a single, black puncture wound. A thin, menacing jet of water began to flow through the small opening. Then, a spiderweb of cracks, almost invisible at first, began to spread from the impact point. The cracks multiplied, extending across the glass like frost on a winter morning, each one a testament to the immense pressure outside.   And then, a colossal, pale shape, the same humanoid-faced monster Sam and Ethan saw in the ocean, slammed against the weakened glass. A deep, guttural roar vibrated through the chamber as the monster slammed against the window again and again, the cracks deepening and spreading with each impact.   The fight against Frank James continued as a triumphant shout from Sam and Eliza signaled their success. The signal's frequency had been altered!   Just then, the cracks on the glass began to expand even more.   The group, sensing the imminent danger, left the injured Frank James and scrambled back through the door and up the stairs just as the glass window finally gave way, exploding inward in a shower of deadly shards.   The group sprinted towards the entrance with a desperate urgency.   Barry, clutching a fire extinguisher he'd grabbed in their frantic escape, took the lead. He placed his hands on the extinguisher and focused mystical energy to transform the foam inside into something much colder.   As they ran past the old well outside, a familiar, terrifying sight unfolded: a swirling vortex of pink butterflies erupted from the dark opening, a silent, deadly swarm giving chase.   They didn't look back, their eyes fixed on the distant outline of the Mary Sue.   Skipper, who had been leisurely fishing, heard them yelling for him to start the boat.   Skipper accidentally dropped his fishing rod in the water and started the boat's engine. The group leaped onto the moving boat, grabbing the railing and hauling themselves aboard just as the swarm descended upon them.   Without a moment's hesitation, Barry aimed the fire extinguisher and unleashed a torrent of white freezing foam, creating a blinding, chaotic cloud that engulfed and halted the advancing butterflies, their delicate forms instantly frozen in place.   The Mary Sue sped away, leaving the frozen swarm and the island behind.