This choice: Someone unexpected finds the Stone. • Go Back...Chapter #6Ahn'Ger in the House of the Undying. by: Mr.Domino   "I think it's gone, Bill" Tom said, taking a break from the search to look at his phone again, which read 8:10am. Tom groaned and pushed himself off his knees and back up onto his feet, stretching upwards until he was towering over Bill...Who was now frantically digging through the vegetation.
"Y'know I'm okay with being late but if we don't get to school soon they'll call our parents. Mom and dad are still pissed with me about the car so I don't want to get any further into the doghouse" Tom said, setting a hand on Bill's shoulder.
"Then fucking GO, or something! I'm sure you can be your own company for a ten minute walk!" Bill snarked back, smacking Tom's hand away for the second time this morning. That same primal force that told him to not let Tom made a wish was barking at him internally to find the gemstone. The geeky teen couldn't truly explain it, but right now listening to Tom moan, for the millionth time, about his personal drama was the LAST thing he wanted to do. And even when in a good, empathetic mood, Tom's complaints weren't really covering new ground insomuch as just treading over the same issues. Gloria, mom and dad, Big Jon, it was the same thing over and over.
And Bill, so consumed by finding the lost gem, never saw the look of hurt flash over Tom's face as the exhausted, depressed athlete took a step back. A tightness formed in his chest and he opened his mouth to say something...But the words never came. Instead, Tom simply turned and, without another word, took off marching down the sidewalk, headed for Shermer High.
"Finally" Bill muttered under his breath as he resumed scouring the underbrush. A few more minutes of solitary searching turned up nothing, and there was no way the gemstone could have flown this far away from where the two teens had been standing.
"Where the fuck is it!?" Bill stood and let loose a growl-like grunt as he brushed the detritus of the ground from his clothes. Had it gone all the way through the bushes? Bill had smacked Tom's hand pretty hard but the angle was down, not up. It SHOULD have been somewhere near the ground. That's how physics worked.
But then again, the gemstone had appeared out of nowhere on his porch...And had glowed when Tom was about to make a wish. Maybe it was time for Bill to stop thinking about this in a rational, logical way and start leaning into the impossible becoming possible. His eyes drifted upwards until he was staring at the second story of the house that was behind the hedges.
Mrs. Reilly's house. The cranky old lady that was always bugging the cops about anyone she saw loitering around her bushes (they were actually part of Shermer's beautification project but the old bat considered them to be HERS). And she was CRAZY religious as well. Bill recalled his Boy Scout days and when they'd been doing some community work by cleaning up yards and all that, and Mrs. Reilly had been OLD then, and she'd been 'nice' enough to let them come into her cross and Jesus portrait-bedecked house for some crappy lemonade that was mostly just water and then made a big deal about everyone praying and giving thanks over it. Eventually they'd left...But the next day she'd called the cops and tried to have all of them arrested for 'vandalism' because they had merely piled the accumulated lawn trash next to the garbage bins instead of IN them like she wanted.
Ever since then she'd had it out for all the boys that had been in the troupe. Especially Bill and Tom, since Bill lived right across from her and Tom was just down the block. Eventually she'd gotten so old that she had a couple of live-in assistants or something to take care of the property for her, but age hadn't stopped her from being a pain in the ass for the rest of the neighborhood.
"Ugh, please no" Bill groaned again. But despite knowing better, Bill peeled the bushes back and stepped over the threshold and into Mrs. Reilly's yard. Maybe the gemstone had actually obeyed physics and was actually just on the other side of the hedges. If he could just dart in, find it and dart out, maybe she wouldn't see him.
Fate, of course, had other plans.
"I SEE YOU, TRESPASSER!!" The hag-like screech called out from the house, and Bill's eyes immediately locked on the shriveled form of Mrs. Reilly, who was standing on the porch of her home, leaning against her walker, looking like a well dressed mummy. Next to her were the sad looking forms of her helpers; an Indian looking woman with her hair tied in such a tight bun that it looked painful, and a tall African-American man who looked like he wanted to be anyplace else than on the porch next to the old woman.
"Shit. Shit shit SHIT!" Bill swore quietly, and made to dive back through the bushes and take off running for the relative safety of his house...But then he saw something glinting a sickly gold emanating from the crone's wrinkled hands.
'Of FUCKING course she has it' Bill thought as the blood drained from his face, 'Nothing can ever just be simple, can it?'
"ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THIS, YOUNG MAN?" Mrs. Reilly screeched, causing her two assisted living companions to wince, "IF YOU CAN PROVE IT'S YOURS, YOU CAN HAVE IT BACK"
"You have got to be shitting me" Bill swore again. But with no other real choice other than diving back through the hedges and giving up what might possibly be the greatest thing to ever happen to him and going to school to deal with all that dramatic teenage crap...
Bill put one foot in front of the other and made his way across the yard towards Mrs. Reilly and her aides, desperately hoping that nothing else would go wrong.
But, Bill's life being what it was, of course it did.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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