Wellsville, Missouri

Just passing through, you’d think it was just another nameless town, another forgettable, tiny village surrounded by miles of farmland. But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.

About a month ago, the Captain and I were passing through Wellsville at midnight. The decrepit graveyard on the edge of town was an ominous way to greet wayfarers, I pointed out. I said that it really sets the wrong tone to make people feel welcome. Then the Captain pointed out that the whole town has a sickly look about it. Every building. Every single building looks slightly decayed, slightly rotting, slightly… tainted.

“It looks like something horrible happened and the townspeople tried to cover it up, and now they’re paying for it,” the Captain had told me that night. Initially, I shrugged it off as him just being sportingly caustic towards a town that we never liked, but there was a great deal of truth to that. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Captain was startlingly shrewd in his assessment.

As the weeks went by, I was called more and more often by Wellsville-Middletown High School to sub. It was almost as if the town wanted me to return. Like it never wanted me to leave.

I somehow always manage to make it out of there before the sun goes down, and I never head out that way at night. Wellsville isn’t… it just isn’t right. There’s something… off about the whole place.

Just like the Captain said. That’s how the town works. You stop there for gasoline, and your car suddenly gets a flat tire or a bad transmission pan, and you have to unexpectedly spend the night there. Your cell phone gets no reception, and you end up getting a hotel room, thinking you’ll solve your problems the next day. Your will power fades, your vitality ebbs, and you think to yourself, “Maybe I’ll just stay here for a while. A few days, maybe.” Days become weeks, weeks lead to months, and then you are assimilated. Or worse. Your soul is fed to the insatiable Hunger. The Tainting of Wellsville has you.

Every house looks unkempt, uncared for, even deserted. A handful of broken-down old trucks accentuate the overall musty feel of the town. No birds are heard singing, the greens are less green, and there is a certain… stagnation to the mild breeze. If you should find yourself nearing the heart of town, rather than just passing through and trying to forget the whole thing, you will notice the air becoming chilly the farther you stray from the highway.

I swear, when you drive by the church in the middle of town, you feel something cold. Like some hazy memory of a childhood nightmare, an impression of icy fingers around your neck, gently caressing your spine, saying, “Welcome, brother.” Like a whisper on the wind, neither really spoken nor quite fully heard. Perhaps the old church is the focal point, a convergence of Evil. Perhaps something was… released there. And that is where they tried to cover it up. And now, the Tainting has grown into something fouler than the rational mind can fathom, having developed a sentience and malicious will all its own.

But what dark secrets lay buried in the spoiled earth of Wellsville, Missouri? What happened there, so long ago? Are the residents punished merely for the sin of being born there? What is it that seems to feed off of the livelihood of outsiders? What gothic horrors await the too-curious traveler who seeks the answers to these questions?