The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [143]
It was only much later that another witness was attested to have been there with them that night; as far as Andrew had heard, the enigmatic figure he’d seen that night upon the playground blacktop had even been present in his own home, though the linking evidence to this boy they called Simon BoLeve was beyond him...it was either through fingerprints dating back from a juvenile record, through bragging to his friends, hell...maybe someone else saw him that night and had taken a Polaroid. The next and last thing Andrew learned was that this Simon had soon afterwards vanished without a trace.
Through all of this, Bari had been there for Andrew still, from his adoption into the household of his Uncle Kenny and Aunt Jamie on until now.
Now, Andrew was ready to live on his own.
And Ralston was the key.
The key to many things.
So Bari insisted.
Bari was the reason for Andrew being there, like he was at the side entrance of Ralston’s garage.
More for Bari and less for Andrew, this meeting was a big deal.
Ralston might likely make a big deal out of it in his own way, but that was okay.
A big deal was to be made.
***
Andrew had many stories to tell, especially by the age of ten and carried enough ambition to actually execute them onto paper. He nurtured several of these stories, the ones he saw fit to let survive because he believed enough in them, and with dedication and discipline he perfected them. By his second year in high school, he submitted all of his perfected stories for publication to a handful of science fiction, fantasy and horror magazines. In a short period of time, one of those magazines, the Chicago-based Fantastic Escapades, purchased and published The Lure of the Cauldron for two hundred dollars. Needless to say, the Halloween issue of the mag made Andrew quite a popular guy with his eleventh grade classmates.
Two more of Andrew’s stories were published and circulated by the beginning of the following year. For a high-schooler, any writer would have only but to dream of such sweet acceptance and response.
And then...early within that same year, there came a telephone call and an offer for Andrew to pen the novelization for the sequel to a successful film.
Into The Grave II was released in trade paperback a mere month before Andrew’s high school graduation.
Potentially, it could’ve launched a grand career.
And it did...
...but not for its author.
***
No more than five to ten minutes had passed and Ralston still hadn’t noticed Andrew poised against the opened side doorway of his garage.
Andrew was in no hurry for his attention; Bari was indeed becoming a nuisance with her coaxing Andrew a mere few yards away, visible only to him and hovering about along the walkway on the outer side of the garage wall. She was engaged in ceaseless coaching, very distracting for a young man like Andrew who held no desire to be there at all. Sometimes she was like this with Andrew...like a bronze, half-transparent female version of Burgess Meredith harshly instructing Rocky Balboa on the right things to do.
On things meant to be.
Ralston climaxed his vocals in a crescendo of rape against the microphone head when he glanced Andrew’s way. He recognized Andrew like a trauma patient to a revelation of the end of the world. His happy moment burst in the way a needle would meet a balloon and his music silenced in mid-twang.
“Holy mother of shit,” Ralston exclaimed, his eyes ablaze and fixed upon Andrew. A tumult of instinctive fright resembling demonic possession overtook him just then, like a nudist bather suddenly under assault by killer bees. He frantically wrestled his guitar strap up over his shoulders and stumbled away from the microphone stand. He flung his guitar onto the ground before him like a spooked soldier relinquishing his weapon in defenseless retreat at the face of the enemy.
He turned to flee, his palm thrusting onto the wall button of the automated carport door, which couldn’t quite seem to respond to his demands and cursings. The