Four Girls, One Guy

A group of friends enter an eerie old abandoned house to be greeted by a lonely old man.

 

“Think of the possibilities!” cried Nick, as he stared at all the ice cream flavours in front of him. He was never one to choose and all of the flavours looked so delicious sitting in their individual white tubs. “Has anyone ever ordered every flavour?”

            The man behind the counter shook his head. He was about in his mid forties, dressed in a white apron that hung overtop his normal clothes, and had a small moustache that kept twitching ever so often, impatient of the boy’s lack of decision. “How much would it cost for all?”

            “Listen kid, you’re wasting my time. I’ve got costumers to serve; I don’t have time for stupid questions.”

            Nick turned around, a long line up had begun to gather behind him, and they too looked frustrated with the delay of time.

            “Seriously though, how much?” Nick persisted.

            “That’s twenty eight flavours and one flavour is about three dollars.”

            The man quickly did the math. “You’re looking at about eighty four dollars.”

            “Eighty four dollars! But all I have is a five.”

            “Then I suggest you choose two flavours or leave my store.”

            “I’ll have a moose tracks and vanilla shake.”

            The man wanted to knock Nick over the head with the silver scooper.

            “Fine,” he said, trying to sound pleasant when really inside he was like a small fire that was about to engulf a building.

            “Thank you,” said Nick, and headed over to the counter.

            “Sorry for the wait,” the man said, looking the next woman directly in the eye. She was holding a small toddler in her hand who was constantly pulling on the blue sleeve of her dress as if she were a yoyo.

            “What is it Timmy?” she asked, as the little boy began to suck his thumb. He then pointed to the sign of flavours that was hanging on the white wall.

            “I don’t know what you’re pointing at,” the mother said, softly.

            The child kept on pointing.

            “I think he wants chocolate,” the woman said, finally.

            “Chocolate he will have,” said the man, delighted with the customer’s quick decision�"anything was quick after dealing with the 16-year-old boy named Nicholas Garner.

            Soon loud noises caught the attention of Timmy and he began to cry, which soon turned into wailing. The blender had just been started up for Nick’s milkshake. The man stared at the 21-year-old intern who was making the shake. He was thinking of getting rid of milkshakes and banning children from his shop. The red headed girl with freckles scattered across her nose just smiled at him apologetically once she shut off the blender and removed the stainless steel cup that had mixed the now thick concoction. The man felt like ripping off his ears and throwing them at the child to make the child shut up. The mother was now trying to soothe her baby by rattling a small plastic duck rattle, but the child kept on screaming.

            Across the counter, the red headed girl had just handed Nick his milkshake. He thanked her kindly and began to head out the door. The man began to run after him wanting to strangle him because of the chaos the stupid boy had invited. He didn’t realize the counter that was in front of him, so incidentally tripped over the thick block of granite and crashed to the floor, barely missing his culprit and only swiping air that could have caught the boy’s shirt tail, as Nick headed out the door. The customers stared at the man now lying face first on the floor and presumed him dead after a collision and fall like that. But the man was very much alive, and as he clutched his, what felt to be broken legs, and lifted his face that seemed to be glowing the same colour of red as Rudolph the reindeer’s nose. He then came to face to face with a screaming and crying baby. As spit from the child flew into his face, the man wished that the shop would suddenly catch fire and he could be buried in the burning embers of his store, charred and burnt, never to be seen again.

 

“That man was about to rip your face off,” said Shawna, as she licked her dark chocolate and cherry ice cream cone.

            Her red dress blew in the wind as Nick came closer to her.

            “What, really?” asked Nick innocently, as he stared into Shawna’s bright blue eyes that beamed in the morning sunlight. “He seemed pretty friendly to me.”

            “Nick, why are you such an idiot?” asked Clara, who was now nibbling on her cone.

            Some crumbs fell on her ruffled white blouse and she quickly swiped them off, to avoid ruining the fabric.

            “I’m not an idiot Clara,” Nick said, taking offence. “I just didn’t know that the man secretly hated me.

            Clara laughed as she noticed the crumbs had ended up on her faded jean short shorts. She performed another swipe hoping they were now off her clothes.

            “It’s because you can’t depict emotion,” said Sylvia, who had finished her cone a minute before Nick had even left the store. “No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”

            “He would probably have her go insane if he did,” pointed out Sara, she had not bought anything at the ice cream shop.  

            Nick couldn’t believe this; his friends were brutalizing him, as if he really was some stupid helpless ignorant child.

            “What’s your guys’ problem anyway?” he asked.

            The girls just shrugged their shoulders.

            “But you did take a long time deciding exactly what you wanted, holding up the other customers in line,” pointed out Shawna.

            The three girls nodded along with Shawna, and giggled.

            “You know we’re teasing you right Nick?”

            Nick knew it, and he wanted to also believe that these four were all secretly attracted to him. He also knew that the odds were favourable, given that he was the only boy in the group, and that sometimes teasing lead to feelings. But he soon dismissed these thoughts thinking they were ridiculous since  he really was only interested in  impressing one�"Shawna Connor. She didn’t know it, but Nick had developed a huge crush on her that had begun in Grade 7. Sometimes, he admitted it did feel awkward hanging around her, and it didn’t help the matter that he was also very clumsy on his feet. He had been labelled a “klutz” more than once from the girls and so he was now trying to “man up” to impress Shawna and her friends. He wanted to  prove that he wasn’t some awkward thoughtless boy.

Usually boys his age would be hanging around other boys. Nick did have “guy friends” but also knew some girls as well. These four had asked him to hang out with them since they hadn’t seen him in a while. The move to a different high school kept him from seeing them regularly, but Nick hadn’t been able to get rid of his feelings for Shawna.They had sort of stayed locked up in a box until he saw her again. Now, his heart beat rapidly when he saw her. Her big bright blue eyes, her cheerful smile, and her long curlylocks of red hair. It hadn’t helped that when he had paid for his cone at the cash register that the girl also had red hair. But Shawna’s hair was more of a shiny bronze with a small mixture of blonde everywhere.

He stared at his friends as he sipped his milkshake.

“I can’t believe you got a milkshake,” said Sara, “and after all that trouble that poor man went through.”

“Guys, enough with the teasing,” said Shawna, “I think we’ve slaughtered Nick enough.”

“No, but I’m serious.”

If Nick had to give adjectives to each one of his friends he would label Shawna Connor as calm and kind�"not just because of reasons that are obvious�"Clara Bell as messy�"she always somehow ended up getting something on her, especially when she wore white�"Sylvia Tristine as sometimes annoying�"especially when it came to Science, she could spend hours discussing that topic�"and Sara Caper who sometimes seemed to be too serious, but still did smile sometimes.

Nick could tell that Shawna was more the leader of her group, like a mother dog trying to gather her puppies.

“How’s your milkshake Nick?” asked Sara. “Is it worth wasting all the customers’ time in line?”

Nick had to laugh at that and put up his hands defensively.

“Alright, alright, I admit that I was an idiot in Cream Ice, now will you all leave me alone?”

The girls nodded their head. “Good.”

He then proceeded to walk down the back alleyway behind the shop; the girls followed him.

“Does anyone have any idea on what we’re gonna do today?” he asked.

Everyone shook their head. “Alright, fair enough. I was just wondering.”

Shawna shook her head and sighed. Nick was trying to show off his superiority, the problem was he was more of a follower than a leader, and she could see right through him. But she followed him none the less, wondering where the hell Nick was taking them. She knew though, that he probably didn’t even know.

After the alleyway, the five teenagers came to a main road and proceeded down the sidewalk passing numerous houses. Shawna knew where they were headed. She had passed these houses a considerable amount of times when she headed up to her farm. None of them lived in the countryside, but Shawna had invited all of them to her farm for the weekend. Of course, her mother found it slightly strange to have only one boy in the house�"her father had passed away three years ago�"but Shawna convinced her that Nick was one of her best friends that she had known throughout middle school and now high school, since all her friends were in Grade 10. Nick though, had never seemed to feel awkward around her friends and she knew that when people saw the five of them on the street, that they either believed Nick to be a homosexual or “a player”, but he didn’t mind, so neither did she. The people could stare as long as they wanted and could think of whatever they pleased.

Nick was leading them to the old run down house that was located at the end of this small country road. It used to be a magnificent looking Victorian house with large windows, a gaping balcony, coated in a chocolate brown roofing with gold trim all along the side of the house, large white columns that went around the great exterior of the, and two large beaming red chimney stacks. The house was painted a menacing white with trees and bushes all around the structure. She had always found the white to be a bit too bright, but either than that she had always envied the elderly couple that lived there. Now though, it was just the older man who occupied it. His wife had passed away many years ago and he had been mostly in mourning after the time of her death. Therefore, he hadn’t put in the necessary time to tend to his majestic house. The paint was now chipping, the wood seemed to be rotting, the shingles were cracking, windows were broken, one of the chimneys had collapsed, and there was one oak tree that seemed to be leaning closer and closer towards the house as the years passed on, as if preparing to crush the building. There were many stories about the house and the old man. Some said that he had left it as soon as his wife had died and had tired to destroy the house by smashing windows and causing as much damage as possible. Some say he tried to burn it but the firefighters came and drowned the house before he could commit much destruction, but there was no sign of any charring. Others said he had been murdered by some children as they threw stones at him perceiving him as an angry old man who didn’t need to pass his life upon others any longer. Some think his body is still lying somewhere inside, rotting, but no one had complained about the smell, which Shawna found to be quite odd. Many, including Shawna, believed he still lived there and hardly left the dwelling.

Shawna had told the story about the old man and his home to her friends many times, and it seemed Nick was now curious to find out the truth and was taking them all along with him. Four 15-year-old girls and one 16-year-old boy.

They now were standing close to the cobblestone steps of the house. Shawna’s friends looked very terrified upon entering probably because of the stories they had heard. They looked at the tall standing structure as if it was sitting atop a cliff being repeatedly struck by lightning.

“Well let’s go inside,” said Nick, calmly.

“Are you crazy?” cried Clara. “Haven’t you heard the stories?”

Nick nodded.

“So? Why, are you afraid?”

“I heard he lures children into his house and eats them for breakfast, and throws the bones out into the backyard. After a while, he decided to kill and eat his wife,” said Sylvia.

“I heard the house is haunted and once you enter, you will never be seen again,” said Clara.

“I just think that we could be arrested if we go inside,” stated Sara.

Everyone stared at her. “What?” asked Sara, sounding offended. “I don’t believe in any of these stupid tales. I just think that if we go inside we could get into lots of trouble.”

“Bullshit,” said Nick, “the guy’s definitely dead or left the place a long time ago. We can’t get arrested for entering an uninhabited building.”

“No,” said Sara, “but I think he still lives here.”

“He’s probably ninety if he does.”

“He could be, some men live to their ninety’s.”

Shawna was getting tired of this so she stepped in.

“Whether he’s in the house or not, I think Nick’s right and we should investigate.”

Nick smiled, knowing that she was on his side. “The stories we’ve heard have been going around forever, I think we should actually see what truly happened.”

“Agreed,” said Nick, beaming. “So let’s go.”

Sara, Nick, and Shawna ascended the cobble stone steps and up the cobble stone path, while Clara and Sylvia trailed closely behind a crazed look of nervousness pasted on their faces.

Once on the front porch, Nick was about to knock on the thick now cracked and splintered wooden door when Shawna said,

“Don’t bother.”

He then proceeded in opening the door which creaked loudly as the teenagers entered.

From the afternoon light, the house seemed to be very dark; they then noticed that all the main floor windows had been boarded up to block the sunlight, so only a small stream of light was able to sneak through from the upstairs floor. The five waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness before proceeding. The floors creaked loudly as they moved inside the house, as if the floorboards couldn’t take the strain of 10 feet walking across them. At each creak, they kept looking back to make sure no one had entered after them, until there was a loud crash and a body fell to the floor. Soon the four girls heard Nick cursing as they saw him hobble in the dark clutching his right leg.

“F*****g stupid table!” he cried. “How the hell you supposed to see in this place?”

Nick’s right leg had careened with a small coffee table that had been sitting against the wall of the hallway. He had been feeling the walls with his hand, as had everyone else, to make sure he didn’t bump into anything. Obviously this tactic hadn’t worked and he had slammed into the table causing him and the table to fall. A vase that had once been sitting on the wooden platform had now shattered, now lying in assorted fragments on the floor.

Suddenly a low scratchy voice cried,

“Who’s there?”

Nick stopped cursing and the teenagers stood very still, as if a ghost had just brushed its arm up their legs.

A light from the kitchen was switched on and in the dimming light, they saw an elderly man crouched over and leaning on his cane for support, staring at them. “How dare you enter my home! What do you kids want?”

His clothes were wrinkled and he had very glassy grey eyes. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days and the girls quickly tried to bury their faces in their tops to be rid of the smell. Nick just stood there not really knowing what to do but worried of plugging his nose.

The old man caught this action. “You find the stench of me revolting do you?” cried the man, cracking his cane on the floor which shook the whole house. “Well I’ll tell you something, when you get married and lose your spouse who was the sun, your soul, and the world to you, you won’t feel so happy and joyful like the young spirits you are now.”

No one said anything. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to enter strangers’ homes especially uninvited?”

Silence.

The man grunted. “Fine. Well I know the boy can talk because I heard his cries as he crashed into my coffee table and destroyed my very expensive vase that was given to be me by my late wife.” His cane was then pointed towards the jagged glass pieces lying on the floor. Nick all of a sudden felt very guilty for causing the disturbance that had probably awoken the old man. The man pointed the cane at Nick and said, “Come,” as if beckoning a dog.

Nick, not knowing what to do, began walking forward. Shawna grabbed his left arm to pull him back, and looked into his lime green eyes.

“Don’t,” she said softly.

Nick gently removed her hand and kept walking towards the old man, as if in a trance.

“Nick!” she cried, but he had already arrived in front of the man.

Then with one hand, he grabbed Nick by his shirt collar, and pushed him into the kitchen table, causing the ceiling light to shake from the vibrations. The man then took his cane and beat Nick’s backside two times with it. Every time the bar struck, Nick could feel his spine bending from impact, as if trying to avoid it. The girls stared paralyzed as they watched metal contact flesh and bone. Once the punishment was complete, the man, drenched in sweat, tripped Nick so he fell to the floor where he lay injured and helpless. He didn’t moan and he didn’t cry, no sound came out of Nicholas Garner. The old man threw his cane to the floor and looked up at the four girls.

“That’s what one gets when they destroy one’s property especially given to them by the deceased.”

The girls didn’t say anything, but tears started welling up in Shawna’s eyes for Nick’s pain. “You should all get at least one wrap of the cane for trespassing, but you’re lucky that I don’t harm the female kind. Carlene would be disgusted with me if I ever did such a thing.” It was the first time the old man had mentioned his wife’s name in a while. “Poor Carlene,” moaned the old man, as the tears began to pour down his face. “Only eighty-five, and yet she could have lived so much longer looking only thirty-five and seeming so young. But dreaded cancer had to suck her life away from me.” He cupped his hands over his face and fell to the floor, weeping.

The girls did nothing to comfort him.

“And you,” pointed the man at Shawna. “Those tears in your eyes for your friend with the broken back. You have no idea what it’s like to be ripped apart in so much loss, depressed by everything, awaiting death, and not knowing when it’ll come. Only true love can do this to you. How can someone so pure seem to shred themselves in front of you?”

The four girls did feel sorry for the poor old man and found that his attempted destruction of Nick was only through emotions. Still, as the man wept, Shawna went over and kneeled close to Nick. She lifted up his shirt to see a large purple bruise where the man had struck him. She lay on the floor and lifted his head up, to see him painfully smile.

            “Don’t say anything,” she whispered.

            He leaned over and kissed her lips.

            It was so unexpected that she almost slapped him away.

            She could now feel his affection run through her body and seemed to hear his thoughts without him speaking. From that one kiss, she knew all this, but she also knew that she couldn’t transfer the same affection back.

            She looked into those soft lime green eyes and uttered the unforgettable words,

            “I’m sorry.”

            A new pain now started to build itself in Nick, but this time it was his heart. His eyes dropped down to the floor not wanting to look into the bright blue eyes anymore. Shawna felt the pain, but couldn’t cure it. She slowly brought Nick to his feet, where he then was hunched over still recovering from the damage of the cane. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his red collared shirt as tears began streaming down her cheeks as she said, “I’m so sorry, Nick.”

            Nick tried to pat her on the back to calm her down, she seemed to be doing the crying for him as well as herself. As Shawna’s stream of tears began, the old man’s ended. He stood up to see Shawna clutching onto Nick, crying for his emotional and physical pain.

            “What are you crying about?” he cried. “No one died in front of your eyes.”

            He went up and pulled Shawna away from Nick and as he did so, Nick fell to his knees since he wasn’t yet comfortable on standing on his own. He clutched his back as he hit the floor, still wincing from the pain.

            Shawna dried her eyes with her hand and the old man went to get her a tissue to blow her nose.

            Once the tissue was thrown into the waste basket, he pulled Nick up to his feet and handed him his cane.

            “Sorry about the beating,” he said to Nick, as if they had just become best friends. “I just get a bit emotional when I’m reminded of Carlene. You need this more than I do, I’ll be fine today without it. I may be old, but I can still walk.”

            Nick took the cane, worried of his punishment if he didn’t.

            Then the old man faced the four girls. “You should all come down to my basement; I would like to show you all something.”

            He switched on the basement light and disappeared down the stairs. Once the man was gone, the teenagers stared at each other, not knowing what to think of the man’s sudden change in attitude.

            “You think he’s suffering from some mental disorder?” asked Sara.

            No one knew what to think.

            “I think we should go down there,” suggested Shawna. “I don’t know what he’d do to us if we didn’t follow.

            “What do you think he wants to show us?” asked Sylvia

            “I don’t think he wants to show us anything, I think he wants to do things to us,

well everyone except Nick,” Clara pointed out.

            “Ugh!” cried the girls, understanding the sexual reference.

            “Think about it. He treats Nick like s**t and us like angels almost. What else

could he want from us?”

            “I don’t think he’s some creepy pedophile,” stated Shawna. “I think he just misses

his wife.”

            “Well Shawna, you can go down there, but I’m staying up here.”

            “Me too,” agreed Sylvia.

            Shawna looked at Sara, who sighed.

            “Thanks guys for putting me on the spot. And yeah, I guess I’ll go down, I don’t

believe he’s some sex predator.”

            “Can you describe what a sex predator looks like without getting into

stereotypes?” questioned Clara.

            “No but�'”

            “I rest my case. He could be very good at hiding it from us.”

            “Bullshit!” cried Shawna. “I’m going down there, who’s with me?”

            Nick and Sara walked towards the basement stairs. “Anyone else?”

            Clara and Sylvia took a few steps back.

            “No way,” said Clara and Sylvia together.

            “Fine,” said Shawna, and she walked up to Nick. “Here Nick, lean on me so you

get more support.”

Nick, still hurt from Shawna’s rejection, realized that she was just trying to be a good friend to him and there was no reason for him to disregard her. It would take a while for him to forget the thoughts, but he didn’t want to destroy their friendship over some stupid crush, so he leaned on her right arm, and she led him down the stairs. He felt like some disabled grandfather, more disabled than the old man, but it couldn’t be helped.

As the three descended down the stone steps, they noticed how cluttered the basement was. Large cardboard boxes were piled everywhere and looked as if mice had made there way into a few. Nick could have sworn he saw a nest resting on top of one of the small bookshelves that was cramped with books and blocked by more boxes. No one wanted to even dare look inside, worried of what they’d find. Rats, mice, cockroaches, and other sorts of disgusting animals and insects. In the corner Shawna thought she could see small mouse droppings along the windowsill that was so musty and damp that there was no way you could see anything through it. The girls were more frightened now not of the old man, but of the state of his basement. Shawna was more clinging on to Nick, than he was leaning on to her. Sara was following very close behind her and gave a high pitch scream when she heard a loud crunch underneath her purple Nike high tops. She had just stepped on a cockroach.

The light only shone from the stairs above, so the basement was dimly lit. It seemed to Sara and Shawna more and more likely that the old man was going to rape them. It seemed like the perfect sketchy environment. The putrid smell of mould, droppings, and mildew seemed to lock itself within their nostrils, refusing to escape.  Shawna felt an arm on her shoulder and almost screamed too, when she felt a hand go over her mouth.

“Shhh,” hushed a voice, it was the old man. “Follow me.”

            He led them into a small abandoned room where a desk stood, piled with stacks upon stacks of paper. A little light bulb hung from the ceiling swinging freely. There was a metal cord hanging to pull which would then turn on the light. Besides the desk and the lamp there wasn’t much else except for two black looking devices, one small and one large. Each of them had on top of it a small red light that blinked every four seconds. The old man picked up the bigger looking device and showed it off to the three as if it was some magnificent toy. Shawna wondered what had happened to her two friends and if they were still upstairs or if they had left the house. “Do you know what this is?” asked the old man, stimulated, his glassy grey eyes twinkling as if he was showing them some magnificent toy.  The three shook their heads. “This is a device that can pick up high frequencies, such as spirits. I’ve been using it, hoping to hear my darling Carlene’s voice again. It took me years to make. I ripped the antenna off my roof, just before these damned kids threw stones at my windows and chimney causing it to collapse. I took some old wires out of a radio and configured them to this old tape recorder. The wiring took a while to connect but I was patient. The tape recorder allows me to record high frequencies and then I play the tape back to hear what I’ve picked up. Most of the time I get nothing, but sometimes something strange happens and I can sort of depict voices, but they are very faint and hardly intelligible.  I also took the dials from the old radio and wired them with the recorder, so I can play around with frequencies. By doing this, I sometimes can hear the voices, but then again my hearing isn’t anything like it used to be. I also created another little mechanism that I plug into the tape recorder that can sometimes heighten the frequencies to extreme heights. It was made through the same inventions but can be used while the tape is playing. I mostly use the tuner when I pick up frequencies really far away.  For both gadgets they are each equipped with a red blinker, the faster it blinks, the higher the frequency.”

            He opened the top drawer of his desk, and brought out a very small black box. He then pressed play and record on the weirdly configured tape recorder and drew out two large antennas from the front of the recorder. A small satellite dish that was close to the buttons of the recorder began to spin, as he held up the device in the palm of his hand. The three teenagers watched in amazement as the dish spun faster and faster, and the blinker began blinking every two seconds. Five minutes went by before the old man pressed stop. He then connected it to the tuner and rewound the tape. Once pressing play, he fiddled with the dials before the three teenagers could almost hear a clear and crisp voice moaning,

            “Ryker, Ryker.”

            The man’s eyes lit up with joy and excitement. He had just heard the voice of his long deceased wife.

            “This is amazing!” he cried, ecstatic. “Never have I gotten such a clear signal, it must be all the bodies in the room that’s producing the energy.”

            He picked up the small black looking box that he had taken from the drawer and wired it up to a headset. He then placed it on his head, looking as if in a teleconference. He leaned the microphone away from his lips and spoke to the teenagers. “I created this little machine through the exact same inventions. The tape recorder and radio were absolutely brilliant creations. Never have I used this machine because I have never picked up any real clear voices, but now I can talk to the dead.” The old man adjusted the microphone to his lips and spoke softly,

            “Hello Carlene.”

            His new invention had small dials as well and could pick up voices rather than just hearing them. Every time the old man spoke, he was sending out very high frequent radar signals into the air and this is what caused the voice to respond back.

            “Hello darling.”

            Carlene had a very soft and calming voice, which made him smile, remembering the wonderful years he had spent with her when she was alive.

            “Where are you my dear?”

            “Up here.”

            “Up where?”

            “Oh come now, I believe you know the place.”

            No one could believe it, the old man, who the teenagers had found was named Ryker, was actually speaking to his wife in heaven.

            “What’s it like up there?”

            “Oh, I couldn’t say.”

            Of course, the teenagers had no idea what Carlene was saying back, the voices were only heard in the earpieces in the head piece. All the teenagers saw was the exited old man thinking he was talking to his wife as he kept speaking into the microphone. Through his excitement though, he handed the adolescents the headset so they could all listen, but all they heard was static.

           

Reviews

[GTVile]

Wow. You know, this went in a direction that I totally was not expecting, and then the end threw me through another loop. This was very, very, creative, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. You really had me going that this was going to be another one of the usual old plots where the kids get tortured or there's some sort of horrible ending, but this one had a bitter sweet and very open-ended finale that leaves the reader to decide for his/herself. I know some people cannot appreciate that, but I can, and I do. So thank you for a very interesting and captivating read.

[Andy Ruffett]

Thanks. What did you think of the opening line connected to the title? I though that was pretty clever.