A New Dawn
By: Sedi
Whooo, chapter four! ^,^!! We find out what happens to Max! Will he fall down the stairs to his death? Will he make it? Only time will tell... or this chapter. ^^' Also... The first appearance of Kai Hiwatari! Read on, dudes!
Chapter Four: Nighttime Chills
Max eyed the stairs, when another chill ran down his spin. He shivered as a feeling of discouragement washed over him. He felt like screaming "Stop it!" but didn't, because he knew that the shout would wake his mother. Gulping, the blonde used his crutch to lift his other leg to the same step his left one was on.
Going more slowly than he would have liked, Max continued these tidious steps. He got up to the second step, then the third, then the fourth... The blonde boy smiled.
'This is more easier than I thought. Why is Mom so worried?'
Suddenly, Max gasped as the crutch landed on his foot instead of the step. He quickly used both hands to cover up a yelp, then his hurt leg collapsed, and he fell on the step, grabbing onto the railing so he wouldn't slide down. He used his good leg to kick himself into a sitting position onto the step and stared down the fifteen steps he had climbed. Never before had he remembered feeling so queasy at just looking down a few feet of height. The blonde boy felt stranded, and his leg was hurting badly as if he had broken it again.
Judy stirred in her sleep when she felt a cold draft on her back, causing her to shiver. She turned over and pulled the covers up tightly around herself, causing her shaking to cease. What caused her eyes to snap open was when she heard an almost distant sounding voice whisper in her ear,"Wake up... Wake up..."
"Max?" she questioned when looking around the room. His son was nowhere to be found. "Just my imagination. Probably a dream. My work is getting to me... or not working is." Judy swung her legs and sat on the side of her bed, yawning. "Thirsty..."
Max closed his eyes and looked up, then opened them. Suddenly the ceiling seemed more interesting than the fifteen steps he accomplished climbing. But if he got his crutch...
The blonde boy looked down again, eyes searching for the wooden stick of hell. When he saw that it had fell all the way to the bottom of the staircase, his heart sank. The pain in his leg was growing, and it took all he had not to cry out. He tried shifting his leg to a more comfortable position, but it only made the pain worse.
Then, Max heard a door creak open. He looked up to see the door to his mother's room swing open slowly, and she walked out of it. Before she took the first step down the stairs, her eyes swooped down and gasped when she saw her son.
"M-Max!" she stuttered. "What are you...? When...? How...-"
"Mom," Max mumbled. "Can you help me?"
The next morning, Max woke up rather late. It was already eleven. He swung out of his bed using his crutch, as he made a habit of doing every morning, and immediatly went into the living room. The paint on the wall had dried by then, and looked much better.
"Now all we need is some carpeting, or at least a rug," he mumbled to himself, sighing.
The house was quiet, so he thought that Judy needed to go to work that day, even though it was a Sunday. When he walked into the kitchen, his thoughts were confirmed. There was a note on the fridge from Judy that told him that she got an emergency call and needed to go back to work, and that there was cereal and poptarts in the cabinet.
Max sighed and tossed the note in the trash, then took a poptart out and started munching on it while looking at a few old pictures on the fridge. They were mainly pictures of Judy and her work buddies, and then a few of Max when he was a little kid.
After finishing the poptart and guzzling some orange juice, Max limped to the back of the house to the porch. He planned on doing laps around the field in the back to get more accustomed to his crutches, maybe even checking out that old tree. But those plans quickly dimished when he looked out the window and saw some shuffling in the tree branches. Frowning, he stepped outside. The day was fairly warm, and there was no breeze, let alone wind.
The blonde boy walked over to the tree as quickly as his crutches would allow. He looked up in the tree and said,"Hello?" No answer. He tried again. "Uh... Hello? Is someone up there?"
"What do you want?" a cold voice from up in the branches asked.
"Well... Erm... I just saw something go up in the tree... I guess it was you," Max answered, a little hesitantly. "Ah... I'm Max. I live here now."
"I know," the voice replied.
"It's not like I mind you being up in there," Max kindly said. "It doesn't bother me. It's just... who are you?"
"What's it to you?"
The blonde boy wasn't sure what to say. He took a step away from the tree and continued staring at it, trying to see who the intruder was, but failed. Then, a boy jumped from it, barely missing landing ontop of Max. Max stumbled backwards in surprise, and then regained his composure. The boy had two tones of blue hair, slate blue in the front and dark blue in the black, and cold crimson eyes. He didn't waste anytime in turning to leave.
"Wait! What's your name?" Max tried again.
The boy stopped. "If you aren't going to leave me alone about it, then my name is Kai. Happy?"
Max blinked, then said,"You're that guy Tyson was talking about... Nice to meet you."
"Hn," Kai grunted, then continued to march off.
The blonde boy opened his mouth to call out to the other, but thought better of it and shook his head. 'Tyson wasn't kidding when he said that Kai was a loner. What was he doing in my tree anyway?' He walked back inside the house, forgetting about his past plans. 'Maybe a nice, long shower will help...'
"He's rude, isn't he?"
Max's eyes widened when he heard a different voice behind him, then carefully turned around as not to trip over the crutch. His eyes immediatly met with amber ones. The same pair he saw in the mirror the other day. The blonde boy gasped and stepped backwards as if to get away. The raven-haired boy stepped forward towards Max.
"Don't run, please," he begged.
The other boy gulped and took another step back, his body threatening to tremble, but finally regained most of his composure. He got a good look at the amber eyed boy this time. He couldn't the other day because he was too much in shock, and the boy had disappeared before he had the chance.
The raven-haired boy was wearing a shabby red headband with a yingyang on it, and traditional Chinese clothings that were quite dirty and looked as if they've been through hell and back. The boy's long black hair was wrapped with some sort of white clothe, and he was barefooted. It was obvious that he was Chinese. What struck Max the most surprising was one simple fact: he was transparent, like a hologram.
"D-Don't hurt me!" Max squeaked. After that remark, he felt quit stupid, because the other boy had cocked his head to the side in a cute way, looking confused.
"Why would I hurt you?"
"Ah... Uhm..." The blonde boy looked at him sheepishly. "I'm sorry."
"You're strange. Sorry for what?" The raven-haired boy stepped forward again. Max's nerves were about to break and send him running. "There isn't anything you should be sorry for. I understand your fear. I'm the reason why the last people who moved here went away..." The boy sighed sadly.
Max bit his tongue in guilt. This wasn't the face of an evil poltergeist; quite the opposite infact. To make up for his rudeness, he said,"Oh... Well, my name's Max. What's yours?"
"Rei Kon," he answered simple. "It's nice to meet you."
"Want to sit?" Max offered. Rei nodded, and they both walked into the living room then sat on the sofa. "So, you know Kai?"
"Not really. He just comes around here a lot, especially to sit in that tree. I don't know why he does it, but he seems to think in there a lot. And then there's this other guy who comes around with his friends. Tyson. He's... strange. None of them know that I'm here, though. I just watch him."
"What does Tyson do here?" Max asked.
"Well, before he met you, he and his friends would just walk right in and do homework. The front door was never locked. It doesn't really bother me. At least they don't vandalize this place, or change it."
Another wave of guilt hit Max when he thought of yesterday when he, Tyson, and Judy had painted the living room. As if reading the blonde boy's mind, Rei told him,"The white looks nice on the walls. Are you doing that in every room? Because that would be good."
"You're not mad?" Max asked, looking up at him.
"No! Not at all! I guess I'm not that transparent after all," Rei said, laughing.
Max giggled at the joke, the decided to change onto a more serious subject. "So, how did you get, eh, transparent?"
"You can go ahead and say I'm dead, I don't mind. And well, I died about thirty years back. My family lived here after moving from China. There was a gang war going on between three groups, and while walking home one day from the store, I just got shot."
The blonde boy stared at Rei, then blinked. Rei was so open about his death, and he wouldn't even tell Tyson about how he was merely wounded. Max gulped.
"So, what's your story?" the raven-haired boy asked, pointing at the other teen boy's leg.
"A gun shot," he answered. "Just some guy, getting recruited into a gang, had to prove himself and all..." Max's voice slightly lowered. "No big deal."
Rei sympathetically tried to touch Max's shoulder, but the blonde boy shivered and pulled back. "You're cold..." Realization then struck him. "Hey... You're the one who's been giving me chills lately!"
Rei blinked and leaned back away from Max. "I'm sorry... I just, uhm... Don't look where I'm going," he said quickly, lies dripping from all of his words except the last ones. Max continued.
"Last night, Mom said something about getting a chill that woke her up. Did you have anthing to do with it?" he asked accusingly.
The raven-haired boy looked at the ground. "Again, I'm sorry... I just saw you on the staircase, and you looked like you needed help, so I had to get your mom. I didn't want you to know that was here. I'm sorry..." Rei suddenly started to fade.
Max's eyes widened. "Wait! I was rude, I should be the sorry one! Oh, don't go!" Rei completely disappeared from sight. "Rei! Come back! Rei..." He gulped. "I'm sorry..."
The blonde boy felt more depressed than he had felt in a long time. But then again, he had already lost a new-found friend, and in a disappearing act no less. It was enough to send Max shaking again without needing the cold drafts to help.
"But why did he lie to me about the first chills?" Max asked himself. "He was so cold when I touched him. Did he touch me? On the back?" He blinked. "Wait, how did he know about me and Tyson meeting? Is he spying on me?" He then blushed at another thought: "Is he watching me while I take showers?" This caused himself to laugh. "I'm so paranoid, I guess I get it from my dad.
The blonde boy stood up and looked out the front window. The day was bright and sunny.
"I should go outside and enjoy this day. I'll be my last free day before I have to go to school tomorrow."
~To Be Continued
What do you guys think about the sizes of each chapter of A New Dawn? Do they need to be longer? And what about details and speed? Am I going too fast or too slow, or at the right place? I need critisism people!
By: Sedi
Whooo, chapter four! ^,^!! We find out what happens to Max! Will he fall down the stairs to his death? Will he make it? Only time will tell... or this chapter. ^^' Also... The first appearance of Kai Hiwatari! Read on, dudes!
Chapter Four: Nighttime Chills
Max eyed the stairs, when another chill ran down his spin. He shivered as a feeling of discouragement washed over him. He felt like screaming "Stop it!" but didn't, because he knew that the shout would wake his mother. Gulping, the blonde used his crutch to lift his other leg to the same step his left one was on.
Going more slowly than he would have liked, Max continued these tidious steps. He got up to the second step, then the third, then the fourth... The blonde boy smiled.
'This is more easier than I thought. Why is Mom so worried?'
Suddenly, Max gasped as the crutch landed on his foot instead of the step. He quickly used both hands to cover up a yelp, then his hurt leg collapsed, and he fell on the step, grabbing onto the railing so he wouldn't slide down. He used his good leg to kick himself into a sitting position onto the step and stared down the fifteen steps he had climbed. Never before had he remembered feeling so queasy at just looking down a few feet of height. The blonde boy felt stranded, and his leg was hurting badly as if he had broken it again.
Judy stirred in her sleep when she felt a cold draft on her back, causing her to shiver. She turned over and pulled the covers up tightly around herself, causing her shaking to cease. What caused her eyes to snap open was when she heard an almost distant sounding voice whisper in her ear,"Wake up... Wake up..."
"Max?" she questioned when looking around the room. His son was nowhere to be found. "Just my imagination. Probably a dream. My work is getting to me... or not working is." Judy swung her legs and sat on the side of her bed, yawning. "Thirsty..."
Max closed his eyes and looked up, then opened them. Suddenly the ceiling seemed more interesting than the fifteen steps he accomplished climbing. But if he got his crutch...
The blonde boy looked down again, eyes searching for the wooden stick of hell. When he saw that it had fell all the way to the bottom of the staircase, his heart sank. The pain in his leg was growing, and it took all he had not to cry out. He tried shifting his leg to a more comfortable position, but it only made the pain worse.
Then, Max heard a door creak open. He looked up to see the door to his mother's room swing open slowly, and she walked out of it. Before she took the first step down the stairs, her eyes swooped down and gasped when she saw her son.
"M-Max!" she stuttered. "What are you...? When...? How...-"
"Mom," Max mumbled. "Can you help me?"
The next morning, Max woke up rather late. It was already eleven. He swung out of his bed using his crutch, as he made a habit of doing every morning, and immediatly went into the living room. The paint on the wall had dried by then, and looked much better.
"Now all we need is some carpeting, or at least a rug," he mumbled to himself, sighing.
The house was quiet, so he thought that Judy needed to go to work that day, even though it was a Sunday. When he walked into the kitchen, his thoughts were confirmed. There was a note on the fridge from Judy that told him that she got an emergency call and needed to go back to work, and that there was cereal and poptarts in the cabinet.
Max sighed and tossed the note in the trash, then took a poptart out and started munching on it while looking at a few old pictures on the fridge. They were mainly pictures of Judy and her work buddies, and then a few of Max when he was a little kid.
After finishing the poptart and guzzling some orange juice, Max limped to the back of the house to the porch. He planned on doing laps around the field in the back to get more accustomed to his crutches, maybe even checking out that old tree. But those plans quickly dimished when he looked out the window and saw some shuffling in the tree branches. Frowning, he stepped outside. The day was fairly warm, and there was no breeze, let alone wind.
The blonde boy walked over to the tree as quickly as his crutches would allow. He looked up in the tree and said,"Hello?" No answer. He tried again. "Uh... Hello? Is someone up there?"
"What do you want?" a cold voice from up in the branches asked.
"Well... Erm... I just saw something go up in the tree... I guess it was you," Max answered, a little hesitantly. "Ah... I'm Max. I live here now."
"I know," the voice replied.
"It's not like I mind you being up in there," Max kindly said. "It doesn't bother me. It's just... who are you?"
"What's it to you?"
The blonde boy wasn't sure what to say. He took a step away from the tree and continued staring at it, trying to see who the intruder was, but failed. Then, a boy jumped from it, barely missing landing ontop of Max. Max stumbled backwards in surprise, and then regained his composure. The boy had two tones of blue hair, slate blue in the front and dark blue in the black, and cold crimson eyes. He didn't waste anytime in turning to leave.
"Wait! What's your name?" Max tried again.
The boy stopped. "If you aren't going to leave me alone about it, then my name is Kai. Happy?"
Max blinked, then said,"You're that guy Tyson was talking about... Nice to meet you."
"Hn," Kai grunted, then continued to march off.
The blonde boy opened his mouth to call out to the other, but thought better of it and shook his head. 'Tyson wasn't kidding when he said that Kai was a loner. What was he doing in my tree anyway?' He walked back inside the house, forgetting about his past plans. 'Maybe a nice, long shower will help...'
"He's rude, isn't he?"
Max's eyes widened when he heard a different voice behind him, then carefully turned around as not to trip over the crutch. His eyes immediatly met with amber ones. The same pair he saw in the mirror the other day. The blonde boy gasped and stepped backwards as if to get away. The raven-haired boy stepped forward towards Max.
"Don't run, please," he begged.
The other boy gulped and took another step back, his body threatening to tremble, but finally regained most of his composure. He got a good look at the amber eyed boy this time. He couldn't the other day because he was too much in shock, and the boy had disappeared before he had the chance.
The raven-haired boy was wearing a shabby red headband with a yingyang on it, and traditional Chinese clothings that were quite dirty and looked as if they've been through hell and back. The boy's long black hair was wrapped with some sort of white clothe, and he was barefooted. It was obvious that he was Chinese. What struck Max the most surprising was one simple fact: he was transparent, like a hologram.
"D-Don't hurt me!" Max squeaked. After that remark, he felt quit stupid, because the other boy had cocked his head to the side in a cute way, looking confused.
"Why would I hurt you?"
"Ah... Uhm..." The blonde boy looked at him sheepishly. "I'm sorry."
"You're strange. Sorry for what?" The raven-haired boy stepped forward again. Max's nerves were about to break and send him running. "There isn't anything you should be sorry for. I understand your fear. I'm the reason why the last people who moved here went away..." The boy sighed sadly.
Max bit his tongue in guilt. This wasn't the face of an evil poltergeist; quite the opposite infact. To make up for his rudeness, he said,"Oh... Well, my name's Max. What's yours?"
"Rei Kon," he answered simple. "It's nice to meet you."
"Want to sit?" Max offered. Rei nodded, and they both walked into the living room then sat on the sofa. "So, you know Kai?"
"Not really. He just comes around here a lot, especially to sit in that tree. I don't know why he does it, but he seems to think in there a lot. And then there's this other guy who comes around with his friends. Tyson. He's... strange. None of them know that I'm here, though. I just watch him."
"What does Tyson do here?" Max asked.
"Well, before he met you, he and his friends would just walk right in and do homework. The front door was never locked. It doesn't really bother me. At least they don't vandalize this place, or change it."
Another wave of guilt hit Max when he thought of yesterday when he, Tyson, and Judy had painted the living room. As if reading the blonde boy's mind, Rei told him,"The white looks nice on the walls. Are you doing that in every room? Because that would be good."
"You're not mad?" Max asked, looking up at him.
"No! Not at all! I guess I'm not that transparent after all," Rei said, laughing.
Max giggled at the joke, the decided to change onto a more serious subject. "So, how did you get, eh, transparent?"
"You can go ahead and say I'm dead, I don't mind. And well, I died about thirty years back. My family lived here after moving from China. There was a gang war going on between three groups, and while walking home one day from the store, I just got shot."
The blonde boy stared at Rei, then blinked. Rei was so open about his death, and he wouldn't even tell Tyson about how he was merely wounded. Max gulped.
"So, what's your story?" the raven-haired boy asked, pointing at the other teen boy's leg.
"A gun shot," he answered. "Just some guy, getting recruited into a gang, had to prove himself and all..." Max's voice slightly lowered. "No big deal."
Rei sympathetically tried to touch Max's shoulder, but the blonde boy shivered and pulled back. "You're cold..." Realization then struck him. "Hey... You're the one who's been giving me chills lately!"
Rei blinked and leaned back away from Max. "I'm sorry... I just, uhm... Don't look where I'm going," he said quickly, lies dripping from all of his words except the last ones. Max continued.
"Last night, Mom said something about getting a chill that woke her up. Did you have anthing to do with it?" he asked accusingly.
The raven-haired boy looked at the ground. "Again, I'm sorry... I just saw you on the staircase, and you looked like you needed help, so I had to get your mom. I didn't want you to know that was here. I'm sorry..." Rei suddenly started to fade.
Max's eyes widened. "Wait! I was rude, I should be the sorry one! Oh, don't go!" Rei completely disappeared from sight. "Rei! Come back! Rei..." He gulped. "I'm sorry..."
The blonde boy felt more depressed than he had felt in a long time. But then again, he had already lost a new-found friend, and in a disappearing act no less. It was enough to send Max shaking again without needing the cold drafts to help.
"But why did he lie to me about the first chills?" Max asked himself. "He was so cold when I touched him. Did he touch me? On the back?" He blinked. "Wait, how did he know about me and Tyson meeting? Is he spying on me?" He then blushed at another thought: "Is he watching me while I take showers?" This caused himself to laugh. "I'm so paranoid, I guess I get it from my dad.
The blonde boy stood up and looked out the front window. The day was bright and sunny.
"I should go outside and enjoy this day. I'll be my last free day before I have to go to school tomorrow."
~To Be Continued
What do you guys think about the sizes of each chapter of A New Dawn? Do they need to be longer? And what about details and speed? Am I going too fast or too slow, or at the right place? I need critisism people!
