DISCLAIMER: ALL CHARACTERS HEREIN ARE OVER THE AGE OF 18. I do not condone any abuse of any kind IRL, and everything herein is just fantasy. Do not attempt to re-enact anything you read here.
Carl was eager to set out and get to know where they would be staying for the foreseeable future -- at least until college applications came back. He had already began drafting his, a lengthy diatribe which sat ominously on the desktop, forever beckoning him to complete it whenever is parents weren't doing so.
That could wait, though. He donned a yellow jacket as the rather moist climate seemed prone to rain, and set off. The garden itself was long since dead, none of the plants having been tended to in years no doubt. That was something he could change, maybe. The land itself seemed to have no trouble growing things. Old brick paths wound around the rather ostentatious garden design, layered upon itself. Wrought iron fitting archways spotted around reminded him just how long ago it might have been since anybody paid more than a passing glance to the garden he was in.
The nearby hills were, he discovered, adrift with winding paths you could get lost in without a handy smart phone and GPS. The almost fairytale like surroundings had him wistful for a youth that, in retrospect, he realized he had never really had. He turned and looked into the trees. Foreboding darkness dwelled within as the canopies grew thicker, and who knew what lay within.
Nothing. Nothing lay in the woods, he reminded himself. Monsters didn't exist. Nobody was around, nobody could see him.
"Who cares?" he thought. "I'm going to have a childhood after all, starting now."
Nearby, a small rustle caught his attention. Cautiously, he approached some long grass and moved it apart with a shoe. Nothing. Well, not nothing. A perfectly shaped stick... a dowsing rod! Someone must have left it here. Left it for so long grass grew up over it. He wondered who's it had been. How long ago had a child stood right where he was, holding this very thing?
Maybe it was just the anxiety of the move but such deep, drawing feelings were coming naturally to him. Maybe it was just the history of the place rubbing off on him. Ancient things rubbing and grinding against his psyche... no wonder he felt so young and spritely.
He let the dowsing rod guide him, holding it out in front. He wasn't a child, he knew they didn't work, but it felt so refreshing so... liberating to just let his inner child out for once. None of his self-entertainment for years had ever felt like this. He really did feel like a kid again.
He let big, comical steps guide him down the path, and just drank in what he saw around him. The forest was a little creepy, especially when he let his inner child's mind do the thinking for him. It made him a little giddy to be free again, to think outside of that logical, reasoned way his parents had drilled into him for so long. Being a kid again, or at least feeling like one, felt so liberating.
There was, apparently, an old well around here and he was determined to find it. That was what a kid would do, they'd spend all day looking for something that might not be there just because someone said it could be. So he would too.
Occasionally he felt a little twitch in the dowsing rod, as if something was pulling him one way or another. He knew that wasn't how it worked. It was a subconscious thing, the mind was interpreting micro-movements of the arms and hands as being from a source other than itself. He didn't mind though. Where the 'spirits' guided him he would go.
Again, it was hard to shake the feeling of being watched. Occasionally he would cast an eye back down the trail behind him, or into the woods and hills either side. Nothing was ever there. When a pebble or two came tumbling down he was sure there had to be someone up there, but even when he made little treks off the path to see, no sign of anyone, or anything was visible.
The thick canopied trees grew even darker as the day wore on, and there in the interior it was impossible not to let those stories he'd been told by his more fantastical family member, namely his Auntie Elle, spring to mind. Creatures that dwelt just outside of human sight, on the edge of the forests, luring unwary children in with songs and tricks of the light until they found themselves lost, and maybe no longer even in the forest at all...
Then he heard it. The rocks came tumbling down the hill just a short way behind him, and this time they were accompanied by the grind of rocks and sand above.
He took off running, his imagined fear just for a moment mingling with a little genuine paranoia. He had been genuinely startled, even if he had overreacted just for fun.
Panting for breath, he stood at a fork in the paths, and listened carefully as the wind picked up. It could have been anything, a fox maybe, someone's pet from a house in the land around. He lifted the dowsing rod again and, oddly, it did feel different. Probably the adrenaline, he thought, as he felt his right hand tugging stronger and stronger. He spun, partly to keep the childish fantasy alive and, partly, to make doubly sure he was alone just in case, and nothing was sneaking up on him.
The rod was tugging and tugging, and once or twice he could have sworn it wasn't him pulling it. The wind was picking up and he tugged the hood of his yellow jacket up in anticipation of the weather, and maybe just a little bit out of fear. He spun in a circle slowly, and again, and froze as he heard that crunch sound from the hill behind him.
He spun on the spot and saw a dark figure come roaring down the hill, a light beaming as a cloak fluttered behind them. He screamed, threw his hands up in front of his face, and felt mud splatter against him as whatever it was roared past within a few inches, and he hit the dirt.
Clad in a black jacket and gloves, which were adorned with the print of a skeleton, a figure stood aside their mountain bike staring down at him. They lifted up a screen on their helmet -- the source of the light -- and Carl was surprised to see a girl looking down at him.
"Hi, you must be new around here. From somewhere dry, I guess," she said in a rather stilted, awkward tone, and Carl realized she was holding his dowsing rod... or stick. "I've heard of people using these before but I don't think you know how the magic in them works."
"What the heck's your problem you could have hit me!" he retorted.
"Right, sorry. I wanted to stop you from getting too close to the well," and at that, she nearly dropped the rod as she stumbled down the hill, shouting "get back!"
