The Monster of Creasy's Hollow (Defenders of the Rift Book 1) (5 page)

“
Oh, get real, you dork,” Donna rolled her
eyes. “You heard someone trying to grind their car into gear
without the clutch or something. Idiot,” she added under her
breath.

“
I’m not so sure,” Alvin said quietly.
“I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that they heard
that particular noise last night.”

“
What do you mean?” Angie demanded.

“
Well, we do that. . .that
thing
,
yesterday, for Waldo,” Alvin replied. “And then that wave
happens, and Waldo disappears. We have no idea where he went, or what
happened to his body. Later on last night, Chip and Donny just
happen
to hear something howling, or growling, that upsets every dog in
hearing distance? Doesn’t that strike anyone as peculiar at
all? Even a little?”

The group grew quiet again, considering Alvin’s
words. He had made some good points that no one in the group could
actually dispute. All solid facts with no conjecture.

“
Might be,” Chip mused into the silence.
“Maybe I made a mistake,” he admitted to them, looking a
bit scared. “Maybe I shouldn’t have got you guys to do
it.”

“
We all agreed to do it, Chip,” Angie said,
and the others nodded, Alvin a bit reluctantly. Even Donna agreed
with that, but. . . .

“
Look, even if I believe that you guys heard
something, and I’m
not
saying I do,” she pointed a
finger at them, eyes narrowed, “there’s nothing that ties
whatever you
might
have heard to poor Waldo. Waldo got killed
by a reckless jerk in a car. We tried to bring him back because we
all loved him. It just didn’t work, that’s all.”

“
I just don’t know,” Chip said softly.
“I just have a feeling that I should have left well enough
alone. I mean, I really didn’t think it would hurt anything,
guys,” he told them, eyes wide with honest regret. “I
just wanted us to get Waldo back, and thought I had found the perfect
way to do it. What if I led us into something really bad?”

“
Bad like what?” Angie asked.

“
Bad like I don’t know what,” Chip
shrugged. “What if Alvin’s right, and we, I, turned Waldo
into some kind of monster?”

“
Oh, that would be
so
cool!” Donny
just had to say. “Maybe we could try it on something else! Like
a squirrel maybe?” The excitement in his voice and on his face
was all too clear.

“
Can you give that crap a rest, Einstein?”
Donna snapped out. “In case you missed it, Chip’s worried
that we may have transformed our dog, that we
loved
, into some
kind of
monster
!” The others nodded angrily at Donny,
who had the grace to look ashamed.

“
Sorry,” he mumbled. “It’s just
exciting to me, that’s all,” he said lamely.

“
Well, if we did transform him into a monster,
then we have to do something about it,” Angie declared. The
others looked at her in shock.

“
Well, what would you suggest?” Alvin was
the first to ask. “I guess we could get our pellet guns and go
after him, right?” His voice contained more than a hint of
sarcasm.

“
No, but we do have to do something,” Angie
retorted. “If we did it, then we’re responsible. We have
to fix it.”

“
I’m the one responsible,” Chip said
miserably. “It was my idea. But what if it can’t be
fixed? What if we did something permanent?”

The others had no immediate answer for that, and silence
reigned around them. They began walking again, ambling along toward
their houses. Finally Donna spoke up again.

“
Look, if a spell from that book made Waldo a
monster, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying that,”
she shook her head, “then there’s got to be a spell in
that book, or another one, that will either turn him back, or. . .or.
. .well. . . .”

“
Kill him?” Angie asked, eyebrows raised.
“Again?”

“
Well, yeah,” Donna sighed. “It sucks,
I know.”

“
Maybe you’re right,” Chip nodded,
clearly thinking about it. “Problem is, how do I figure out
which one to use? I mean, I picked the one we used yesterday because
it said reanimation. I thought that meant it would bring Waldo back
to us.”

“
And we don’t have Waldo anymore, body or
otherwise,” Alvin pointed out. “We might need him to make
the spell work. Right?” he looked at Chip.

“
I don’t
know
,” Chip lifted his
hands in a gesture of helplessness. “This all seemed so simple
yesterday. Now. . .I don’t know,” he repeated. He stood
there a minute longer, then took a deep breath. He looked at his
friends.

“
There’s only one thing I can do,” he
said dejectedly. “I’m going to have to tell my dad. Don’t
worry,” he held up a hand to ward off objections. “I’ll
tell him I did it alone. That I was the one who did it all, and now I
don’t know what’s happened. None of you will get in
trouble,” he promised.

“
That doesn’t seem fair,” Angie
frowned, and Donna nodded in agreement. Donny joined them, and they
all three looked at Alvin.

“
I didn’t want to do it to start with,”
Alvin objected. “But I went along with it, so I’m as
guilty as anyone,” he admitted. “I’m willing to go
with you, Chip. We weren’t trying to do anything wrong. At
least we don’t think we were,” he added.

“
I’ll go too,” Angie agreed.

“
So will we,” Donna said, looking at her
brother as if daring him to argue. He didn’t.

“
Guys, you don’t have to do this,”
Chip told them. “It really is my fault.”

“
Your idea, maybe,” Donny said. “But
we all helped. If we did something wrong, then, well, we’re all
at fault. Like it or not.”

“
My dad should still be in his office,” Chip
said finally, secretly glad that he wouldn’t have to face this
alone. “Let’s go over there.”

Chuck was surprised to say the least when his son and
friends showed up at his office.

“
Well, what brings you kids out to see me today?”
he smiled, forcing his worry about other things, other-worldly
things, down for the moment. “Need some insurance?”

“
Hey dad,” Chip said.

“
Hello, Mister Douglas,” the others said in
near unison.

“
Why the long faces?” Chuck asked, noting
the tension in the group.

“
Dad, I need to talk to you about something
important,” Chip said. “Something that we did, and maybe,
almost certainly, shouldn’t have done, it looks like.”

“
That sounds ominous,” Chuck tried to keep
things light. What could these kids have done that could cause all
this? It couldn’t be that bad.

“
We did a ritual yesterday from one of your books
trying to get Waldo to come back to life,” Chip said all in one
breath. “Now, we think we’ve turned him into a monster of
some kind. That he’s what I heard, me and Donny both heard,”
he added, and Donny nodded, “last night. And we don’t
know what to do now.”

Chuck sat down. It was just the first thing that
occurred to him to do. He had been searching for what had happened,
and who could have done it, and now. . .it had been their children?

There has to be another explanation
, Chuck
thought.
It couldn’t have been them. They’re kids,
they don’t know the first thing about. . . .

“
So, which book did you use?” he asked,
trying grin. “And you know you shouldn’t have been
messing around with that anyway, right?” he added to Chip. His
son nodded mournfully.

“
We just wanted to get Waldo back,” Chip
told him, and the others all nodded in agreement. “We didn’t
mean anything bad.”

“
I know you didn’t, son. All of you,”
he added, looking at the other teens. “But sometimes just
because we don’t mean for bad things to happen doesn’t
mean they can’t, or won’t. Understand?”

“
We do now, Mister Douglas,” Angie replied.
Again, the others all nodded agreement. “We really just wanted
Waldo back.”

“
Are we talking about Waldo, the stray dog you
kids are always playing with and sneaking food out to?” Chuck
asked.

“
Yes, sir,” Donny answered that one. “He
got hit by a car day before yesterday. Whoever the guy was drove
right up on the sidewalk. Could have hit one of us just as easy as he
did Waldo.”

“
Do you know who it was?” Chuck asked, angry
that someone had endangered his son and his friends.

“
No, sir,” Chip shook his head. “Didn’t
recognize him or the car. He hit Waldo and then just kept right on
going.”

“
I need to know what book you used, son,”
Chuck said seriously. “Though I doubt you turned Waldo into a
monster,” he added, smiling tightly.

You just offered him to a monster summoned back from
another plane, who probably wasn’t happy about that at all
,
he thought to himself.

“
I used that old leather one that you keep in the
closet,” Chip replied. “The one that’s kinda
cracked and the pages are all yellow and brittle.”

“
Did it have a name on it? Anything I can identify
it with?”

“
No sir, just a plain old book. We used something
that was supposed to be for reanimation, or at least I thought we
did. But once we said all the words, this blue wave thing hit us, and
when we got up, Waldo’s body was gone. Then, me and Donny heard
that howling last night, and. . .well, we figured we must have turned
him into a monster. We didn’t mean to,” he added. “We
just wanted to bring him back.”

“
I think we better go to the house,” Chuck
said, getting to is feet. “I need to see exactly what you did.
That way I can explain better what might have happened.”

“
Okay,” Chip sighed. “We’ll meet
you there, I guess.”

“
That’s fine,” Chuck nodded. “Make
it twenty minutes, okay?”

“
Yes, sir,” the teens chorused. They left
the office, headed back the way they had come.

“
Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Alvin
said, breathing easier. “For a minute there, I thought we were
in real trouble.”

“
We still may be in trouble,” Angie was
frowning. “Didn’t you guys see?”

“
See what?” Donna asked.

“
Mister Douglas was scared.”

*****

Chuck was scared, but he had managed not to show it in
front of the kids. He was almost certain he knew which ritual they
had used. And it wasn’t reanimation, but reclamation. As in
reclaiming.

Reclaiming the Earth.

He started dialing numbers as soon as the kids were out
of sight. There was no way he was going to face this alone.

As he waited for the first number he dialed to answer,
he wondered at the fate that had put all of their children together
and allowed them to work one of the most dangerous, most powerful
spells ever written.

Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed.

*****

When the kids all got to Chip’s house, they were
surprised to see their parent’s cars there as well as Mister
Douglas’ truck.

“
I guess we’re in trouble after all,”
Alvin said sourly, seeing his dad’s truck sitting on the curb
in front of the house.

“
Looks like it,” Angie sighed. Of course her
mom was there. Chip suddenly moved in front of them, holding up his
hands.

“
Look, let me take the blame for this,” he
insisted. “This is my fault. I’m the one who started it.
So let me take the heat. All of you may get some kind of punishment,
but most of it should fall on me.”

“
Either we’re friends, or we’re not,”
Donny said suddenly, and everyone looked at him.

“
We’re friends, then we stand together,”
Donny said firmly. “We’re not, then. . .well, we’ll
just be what to each other? Buddies? People we know? We’ve been
friends through thick and thin since we were all in kindergarten
together. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll always be
friends. No. Matter. What.”

The normally taciturn Donny rarely made such statements,
and it caught the others off guard for a moment. Donna looked at her
brother with something like respect, which, had Donny noticed it,
might have scared him a little.

“
I don’t want to be in trouble,” Alvin
said miserably, “but Donny is right about one thing. We’re
friends. I’m not going to let you take the blame for something
I was part of doing, Chip. I’ll take whatever happens. I won’t
like it,” he added with a frown, “but I’ll take
it.”

“
Same here,” Angie nodded. “We all
wanted Waldo back. There’s nothing wrong with that, either, as
far as I’m concerned. We may have screwed up, but we weren’t
deliberately doing anything bad.”

“
I’m in,” Donna said simply. “No
sense putting it off. Besides,” she pointed toward the house,
“we’ve been spotted.” Everyone looked to see all
the parents gathered outside the front door watching them.

“
Let’s get it over with, then,” Chip
sighed. He was proud to have such good friends. He felt guilty that
he had led them into this trouble, but proud that they were willing
to stand with him.