Back to the Humans

If you’ve been reading The End of Time then you would know that occasionally it cuts from the world of fairies and we delve into the lives of Luke and his family. Luke and Annie missed the train, so they are now walking across a field of daisies so Annie can make it school. Annie loves fairies like many little girls do, but Luke finds it nonsensical for her to talk about a world of make believe all the time.

Luke trudged across the daisy field, determinedly not responding his sister’s calls or looking back at her.
“Luke! Luke, wait!” there was a moment of silence, Luke heard her steps turn into a run “I can’t catch up!” Annie called and began to cry again, her steps stopped, she had apparently given up. Luke stopped walking and turned around. As much as she annoyed him, Luke cared for his sister.
“I’ll slow down, if you promise not to talk about fairies.... or magic... or any other nonsense that won’t do either of us any good” he remained standing still until Annie had caught up.
“Thank you” she said softly and took his hand in hers, Luke smiled to himself.

For lack of magical things to talk about, Annie resorted to telling Luke all about school, her evil maths teacher and her friends. Luke was delighted that Annie was capable of talking about things other than fairies, and hung on her every word with fascinated interest. He was amazed that she lived a life aside from her dreamt up world of magic.
The time passed quickly, Annie did most of the talking, which usually would have aggravated Luke but he found himself content just listening to her, asking a question or two every so often.

They soon reached the end of the daisy field, Annie let go of Luke’s hand to scratch her noise, and Luke shoved his hands back into his pockets, he was glad to be free of the burden holding her hand had become. Luke was familiar with Chestnut Road - the street at the end of the daisy field - he had been here several times.
It was dark and depressing and the large uneven cobble stones stuck up in places, making the ground unpleasant to walk on. At the end of the short gloomy street was Annie’s school, an old dingy brown building, barely big enough to comfortably school a hundred children, and yet it schooled two hundred.
Annie, however, loved school. Luke never understood her for this, he had dropped out as soon as legally possible. He imagined she would want to stay at school until the end of year twelve, but he knew she would have to drop out early, like him, to earn money.
“How late will I be?” Annie asked worried, as they staggered over the cobble stones towards the dull brown building.
“Very” Luke said plainly, deciding the simple truth was best. They didn’t hasten their pace though, and continued walking at a steady speed, being careful not to trip on the bumpy ground.

After a few paces they passed a rather, out of place, looking house. All the other houses and shops on the street were clearly visible from the road, and Luke could see into all of their windows. But this one was not like the others.
He couldn’t even see beyond the tall, black metal gates, that were covered in weeds and other unattractive and prickly looking plants. Luke stopped at the gates, trying to see up the driveway to the house. Although he couldn’t see it, he felt unusually tense, and he realised that he was afraid of the house.

He was afraid, because it was unknown.

For a second he drifted off, and began imaging haunted mansions like the ones you see at the end of happy, sunny streets in films.... streets were all the houses have freshly mown green lawns and white picket fences.
But he quickly wiped the thought from his mind, no good would come of filling his thoughts with stories. It was at this point that Luke noticed Annie’s unexplained sudden absence, he looked left and right down the street. And then, just before he was about to call her name, he saw her walking up the driveway of the secretively creepy house.
The gate was ajar, leaving just enough room for Luke to squeeze through without having to move the gate. He feared it would make a loud squeaking noise if he pushed it, as the rusting hinges suggested.
He ran up the drive way and grabbed Annie from behind, by the shoulder. She whizzed around, just a little too fast, and Luke let out a girlish squeal. He had half expected to see his sister transformed into some kind of monster, but she was more herself than ever before.
She began to giggle at the sound of her brother’s squeal. Luke heard the sudden sound of a wooden fly wire door slamming open, he whizzed around to look at the house, which was several metres away from them. Standing on the veranda was an old man. Luke gasped, less girl like this time, and took a step backwards.

The old man yelled something inaudible and pulled out a long gun. Without further notice, and before Luke could do or say anything, the old man shot Annie several times in the chest and belly, she fell heavily to the floor. Circles of blood began to show through her navy blazer, Luke fell to his knees beside her.
He had no idea what to do.
First he touched one of the wounds...but thought better of it. Touched her cheek... found no point to it. Tried to take off her blazer... but didn’t want to move her too much. Then finally he took off his own jacket and put it over her bloody body, wondering if putting pressure on bullet wounds was the way to go.
He frantically did the best he could, wishing very much that he could save her. But blood was flowing from her torso at an uncontrollable rate. He felt a sick combination of horror and nausea, as he watched more and more blood flow from his sister.
Luke looked angrily up at the veranda. The old man was now crotched over, standing only with the support of a cane “are you alright laddy?” the man called to Luke, as if nothing had happened.
Luke looked hastily back to Annie, she was no longer on the ground, but standing upright next to him. Luke stood up to feel her chest and belly, but there was nothing there.
“Get off!” she yelled “what are you doing?” she kicked his shin and Luke instinctively bent down to hold the pain.
He remembered his jacket, and how he had used it to put pressure on Annie’s wounds, but he found himself wearing the beige, corduroy jacket once again. He threw it off himself in one swift movement, examining it with terror- lying completely bloodless on the ground.
“Why don’t you children come in for a cup of tea, eh?” the old man asked sweetly... a little too sweetly, thought Luke “I have cookies” the man added, heading back into his house.
“Stop messing with me!” Luke yelled at the man “what’s going on!? What are you playing at!?” the old man looked over to Luke and said, as if he knew exactly what was going on
“I don’t know what you’re on about lad” and then added, with inarguable seriousness “come in and have a cookie, boy.”

Annie and Luke headed slowly towards the house, Luke was shaking intensely and wasn’t sure why his curiosity was overpowering his logic and sense at this point.
As they got closer to the veranda, Luke noticed the frizzy white haired man had one brown eye and one electric purple eye. Luke stared with fierce fascination.