Havoc and Consequence

HOME – II

It was not until later that he got to investigate the mysterious book. He must have fallen asleep after Grace left. These drugs must be pretty strong, he thought to himself. His mother had obviously come in and moved the book onto his bedside table. A fresh glass of water was evidence of her activity, along with an extra blanket now resting upon him. He heard her downstairs in the kitchen, singing along to the radio. Probably preparing dinner, he thought.

He reached across for the book, trying not to lift his leg off the bed as he turned. His fingers felt their way toward the leather and, though the room was dark, he could have sworn the book moved slightly toward him. A small vibration of life. It was getting dark outside, so lifting the book onto his lap he turned on the lamp beside him.

Dinosaur silhouettes danced across his ceiling, the old lamp from his childhood still determined to follow him into his teenage years. Zachary opened the cover and looked at the first page. A huge square seemed to stretch down into the book, as if pulling him inward. He blinked, trying to adjust his focus. It must be an optical illusion, he thought, and blinked again to disperse the fuzziness. Looking closer, he realised the lines of the shape were actually words that spiralled down into a centre point. They were so tiny they were almost indecipherable; each line stacked upon the next. Most strange.

They seemed to be English mixed with a few unfamiliar characters, but he could not make out what they said because of the handwriting. He turned the page, hoping for a clue. One name stared back at him: Edward T. Reynolds. He turned to the next page with a crinkle of old paper, none the wiser. The smell of aged pages and the damp scent of Grace’s attic reached his nose. Outside his window he heard alley cats fighting. Night had crept in and the evening stars had begun to shine. Zach shivered under his sheets.

To whomever reads this book be warned, there is more entailed than words adorned.
Within these pages lies a truth, one that is found in innocence’s youth.
Monsters, myths and things to frighten, can lead to fear that terrorises and tightens
around you in the dead of night, it seeps inside with death and fright.
So be brave and true upon this quest, a resourceful heart will need no rest.
To see what is there and what resides inside you,
Strength and courage come to but a chosen few.

Zach reread this several times before he understood what it meant. He had never read a book with a warning before. He had seen censored books at his local library, tantalising titles that for some reason had been banned at some point. The notion had always made him laugh. They are just words, he had thought. How can words hurt anyone? Yet the warning seemed to leap off the page at him now. The calligraphy looked as if it moved, the words shifting toward him as if by magic, dancing before his eyes. Intrigued, Zach continued turning the pages.

He flicked again to the back of the book to see the empty ones. The blank pages looked as if they had doubled since before. At the very back, the page before the cover held three letters:

לאר

Zach had seen these types of characters before. He had seen them when his grandma took him to church when he was younger. He knew she had been Jewish, and he figured this was Jewish writing. She had died last year, though no one had really told him what had happened. His mum had simply sat on his bed and told him she had gone, and that she would no longer be around.

He had not asked about death, or heaven, or what happens when someone dies. His mother had taken his silence for sadness, since he and his grandmother had been close. Though comforting, she had not explained anything to him. The truth was, Zach had so many questions, but he did not know where to start.

So, he had kept silent, internalising it all. He had seen the writing in the prayer books around her house and on some of the framed pictures on her walls. Also, in the church they had visited many times. She would have been able to read this, he thought. A cold chill settled on his shoulders as memories of her rose up. He looked toward the window to see if it was open. It was closed.

Zach snuggled further under his sheets, letting the warmth envelop him. He turned back to the beginning of the book, skipping past the strange drawing and the author’s page. There were chapter names, handwritten like the rest of the book. The first one was a single word: Afraid. This book was certainly unusual, he thought, closing it suddenly. He decided he needed to pee. He had been holding it for a while, because the last time he had gone to the bathroom it had taken ages with his cast. The slightest movement in his room seemed to summon his mother up the stairs, and he did not want to bother her again.

He put the book down on the bed and slipped onto the floor. The cast made a thud on the wooden boards, and Zach waited to see if his mother would come up. Nothing. He looked over at the phone on his desk and saw the red light glowing, indicating someone was on the line. She must be calling his dad, he thought. His dad worked strange hours at his office, something to do with international time zones, though Zach did not really know what he did. He only knew he liked it when his dad worked from home, because he would make Zach pancakes for breakfast.

Edging toward the door, Zach stepped out onto the landing, forgoing the crutches, though not without difficulty. He made his way to the bathroom, passing the pictures of his uncle and grandmother that hung at the top of the stairs. He turned on the bathroom light. It flickered and popped with a flash. Damn, he thought. He would have to pee in the dark.

The moon had risen and cast its glow through the window into the bathroom. Zach finished up and returned to his bedroom, much colder for the effort. The book was propped against his pillow, open at the start of the first story. Zach stopped in the doorway, looking around his room. This was getting strange now, he thought. He definitely had not left the book like that.

He moved closer to the bed and stared at it. There was a strange picture at the top of the page, etched in black ink, again with a sense of movement. He picked up the book and got back into bed, lifting his leg with both hands. His elbow twanged with pain, reminding him that it was not just his leg that had been injured in the fall.

Well, it is just a story, he thought, and it will be a while before dinner.

So, he began to read.

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Flight or Fight

The day dragged on, dull and uneventful, the kind of day that seemed to stretch itself thin just to spite him. Science had been a blur of diagrams and droning explanations, algebra was a battlefield of numbers that refused to behave, but it wasn’t only the lessons that made the hours crawl. Grace’s empty seat beside him had left a hollow in the day. He hadn’t realised how much he relied on her running commentary, her whispered jokes, her ability to make even the worst lessons feel survivable. Misery loved company, and without her, he’d had to face the misery alone.

She was supposed to return after her dentist appointment, but she never appeared. He imagined her at home, curled up on the sofa with a blanket and a packet of crisps, watching something ridiculous on TV. Toothache or not, she’d make the most of a day off.

When the final bell rang, Zach felt the relief ripple through the class like a collective exhale. He packed his books slowly, delaying the inevitable moment when he’d have to face the homework his teacher had piled on them. More fractions. More equations. More torture. He slung his bag over his shoulder and joined the stream of students spilling out of the gates, already deciding he’d stop by Grace’s house before heading home. Just to check on her. Just to see her.

He turned the corner, and walked straight into the group he’d gone out of his way to avoid that morning.

“Watch it!” snapped the biggest of them, a round‑shouldered boy whose bulk made him look older than he was. His eyes didn’t quite meet Zach’s; they drifted slightly to the left, as if he couldn’t bear to look directly at the person he was threatening.

For a moment, Zach thought the boy must be talking to someone else. But then two of the cronies rolled their bikes in close, hemming him in with metal frames and muddy tyres. No mistake. He was the target.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Zach said, his voice catching on the words. His mind flicked through escape routes like a deck of cards.

“I’m hard to miss,” the boy spat. “Maybe you wanted to bang into me. Maybe I’m not important enough for an excuse me… huh?” He leaned forward, breath pungent, eyes narrowing. “Maybe you wanted me to have a little chat with you. Teach you some manners.”

“Lots of maybes there,” Zach muttered before he could stop himself. His mouth always betrayed him at the worst possible moments.

The boy straightened, looming. “Maybe I just punch you in the stomach and take your bag, eh, wise‑ass?”

Zach swallowed hard, feeling like a cartoon character about to be flattened.

“What’s going on there, Collins?” a voice called from behind.

Mr. Langley stood at the school gates, hands in pockets, watching them with that calm, steady expression teachers used when they were about to intervene. Geography teacher. One of the few who didn’t make Zach want to claw his ears off.

“Nothing, sir,” one of the lads said quickly, all innocence and wide eyes.

Zach didn’t wait. He shoved past the bikes and bolted down the pavement, heart thudding. He risked a glance back. Collins looked furious, spinning his bike wheel in frustration as Mr. Langley approached. A lecture was coming, and Zach wasn’t sticking around to hear it. He ran until he reached the traffic lights, which took an eternity to change, then disappeared down the street.

He wanted to get home quickly. The sky was already bruising into evening, clouds gathering like a warning. But he couldn’t take his usual route. If the bullies decided to follow, their bikes would catch him in seconds. And he absolutely wasn’t going down Henley Avenue again. Not after what he’d seen there. Not today.

He turned onto Rosebank, a quiet cul‑de‑sac lined with neat bungalows and tidy gardens. Cats lounged on low walls, blinking lazily at him as he passed. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and cut grass. He slipped down the side of a house with a huge caravan under a flapping tarp, found the narrow gap in the fence, and squeezed through into the overgrown alleyway beyond.

Not many people knew about this cut‑through. It was technically someone’s driveway, which made it risky, but it sliced a huge chunk off the walk home. Zach moved quickly, stepping around old carrier bags and the shattered remains of an oven whose metal innards spilled across the mud like a gutted creature. The alley narrowed, funnelling him toward the dead‑end he knew was coming.

The only way out was up.

He looked at the tree rising before him, its branches reaching over the fence like skeletal arms. Wedged into the trunk, as if the tree had grown around it, stood an old black lamppost with an iron frame and a glass lantern. Somehow, despite the usual vandalism in places like this, the glass remained intact. As if people sensed it was needed.

Right on cue, the lamp flickered to life, glowing a warm, fragile orange in the deepening gloom. The branches above curled down like a giant withered hand, as though trying to swallow the lamppost whole.

He began to climb. He’d done it once before with Grace, she’d made it look easy, laughing as she swung herself over the fence. Thinking of her now steadied him, just a little.

Halfway up, he glanced back. He could still see the caravan through the rain, though a huge bush blocked most of the view. He thought he heard something, a rustle, a footstep? The rain thickened, cold and heavy, drumming on the bare branches and soaking his hair, his clothes, his skin.

He looked over the fence. The drop was bigger than he remembered. Much bigger. The alley on the other side opened into a back lane of garages, abandoned cars, and a sagging sofa being slowly eaten by rats. The street beyond led almost directly to Grace’s house.

Then he heard voices.

He pressed himself into the trunk, trying to vanish into the bark. Through the gaps between houses; he saw the gang drifting down the street, shouting, laughing, smashing a bottle against someone’s wall. Their hoodies kept the rain off; they didn’t seem to care about the weather.

A bark split the air behind him.

Zach twisted, heart hammering. Nothing. A dog from one of the houses? No. This bark was deeper, stranger. The Lore house dog. That awful, guttural sound that had haunted him since the morning.

Another bark. Closer.

A shape moved at the far end of the alley.

Too big to be a dog.

Rain blurred everything, turning the world into streaks of grey, but he could make out a figure. Tall. Dark. Shuffling. The sound of the dog now seemed to come from below him, but when he looked down, the ground was empty.

He edged forward. He’d rather face Collins than… whatever this was.

He looked back again and froze.

The figure was clearer now. The same hat. The same coat. The same sunken eyes he’d seen at Lore house. Drifting toward him like a skeleton pulled from the mist, with withered hands hanging from the sleeves.

Zach’s breath caught.

He edged along the branch. He had to get down. Now. The barks stretched unnaturally, as if time itself was being pulled thin. The figure lifted its head.

Zach slipped.

The world flipped. The ground slammed into him with a crack like splintering wood. Air blasted from his lungs. For a heartbeat he lay stunned, suspended in shock, then pain erupted through him, sharp and total. His elbow had taken the brunt; his leg twisted beneath him.

A raw, broken scream tore out of him.

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Lore House

“Remember this please, none of this is real.
It’s only how I feel”

Zach hated to walk this way to school, but this morning the circumstances left him with little choice. The kids who had stolen his lunch money last week had been at the corner of the high street, lurking and threatening people as they went by. They weren’t choosy about who they stole from either, with many of the kids in his class falling victim to their bullying needs. It wasn’t even about the money, or what little they actually got; they did it simply because they could. It would have been fine if Grace was with him, he thought, as she always gave him the feeling of combined strength.

He was sure they wouldn’t take anything if she were here. Their agenda so far seemed to have some moral boundaries, excluding girls from their reign of terror. Together they would have crossed over to the other side and walked to school like they did most mornings, chatting and dreading another dull day at Braxton Hill Comprehensive. But Grace was off to the dentist, something she was extremely excited about, as she’d told him the day before when they walked home together. Grace was his neighbour, living two doors down, and she was his best friend.

They’d been friends for what seemed like forever, though in truth it had only been two years since Zach and his family had moved into the neighbourhood. He was a little shy at meeting new people, which was fine, because Grace was more than happy to come up to you, shake your hand, and invite you over for lunch. She was taller than Zach, though he’d begun to think he’d grown a little more in the past few months. When they walked side by side now, he noticed she no longer seemed to tower over him.

They would walk the same route every morning to school, stopping at the store for Mars bars and KitKats depending on what mood they were in; unless Grace was in one of her “more savoury moods,” in which case they would stock up on crisps and nut bars.

But this morning Grace was dentist‑bound, which left Zach walking to school by himself. Opting to forgo being idiotically brave, he’d chosen to go the long way to avoid the bullies, which he hated to do. Not just because it took him twice as long, but because it took him down Henley Avenue, which presented the notorious Lore House, an old crumbling ruin which every kid in school would tell you was either haunted, or where a murderer lived, or that it used to be an old mental asylum. Depending on who you talked to, and how inclined they were toward the frightful. The Lore property was a grand Victorian house that dominated the south side of Henley Avenue. Even walking on the opposite side of the street was no good, as the house seemed to pull you in with its iron fences that curled at the tips like long, twisted bony fingers reaching out. Zach hated it; he hated the street, the house, and how it made him feel.

He didn’t think he was a nervous person generally, but there was something about the street and that old house that really unnerved him. The dead trees in the yard and the old car rusting away in the driveway did nothing to improve its appearance or his suspicions of what lay within. He wasn’t sure about witches or ghosts, but he knew something unpleasant lived there.

No kids lived on Henley Avenue either, as far as he knew; and the other houses, though less creepy, weren’t the most welcoming he’d ever seen. Zach quickened his pace, hoping his twelve‑year‑old legs would not give up on him. The last time he’d come down this road had been with Grace, on the last day of school before the summer holidays. In their free spirits they had decided to come down the street, altering their usual route home in the excitement of summer freedom.

The street led to a cut‑through to Ash Park, one of the best parks in town, as it normally accommodated an ice‑cream van, and subsequently, children high on sugary creamy wonderment causing riots on sunny days.

He remembered how they had been caught up in talk of plans for the summer. Grace was going to France for the first week and had invited Zach to come with her, her parents eager for her to bring a friend. Zach had never been to France before, and excited though he was, he’d sworn he wouldn’t be eating any frog’s legs. They had stopped suddenly outside the Lore House as Grace complained of something in her shoe.

No one really knew why the house was called the Lore House; it was one of those things passed on in each retelling. The most popular story was that it used to be an old orphanage run by an evil spectre of a man who would lock the children in rooms no bigger than cells, starving and torturing them into soulless zombies. Grace had taken off her left shoe and was tapping it on the pavement to remove any stowaways when they heard an almighty cry.

At first Zach thought it was a cat in distress, as he’d often heard cats in the alley behind his house crying and calling to each other in the night. But Grace stood up in alarm. Suddenly they heard whispers coming from the right side of the house. Another scream pierced their bright sunny afternoon. It was still hard to tell if the noise came from an animal or a person. Then there were shouts, and Grace had gone up to the gates, as if to be closer to the action, or in Zach’s thoughts, danger. He had tried to get her to come away, but she said she’d seen something in one of the windows, a huge shape, she insisted.

He stepped forward to pull her back when suddenly a huge black dog jumped from the bushes and leapt towards the fence, crashing through the stinging nettles and leaves. It barked and snapped, saliva flinging through the bars from its slobbering mouth while they both jumped back in alarm. With that, they had turned and run to the end of the street, not looking back but hearing the dog’s bark follow them all the way, accompanied by hostile screams and shouts from someone, or something.

Now Zach was here on his own, and he horribly remembered that day and missed Grace not being just an arm’s length away. He quickened his pace going past the house, mindful not to look at it at all. The gloomy sky above him was promising rain.

An old Ford Fiesta came trundling up the road, its exhaust giving off a black plume of smoke in its wake. Zach waited for it to pass before he crossed over. He didn’t want to linger down this road longer than he had to, but something made him turn back. He looked up the pavement and there, lying on the floor on the opposite side of the road, were some of his school books. He suddenly took off his backpack, Kermit the Frog grinned up at him, his mouth the zipper, which had come undone and allowed his books to tumble out. No doubt as he’d hurried past the house, he thought.

Annoyed, he quickly crossed back over and went to retrieve his books. While picking them up, he looked up at the old Lore House. Smoke was coming out of the chimney stack perched precariously in the middle of the roof which, to Zach, looked like it would topple over at any moment.

A giant black bird took off from the roof, a huge feather falling to the ground over the fence. Smoke, he thought; that means someone does live there. Packing the books into his bag and securing the zip, he started off again when suddenly a flash of light caught his attention. Looking to the left, he saw the giant wooden door to the house close, the glass window at the top catching the sunlight like a huge eye. Was someone leaving? Despite being afraid, curiosity kept him rooted to the spot. A sudden bang startled him, so loud that a bird in the tree next to him took flight with a disgruntled hoot.

He suddenly heard the sound of faint music, old music, like the type his grandma would listen to whenever he stayed at her house. It was haunting music, warbling over the bushes towards him. Zach stepped back and stole a quick glance around the hedge.

He saw an old figure shuffling down the drive to the side of the house. He couldn’t make out the features very well, though Zach guessed him to be very old, and he was wearing a strangely styled hat. He heard a door open and then the patter of feet. Suddenly the huge black dog came into view. Noticing; if not smelling. Zach, it barked furiously, a strange bark that ripped through him and echoed dimly all around. Without looking back, Zach fled from the house and ran all the way to the end of the street. He barely dodged the number 45 bus, causing the driver to sound his horn. He ran past other kids on their way to school and came to rest outside the school gates, where he stopped to catch his breath. He promised himself he would never go down that road again, with or without Grace.

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