A Day In The Life - {Watty Awards 2015}

Chapter 5: Ask Me Why (Jeb)

I am running from something. Something that wants me or needs me for something. I can't see it, but I can hear it behind me. I keep running, wondering why I see nothing that resembles a path, though I'm running through forest and if there's no path, I should have run into a tree by now. I hazard a glance behind me. As the thing that's chasing me materializes in my vision, I feel a sharp pain, hear a CRACK noise and feel myself fall to the ground. I have run into a tree, giving it time to catch up to me... I'm dead meat... so dead. 

I woke up, feeling a sharp pain in the back of my head, and looked at the clock: 1:25 AM. Crap, I have work tomorrow and there is no way I'm getting back to sleep. I picked up my iPod and put on the headphones, blaring Metallica's "Enter Sandman." Our house had wonderful soundproofing, which meant that I could be up as late as I wanted (or as early, as the case may be) and no one would ever know the difference. I was glad, because music helped me clear my mind.

I nearly jumped when I saw a crack of light growing along the wall opposite me. Crap, someone was opening my door. I turned to see Andrew, in his pajamas, standing in my doorway. I pulled off my headphones and shut off my iPod, cursing. 

"Nice bass," he stated. He crossed my room to my giant stacks of CDs and took a few off the top of one of the piles. He stood there for a moment, flipping them over, reading the bands and tracks. Then he looked at me. "Wow," he said, looking through a few more CDs. "Explicit, heavy metal, black metal, but all from the 60s to the 90s... My sister's a classics bad-ass... You know, I never pictured you as a bad-ass." He trailed off, but I knew this wasn't what he'd come up here to talk to me about.

"Okay, why are you actually here?" I ask him.

"Because I wanted to see you guys and actually, physically see how you're doing."

"No, not here, HERE, as in, in my bedroom."

"Oh, I wanted to talk to you, see how you're actually doing." 

That was really the one thing I hoped he would not ask, it was a really hard question to answer.

"I'm fine."

"What's been going on around here?"

"Dad left, they both remarried, and neither marriage is all that happy."

"Who'd she marry?"

"You remember Mr. Jeffery Williams, used to help out at church and things like that?"

"HIM?"

"Yeah, him."

"He's practically 20 years older than her."

"She really didn't care."

"Interesting."

"To say the very least," I said. "Yeah, you left and everything kind of went south."

"No shit."

"Now who's being explicit?"

"Sorry, forgot there were little ears in the room." 

I looked at the clock. 2:15 AM. I couldn't sleep and the conversation had died to the point that neither of us felt the need to resurrect it, so I decided I'd go for a walk to the Grove, a place in the woods outside the neighbourhood. I got up and saw that Andrew was blocking my way out the window. 

"Drew, you're blocking by path, please move."

"Why?"

"Because I want to go for a walk and the window is really my only option to get out of the house without being caught."

"Why the hell do you want to go for a walk now, of all times?"

"Because staying in one's room for extended periods of time has been deemed 'unhealthy'." He moved, so I left the room and walked toward the forest.

I was about halfway through the forest when everything started to seem suspicious. Every bush was full of snakes and the trees were full of shadow demons, and I began to feel slightly crazy under the growing feeling of suspicion in my stomach. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder. 

I jumped and turned around, surprised to find Andrew behind me, having apparently followed me from the house. 

"Come on," he said, "I want to show you something." He walked me to the Grove, a spectacular place, albeit, but all too familiar. 

"I was already going here," I said, not trying to hurt his feelings, because he obviously wanted to show me this place very badly and for it to be my first time seeing it. I felt so terrible for bursting his bubble. 

"This isn't what I wanted to show you," he said. I was wondering what he meant when he led me to a large oak tree in the middle of the clearing. 

"I love this tree," I said, still not quite sure and not at all convinced that there was really something special about this tree. 

"You don't know the half of it," he said, obviously having read my expression as not excited enough to be there. He uncovered a section of root that I had previously mistaken for a real root to reveal a hole large enough for me to wonder why I had never noticed it before. "After you," he said, in a tone which passed for a gentlemanly brother's tone. I climbed down the hole and Andrew came down after me. I tried to look around, but there was no light and my eyes hadn't adjusted yet to being underground. I saw a light flicker on as Andrew lit an old-fashioned lantern that lit up the entire room. In the lamplight, I saw the room as it was. A small bunk bed to one corner, a ladder extending down a hole in the ground, and a small table acting as an end table, where the lamp was resting and Andrew was standing, blowing out a match.

"This is what I wanted to show you," he said. 

"This is amazing," I said, still taking in the authentically rustic feel of the place.

"This isn't all of it, or even the best part." He said, "That's down there," gesturing at the hole in the ground with the ladder. I went down into the abyss, thrown into darkness only for a moment before Andrew came down the ladder with the lantern that lit up the entire room, not really a room, but a long corridor with several doors coming off of it, giving it the appearance of a whole house underground. He led me into a room that appeared to act as a study. A desk was up against one wall, a few papers lying on and around it. "The first time I came down here was in '94. Seven and brave enough to travel down a deep dark hole... I was an odd child. Anyway, I found this diary the first time I came down here. It was in the desk." He picked up a small book and handed it to me. "It's kind of interesting how people are less scared when they're young than they should be, isn't it?" 

I took the diary, opening it, and looking at the date: July 30th, 1807. "What is this?"

Andrew gave me the rest of the tour, there really was not much else, though, besides a sitting room, complete with a fireplace. I wondered where the smoke went from the fire in the room, until I saw a small room. "What is that?" I asked him.

"Locked." He said. "I know, I've  been looking for the key since '94." 

"We should go. Nell is probably up," I said. 

"It's 3:30 AM!" 

"Exactly. She's probably up and she'll tell."

"What would she be doing up at this hour?" 

"I don't know. She is up at 3:30 and sleeps again at 6:30, it's her partrol time or something. Anyway, we should get back."

"Okay."

He left first, to make sure I could get back into my room properly. On the way back, I couldn't help thinking about what he said. It's kind of interesting how people are less scared when they're young than they should be, isn't it? What was that supposed to mean? Everything became suspicious again and I hurried home. When I got there, I put my iPod on, hoping for some comfort in the music that would take me away. The first thing I heard: Sleep with one eye open / Gripping your pillow tight. I skipped it. The next song came on, Kerli's Walking on Air. There's a little creepy house in a little creepy... No thank you. Skipped to the next song. I come from a land called secret Estonia, Nobody knows where it's at.... Welcome to the Creepshow. You know what? Forget it. I laid down to sleep, fully aware of every shadow in the room.