Will the Wise

Chapter 4

Will was somewhere else. He wasn't sure where, wasn't sure how, but that the only explanation that made sense. His friends would have said that it was just like the Plane of Shadows, in Dungeons and Dragons. He wasn't going to give it any names yet. The only things he knew were that it was somehow decomposed, and that everything had been overrun with black, slimy roots. Everything was in the same place as normal, just old, and rotted. And his family wasn't here. Nobody was here. Just Will, and whoever had set up those Christmas lights. He could hear his family, though. They couldn't hear him. At least, if they did, he didn't hear them react to it. The only things inhabiting the place were the tendrils, the creature that had followed him home, and the shadow monster.

The shadow monster. It was one of the things he couldn't figure out. The humanoid creature was terrifying, but he could at least find an explanation for it. It was just an animal. He didn't know if it was a predator, since it hadn't technically harmed him in any way. But it was a creature. A solid, flesh and blood creature. But he couldn't explain the shadow monster. It had looked like it was made of some sort of gaseous substance. For now, he let himself assume that it was just a cloud that had been blown into that shape by the wind. He needed to find a way to contact his mother, and being in constant fear of some sort of monster wasn't going to help with that.

That didn't mean that the thought of that giant, cloudy creature didn't make him shudder.

Around noon, Will heard the voice in the living room start to speak again. He stood up warily, and put his final drawing on his bedside table. If it had been a normal day, he would have swept the drawings on the floor into a careful, neat pile, so that his mom wouldn't have to. It wasn't a normal day. Instead, he again picked the lamp off his desk, and opened the door. As usual, the hallway was empty. The lights hung, and the dull color in them reminded him momentarily of ghosts. He gulped shakily, surprised by how dry his mouth had gone, and how suddenly. He crept into the living room, and sat down on the couch.

Just like before, he could hear his mother and his brother talking, mostly about him. At first, it was his mother, in tears, ranting about the chief of police. Then, Jonathan, comforting her. All the while, Will sat in the living room. He had covered all of the windows in the house, but he still felt shaky from fear. The only thing that comforted him was his family's voices. In order to distract himself, he tried to figure out how much they knew. They both thought he had gotten lost on the way home. Apparently, the chief of police thought he had gone to his dad's house.

Will thought of his dad. He had cared about him, Will knew that. It was just that he didn't really know what Will wanted. Will thought of the baseball games they'd gone to. He thought about some of the things he'd heard his dad call him. Queer. Fag. I just want him to fit in, he'd said once, to Joyce. Will had been in his room, but he could hear it through the walls. Maybe if we could try to send him to more baseball lessons. Have him quit drawing. Try and make some new friends. Will had reminded himself that his dad had been different than he was when he was in school. He'd been one of the jocks. He didn't know that it was still possible to be happy if you weren't popular.

That didn't stop Will from trying to be what his dad wanted him to be, though. He went to the baseball lessons, and the games. He stopped showing his dad his new drawings, or hanging them up on the fridge. He didn't invite his friends over, because his Dad had said they give me the creeps. Will knew his friends were weirdos, but he was a weirdo too. Jonathon had said that that was okay. Besides, he loved his friends.

What might things be like if they were with him? He thought of Mike, who had always been the leader. He would already be making plans, trying to figure out how they had gotten there, and trying to find ways to communicate with the normal world. Lucas, he imagined, would be trying to come up with a logical explanation for this, that didn't involve dimensions and monsters. Dustin, who would probably have raided the kitchen. Will smiled at that.

Finally, Will convinced himself to start working. He was still afraid to leave the house, but he could still – what was it that his friends would have done? Mike seemed to be able to solve any problem, so he thought of what he would do. He could try and communicate with his family, but how? He could hear them talking, even though it sounded muffled and echoey at times. Maybe there was some sort of connection the other way. He briefly considered radio waves, but pushed the thought away. He didn't have electricity, let alone a proper radio. There was no explanation for this, not one that didn't involve monsters or alternate dimensions, so he couldn't follow what Lucas would do.

The next step in his mental list was to find food. He wasn't hungry right now, but he knew he would be later. He stood up warily, and, being careful not to make too much noise, left the living room, and crept down the hall into the kitchen. There were cobwebs stretching across corners of the room. He hesitated for a moment, before opening one of the dark, wooden cabinets bolted to the wall. The insides were caked with some sort of slimy, black, lumpy substance. Will glanced at it, but was surprised that he didn't feel disgusted. If he'd found something like that in his normal kitchen, then he would have gagged. Maybe he was almost used to it by now.

Will had to root through several wet, decayed cardboard boxes before he got to the cans. They were what he'd been looking for – everything else, looking at the state of the house, would have gone moldy long before. He spent some time taking the cans out, looking at the expiration dates, and sorting them into piles on the kitchen table. He'd been doing this for a while before realizing that he didn't really know what the date was. So far, he'd been assuming that it was still November 2nd, but who knew? This dimension seemed to be at least years ahead of his. He had no way of knowing exactly when it was now. He sat there for a moment, frustrated, and had just decided to start putting them back in the cabinet when he froze.

He heard chittering from outside. It was faint, but getting louder. The creature was on its way to his house. He glanced at the door, then down at the cans of food. Would it be able to tell if things had been moved around since it last came? Would it know, then, that he was in there? Or was it the smell of the food that had brought it there in the first place? He noticed belatedly that it had gotten dark outside. Maybe it only hunted at night.

Will stood up and, pushing the chair out from under the table, started shoving tin cans back into the cabinet. When they were all out of sight, he pushed the chair back in and ran into the hallway.

Meanwhile, the chittering was getting louder.

Heart pounding, Will sprinted into his bedroom. What could be used as a weapon? He considered running out to the shed and grabbing his dad's old guns, but he couldn't make himself. He didn't like it, but he didn't have the courage to leave his house. Instead, he ran over to his desk and grabbed his lamp. He was starting to doubt that it would do anything against the creature, but he didn't have time to find anything else. He ran back into the hall.

He could hear those heavy, slow footsteps now, along with the chirping. He had a sudden flashback to the night before, when he had been standing in the same place, listening to that same chirping.

The rhythm of the footsteps sounded strange, though. Like it was going at an erratic speed. Or as if there were two of them. As if to prove his point, the second set of footsteps got faster, and louder. Will backed up, and his shaking hand brushed against the telephone.

He stood there waiting for what felt like forever, blood pounding in his ears, lamp held shakily in front of him. He could faintly hear his mother yelling, but he couldn't pay enough attention to get the exact words.

There. He could hear harried breathing on the other side of the door. He could almost make out a shape through the window. He cursed himself silently for forgetting, of all things, to latch the door shut. He knew now that it didn't make a difference, but it would have made him feel safer. He backed up until he was pressed against the wall, not letting himself blink –

A man burst through the front door. When he saw Will, he stopped in his tracks.

"Shit."