Hello, readers! I'm not positive on how clear I was explaining some things during the story, so I thought I'd give you a heads up or two; feel free to skip this note if you'd like to avoid any potential spoilers. The prologue takes place three years after the events of the movie; in that time, Ms. Bennett remarries - to a Christian and a police detective, Christopher Graves - and changes the family's names to Bennett-Graves, a move Jamie strongly opposes. Sophie is in Kindergarten, a bit early but she's a bright kid; and having never known her birth father, she's very close to Christopher. On the Guardians' side, Pitch has been quiet since the events of the movie and the Guardians haven't heard from or about him once during all that time. Part I is told from Jamie's POV and takes place over a year after the Prologue; and Part II is told from Jack's POV and picks up immediately where Part I left off.
I have liberally butchered canon from The Guardians of Childhood, but the movie timeline has been left alone. We'll just pretend they're two separate things.
Fair warning, I'm doing this for NaNoWriMo, so those of you in the know have an idea of what to expect on that front, ahaha. This is an unedited, unbeta'd draft; expect some rambling, unnecessary scenes, missing scenes, more than a few typos, and - in general - a lot of mistakes. I intend to rewrite the story following the completion of this manuscript, but in the meantime I hope this will entertain you nonetheless. Critique and criticize if you'd like to, I'd greatly appreciate it!
This is a fan-created work of fiction; the author does not claim to own Rise of the Guardians or The Guardians of Childhood, which belong to Dreamworks and William Joyce, respectively. No profit has been made from this work.
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On the day Jamie Bennett turned 11 years old, he was given an Ouija board.
This didn't surprise anyone. From the time he could read Jamie had been utterly fascinated with the fantastic side of life: spirits and sprites, Bigfoot and Nessie, aliens... he had always believed with a fervent, hopeless passion, in all those fantasies of childhood. Even now he had reached the age when most kids stopped believing, Jamie continued to stay up trying to see Santa or tell stories about the snowball fights he'd had with Jack Frost. This was no secret among his friends and family, so it was no surprise when Jamie unwrapped a large-ish blue package containing the Ouija board at his birthday party.
What did come as a surprise was Jamie's totally apathetic reaction.
"I thought you would've gone nuts over that Ouija board," Pippa said thoughtfully while Jamie unwrapped her gift (a book on the scientific hypotheses on extra terrestrial life, which Claude pronounced as "typically Pippa"; only she or an adult would give a kid something so boring).
"I don't need an Ouija board to talk to the Easter Bunny or Jack Frost," Jamie pointed out, admiring the book. He and Claude disagreed on many things; this was one of them. "You guys know that. We can already see them and talk to them as long as we believe."
"Those things are creepy, anyway," Cupcake said. Monty nodded vigorously beside her.
"Well, I want to try it," Caleb said, smiling and nudging Claude with an elbow.
Claude delivered a punch to his brother's shoulder in reprisal. "Yeah, whatever. You guys will believe anything."
"I'm not sayin' I believe in anything," Caleb interjected, not quite dodging Claude's punch while delivering a kick under the table. "Just sounds kind of like fun."
"Yeah, sure, maybe there are spirits floating around that you don't believe in yet. I'm sure they'd just love to talk to you through a Oujia board," Claude rejoined, avoiding Caleb's kick and delivering one of his own.
"Ow!" Caleb complained.
Jamie continued unwrapping gifts while the twins started another one of their play-fights. "It might be fun if we meet new spirits like Jack Frost," he said, looking up from Cupcake's gift (what could only be described as a manly baking set). "None of us could see Jack Frost until we believed in him. This could be a new way to make contact with others like him."
"It'd be fun if we met somebody like Jack Frost," Pippa agreed, turning a half-smile in Cupcake's direction; being the only two girls present apart from Sophie, Pippa and Cupcake had been doing that a lot during the course of the party.
Cupcake caught on to whatever Pippa was implying and said, dryly, "I dunno about that."
"I think it's a bad idea," Monty ventured, toying with the gift the twins had given Jamie (his very own drone; Monty was irredeemably jealous and already knew he'd be spending more time at Jamie's just to play with it).
"You know, I think I've always wanted to try something like this," Claude said, cheerfully swapping sides in an argument nobody knew they'd been having until he did so. "C'mon, Jamie."
"Yeah, why not?" Cupcake said, interested despite herself.
"Well," Jamie said, meeting his friends' eyes haltingly around the table, "if you guys want to. Sure."
Caleb and Claude cheered, Pippa grinned, and Cupcake rolled her eyes. Monty suddenly lost his appetite for cake and ice cream.
It was over cake and ice cream that the kids began arguing over the board. Monty wanted to play with the board immediately to get it over with, but Caleb and Claude thought they should wait until nightfall; the other kids fell somewhere in between. Eventually somebody decided the argument by locating a calendar and declaring that day to be a new moon, and the kids decided on midnight. After all, what could possibly be better than playing with an Ouija board on the night of a new moon?
After securing permission for a slumber party, they began hammering out the particulars. The final conclusion was to set up the board in the main upstairs bathroom because it was the only room with a large enough mirror for all of them to see in — a mirror, Pippa insisted, was an absolute necessity in cases like this; she'd read all about them. Jamie, getting in to the spirit of the game, came up with the candles when Cupcake made an offhand remark concerning séances at night: they were the battery-powered kind, pink and encased in flower-printed class, and smelled like apple bourbon, but Jamie assured his friends they would do in the absence of any real candles.
Monty brought a flashlight.
The time spent waiting for midnight was one of general cheer, and the kids hardly noticed it. They might have missed midnight entirely if Pippa hadn't happened to glance at Jamie's stepdad's ancient grandfather clock. It didn't work (and, according to Jamie's stepdad, never had), but it reminded her that she had been keeping the time, and so, at a quarter to midnight, she whispered dramatically, "it's time."
The kids filed to the bathroom, tiptoeing past Sophie's room to keep from waking her. The door clicked shut silently behind them.
In point of fact, the Bennett-Graves household was in possession of three bathrooms: a cramped half-size located in the master bedroom; a small, but fully furnished bathroom located on the top floor; and a deluxe, full-sized bathroom located in the cluttered, half-built basement. The full-size lacked running water for reasons Jamie's stepdad knew of but had yet to address. It was something his mother thought of on occasion, but she, too, didn't hold it high on her list of priorities; the basement was rarely used and there were more important things to do. In all honesty Jamie had not considered the basement bathroom — and it's much larger surface area, including a much bigger mirror — because he had never used it. So it was that he and his friends packed themselves into the smaller bathroom upstairs.
"Uh, how are we going to do this, exactly?" Cupcake asked once everybody was shut in. Her dry-voiced question was a valid one: while Jamie had always known this bathroom to be comfortably large enough for two small kids to brush their teeth in, it became much smaller than initially expected with six tweens and a board game stuffed inside.
Monty, who was hovering near the door with no intention of moving, flipped the light switch on. "We need to see to set it up, at least," he defended himself when somebody protested loudly.
"Yeah," Cupcake agreed unexpectedly. "Those candles aren't enough to see the board by."
"Wait, wait, wait. Monty, didn't you bring that flashlight?" Claude said suddenly, a slow smirk unfurling across his face.
"Uh... yeah?" Monty said with a sinking suspicion of where this thread of conversation was headed.
Claude turned to Jamie in triumph; Jamie caught on immediately.
"I have another one in my room, just a sec!" Jamie said, and, dodging Monty, disappeared around the door and down the hallway.
Once he was gone Cupcake turned to the bathroom counter. It was liberally cluttered with various bathing-room items; the sink took up the majority of counter space front and center. Either side of the sink were open baskets in pink and green respectively, both filled with what were obviously Jamie's and Sophie's toiletries. On Sophie's side, every bottle, tooth brush, and knick-knack were laying across the counter.
"Where are we going to put the board?" Cupcake asked, scrutinizing the rest of the room while the other kids examined the countertop as well. Beside the sink was a small, shallow closet, over-stuffed with towels and toilet paper and other bathroom necessities; then the toilet, which was very nearly pressed against a knee-high bathtub-shower combo. Across from the counter was a low cupboard with doors that squeaked loudly when opened. Between cupboard and shower was a towel rack. All-in-all a normal-looking bathroom. Not the place Cupcake would have chosen to communicate with the dead, but hey, she was no expert on these kinds things. If they needed a mirror, they needed a mirror.
Caleb was thinking along the same lines as Cupcake. "We can't balance it over the sink," he sighed, referring to the board. "And that's the only place we could all reach it."
"W-why would we all need to reach it?" Monty asked.
"'Cause we all got to put our fingers on the... the triangle thingy. Duh." Caleb explained unhelpfully, carefully sidestepping the fact that he did not, really, know what he was talking about, but clearly enjoyed thinking he did.
"It's called a planchette, Caleb," Pippa said, scrutinizing herself in the mirror and adjusting her hat. "And we can't all put our hands on it; one of us needs to be the recorder. You're right, Cupcake, we'll have to put it on the floor."
"What's the point of doing it in the bathroom if we aren't going to look in the mirror?" Claude asked. Caleb snorted.
"What's the recorder do?" Cupcake asked.
"Might as well do it in Jamie's room," Monty said hopefully. "It would be more comfortable."
"The recorder records what the board says," Pippa said mildly. "Monty, we can see the mirror from the floor. I don't think we need to see the board in the mirror, just the mirror."
"I'll be the recorder," Cupcake volunteered. "Now, why do we need the mirror again?"
"Because," Pippa met Cupcake's eyes in the mirror, eyebrows and lips turned up just slightly, "the looking glass has long been known to be a portal between worlds."
"So... the spirit's gonna come through the mirror to talk to us," Claude stated, looking at Monty as if for confirmation; Monty shrugged one shoulder.
"Okay, guys, I got it!" Jamie's return brought an energetic end to the conversation, his arms full of flashlights in varying shapes and sizes. "After I found mine I remembered there were more in the hall closet and Sophie's room. Think this is enough?"
"Aw, yeah, baby," Claude cheered as Jamie passed out the flashlights. "This is gonna be awesome."
"We're sitting on the floor," Monty informed Jamie glumly as the twins and Cupcake began moving bathroom rugs and situating the board on the tiles.
"But the candles should go in front of the mirror," Caleb added.
Obligingly, Jamie cleared the counter space after fetching a notebook for Cupcake. After dumping everything in the sink, he clicked on the four candles. He placed two on either side of the sink, grabbed his flashlight, and placed his free hand over the light switch.
The kids situated themselves on the floor, cross-legged and, after some discourse on the subject, with their knees touching. Monty, having no interest whatsoever in seeing whatever it was the others wanted to see in the mirror, sat with his back to the counter cupboards. To his left, with her back to the toilet, sat Cupcake. Being of the opinion that, although this sounded like fun, it would forever be irredeemably stupid, Cupcake found herself to be relieved to have secured the position of The Recorder (Pippa had said this as though it were a proper title); she held a small flip-notebook in one hand and a pen poised over it in the other. To Cupcake's left, back to the bathtub, sat Claude, and beside him, Pippa. Caleb claimed a seat across from Cupcake, leaving a spot open between himself and Pippa for Jamie.
"Ready?" Jamie asked, grinning and positioning the flashlight below his chin.
Three grins, an upraised eyebrow, and a worried frown answered him. "Do it," Caleb whispered theatrically, also pointing his flashlight upwards below his chin.
Jamie clicked the light off.
Once their eyes adjusted, the children found the ambiance was not as chilling as they would have liked. The most light came from the hallway through the crack in the door, effectively destroying whatever dark atmosphere they might have created. The battery-powered candles did not offer much light, but what they did give off was steadily and decidedly pink, throwing vague flower shapes on the wall and ceiling opposite the mirror. The flashlights, which the kids propped up in their laps facing the board, effectively took away the deepest shadows on the floor. The only truly dark parts of the bathroom were the shower (curtain drawn) and the ceiling above it.
Pippa took the lead as Jamie joined his friends in the haphazard circle, attempting to put the best face on things. If they were going to make this scary they would, it seemed, have to do all the legwork themselves.
"We may now contact the spirits," she intoned gravely.
"I'll ask the questions," Claude said eagerly.
"I want to ask questions, too," Caleb complained, upsetting the circle in an attempt to get his leg up for a kick in Claude's general direction.
"Why don't we all ask questions?" Cupcake asked loudly, having been the only one who came close to being affected by Caleb's and Claude's budding argument. She settled back into her seat wearily.
"Uh, I don't think any spirits would mind if we all asked questions," Jamie said. Somewhat deflated, the twins gave in.
"Alright," Pippa said, moving the game along, "everybody, place the fingers of your dominant hand on the planchette."
"Huh?" said Jamie.
"The triangle thing," Monty supplied.
"Oh."
Everybody with exception to Monty and Cupcake reached forward and placed the tips of their fingers on the planchette, which Pippa had previously put in the center of the board. Then they all turned to stare at Monty and Cupcake.
"Recording, remember?" Cupcake said dryly, holding up her pen. "I can't write and reach at the same time." The other children agreed this was a good enough excuse to not touch the planchette, and then turned en force on the bespectacled blonde.
"I- I- I- don't want to," Monty whispered.
"Oh, c'mon, Monty," Claude groaned. "It's not going to bite you."
"It's okay, really," Jamie assured him. His smile was genuine. "I mean, Santa or the Tooth Fairy wouldn't do anything scary or weird, right? What if we couldn't see them because we didn't believe in them? Think of all the friends we might not've met because we don't know to believe in them! They can tell us their names and what they look like, and then we'll have more friends like Jack Frost. Wouldn't that be so cool?"
"I doubt any of 'em would be hanging out in Jamie's bathroom," Cupcake deadpanned. Her vote turned out to be the most placating. "I don't think anything interesting is going to happen. It's just a board game at heart, isn't it?"
Monty finally consented to placing his fingers on the planchette with the others. Everybody gazed down at the board solemnly.
The board was rather plain in appearance, something the kids were grateful for; though the light wasn't spooky, it wasn't the best to see by, either. It was made to look like wood, light brown with tree grain markings painted on. At the top, "Spirit Board" was spelled out in almost illegibly curly letters. The center of the board was dominated by the alphabet (all legible, fortunately) listed in two lines; below the letters were the numbers zero through nine, the words "yes" and "no" on either side, and at the bottom was a single word: "Goodbye."
"Can we talk to a spirit now?" Caleb asked.
"The directions said to open the board first by spelling out hello," Monty said.
"There are directions?" Caleb said, turning to Monty with an utterly bewildered expression.
"Saying 'hello' is a good idea," Pippa said. "Let's spell it out."
It was harder to drag the planchette across the board than any of the kids expected, entirely owing to everybody wanting to be the principal force in pushing it. Giggles erupted from all sides while they worked at their task, most of them speaking each letter aloud as they went.
"Okay. Now what?" Jamie said, looking to Monty. Jamie hadn't realized the game came with directions, either.
"Now we say hello," Cupcake said, smirking.
"Are there any spirits here that would like to be believed in?" Caleb said, raising his voice slightly.
Everybody watched the board intently with bated breath. Apart from some fidgeting, the bathroom was fell completely silent. And, to their enormous credit, the kids were able to hold still and remain quiet for almost two full minutes. It was Cupcake who broke the silence.
"This is stupid."
"Cupcake!" Claude objected, "we have to give them a chance to answer, you know!"
"How long of a chance are we going to give them, exactly?" Pippa asked, the smile evident in her voice.
Caleb sighed and rested his elbows on his knees. "Maybe we should just start asking questions."
"Good idea," Jamie said.
Claude sat up and cleared his throat. "Attention all spirits in the area who have yet to be believed in, attention all spirits in the area who have yet to be believed in, do you read me, over?"
Caleb, Cupcake, and Jamie giggled.
"We should be serious about this if we really want to make contact," Pippa said, twitching the planchette lightly in time to her words to carry the point.
"What's to be serious about?" Cupcake grumbled, placing one hand on her neck and stretching it.
"Maybe we're not asking the right questions," Caleb said, smirking faintly.
"We haven't asked any questions," Cupcake pointed out.
"Whatever we ask, we do need to give them time to answer," Pippa said.
"Do you think we should be asking something specific, though?" Jamie mused. "I mean, what if it can't speak English or something? Maybe we should talk to them in shorter sentences."
"Maybe we should just go to bed," Monty muttered.
"What was that, Monty?" Caleb said. Everybody stopped talking and turned to look at him.
"I- uh, nothing. Nothing." Monty gulped and tried to look interested. "Only, Claude, m- maybe you shouldn't move the... uh, the planchette around so much."
"I'm not—" Claude began to protest, but the words died quite suddenly in his throat. His mouth remained open as he snapped wide eyes back to the board.
The planchette moved.
The all felt it, as if something far stronger than the tips of kids' fingers were pushing it. Monty yelped and snatched his hand back. There was an audible thunk as his shoulders hit the cabinet behind him.
The planchette twitched across the board five times, then stopped. Everybody stared, eyes wide, lips forming various sized "O" shapes. The silence was suddenly total and absolute. They even held their breath. The bathroom began to feel less pink and light-hearted. More than one pair of fingers trembled, but none apart from Monty took their hands away from the board.
"Wha-" Caleb's voice was something between a gasp and a strangled whisper, "what did it say, Cupcake?"
Cupcake twitched, then seemed to come back to herself. "I didn't catch it," she admitted, rallying; she was relieved to find her voice sounded steady. "I wasn't looking at the board."
Pippa pressed her lips together, trying to form words. It was Jamie who spoke next, however. If the unexpected movement centered around the board subdued him, he did not show it. He and Cupcake appeared to be the only two kids left unshaken.
"What is your name?"
Everybody held their breaths again, fingers light on the triangle. When a few agonizing seconds passed, Jamie looked up to the mirror.
"Can you show us your reflection?"
Everybody except Monty immediately craned their necks back to get a good peek at the mirror. Nothing.
And then the planchette twitched beneath their fingers again. As it began gliding smoothly, but quickly, across the board, Cupcake snapped into action and began scribbling letters as quickly as possible. It went fast enough that she couldn't look at what she was writing.
It stopped. Again, a pregnant silence. Again, Jamie and Cupcake appeared to be the only participants willingly engaged. All the other young faces had begun showing signs of varying degrees of stress.
Jamie whispered, "Cupcake?" and the girl in question looked down at what she had written. Thankfully, her coordination was good enough that her scribbles were readable.
CHILDREN
"...Um," said Jamie at last, "yeah, we're kids, I guess. Big kids, though. Do you need us to believe in you before we can see you?"
This time the pause was not so long. Caleb breathed out a wondering sigh as their fingers were dragged lightly across the board again. Once more, Cupcake was hard-pressed to keep up.
WANTTOPLAYAGAME
"Uh, sure," Jamie answered, unsure as to whether this was a question or a statement.
"What kind of game?" Pippa asked. Across from her, Monty moaned softly, knuckles pressed to his teeth.
The planchette trailed over the board. Cupcake leaned forward and stared intently, scribbling furiously.
HIDEANDSEEK
"Oh, well, that's easy enough," Claude answered charitably. "Can you make yourself visible so we can find you?"
"Yes, please?" Pippa agreed.
"We can't find you if you aren't visible," Jamie added.
"And it would be easier to talk face to face, don't you think?" Caleb contributed.
The pause was a long one. Over a minute passed before Cupcake was scribbling the answer.
YOUHIDEISEEK
"Uh," said Pippa.
"Do we have to do this?" Claude groaned, sitting back - but not far enough to take his fingers from the triangle. "I thought we were going to talk to new spirits like Jack Frost and the Sandman." He was startled when the triangle immediately began to move again.
HIDEFROMME
"Okay..." said Jamie slowly, his confidence suddenly shaken. He felt as if the tip of a cold claw was running slowly up his back, from the base of his spine to the back of his neck. He shivered.
"Spirit, we will not be leaving this room," Pippa called out firmly. She, too, had felt that cold feeling of something like dread creeping up her back.
Caleb and Claude immediately backed her up. "We can't leave this room and talk to you at the same time. We wouldn't know if you'd found us or not."
"Yeah, that's no fun..."
All six kids watched the board expectantly for close to five minutes before they got their next message, which was not a message, precisely. The pointer jerked down to the number nine, paused for a heartbeat, and then jerked to the number eight. Another pause. Seven. Pause. Six. Pause. Five.
The room seemed to fill with something heavy and dark, like dread or depression.
Four.
Three.
An immediate hubbub broke out.
"What is it doing?"
"Stop it! You guys!"
Two.
Jamie tore his hands from the planchette, yelling, "we're not going to play your stupid game!"
One.
Zero.
"I said-" Jamie was cut off by a sudden snap! that cracked across the bathroom like a gunshot. At least four kids squeaked or wailed, and they all jumped. All four of Jamie's mom's battery-powered candles, and every flashlight except Monty's, had gone out at once, but with the noise of a thousand light bulbs cracking into nothingness.
Monty gripped his flashlight tightly against his chest, breathing harshly; the lone light illuminated each puff of breath as if he were standing outside on an icy winter's night. More than one child came to the conclusion that their trembling was from more than just shot nerves. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped considerably with the countdown.
The planchette moved again in the much more thorough semi-darkness. Caleb yelped.
"I can't see!" Cupcake cried. Claude snatched the flashlight from Monty to shine it on the board. Cupcake leaned so far forward to see that she blocked the view from everybody but Monty, who had covered his face with both hands and was whimpering softly.
READYORNOT
Their fingers stilled for a brief pause and Cupcake slowly leaned away, eyebrows drawn together. And then:
GOTCHA
There followed a sudden commotion at the door and the sound of something inhuman. All of the kids screamed and jerked away from the door, Caleb tripping over the board and knocking the others over in the darkness like dominoes. Jamie recovered quickly, though, and, trembling, darted to the door and yanked it open.
"It's okay," he gasped as Abby, the family greyhound, bounced in. "It's just Abby. She hates being locked out of whatever room I'm in."
The open door allowed light and blessed heat to flood in to the suddenly suffocatingly small room. There was a brief struggle as every child attempted to escape into the hallway at the same time. Abby squeezed out with them, adding merrily to the melee by jumping on Jamie, making little whining sounds, and whipping everybody within reach with her tail.
"Jamie? Kids, is that you?" Jamie's mom mounted the steps and found all the children under her care in a tangled heap on the floor of the hallway. "What are you kids up to?"
"N- n- nothing," Pippa managed, picking herself up gingerly.
Jamie's mom was not fooled. "Been playing with that talking board, haven't you?"
Caught, the children all hung their heads a little sheepishly.
"Did you meet any ghosts?"
"Well..." Caleb began.
"Not... sort of?" Cupcake offered, as much at a loss as the others.
"Mom, our house is haunted," Jamie informed her, point blank. "There's a creepy ghost in the bathroom."
His mom seemed to think that was funny. Chuckling placidly, she suggested the ghost go outside to play with Jack Frost so her kiddos could go to bed. They caught the hint and shuffled off to Jamie's room (and Sophie's, for the girls) obediently, with Abby bouncing in their wake.
It was some hours later when Jamie's mom entered the hallway properly on her way to bed, and stopped to inspect the bathroom. Flipping on the light confirmed her suspicions: the Ouija board lay haphazardly on the floor with no sign of the planchette, something she would not have thought to look for anyway. She tutted at all of the flashlights and candles - clearly, Jamie had raided every closet in the house - and began gathering everything up to put away.
She did not notice a strange temperature in the room, or not particularly; nor did she try any of the candles or flashlights to find if they were working or not. She did notice smudges on the mirror, however, and gave an exasperated sigh. One thing she had always gotten on Jamie and Sophie about was writing on and leaving fingerprints all over the bathroom mirror. She didn't bother to read the message - doubtlessly something meant to be spooky and séance-ish - but flipped on the sink, nabbed a hand towel, and washed it off.
The next morning brought with it sunlight and warmth, a cloudless spring day, and the joy of having no school to go back to yet. Waking up to birdsong and the smell of bacon, the kids each felt something like foolishness regarding their Ouija experience the night before, rather the way one feels after panicking over a nightmare in the dead of night only to find it was, after all, nothing but a silly dream.
They giggled about it at a late breakfast table, talking over each other with their mouths full. Jamie's stepdad, Christopher, who had just returned from a night shift as a police detective, provided an attentive listener to their story, which they took in turns to tell.
"And then it started counting down all the way from nine, huh?"
"Yeah! It was super creepy, Mr. Graves. Then the whole room got cold-"
"It was like freezing cold-"
"I could see my breath, it was that cold-"
"And then suddenly, out of nowhere-"
"Abby tried to get in the door," Jamie finished, to a round of laughter which spewed crumbs across the table in almost every direction.
"Just ol' Abby, huh?" Christopher flashed a conspiratorial smile at his stepson while the dog in question laid her head in his lap and gazed soulfully up at his plate. "So no haunted bathrooms after all?"
"Nope," Cupcake assured him.
"But even if there was a ghost, you could just shoot it, right?" Monty asked.
"Oh, I don't know. I think I'd have to arrest it for trespassing first."
"Has anyone seen Sophie?" Jamie's mom asked, returning to the table to dish out seconds from a hot pan of bacon.
"Nope," Jamie supplied unhelpfully.
"She was still asleep when we left," Pippa said.
"Strange. She's usually an early riser," Jamie's mom said thoughtfully.
"I'll go get her up. Save some bacon for your sister, Jamie!" Christopher said, vacating the table and kitchen. Jamie could hear his voice faintly upstairs, calling for "his sleepy girl" and asking Sophie what she'd been up to all night. He returned several minutes later with a drowsy Sophie in one arm, still wearing footie pajamas and her hair in a tangled mess. She clung to Christopher even when presented with breakfast and had to be fed from his plate.
The sight made Jamie's stomach clench uncomfortably. Fortunately, breakfast didn't last much longer and, with his friends preparing to walk home, Jamie allowed himself the luxury of fleeing the kitchen table. Christopher's voice and Sophie's infectious laughter followed him all the way outside where, fortunately, he found something else to distract himself with.
In the kitchen, once the children had all left either to pack up or go home, Christopher and his wife had a brief conversation in soft voices while Sophie maneuvered food between her mouth and Abby.
"An Ouija board?" Christopher asked, eyebrows raised.
Mrs. Bennett-Graves shrugged. "I didn't see anything wrong with it. It's just a board game."
"Talking boards can be dangerous, Hon. I mean it," he added when his wife half-turned to give him a small, placating smile. "There are things wandering around that can do a lot of damage when they're invited to it."
Jamie's mom turned away from the stove and rested her lower back against it, gripping her elbows lightly. "But you don't have a problem with Jamie looking for aliens or camping out in his sister's room to see the Tooth Fairy?" she asked with false mischief in her smile.
Christopher let her derail the subject, engaging instead in a topic which was becoming a tired argument of late. "There's nothing wrong with a little imagination."
"But he's eleven years old now; he's getting too old for it, Chris. What's going to happen when his peers find out he still believes in Santa Clause? This needs to stop..."
"He'll grow out of it when he's good and ready, Elizabeth. There's nothing to worry about; he's a bright kid, he'll figure it out on his own. Repeatedly telling him the Easter Bunny isn't real hasn't worked yet and it's not going to until he's reached a point where he's ready to move on; we can't force him to grow up."
"I'm not trying to force him to grow up," Jamie's mom said a little scathingly, but the censure was directed at herself.
Christopher stood and approached his wife, leaving Sophie to scamper out of the kitchen unattended. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her temple. "Hey, love," he said, "it's alright. Jamie's going to be fine. A little faith never hurt anything — you know that better than anybody."
Jamie's mom smiled and returned the embrace. "No," she murmured, "I suppose it doesn't."
They were interrupted by Sophie a short while later, who came thundering in from outside with Abby at her heels, shrieking, "snowing! Snow! Mommy, Daddy, look!"
They did look, incredulously. It had been a mild winter followed by a warm spring; just this morning the weatherman had predicted a cloudless day with highs in the mid seventies. But sure enough, when Jamie's parents poked their heads out the front door, it was as if winter had settled in for one more day. The wind nipped their noses; clouds appeared to be covering the expanse of Burgess only; snowflakes had begun to pepper the air.
"Would you look at that," said Jamie's stepdad.
"Jack Frost," Sophie turned her bright, dimpled smile to the sky. "He's back, Daddy." Then she glanced back over her shoulder, into the house, where Abby was sitting at the door. "Come and play!"
The adults were forced to dodge Abby as the greyhound came barreling into the yard, but Jamie's mom immediately jumped into action and shot after Sophie, calling for her to put on a coat and a hat.
The neighborhood filled with the delighted calls of children, Jamie and Sophie among them. Christopher Graves stood in the doorway, shivering a little, and watched the sight appreciatively. Very little could compare, he thought, to the joy of children; and, closing the door behind him, he stepped into the snow and joined in on a snowball fight started by one of the twins.