Darkness of Summer

I just recently (several months ago) read 'Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need' by Blake Snyder and thought that I would try my hand at it. I haven't written a screenplay yet but here is my first terrible attempt at thinking about one. Obviously 'Stranger Things' and 'Disturbia' had a big influence. But a lot of this also has the nostalgia of my own childhood growing up in the 90's, which is where I got the idea from originally anyway. I'd been thinking about my childhood ramblings and grinning at the stupid things my twin neighbors, my brother, and I used to get into. We were all very close in age and spent almost every afternoon together growing up. Then, of course I thought, what if. What if during our woodland adventures we found a body?

I'm just going to call it a day, since I have so many other things I'm working on, and put it up on this blog for the fun of it. I probably won't ever do anything with this, but it was a fun thought experiment. One day maybe.

Title: Darkness of Summer

One Line: When a series of disappearances hit their neighborhood four kids set out to solve it.

Logline: While on summer break four kids discover a corpse near the home of an ominous neighbor and alert the authorities, but when another person goes missing in the town, the adolescents suspect the elusive neighbor is to blame and set out to see if they are responsible for the killings.

Plot: Four close neighbor children set out on the mini adventure during the summer of 1998. They go to the community pool down the street, explore the fields across the street, lounge around by a local pond, and traverse the woods behind their house. During a particularly hot day the foursome find a dead body in the woods behind their house. The corpse is so decomposed that they can't tell whether it was a man or a women. They run home and call the police. The kids learn that the dead body has been there for a few years and might be one of the first kills of a serial killer that has been plaguing the area recently. Weeks later while the kids are playing hide and seek in the backyard (their game going late), they hear screaming in the woods near their creepy neighbor’s house. They begin to suspect the neighbor and begin their own investigation. This leads them to spying on the neighbor, trespassing, and eventually finding proof, or what they believe is proof. The neighbor calls the police on them. 

The parents become angry and separate/ground them from seeing each other for the rest of the summer. Henry and Jean’s family goes to the beach, while Christian and Stephanie's go to the Bahamas. It seems like they were wrong. That they were chasing the wrong person, until another person goes missing over their vacations. Someone that they know from the community. The children now have no other choice than to go into the neighbors house to see if they can find evidence. Real Evidence that they can take to the police. However, they don’t find anything and are almost caught. They think that they get away safe, but Jean loses her charm bracelet which makes it obvious that they were in the house.  The killer comes over while the parents are gone to a party to murder the children. The Killer can’t have their secret discovered. A harrowing chase occurs. The four kids lead the killer back into the woods. They end up at the farm that they get chase from away from in the beginning of the story, the farm behind the woods of their houses. The killer doesn’t know the farm as well as the kids do. They set a trap knowing that the killer will fall for it. The killer trips on the trap and goes face first in the cow pond. The killers shoes get stuck in the muddy edges of the pond and the kids are able to capture the killer. Christian and Jean run to the farmers house to call the police.    

The ending of the movie can be Henry reading his “What did you do over the summer essay”.

Excerpt: The summer has once again granted Henry and Jean West freedom from their elementary school. This summer was going to be the best. One of the first things they were going to do would be to run over to their neighbors, one house down to the right, and get the twins: Stephanie and Christian Meadows and to go adventuring with them. They would climb trees, go swimming in the local pool, and naughtily cross into everyone’s yards without a care, it was what they had always done and this summer it would be no different, it was going to be a great. 

Oh the irony of childhood, they couldn’t have been more wrong. On a particularly sticky hot afternoon, when mom couldn’t be woken up from “resting her eyes” as the baby slept, only the wood’s foliage could give them the respite that they needed. The deep shade a beckoning relief. They phoned the twins, who met them at the edge of their property. The foursome slipped into the coolness of the woods, following the small creek, that lead deep into the woodland and towards The Farm as they called the farm at the end of the woods.

 They knew where it went of course. The path was worn down to finely packed earth through the many years of the children’s stopping feet. The creek would lead them on a twisting and turning course through the trees until they reached the electric fence of a cow pasture two miles beyond their house. The owner of the farm was a cow and turkey farmer and on late summer nights, when the wind was strong, the smell would carry onto their property stinking everything to high heaven. 

That was probably why no one noticed the smell in the first place two years ago.That day was just another one of those volatile summer days, when the heat cracks the pavement and breeze wafted the stink of the turkeys through mowed yards, just shy of fourth of July. It was like that in the south. The kids didn't mind so much, this smell was as familiar to them as the old trail that they transgressed.

It was Christian, that’s how they notice it in the first place. He’d thought it’d be a good dare. Stephanie, of course had refused. She wasn’t going to get bit by a snake for the sake of a dare. She was the sensible one, the one who never took risks. Jean teetered, she thought about it, but she had to agree with Stephanie on this one. She usually had something to prove, like if she was the bravest or the smartest; whether she could climb the highest, or hold her breath underwater the longest, or stay hidden in hide and seek the longest. Christian, well, Christian always made the dares, but he rarely, if ever, did them. Unless he knew it would be at minimal risk to himself. Christian was a slight bully. Henry, though- Henry always tried to do everything that Christian said, even if he was fearful or not. And more often than not he was. He seemed to always be afraid. But he wanted to impress Christian. He cared too much about what Christian thought.

Henry a year and a half younger than everyone else, including his sister, she was only a couple of months younger than the twins, squared his shoulders, and gulped. In front of the small group of friends, towered a fallen tree. Roots sprung from the ground, now reaching towards the canopy as if begging the leaves for help to put them back into the cool soil of the earth, leaving a large opening hole in the place where they’d once been. 

It was like the mouth of a monster, all curled and gnarled up and forgotten; it’s twisty roots still clinging to globs of earth, like spinach between someone's teeth. 

Henry, feeling brave and wanting to prove himself to Christian, moved through the wooded undergrowth towards the opening maw of the uprooted tree. He poked his head into the cool shadowed cave-like opening. The smell of dirt and decomposing leaves hit his senses like a brick. Henry let his eyes adjust, a goofy grin on his young face, this wasn’t scary. He didn’t even see any snakes lurking in the leaves. But there was something there. What was that? Something white was poking up through the leaves. A hand?  Henry sucks in his breath.   

“You guys! I found something!”