This Reporter Part 1

I'm working on a new story idea. Really it's two stories that cross over with about a 75 year gap in-between. The first is a radio drama about two famous explorers in the 20s -30s. The next is the adventures of one of the explorers’ descendants when the events of the first story bleed through into the present. I have done quite a few treatments for this and tossed it around a lot before coming up with this format. This is an article written by a reporter who witnessed a large part of the present story. What the story would look like to an outsider. You may not have noticed but a lot of what I write is told from the prospective of a character or an all knowing narrator so this was kind of hard for me.

Long Field Ill. This reporter saw it all; weeks of snakes flooding into this small town, a deadly snake woman from the African Jungles come to get revenge on the grandson of the man who imprisoned her long ago, the jewel know as the Heart of the Jungle that held the power to shape one’s dreams, and the bravery of a group of kids to save the community they grew up in.

It has been no secret that for the last few months the snake population of the Riverside County in Illinois has skyrocketed. It’s what first drew this reporter to the small hamlet of Long Field. All types of snakes have been reported here but it wasn’t until rare tropical species from Africa showed up that the authorities became concerned. At first they suspected that a snake collector had gotten tiered of his exotic pets and had released them, often the case when wildcats are found roaming in neighborhoods. But as time passed the number of exotic snake found was far greater than any collector could have had, and the other fact was that all the snakes seemed to be converging on a single point within the county, Long Field.

Nothing made sense to this reporter until a little research found that since this whole phenomenon had started there had only been one snake related death; an elderly gentleman named Jonah Parks had been bitten in his house and died of the venom. Jonah Parks had been a locale celebrity in town, having spent most of his life traveling the world; he spent a lot of time telling the local children all about his adventures and showing off his souvenirs. That’s what he appeared as on the surface anyways, but with a little research this reporter discovered that he was really Jonah Parks, founder of the famed Adventures Club that meets at crossroads hall in London. He had been traveling companion to Professor Henry J. Humphries, famed explorer and discoverer of over 200 new species. Also Mr. Parks was over 100 years old, but from what I understand most people thought he was in his 70’s. Jonah Parks first appeared in newspapers back in the 1920s when he helped professor Humphries with the “Great Snake Infestation of the Congo”.

This was almost too much for this reporter to handle. The reports of the Congo snake infestation were hauntingly similar to that of the one this small Illinois town was facing. I was able to arrange some time to talk to Parks only living relatives, his son in law, Robert Jackson, and his son Johnny. Robert told me that he was aware that his father in law had been a famous explorer but was unaware of any snake infestation in the Congo. He did offer to have his son take me to his father in-law’s home to see if I could find anything there to help me.

That’s when I met Johnny Jackson, the boy with the walking stick.