"Haley Gets Her Heart Broken"
May. 20th, 2022 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Haley Gets Her Heart Broken"
5/28-5/20/2013
I.
"Jasper left with his friends twenty minutes ago."
Sitting on the waist-high stone retaining wall in front of Coolidge High, Haley Lawson gave a start. "Gina! Hi. I wasn't waiting for Jasper. I'm just thinking."
Almost a year younger than her BFF, Gina Giacomo was a petite girl, Italian on both sides with long wavy black hair to prove it. She dumped her bookbag unceremoniously on the sidewalk and hopped up on the wall to sit with her legs tucked under her. "Who are you kidding? You're one step away from standing outside his house at night hoping he'll walk past a window."
"No way. Come on, Gina, I like the guy but I dunno, he looks right through me. My vanity is stung, that's all." Five feet eight, Haley Lawson was six inches taller than her pal, long-legged and rangy compared to Gina's curves. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail that was getting too long to manage. Haley's best features were her large lime-green eyes and lately she had been trying to accent them with some liner. "You wouldn't know how it is. You're too hot for your own good. Every day, you have to shove the boys off so they don't bury you in a dogpile."
"Hah. So true. But Bentley and I have been serious for two years now. I wouldn't risk losing him for anything."
"Speaking of Bentley, where is he anyway?"
"Working at Price Chopper. Twenty hours a week now. Too bad he has to punch in right after school, but he gets off at seven and tonight we're going to watch a Slamface concert at my house."
Haley nodded gravely and fiddled with the knapsack next to her. "Less than a month until we graduate and we're outta here, Gina. I have mixed feelings. Everything's all set with the Kenneth Dred Foundation. On June 22nd, I take the Greyhound and move into headquarters on 38th Street."
Gina grinned so widely it seemed it must hurt. "And Windcatcher will save the world from all the monsters that come out in the middle of the night! Oh my God, you must be so excited."
"I guess. I mean, it seems a little unreal, ya know? I still can't understand why I'm not a world-famous celebrity. A girl who can literally fly and cause thunderstorms and tornados. But no one in Glenville seems impressed. As if it's no big deal. I don't get it."
"Me and Bentley were talking about it," Gina said. "We think it's kind of some side effect of your Air Gem. That thing is magic like nobody's business. We think maybe the stone dampens people's reaction to you. Otherwise, you'd be on the news alla time, giving interviews, being asked to the White House, getting called to help out with disasters."
"Beats me." Haley shifted her weight restlessly. She tugged at the calico-colored shirt which was clinging to her back. "Sure is hot today. How about I summon a tornado and we fly out to Lake Schoonmaker?"
"You figure Jasper will be there drinking beer and smoking weed with his friends, right?"
Haley tried to keep a straight face but couldn't repress a grin any longer. "Coullllld be. Anyway we can get some footlongs and soda at the stand there. What do you say?"
"You got it bad, girl." Gina bumped her shoulder up against her friend and Haley bumped her right back. "He's gonna be your second partner, right?"
"Ah, that thing with Beckert was mostly out of curiosity. I didn't like it all that much." Haley hopped to her feet and stretched, then started trying to shrug into her knapsack, Gina giving her a hand. "This thing weighs a TON," she complained. "All my textbooks and my Ipad and charger and my phone's charger and some Tylenol and my art supplies, not to mention my Windcatcher outfit. I'm folding up my cape to fit in there, it still takes up a lot of space."
"The hard life of Long Island's resident super-hero," Gina scoffed, making sure her own bookbag was strapped securely. "Do you have enough for curly fries? I'm busted."
"That's what all the boys say! You're busted, har har."
"Extremely hilarious, Hales. Okay. I'm all set."
Haley held out her arm and Gina took it, also wrapping a thin arm around her friend's waist. "This is not the gay, I just don't wanna get dropped on my head."
"That only happened ONCE and you were fine." Concentrating and visualizing, Haley sensed a full tornado out in Oklahoma. She drew some of those two hundred mile per hour winds through a gralic gate. With a rush and a roar, Windcatcher and Gina were flung upward and out of sight almost instantly.
Speech was impossible within the vortex of furiously whirling air. How the two of them were able to breathe at all during the flight was another mystery. It was sixteen miles from midtown Glenville to the shores of Lake Schoonmaker and Haley was not using her top speed to keep Gina from distress.
But within a few minutes, the winds lessened and they descended at a good clip. Both knew how to drop their legs and bend their knees before landing, but this time they touched down as lightly as if hopping down off a kitchen chair.
"You are getting much better at that," Gina said with relief. "When you first started, I saw you take some awful spills."
"Tell me about it. Practice all day every day, that's the trick." Windcatcher pointed at the crowd of twenty people who were lazing about the lake, including those who were gathered at the trailer which sold hot dogs and hamburgers, bottles of soda and bags of chips. "I mean, what the hell? We come sailing down out of the sky! It's astonishing! Only everyone looks up and then goes back to what they were doing."
"Wish I'd tied back my hair," was Gina's only response as she began working on the hopeless tangle of her hair with a brush. "Hmm. Smell them burgers on the grill."
"See, you're doing it too!"
"Let's wrap ourselves around some chow, Hales," Gina urged, tugging Windcatcher by one arm. The town had provided a few wooden picnic tables with benches and the two girls plopped down with paper plates laden by double cheeseburgers, large curly fries and one bag of spicy Doritos. Each had a can of soda, root beer for Haley and Diet Pepsi for Gina. They dug in with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
"Oh, that's better. I spent lunch period in the hall on my phone," Gina sighed. "I swear there was an echo in my stomach."
"Yeah, I didn't exactly mind this," agreed Haley. "That mac and cheese in the cafeteria is old enough to walk by itself."
Changing to a sing-song voice, Gina crooned, "Somebody is watching you, Haley Jean..."
Windcatcher swung her head so fast that her ponytail almost knocked over her soda can. "Oh. Is he coming over here? How do I look? Are my bangs straight?"
"Jeez, Hales, what do you think you could do if they weren't straight? Hi, Jasper. Howya doing?"
Sauntering up to them was the tallest senior in the school, gawky with the long torso and limbs of late adolescence. Jasper Brink was wearing his usual tight jeans, baggy green T-shirt and an open white button-front shirt over that with the tail hanging free. That haircut, shaved on the sides but teased on top, annoyed Gina as unbearably pretentious but one glance at her friend showed that Haley liked it fine.
For Windcatcher, the rest of the world faded into foggy irrelevance. All that mattered right then was being approached by this boy, with his cocky smile and complete confidence. "Hey there," she managed to say.
"Hi, girls. Haley, good thing you turned up here."
Unaware of the smitten expression on her face, she said, "It is?"
"Yeah. My squad found something weird in the woods. Nobody knows what to do, we figured you might want to take a look. Ever see a Bigfoot skeleton?"
II.
"Yeah, right," Gina scoffed. "You and the Saulpaugh brothers just want to get two cute girls way out in the woods. We heard all about you and that Naomi." She toyed with the last remaining curly fry before popping it in her mouth.
"Of course we'll go check it out," Haley immediately contradicted her. Catching the withering stare from her friend, she added, "Gina, if you're not safe with me around, when are you safe?"
"You got a point. Okay. I wish there was a place to leave my bag, I hate lugging it on a hike."
"I'll carry it for you," offered Jasper, reaching down to snatch it off the ground. "How about you, Haley?"
"Thanks but I'm fine. Getting in shape, you know." She took their debris over to a wire frame basket and dumped it, then tugged on her knapsack.
The three of them took off at a brisk cantor. Haley was busy absorbing every detail of how Jasper looked and moved, but the infatuation faltered a bit when it sank in that he was definitely flustered. By what had been found out in the woods? A skeleton couldn't hurt anyone, not even if it really was a Bigfoot skeleton.
But then, she realized, in the last year she had experienced so many supernatural events and had met the weirdest people. The fishmen from Ulgor. The Skull-faced guys who took her, Gina and Bentley to some foggy place called Perjena. May Dusa and the grinning horror called Sepulchre. The Teen Tyrants, and being chased by federal agents. Those critters that looked like big spiders with wings. A vague insight stirred in her mind that she had already been exposed to the Midnight War enough that she was very different from other kids her age. It was natural she was more open to the unexplainable.
Then Jasper smiled at her and said, "When we stumbled on the bones, my first thought was to hope you'd come out here today," and she was lost in warm daydreams again.
It wasn't a long hike. Less than a mile along the shore, pine trees marked where public land ended. Peeking out from behind the trees were the two Saulpaugh boys. Franklin was a classic nerd, short and thin, wearing broken glasses held together with a piece of Scotch tape and with his old-man shirt buttoned right up to the neck. A year older, Schuyler was much more relaxed, although the tang of pot smoke clinging to his hair explained some of that. His habit for wearing shirts advertising bands no one had ever heard of was a puzzle in itself.
"You found her!" said Schuyler with a welcoming wave. "Great."
Haley smiled. "I didn't think you jokers knew I was alive."
"Seriously, get serious about serious things," added little Franklin. "Everyone is wondering when you're going to catch some vampires or zombies or something. Glenville was never interesting until you showed up."
"Nice to be appreciated. I guess." Windcatcher turned to Gina and said, "Need a minute to catch your breath?"
"Nah, I'm good."
"Right up here, then." Jasper took the lead up a steep incline where they all had to grab branches and bushes to help pull themselves along. Haley regretted no letting one of the boys carry her knapsack, boys had more upper body strenth. But in another few minutes, slightly sweatier than before, all five teens were circled around a vivid sight.
Stretched out full length on its back was indeed a complete skeleton. Parts had come loose from each other as the tendons and ligaments had rotted away but most of the bones seemed to be unmoved. Manlike but close to seven feet tall, short legged but with abnormally long arms, the skeleton's head featured both a protruding brow ledge and a muzzle crammed with teeth that were close to being jagged tusks.
Staring down at the bones, Haley Lawson was not aware that Jasper Brink had dropped from her thoughts. Since applying for KDF status, much of her free time had been spent researching Midnight War. "Listen, you guys, be on your toes. If I yell run, then you run as if your hair is on fire and your butts are catching."
"Is this... a gorilla? Out here on the Island?"
"Worse than that," Windcatcher said. "This is, or was, a Troll."
III.
"Wot?" asked Franklin. "You mean this is what those jerks on messageboards look like?! If I'd known that, I wouldn't have argued so much with them."
"Not THAT kind of Troll. Sheesh," Haley snorted. "These are the real thing. Monsters that dig tunnels in the ground. Lots of reports that they abduct people for food. There could be a colony of them running around under our feet right now."
"I'm supposed to be home by five," Franklin blurted, back up and tripping over a root so he fell into a sitting position.
"You ain't going anywhere," his brother warned. "I've got the keys to Dad's car."
Some of the smug self-assurance had drained from Jasper's manner as he poked at the bones with a stick. "Hate to see one of these when he's feeling like he wants a snack. Haley, what do you think we should do?"
"Fighting Trolls is not on my bucket list. We need to head back to where everyone is. I'll phone some people I know who are veterans at handling this sort of nightmare. Get Jeremy Bane and a few of his friends out on the scene and even Trolls will take off the other way."
Bent over the skeleton, hands pressed to her thighs for support, Gina asked, "How come nobody saw these bones before? This hill is right out in the open."
"They weren't there back in April," Franklin said. "We were all out here back then on the 20th."
"4/20, right, I get it. But that's still funny. If this Troll died then, how would he already be nothing but bones?" The little Italian straightened up and her piquant face dropped. "Unless..."
Haley had dropped her backpack on the grass and was rummaging through it. "Honey, see those little nicks and digs all over the bones? What do you think they are?"
"How should I know? Wait. Bite...marks?!
"Right the first time," Haley said. She lifted an ankle-length cloak of heavy material, weighted at the bottom hem and reinforced with stiff plastic rods running vertically. It clasped securely at her throat, where the fastener had a gorgeous aquamarine-colored stone in place. "There. I feel better now."
"I wanted to ask you about that blanket you wear," Schuyler began but she cut him off.
"It is an important piece of my equipment," she told him with icy undertones. "You'll see if things go wrong. Okay, everyone start heading back down toward the open. Maybe nothing bad is about to--"
Twenty feet away, Franklin made a noise that could be rendered as "Yawp!" and there was a rasping crash. Everyone wheeled around in time to see round circular plug of dirt ten feet across slam shut in the ground.
"Franklin?"
"What the hell is that? Where's Franklin?" yelled Schuyler.
Haley Lawson sprang over and dropped to her knees. Her long fingers dug at the ground. "Look at this. The dirt is clotted together with something, maybe saliva. This is the cap to a hole in the ground."
"What, like a giant trap door spider?!" Jasper demanded. "That's impossible. They can't possibly grow that big."
"I wish it was only a huge spider." Haley waved for everyone to get back. "Give me some room. Please, no talking. I'm not sure I can focus enough to do this trick."
The teenagers were agitated enough to obey, keeping quiet after backing off. Haley Lawson stared down at the trap door. First, her mind latched on to a mass of air from directly above an active volcano in Hawaii and she brought a layer of that air down over the door. Immediately, she thrust a wind from Antarctica to hit the superheated ground. With a sharp cracking noise that made everyone jump, the plug in the ground shattered into small pieces and fell into what was revealed as a gaping hole.
"Tunnels of the Trolls," she announced, casting her cloak back over her shoulders in a dramatic gesture she couldn't resist.
"You're not thinking about going DOWN there," whispered Gina. "...Are you?"
Jasper Brink knelt down and stared into the blackness. "They took Franklin. I don't care what happens, I'm going to get him back safely."
"You're so brave, it's wonderful," Haley said. Then, seeing the reactions on their faces, she continued, "What? Anyway, I know a trick that might help. Get behind those trees over there, you guys. No telling how many monsters are down there."
"Hurry!" yelped Schuyler. "That's my little brother they're going to eat."
Haley stood with legs planted far apart and gazed down into the tunnel opening. A stiff breeze blew up from within that hole, blowing her ponytail wildly about. The wind stiffened to gale force. A second later, Franklin's spare form came tumbling up into the opening, arms and legs flailing.
"You got him," Schuyler said. "Come on, runt, get over here."
Then two yellow-hided hands as broad as smoked hams gripped the edges of the hole. Wide hairy shoulders heaved up, topped by a conical-skulled head that was raging with anger. The massive muscles looked like boulders covered with skin. In a flash, the Troll loomed up over Haley. Its only garment was a rude kilt of some coarse material around its waist. The monster roared deeper than a grizzly could have matched.
Windcatcher's nerve faltered for a second. She made a squeaking noise and backpedaled out of reach before getting ahold of herself. "Stop right there. You like breathing, don't you?"
As she spoke, the creature's long thick mane swirled violently and then hung down. He pawed at his throat, his chest heaving, and sank to his knees.
"Listen, you. I'm going to let you have a little air. Enough to keep you alive but that's it. Understand?" Haley told him.
The brute gasped and wheezed but seemed to understand. He could not manage to rise. Beneath a brow ledge that protruded more than an inch from his forehead, yellow-brown eyes were tearing up profusely. He braced his mighty arms on the ground for support, trying to draw in a deep enough breath to be comfortable.
"There's two more like him down there," offered Franklin. "They were poking at me and turning me over."
"Probably deciding who got to eat what part," Jasper said. "Not being funny."
Windcatcher pointed at the tunnel opening. "Get back in there and stay in there. Eat each other all you like but leave people alone. Savy?"
"Yes..." came a barely recognizable voice deeper than any opera singer could match. The big brute crawled rapidly over on its knees and slipped headfirst down into the darkness. A few seconds later, another plug of hardened dirt was shoved upward from within to seal off the tunnel again.
Seeing the horizontal trunk of a fallen tree, Haley lowered herself down onto it and took a shuddering breath. "Whew. My hands are shaking. I bet my adrenalin is used up for the rest of the year."
Gina rushed over to sit right up against her friend. "You're amazing. How you can think clearly in a situation like that is beyond me. I was standing over there with my mouth hanging open like a fool."
"Thanks, Haley," Schuyler said.
"Yeah. I'm not sure what you did exactly, but I'm sure glad to not be down in there getting carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey."
Haley dug in her back pocket and came up with her phone. "I'm going to call Mr Bane. He lives for this kind of craziness. I bet he'll be out here in an hour with a few of his friends and they'll chase these Trolls down so deep no one'll ever hear from them again. Hello? Hi, yes it's Haley. Fine. Listen, there's something going on out here in Glenville..."
After the call ended, Windcatcher stood up again. "We might as well ramble away ourselves. He said he's on his way with Princess Valera, whoever that is. I'd rather meet him back at the picnic area than out here. Come on, everybody."
As they trudged down the steep hill, Haley wondered why Jasper hadn't said two words since the incident. Was he traumatized? Maybe, just maybe, he was so impressed by her heroism that he saw her in a new light? And he was about to ask her what she was doing that night? Then to Haley's horror, she watched him drape an arm across Gina's narrow shoulders.
"I'm going to ask again," he said in a low confidential tone. "You're the prettiest girl on Long Island. If you want to take a break from Bentley, I'll show you the best time you ever had. You've got my number."
She wriggled loose and moved a step away. "And be just one more name on your trophy list? Forget it." Gina sniffed in disdain, then glanced back and saw Haley's stricken face.
10/15/2021
5/28-5/20/2013
I.
"Jasper left with his friends twenty minutes ago."
Sitting on the waist-high stone retaining wall in front of Coolidge High, Haley Lawson gave a start. "Gina! Hi. I wasn't waiting for Jasper. I'm just thinking."
Almost a year younger than her BFF, Gina Giacomo was a petite girl, Italian on both sides with long wavy black hair to prove it. She dumped her bookbag unceremoniously on the sidewalk and hopped up on the wall to sit with her legs tucked under her. "Who are you kidding? You're one step away from standing outside his house at night hoping he'll walk past a window."
"No way. Come on, Gina, I like the guy but I dunno, he looks right through me. My vanity is stung, that's all." Five feet eight, Haley Lawson was six inches taller than her pal, long-legged and rangy compared to Gina's curves. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail that was getting too long to manage. Haley's best features were her large lime-green eyes and lately she had been trying to accent them with some liner. "You wouldn't know how it is. You're too hot for your own good. Every day, you have to shove the boys off so they don't bury you in a dogpile."
"Hah. So true. But Bentley and I have been serious for two years now. I wouldn't risk losing him for anything."
"Speaking of Bentley, where is he anyway?"
"Working at Price Chopper. Twenty hours a week now. Too bad he has to punch in right after school, but he gets off at seven and tonight we're going to watch a Slamface concert at my house."
Haley nodded gravely and fiddled with the knapsack next to her. "Less than a month until we graduate and we're outta here, Gina. I have mixed feelings. Everything's all set with the Kenneth Dred Foundation. On June 22nd, I take the Greyhound and move into headquarters on 38th Street."
Gina grinned so widely it seemed it must hurt. "And Windcatcher will save the world from all the monsters that come out in the middle of the night! Oh my God, you must be so excited."
"I guess. I mean, it seems a little unreal, ya know? I still can't understand why I'm not a world-famous celebrity. A girl who can literally fly and cause thunderstorms and tornados. But no one in Glenville seems impressed. As if it's no big deal. I don't get it."
"Me and Bentley were talking about it," Gina said. "We think it's kind of some side effect of your Air Gem. That thing is magic like nobody's business. We think maybe the stone dampens people's reaction to you. Otherwise, you'd be on the news alla time, giving interviews, being asked to the White House, getting called to help out with disasters."
"Beats me." Haley shifted her weight restlessly. She tugged at the calico-colored shirt which was clinging to her back. "Sure is hot today. How about I summon a tornado and we fly out to Lake Schoonmaker?"
"You figure Jasper will be there drinking beer and smoking weed with his friends, right?"
Haley tried to keep a straight face but couldn't repress a grin any longer. "Coullllld be. Anyway we can get some footlongs and soda at the stand there. What do you say?"
"You got it bad, girl." Gina bumped her shoulder up against her friend and Haley bumped her right back. "He's gonna be your second partner, right?"
"Ah, that thing with Beckert was mostly out of curiosity. I didn't like it all that much." Haley hopped to her feet and stretched, then started trying to shrug into her knapsack, Gina giving her a hand. "This thing weighs a TON," she complained. "All my textbooks and my Ipad and charger and my phone's charger and some Tylenol and my art supplies, not to mention my Windcatcher outfit. I'm folding up my cape to fit in there, it still takes up a lot of space."
"The hard life of Long Island's resident super-hero," Gina scoffed, making sure her own bookbag was strapped securely. "Do you have enough for curly fries? I'm busted."
"That's what all the boys say! You're busted, har har."
"Extremely hilarious, Hales. Okay. I'm all set."
Haley held out her arm and Gina took it, also wrapping a thin arm around her friend's waist. "This is not the gay, I just don't wanna get dropped on my head."
"That only happened ONCE and you were fine." Concentrating and visualizing, Haley sensed a full tornado out in Oklahoma. She drew some of those two hundred mile per hour winds through a gralic gate. With a rush and a roar, Windcatcher and Gina were flung upward and out of sight almost instantly.
Speech was impossible within the vortex of furiously whirling air. How the two of them were able to breathe at all during the flight was another mystery. It was sixteen miles from midtown Glenville to the shores of Lake Schoonmaker and Haley was not using her top speed to keep Gina from distress.
But within a few minutes, the winds lessened and they descended at a good clip. Both knew how to drop their legs and bend their knees before landing, but this time they touched down as lightly as if hopping down off a kitchen chair.
"You are getting much better at that," Gina said with relief. "When you first started, I saw you take some awful spills."
"Tell me about it. Practice all day every day, that's the trick." Windcatcher pointed at the crowd of twenty people who were lazing about the lake, including those who were gathered at the trailer which sold hot dogs and hamburgers, bottles of soda and bags of chips. "I mean, what the hell? We come sailing down out of the sky! It's astonishing! Only everyone looks up and then goes back to what they were doing."
"Wish I'd tied back my hair," was Gina's only response as she began working on the hopeless tangle of her hair with a brush. "Hmm. Smell them burgers on the grill."
"See, you're doing it too!"
"Let's wrap ourselves around some chow, Hales," Gina urged, tugging Windcatcher by one arm. The town had provided a few wooden picnic tables with benches and the two girls plopped down with paper plates laden by double cheeseburgers, large curly fries and one bag of spicy Doritos. Each had a can of soda, root beer for Haley and Diet Pepsi for Gina. They dug in with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
"Oh, that's better. I spent lunch period in the hall on my phone," Gina sighed. "I swear there was an echo in my stomach."
"Yeah, I didn't exactly mind this," agreed Haley. "That mac and cheese in the cafeteria is old enough to walk by itself."
Changing to a sing-song voice, Gina crooned, "Somebody is watching you, Haley Jean..."
Windcatcher swung her head so fast that her ponytail almost knocked over her soda can. "Oh. Is he coming over here? How do I look? Are my bangs straight?"
"Jeez, Hales, what do you think you could do if they weren't straight? Hi, Jasper. Howya doing?"
Sauntering up to them was the tallest senior in the school, gawky with the long torso and limbs of late adolescence. Jasper Brink was wearing his usual tight jeans, baggy green T-shirt and an open white button-front shirt over that with the tail hanging free. That haircut, shaved on the sides but teased on top, annoyed Gina as unbearably pretentious but one glance at her friend showed that Haley liked it fine.
For Windcatcher, the rest of the world faded into foggy irrelevance. All that mattered right then was being approached by this boy, with his cocky smile and complete confidence. "Hey there," she managed to say.
"Hi, girls. Haley, good thing you turned up here."
Unaware of the smitten expression on her face, she said, "It is?"
"Yeah. My squad found something weird in the woods. Nobody knows what to do, we figured you might want to take a look. Ever see a Bigfoot skeleton?"
II.
"Yeah, right," Gina scoffed. "You and the Saulpaugh brothers just want to get two cute girls way out in the woods. We heard all about you and that Naomi." She toyed with the last remaining curly fry before popping it in her mouth.
"Of course we'll go check it out," Haley immediately contradicted her. Catching the withering stare from her friend, she added, "Gina, if you're not safe with me around, when are you safe?"
"You got a point. Okay. I wish there was a place to leave my bag, I hate lugging it on a hike."
"I'll carry it for you," offered Jasper, reaching down to snatch it off the ground. "How about you, Haley?"
"Thanks but I'm fine. Getting in shape, you know." She took their debris over to a wire frame basket and dumped it, then tugged on her knapsack.
The three of them took off at a brisk cantor. Haley was busy absorbing every detail of how Jasper looked and moved, but the infatuation faltered a bit when it sank in that he was definitely flustered. By what had been found out in the woods? A skeleton couldn't hurt anyone, not even if it really was a Bigfoot skeleton.
But then, she realized, in the last year she had experienced so many supernatural events and had met the weirdest people. The fishmen from Ulgor. The Skull-faced guys who took her, Gina and Bentley to some foggy place called Perjena. May Dusa and the grinning horror called Sepulchre. The Teen Tyrants, and being chased by federal agents. Those critters that looked like big spiders with wings. A vague insight stirred in her mind that she had already been exposed to the Midnight War enough that she was very different from other kids her age. It was natural she was more open to the unexplainable.
Then Jasper smiled at her and said, "When we stumbled on the bones, my first thought was to hope you'd come out here today," and she was lost in warm daydreams again.
It wasn't a long hike. Less than a mile along the shore, pine trees marked where public land ended. Peeking out from behind the trees were the two Saulpaugh boys. Franklin was a classic nerd, short and thin, wearing broken glasses held together with a piece of Scotch tape and with his old-man shirt buttoned right up to the neck. A year older, Schuyler was much more relaxed, although the tang of pot smoke clinging to his hair explained some of that. His habit for wearing shirts advertising bands no one had ever heard of was a puzzle in itself.
"You found her!" said Schuyler with a welcoming wave. "Great."
Haley smiled. "I didn't think you jokers knew I was alive."
"Seriously, get serious about serious things," added little Franklin. "Everyone is wondering when you're going to catch some vampires or zombies or something. Glenville was never interesting until you showed up."
"Nice to be appreciated. I guess." Windcatcher turned to Gina and said, "Need a minute to catch your breath?"
"Nah, I'm good."
"Right up here, then." Jasper took the lead up a steep incline where they all had to grab branches and bushes to help pull themselves along. Haley regretted no letting one of the boys carry her knapsack, boys had more upper body strenth. But in another few minutes, slightly sweatier than before, all five teens were circled around a vivid sight.
Stretched out full length on its back was indeed a complete skeleton. Parts had come loose from each other as the tendons and ligaments had rotted away but most of the bones seemed to be unmoved. Manlike but close to seven feet tall, short legged but with abnormally long arms, the skeleton's head featured both a protruding brow ledge and a muzzle crammed with teeth that were close to being jagged tusks.
Staring down at the bones, Haley Lawson was not aware that Jasper Brink had dropped from her thoughts. Since applying for KDF status, much of her free time had been spent researching Midnight War. "Listen, you guys, be on your toes. If I yell run, then you run as if your hair is on fire and your butts are catching."
"Is this... a gorilla? Out here on the Island?"
"Worse than that," Windcatcher said. "This is, or was, a Troll."
III.
"Wot?" asked Franklin. "You mean this is what those jerks on messageboards look like?! If I'd known that, I wouldn't have argued so much with them."
"Not THAT kind of Troll. Sheesh," Haley snorted. "These are the real thing. Monsters that dig tunnels in the ground. Lots of reports that they abduct people for food. There could be a colony of them running around under our feet right now."
"I'm supposed to be home by five," Franklin blurted, back up and tripping over a root so he fell into a sitting position.
"You ain't going anywhere," his brother warned. "I've got the keys to Dad's car."
Some of the smug self-assurance had drained from Jasper's manner as he poked at the bones with a stick. "Hate to see one of these when he's feeling like he wants a snack. Haley, what do you think we should do?"
"Fighting Trolls is not on my bucket list. We need to head back to where everyone is. I'll phone some people I know who are veterans at handling this sort of nightmare. Get Jeremy Bane and a few of his friends out on the scene and even Trolls will take off the other way."
Bent over the skeleton, hands pressed to her thighs for support, Gina asked, "How come nobody saw these bones before? This hill is right out in the open."
"They weren't there back in April," Franklin said. "We were all out here back then on the 20th."
"4/20, right, I get it. But that's still funny. If this Troll died then, how would he already be nothing but bones?" The little Italian straightened up and her piquant face dropped. "Unless..."
Haley had dropped her backpack on the grass and was rummaging through it. "Honey, see those little nicks and digs all over the bones? What do you think they are?"
"How should I know? Wait. Bite...marks?!
"Right the first time," Haley said. She lifted an ankle-length cloak of heavy material, weighted at the bottom hem and reinforced with stiff plastic rods running vertically. It clasped securely at her throat, where the fastener had a gorgeous aquamarine-colored stone in place. "There. I feel better now."
"I wanted to ask you about that blanket you wear," Schuyler began but she cut him off.
"It is an important piece of my equipment," she told him with icy undertones. "You'll see if things go wrong. Okay, everyone start heading back down toward the open. Maybe nothing bad is about to--"
Twenty feet away, Franklin made a noise that could be rendered as "Yawp!" and there was a rasping crash. Everyone wheeled around in time to see round circular plug of dirt ten feet across slam shut in the ground.
"Franklin?"
"What the hell is that? Where's Franklin?" yelled Schuyler.
Haley Lawson sprang over and dropped to her knees. Her long fingers dug at the ground. "Look at this. The dirt is clotted together with something, maybe saliva. This is the cap to a hole in the ground."
"What, like a giant trap door spider?!" Jasper demanded. "That's impossible. They can't possibly grow that big."
"I wish it was only a huge spider." Haley waved for everyone to get back. "Give me some room. Please, no talking. I'm not sure I can focus enough to do this trick."
The teenagers were agitated enough to obey, keeping quiet after backing off. Haley Lawson stared down at the trap door. First, her mind latched on to a mass of air from directly above an active volcano in Hawaii and she brought a layer of that air down over the door. Immediately, she thrust a wind from Antarctica to hit the superheated ground. With a sharp cracking noise that made everyone jump, the plug in the ground shattered into small pieces and fell into what was revealed as a gaping hole.
"Tunnels of the Trolls," she announced, casting her cloak back over her shoulders in a dramatic gesture she couldn't resist.
"You're not thinking about going DOWN there," whispered Gina. "...Are you?"
Jasper Brink knelt down and stared into the blackness. "They took Franklin. I don't care what happens, I'm going to get him back safely."
"You're so brave, it's wonderful," Haley said. Then, seeing the reactions on their faces, she continued, "What? Anyway, I know a trick that might help. Get behind those trees over there, you guys. No telling how many monsters are down there."
"Hurry!" yelped Schuyler. "That's my little brother they're going to eat."
Haley stood with legs planted far apart and gazed down into the tunnel opening. A stiff breeze blew up from within that hole, blowing her ponytail wildly about. The wind stiffened to gale force. A second later, Franklin's spare form came tumbling up into the opening, arms and legs flailing.
"You got him," Schuyler said. "Come on, runt, get over here."
Then two yellow-hided hands as broad as smoked hams gripped the edges of the hole. Wide hairy shoulders heaved up, topped by a conical-skulled head that was raging with anger. The massive muscles looked like boulders covered with skin. In a flash, the Troll loomed up over Haley. Its only garment was a rude kilt of some coarse material around its waist. The monster roared deeper than a grizzly could have matched.
Windcatcher's nerve faltered for a second. She made a squeaking noise and backpedaled out of reach before getting ahold of herself. "Stop right there. You like breathing, don't you?"
As she spoke, the creature's long thick mane swirled violently and then hung down. He pawed at his throat, his chest heaving, and sank to his knees.
"Listen, you. I'm going to let you have a little air. Enough to keep you alive but that's it. Understand?" Haley told him.
The brute gasped and wheezed but seemed to understand. He could not manage to rise. Beneath a brow ledge that protruded more than an inch from his forehead, yellow-brown eyes were tearing up profusely. He braced his mighty arms on the ground for support, trying to draw in a deep enough breath to be comfortable.
"There's two more like him down there," offered Franklin. "They were poking at me and turning me over."
"Probably deciding who got to eat what part," Jasper said. "Not being funny."
Windcatcher pointed at the tunnel opening. "Get back in there and stay in there. Eat each other all you like but leave people alone. Savy?"
"Yes..." came a barely recognizable voice deeper than any opera singer could match. The big brute crawled rapidly over on its knees and slipped headfirst down into the darkness. A few seconds later, another plug of hardened dirt was shoved upward from within to seal off the tunnel again.
Seeing the horizontal trunk of a fallen tree, Haley lowered herself down onto it and took a shuddering breath. "Whew. My hands are shaking. I bet my adrenalin is used up for the rest of the year."
Gina rushed over to sit right up against her friend. "You're amazing. How you can think clearly in a situation like that is beyond me. I was standing over there with my mouth hanging open like a fool."
"Thanks, Haley," Schuyler said.
"Yeah. I'm not sure what you did exactly, but I'm sure glad to not be down in there getting carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey."
Haley dug in her back pocket and came up with her phone. "I'm going to call Mr Bane. He lives for this kind of craziness. I bet he'll be out here in an hour with a few of his friends and they'll chase these Trolls down so deep no one'll ever hear from them again. Hello? Hi, yes it's Haley. Fine. Listen, there's something going on out here in Glenville..."
After the call ended, Windcatcher stood up again. "We might as well ramble away ourselves. He said he's on his way with Princess Valera, whoever that is. I'd rather meet him back at the picnic area than out here. Come on, everybody."
As they trudged down the steep hill, Haley wondered why Jasper hadn't said two words since the incident. Was he traumatized? Maybe, just maybe, he was so impressed by her heroism that he saw her in a new light? And he was about to ask her what she was doing that night? Then to Haley's horror, she watched him drape an arm across Gina's narrow shoulders.
"I'm going to ask again," he said in a low confidential tone. "You're the prettiest girl on Long Island. If you want to take a break from Bentley, I'll show you the best time you ever had. You've got my number."
She wriggled loose and moved a step away. "And be just one more name on your trophy list? Forget it." Gina sniffed in disdain, then glanced back and saw Haley's stricken face.
10/15/2021
