Misted Eyes

Yer a wiz- Er, ye a deadman, Adams!

The bruised apple sat on the table, demanding.
"Now, children. Do not draw what you see as a whole. Draw the curves, the lines. The texture. All separate pieces of art." Ms. Noble drawled, hunched over a laptop. She read the article out loud, looking baffled by the words that spilled from her thin lips.

Fighting an eye-roll, Ryan Adams barely glanced at the apple, and set his pencil against the rough page. With quick strokes, he drew a large "a" in the middle of the page. Then, within the circle of the letter, wrote a "p", then another. A strike of an "l" divided the entire "a" diagonally, and a tiny "e".

He sat back, satisfied, just as the bell rung.
It was a short, time-fill period, just before home bell on a Friday, a lesson he wasn't graded on. He stood, gathered his supplies, scrunched most of it up, and threw it all into his bag. With a wave to the last stragglers, the boy headed off.

As he walked up the hill to the bus-stop, Ryan ran a quick inventory check. Why did it feel like he was missing something?
He paused just as a bus pulled up. My damn phone. He thought angrily, spinning on his heel. He jogged down the pavement, the rare Australian chill forming his breathing into fog. Ryan swung himself back into the school yard, and walked briskly, just as a janitor closed the classroom door.
"Er," Ryan said carefully, knocking on the door. There was a grunt from inside, but the door pulled open. The cleaner had pale skin and ginger hair, and looked weirdly too young for his job, his eyes too bright and young for his supposed age. He looked just above Ryan's age of 15. His janitors uniform was a few sizes too big. Oddly, he wore a mask over the bottom half of his face.

"Jamie?" Ryan asked, baffled. Jamie, the year-9 jokester of the school, sighed. The ginger pulled the mask down, revealing an impish grin.
"'Sup, Ry-Ry!" He said quietly, keeping his voice conspicuously low. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and stepped aside to let a weary Ryan through.
"What are you doing here? Impersonating a janitor, no less?" Ryan said, eyebrows knitted. Jamie ignored his question, but crossed to the middle of the cluttered room and stood by a beaten-up vacuum cleaner.
"Not regulation, but still a beauty." The older boy told him.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The vacuum."
"What does the vacuum have to do with this?"
"Everything!" Jamie exclaimed. He started a long rant on a prank he had planned, something about a draw and a lot of dust.

Ryan nodded along, but his attention wandered and he began searching for his phone, among the haphazard rubble of art easels and supplies. He found it, and tucked the hunk of metal into his pocket. He wore a white button-down and the baggy trousers of his public high school's uniform.

"So, um, great. Have fun." Ryan said distractedly, making to head out the door. Jamie didn't reply, at least, not in comprehensive words.

"Yaaaaargh!Aaarghaaaaa!" The prankster screamed from behind Ryan.
Ryan whipped around and stared as a giant, hulking beast tore at Jamie's leg, dragging him down. Blood spurted, smattering the furniture.

"Help! Hel-" Jamie's pleas ended in a gurgle as his windpipe was crushed by a giant paw.

Ryan stood stock-still, frozen in shock. His ADHD forced his mind to note the splatters of gore and blood, the giant bear's heavy breathing, and then -

The trembling boy waited for a split-second for the bear to attack him, but then he realized he didn't really want to die, and he staggered backwards, turned, and sprinted away. The beast lumbered after him, breaking through the doorjamb like it was made of paper. His combat boots hit dirt and he was running across the grassy oval.

"Run," a voice said in the fleeing boy's mind. Oh, I didn't think of that. Ryan shot back, surprising himself. He usually wasn't rude, even to hims-

"Yeah, well RUN FASTER." Screamed someone. Ryan jolted, realising the conversation had been aloud.
"You run!" He yelled, his legs screaming as he leaped over a bush and ploughed through the back gates of the school. The frost had been ripped from his bloodstream as adrenalin coursed through his veins, and sharp, spiked fear shot through him.
A second later and he was joined by a boy with wildly curly black hair and olive skin. They ran side-by-side, pelting up an alleyway.
"What is that thing?" He asked, breathing hard from exertion. Ryan was about to snap back that it was obviously a bear, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was because there were no bears in Australia, or because bears don't get the size of a caravan.
"I don't know," he admitted. He felt a third stitch form under his ribs, but he ignored it and kept running.
"We can't outrun it - we'll have to hide." The other boy said wisely.
"I have a feeling it has the nose of a bloodhound..." Ryan replied uneasily, but allowed the the boy to drag him to a side street.

They stormed down the lane and almost collided with a graffiti-covered brick wall slanting to the left.
Ryan hit the wall, hands out, and bounced off, bumping into the other boy. They skidded into a deep doorway and held their breath.
Ryan heard the beast smack into the wall, but he was pressed against the wall and couldn't see. His hand closed around a wooden pole to his side, a short, stout stick with a thin handle. He dared a glance down and saw that it was a softball bat.
"I'm Simon," the curly-haired boy whispered, his voice barely audible.
"Ryan." Ryan said. In hindsight, it was the stupidest place to have an introduction, but an almost hysterical giggle swelled in Ryan's throat, but he forced it down firmly. They heard a rough sniff from the beast, and a shadow fell over the doorway. Ryan moved surprisingly quick - slamming aside Simon and raising the bat -
But the bat hit the top of the doorway and rebounded, costing them precious seconds. Ryan quickly regained control and went for a stab, rather than a swing, and caught the brute's eye socket with a horrifyingly satisfying squish.
Its eyeball oozed around the end of the bat, having burst in a soft oof.
Ryan barely remembered letting go of the bat, barely remembered Simon pulling him away and then joining him to sprint away.

But he definitely remembered the staircase they ran at, and he most certainly recalled the staircase splitting in two, and Simon tugging him down one way. The brute barrelled down the other stairs, and Ryan heard the tunnel collapse, and an anguished howle ring in the air.

"Wh-what?!" Ryan squawked, looking at his companion, who shrugged.
"I really don't know, man." Simon deadpanned. Ryan turned in a slow circle, running his hands through the waves of his brown hair. Simon was leaning on the wall, his complexion pale and clammy in comparison to his usual dark.
"He- Jamie - died. Simon. He's... He's dead." Ryan whispered. He cleared his throat and repeated. Simon made a strangled grunt.
"We have to call the police," he said.

Ryan looked up and passed a shaking hand over his face, and when his fibers dropped to his side, his expression was carefully controlled.
"Mm. I..." Ryan patted his jeans pockets, but his phone was gone.
"Dammit! It must've fallen... Do you have a phone?" He asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
"No. We'll have to walk to the station." Simon said. His jaw was set, but he was jiggling from head to foot. He jerked his thumb one direction, and they headed along. The walls were strangely graffiti-free, and the floor was smooth and well-paved: a rarity in these suburbs. Simon tilted his head up and spoke carefully:
"This is... Odd. I can't feel a breeze. Tunnel like this, you'd feel a drifty Northern..." He looked over at Ryan's confused expression and relented:
"Its a dead-end."

Ryan's eyebrows raised and he broke into a jog, before his stitches had even eased. A few hundred paces and they were at two doors. One was white, one was black.
"That's racist." Simon piped up. Ryan snorted and reached for the handle of the white door, cracking it open. A sweet, comforting breeze drifted through.
"Try the other one," he told Simon, who pulled a face.
"The white guy checks the white door and the Indonesian checks the black one? Really?" He snorted, but he obeyed. The black door held a sour, dangerous smell.
"I'm happy to go through the white door." Simon suggested. Ryan felt an uneasy tug in his gut.
"I... It doesn't feel right.." He murmured. He moved to the black door. Opened it slightly and tilted his head.
"No. That..."
The air wasn't sour or musty. It was actually fresh - it was the sickeningly sweet air that held the deception.
"This one." Ryan said firmly. He opened it fully, and stepped through, not looking back.

The next thing he knew he was tumbling down a green hill, and his head smacked an outcropping of rock.