Jason walked up to the sign and leaned over it, pressing his hand experimentally against the heavy wood. "This thing could be brand new, scruff!"

Kyle gritted his teeth. What, exactly, possessed him to reveal his old nickname? But Jason was right. There was no mistaking the freshly sanded surface, the thin film of whitewash and crisply chiseled letters. Aside from mild weathering and the lilt of smoke curling from the edges, the sign wore its sheen like a badge of honor. Strangest yet, it didn't say Old Town as they both expected. Could Dr. Z have been so wrong?

"Wasn't this thing a frigging ant farm a couple minutes ago?"

"Er, yeah." Kyle scratched his head and ran a finger along the bottom edge of the toppled beacon. It's warm!

"Ya know what this means, right?!" Jason yelled excitedly. "We've hit the motherload!"

Kyle wasn't sure what Manny meant. He silently hoped motherload wasn't a double-entendre.

"Don't you get it, kid? There's magic in them thar hills!" Jason tried his best to inflect a country accent, failing miserably. Gangster, yokel, Englishman, it didn't matter; Jason's accents were always outrageous and mostly terrible. But his enthusiasm? That was genuine. "C'mon, let's go!"

Like a bullet from a starter-pistol, Jason Manny darted bodily for the nearest pile of snow-covered bricks, ready to shove his hands into the debris in search of buried treasures. Kyle was momentarily shocked by this display of energy, from a boy who could barely breathe after merely walking for twenty minutes. No doubt about it, Manny hammed-up his performance for Kyle's benefit. Kyle laughed, scribbled a few lines in a small notepad he brought, and wandered over to the junk Jason unearthed. Treasure? Probably not. But there was no denying—recent events especially—Old Town concealed mysteries galore. Kyle resolved to call the ruins Old Town, regardless of what the sign claimed. That name didn't throw an unsettling jab to his nerves, and felt less eerie.

Jason dug with gloved hands, picking chunks of ice and snow from every crevice his fingers found purchase. Kyle scanned the area critically. Manny frantically administered his attention on a single corner of a formerly rectangular building about dozen yards wide, and almost as deep. Kyle taped Jason's shoulder until the boy stopped scrabbling at the haphazard edifice.

"There's nothing there, idiot. Look." Kyle waved his arm across the rest of the collapsed building, and Manny groaned. "C'mon, let's look around a litle first."

Jason couldn't argue with that. He shrugged, stood up, and stared at the landscape. A quiet wind whipped up loose powder, sending lazy curls twisting to the sky. Visibility was low thanks to the wind-whipped snow, almost an opaque light fog. He idly wished for a lighthouse.

They both heard the clink simultaneously. Their heads jerked around to regard the sound in the otherwise silent graveyard of abandoned buildings.

"What's that?" Jason walked cautiously toward the sound until he saw the source, and laughed. "Oh, that's rich!"

A swing-set, rusted and sundered, leaned heavily on the left where one of the supports was missing. The top bar hung low, twisted and pushed by the remaining left leg until it resembled a crazy, precarious zigzag. Chains on that side lay crumpled in a pile in the snow, barely held aloft by the left side which hovered a mere three feet from the ground. The right side fared better, except the seat dragged on the ground, pushed by the wind. Apparently one of the seat links had broken or rusted through; it was that unencumbered chain that lightly tapped one of the right legs, twisted into reach by its deformity.

"Looks fun!" Jason quipped.

Kyle didn't hear Manny's inevitable wisecrack. The sight and sound of that delapidated playground centerpiece sent his mind reeling. To him, each quiet clink of metal on metal resounded harshly, echoing and distorted, sinister and wrong. He backed away, never realizing his own retreat. Kyle was inexplicably horrified as his hideous nightmare flooded his senses, superimposing themselves cruelly over the innocuous rubble. He choked and sputtered, confused at the mental assault.

Manny was still laughing at the scene. He'd never seen a swing-set in such sorry disrepair, and the finality of its demise as a tool of enjoyment seemed ironic to him. "Guess you can't call it a play-ground anymore. Right Kyle?" He turned toward Kyle then, ready to share his joke and the unsuppressed snigger. But Kyle wasn't at his right anymore. "Kyle?" Jason turned slightly further and saw him, still backing away, wearing a mask of terror.

"Kyle!" he shouted, then. "Snap out of it, kid!" He was starting to worry about Kyle and his random fits.

Kyle looked up, his tormenting reverie shattered by Jason's interruption. "I–" he stopped, lost temporarily in thought. "I think I dreamt about this place last night. It was... bad, Manny."

"Nightmare, huh? Those are no good. You say it was here?"

"Yeah. Right here." Kyle locked eyes with Jason, a grim albatross flying between them. Jason blanched and backed away from the swing, spooked.

Kyle tried to look reassuring. "No! It's ok. Really. Even if it's not a coincidence, it's just a bunch of broken junk. The dream didn't get really bad until I went into some schoolhouse, or church, or something."

Jason nodded. "Like that one?" He swept his arm further to the right, and though obscured by the foggy snow, Kyle saw the only structure still standing, though sunken deeply into its foundation on one side, teetering like an upset stack of newspapers.

"Yeah. Exactly like that one."

Jason grinned evilly. "Well hell! Let's go check it out, kid!"

"You first."

Jason roared with laughter before turning on his heel and heading off to meet Kyle's boogeyman.