Things were getting much, much better. Things were so good, I couldn't believe it. It was like all my sad, lonely feelings were replaced in one huge burst. Every time Sophia and I were together we stood intimately close, sometimes even holding hands. At the church we always sat together now. And the funny thing is, I don't think anybody noticed, I guess they were too preoccupied with their own lives and other things, like the problem Josiah brought to us about two weeks later.
"Guys, we got a problem," he said as we walked in one day, "We can't meet here anymore."
"What? Why not?" Sophia exclaimed.
"You know how my dad's a demolition foreman. I overheard him say they were gonna start tearing this place down this weekend."
"That's not good," I said.
"Yeah, they're going to build a meat-packing plant for some company and they gotta clear the land."
"Well, where are we gonna meet now?" Sophia asked.
"That's what we've gotta figure out."
"You know," Quentin declared from lying down on a bench, looking up at the ceiling, "I just realized we can't stop by Dairy Queen anymore."
"I could really care less if we meet near Dairy Queen anymore. I'm more concerned about finding a place away from everybody where nobody'll bother us," Sophia said.
"Maybe we can meet at Dairy Queen"
"Shut up about the damn Dairy Queen, already. Think seriously."
I sat down at the edge of the pulpit. We stayed lost in thought for a long while.
"Man, I got no idea where we can go. We need this place," Quentin said.
"It's not like we need to come to a church or anything, just somewhere where we can be alone," Sophia said.
"You know, I might know a place," I declared. "My house has a big shed in the backyard we don't use."
"How far away is it from your house?" Jo asked.
"Well, we've got two acres of property, our house is at one end and the shed is at another."
"Sounds worth a look," Quentin said.
"All right, let's go check it out," Jo added. "Is there anybody there now?"
"No, my mom will be at work for a long time yet. We won't be bothered."
"All right, let's go."
We all walked out of the church. Quentin looked longingly across the street. "Can we stop at the Dairy Queen once before we go?"
"Shut up, Quentin," Josiah yelled.
So, we all went to my house and parked our cars along the curb. I knew the first thing they noticed was my house dwarfed by the immensity of the yard. It looked very peculiar compared to the other large houses around.
"Dude, your house is really small," Quentin remarked, "But you got all this land."
"Yeah," I explained, "My mom told me my great-great-great-great-great grandfather had this land for farming 150 years ago, and we've been living here since."
"Your whole family, all the way down? Interesting."
"I need to go into the house to get the key," I said.
"I gotta go to the bathroom anyway," Josiah added. I unlocked the door to my house and entered, the others followed me.
"The bathroom's on the right," I said.
Josiah headed to where I was pointing, the hallway leading to the bedrooms, bathroom and other rooms. Sophia and Quentin began exploring my living room while they waited. Sophia started looking at a sepia portrait on the wall of a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat standing in shadow.
"Who's this?" she asked.
"That's my grandfather I was talking about before. I was named after him."
"Oh."
"He was the first owner of this land. He had to defend it against the Mexicans and Indians and became a merciless gunfighter, very legendary."
"He seems like a fighter."
"Yeah, no one really knows how he died."
"Hey, Nintendo," Quentin suddenly exclaimed. I turned around, he was bent under the TV, exploring my library of video games.
"Let's see here, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo... wait a minute, these are all shooting games."
"Yeah, so?"
"So they're all boring."
"Oh, yeah?" Oh, he thinks shooting games aren't good, huh? I turned on the TV & Nintendo and the title screen for 'Showdown' flickered on. I picked up the large orange pistol and shot the screen once. The difficulty screen popped up, I selected super hard level and backed up as far as the cord would stretch.
"You're gonna shoot it from way back there? On super hard?"
I smirked confidently as the screen flashed ready. I shot once.
Cowboys and civilians began popping on the screen fast and furious. The cowboys began falling as quickly as I could shoot, the screen flashing as I squeezed the trigger each time. In two minutes the game stopped and my statistics came on:
COWBOYS: 30
TOWNFOLK: 0
POINT TOTAL: 500,000
BONUS POINTS: 100,000
PERFECT SCORE!
Quentin whistled in awe. "Impressive."
"I aim to please," I smiled, blowing imaginary smoke off my gun.
"Is that how you got so good at shooting?"
"Pretty much."
"How come you don't have N64 or Playstation?"
"No trigger games."
"You'll only buy trigger games?" Sophia asked.
"They're the only ones I like, and they're cheaper."
I heard a flush and Josiah came out of the bathroom.
"Jo, check this out." Quentin exclaimed. "30 cowboys, perfect score."
Josiah looked at me holding the light gun. "If all you can shoot is the TV, you ain't got nothing to brag about."
"I don't know," I said, "Flawless victory on super hard level from back here on a 13-inch TV seems pretty good to me."
"Yippee," he said venomously, "Do you have the key?"
I didn't, I realized, I was distracted. I ran into the kitchen to get the key. While I was in there I heard Josiah say, "Idiot was playing Nintendo while I was in there instead of getting the key. And this old P.O.S. Nintendo, no less."
"Leave him alone," Quentin said.
"Hey, I told you to shut up, Quentin."
Quentin didn't talk anymore, but Sophia came to his defense.
"Stop telling him to shut up all the time."
"Don't tell me what to do, bitch."
"Fuck you, Jo."
"Fuck you too, bitch, stay out of my face."
"What the hell is your problem?"
"It's about to be your problem in about ten seconds."
"Not on your best day, insect."
"Oooh, I'm scared, what're you going to do to me? Hurt my feelings?"
"How about we cast you out?"
"What?" he laughed.
"You're already in the ritual, so that's what we'd have to do."
"Bullshit, you all are too chicken shit to cast me out."
"You wanna try me?"
Cast him out?
"I fuckin' made you all!"
"The hell you did, the hell you ever made anything!"
"I made you all and I'll break you all just the same!"
"Over my dead body," Sophia finished.
Jo just glowered evilly at Sophia. He'd better not have been thinking what I thought he was thinking.
"I've got the key," I muttered from the doorway.
"Good, let's go," Josiah said angrily.
We exited through my back door and walked for a while to the back of my property, leaves and grass crunched under our feet, thin sapling trees surrounded us, as they fought for light among their older rivals. No one said a word. I walked ahead of everybody, but I got the impression Sophia and Josiah were giving each other bad looks as they walked. I half expected them to start brawling at any instant.
Quentin, who had turned silent and sad, caught sight of the shed and his eyes widened.
"Wow, that's a pretty huge shed. What's in it?"
"I don't know, I haven't ever been in it."
I had some trouble fitting the key into the hole, but it went in after a little jostling. The shed's thick layer of dirt and grime rubbed off on my hand as I opened the double doors.
A cold blast of dry wind swept over us. Sunlight streamed through the shed displaying a swarm of floating dust.
And we gasped.
The floor was covered with straw. Red straw. Blood-stained straw. In fact, the entire center of the floor was colored red. A long trail of crimson fluid that led back to a foreboding altar, an iron-cast block where a leather-bound book rested, surrounded by four candles, one on each corner, each pre-burnt and thoroughly melted. Two dark, abstract paintings were hung on the wall of the shed. At each of the four corners stood a tall pillar, intricately engraved with all sorts of weird markings I couldn't figure out.
"Whoa," I said.
"Caleb, what the hell is this?" Sophia asked.
I didn't answer, I didn't know, I was too shocked. What the hell happened in here?
I cautiously made my way into the room. As I crept closer I could see much more. The wooden walls were stained with splotches of dried blood. It was like someone had thrown it on there like paint. I saw a box near the far corner of the shed in front of a pillar. I hoped to god that it didn't contain the owner of all this blood.
"Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," Jo said.
Slowly, I approached the altar and opened the tome. The pages revealed dense lines of text and graphic diagrams penned in red ink. The words were in English letters but the language was completely indecipherable.
"What the hell does that say?" QT asked over my shoulder.
"I don't know, it looks like Latin or Japanese or something."
"Hey," Jo said from across the room.
I turned and saw Jo holding up a wooden staff. Tied to the top of it was a large yellow human skull that had one eye still in the socket.
"Ew, put that down," Quentin said.
"Now is that fucked up or is that fucked up?" Jo said.
"Did anybody check that trunk over there yet?" I asked.
"Here's a better question, does anybody want to?" Sophia said
Not to my surprise, no one raised a hand. And so, being the courageous (or foolhardy, take your pick) man I was, I approached the box.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Quentin asked.
"No, but I've got to find out what's in there."
Please no body, please no body, please...
I lifted the lid.
"Whoaaaa... now this..."
I reached in and pulled out some of its contents, one by one.
A sawed off shotgun.
A flare pistol.
Another flare pistol.
A bundle of TNT sticks.
A blue metal circular shield.
A can of gasoline.
"Now this is what I'd call fucked up."
It was an entire arsenal in the box. With this load you could have defended the Alamo alone and won.
Jo dropped the skull-staff and took the shotgun from the floor. "Hey, now we don't need the ritual, we can just take over the school."
We all laughed. We could be able to do some serious damage with this shit, but we'd get annihilated like Waco.
"Better put this stuff away," I said.
"Now wait a minute," Jo said. "Let's keep it. We could use-"
"Jo, you can't be serious," Sophia said.
"Hold on, hear me out. We take these and go into the school, and while everyone's in class we go in and hold the administration hostage while someone barricades the doors."
My god, he was serious! This guy was seriously planning a hostile takeover right in front of us.
"Jo, are you crazy? You can't take over the school, it'd be suicide," Sophia said. I bent down stealthily and placed the can of gasoline on the floor.
"You can't keep all the students in the building, they'll get out through the fire exits," Quentin said. Slowly, without anyone noticing, I picked up the closest weapon, a flare pistol, and tried to subtly hide it behind my leg as I stood up so he wouldn't notice.
"And what sort of demands are you gonna make?" Sophia added.
"I don't know, two million dollars?"
"Jo, this is insane, give me back the gun," I said.
Jo pulled it away, protecting it, like it was his baby.
"Jo, give me back the gun," I repeated with more emphasis.
He didn't give me it back. Now I was seriously worried and scared. Was he going to go psycho on us? Was he going to finally snap and turn us into chunky salsa?
It was a showdown. Me and him staring at each other. Unfortunately, he had a shotgun and I merely had a flare pistol, either of which may or may not even be loaded. My finger twitched on the trigger. If Jo looked like he was going to fire I might have had to plug him, but who would get the shot off faster?
Jo stepped back, slowly bringing the shotgun across his chest, holding it there.
Then he held it out for me. "I was just kidding, Caleb," he said in a congenial voice.
I smiled, trying to act calm even though I was more scared of Jo now than ever. I accepted the gun and put everything back in the box and shut it tight.
"You had me worried for a second, Jo," I joked.
"Nah, I was just fooling around."
"So," Quentin said, trying to ease tensions, "Are we going to use this place or what?"
"Looks good enough for me. It certainly fits the ritual tone. We aren't going to be bothered or anything, will we?" Jo asked.
"No, my mom is always at work. Even if she isn't, she probably doesn't remember that this place is back here."
"Good, all right, we'll meet at your house and then use the shed for the ritual."
"Sounds good to me."