The Color of Night
by Jack Thomas
Copyright 2011 by Jack Thomas
Published at Smashwords
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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For my parents.
~~~~~
Part One
~
The Crow
Chapter 1
The students were the same age, the curriculum was practically identical, and everybody had access to the same internet and TV channels as the rest of America. But to Patrick, Hillward High was extremely different.
In fact, almost every aspect of the town was in stark contrast to the city. Whereas Santa Casilda was a bustling metropolitan sprawl of skyscrapers and warehouse retail stores gathered around the intersection of two major freeways, Hillward was a sleepy town nestled about a one- or two-mile stretch of highway, woods and mountains to the north and open fields to the south. There were no buildings with more than two stories, and even the ones with two were rare. There were no furniture stores or electronics retailers or malls, and in fact not a single restaurant or shop that even belonged to a franchise or chain.
But if Patrick had to choose one major difference between the two places, above all else it would be that Hillward was quiet. There was no rush of endless cars streaming from dozens of surrounding streets, no screaming road-ragers, no clanking and whirring machinery constantly worrying at some part of the road or constructing another new building… It was the only place Patrick had ever lived where there was any sort of true silence to be had. Even of the few wooded areas that his old city did house, not one was large enough to take you from the ever-present sound of the freeway—that inescapable, distant roaring sound much like that of the ocean.
There were cars in Hillward, but when one departed from Deer Creek—the main road through town which reclaimed its status as a highway on either end—they were sparse. Screaming children were normally only found at the single joint elementary and middle school during recess and after classes dismissed for the day. And though the time Patrick had spent in this town had been very short, he was impressed by the fact that he had yet to see a single bulldozer or any sign of construction. There was a sort of hush that lay over the town like a blanket. The quiet seemed more of an actual presence than the constant sound of the city ever had.
His old high school housed a student body of well over a thousand kids, and with such numbers it was only natural for a student to complete his senior year having only learned a small fraction of his fellow students’ names. Small cliques formed throughout the school, and unless some enterprising soul did something particularly attention-grabbing, you wouldn’t find much reason to learn the names of anyone outside your clique or your classes. The outcasts were especially isolated, and the rare ultra-populars attained near-celebrity status. It was hard to find a person who didn’t dress in their nicest and most fashionable clothes every single day. All the girls wore perfume and the boys cologne, perhaps to make their existence a little harder to ignore; it was easy to get lost in the sea of jabbering heads as they all clambered to their next class. Everyone cool listened to the same popular music, and anyone who didn’t were members of those especially quiet cliques who fiercely opposed the Populars, distancing themselves from the rest of the school as if it were a society in itself, the views and ideals of which they would not stand for. They all listened to the same “unpopular” music.
One very interesting thing that Patrick noticed when he arrived at Hillward High was that even though school had only been in session for a few weeks, everyone already seemed to know each other. In the halls he heard kids who were obviously of different grades calling to one another and talking jovially. He supposed that in a town so small it must be much easier to get to know the students around you, but still it made for some odd sights; a sophomore even talking to a freshman was strange, and the two knowing each others’ names was downright bizarre.
The room in which Patrick sat held about half of the entire junior class of Hillward High, and this was oddly unsettling. The large, chaotic, and impersonal world around him had been replaced by an environment in which the majority of the people had grown up together—a group almost small enough to be called a family. Somehow this made him feel more isolated than he had even felt during his freshman year at his old high school.
It didn’t take long to begin noticing the differences in the students themselves. While there were still a handful of those who wore sports jerseys and terribly tight pants and freshly purchased sneakers or flats and had their hair bleached and highlighted or died black and slicked over at an odd angle, most of them dressed much more comfortably. Everywhere he looked he saw worn out skate shoes with duct tape holding them together, patched up hoodies, very “broken in” pairs of jeans, t-shirts that looked like hand-me-downs, and at least one pair of sweat pants. Patrick wore a new set of jeans, a green t-shirt and skate shoes in an attempt to look neutral during his first day in this foreign world, but somehow ended up feeling more out of place than he would have liked.
Not that anyone was giving him much attention anyway. Everyone was caught up in their own conversations or worrying at last-minute changes to their homework. Two people, however, caught Patrick’s eye.
The first was a guy sitting a few seats to his right and one row up. He stood out at first because he wasn’t talking to anyone. He sat slumped in his chair, staring at the front of the room with disinterested, half-lidded eyes, as if these first few minutes in the classroom had already proven much too boring to handle. The other feature that made him stand out significantly was his size; when Patrick got a good enough look at him, he guessed the guy would probably stand close to a head above everyone else were he to rise from his seat. He looked old enough to be out of high school and well on his way in a career of college football. He sported broad shoulders and huge arms, as well as somewhat of a barrel-neck. If Patrick’s grandfather were still alive, he would have said the boy was built like an ox, or at least could clobber one.
When Patrick’s eye began to wander nervously once again, he noticed a girl sitting in the front row, close to the door. Like the barrel-necked guy, she stood out because she was sitting quietly by herself. She didn’t seem unhappy to be in class however, and waited patiently for the teacher to arrive, occasionally flipping through her binder and checking some note or making a scribble on what seemed a random page.
And while he was hesitant to admit it, Patrick also found her to be kind of pretty. She had very straight long, blonde hair, and wore plain small-rimmed glasses. Her dress was blue with flowers on it, and it was complimented by a long white blouse. She was dressed like someone much older than she was, and he supposed that this was what he found so refreshing about her look.
While he was thinking this, she turned and met his eyes. Reacting on an instinct developed over so many years at a large and very impersonal school, Patrick immediately looked away as if it had been an accident. But in the very last split instant before he turned he saw her mouth stretch into a big smile. By the time this image had registered in his mind he had already turned. He considered looking again and smiling back at her, but too soon the moment had passed and he was left staring at the front of the room, feeling very awkward and not daring to turn back in her direction.
Hardly a minute later the teacher walked through the door. She was an older woman, very homely and friendly looking. She had curly grey hair and wore a blue button-up shirt with a matching skirt. Her small, round glasses gave her the perfect grandmotherly look, especially when perched in front of her round cheeks and small, cheery eyes. Patrick had learned earlier that her name was Mrs. Spotts.
The class didn’t begin to quiet down until she had walked to her desk and begun taking her teaching materials out of her bag. When she started talking the few remaining students who were chatting finally fell silent.
“Good morning, everybody,” she said with a voice that was very cheerful and seemed much smaller than she was. “I hope you all had a good weekend.” She took one final book out of her bag and moved in front of her desk, folding her hands in front of her.
“Before we start our lesson today, I think the most important order of business is to introduce our new friend, Patrick Reed.”
Everyone turned to look at Patrick—some smiling, most rather neutral. He didn’t look to see if the girl in the dress was smiling.
“Patrick just moved here yesterday from Santa Casilda. His father is Hillward’s new Irrigation Supervisor, so the next time you enjoy any locally-grown produce from the grocery store, be sure to have Patrick relay your thanks to him.”
No one reacted to this, but Patrick gave a light chuckle and a smile for her sake. Everyone then looked back to the front of the room and the lesson began.
Mrs. Spotts seemed like she would be better off teaching elementary school; she spoke very simply and her lesson was on some very basic principles of English. Patrick decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she would be a little more in-depth once she was confident that all her students were refreshed in the subject. Summer did have a tendency to cause one’s brain to atrophy, he supposed.
When the bell rang the students filed out of the class hurriedly. Patrick gave Mrs. Spotts one more smile in passing, which she returned, and followed the majority of his class to a room across the quad, next to the single basketball court.
He had already met Mr. Poulton—a balding, bearded middle-aged man with thick black-rimmed glasses. He gave Patrick a nod and started his biology lesson before everyone had even been seated. He was a stern man with a voice that was exceptionally easy to tune out, but Patrick paid attention for fear of being called on. (He had learned throughout his academic career that those in the very front row were always the most likely to be called on randomly, and unfortunately had arrived to class at the tail end of the crowd and had secured a perfectly rotten front-and-center seat.)
The class was uneventful, and afterward the students were given a fifteen-minute break. Patrick found a bench to sit on (a rare luxury in his mind) and began rooting through his backpack in search of the piece of paper which instructed him where to go for each of his classes. He started to get a little nervous when it seemed to have disappeared, but he assured himself that it was a simple matter of asking someone who was in one of his first classes if they knew where the next one was. But when the bell rang the students scattered, and before he could find anyone who looked familiar almost everyone had left the quad.
Finally he saw the older-looking guy from English strolling slowly down the covered sidewalk to the hall doors with his hands in his pockets. As Patrick fell in step his assessment of the guy’s height was proven to be startlingly accurate.
“I think I’m supposed to be going to history,” Patrick said, more than a little nervous. “Where are you headed?”
The guy glanced down at him for about a second, then looked away as if Patrick had said nothing at all, appearing as disinterested as ever. After a moment of awkward silence the hulk reached the door and flung it open. As he walked into the hall Patrick stopped and watched him go, a little dumbfounded. But before the door could close all the way he grabbed the handle and made his way inside. He just barely caught sight of Andre the Giant disappearing into a classroom and he followed. When he got to the door and saw the number, something in his memory clicked and he knew he had found the correct room.
As Patrick walked inside he saw that the teacher had arrived and that everyone was still settling. There were a few extra chairs this time around and he managed to nab a seat near the back where he was most comfortable. As everyone found their seats the teacher began to speak.
“Hello, everyone,” he said, leaning against his desk and folding his hands in his lap. “I sincerely hope the day is treating you well. I trust most of you have met Patrick, way back there.” He motioned toward the back. The few classmates who hadn’t shared a class with Patrick yet turned to look, and a few others did as well out of impulse.
“Unfortunately, Patrick,” he continued, “you missed the ‘What I Did Over the Summer’ essay, but you’re just in time to begin your research for the ‘What I Want for Christmas’ essay.”
The joke got a brief but good laugh out of the class, Patrick included.
“And that will be in APA format. Picking up where we left off yesterday on the most painfully interesting subject of early prehistory, it is my honor to speak to you a little about what I like to call—nay, love to call—the Last Glacial Maximum.”
A few minutes into the class Patrick remembered finally where he had put the paper that held all of his class info and retrieved it from his binder to find that this teacher’s name was Mr. Vincent.
While he presented the material in a way that was rather interesting, inserting witticisms and pop culture references where appropriate, nothing Mr. Vincent said was nearly as interesting as the man himself. It was soon apparent that he was merely in his thirties, though upon first glance he looked at least ten years older. He had deep lines around his eyes as if he did a lot of smiling or sleeping—or both. And despite the bags under each one, his eyes held a certain brightness. His thick hair was probably kept just within the lowest standards of professionalism, with several locks sticking up from the rest of the brown mass which was probably supposed to look somewhat neat. When he turned Patrick could even spot small patches of grey. It reminded him of a friend he had once whose father’s hair started turning grey when he was in his twenties—a concept which he had always found fascinating.
Mr. Vincent wore a black button-up shirt which he clearly wanted nothing to do with judging by its wrinkles and slightly upturned collar. His slacks and shoes were acceptable but had clearly seen quite a bit of use, which very much opposed the philosophies of the freshly pressed and packaged teachers of the city.
His speech was quiet and deliberate, and his voice was very low. When he had to move he did it slowly, but he mostly resolved to sitting at or on his desk. If Patrick had to make an immediate judgment about him, he’d say that Mr. Vincent was a generally lively man who woke up far too early for his liking on this particular day. Patrick wondered if a regular lack of sleep could turn your hair grey.
The period was soon over and Patrick shuffled out of the room with the rest of the class, exchanging a nod and a smile with Mr. Vincent. The rest of the day was as uneventful as biology had been. He had an algebra class with a short, slightly senile yet fairly nice older gentleman named Mr. Baker who insisted upon being called Fred; political science with an entirely unpleasant and rather heavyset middle-aged woman named Mrs. Gomes; a hilariously cliché PE teacher named Mr. Rolls whose qualifications obviously included watching way too many sports movies; and a boring lunch on a bench in the quad to top it all off.
*****
The day seemed to last for two or three, and Patrick was extremely relieved to walk home. His house was only a short way down the road from school, and the slow walks were a nice change of pace from the mad rush his mom had to make daily to get him through traffic to a school fifteen miles across town. This gave him time to reflect and to further take in the quiet that he was quickly growing to appreciate. The neighborhood was calm, with maybe a dozen or so small, peaceful houses on the right side of the road. Only a handful of kids were walking home this way, most of them heading the other direction up the street or taking the bus to their homes on the farther outskirts of town.
The street was paved but very cracked, and the dotted yellow line had faded to nearly nothing. On either side were dusty shoulders, with grass and weeds a few feet further than that. Patrick’s shoes were covered in white dust after only a minute, but it was certainly worth the change of pace. He had never even thought about it before, but he now reflected that he could go the rest of his life without seeing another boring sidewalk and be quite happy.
He looked up at the trees that peppered the neighborhood. The first thing he had noticed about the town was that the trees were surprisingly tall. They grew in peoples’ shaggy lawns, between their houses, and on the side of the street, all swaying gently in the breeze, looking as if they could easily be as old as the town itself. They granted Deer Creek with a pleasant amount of shade, making the area seem cozy and tucked away. It was comforting somehow…
Patrick let his gaze fall back to the road, and up ahead on the other side he immediately spotted the girl in the dress. Her book bag was slung over her shoulder and she was walking at a leisurely pace along a yellowing fence. Hardly a moment after he noticed she was there, she turned right onto the next street and disappeared behind a house.
At this Patrick stopped walking and stared at the spot where she left his view. He was experiencing an odd sort of attraction toward this girl, and he didn’t fully understand it. He knew it wasn’t the beginnings a crush; much observation had taught him that they led to nothing but fighting and crying… Yet somehow he found himself looking, thinking about the big smile that had been directed at him and not returned. A small flush of remembered embarrassment passed over his face.
His attention was caught suddenly by a car driving down the street from behind him. He turned to see Andre the Giant glancing at him casually from the driver’s window of some sort of beat-up classic car. Just as the guy passed he flicked a cigarette butt out the window. It landed a few feet in front of Patrick, and he looked up from it to watch the car disappear down the road. He stood for a few more moments, trying to make sense of this gesture but finding no answer. Then he continued walking the few remaining blocks to his house.
Patrick’s house was at the end of a short driveway just off Deer Creek. It was the biggest house he had seen in town so far (though that was largely owed to its unnecessarily high ceilings, which he found to be a silly waste of space). The roof was black and the wooden walls a dark brown, made darker by the constant shade that wrapped around the property like a blanket. Just behind the house were a few acres of woods that stretched out behind all the buildings on the surrounding streets—a lake of trees in the middle of the neighborhood. Patrick passed by the other end of it when he walked to and from school. He planned on exploring it eventually, but at present he just wanted to get home and do a little unpacking.
*****
Later that night he sat down to dinner with his family. Richard, his father, was telling a story about his hilarious friends at work. Patrick wished that he could make friends quite so quickly. His mother, Jodi, listened while occasionally laughing or taking a bite of her roast beef, the aroma of which temporarily dulled the unpleasant smell of new paint and an unfamiliar house. His eleven-year-old sister, Lizzy, was making a rather interesting tower out of her peas and mashed potatoes. His parents were too engrossed in his father’s story to notice.
“So Jeff just kind of looks at him,” his father was saying between chuckles, “looks at him with this reeeaaal intense look, and he starts to say something back, but he tips over his coffee and it spills all over the desk. We all completely lost it.”
His mother laughed before a forkful of potatoes could reach her mouth; it was sharp and loud, yet Patrick always found it endearing. His father took off his glasses and wiped a smudge off one of the lenses as his own laughter slowly died down. Lizzy’s tower had grown far too high for her to be listening. It was a little funny that someone spilled their coffee, but Patrick had been thinking about school during any explanation as to why this was a particularly hilarious thing to happen to this Jeff person, so he only smiled.
His father noticed and turned to him.
“What about you, Pat? How was school? You’re pretty quiet tonight.”
Patrick pried his eyes from his sister’s art piece and picked up a dinner roll.
“Oh, it was okay. It was good to see that I have a few nice teachers.”
His father chuckled at that.
“Only a few, huh? I’m pretty sure that other school we had you at was run by zombies. Those meetings were just agonizing!”
“Remember Mr. Fitzpatrick?” Patrick asked, a grin creeping onto his lips.
His father threw his head back and laughed loudly. His body type was very different from Patrick’s; he was much thicker in the arms and chest, and he had gained a little weight over his few decades of family life. He was much more suited for such laughter, Patrick thought.
“He’ll certainly never forget me, you can be certain of that! Try to give my son an ‘F’ because we got stuck in traffic for five minutes too long… Gave him the ol’ academic one-two, I did! He may have had a PhD, but I’ve got my doctorate in yellin’!”
His mother giggled, having had her share of unpleasant memories involving Mr. Fitzpatrick. She had a body type more like Patrick’s—lean and somewhat short—but she laughed and made friends like his father.
Everyone looked simultaneously at Lizzy as she slowly lowered her fork, tine end up, into the pinnacle of her mashed potato tower. It was complete with pea battlements, roast beef drawbridge and a gravy moat.
“What about you, Lizzy?” his mother asked. “Make any friends yet?
“Yeah, one’s named Jodi, like you.” She began to lick the potato from her fingers.
“Oh, that’s gross,” his mother objected. “Use a napkin.”
“And these other two girls, Jessica and Aralaysia, sat with me at lunch,” she continued, picking up a napkin and wiping her hands.
“Aralaysia?” his father chimed with a smirk. “Sounds like a farting disease.”
Lizzy dropped her napkin and laughed loudly, and her father joined her. Patrick chuckled a little more quietly, and his mother only smiled, shook her head and said, “My goodness,” (though Patrick knew her well enough to know that she thought it was funny, too).
“And there’s another girl in third grade named Citriana,” Lizzy continued after she caught her breath.
“Citriana!” his father said with much excitement. “Better not invite her over for dinner or I might try to drink her after a spicy burrito, because she sounds extremely refreshing!”
They all laughed again, his mother included.
“I’m pretty sure they’re sisters, too,” Lizzy added.
This fueled several more remarks from his father and the four of them laughed throughout dinner. Patrick tried to join in on the jokes where he could, but his mind always seemed to return to his day at school.
*****
Later that night as he sat at his desk and finished an English assignment, Patrick wondered if the next day would bring a little more comfort and stability or if his mind would be all the more clouded. He hoped dearly that he wouldn’t have any additional awkward encounters with his classmates, though he knew with a grave sort of resignation that such experiences were merely a part of his nature.
When he finished his homework he clicked off his desk lamp and walked over to his bed. He crawled under the blankets and switched his alarm clock to on, but just before settling he looked out the large window beside him.
Patrick’s room was on the second story, and he had a good view of the wide backyard. It was almost completely dark, but what little moonlight managed the journey to Earth brought the far end of the yard into view. He could see where the packed dirt stopped and the mossy soil began—the edge of the woods, as defined by the oddly deliberate-looking line of trees that stood between the two areas like a row of guards. He still wanted to get around to taking a look in there, and the crazy thought of going now and walking in the dark crossed his mind for a moment…
But he immediately dismissed it. He was far beyond being scared of monsters, but the thought of walking through pitch black woods in the middle of a strange new town sounded entirely unpleasant. Maybe he would do it Saturday morning, or even Friday after school if he didn’t have too much homework.
Patrick lay down and pulled his blankets up to his neck. It took him an uncomfortably long time to fully slip into unconsciousness, and even as he did, that big, sincere smile still haunted him.
Chapter 2
Mr. Vincent was no less quiet, slow, and deliberate on the second day, disproving the theory that he had simply been particularly underslept on the day previous. He was also no less fascinating, and this time Patrick found himself pondering about the man’s life rather than focusing on the lesson he was giving.
He still hadn’t dared to look in the direction of the girl with the dress. He knew he was probably making more out of it than he should, but somehow that only increased the embarrassment he felt, making him feel kind of stupid and childish. He hadn’t made another attempt at contact with the tall guy either, though he didn’t really intend to after the strange encounters he had already had.
Patrick was engulfed in his own thoughts for the majority of the day, and he almost missed a few homework instructions because of it. He managed to survive until three thirty however without any strange or uncomfortable happenings, though he figured he probably owed that to simply not talking to or making eye-contact with anyone.
Despite the relatively low-stress day his walk home was once again a relief, and he reveled in the quiet of the street. It took him nearly a minute before he realized that he hadn’t seen the girl in the dress walking down the street ahead of him, and he was a tad startled when he turned to look back toward the school and found her walking parallel to him on the other side.
He jerked his attention back to the road in front of him as a hundred butterfly cocoons hatched in his stomach. He tried his best to focus on the ground, but curiosity soon won out (as it almost always did, he reflected) and he found himself sneaking another look. But somehow, Patrick tapping into that special and eternal well of bad luck that it seemed only he possessed, her head turned at the exact same moment as his and their eyes met again, as they had in English class. Even in his constant awareness of this bad luck he somehow never saw these things coming, but when he spotted her smile he seized the opportunity and gave her one back, albeit a slightly awkward and unnatural one. He had never been good at forcing smiles.
Patrick was extremely relieved when the brief transaction of facial expressions was completed successfully and she disengaged their eye-contact.
He had a moment of silent celebration, but it was cut short when he saw her turn her head once more out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t prepared for this, so he kept his gaze ahead. He was forced to turn to her again however when to his horror she started to cross the street.
He was immediately faced with the question of whether to stop or keep walking. He apparently chose the latter, probably owing to his legs simply not being able to stop what they were doing. As she crossed the breadth of the street and fell in step with him, he noted that his eyeballs suddenly felt unusually full of blood.
“Hi,” she said cheerily. “I’m Rachel.”
Patrick was dumbfounded for a moment, but forced another smile and quickly gathered himself.
“I’m Patrick,” he said carefully, so as to prevent his voice from cracking.
“So you really moved here from Santa Casilda?” she asked, turning her head in front of her again. Patrick followed suit, now faced with the challenge of deciding when exactly to look at her. Does anyone else have these problems? he wondered to himself.
“Yeah, my dad got offered a management position here, so he moved me and my mom and sister.”
“Kind of an upgrade and a downgrade at the same time,” Rachel said, looking at him with a smile.
He looked back at her for only a second, and struggled with finding a response.
“It must be so different living here,” she continued, closely inspecting something on her book bag. “I bet you’re totally hating it, huh?”
“Actually, it’s really nice. It was hard to move away from my friends and everything, but I’m kind of enjoying the quiet. The city is just so… loud.” He thought briefly of the construction that never stopped, all the machinery that never seemed to sleep. “Everything’s moving all the time, and there are barely any trees.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could ever live like that. Still, it must stink not having all those awesome shops to go to, right?”
Patrick was finding the conversation a little easier with each second, but still feared it could all come crashing down at any misstep.
“They all get pretty boring after a while. Sometimes when one opens up with something new it’s fun for like a week, but window shopping only takes you so far when you don’t have any money.”
Rachel laughed. Apparently what he had said was kind of funny, so he smiled.
There was a brief silence, and they each stared intently in a random direction. Patrick scrambled to find something to say, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, not wanting her to feel compelled to leave.
“I really like Mr. Vincent,” he said, glancing at her for a moment, extremely relieved that he found something coherent and relevant to talk about.
“Oh, I do too,” she responded with a smile. (Patrick wondered if she was as relieved as he was.) “He’s definitely the most fun to listen to, though Mrs. Spotts is really nice, too.”
“Yeah,” Patrick agreed, “she always gives me such a big smile every morning.”
“I think she’s been teaching here for a really long time. She must really love kids.”
“I don’t know how anyone could have enough patience.”
There was another silence, and Patrick was forced once again to think of something to say. There were pretty much only three things he had been thinking about for the last few days and he had brought up one and was talking to another, so he thought he would attempt to get some clarity on the third.
“What’s with that really big guy in most of our classes?”
“Oh, that would be Dean.” There was a definite drop in her voice, as if he might drive by as he did the day before and hear their conversation.
“He looks like he shouldn’t even be in high school,” said Patrick.
“I don’t think he is supposed to be. He got held back last year, and maybe the year before that, I’m not sure. So he should either be a senior or in college by now…”
After a pause Patrick said, “He seems like an… able fellow.” He wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that.
“Well, he just doesn’t seem to care about school much,” Rachel continued. “He doesn’t cause too much trouble in class, though I think he’s done some pretty bad things over the years. I couldn’t tell you what they were, only rumors and whatnot. He doesn’t listen to the teachers when they tell him things… He doesn’t talk to anybody, really. But he shows up every day, and just sits in class. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just do a little work for a couple years and get through it, rather than just staying in the same place for so long and accomplish nothing.”
Patrick looked at her for a moment, and she continued looking ahead. Judging by the attentiveness she seemed to exhibit in each of her classes, this concept obviously opposed her own philosophy of academia.
“That is weird…” he said, and he looked back to the ground. He only now realized that they had been walking very slowly.
“Well, my house is down that way,” Rachel said suddenly, turning to him with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She waved cheerily and walked quickly across the empty road and down her street, clutching her book bag to herself (perhaps a little too tightly, he thought).
Patrick barely managed a “Yeah, see ya,” before she was gone. He would’ve liked nothing more than to stop walking and watch her go, or even to call her back and offer to hang out sometime, but he didn’t dare to attempt either and he soon lost sight of her behind a dirty fence.
Patrick’s mind was a flurry of excited thoughts as he walked the last few blocks to his house. He went over the conversation again in his head, making sure that he hadn’t said anything horrible without realizing it.
*****
When he reached dinnertime without his mind leaving the subject for even a moment, he felt silly all over again. As his parents discussed the surprising deli selection at their local market he found himself thinking about her over a scarcely touched plate of spaghetti.
He had never been affected by a person in such a way before. No matter how hard he tried to think of something else their conversation kept replaying itself in his mind. And the butterflies decided to take flight again every time he thought about how she crossed the street just to talk to him. He wasn’t used to people engaging him so forwardly, and he was so glad that she was the one to do it…
She obviously held some important spot in his mind, but he wasn’t exactly sure what that meant yet.
“Honey, I don’t think you’re going to get much more on there.”
Patrick looked to his mother with a slight start and realized that he had been spinning noodles onto his fork for the last minute or so, accumulating more than a normal-sized mouth could comfortably hold.
“Sorry,” he said. He shook most of the noodles off his fork and ate what remained.
“How was today?” his father asked.
“Uh, same as yesterday,” Patrick said, trying to pull his attention back from space.
“Hm.” His father speared a meatball with his fork. “You’ll make friends soon enough. Then it’ll be a lot more fun.” He stuck the meatball in his mouth and chewed happily. It was no secret that Patrick wasn’t quite as good at making friends as the rest of the family, and he took no offence to it.
The remark obviously did nothing to get his mind off of Rachel, and he only managed to give them a “Yeah,” before returning to spinning his fork. His parents continued talking and Lizzy was struck with sudden inspiration, deciding to see how large an accumulation of noodles she could amass on her own fork.
*****
Patrick’s mind finally began to settle (a little) as he did his homework. When he finished his algebra and switched off his desk lamp the image of Rachel’s face flashed across his mind, but he tried to push it out for fear of difficulty getting to sleep. He slipped his legs under his blankets and started to lie down, but once again found himself looking across the backyard to the edge of the woods.
The trees were barely visible, standing ominously like the black wall of some mysterious and forbidden world. He hadn’t had any thoughts to spare for the woods throughout the day, but now in the still dark of his room the allure presented itself again. He wanted so badly to see what they looked like and how far they went. They were nothing more than a few acres across, but what was the terrain like? Was there anything interesting to see inside? Maybe a pond, or some cool trees or animals?
He suspected that the exciting events of the day were increasing his sense of adventure; the thought of treading through those woods so late at night seemed just a little less insane now. Part of him wanted to put on his sweater and a pair of boots and just jump right in, throwing caution to the wind and solving the mystery there and then.
But it was frightening. He couldn’t see anything beyond the dimly moonlit trees closest to the yard, and he knew that beyond them it was doubtful that there would be much direct moonlight at all. Would he even be able to see? He could fall somewhere and hurt himself. There could be dangerous animals. He tried to convince himself that he was more deterred by the realistic dangers than by the outright spookiness as he lay down and closed his eyes. Sleep came a little more quickly than it had the night before.
Chapter 3
Rachel wasn’t at school the next day.
Patrick had woken feeling very positive, like he might make a friend today. He thought he might catch her on the way to school, but the street was quiet as usual—only two short kids walking beside each other further up the street. It seemed that she always got to school much earlier than him, so it wasn’t something to worry about.
In English class he sat closer to the front. He wanted to give her a chance to sit by him without looking desperate. Keeping a seat open beside him certainly wasn’t very difficult, it only being his third day at Hillward High.
But when Mrs. Spotts arrived and gave everyone a warm greeting, it seemed that Rachel was running unusually late… and when the teacher finally started her lesson and got a few minutes into it, it was apparent that Rachel probably wasn’t coming at all. This casted Patrick into a glummer mood than he even would have liked to admit to himself.
All hopes of at the very least having another nice conversation were shattered and Patrick was forced to endure another dragging day of people-watching. Even Mr. Vincent’s lesson wasn’t interesting enough to hold his attention for long, and the end of the day seemed to come several hours later than he would have liked.
The bell rang and Patrick gathered the books he needed to complete his homework from his locker. He hardly even noticed Dean lighting up a cigarette and strolling toward the parking lot. Mr. Poulton saw him and began to shout something across the lot, but Dean was in his car and driving away within seconds.
Patrick walked through the cloud of dust left by the faded red car and headed gloomily down the street. He realized that he was reacting much too strongly to Rachel’s absence, and was all the more embarrassed for it. The smart thing to do would be to forget the whole thing and just see what tomorrow brings. She was most definitely going to be back in a day or two. And he couldn’t rule out the possibility that she didn’t even want to talk to him anymore, and that she was just being friendly before.
This thought made Patrick’s stomach drop, and for his own sake he chose to disregard it. He did maintain however that he was being downright silly.
His train of thought was suddenly halted when he looked up and found a crow staring at him from a fence post.
Patrick was suddenly struck with a strong feeling of peculiarity and for reasons unbeknownst to himself immediately stopped walking.
The crow wasn’t cawing or pecking at the ground or threatening to fly away; it was merely staring directly at his face, the little black marbles on either side of its head unmoving. It stood on a rotten wooden post at a break in the rickety fence separating the road from the trees. Beyond it a narrow and overgrown path led into the woods. He regarded the crow curiously, waiting for it to take flight, or make any movement at all.
But it didn’t. It only stared at him, almost as if expecting something. It was only a bird (and not a pressing adult or an intimidating classmate), but the steady eye contact was making him uncomfortable regardless. Coming to the conclusion that it was most likely sick or disturbed, he broke from its unnerving stare and continued walking. He felt its gaze on him as he walked by, and could only get a few yards down the road before turning again to see what it was doing.
It was still looking at him. But after another strange moment it turned and flew straight into the trees and out of sight.
Patrick stood for just a moment longer, then continued on his way home, not exactly sure what his mind should be hanging onto anymore.
*****
Dinner came and went quickly. Lizzy was already comfortable enough at her school to stay the night at a friend’s house. Patrick’s parents were fairly deep in conversation, so he ate his chicken quickly and went upstairs to do his homework. He had hoped to have a little extra free time after school, but with dinner and yet another load of boxes to unpack and homework that was hard to focus on, the time was anything but free and went by almost instantly. He spent the last few hours of the night struggling with the simple task of choosing a topic for an essay and writing an outline. His mind’s refusal to focus frustrated him, and he recalled with a grim sort of humor the elation he had felt the day before.
Once he had completed everything, his parents had long gone to bed. The world was quiet once again and he switched off his light, happy to grab some mindless sleep before another day of mystery.
Patrick sat on his bed and looked out his window, as he had been developing a habit of doing.
There the woods sat, just as they had every night; the same trickle of moonlight, the same dark, looming branches. Patrick found his mind quieting when he looked at them. He had wanted to explore them the moment they first arrived at the house, yet for some reason it seemed impossible to find the time during the day. He could wait until the weekend as he had originally intended…
But they were so close. Forty feet from the edge of the house, if that. He could be there within minutes, aggressively seizing what had been eluding him since his arrival. At the moment it was the one unresolved aspect of his life that he felt he could actually do something about, and that resolution was in view.
He considered again what could go wrong and came to the conclusion that it couldn’t possibly be that dangerous. He doubted there were any invisible gaping chasms or rabid badgers waiting in those trees… The worst thing that could happen would be cutting himself on some outstretched branch, and that would only require some disinfectant and a bandage.
But the darkness…
It looked pitch black. He might not even be able to see where he was stepping. And though he was hesitant to admit it, the thought of wandering into that darkness was just outright scary. It would be frightening enough with a flashlight, and they were all probably still packed away in the enormous stacks of boxes that filled the garage. He would practically be blind, depending entirely on the few beams of moonlight that happened to slip down through the branches.
He was surprised by how close he was actually coming to making the attempt, but as usual reality eventually set in and he decided it was just too unnerving an idea. But the split second before he could lie down something black caught his eye.
A little blurb of darkness under the trees. Patrick’s first thought was that it was some animal, but then he decided it was probably just a rock.
Then it moved.
He thought the motion might have just been imagined—nighttime and darkness had a tendency of making any shadow or object appear as though it were moving—but then the little dark thing hopped on black legs out of the shadow of the trees and into the moonlight.
It was the crow—the one from his walk home today.
He immediately realized the silliness of this thought however, as there were probably hundreds crows living in Hillward. But still… this one seemed to be staring at him like the other one did. From all the way across the yard he could tell that its little head was pointed directly at his window, and this brought back that creeping sense of unease.
After a few peculiar moments it jerked its head away and turned, hopping straight into the woods and disappearing.
He acknowledged the fact that the animal was a crow, and only a crow, but his small superstitious side seized the image and rocketed the mystery surrounding the woods to an unbearable level. Patrick stared at the spot where the crow had hid in the shadows, feeling now that the barrier of trees had become more of a personal challenge than anything. He thought of how incredibly brave he would feel if he accomplished this task. Maybe it would give him new inspiration to talk to Rachel again—or to talk to anyone for that matter.
A spark of some strange sort of drive that must have been insanity was struck inside him. Without considering it any further he jumped out of bed, put on his favorite green hoodie and dug his boots out of his closet, careful not to make too much noise. He didn’t take the time to change out of his pajama bottoms.
He crept downstairs and across the living room. Soft moonlight shone through the sliding glass door, which was without shades or curtains. He unlocked it with a soft click and began the slow process of opening it. On the first day in this new house he had discovered that if the door was opened too fast the friction created a loud rumble that practically shook the whole side of the house. As such he slid it open with extra care, and a few moments later found himself crossing the yard. It seemed a much greater distance across than it had from afar, and with every step the trees loomed further over him and grew all the more menacing. Soon he was standing face to face with the woods.
It was only a small wooded area—probably not even large enough to be called “woods”. Darkness, in the end, meant just about nothing as long as he was careful. Chances were, there were no dangers that weren’t also present during the day—apart perhaps from the presence of skunks, which very certainly wouldn’t kill him.
Yet this challenge seemed momentous. He knew it was entirely irrational, but he felt a very real fear when he looked into those trees. Everything inside him told him to go back up to his room and go to bed, and wait for the daylight to go exploring. Maybe even get up with the sun and do it before school—just anytime but now!
But the desire to give up was outweighed by the huge sense of accomplishment he would surely feel if he completed this task. If he could do this, he could do anything. Maybe if he could breach this invisible barrier he could begin to break the ones that plagued him in his everyday life.
His only real comfort was that he could see a few feet in front of him into the woods. From Patrick’s few experiences camping with friends he knew that no matter how dark it got outside, it could rarely get so dark that you couldn’t see anything at all. Sort of like driving at night; you can only see what’s right in front of you, but you can make the whole trip that way.
So, with one final deep breath, Patrick let his legs take him into the space where he could see and that odd spark past it to where he couldn’t—deep into the woods and the darkness.
When he left the moonlight behind, a very different breed of butterflies began to flutter around his stomach—the kind that made him feel uneasy, and made his shoulders want to tremble. Every slow step was a massive effort, yet he continued to stare into the black woods ahead, knowing that looking back and seeing his comfortable house through the trees would make the temptation to run at full speed back to his bed unbearable. So further and further he walked down the vague path, goose bumps racing down his arms and back in waves.
At first he couldn’t make out any shapes; he could only see what was immediately in his path. After a minute or so however his eyes adjusted slightly, and the sparse moonlight further illuminated the woods in front of him. His intense nervousness didn’t lesson though, and the butterflies only got worse the deeper he went—the further he got from his house and the streets and other people. The only sounds he could hear were the crunching of leaves beneath him and the chirping of crickets. Each was uncomfortably loud in his ears.
Eventually he stopped, trying to hear beyond the chirping insects. There was no wind. No shuffling. No mysterious footsteps. Just cricket calls, echoing in the distance.
A sharp CAW came suddenly from behind him and he jumped and spun toward it, his heart beating a mile a minute. His first instinct was to run, but he held onto his nerves a moment longer and his eyes finally focused on a small, dark figure standing in front of him.
Patrick stared at the crow, breathless and holding his chest, almost wanting to kick it for scaring him so badly. Once again it seemed to be staring at him.
Then, Patrick’s vision began to blur.
An entirely foreign and indescribable sensation washed over his entire body. His heart hammered faster than ever in his chest and he began to panic as he found the ground rushing up at him. He landed on his hands and tried to push himself back up, but his limbs felt strange—felt wrong—and he couldn’t seem to move properly. He craned his neck to look for the crow, but it wasn’t there, and the feeling engulfed every part of him. It was like pressure, but also like some massive release—somehow like being crushed and pulled apart at the same time. It was like heat and cold, like dying and dreaming and pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to shout but couldn’t control his voice, and he found himself lost in this overwhelming sensation of complete helplessness, like falling—so much like falling.
Then it stopped.
Patrick opened his eyes. The woods were still dark. He stirred and tried to stand up and found that he couldn’t. He was low to the ground—like he was crawling, only it was the highest he could go. His arms and legs were wobbly, and he had the intense desire to throw up.
Then he took a deep breath through his nose, and the world around him lit up.
He could see almost nothing, but every other sense was a massive blur. His head filled with intense and indescribable sensations. Color assaulted his mind’s eye and tastes filled his mouth, and it was almost too much to handle. This brightness surged with each inhale of cool night air, and his only theory as to what was flooding his mind with these odd colors was a crazy one.
It was almost as if they were smells.
The sound of the crickets was now almost deafening, and he could very clearly hear his own quickened breathing. He heard the crunch of the leaves echo through the woods when he took a step, heard the unbearable shrieks of the hunting bats above—heard their leathery wings beating the air. As he turned, dozens of other smells he couldn’t even begin to describe invaded his mind, barraging him with sensations he couldn’t understand. They were on the bark of the trees, all over the leaves, in every hole and on every rock on the forest floor, making freeways of scent that crossed through the air and around every turn, each one calling to him, begging to be consumed.
He began to walk slowly and shakily forward (or crawl—he couldn’t tell). His mind reeled, and it was difficult not to topple over. He trudged around the trees, his sense of direction failing him completely. He couldn’t stand, he couldn’t run, he couldn’t escape this place and this darkness that was so full of colors that didn’t exist. Panic was steadily tightening its hold on his heart, and he was starting to think he would wander in these woods for the rest of his life when he saw something loom over him.
In his jumbled senses Patrick couldn’t quite tell how much of the object he was seeing and how much he was smelling. It was tall, he knew that. Tall and dark, even darker somehow than the pitch-black woods. The smell was different. It was an older smell, more musty and rotten, more sharp and strange. He stopped and looked to it, breathing deeply and listening, listening for anything. He couldn’t move at all now; he could only watch the thing and wait, wait for something to happen or something to come. But it only grew darker and taller, and as he focused more closely on it so it grew in his mind and his sight, smelling of something different, something old…
Then he woke up.
Chapter 4
Patrick opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the ceiling. The sun was beginning to rise and bluish light poured in through the large window. The haunting remnants of the dream still hung in his brain as the last bits of sleep withdrew from him like a lifting fog. What was left was a deeply uneasy feeling—the kind only a very bad or strange dream can give. He continued to stare at the ceiling as the sun came up and until he had to get ready for school.
He was hardly aware of the world as he walked up the street. The dream was returning to him backwards, the intense and strange events being the most clear and the details that led up to them developing in bits and pieces. It hadn’t been like any bad dream he’d ever had; it was so much more confusing, and a lot more unnerving. He couldn’t even remember it clearly, yet it hung in his mind as though it were somehow truly meaningful.
Soon he had arrived at school and was left to puzzle at the dream further as the class waited for the teacher to arrive. The other students chatted noisily with one another as Patrick stared at his desk.
The oddest thing about it was that even though the end had been hazy and confusing, the memories of the beginning that had drifted back were shockingly vivid. There were still pieces missing here and there, but he had never had a dream before that was even almost as coherent and logical as this one. Normally something even as simple as walking outside would be interrupted by his third-grade teacher riding a giant snake or by the ground opening up in a surge of flowing lava… But this time it had all seemed so real, up until the second half—the part when those feelings began. It always came back to those impossible sensations that confused his mind whenever he tried to remember them. If it had been a dream, then why could he almost remember what they felt like?
“Sorry I wasn’t here yesterday.”