The Valley

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley. Vampires weren’t real, and ghosts were a figment of your imagination. At least that’s what the grown-ups in our small town would have us believe. Except I realized that those lies were the stories they told us to protect their secret. That secret? Dragons were real, and Vampires walked amongst us and ghosts, well, ghosts made all things go bump in the night.

It wasn’t until she moved to town that I noticed all the oddities that she pointed out. Her name was Cordelia, and she had the longest strawberry blonde hair that I had ever seen. When most people talk about strawberry blonde hair, they talk about the color. For me, it was her scent. Her hair smelled like strawberries. It reminded me of one of those dolls that my mother always talked about—strawberry something or other. In any case, whenever I was around her, I would catch the faintest scent of strawberries. If my hair had a smell, it would be that of chocolate because everything about me was a rich chocolate brown. My skin, my eyes and even my hair. No, that’s a lie. My hair was as black as the ink that oozed out of a squid’s butt at the first sight of danger.

Cordelia, or Delia as she preferred to be called, moved in next door that summer.

It was the first day of summer break, and I was bored. I was lying in my bed, bouncing a tennis ball off the ceiling, trying to decide what I was going to do. The pool was closed for maintenance—who closes a pool in the summer for maintenance?

Jess, my best friend, was spending the summer on the coast with her mother. Her parents had just divorced, and her mother took her on an extended summer vacation to get her mind off things. As if soaking up the sun in California could make any fifteen-year-old forget that her parents were a dysfunctional mess. Her words, not mine. So that left me stuck here in my sleepy little town called The Valley with nothing to do. I was about to bounce the ball for the millionth time off the ceiling when the coldest spray of water came blasting through my bedroom door, soaking me faster than a thunderstorm in May.

“Lucas! I’m going to kill you!” I yelled as I jumped out of bed and ran after him.

“You sleep too much.” He yelled back.

I ran down the stairs two at a time and exploded out the front door. Momma was sitting on the front porch shucking peas.

“Well, it’s about time. Idle hands are the devil’s work, child.” Momma said without looking up at me.

"Momma, it’s the first day of summer vacation. Can’t anyone get a moment of peace?”

Momma looked at me and smiled.

“Momma, you better tell Lucas not to do that again, or I’m gonna tie him to that there willow tree and soak him with the hose.”

“I dare you, Abby,” Lucas yelled from across the yard as he danced around.

“Momma!” I pleaded.

“Oh, hush. Lucas, you leave your sister alone, and Abby, I will not tolerate that kind of behaviour in this house, you hear?”

“Oh, my behaviour? Your son just soaked me, and my bed with goodness only knows what, and my behaviour is not tolerated?” I pouted and folded my arms across my chest in defiance.

I was about to storm back inside when the moving truck pulled into the house next door. That house had been vacant for over a year. Ever since the incident. No one—and by no one, I mean us kids—knew what the incident was, only that the McCormicks left in a hurry. This was strange, but stranger still was that they had left all their belongings. It was as if they vanished into thin air. At the last town meeting, all the adults agreed that losing the McCormicks was “unfortunate.” Then they switched the topic to old man Jerimiah and how he needed to curtail his rabbit population. The darn things were breeding like—well, rabbits.

Here’s what I know.

Jenna McCormick was my second-best friend. We had lived next door to each other ever since we were five. Now you might be wondering why we weren’t best friends. The answer was I had known Jenna longer. Actually, my parents had known her parents longer, which meant that Jenna and I had to be best friends. One of the quirks of small-town logic. Anyway, the week before the alleged incident, Jenna said that her dad, Mr. McCormick, was acting strange. Apparently, he had found an old book in their attic. Why Mr. McCormick was in the attic was still a mystery. Mr. McCormick and I say this with the utmost respect; he was a little bit of a scaredy-cat. He hated spiders, and almost everything creeping and crawling terrified him. So why he was up in their dark, mouldy, critter-filled attic remains a mystery. I mean, there were no Christmas decorations up there. His office was on the main floor, and as Mrs. McCormick called it, his man cave was in the shed in the backyard. Yet after finding the book, he became obsessed with it and their attic.

Jenna and I caught a glimpse of the book’s title just before her dad grabbed it from Jenna's hand and forbade her ever to lay eyes, let alone hands on it again.

What was the name of that damn book again?

I was deep in thought, trying to think of the name of that book, when I saw her wave. I waved back instinctively, and at that moment, our friendship was ignited. Little did I know that this friendship would change our lives forever.