Into Darkness

Chapter 1

Bobby heard the screen door sam shut behind him with a satisfying ‘whack”, and smiled a little knowing just how much his grandmother hated when he let it slam behind him.  Sure enough, it didn’t take long, and there she was, standing in the open inner doorway behind him.  He didn’t have to look around to know that the short, squat looking woman who usually always had a warm smile for anyone and everyone would not have that smile now.  It would be turned around, and there were would a deep scowl as she would glare up at him.

“Robert Evan Taylor, you know better than to let that screen door slam behind you.” He heard behind him.  He turned and saw the shorter woman standing there.  She did have the glare, but as he flashed his smile back at her, he saw her glare break, and the hardness left it.  It wasn’t in her nature to stay upset, and her usual smile graced her lips.

“I’m sorry, Grandma.” He said as he jumped down the few cement steps to the front sidewalk.

“Ok.  Make sure to have your mom call me when you get home.  I want to know if she still intends to go garage sailing with me tomorrow. and if so, she better get here early.”

Bobby knew of course that his Grandma could and would easily  just call his mom.  No, the reason for him to tell her to call was her little subtle way of checking to make sure he got him safe.  He was ten years old.  He didn’t need their constant checking up on him.  Half the kids in town, their parents never knew where they were, and he was so overly annoyed that they where always keeping a watchful eye on him.

Yeah, he probably knew why, but it still wasn’t fair.  That had happened over a year ago.  They should move on already.  

“I will.” Bobby said as he started to walk towards the end of the sidewalk and to the street.  He would turn left and start walking the few blocks towards what his grandmother called, “The Fool’s Woods” which is what she described the woods that surrounded the large coal dump in town.  Of course, she, nor his mother would allow him to go through there, but otherwise, he would have to go way out of his way to get home.  How else would he get home?  Would he really go all the way up to the little downtown, so that he could get harassed by the older kids who hung out up there, just to have to cut back over.  

“Bobby, Where’s your bike?”

He turned back around.  Yeah, he wasn’t happy that he didn’t have his bike either.  He didn’t want to tell her that he had bent the rim yesterday by jumping it off of one of the little cliffs around the coal dump.  Well, he didn’t bend them jumping off of it.  Oh no, it was the landing that had.  It had gotten up some really good speed, so much so, that he realized at last second that he had been going too fast.  Some kind of survival instinct had kicked in,and he had bailed off of his bike right before the cliffs edge.  In the end, he walk away with just some scratched knees, his bike, well, it wasn’t so lucky.

Tomorrow he already planned to go to the some of the garage sales by himself and see if he had enough allowance money to maybe get some other crappy bike, nothing as nice as the sixteen speed mountain bike he had now, but maybe he could find a granny rider, or a banana special that he could tool around with and maybe salvage some of the parts from it.  It wouldn’t be the first time he had done so, and the second garage was starting to look like a bicycle graveyard.

“Oh, it had a flat tire before school this morning, so I just walked.” He said, rushing through the lie as he stepped out on the side of the road.  The gravel crunched beneath his sneakers, and he started to jog a little.  He heard the screen door ease shut behind him, knowing she had probably stepped out a little just to watch him make the way down to the end of the block before feeling satisfied and going back inside.