Witch Child - Secrets of the past

2 - William Stone

William Stone awoke to the barking of his neighbour's Rottweiler. William grumbled to himself as he rubbed the gunk out of his bloodshot blue eyes. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 5am. He mustn't have had more than four hours sleep. Will groaned and pulled the covers over his head, turning his head into the pillow to block out the world. It wasn't even light outside yet. It wasn't long before the dog got restless and started pawing at the walls, continuing its loud barking. Will banged his head into his pillow several times before finally throwing off the covers and stepping onto the cold, overly worn tile. Yawning in the cool dawn air, Will trudged to the kitchen and hit the switch on the electric kettle. Stretching, he ran his fingers through his almost black hair, mussing up the already messy edges. He needed a new haircut. Will reached for his only coffee mug, an old white ceramic cup that had more than a few chips around the edges. It had great sentimental value to Will. The cup had once belonged to his father, and was the only thing Will had left that belonged to the man. Everything else had disappeared along with Neil Stone. Sighing, Will slowly sipped his weakened black coffee, listening to the sounds of the early morning activities in his apartment building.

Will's unit was on the second floor of a two story building. There were ten units in all, upper and lower homes, all sharing walls and car spaces. It was one of those places where no one asked questions and no one cared for the answers. Will was one of the three permanent tenants in the rather run down structure, the other rooms were unoccupied or rented by people for a day or two. The owner was a larger man in his mid-forties by the name of Jason Steed. He seemed to always be sitting outside the first downstairs unit, in the same faded blue jeans and white singlet top with egg stains, every day, sipping a bottle of scotch while chain smoking cigarette after cigarette until the whole steep driveway and surrounding building reeked of cheap smoke and alcohol. The man himself was very much like his building. Worn down, with bags under his eyes and blotches on his face. His stringy grey-brown hair and beard hung over his eyes and chin. The building itself was cream in colour, not from the paintwork, which was chipping away, but from general wear. The brilliant white the building used to be had long since faded to the darker colour.

Will's unit was the furthest from the road, and the owner, but that didn't mean it wasn't in any better shape. The space was small, cramped and quite empty. Will didn't put much stock into decorating. The bulk of his personal possessions were still at his mother's home in Brisbane, over and hour and a half away, and there was no way that Will would be going back for them any time soon. Most of Will's money was tied up in rent and utilities, rather than in possessions. If he was kidnapped tomorrow, there was nothing he would miss and no one that would really miss him either.

Will was average. Nothing about him seemed special upon first glance. Average height, average weight, maybe slightly scrawny, but nothing about his appearance caused him to stand out of the crowd. And that was exactly how he liked it. If Will had needed glasses, he could have qualified for the shy nerd transformation to cool hottie. But, alas, that was never in the cards for him. He would always be average. The one advantage Will had over others was his brain. Will had often been branded as the smart kid, always understanding any mechanical or technological thing that the world was coming out with. His unit was was often filled with cheap or broken computer and other electronic parts that he had disassembled in order to study the fine workings of the machines he was so interested in. Of course this fascination came in handy for Will's job. He apprenticed as a mechanic. Not a lot of pay and not quite like the smaller things Will so loved to study, but a machine is a machine and Will thrived on it. He took pride in starting with a rundown, good for nothing object and transforming it into something useful.

"I'm going to kill that dog," Will grimanced to himself as he finished the last dregs of coffee and rinsed his mug. The awful creature downstairs was, more often than not, the bane of Will's existence. Will sighed a world weary sigh that only an eighteen-year-old-fresh-out-of-high-school-and-on-his-own-for-the-first-time could. The world was harsh, but seemed unyieldingly unfair to Will.

As Will headed off to work for the day, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. It wasn't unusual in his neighbourhood, but the feeling made Will uneasy all the same. As he quickly walked the two blocks to the auto shop, situations and scenarios ran through his head quicker than he could keep up. His brain had always been like that. Will was nothing if not a pessimist. He finally managed to shrug off the feeling as he reached the garage and pulled on his overalls to continue working on the car that had come into the shop the day before. Will lovingly patted the hood of the blue, rusty 1956 Volkswagen Beetle and got to work.