Through Blessed Eyes

Chapter 5-- Tess

TESS

After the kelpie attacked us, everyone seemed to be on end. Every time the phone rang, my stomach lurched thinking it was Miss Stanford calling my mom and dad. I expected Evelyn to get expelled or suspended or... something.

And to make matters worse, Mom and Dad lectured us. They tried to make us tell them what happened, but thanks to Scout's quick thinking, we were able to come up with a story.

"We were hanging out by the ocean," she began which wasn't entirely false. "When there was a big wave and Evelyn got sucked in the water, and was beginning to be pulled out to sea. Tess and I, we jumped in to get her. Tess hung to a rock and held out her hand for Evelyn, and I went out to help get her. "

Scout states all this with a straight face now that she’s not being confronted in the middle of the night. I could learn a bit about lying from her.

"And afterwards we were so out of breath we sat on the beach for twenty minutes, just trying to catch our breath. And then it took us a while to bike back home because we were already tired from swimming. "

Mom looked into Scout's grey eyes with her brown one's. I knew that Mom knew that Scout was lying. But that was the story we were sticking to.

"Evelyn," she says, turning to her, "Ye need to be more careful around the rocks. They're slippery and more than once people have fallen inta them,” lastly, Mom looks at me, "Tess, ya need to be more careful as well. Ye know the ocean 'roun here. Ye shoulda warned her. "

"Now," Mom takes a step back, talking to all three of us now. "Ye are to come righ' home from school. Upstairs, and do your homework. An’ no TV for a week."

"What?" I ask her. "B-but Mom, that's not fair!

"That's what you get for getting your uniforms soaked and home from school five hours late!" She says. "Now go finish your homework!"

The three of us make our way up the steps.

We eat dinner in silence, only speaking when something needed to be passed. We just had a simple salad with chicken, and then some garlic bread. Mom and Dad, on the other hand, were talking up a storm.

"Did ye hear about Mr. Bales?" Mom asked my dad. He shakes his head.

"No, what about him?"

"They say he's gone crazy!" She chuckles. "They say he claims a Brownie came in the middle o' the night an' cleaned the whole house before his daughter came home!" Dad chuckles right along.

"That crazy old coot... he really believes in all that folk tale. It's all rubbish,” he says.

I don't say anything, just stare at my food, moving my carrots around the plate and taking small sips of my water. I wonder if what Mr. Bales said was true. Could a Brownie really be living in his house? I find that a simple Brownie could be real if the horrifying kelpie could be.

"May I be excused?" I ask, and my mother reluctantly nods.

"Clean yer plate and finish any homework ya have," she says, and then goes back to her conversation. I scrape my plate and put it away in the dishwasher before climbing up the steps into Scout's room. In there, we have a computer.

Evelyn had after all suggested that we research the kelpie before going back to my beautiful cove again.

I go onto Google and type in 'kelpie'. Of course I knew a bit about them from the simple folk tales Mom used to read me to bed at night, but all that I knew was from the stories.

Time to get some real facts down.

According to the Internet, it said that kelpie's encouraged their prey to ride on them, and their skin then becomes an adhesive and then they bring their prize under the water. And that is exactly what happened to us. My suspicions are right... what we experienced yesterday truly was a kelpie.