The Stone of Blood (37 page)

And the third man carried a gun.

I watched as he turned then within my vision and looked me squarely in the eye. And I watched him as he raised his gun and pointed it directly at me.

He stood silently as I sat peerin’ down the barrel of his gun. And I listened as the shot rang out! And I watched the bullet leave its chamber…

I awoke in a pool of sweat!

My heart poundin’ rapidly as I sat straight up in my bed!

The time on the clock said a quarter past three, as I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. Everyone was asleep. And the house was quiet.

I recalled the faces from my dream as I lay back upon my bed. Some were the faces of my neighbors while still others, though they seemed familiar, were unknown to me. The three people who had crossed the field I did not recognize, nor did I want too. But I did recall the sword.

“
A knight had stood vigil at the entrance to
Stone
Castle
.
” I remembered vividly. “
And he had held this same silver sword in his hand.
”

It was way back at the beginnin’ of summer.

Stone
Castle
was the name of a toy soldier museum in town. I had only been inside of it one time, and that was when Colby was with me. The buildin’ was made of old mortar and stone and it actually did look a little bit like a castle on the outside of it, except for that there wasn’t a moat around it or nothin’.

The floors inside were carpeted with dark red patterns in varying degrees in shades of the color of blood. And its walls were heavily laden with shelving and weaponry, of any manner of soldier’s insignia from a hundred unnamed wars …an eerie feelin’ swept over me as I stepped inside its hold; where haunting whispers echoed with the spirits of times past.

Colby had found a class ring that someone had lost, just outside of the Museum on the grass by one of the tall trees growin’ by the side of the buildin’. And instead of him keepin’ it or sellin’ it or whatever, he decided to take it inside and turn it in.

This was a very brave act for Colby, since he was the absolute ‘
King
’ of
sneakin’
stuff and
freein’
captured boats from creeks and other things like that! I was actually proud of him. It showed a depth to his character that I hadn’t previously been a witness to.

While Colby went to the manager’s office to return the ring to its rightful owner, I stood as close as I possibly could to the front door. I really didn’t wanna be in there in the first place! But I stood there in that eerie place anyway, right beside a suit of armor; a suit of armor that held this same silver sword.

It was a sword that King Author might have carried, with intricate detailed metal engravings and with a special crushed velvet handle. I placed my hand upon its blade to feel the coolness of its steel. It was smooth and cold; with foreshadowing’s of untold events yet to be revealed.

“
Why would my dreams take me back to a time when I was near this sword?
” I wondered. “
And what was the meanin’ of the three people walkin’ and the man with the gun?
”

“
It was probably nothin’ more than a dream.
” I reasoned. “
And it was way too early in the mornin’ for me to be tryin’ to make reason out of some old dumb dream anyways!
”

I lay there starin’ up into the darkness about my room at my red, white and blue striped ceilin’ for what seemed like hours. If I stared at those stripes long enough, they would play tricks with my eyes and create optical illusions that made the lines stretch out and race each other as I watched em’.

I was tired! But sleep would not find me and my brain refused to disengage.

I knew that I was gonna have to go back into the cave then. I knew that was what was keepin’ me awake! I figured I’d learned about all that I was gonna be able to learn from books and from the grownups that I knew. So goin’ back into the cave was somethin’ that I was just gonna have to do.

It had been over a week since we’d been in there, Colby and me, and I figured that since they hadn’t killed me yet then it should be somewhat safe to go back. At least that was what I was tellin’ myself. And then maybe too, since it had been so long …maybe they weren’t really lookin’ to kill me after all.

“
Now that wouldn’t explain why I was chased from the barn. But that could have been a regular old wolf, right?
” I surmised.

It was the last day before school started and it was also Sunday mornin’. And maybe its bein’ the
Lord’s Day
and all would add an extra added bit of protection for me. I couldn’t say that I knew if that would help out or not, but I was willin’ to believe dang near anything if it would help! And Colby was all the way over there on the other side of town at his house!

He’d told me the other day when we’d talked that he had had a dream about the ‘
werewolf
’ cave, and that it had scared him. And that he wasn’t ever goin’ back in there again! So I knew it would’ve been useless for me to call him up and have him come over here and go back in there with me. But I did think it was kinda funny though, how a person could go from actin’ all brave and stuff one minute and then become a total and complete ‘
scaredy cat
’ or ‘
chicken
’ the next! I guessed maybe he’d just reached his limit.

If Colby was actin’ this way, what did that say of me? I mean, Colby was the brave one. Like when we were campin’ out at the quarry and those ‘
policemen
’ come. And when we were deep inside the ‘
werewolf’
cave with only our flashlights and he was runnin’ through the tunnels all fast and stuff! I was always the cautious one, the one who tried to be brave. But Colby was the brave one.

I’d have to admit that I really wasn’t feelin’ very brave or even tryin’ very hard to act that way now! Cause I didn’t wanna go in there alone! Not all by myself!

But ‘
sometimes you just have to do, what you have to do.’
My dad had told me.

So I put on my dirty jeans for crawlin’ and climbin’ in, once I’d heard noises from downstairs that told me that everybody was wakin’ up. And I fashioned together a quick knapsack of tools, extra batteries for my flashlight, and my knife and string. I mean, you just never knew when some good old string or some rope was gonna come in handy!

I told my mom and dad ‘
Good Mornin
’ and all and that I was goin’ outside and out to the barn and then I told em’ that I might go into Mr. Roberts’s woods for a while. I told em’ so that they wouldn’t be worried about me or nothin’. And then I set right out! I guessed they’d forgotten about the wolves I’d told em’ about the other day. Or maybe they had chalked that up to a kid’s imagination too! Either way, I wouldn’t hold it against em’. But I wasn’t gonna bring it up to em’ again either!

My dad was goin’ out to his garage to do some tinkerin’ on some things with our neighbor Mitch, and I think Anna was still in her room asleep. So I headed out the back yard towards the barn. Nobody saw me leavin’ or nothin’, except for Candy.

My dog Candy wanted to come with me of course. Cause as it seemed to me, animals just had a sixth sense about stuff. And I can’t say that I minded that none, her comin’ with me that is. But she couldn’t go with me into the cave cause there was so much climbin’ to do, and she’d be barkin’ and stuff at times when we’d need to be quiet. So I figured that it would be best all around if she just stayed here and didn’t go with me! She wasn’t gonna like it, but I let her come to the barn with me anyways. That way she could sniff around and things and make sure the barn was at least safe enough for me to go in to.

I was ten feet away from the barn the moment my legs began to tremble and I began to feel nauseous. I realized that if I was already feelin’ that way before I’d even made it into the tunnel, then it was gonna get really bad once I’d climbed down into it! I guess like my grandpa, I wasn’t gonna
say I was scared
, but I also knew when I’d rather
be someplace else!
”

I decided that instead of crawlin’ through the tunnel and walkin’ all the way through the darkness to the other side beneath the quarry, I’d just take the shortcut through Mr. Roberts’s woods instead. That way I could take advantage of the daylight, come at this thing from a whole different angle and save the energy in my batteries for later, just in case I needed em’. That’s what I told myself anyways. Cause you know, I wasn’t no ‘
chicken
’!

I knelt down and said goodbye to Candy and then I made her go back on up to the house. I climbed over the fence slowly, so as not to rip my pants on the barbed wire or fall through a rusty part of the fence wires. And I set out straight up through the Mr. Roberts’s woods.

It was different when you were walkin’ through the woods all by yourself. I guess maybe cause you didn’t have someone there to talk to ya and you always had to keep a good look out for anythin’ that might come along and jump out at ya!

It was still kinda early yet and the ground was slightly damp from the last night’s dew as I walked up the hill by way of Mr. Roberts’s pond. The grass was taller here before I entered the tree line and it lay over as I walked through it; seeds of the grass sticking to my britches.

The sunlight had a harder time gettin’ through the woods here. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t entirely bright either. I walked beneath the tall trees lookin’ up through their leaves to the blue skies above em’ and I kicked up their fallen leaves as I passed.

I found the dried dirty area just this side of the fence that led out to the open grassy fields the other side of the woods, and I picked up several pieces of petrified wood. I also put a few in my pocket so that I could look at em’ later.

I remembered what it looked like in the cavern beneath these rocks as I reached down and picked up a larger piece of the rock in the shape of the state of
Kentucky
. But it was too big for me to carry so I just left it there under a half dry rotted log, so it would be easier to find it again if I ever decided to make a trip back through here to pick it up. A few cows were grazin’ in the meadow just over the fence and another was takin’ a sip of water from the pond.

I placed my knapsack on the ground and slid it to the other side beneath the wires in the fence and I climbed over and stepped out into the field. I watched where I was steppin’ too, since many cows had grazed here. And I walked around the large oval shaped pond to the woods that lay on the other side of it.

Those woods were a part of the quarry. It was a part of the county’s land, not a part of Mr. Roberts’s. I didn’t know who owned it exactly. But I was told that it belonged to the county, so I guess that meant it belonged to me too.

There was an old tree with part of a wired fence line nailed to it that was set as the boundary line for the woods. And I crossed over that fence easily and continued my journey up the hill and back into the deeper sections of the wood.

At the top of a small hill I passed an abandoned camp site where an old log cabin club house had once sat. It had been built by local teenagers from down the road. Of course, if you didn’t know this had once been the site of a log cabin, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. Cause it was mainly rubbish now with logs strewn here and there, all piled up in a crevasse down below and to the south.

I had been there once before when I was smaller, back before it had been demolished and torn down. It had once looked like a giant Lincoln Log set to me, that you could play in, in ‘
real life
’!