Dill frowned and looked at Peter. “It came after you?”
“Yeah, it chased me!”
From out of nowhere, Dill hauled off and hit Peter in the arm. “You stupid jerk!”
“OW!” Peter backed away. “Hey, what’s your problem?”
Dill was still coming, arms swinging. “I should kick your ass, making fun of me like that!”
“I’m not making it up!”
Dill stopped swinging. His chest heaved up and down as he panted. “Swear to me.”
“I swear!”
In the moonlight, it looked like Dill’s cheeks might be wet with tears. “So I…I didn’t kill anybody when I accidentally set that fire?”
Peter’s eyes widened with shock. “No, no, I don’t think so. Whatever it was, you sure didn’t kill it, cuz it came running after me.”
Both the boys gazed back at the garden. Nothing was moving within its shadows. The vines and stalks were completely still.
“Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” Dill asked, in the same tone of voice he might say gimme a break, dude.
“I SWEAR. It came running after me. I think it grabbed my shirt.”
Dill frowned, and circled around Peter. He gasped. “Oh my gosh.”
“What? WHAT?” Peter tried to turn to see whatever Dill was looking at. He tugged the edge of the shirt around to the front, but with the wrinkles and the nighttime darkness, he couldn’t see anything.
“Take off your shirt,” Dill whispered.
Peter yanked it off his body like it was on fire, then shone the flashlight on it. When he saw what Dill was talking about, he dropped the shirt like it was a live rattlesnake.
On the back, right where Peter had felt the tug, was the clear outline of very thin fingers, smudged in black soot.
Both boys looked back at the garden.
Nothing.
Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted and fell silent.
*********************
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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.
7 comments:
Soo cute. I hope you're getting more readers especially after your advertisement on ToMu, which is how I found it.
I'll be back in a few days to see how this goes... intresting so far.
Hey Courtney and Jasam -
Thanks for the kind words! Keep coming back, I got enough posts for the next 200+ consecutive days...
Looks like the story's off to an interesting start! I'll definitely be checking back.
(BTW, I found my way here from the ad on Tales of MU.)
Well colour me suprised! I follow a link of ToMu and read all your story, quite getting into it, scroll back to the top at the end and it's by Darren Pillsbury of Imaginary Friends fame!
Nice to see you have another project going, mate, I'll be sure to stay tuned!
Thanks, MissLynx!
MissE - awesome! Always glad to have an IMAGINARY FRIENDS reader on board! Keep coming back! (And for anybody else wondering what IMAGINARY FRIENDS is, don't worry - there's a link coming soon.)
This is a really cool story. The kind of thing I'd love to have in print some day if I have kids! Keep up the good work, I can't wait to make it through the backlog and start reading it as you post it!
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