Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 45.1: October 7th, 2011
This is an untitled, unfinished novel that was technically left alone in late 2008. However, the last time it was modified and checked for errors was 2011, where upon I decided that the absurdity of the plot combined with the sloppy British research was too much for the story to continue.
However, seeing as this is Whims of the Time Traveler, it's a perfect example of my first attempt at long fiction, so I've decided to unabashedly display it.
Have fun.
Untitled: Chapter Five
by Belinda Roddie
I admit that I should have listened to Rupert. He was right; we didn’t have very much time to spare as kids anymore. Even as soon as we were fourteen, our professors, our guardians, even our friends were expecting us to be different. They expected us to act like adults, like professionals, because we were going to have to be one of them soon. My friends were waiting for me to get out of my tomboy phase. To state it more accurately, they wanted me to lose about ten IQ points and lather my face in make-up.
I didn’t let them do that. Sure, we still were friends, but I was a stand out among the tight little group we were in. Not only did I look different, with my wily hair, my casual clothes, and, yes, my four foot eleven inches stature—I didn’t start to really grow until I was seventeen years of age—but I also acted differently. It wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it allowed me to make a lot of new friends even while older ones faded away. But there were many students who I had become comfortable being around, especially the boys who decided to stick with me as if I were still worth their time and energy.
When Rupert said he didn’t want to grow up, he meant it. While most boys his age were now becoming interested in sex, cigarettes, and video games, Rupert was able to hold his group together to play sports and go swimming. Bryce still was the awkward fat kid who thought he was “it” and never stopped his goofy teasing of me, which I didn’t mind. Ivan was still terribly lanky, although he has having his fair share of acne and stubble. Even Zachary was the same, his red hair tousled and the same lopsided grin on his face whenever he hit well in cricket. The only boy out of the group who had really been changing was Luke, and although he didn’t talk to me, I learned that he was going to a prestigious all-boys school to train to be an actor.
We were all trying not to change too much, to enjoy who we were before we had to grow up. Alfred was really the only adult who congratulated me for still being able to be a kid and not having anyone tell me otherwise. By then, even my great-aunt had been chastising me, telling me to become a lady. I told her that being a lady wasn’t necessary anymore to do well in this world, and that she obviously had seen how women had even become powerful politicians over the years. She said it was improper. I couldn’t change her mind.
Despite our best efforts, however, we were changing. I especially was changing inwardly. Despite my rowdy attitude and slightly above average marks, I was becoming more prone to anxiety and stress, and whatever vague symptoms of claustrophobia I had were beginning to worsen; in fact, they became so severe that whenever I went to get my clothes from the closet, I made sure I was at least six inches away from any danger of being shut inside. Although I was able to concentrate in class, I was beginning to have trouble with my assignments. It was as if a part of me was conflicting with what I had become, telling me that something was wrong, something wasn’t fitting correctly in the puzzle that my alleged grandfather had helped me put together.
But most importantly, I continued to dream the same dream for the next year.
I didn’t endure it every night, but it occurred just enough to keep me alert about it. After a while, I trained myself not to wake up screaming, but I would always jolt myself awake, gasping for air, my face damp with cold sweat. It was especially bad by the time I turned fourteen, and Alfred would frequently fall asleep in a chair beside my bed because I would ask him to stay with me.
As it drew closer to my fifteenth birthday, which was near the end of the school term, the dreams became less common, but when they did occur, they became much more amplified. The noises, for one, would be much louder and more succinct, voices becoming easier to tolerate but the words still unclear. With the usual clawing against the top of the object I was concealed in during the dream, the pain in my fingers would get worse, and on some occasions, I would wake up with a dull ache in my fingertips. Finally, just before I would wrench myself awake, the side of my head would start to throb.
Those two aches added to the wonder of these dreams, or in my case, nightmares, as I perused my fingers and rubbed the raw side of my head. After months of persuading myself that they were only relics of the car crash I was in, I remembered my fingers in bloody bandages and my head wrapped in thick gauze. I would touch the scar just above my cheekbone and trace the outlines of it, and it became a habit, especially when I was working on a difficult exam. It didn’t scare me anymore; I had gotten used to waking up in the middle of the night. It didn’t irritate me, either, because I was still able to get a decent amount of sleep and there was nothing I could to stop the dreams, anyway. But it made me wonder.
When I turned fifteen, the dreams gradually faded from my subconscious. I was still anxious and stressed often, but I tried to forget the questions that had been popping up over the course of the year. As the new school year started, I was able to go back to my former goal of enjoying my youth as much as I could without changing a single bit. But I was changing. And my world along with my sense of security would change, too.
***
“And so, as we can see, it is not only through actual history and cultural beliefs, but also the media, that vampires have evolved into the pale, seductive, blood-sucking monsters found in coffins that we read about today.”
Bryce snickered. “Yeah, must be awful comfy sleeping in a rectangular box.”
“Shut it, Bryce,” Rupert hissed.
I merely rolled my eyes as Ms. Randolph, our professor, wrote “Media Influence” on the board. For four days now, we had been discussing vampires as part of our lesson on myth and the supernatural. The first couple of days, for me, had been rather interesting, as I listened to the different cultures’ idea of a vampire and the many ways you could become one according to mythology. However, the constant reminder of how vampires had been distorted since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was beginning to leave a sore spot in my mind. Like how I had felt about many other things I had been learning this year, I didn’t really care.
Rosie Walsh, who sat next to me and liked to call herself my closest friend, raised her hand eagerly.
“Yes, Miss Walsh?” Ms. Randolph asked.
“Um…I would like to know more about how vampires have truly evolved in some senses, ma’am. For instance, didn’t people believe vampires lived in coffins years ago, before Stoker wrote Dracula?”
“They weren’t the only ones who must have lived in a coffin,” Bryce whispered, snickering some more.
“Bryce,” Rupert growled, “Cut it out.”
“What? I’m just saying it’s likely.”
Ms. Randolph cleared her throat loudly, and Bryce and Rupert fell silent. Then she turned back to the question on hand.
“Well, Miss Walsh, I would say that gravediggers were deathly afraid of finding vampires in coffins, but I wouldn’t say that they lived in them. As shown in Stoker’s novel, Count Dracula has an enormous palace, but it is true that he sleeps in a coffin after his nightly feeding.”
“And why is it that the media has made it so vampires cannot endure the sunlight at all, rather than lose their powers?” asked Rosie.
Ms. Randolph furrowed her brow. “Well, there is really no strong reason behind changing it a bit. However, I’m sure they did so to, shall we say, further outline the weaknesses of a vampire.”
Rosie Walsh leaned back in her chair, satisfied, as Richard Jordan raised his hand tentatively.
“Yes, Mister Jordan?”
“Er…” Richard Jordan licked his lips; he was a timid boy, even at fifteen. “Well, I was just wondering…I mean, it really doesn’t have to do with vampires, it…more has to do with coffins…”
Bryce snorted loudly and Rupert jabbed him hard in the ear with his pen. I shook my head; Bryce was really starting to bother me.
Ms. Randolph curiously looked at Richard Jordan. “Well, I can’t say it’ll hurt to stray off tangent for a little, Mister Jordan. After all, it is my job to educate, no matter what the subject.”
“So you can teach us how to shag properly?” one boy called from across the room.
The whole room, save for Rupert and me, found this to be extremely funny. Ms. Randolph retrieved a plastic ruler from her desk and rapped the boy’s desk sharply.
“You’re going to find out from somebody else whether or not you’re doing a job of it, Mister Lansing,” she said coldly. “And believe me, you’re not going to find out in your bathroom.”
The whole class roared, and this time I had to give in to the giggles. Ms. Randolph was not a strict teacher; despite being a fifty-year-old widow, she had a sharp tongue whenever it was necessary. Furthermore, she wasn’t afraid to break away from simply showing us the backbone of the topics we learned or speak her mind. I applauded that, and I looked at her with profound amusement as she returned to the board and nodded at Richard Jordan to ask his question.
Richard Jordan continued, “I was just wondering how coffins came to be how they are, the different colors and shapes and such. Like when you talk about vampires, I think of the cartoons…and well…there’s a…well, there’s a geometrical sense to them, for some reason…and I always wondered why.”
“Yes, I have noticed that as well, Mister Jordan. I appreciate your keen observations,” Ms. Randolph said quite sincerely. “It’s hard for me to figure out myself. I would say, usually, that the end of the coffin that is widest and more complex in angular structure is where the head is rested. Whether for efficiency or decoration, it’s evolved into what we normally see in films and cartoons. However, there are plenty of caskets, big and small, that do not have that sort of geometry. Many are more squared off, others rounder on the edges. It all depends on what the family of the deceased desires.”
“Mister Ainsworth!” Ms. Randolph cried out in shock, as the whole classroom burst into whispers. I was just as confused, but I remained silent.
Bryce stood up as if confronting Rupert. “I’m not saying anything bad! I’m just saying—”
“And I’m saying that you’re gonna get us all in trouble, that’s what!” snarled Rupert.
“What trouble? I just said that people could get shut up in coffins—”
“If you say one more thing about coffins,” Rupert threatened, “I’m going to shove my pen up your fat arse!”
“That’s quite enough, Mister Ainsworth!” Ms. Randolph snapped.
“Come off it, Rupert!” one boy shouted. “Leave the kid alone!”
Rupert whirled on the interjector. “What, you gonna take the side of this fat dolt?”
“Hey, if you’re gonna insult me, you say it to my bloody face, arsehole!” Bryce shouted, and he seized the back of Rupert’s collar.
It was as if a wild, rabid beast had been let out of its cage as Rupert swiped at Bryce’s head. In a flash, Bryce had Rupert pinned down on one of the desks, scattering books and pencils and causing students to scoot hurriedly away from potential harm. Amidst the shouts from the teacher, the shrieks from the girls and the cheers from the boys, I sat, rigid, as Rupert escaped from Bryce’s girth and began to punch him in the face again and again and again, and Bryce retaliated by grinding his foot into Rupert’s groin. I couldn’t move or speak as two of my best friends tried to rip each other to shreds, and I watched them roll to the floor, knocking over desks and students with them, kicking and punching and biting and everything to make for the perfect school fight…
And then it was over as Ms. Randolph, simply using one arm and a ruler, broke the two apart, and they both seemed happy about it as they lay on the floor, gasping for breath and spitting blood out from between their teeth. Then, setting her ruler down, Ms. Randolph seized Rupert and Bryce by their collars.
“I suppose a good talk with the headmaster would do both of you good, thank you very much!” she barked, all of the calmness sucked from her voice like honeysuckle. She turned to the rest of us. “Class dismissed early. The rest of you read pages three hundred and seventy two to three hundred and eighty five, and continue studying for the final exams next week!”
With that, she stormed out of the room, dragging Rupert and Bryce with her. At first, none of us moved, not even to put our things into our book bags. I certainly didn’t want to move, looking down at my hands while my shoulders shook from the aftershock of the event.
“What do you think that was all about?” Rosie Walsh whispered.
“I’ve never seen Rupert act like that before. He’s normally only that rough when it comes to sports,” one boy muttered.
“I wonder what could have sent him off like that?” another girl asked.
I wondered the same thing. Bryce was irritating, no question about it, but even he hadn’t been able to bother Rupert in the worst of cases. I had never seen Rupert so furious in all of the years I had known him. But besides that, the one question running through my mind was what Bryce had possibly said to set him off. What had Bryce said that was so wrong and inappropriate? And even so, why did Rupert respond in such an abnormal way?
I zipped up my book bag and followed Rosie out into the yard as she chattered about her latest love interest, but my mind remained distant from anything she said. I was far away from the yard, far away from the school. My thoughts only settled on Rupert, how he had pounced on Bryce like a madman, and of course, why he had done it.
***
I waited for Rupert outside the headmaster’s office with my hands folded in my lap, looking slightly more lady-like than usual. I wasn’t able to hear any arguing or any angry remarks that the headmaster might have possibly been saying to Bryce and him, so obviously everything had cooled off between the two. However, as they left the office, I could tell that the bumps, bruises, and black eyes they had received from each other wouldn’t fade away too quickly.
Rupert saw me jump up from the bench and walked over to me quickly, casting a death glare at Bryce when the latter attempted to follow him. He took my hand.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“I dunno. Somewhere. Let’s just find a place to cool off.”
“What did the headmaster say to you two?” I asked as we began to walk down the path toward a cluster of trees nearby.
Rupert shrugged. “Not much. Me and Bryce have never been in serious trouble, so he just gave us a warning and he’s gonna call our parents about it. It’s a pity, ‘cause now I have to actually enjoy whatever time I have left at school before I cop it with my mum and dad.”
We sat down against a large oak, and I looked over Rupert’s head to see Bryce sitting a good distance away, looking like a large, disgruntled potato in a school uniform. Rupert pushed his dark bangs out of his eyes and looked at me with a great deal of guilt.
“I’m sorry for what happened back there,” he said.
“It’s okay. It was just…so unexpected coming out of you,” I replied, shaking my head. I let my vision settle on the grass, watching it bristle in the wind; summer was coming again, fast.
“I did it for you, you know.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
Rupert stared at me; his blue eyes had grown cold and hard, like ice, and he looked in every direction, as if making sure that no one else was around. “I said I did it for you. That kid was gonna blow your cover, ruin everything, and get our whole group into trouble. I’m surprised you didn’t say anything.”
I blinked. “Say anything about what?”
I saw Rupert’s mouth open and close, his brow furrow, his entire face lapse into a look of skepticism. It was a strange spectacle, as I had never seen Rupert confused like that unless he was focusing on an exam.
“We’re…we’re trying to keep this quiet, what happened to you, ‘kay?” He looked around again, his eyes flickering from one side to the other. “I did you a favor. He was gonna let everybody know, and all this time, I thought it was gonna be Luke who would blurt it out.”
“Luke? What’s Luke got to do with it?”
“Oh, c’mon, haven’t you noticed?” Rupert snapped, gawking at me. “The kid’s too scared to talk to you! He’s been threatened by me boys that he ever says a word about it, he’ll get kicked out of the group. We all were told to cover it up, not tell anyone, not even our own parents. We did it for you, and Bryce was gonna screw it up. Don’t you get what I’m saying?”
“No!” I said, with a lot more conviction than I had imagined. “I don’t. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“Joan!” Rupert growled, his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“No,” I said, quite coldly.
There was a tense silence between us, something that had never happened before. Rupert’s face looked like it had been turned to stone; I couldn’t sense any confusion or disbelief or anything like that. It was all gone, vanished, and at last he understood.
“You…you don’t know?” he asked.
“I just said that.”
“Not a thing?”
“No, Rupert.”
“And they never told you? Not even Mister Engel?”
“No. Well, at least, not this thing that we have to ‘cover up,’” I replied, feeling slightly annoyed that he wasn’t specifying anything.
Rupert took some time to digest what I had said, and I thought he would leave it alone. However, as I looked at him, I noticed the veins in his arms bulging, and I didn’t know why until I saw that he was clenching his fists. In a flash, he was on his feet.
“Bryce! Get over here!”
Bryce, who looked like he had rolled onto his stomach and fallen asleep, snorted and got to his feet. At the sight of Rupert, he shrank back. “Don’t hurt me, buddy. Won’t say another word, I won’t!”
“No, Bryce, it doesn’t matter now. Just get over here!”
Bryce got up and trotted over to Rupert. Rupert looked at him, then me, then back at Bryce.
“I’m not happy with what you did in class, but you can help now,” he said, as authoritatively as a fifteen-year-old in slacks could.
“H-how?” Bryce stammered.
Rupert turned back to me. I stood up slowly, clutching my book bag and staring at him with wide eyes.
“I just talked to Joan,” he said softly, directing his words to Bryce, “and it turns out she didn’t react to anything you said because she didn’t know about what you were talking about.”
Bryce gawked at Rupert. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me,” Rupert said. “She doesn’t know what you were referring to. Not a bit.” I could hear his voice deepen into a growl. “They didn’t even tell her. They didn’t even tell her what happened! How could they not tell her, after all these years?”
“I dunno why they didn’t, Rupert!” Bryce spluttered. “You’re asking the wrong person, buddy!”
“Who’s ‘they?’ Who didn’t tell me what?” I demanded.
The two didn’t seem to hear me; Rupert looked as if he had zoned out, his teeth clenched, his eyes frozen. Bryce, on the other hand, looked like a fish, with his eyes bulging out of his head and his mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.
“Bugger and blast,” he finally squeaked. “You don’t know anything at all?”
“If I knew what ‘anything at all’ meant,” I replied, “then it’d be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Rupert,” Bryce mumbled, looking at his friend. “What do we do?”
That was when the final bell rang, and students started to file out of their final classes. We watched as younger boys and girls walked off, giggling, before Rupert shook his head.
“Nothing, for now,” he said, “except study for our finals.”
“What? You can’t just go act like I’ve bloody forgotten the queen and leave it at that!” I shrieked. For these past five minutes, I had done nothing but let Rupert confuse me nearly to death and I wasn’t going to let them leave me hanging in this manner.
Both looked a little surprised at my outburst, but I remained firm, standing there with my hands clenched into fists just like Rupert’s, my feet set apart, as if I were ready to give a dramatic speech. Rupert was quicker, so before I could go off again he was already talking, and hastily.
“Get your finals done first, Joan. Me and Bryce are gonna make a few calls to our friends. We’ll be going home next week, and we’ll be able to sort things out then.”
“I can’t wait a week, Rupert!” I retorted, feeling my face grow hot. “No. Not acceptable. You’re going to tell me right here, right now. I’m not going to wait.”
“Well, you’re gonna bloody have to!” Bryce barked, standing beside Rupert like a hero’s loyal sidekick. “We’re not going to tell you ‘right here, right now.’ ”
“Why not? Why can’t you?”
“Because it’s not just some little quirk we’re dealing with here,” Rupert replied. “This is big.”
“Yeah,” Bryce added, nodding. “Bigger than big. We’re gonna need a whole council on it, set it up like a meeting. It’s all got to be extremely professional.”
He said that final word with pride, as if it was a great achievement for him to know the word “professional.” Rupert nodded his approval. “So you’re going to have to be patient.”
“And you’re going to go through all these measures just to tell me something I don’t know?” I asked, feeling my patience withering away. “Just how serious is this, anyway?”
The only response I got was more silence, but it wasn’t the same silence that had been between Rupert and me just a few minutes ago. It was the kind of silence you saw in movies, and the dramatic music would swell as the protagonist realized something of great importance. But there was no music, and no extreme realization. It was simply an understanding of the situation.
I felt the veins in my forehead pulse. My mouth was dry, and I swallowed painfully and nodded. For the first time since I had first started having nightmares, I was terrified.
“This…this isn’t a prank, right? You’re serious about...whatever you guys are…?”
“Joan, I’ve bloody teased and mocked you for five years now,” Bryce said, grinning. But his smirk faded quickly. “But I’ve never messed with you, have I?”
He hadn’t. I knew that. So there was nothing I could do but nod.
“We better head back to our houses and catch up with Zachary and Ivan, see if they can help, too,” Rupert said. He began to walk back towards the path, Bryce trailing behind him. Then he stopped. “Oh, and Joan?”
I felt a chill down my back when I looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Bring your coat the night we meet. We’re gonna be together a long time. And be prepared for anything.”
***
I couldn’t concentrate on my studying after that, and as finals week unfolded, I could tell that my girlfriends were worried. Rosie would ask constantly if I was ill and needed to go to the infirmary, but I told her I was okay, I just had a lot on my mind. And I did. Especially Rupert’s last words to me: Be prepared for anything.
I hadn’t seen him since our last meeting, when he and Bryce had gaped at my being clueless about whatever they were hiding from me, when they had talked about getting the boys together at the end of the year for some sort of meeting. I didn’t see how the boys played into any of this. In fact, I didn’t even know what Rupert or Bryce could possibly know that I didn’t. They hadn’t been there at the car accident. They hadn’t been there in the hospital as I slowly realized that I remembered nothing from my past until Alfred told me.
So what did they know? And why were they so hell bent on making it such a big deal? Or, and this made me shiver as I lay in my bed, was it really such a big deal that they needed to do this? Questions would be answered. I just wanted them answered now.
Finals were a blur, like a lot of other things in my life. I must have done them fairly quickly because I was out of the class before anyone else. I let myself rest against the oak, the same oak under which Rupert had interrogated me, and I let my head recline against the bark. But I didn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t. Not now.
Finally, as I was packing my things and preparing to meet Alfred in the lot, Rosie entered the room.
“You got a letter.”
I looked up. “From whom?”
“Dunno. Got your name on it, though,” Rosie giggled, waving the envelope around. “Must be from a boy.”
She handed it to me and skipped off. I opened it cautiously, so as not to damage anything, and let the tiny note inside it fall into my lap. Rosie was right about a boy sending it, but not the intent behind it.
It was from Rupert, and all it said was, Tomorrow night, eight o’clock, by the river. And then that same line: Remember, be prepared for anything.
I didn’t say a word as Alfred picked me up and drove me back home. I had walked toward that car with the complete intention of talking to Alfred about what Rupert had mentioned and the plan they were hatching. I didn’t end up saying anything about it. Half of my mind was telling me that he should know, but the other half, surprisingly, nagged me that it was none of my business. Little did I know that in truth, it was his business; he just didn’t need to hear it right now. He was happy to see me again for the summer.
I left Alfred sleeping on the chair by the fireplace and left the cottage around seven forty-five, wearing a gray jacket I had bought several years ago. It was the best I could do for a coat, and it was still rather warm out. However, it was already starting to get dark, and I could see the silhouettes of the boys as they congregated on the riverbank.
As I drew closer, I could see Rupert in a black coat, kneeling beside a small stack of wood and brush. He was looking much cleaner than usual; in fact, so did all the other boys. Their hair was combed, their clothes unstained. Even their faces were washed. Luke looked the most well kept out of all of them, and, as I stepped closer, the most relieved.
There was a flicker of light, and I watched as Rupert held an old cigarette lighter—probably stolen from his father—against the woodpile. Sure enough, a soft orange flame began to glow, and with the help of that flame, Rupert looked up and was able to see me. I prayed to God that no one spotted us doing this. There had to be a law against it somewhere.
“All right?” he said.
“Good,” I replied.
“Then sit,” Rupert ordered, beckoning towards an empty space just across from him.
I sat down where he directed me, and I found myself flanked by two boys named Rowan and Freddy, both with brunette hair and similar stature. I stared at the flames and followed the smoke until it disappeared into the sky, shrouded by the moon above our heads. It was a half moon tonight, not imposing or anything. But there was still an aura about the place that scared me and made me shake under my jacket.
It was at this point that I started reconsidering whether I should be there. Alfred could wake up any minute and notice that I was gone. This could be all some foolish, something insignificant or spooky that they wanted to tell me. Even with Rupert’s sincere and concerned voice ringing in my ears, I felt all of the trust I had be swallowed up in fear. And as I sat among ten boys around a fire by the river whose trickle had played a huge role in my dreams, I had a strong desire to go home.
I didn’t. I stayed. And with every attempt I made at getting up and walking off, I heard not only Rupert’s voice, but also Bryce’s. I’ve never messed with you, have I?
A sudden crack startled me, and I looked up to see Bryce looming over us, his enormous girth casting a shadow over the fire. He must have stepped on a branch because he kicked something aside and stood in front of the circle, his hands clasped together, his chin held high, and his eyes narrowed into slits as if he were a monarch, ready to see the armies off to another Great War. The rest of the boys even resembled soldiers, their jaws set, their hair combed, sitting upright with their heads erect and their eyes locked onto their speaker.
“Friends and brothers,” Bryce began, not in the voice of an actor, but of a man saying something of great importance, “Tonight we have brought you here to retell a story, a story that all of us have never told except to one another in utter secrecy…a story that is still unknown by one of us here.”
I rolled my eyes, but the boys looked at each other with puzzled expressions. I knew what they were thinking; they weren’t thinking that I didn’t know, but thinking that one of them may not have been around to hear of this story. Then they noticed Bryce raise his index finger.
“That person,” he said, pointing at me, “is sitting right across from me, the very person that this story is about…Miss Joan Engel.”
The puzzled looks faded, and all of the boys save for Rupert and Bryce began whispering to one another, casting glances at me as they did so. I could see Luke staring at me through the hazy glow of the fire, and for the first time, he was not looking at me out of fear or caution. He was looking at me with an expression of contemplation.
Then he spoke to me, for the first time in two years. “They never told you, did they?”
I didn’t know what to say and didn’t really have time to say anything at all. I managed to shake my head before Bryce spoke again.
“Friends and brothers, the time has come where we must tell that story once more, and then never again. Let us swear upon our loved ones, our years together, our past, present, and future, that this telling of the story will be the last to anyone, absolutely anyone, besides ourselves.” When done with that surprisingly fluid and rather poetic statement, Bryce looked at each boy, a glint of earnestness in his eyes. “Do you swear?”
“We swear,” all of the boys chorused.
So unbelievably formal. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes again.
“Good.” With that, Bryce sat down and folded his hands in his lap. “Zachary, if you could do the honors of beginning this intriguing tale of our fine lady friend?”
Zachary cleared his throat, and out of his pocket he pulled a small flashlight. I half-expected him to hold it under his chin, but instead he directed it behind him, toward the flowing water, lit up in a garish white by the moon.
“Friends and lady, we begin…the tale of the Coffin on the River Thames.” He looked at me as if waiting for a response, and at the sight of my arching one of my eyebrows, Zachary smiled and passed the flashlight to Ivan, who directed its beam to the people he mentioned as he spoke. I knew from the start that whatever this story was, they were not going to hold back on making it as dramatic as possible.
“It was a normal summer day for ten young boys as they played their games by the river. We were all young, carefree, and never really thought about anything exciting except for our games of pirates, or marbles, or simply roughhousing. No, with the help of our dear friends, such as Rupert, leader of the gang…”
Rupert nodded, grinning.
“…Bryce, the noble second-in-command…”
Bryce smirked at this apparent honor, folding his arms across his chest.
“…baby Luke…”
“I resent that,” Luke said, rather bitterly.
Ivan ignored him. “And many others, all innocent…that is, until our dear Rupert went for a dip in the muddy Thames.”
Without any hesitation he passed the flashlight to another boy. This boy, Sebastian, actually held the flashlight against his chin, and whispered, “It seemed like any other dip in the Thames, a leisurely swim while we played an innocent game on the shore. Yet everything changed as something strange appeared on the river…that thing was a coffin, floating on some kind of raft.”
The boys gasped, as if to add to the effect. I half-expected myself to grow annoyed and ask what this had to do with me at all. However, as they spoke, I began to feel a cold, familiar feeling, and as Sebastian continued, a funny thing happened.
My head began to ache.
“If it had been anything else, we may have ignored it. And we almost did. But Rupert, ah, no, he went diving for it, against disapproving words, and with all of the strength he could muster, he dragged that coffin right to shore.”
“Hey, I didn’t do it by myself,” Rupert snapped. “You guys all jumped in to help, under my orders.”
Sebastian glared at him. “Well, if you want to make it less thrilling, you tell the story.”
Rupert shook his head. “It’s Pat’s turn, anyway. Give the flashlight to him.”
Sebastian obeyed, tossing the flashlight to a boy with a thick thatch of curly black hair.
“We were all awestruck. We had never seen anything like this before. Many of us didn’t want to open it at first, but Rupert wasn’t taking no for an answer, even if there was a body in it.” I heard Luke audibly muffle a squeak; Pat glared at him before continuing. “The coffin was locked, but Rupert and Bryce toiled to open it. And they prevailed...to see a young girl inside.”
I must have choked on my own spit, for I was coughing and gurgling. Rowan and Freddy moved to pound me repeatedly on the back while Luke turned to Pat.
“There, see, you’re making this too dramatic! It doesn’t have to be!”
“Then you have a go, it’s your turn, anyway,” Pat growled, shoving the flashlight into Luke’s hands.
Luke stared down at the object in his hands, hesitating, before shining it right onto the ground. “Well, I can’t say I remember…too much, I mean, I was six. But I remember crying a lot, thinking that girl in the coffin was dead…but she wasn’t. She was alive. And…well…the rest involves the police and carting that girl off to the hospital.”
“So now can we say who it was?” Bryce asked, sounding like an impatient five-year-old.
“Yes,” Rupert replied. Then he looked at me almost apologetically. “It was you.”
Then Luke turned off the flashlight, and the boys were all quiet, staring at me. Needless to say, I began to laugh. It was an overly raucous laugh, painful even in my own ears, and as I doubled over I saw Rupert staring at me rather coldly.
“You think it’s funny, Joan? ‘Cause you know, this is about you,” he murmured.
I calmed down. “I just…I…where do you come up with these things? You should be writers, all of you.”
“Joan.” Even Bryce’s voice was firm, surprising me. “We didn’t make this up.”
The pain in my head was worsening, and I began to shake it, in complete and utter skepticism.
“No, no,” I said, attempting to laugh again but ending up making a strange garbled noise. “That’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“It sounds ridiculous, Joan,” Rupert said, “but it’s true. We were all there. We swear it.”
“Yeah,” Rowan piped up next to me. “And we all kept good and quiet about it.”
But I still shook my head; I didn’t believe it. It was impossible. “No one can stay in a coffin on the river and live. They’d suffocate, or maybe die from dehydration.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said, “but you didn’t.”
“It was a miracle,” Pat added.
“Yeah,” Freddy whispered. “Like you rose from the dead.”
“But it can’t be!” I was on my feet now, ready to leave. “Look, it’s been fun, and I liked your story, but I have to say that I’m sick of your joking.”
“We’re not joking, Joan!” Rupert snapped, rising up to meet me. “We told you we don’t joke about things like that.”
“But I was in a car accident!” I shouted, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “I was in a car accident, and Alfred saw me—”
“You weren’t in a bloody car accident!”
I stepped back. Rupert was standing rigid, fists clenched, teeth bared. He had never yelled at me before, not ever. I sank back to the ground, shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to shout at you like that.” He walked around the fire and sat beside me, putting an arm around me. I pulled away. “But you weren’t in a car accident. I don’t know who told you that, or why they told you that. Maybe it was because we were all so young, and they didn’t want to traumatize you or something. But that’s not how it happened.”
“How, then?” I asked, my voice thin. “How did I end up in…a coffin? On a raft?”
“No one knows,” Bryce murmured. “Strange things happen. Seen them in movies. But I had never seen anything like that before.”
He was trying to calm me down; I knew he was. But I backed farther away from the circle, scooting across the dirt and hugging myself to fight the cold. My head was spinning. My eyes were watering. I felt sick and small again, just like in the hospital five years ago.
“Proof…” I whispered, barely getting the words out of my mouth. “I need proof.”
Rupert snorted. “Proof? What, do we need to get the bloody coffin for you? What about you? You’re telling me you don’t have any recollection of this at all? Any bits and pieces? Flashbacks? Dreams?”
Dreams. I felt my head throb again, my fingers ache. I held them up to my face, inspecting them, looking at the scars on my cuticles and fingertips. I saw the darkness, heard the water and the voices. I remembered my screams, my clawing at the top of what I was trapped in…the lid of the coffin…
And I understood.
But I didn’t want to.
“Maybe…” I said, quietly. “…Maybe I do need to see the coffin for myself.”
I expected them not to have a positive answer to that. I expected the boys to inform me that I couldn’t see it, that it was gone or burned or chopped into bits. I expected them to admit their defeat so I could smile, forget all of this nonsense, and go back home to my bed. But Rupert, his face blank, had stood up, and he was directing the boys to do the same. Then, simultaneously, all ten of the boys blew the fire out before Rupert took my arm.
“Then come with us,” he told me. “We know exactly where it is.”
***
For a while, as I followed the boys through the town that was so dimly lit, and so quiet, that I began to wonder what on Earth I was doing. I thought that anyone in her right mind would have turned around already, unable to tolerate this sort of rubbish any longer. However, something kept nagging me, saying that there were too many coincidences, too many connections. It kept reminding me of how much I should trust Rupert, the boys, even Bryce, as they led me through the darkness toward an unknown destination. And of course, after hearing such a story, I unwillingly found myself cooperating with the pestering feeling in my mind. So I kept going.
At first I thought we were going to the police station. However, as we passed various familiar buildings, I realized that we were going in a completely different direction. I struggled to catch up with Rupert, even sprinting at one point when I realized that he was speaking, and he obviously was meaning to talk to me.
“The cops hauled the coffin off pretty quickly, after the ambulances left,” he was saying as soon as I had time to catch my breath and listen. “But some of us wanted to know what they were gonna do with it. Whether they’d store it as some kind of evidence or burn the thing.”
“So what did they do with this alleged coffin?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” Bryce dropped in, chuckling. “We didn’t give ‘em the chance to do anything to it. Couple of us actually snuck over to find it ourselves.”
“You went and stole evidence?” I gasped.
“Well, sort of,” Ivan replied. “I mean, they just threw the thing in a bin. Dunno if they were gonna study it or anything. Cops sometimes can be a bit stupid.”
I blinked. “You know this is only making me more and more skeptical, right?”
“Any time now,” Rupert muttered, “and we’ll be able to show you.”
We walked about three more blocks, and for the whole time, we were quiet. The wind wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. It was just there, weaving its way through our hair and eyelashes, and as it passed it left me feeling a bit dry and empty. They were strange feelings, but nothing compared to the feelings in my stomach and my head. They were raw feelings, painful, like open wounds and scrapes that wouldn’t heal. I tried focusing on different things in order to ward the feelings off, whether it was a tree or a house or the back of Rupert’s head. Nothing worked; I felt them all the same, and they seemed to get worse the closer we got to our destination.
It turned out that Freddy had a rather large shack right beside his house, which was much farther away from our homes and therefore not a suitable place to hang out. I had had my share of staying at boys’ houses, playing games but always watching my back. However, Freddy’s house was different, even in the dark. For one thing, it was much bigger, adding to the ominous effect of the whole situation. The shack itself was bigger than any other tool shed I had ever seen.
“So this thing’s always been locked?” Rupert asked Freddy.
“Sure thing.”
“And for five years, no one’s opened it?”
“Why would we? Pap’s gone, and Mum’s got no need for the tools. She’s got Uncle Will doing everything when it comes to house stuff.”
Bryce spat out of the corner of his mouth. “So where’s the key?”
Freddy rummaged in his pockets, and I watched in surprise as he retrieved a large bronze key from his trousers. It seemed that the boys already knew what was going to happen. As Freddy worked to get the rusty lock undone, I found a place on the fence nearby to sit down. The air was growing heavier every time I inhaled and exhaled, and though I knew it was merely psychological, the pressure felt undeniably real to me. I tilted my head back and tried to let the breeze caress my face, but all I felt was cold perspiration and a throbbing in my brow. I let myself rub my temples, but not without giving in to the habit of tracing the scar on the side of my head.
Rupert noticed. He sat beside me, and we both watched as two of the other boys went to help Freddy unlock the stubborn bolt, Zachary holding the flashlight so they could see.
“You know where you got that thing?” he asked.
“What thing?”
Rupert snorted. “ ‘What thing.’ The thing you’re rubbing. That scar.”
“Course I don’t,” I snapped. With all the tension weighing down on my body, I felt the need to be mean. “I mean, I thought I got it from a car crash. But that apparently didn’t happen, remember?”
Rupert didn’t seem to listen; he merely looked ahead, jaw set, eyes narrowed. Then I heard the clicking sound of the bolt being unlocked, and I watched as the boys moved to open the door. The next moment, Rupert had taken my arm and was leading me toward the shack.
“Give her the flashlight,” he ordered.
Zachary pushed the flashlight into my hand and I watched as it simply fell to the ground. He picked it up and gave it to me again, and this time I remembered to close my fingers around it. In this moment, this climax, I was forgetting basic movements and reflexes. I was devolving. And I really didn’t like the feeling. I stepped in front of the doorway and raised the flashlight.
What lay in the beam of light appeared to be a large piece of wood, and even without eyes, it seemed as if it were gazing into me. As I moved closer, however, forgetting my claustrophobia, I saw how the wood had been carved. The whole shack smelled of dry resin. I moved closer toward it, and I kept the flashlight above my head, so the beam became a circle of light shining on what was, indeed, a small black casket.
I knelt beside the coffin, observing its damaged design, its splintered corners, and, I had to admit, its cracked surface. I let the beam fall on the now rusty latches, looking at the browning metal with a cold, unwanted feeling. I let my arm extend toward the object in front me, and my fingers brushed against the lid.
Then the pain shot through my fingertips, and I screamed. It was all psychological, all in my head, but for the boys, it was as if I had gone mad. In a flash, Bryce had a hand over my mouth and was dragging me out of the shack, and as I pulled farther away from the casket, I saw the same images I had seen in my dreams. Flashes of darkness, of fear, the fear of being completely and utterly alone.
We left in a flash, running down the street until we were a safe distance away. I collapsed against a tree, breathing in gasps and feeling my shoulders shake under my jacket. I was still in the dream, even though I was awake, and it took Bryce’s shaking me to get me out of it.
“Bloody Hell was that?” he panted, his face red in the white moonlight. “D’you want us to get caught? Christ. Bloody Hell.”
“Take it easy, Bryce,” Rupert said. I saw him kneel down beside me, felt him place his hand against my cheek. “You all right?”
I didn’t answer at first. Rupert wouldn’t give up.
“Are you all right?”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m claustrophobic,” was what came out.
“Claustrophobic? You mean you acted out like that because you’re bloody claustrophobic?” Bryce barked.
“Yes. I mean, no, no!” I was struggling to stand up, but it was as if something wasn’t letting me. The air, the dreams, something. “No. I mean, I was…I was dreaming.”
The boys looked confused, but Rupert shook his head; he understood. “No, Joan,” he murmured. “You weren’t dreaming. You were having a flashback.”
I let his sentence drift into my mind. I couldn’t argue anymore. “So that was the coffin,” I murmured.
“Do you remember it?”
“Of course not. I only saw the outside of it.”
“The inside, then.”
“I didn’t want to open that thing.”
My eyes grew wet and Rupert placed an arm across my shoulders. I bit my lip.
“So that’s it, then?” I managed to say. “That’s the secret?”
“We never told anyone,” Luke piped up; for a while, I had forgotten that he was there. “Honest we didn’t.”
“Yeah, we kept quiet,” said Pat.
“But Granddad…” I let my head fall against the tree trunk. “And my family…and everyone…they never said anything…”
“I know, Joan,” Rupert whispered. “But maybe it was for a good reason.”
“Then…then who…?”
“Alfred Engel may be your grandfather,” Rupert said. “He may be. He may have recognized you or something. He looked taken by you, down by the river that day. I remember that as clear as everything else that happened. It’s not a day to forget.”
He kept going about excuses and ideas in order to make me feel better, but the emptiness was growing deeper, a familiar feeling I had five years ago. I let the tears fall, not of sorrow, but of every emotion I had held the entire night, and the heaviness lifted ever so slightly. I let Rupert lead me back down the street, back to the same cottage I had lived in for so long, and let me cry against his shoulder before leaving me.
After all of this, however, it didn’t seem I was going home. Not anymore.
However, seeing as this is Whims of the Time Traveler, it's a perfect example of my first attempt at long fiction, so I've decided to unabashedly display it.
Have fun.
Untitled: Chapter Five
by Belinda Roddie
I admit that I should have listened to Rupert. He was right; we didn’t have very much time to spare as kids anymore. Even as soon as we were fourteen, our professors, our guardians, even our friends were expecting us to be different. They expected us to act like adults, like professionals, because we were going to have to be one of them soon. My friends were waiting for me to get out of my tomboy phase. To state it more accurately, they wanted me to lose about ten IQ points and lather my face in make-up.
I didn’t let them do that. Sure, we still were friends, but I was a stand out among the tight little group we were in. Not only did I look different, with my wily hair, my casual clothes, and, yes, my four foot eleven inches stature—I didn’t start to really grow until I was seventeen years of age—but I also acted differently. It wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it allowed me to make a lot of new friends even while older ones faded away. But there were many students who I had become comfortable being around, especially the boys who decided to stick with me as if I were still worth their time and energy.
When Rupert said he didn’t want to grow up, he meant it. While most boys his age were now becoming interested in sex, cigarettes, and video games, Rupert was able to hold his group together to play sports and go swimming. Bryce still was the awkward fat kid who thought he was “it” and never stopped his goofy teasing of me, which I didn’t mind. Ivan was still terribly lanky, although he has having his fair share of acne and stubble. Even Zachary was the same, his red hair tousled and the same lopsided grin on his face whenever he hit well in cricket. The only boy out of the group who had really been changing was Luke, and although he didn’t talk to me, I learned that he was going to a prestigious all-boys school to train to be an actor.
We were all trying not to change too much, to enjoy who we were before we had to grow up. Alfred was really the only adult who congratulated me for still being able to be a kid and not having anyone tell me otherwise. By then, even my great-aunt had been chastising me, telling me to become a lady. I told her that being a lady wasn’t necessary anymore to do well in this world, and that she obviously had seen how women had even become powerful politicians over the years. She said it was improper. I couldn’t change her mind.
Despite our best efforts, however, we were changing. I especially was changing inwardly. Despite my rowdy attitude and slightly above average marks, I was becoming more prone to anxiety and stress, and whatever vague symptoms of claustrophobia I had were beginning to worsen; in fact, they became so severe that whenever I went to get my clothes from the closet, I made sure I was at least six inches away from any danger of being shut inside. Although I was able to concentrate in class, I was beginning to have trouble with my assignments. It was as if a part of me was conflicting with what I had become, telling me that something was wrong, something wasn’t fitting correctly in the puzzle that my alleged grandfather had helped me put together.
But most importantly, I continued to dream the same dream for the next year.
I didn’t endure it every night, but it occurred just enough to keep me alert about it. After a while, I trained myself not to wake up screaming, but I would always jolt myself awake, gasping for air, my face damp with cold sweat. It was especially bad by the time I turned fourteen, and Alfred would frequently fall asleep in a chair beside my bed because I would ask him to stay with me.
As it drew closer to my fifteenth birthday, which was near the end of the school term, the dreams became less common, but when they did occur, they became much more amplified. The noises, for one, would be much louder and more succinct, voices becoming easier to tolerate but the words still unclear. With the usual clawing against the top of the object I was concealed in during the dream, the pain in my fingers would get worse, and on some occasions, I would wake up with a dull ache in my fingertips. Finally, just before I would wrench myself awake, the side of my head would start to throb.
Those two aches added to the wonder of these dreams, or in my case, nightmares, as I perused my fingers and rubbed the raw side of my head. After months of persuading myself that they were only relics of the car crash I was in, I remembered my fingers in bloody bandages and my head wrapped in thick gauze. I would touch the scar just above my cheekbone and trace the outlines of it, and it became a habit, especially when I was working on a difficult exam. It didn’t scare me anymore; I had gotten used to waking up in the middle of the night. It didn’t irritate me, either, because I was still able to get a decent amount of sleep and there was nothing I could to stop the dreams, anyway. But it made me wonder.
When I turned fifteen, the dreams gradually faded from my subconscious. I was still anxious and stressed often, but I tried to forget the questions that had been popping up over the course of the year. As the new school year started, I was able to go back to my former goal of enjoying my youth as much as I could without changing a single bit. But I was changing. And my world along with my sense of security would change, too.
“And so, as we can see, it is not only through actual history and cultural beliefs, but also the media, that vampires have evolved into the pale, seductive, blood-sucking monsters found in coffins that we read about today.”
Bryce snickered. “Yeah, must be awful comfy sleeping in a rectangular box.”
“Shut it, Bryce,” Rupert hissed.
I merely rolled my eyes as Ms. Randolph, our professor, wrote “Media Influence” on the board. For four days now, we had been discussing vampires as part of our lesson on myth and the supernatural. The first couple of days, for me, had been rather interesting, as I listened to the different cultures’ idea of a vampire and the many ways you could become one according to mythology. However, the constant reminder of how vampires had been distorted since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was beginning to leave a sore spot in my mind. Like how I had felt about many other things I had been learning this year, I didn’t really care.
Rosie Walsh, who sat next to me and liked to call herself my closest friend, raised her hand eagerly.
“Yes, Miss Walsh?” Ms. Randolph asked.
“Um…I would like to know more about how vampires have truly evolved in some senses, ma’am. For instance, didn’t people believe vampires lived in coffins years ago, before Stoker wrote Dracula?”
“They weren’t the only ones who must have lived in a coffin,” Bryce whispered, snickering some more.
“Bryce,” Rupert growled, “Cut it out.”
“What? I’m just saying it’s likely.”
Ms. Randolph cleared her throat loudly, and Bryce and Rupert fell silent. Then she turned back to the question on hand.
“Well, Miss Walsh, I would say that gravediggers were deathly afraid of finding vampires in coffins, but I wouldn’t say that they lived in them. As shown in Stoker’s novel, Count Dracula has an enormous palace, but it is true that he sleeps in a coffin after his nightly feeding.”
“And why is it that the media has made it so vampires cannot endure the sunlight at all, rather than lose their powers?” asked Rosie.
Ms. Randolph furrowed her brow. “Well, there is really no strong reason behind changing it a bit. However, I’m sure they did so to, shall we say, further outline the weaknesses of a vampire.”
Rosie Walsh leaned back in her chair, satisfied, as Richard Jordan raised his hand tentatively.
“Yes, Mister Jordan?”
“Er…” Richard Jordan licked his lips; he was a timid boy, even at fifteen. “Well, I was just wondering…I mean, it really doesn’t have to do with vampires, it…more has to do with coffins…”
Bryce snorted loudly and Rupert jabbed him hard in the ear with his pen. I shook my head; Bryce was really starting to bother me.
Ms. Randolph curiously looked at Richard Jordan. “Well, I can’t say it’ll hurt to stray off tangent for a little, Mister Jordan. After all, it is my job to educate, no matter what the subject.”
“So you can teach us how to shag properly?” one boy called from across the room.
The whole room, save for Rupert and me, found this to be extremely funny. Ms. Randolph retrieved a plastic ruler from her desk and rapped the boy’s desk sharply.
“You’re going to find out from somebody else whether or not you’re doing a job of it, Mister Lansing,” she said coldly. “And believe me, you’re not going to find out in your bathroom.”
The whole class roared, and this time I had to give in to the giggles. Ms. Randolph was not a strict teacher; despite being a fifty-year-old widow, she had a sharp tongue whenever it was necessary. Furthermore, she wasn’t afraid to break away from simply showing us the backbone of the topics we learned or speak her mind. I applauded that, and I looked at her with profound amusement as she returned to the board and nodded at Richard Jordan to ask his question.
Richard Jordan continued, “I was just wondering how coffins came to be how they are, the different colors and shapes and such. Like when you talk about vampires, I think of the cartoons…and well…there’s a…well, there’s a geometrical sense to them, for some reason…and I always wondered why.”
“Yes, I have noticed that as well, Mister Jordan. I appreciate your keen observations,” Ms. Randolph said quite sincerely. “It’s hard for me to figure out myself. I would say, usually, that the end of the coffin that is widest and more complex in angular structure is where the head is rested. Whether for efficiency or decoration, it’s evolved into what we normally see in films and cartoons. However, there are plenty of caskets, big and small, that do not have that sort of geometry. Many are more squared off, others rounder on the edges. It all depends on what the family of the deceased desires.”
“Not to mention if someone wants to shut somebody up in one!” added Bryce rather loudly.
It was as if something had snapped, for Rupert jumped to his feet and roared, “God damn it, Bryce, shut the Hell up!”
It was as if something had snapped, for Rupert jumped to his feet and roared, “God damn it, Bryce, shut the Hell up!”
“Mister Ainsworth!” Ms. Randolph cried out in shock, as the whole classroom burst into whispers. I was just as confused, but I remained silent.
Bryce stood up as if confronting Rupert. “I’m not saying anything bad! I’m just saying—”
“And I’m saying that you’re gonna get us all in trouble, that’s what!” snarled Rupert.
“What trouble? I just said that people could get shut up in coffins—”
“If you say one more thing about coffins,” Rupert threatened, “I’m going to shove my pen up your fat arse!”
“That’s quite enough, Mister Ainsworth!” Ms. Randolph snapped.
“Come off it, Rupert!” one boy shouted. “Leave the kid alone!”
Rupert whirled on the interjector. “What, you gonna take the side of this fat dolt?”
“Hey, if you’re gonna insult me, you say it to my bloody face, arsehole!” Bryce shouted, and he seized the back of Rupert’s collar.
It was as if a wild, rabid beast had been let out of its cage as Rupert swiped at Bryce’s head. In a flash, Bryce had Rupert pinned down on one of the desks, scattering books and pencils and causing students to scoot hurriedly away from potential harm. Amidst the shouts from the teacher, the shrieks from the girls and the cheers from the boys, I sat, rigid, as Rupert escaped from Bryce’s girth and began to punch him in the face again and again and again, and Bryce retaliated by grinding his foot into Rupert’s groin. I couldn’t move or speak as two of my best friends tried to rip each other to shreds, and I watched them roll to the floor, knocking over desks and students with them, kicking and punching and biting and everything to make for the perfect school fight…
And then it was over as Ms. Randolph, simply using one arm and a ruler, broke the two apart, and they both seemed happy about it as they lay on the floor, gasping for breath and spitting blood out from between their teeth. Then, setting her ruler down, Ms. Randolph seized Rupert and Bryce by their collars.
“I suppose a good talk with the headmaster would do both of you good, thank you very much!” she barked, all of the calmness sucked from her voice like honeysuckle. She turned to the rest of us. “Class dismissed early. The rest of you read pages three hundred and seventy two to three hundred and eighty five, and continue studying for the final exams next week!”
With that, she stormed out of the room, dragging Rupert and Bryce with her. At first, none of us moved, not even to put our things into our book bags. I certainly didn’t want to move, looking down at my hands while my shoulders shook from the aftershock of the event.
“What do you think that was all about?” Rosie Walsh whispered.
“I’ve never seen Rupert act like that before. He’s normally only that rough when it comes to sports,” one boy muttered.
“I wonder what could have sent him off like that?” another girl asked.
I wondered the same thing. Bryce was irritating, no question about it, but even he hadn’t been able to bother Rupert in the worst of cases. I had never seen Rupert so furious in all of the years I had known him. But besides that, the one question running through my mind was what Bryce had possibly said to set him off. What had Bryce said that was so wrong and inappropriate? And even so, why did Rupert respond in such an abnormal way?
I zipped up my book bag and followed Rosie out into the yard as she chattered about her latest love interest, but my mind remained distant from anything she said. I was far away from the yard, far away from the school. My thoughts only settled on Rupert, how he had pounced on Bryce like a madman, and of course, why he had done it.
***
I waited for Rupert outside the headmaster’s office with my hands folded in my lap, looking slightly more lady-like than usual. I wasn’t able to hear any arguing or any angry remarks that the headmaster might have possibly been saying to Bryce and him, so obviously everything had cooled off between the two. However, as they left the office, I could tell that the bumps, bruises, and black eyes they had received from each other wouldn’t fade away too quickly.
Rupert saw me jump up from the bench and walked over to me quickly, casting a death glare at Bryce when the latter attempted to follow him. He took my hand.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“I dunno. Somewhere. Let’s just find a place to cool off.”
“What did the headmaster say to you two?” I asked as we began to walk down the path toward a cluster of trees nearby.
Rupert shrugged. “Not much. Me and Bryce have never been in serious trouble, so he just gave us a warning and he’s gonna call our parents about it. It’s a pity, ‘cause now I have to actually enjoy whatever time I have left at school before I cop it with my mum and dad.”
We sat down against a large oak, and I looked over Rupert’s head to see Bryce sitting a good distance away, looking like a large, disgruntled potato in a school uniform. Rupert pushed his dark bangs out of his eyes and looked at me with a great deal of guilt.
“I’m sorry for what happened back there,” he said.
“It’s okay. It was just…so unexpected coming out of you,” I replied, shaking my head. I let my vision settle on the grass, watching it bristle in the wind; summer was coming again, fast.
“I did it for you, you know.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
Rupert stared at me; his blue eyes had grown cold and hard, like ice, and he looked in every direction, as if making sure that no one else was around. “I said I did it for you. That kid was gonna blow your cover, ruin everything, and get our whole group into trouble. I’m surprised you didn’t say anything.”
I blinked. “Say anything about what?”
I saw Rupert’s mouth open and close, his brow furrow, his entire face lapse into a look of skepticism. It was a strange spectacle, as I had never seen Rupert confused like that unless he was focusing on an exam.
“We’re…we’re trying to keep this quiet, what happened to you, ‘kay?” He looked around again, his eyes flickering from one side to the other. “I did you a favor. He was gonna let everybody know, and all this time, I thought it was gonna be Luke who would blurt it out.”
“Luke? What’s Luke got to do with it?”
“Oh, c’mon, haven’t you noticed?” Rupert snapped, gawking at me. “The kid’s too scared to talk to you! He’s been threatened by me boys that he ever says a word about it, he’ll get kicked out of the group. We all were told to cover it up, not tell anyone, not even our own parents. We did it for you, and Bryce was gonna screw it up. Don’t you get what I’m saying?”
“No!” I said, with a lot more conviction than I had imagined. “I don’t. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“Joan!” Rupert growled, his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“No,” I said, quite coldly.
There was a tense silence between us, something that had never happened before. Rupert’s face looked like it had been turned to stone; I couldn’t sense any confusion or disbelief or anything like that. It was all gone, vanished, and at last he understood.
“You…you don’t know?” he asked.
“I just said that.”
“Not a thing?”
“No, Rupert.”
“And they never told you? Not even Mister Engel?”
“No. Well, at least, not this thing that we have to ‘cover up,’” I replied, feeling slightly annoyed that he wasn’t specifying anything.
Rupert took some time to digest what I had said, and I thought he would leave it alone. However, as I looked at him, I noticed the veins in his arms bulging, and I didn’t know why until I saw that he was clenching his fists. In a flash, he was on his feet.
“Bryce! Get over here!”
Bryce, who looked like he had rolled onto his stomach and fallen asleep, snorted and got to his feet. At the sight of Rupert, he shrank back. “Don’t hurt me, buddy. Won’t say another word, I won’t!”
“No, Bryce, it doesn’t matter now. Just get over here!”
Bryce got up and trotted over to Rupert. Rupert looked at him, then me, then back at Bryce.
“I’m not happy with what you did in class, but you can help now,” he said, as authoritatively as a fifteen-year-old in slacks could.
“H-how?” Bryce stammered.
Rupert turned back to me. I stood up slowly, clutching my book bag and staring at him with wide eyes.
“I just talked to Joan,” he said softly, directing his words to Bryce, “and it turns out she didn’t react to anything you said because she didn’t know about what you were talking about.”
Bryce gawked at Rupert. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me,” Rupert said. “She doesn’t know what you were referring to. Not a bit.” I could hear his voice deepen into a growl. “They didn’t even tell her. They didn’t even tell her what happened! How could they not tell her, after all these years?”
“I dunno why they didn’t, Rupert!” Bryce spluttered. “You’re asking the wrong person, buddy!”
“Who’s ‘they?’ Who didn’t tell me what?” I demanded.
The two didn’t seem to hear me; Rupert looked as if he had zoned out, his teeth clenched, his eyes frozen. Bryce, on the other hand, looked like a fish, with his eyes bulging out of his head and his mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.
“Bugger and blast,” he finally squeaked. “You don’t know anything at all?”
“If I knew what ‘anything at all’ meant,” I replied, “then it’d be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Rupert,” Bryce mumbled, looking at his friend. “What do we do?”
That was when the final bell rang, and students started to file out of their final classes. We watched as younger boys and girls walked off, giggling, before Rupert shook his head.
“Nothing, for now,” he said, “except study for our finals.”
“What? You can’t just go act like I’ve bloody forgotten the queen and leave it at that!” I shrieked. For these past five minutes, I had done nothing but let Rupert confuse me nearly to death and I wasn’t going to let them leave me hanging in this manner.
Both looked a little surprised at my outburst, but I remained firm, standing there with my hands clenched into fists just like Rupert’s, my feet set apart, as if I were ready to give a dramatic speech. Rupert was quicker, so before I could go off again he was already talking, and hastily.
“Get your finals done first, Joan. Me and Bryce are gonna make a few calls to our friends. We’ll be going home next week, and we’ll be able to sort things out then.”
“I can’t wait a week, Rupert!” I retorted, feeling my face grow hot. “No. Not acceptable. You’re going to tell me right here, right now. I’m not going to wait.”
“Well, you’re gonna bloody have to!” Bryce barked, standing beside Rupert like a hero’s loyal sidekick. “We’re not going to tell you ‘right here, right now.’ ”
“Why not? Why can’t you?”
“Because it’s not just some little quirk we’re dealing with here,” Rupert replied. “This is big.”
“Yeah,” Bryce added, nodding. “Bigger than big. We’re gonna need a whole council on it, set it up like a meeting. It’s all got to be extremely professional.”
He said that final word with pride, as if it was a great achievement for him to know the word “professional.” Rupert nodded his approval. “So you’re going to have to be patient.”
“And you’re going to go through all these measures just to tell me something I don’t know?” I asked, feeling my patience withering away. “Just how serious is this, anyway?”
The only response I got was more silence, but it wasn’t the same silence that had been between Rupert and me just a few minutes ago. It was the kind of silence you saw in movies, and the dramatic music would swell as the protagonist realized something of great importance. But there was no music, and no extreme realization. It was simply an understanding of the situation.
I felt the veins in my forehead pulse. My mouth was dry, and I swallowed painfully and nodded. For the first time since I had first started having nightmares, I was terrified.
“This…this isn’t a prank, right? You’re serious about...whatever you guys are…?”
“Joan, I’ve bloody teased and mocked you for five years now,” Bryce said, grinning. But his smirk faded quickly. “But I’ve never messed with you, have I?”
He hadn’t. I knew that. So there was nothing I could do but nod.
“We better head back to our houses and catch up with Zachary and Ivan, see if they can help, too,” Rupert said. He began to walk back towards the path, Bryce trailing behind him. Then he stopped. “Oh, and Joan?”
I felt a chill down my back when I looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Bring your coat the night we meet. We’re gonna be together a long time. And be prepared for anything.”
***
I couldn’t concentrate on my studying after that, and as finals week unfolded, I could tell that my girlfriends were worried. Rosie would ask constantly if I was ill and needed to go to the infirmary, but I told her I was okay, I just had a lot on my mind. And I did. Especially Rupert’s last words to me: Be prepared for anything.
I hadn’t seen him since our last meeting, when he and Bryce had gaped at my being clueless about whatever they were hiding from me, when they had talked about getting the boys together at the end of the year for some sort of meeting. I didn’t see how the boys played into any of this. In fact, I didn’t even know what Rupert or Bryce could possibly know that I didn’t. They hadn’t been there at the car accident. They hadn’t been there in the hospital as I slowly realized that I remembered nothing from my past until Alfred told me.
So what did they know? And why were they so hell bent on making it such a big deal? Or, and this made me shiver as I lay in my bed, was it really such a big deal that they needed to do this? Questions would be answered. I just wanted them answered now.
Finals were a blur, like a lot of other things in my life. I must have done them fairly quickly because I was out of the class before anyone else. I let myself rest against the oak, the same oak under which Rupert had interrogated me, and I let my head recline against the bark. But I didn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t. Not now.
Finally, as I was packing my things and preparing to meet Alfred in the lot, Rosie entered the room.
“You got a letter.”
I looked up. “From whom?”
“Dunno. Got your name on it, though,” Rosie giggled, waving the envelope around. “Must be from a boy.”
She handed it to me and skipped off. I opened it cautiously, so as not to damage anything, and let the tiny note inside it fall into my lap. Rosie was right about a boy sending it, but not the intent behind it.
It was from Rupert, and all it said was, Tomorrow night, eight o’clock, by the river. And then that same line: Remember, be prepared for anything.
I didn’t say a word as Alfred picked me up and drove me back home. I had walked toward that car with the complete intention of talking to Alfred about what Rupert had mentioned and the plan they were hatching. I didn’t end up saying anything about it. Half of my mind was telling me that he should know, but the other half, surprisingly, nagged me that it was none of my business. Little did I know that in truth, it was his business; he just didn’t need to hear it right now. He was happy to see me again for the summer.
I left Alfred sleeping on the chair by the fireplace and left the cottage around seven forty-five, wearing a gray jacket I had bought several years ago. It was the best I could do for a coat, and it was still rather warm out. However, it was already starting to get dark, and I could see the silhouettes of the boys as they congregated on the riverbank.
As I drew closer, I could see Rupert in a black coat, kneeling beside a small stack of wood and brush. He was looking much cleaner than usual; in fact, so did all the other boys. Their hair was combed, their clothes unstained. Even their faces were washed. Luke looked the most well kept out of all of them, and, as I stepped closer, the most relieved.
There was a flicker of light, and I watched as Rupert held an old cigarette lighter—probably stolen from his father—against the woodpile. Sure enough, a soft orange flame began to glow, and with the help of that flame, Rupert looked up and was able to see me. I prayed to God that no one spotted us doing this. There had to be a law against it somewhere.
“All right?” he said.
“Good,” I replied.
“Then sit,” Rupert ordered, beckoning towards an empty space just across from him.
I sat down where he directed me, and I found myself flanked by two boys named Rowan and Freddy, both with brunette hair and similar stature. I stared at the flames and followed the smoke until it disappeared into the sky, shrouded by the moon above our heads. It was a half moon tonight, not imposing or anything. But there was still an aura about the place that scared me and made me shake under my jacket.
It was at this point that I started reconsidering whether I should be there. Alfred could wake up any minute and notice that I was gone. This could be all some foolish, something insignificant or spooky that they wanted to tell me. Even with Rupert’s sincere and concerned voice ringing in my ears, I felt all of the trust I had be swallowed up in fear. And as I sat among ten boys around a fire by the river whose trickle had played a huge role in my dreams, I had a strong desire to go home.
I didn’t. I stayed. And with every attempt I made at getting up and walking off, I heard not only Rupert’s voice, but also Bryce’s. I’ve never messed with you, have I?
A sudden crack startled me, and I looked up to see Bryce looming over us, his enormous girth casting a shadow over the fire. He must have stepped on a branch because he kicked something aside and stood in front of the circle, his hands clasped together, his chin held high, and his eyes narrowed into slits as if he were a monarch, ready to see the armies off to another Great War. The rest of the boys even resembled soldiers, their jaws set, their hair combed, sitting upright with their heads erect and their eyes locked onto their speaker.
“Friends and brothers,” Bryce began, not in the voice of an actor, but of a man saying something of great importance, “Tonight we have brought you here to retell a story, a story that all of us have never told except to one another in utter secrecy…a story that is still unknown by one of us here.”
I rolled my eyes, but the boys looked at each other with puzzled expressions. I knew what they were thinking; they weren’t thinking that I didn’t know, but thinking that one of them may not have been around to hear of this story. Then they noticed Bryce raise his index finger.
“That person,” he said, pointing at me, “is sitting right across from me, the very person that this story is about…Miss Joan Engel.”
The puzzled looks faded, and all of the boys save for Rupert and Bryce began whispering to one another, casting glances at me as they did so. I could see Luke staring at me through the hazy glow of the fire, and for the first time, he was not looking at me out of fear or caution. He was looking at me with an expression of contemplation.
Then he spoke to me, for the first time in two years. “They never told you, did they?”
I didn’t know what to say and didn’t really have time to say anything at all. I managed to shake my head before Bryce spoke again.
“Friends and brothers, the time has come where we must tell that story once more, and then never again. Let us swear upon our loved ones, our years together, our past, present, and future, that this telling of the story will be the last to anyone, absolutely anyone, besides ourselves.” When done with that surprisingly fluid and rather poetic statement, Bryce looked at each boy, a glint of earnestness in his eyes. “Do you swear?”
“We swear,” all of the boys chorused.
So unbelievably formal. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes again.
“Good.” With that, Bryce sat down and folded his hands in his lap. “Zachary, if you could do the honors of beginning this intriguing tale of our fine lady friend?”
Zachary cleared his throat, and out of his pocket he pulled a small flashlight. I half-expected him to hold it under his chin, but instead he directed it behind him, toward the flowing water, lit up in a garish white by the moon.
“Friends and lady, we begin…the tale of the Coffin on the River Thames.” He looked at me as if waiting for a response, and at the sight of my arching one of my eyebrows, Zachary smiled and passed the flashlight to Ivan, who directed its beam to the people he mentioned as he spoke. I knew from the start that whatever this story was, they were not going to hold back on making it as dramatic as possible.
“It was a normal summer day for ten young boys as they played their games by the river. We were all young, carefree, and never really thought about anything exciting except for our games of pirates, or marbles, or simply roughhousing. No, with the help of our dear friends, such as Rupert, leader of the gang…”
Rupert nodded, grinning.
“…Bryce, the noble second-in-command…”
Bryce smirked at this apparent honor, folding his arms across his chest.
“…baby Luke…”
“I resent that,” Luke said, rather bitterly.
Ivan ignored him. “And many others, all innocent…that is, until our dear Rupert went for a dip in the muddy Thames.”
Without any hesitation he passed the flashlight to another boy. This boy, Sebastian, actually held the flashlight against his chin, and whispered, “It seemed like any other dip in the Thames, a leisurely swim while we played an innocent game on the shore. Yet everything changed as something strange appeared on the river…that thing was a coffin, floating on some kind of raft.”
The boys gasped, as if to add to the effect. I half-expected myself to grow annoyed and ask what this had to do with me at all. However, as they spoke, I began to feel a cold, familiar feeling, and as Sebastian continued, a funny thing happened.
My head began to ache.
“If it had been anything else, we may have ignored it. And we almost did. But Rupert, ah, no, he went diving for it, against disapproving words, and with all of the strength he could muster, he dragged that coffin right to shore.”
“Hey, I didn’t do it by myself,” Rupert snapped. “You guys all jumped in to help, under my orders.”
Sebastian glared at him. “Well, if you want to make it less thrilling, you tell the story.”
Rupert shook his head. “It’s Pat’s turn, anyway. Give the flashlight to him.”
Sebastian obeyed, tossing the flashlight to a boy with a thick thatch of curly black hair.
“We were all awestruck. We had never seen anything like this before. Many of us didn’t want to open it at first, but Rupert wasn’t taking no for an answer, even if there was a body in it.” I heard Luke audibly muffle a squeak; Pat glared at him before continuing. “The coffin was locked, but Rupert and Bryce toiled to open it. And they prevailed...to see a young girl inside.”
I must have choked on my own spit, for I was coughing and gurgling. Rowan and Freddy moved to pound me repeatedly on the back while Luke turned to Pat.
“There, see, you’re making this too dramatic! It doesn’t have to be!”
“Then you have a go, it’s your turn, anyway,” Pat growled, shoving the flashlight into Luke’s hands.
Luke stared down at the object in his hands, hesitating, before shining it right onto the ground. “Well, I can’t say I remember…too much, I mean, I was six. But I remember crying a lot, thinking that girl in the coffin was dead…but she wasn’t. She was alive. And…well…the rest involves the police and carting that girl off to the hospital.”
“So now can we say who it was?” Bryce asked, sounding like an impatient five-year-old.
“Yes,” Rupert replied. Then he looked at me almost apologetically. “It was you.”
Then Luke turned off the flashlight, and the boys were all quiet, staring at me. Needless to say, I began to laugh. It was an overly raucous laugh, painful even in my own ears, and as I doubled over I saw Rupert staring at me rather coldly.
“You think it’s funny, Joan? ‘Cause you know, this is about you,” he murmured.
I calmed down. “I just…I…where do you come up with these things? You should be writers, all of you.”
“Joan.” Even Bryce’s voice was firm, surprising me. “We didn’t make this up.”
The pain in my head was worsening, and I began to shake it, in complete and utter skepticism.
“No, no,” I said, attempting to laugh again but ending up making a strange garbled noise. “That’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“It sounds ridiculous, Joan,” Rupert said, “but it’s true. We were all there. We swear it.”
“Yeah,” Rowan piped up next to me. “And we all kept good and quiet about it.”
But I still shook my head; I didn’t believe it. It was impossible. “No one can stay in a coffin on the river and live. They’d suffocate, or maybe die from dehydration.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said, “but you didn’t.”
“It was a miracle,” Pat added.
“Yeah,” Freddy whispered. “Like you rose from the dead.”
“But it can’t be!” I was on my feet now, ready to leave. “Look, it’s been fun, and I liked your story, but I have to say that I’m sick of your joking.”
“We’re not joking, Joan!” Rupert snapped, rising up to meet me. “We told you we don’t joke about things like that.”
“But I was in a car accident!” I shouted, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “I was in a car accident, and Alfred saw me—”
“You weren’t in a bloody car accident!”
I stepped back. Rupert was standing rigid, fists clenched, teeth bared. He had never yelled at me before, not ever. I sank back to the ground, shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to shout at you like that.” He walked around the fire and sat beside me, putting an arm around me. I pulled away. “But you weren’t in a car accident. I don’t know who told you that, or why they told you that. Maybe it was because we were all so young, and they didn’t want to traumatize you or something. But that’s not how it happened.”
“How, then?” I asked, my voice thin. “How did I end up in…a coffin? On a raft?”
“No one knows,” Bryce murmured. “Strange things happen. Seen them in movies. But I had never seen anything like that before.”
He was trying to calm me down; I knew he was. But I backed farther away from the circle, scooting across the dirt and hugging myself to fight the cold. My head was spinning. My eyes were watering. I felt sick and small again, just like in the hospital five years ago.
“Proof…” I whispered, barely getting the words out of my mouth. “I need proof.”
Rupert snorted. “Proof? What, do we need to get the bloody coffin for you? What about you? You’re telling me you don’t have any recollection of this at all? Any bits and pieces? Flashbacks? Dreams?”
Dreams. I felt my head throb again, my fingers ache. I held them up to my face, inspecting them, looking at the scars on my cuticles and fingertips. I saw the darkness, heard the water and the voices. I remembered my screams, my clawing at the top of what I was trapped in…the lid of the coffin…
And I understood.
But I didn’t want to.
“Maybe…” I said, quietly. “…Maybe I do need to see the coffin for myself.”
I expected them not to have a positive answer to that. I expected the boys to inform me that I couldn’t see it, that it was gone or burned or chopped into bits. I expected them to admit their defeat so I could smile, forget all of this nonsense, and go back home to my bed. But Rupert, his face blank, had stood up, and he was directing the boys to do the same. Then, simultaneously, all ten of the boys blew the fire out before Rupert took my arm.
“Then come with us,” he told me. “We know exactly where it is.”
For a while, as I followed the boys through the town that was so dimly lit, and so quiet, that I began to wonder what on Earth I was doing. I thought that anyone in her right mind would have turned around already, unable to tolerate this sort of rubbish any longer. However, something kept nagging me, saying that there were too many coincidences, too many connections. It kept reminding me of how much I should trust Rupert, the boys, even Bryce, as they led me through the darkness toward an unknown destination. And of course, after hearing such a story, I unwillingly found myself cooperating with the pestering feeling in my mind. So I kept going.
At first I thought we were going to the police station. However, as we passed various familiar buildings, I realized that we were going in a completely different direction. I struggled to catch up with Rupert, even sprinting at one point when I realized that he was speaking, and he obviously was meaning to talk to me.
“The cops hauled the coffin off pretty quickly, after the ambulances left,” he was saying as soon as I had time to catch my breath and listen. “But some of us wanted to know what they were gonna do with it. Whether they’d store it as some kind of evidence or burn the thing.”
“So what did they do with this alleged coffin?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” Bryce dropped in, chuckling. “We didn’t give ‘em the chance to do anything to it. Couple of us actually snuck over to find it ourselves.”
“You went and stole evidence?” I gasped.
“Well, sort of,” Ivan replied. “I mean, they just threw the thing in a bin. Dunno if they were gonna study it or anything. Cops sometimes can be a bit stupid.”
I blinked. “You know this is only making me more and more skeptical, right?”
“Any time now,” Rupert muttered, “and we’ll be able to show you.”
We walked about three more blocks, and for the whole time, we were quiet. The wind wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. It was just there, weaving its way through our hair and eyelashes, and as it passed it left me feeling a bit dry and empty. They were strange feelings, but nothing compared to the feelings in my stomach and my head. They were raw feelings, painful, like open wounds and scrapes that wouldn’t heal. I tried focusing on different things in order to ward the feelings off, whether it was a tree or a house or the back of Rupert’s head. Nothing worked; I felt them all the same, and they seemed to get worse the closer we got to our destination.
It turned out that Freddy had a rather large shack right beside his house, which was much farther away from our homes and therefore not a suitable place to hang out. I had had my share of staying at boys’ houses, playing games but always watching my back. However, Freddy’s house was different, even in the dark. For one thing, it was much bigger, adding to the ominous effect of the whole situation. The shack itself was bigger than any other tool shed I had ever seen.
“So this thing’s always been locked?” Rupert asked Freddy.
“Sure thing.”
“And for five years, no one’s opened it?”
“Why would we? Pap’s gone, and Mum’s got no need for the tools. She’s got Uncle Will doing everything when it comes to house stuff.”
Bryce spat out of the corner of his mouth. “So where’s the key?”
Freddy rummaged in his pockets, and I watched in surprise as he retrieved a large bronze key from his trousers. It seemed that the boys already knew what was going to happen. As Freddy worked to get the rusty lock undone, I found a place on the fence nearby to sit down. The air was growing heavier every time I inhaled and exhaled, and though I knew it was merely psychological, the pressure felt undeniably real to me. I tilted my head back and tried to let the breeze caress my face, but all I felt was cold perspiration and a throbbing in my brow. I let myself rub my temples, but not without giving in to the habit of tracing the scar on the side of my head.
Rupert noticed. He sat beside me, and we both watched as two of the other boys went to help Freddy unlock the stubborn bolt, Zachary holding the flashlight so they could see.
“You know where you got that thing?” he asked.
“What thing?”
Rupert snorted. “ ‘What thing.’ The thing you’re rubbing. That scar.”
“Course I don’t,” I snapped. With all the tension weighing down on my body, I felt the need to be mean. “I mean, I thought I got it from a car crash. But that apparently didn’t happen, remember?”
Rupert didn’t seem to listen; he merely looked ahead, jaw set, eyes narrowed. Then I heard the clicking sound of the bolt being unlocked, and I watched as the boys moved to open the door. The next moment, Rupert had taken my arm and was leading me toward the shack.
“Give her the flashlight,” he ordered.
Zachary pushed the flashlight into my hand and I watched as it simply fell to the ground. He picked it up and gave it to me again, and this time I remembered to close my fingers around it. In this moment, this climax, I was forgetting basic movements and reflexes. I was devolving. And I really didn’t like the feeling. I stepped in front of the doorway and raised the flashlight.
What lay in the beam of light appeared to be a large piece of wood, and even without eyes, it seemed as if it were gazing into me. As I moved closer, however, forgetting my claustrophobia, I saw how the wood had been carved. The whole shack smelled of dry resin. I moved closer toward it, and I kept the flashlight above my head, so the beam became a circle of light shining on what was, indeed, a small black casket.
I knelt beside the coffin, observing its damaged design, its splintered corners, and, I had to admit, its cracked surface. I let the beam fall on the now rusty latches, looking at the browning metal with a cold, unwanted feeling. I let my arm extend toward the object in front me, and my fingers brushed against the lid.
Then the pain shot through my fingertips, and I screamed. It was all psychological, all in my head, but for the boys, it was as if I had gone mad. In a flash, Bryce had a hand over my mouth and was dragging me out of the shack, and as I pulled farther away from the casket, I saw the same images I had seen in my dreams. Flashes of darkness, of fear, the fear of being completely and utterly alone.
We left in a flash, running down the street until we were a safe distance away. I collapsed against a tree, breathing in gasps and feeling my shoulders shake under my jacket. I was still in the dream, even though I was awake, and it took Bryce’s shaking me to get me out of it.
“Bloody Hell was that?” he panted, his face red in the white moonlight. “D’you want us to get caught? Christ. Bloody Hell.”
“Take it easy, Bryce,” Rupert said. I saw him kneel down beside me, felt him place his hand against my cheek. “You all right?”
I didn’t answer at first. Rupert wouldn’t give up.
“Are you all right?”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m claustrophobic,” was what came out.
“Claustrophobic? You mean you acted out like that because you’re bloody claustrophobic?” Bryce barked.
“Yes. I mean, no, no!” I was struggling to stand up, but it was as if something wasn’t letting me. The air, the dreams, something. “No. I mean, I was…I was dreaming.”
The boys looked confused, but Rupert shook his head; he understood. “No, Joan,” he murmured. “You weren’t dreaming. You were having a flashback.”
I let his sentence drift into my mind. I couldn’t argue anymore. “So that was the coffin,” I murmured.
“Do you remember it?”
“Of course not. I only saw the outside of it.”
“The inside, then.”
“I didn’t want to open that thing.”
My eyes grew wet and Rupert placed an arm across my shoulders. I bit my lip.
“So that’s it, then?” I managed to say. “That’s the secret?”
“We never told anyone,” Luke piped up; for a while, I had forgotten that he was there. “Honest we didn’t.”
“Yeah, we kept quiet,” said Pat.
“But Granddad…” I let my head fall against the tree trunk. “And my family…and everyone…they never said anything…”
“I know, Joan,” Rupert whispered. “But maybe it was for a good reason.”
“Then…then who…?”
“Alfred Engel may be your grandfather,” Rupert said. “He may be. He may have recognized you or something. He looked taken by you, down by the river that day. I remember that as clear as everything else that happened. It’s not a day to forget.”
He kept going about excuses and ideas in order to make me feel better, but the emptiness was growing deeper, a familiar feeling I had five years ago. I let the tears fall, not of sorrow, but of every emotion I had held the entire night, and the heaviness lifted ever so slightly. I let Rupert lead me back down the street, back to the same cottage I had lived in for so long, and let me cry against his shoulder before leaving me.
After all of this, however, it didn’t seem I was going home. Not anymore.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since October 7th, 2011.
Comments
Post a Comment