The League of Monster Slayers

The League of Monster Slayers
They called themselves the League of Monster Slayers and it was a very exclusive club. Initiation in the club was the pinnacle of every young Kingsmouth boy's social standing, creating a division between the ones on the inside and those left out. If you weren't a monster slayer, you were no one. The only way to be granted membership was through the endorsement of current members, the nomination of a departing member, and a very serious initiation ceremony involving a pledge of undying loyalty to fellow slayers. Most members would stay well into their teen years before outgrowing the club and leaving.

The treehouse has undergone several improvements and amendments as almost three decades worth of monster slayers have made their individual marks on the place. The current structure is impressive and sizeable as far as treehouses go, extending over two floors, with real glass windows and even a balcony, all meticulously maintained over time by the devoted members.

In the beginning, the slayers spent most of their time reading comics, sharing horror stories, talking about movies, and coming up with imaginative ways to battle the inevitable invasion of zombies, vampires and mummies. However, what started as fun and games ended up a lot more serious than the boys had ever expected.

In 1987, two young boys from town were found mutilated in the forest. The League were convinced that a monster - not animals - had killed them. They decided to investigate, armed with nothing but homemade and improvised weapons like slingshots, wooden stakes, Molotov cocktails and firecrackers. As they searched the forest, the boys were ambushed by a wendigo, and would all have been killed if not for the secret abilities of one of the hunters.

At the time, one of the veteran members in the League was also a student at Innsmouth Academy. Fifteen-year-old Jackson Miller broke all the oaths of his school by using magic outside campus, among civilians. He had likely panicked and used lethal magic when the wendigo advanced on the group, and amidst the confusion, screams and smoke from the firecrackers, the other boys didn't notice what he did.

As the smoke settled, the wendigo lay dead on the forest floor. Victorious, the boys celebrated, now convinced that they - and their makeshift weapons - were special somehow. Jackson Miller remained quiet. When the rest ran home to brag about their exploits, Jackson returned to the Academy, hid his toy weapon, and immediately confessed to the headmaster what had happened.

Not far from Red's Bait and Tackle, in the forest north of the Black House, lies an old treehouse built by local boys in 1983. Led by a ten-year-old William Dexter, the boys chose a spot as far from town as they dared and built the treehouse as a secret hideout - a place where they could get away from parents and girls.

While the boys were gone, Innsmouth Academy sent someone to collect the wendigo carcass, and had it incinerated in the academy's boiler room. Jackson Miller was reprimanded by the faculty for breaking school rules, but among his fellow students he received legendary status as the only one of them who had actually seen battle. Even twenty-five years on, urban legends of the boy who single-handedly killed a wendigo circulate the halls of the academy.

No one believed the Kingsmouth boys when they spoke of their heroic feat. There wasn't a body to show or even a trace of struggle. Their tale was dismissed as the product of imagination run wild. They were met with scorn from parents and ridicule from friends, so eventually the boys fell silent and made a pact to never mention their special powers outside the League. Instead, the focus of the club became to prepare for the next attack and study any and all inexplicable incidents in the area.

Since then, all boys of the League have waited for another opportunity to prove their expertise as monster hunters. Over the years, the boys have meticulously logged all their knowledge in cryptic notebooks and readied the treehouse and their weapons for the inevitable war.

Now, their waiting is over. The current roster is led by Danny Dufresne. In fact, with the other members having all disappeared when the fog came, Danny may be the only remaining monster slayer.