A Beginning

Any ghost hunter or paranormal investigator will tell you that the middle of the night is the perfect time – to watch, to ask, to act.

This isn’t a paranormal investigation or a ghost hunt, but those are all I can think about, so I’m not getting any sleep anyway. I check the clock on my nightstand – 3:24am. Dad will wake up in about three hours and go straight to work. Mom will wake up around the same time, and she’ll wake me up for breakfast and school. I sigh. School, one of the most tedious wastes of time I can imagine. I’d much rather be on a ghost hunt, or looking for aliens or UFOs, or…anything.

I groan and get up. This is pointless, I’m never going to get to sleep now. I grab my phone, checking for any messages that might have come through when I was asleep. They would have been late, but Borden’s relationship with his cell phone was questionable at best. The most surprising part about the idea of him texting late would be the fact that he had his phone to begin with.

I can’t open any outside doors or windows without the alarm’s chime going off. We never bother to active that alarm itself, but the chime is constant. I’m not sure if it’d wake my parents, but I’m not willing to risk it, so I go down to the basement, and further down still to the wine cellar. Two stories underground and stocked with more liquor than actual wine, it has its own separate security system that includes a code to open the door. My parents don’t know Borden figured out the code three weeks ago, but I’m able to use it to sneak through their at-home-bar and to the freestanding shelves in the back. Pulling them away from the wall isn’t easy, but once I do, the tunnel unwinds ahead of me, a black pit of darkness waiting to consume me. Not for the first time, I wonder what’s hidden down here that few human eyes can see.

I take out my phone, using it as a flashlight to light the way ahead of me, a few feet at a time. Time doesn’t seem to exist down here in the darkness, so I’m not sure how long the walk takes me. I try to check on my phone, but the clock is frozen at 3:32am. I try to count off the seconds, but lose count at 94. Before I can think of another way, I’m too far in for it to matter.

The tunnel ends in a crypt in the graveyard. It’s locked, but I know a master lockpick. I pull out my cell phone and call Spyro.

Spyro doesn’t answer until I’m half convinced it’ll just go to voicemail. “Gatsby,” he mutters in a sleepy voice. “Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I need you to go get Borden and then come let me out.”

“Let you out? Let you out of what?”

“A crypt in the graveyard.”

Spyro just starts laughing. His laughter’s always contagious, I can’t help but join in despite my circumstances. “Spyro! I’m serious!”

“I know,” he laughs, “that’s why it’s so funny.”

“Oh my god,” I hang up on him, still laughing.

My phone clock’s working again. It takes about twenty minutes before Borden and Spyro show up on their bicycles, bumping them up the curb in front of the graveyard’s gate and parking them against the fence.

“ARE ANY DEAD MEN STILL ALIVE IN HERE?!” Borden yells, and Spyro laughs in response.

“Would you just get in here and help me?!” I call back to them, and they both laugh now. It takes them another five minutes to get the graveyard gate unlocked, and then the padlock to the crypt I’m stuck in, finally freeing me.

“Where to now?” Borden asks, locking the crypt back up behind me.

“I’m thinking ice cream,” I tell them. Spyro grins and Borden nods in agreement. “With Rune.”

“He’s going to think we’re crazy, showing up at 4am two days after first meeting him,” Spyro points out.

“Who says he’d be wrong?” Borden asks. That makes Spyro laugh – everything makes Spyro laugh.

I grin, “If he’s going to hang with us, he’s going to have to learn that quickly.”

“Do you know where he lives?” Spyro asks.

“I know where everybody lives, sport,” I wave a hand dismissively. They grab their bikes from the fence, but since I don’t have mine, they walk with them instead of ride them. We pass the 24-hour convenience store on our way, so they leave their bikes there.

When we get to Rune’s house, Borden goes up to each window, peering through to find Rune’s bedroom. Spyro and I stay back, at the edge of the yard, ready to run in case the cops show up.

“He looks like a stalker,” Spyro whispers with a grin, and I struggle not to burst out laughing. When Borden finds Rune’s bedroom, he motions for us to come over, but he’s already knocking on the window by the time we get there. Incessantly. Spyro and I snigger at that too.

Rune opens the window, his hair wild from sleep, but he’s still wearing the clothes he was wearing in school today.

“You sleep in your clothes?” Borden, as usual, says what probably all three of us are thinking.

“I fell asleep studying,” Rune snaps, tired and irritable. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re going to get ice cream,” I grin at Rune. “Come on.”

Rune just stares at us for a minute. “Who sneak up to someone’s window at 4am to go for ice cream?” he asks incredulously.

“Trust me, sport, some day we will be sneaking through windows to do far worse things. Some day very soon.” Borden, Spyro and I all exchange knowing looks, but Rune’s too new still to know my plans for the future. He will soon though. Maybe even tonight. But for now, he just sighs in defeat and climbs through the window to join us.