MAYBE FOR THE BETTER

(CHAPTER NINETEEN) TANNER

DECEMBER 21ST, 2009:

Eventually, I would have to come face-to-face with Alexander Briar once more, possibly inside his house again before we headed off to the search party for Alicia Sparks. I couldn't quite define how that made me feel. Excited? Fearful? Nervous?

My shoes slouch through the bathed grass, saplings and stocks of softwood from pine trees swishing in the heavy wind. It became more icey than it was on December 17th, where everything went to shit–if my life hadn't already. January was almost quick to roll in; it wouldn't be long until the snow appeared.

A coat warmed me, baggy jeans and a beanie following. Grandma insisted I wore mittens, so I brought them with me, but immediately ripped them off the minute I stepped out the front door.

My lips quivered in coldness, my black hair trapped underneath the beanie, the little bits of my bangs that fell through the cracks between my hairline and forehead tickling the crinkles twisted into my skin. Cuddling myself at first, my skin getting used to the cold, I trampled through the field. The newspaper Olivia had showed me yesterday was held in my grasp. Not the same one we shared together, a different one. Just had the same information.

My eyes sobbed downward towards the paper, encased in the sight of what terrified me. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? That 'bundle of bones' boy, the dead one–the one that haunted my dreams alongside the girl who looked like Alicia Sparks. A piece of information was listed onto the newspaper that I didn't read yesterday: where they located him. The Greenes' farm, that's where I was.

There was still a little time before the search party went underway, the time I needed to report to Alexander Briar. In that short time I was gifted, it wasn't going to waste.

As I explored the field secretly, nowhere near the house itself but where they actually found the body. It was beaten, worn and gashed. Unmaintained, forgotten. The chicken coop. The same one near the dug hole sectioned by crime-scene tape wrapped around limpy poles dug into the ground, guarding the scene from anyone such as myself from disrupting the naturalness of it all. The rain and harsh weather already tore and ripped aspects of the tape, though. Bit of the yellow became faint, and I sighed, condensation throwing out from my shaken lips.

There was a discontinuity in the ground, the resting place of that soccer boy. His bleached blonde hair appeared before me in a haze, and I shook it out, afraid it would become real, coming back to taunt me with its hideous revenge.

The chicken coop waited for me as it weakly stood on unstructured pillars that reached far in the soil. With a stomp of my ankles, the clicking of my converse stirring the grass, I approached that disdainful building structure.

Just like the hole, the chicken coop also had police tape covering around it. It didn't mean much to me, however. I simply tattered through it with zero regrets, my lips curving down to a frown. The chicken coop door has sealed shut, a paper glued onto it. It read: LAW ENFORCEMENT–DO NOT ENTER. In rebellion, I grabbed the pick in my jeans' pocket, sticking it through the lock.

The dream I had last night was strange. I was given information by Connor about everything. What that place was. I couldn't believe it to be true, so in a desperate attempt to understand further, I wanted to experience the soccer boy again. Memories seemed prevalent to certain areas. For example, at grandma's house, the photos that contained many areas around Samridge Pines–Lexington Bridge most importantly–Alicia Sparks, or the girl, appeared and caused some physical distress.

Connor mentioned something about the 'other side' being a divide between the physical and the consciousness of one's being. If what he said were true, if any of this was really happening, then that'd mean my physical body isn't coming with me whenever I visit Connor, yet my consciousness being ripped from my vessel.