W.S.S.H.

Pages Smarter Then Me

When I woke up the first time I made sure was that there was no pain anywhere on my body. I had all my limbs, both my eyes and ears; it looked like nothing had happened at all. The book was just where I left it, but in the morning sunlight it didn’t look nearly as menacing as I thought I had been before. I examined it again, making sure that there wasn’t any blood or anything in it, when my alarm clock went off, making me jump three feet back and stumble into my desk chair.
“Come on kids, six o’clock, get up!” my mom called. I was already up, so I changed as quickly as I could and went to get rid of the sleep in my appearance, washing my face, brushing my hair and teeth and making sure I looked plenty presentable for my first day. It’s not like I would be meeting anyone new, new teachers but that was pretty much it. Then I went out for breakfast, shoveling down the waffle mom made for me and made numerous promises that I’d be good and make new friends. Of course I wouldn’t make any new friends; I thought that was quite impossible since I already knew everyone in the school. A minor complication was that, in my opinion, Greg was the only person that wasn’t some stuck up jerk. I went back to my room, grabbing my backpack and with a quick goodbye walked out the door. This was the first year that Harry wasn’t joining me, she graduated last year and was off to college in a couple of days. I really felt bad for whatever college she was going to, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. I waited outside on the driveway for a while, looking down the road for the big yellow bus that would come to pick me up. I looked the other way too, the way to the dirt road, where I was scared a man would come up the road for me. Finally the bus was in sight, stopping at a couple of stops, including Greg’s I hoped, before finally pulling up and opening its doors for me. I walked onto the bus, smiling at the bus driver who didn’t return the smile; he merely glared with tired eyes. I decided to just keep walking, hating the noise and smell of this miserable bus. I saw Greg sitting in an empty seat towards the back, waving at me to hurry up. I waddled through the aisle, avoiding legs and backpacks and finally falling into the seat next to him.
“Way too many people here.” I decided. He nodded, but I doubted he had even heard me correctly. Thankfully I was one of the last stops, so we arrived at the school and unloaded all of the kids, piling onto the sidewalk and storming into the building like a mob. The teachers welcomed us and tried to show the new freshman around, but even the staff couldn’t make it through the oncoming wave of students. I said goodbye to Greg at his locker, walking over to mine and unloading my bag, carrying all the books and binders I needed for first period in the bag. I was off to Algebra while Greg was stuck in English, but I guess he got the better deal here. I walked over to my class and looked at all the faces that I didn’t miss since last year. The class seemed to be divided into two, the populars and the nerds. In the popular section you had your jocks, your brainless blondes, and the wanna-be’s, sitting over there just because they think they can make it. In the nerd section there were the kids with the glasses and braces, having a very in depth conversation about some video game about aliens or something. Even though I hated it, I sat in the empty seat in the back seat of the nerds. The front seats were all occupied by the kids, all wanting to absorb every word the teacher said. Finally the noise died down and we did the classic role call get to know you crap, but they got strait to business, the teacher telling us to get out notebooks our and write down some over-complicated problem that I’d love to avoid. But I tore through my bag, getting out a pencil and trying to find my spiral bond notebook I would’ve sworn was in my bag when I packed it. I looked behind my folder and my heart stopped. The notebook wasn’t there, but the book was, the black book from the cave. The teacher went on talking but I couldn’t hear him, I was bloody terrified. I had never put it in there, there was no way it could’ve gotten in there, it was on my dresser when I walked out of my room. I had no other paper, my binders and folders were all plastic and I couldn’t write on the desk. I couldn’t ask someone for paper since the class was already going on, so I pulled the book out nervously, as if it would burn my hand or something. The initials W.S.S.H. gleamed up at me in the light, as if laughing at my terror. I didn’t want to use it, but it was my last resort. The problem on the board was foreign to me but I scribbled it quickly, wanting to hear as much as I could. The teacher said something about taking the six and dividing it by two for some reason, but as I went to write it down I saw that my previous writing had disappeared. Instead, there was a 34 in neat ink in a handwriting that definitely wasn’t mine.
“Oh my god!” I exclaimed before thinking. The class was silent and I felt all eyes on me, my cheeks starting to glow nervously.
“Do you have something to say Mr. Watson?” The teacher asked sternly, annoyed that I had interrupted him.
“Um, no, I just, that’s interesting.” I said with a nervous laugh.
“If it’s so interesting then do you have an answer for us?” he asked. Suddenly I felt my entire body sweating with the eyes of everyone looking at me. Even the nerds in front of me looked puzzled, so I hoped to god this number was right.
“34?” I said doubtfully. The teacher paused for a moment, but then his angry expression turned impressed.
“Yes Mr. Watson, x=34, very good.” He said happily, and went on explaining how to solve it. I smiled with nervous relief, getting some glares of amazement and some of resentment. I took the explanation as an opportunity to flip through the still empty pages of the book, trying to find where my writing had gone. Had I not written it, and where did this writing come from? The rest of the class was filled with the same question, no matter how long I stared at my pencil writing when I looked up it was gone, replaced by the ink answer. When class was over I threw everything into my bag except the smart mystery book, walking off to History. Unfortunately I didn’t meet Greg in the halls, but it took me long enough to find my way to my class than to worry about where he was. When I finally got seated in the back once more I set the book carefully on the desk, not knowing what to do about it. Yes it was a sort of gift, I hated math and apparently I didn’t have to do it for now, but who was at the other end? Was it even a person, or just a calculator or something? When class started off I ignored the roll call to write down a simple question, When was the start of WW2? I stared at the writing, but it didn’t disappear as usual. I looked up at the wall, looking back down as quickly as I could. This time instead of a single number I saw neat, cursive handwriting September 1st, 1939. My blood ran cold, maybe this was the first computer or something? I flipped the book over, it was just a journal, thin, no wires or anything poking out, the pages were now blank once again, it made no sense. How could something like this just have all of the answers? The entire class was filled with the right answers and glares from my fellow students. Most of the answers I kept to myself though, I didn’t want to show off that much, people might get suspicious. But once the bell rang for lunch I almost ran down the hallway to where I knew Greg must be. He was by his locker and looked almost terrified as I stormed up to him and shoved the book in his face.
“What the heck John, you brought it to school!?” he exclaimed, taking a big step back and almost stepping on some girl getting her stuff on the floor.
“We seriously need to talk, got your lunch?” I asked.
“I packed.” Greg pointed out, holding up the blue lunch box he’s had since third grade.
“Good, let’s go out on the football pitch.” I decided.
“John come on, does it need to be so secret, can’t you just tell me here?” he pointed out.
“No, seriously, you’ll want to see this.” I decided, grabbing my own lunch from my locker and leading the way out to the football pitch.
“Since when were you one to break the rules?” Greg asked as I opened one of the emergency exits and walked out onto the ground. I knew we could get in trouble for this, the exits were only for emergencies and technically we should be in the building, but I was too excited to care. And if we got caught who cares, I’ll blame it all on Greg, all the staff knew that he was the one that deserved the punishment for anything we both seemed to get caught in.
“This is really important, I don’t want anyone hearing.” I pointed out, walking up the steps to the bleachers and sitting in the middle row. Even though it was summer the seat was cold, making me shift around to make sure I sat on my shorts and didn’t freeze my legs off.
“Okay, what’s so important?” Greg asked with annoyance, plopping next to me. I held up the book for him to see and he scooted a little bit away.
“No, it’s not bad, as far as I know. I didn’t pack it in my bag, I know for a fact that it was on my dresser when I left, and my notebook isn’t here anywhere, but that’s only the boring part, look.” I said, grabbing a pencil out of my back and scrawling down a simple question, Who sings Gold on The Ceiling? Nothing happened, of course it didn’t, we both have to look away.
“Look over there.” I decided, and the minute his head turned I looked back, seeing three neat, ink cursive words. The Black Keys.Greg’s face lit up, in confusion or horror I couldn’t tell, but I handed the book over for him to investigate. He started flipping through the pages, looking for any sign of my question that had vanished into thin air.
“You can check every page, it’s not there.” I pointed out.
“Okay then, give me the pencil.” He decided.
“You need to look away, then the writing also goes away.” I pointed out. He looked up at me as I said that, so I guess all it took was him to look back at the now blank paper.
“I could be wrong, but I don’t think books should do that.” Greg decided.
“Go ahead and write your own question.” I suggested.
“Okay, I will.” He decided. He started scrawling down. How many people are on a football pitch at a time? We both looked away, down the bleachers to make sure no one was coming up, but when we looked back, 11 on a team, 22 in all.
“Is that right?” I asked, not knowing much about football to be impressed.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Greg muttered, flipping the book over again. “How’d you find this out?”
“Well I didn’t mean to, my notebook was gone so I decided to just use this and when I wrote down a math problem the answer was written and the problem was gone. It knew the start date of WW2, math, now music and sports.” I muttered, looking at the small book in amazement.
“But it’s just a journal!” Greg debated.
“Maybe it’s magical.” I decided. Greg just laughed, but I wasn’t joking, magic was the only explanation I could think of. It obviously wasn’t a machine, and I bet all the pages could do that, so it had to be an amazing power neither of us could find buried in the pages. Greg cursed silently, but he was less mad and more amazed.
“Do you think it wanted to be found, that’s why the rock moved?” he asked wondrously.
“The rock moved because you leaned on it, it’s not magic it’s too many biscuits.” I defended, making Greg frown at me.
“Well then how’d it get in your bag?” he said. I couldn’t explain that, it couldn’t have just sneaked in, I would’ve noticed, so why in the world was it here?
“It’s a book, it can’t walk or move things, but it’s obviously up to something.” I decided.
“It also shouldn’t be able to talk back to us.” He pointed out.
“I think it’s a miracle.” I defended.
“Just because you don’t have to do your own work, that’s cheating John, and you’ll be rubbish on your tests.” He pointed out.
“Oh stop, you’re only jealous, if you had this you’d be all over it with excitement.” I pointed out. Greg muttered that he wouldn’t, but I knew he was lying.
“We should get back.” He decided, looking back at the school, which seemed to be moving around now. My stomach growled, but we walked back into the school and blended into the crowd once again, the book clutched safely in my hands. I couldn’t let this thing get away; it seemed to be one of the best things to happen to me in a while. Maybe we hadn’t found gold down there, but we found an all knowing god book, and I think that was a bit better. Greg and I shared the science class next, with Mrs. Fletcher, so we walked to the room with our stuff, still lunch less but I guess we’d have to sneak some food into class. We sat together in the back and finally in one of my classes I actually had a friend. When the teacher wasn’t looking I snuck a couple of crackers into my mouth and Greg ate some pretzels, he knew as well as I that we would be brutally murdered if we were caught. I kept writing down questions, all the questions I could think of, and every single one was answered correctly. It didn’t matter how many numbers I added or divided, I even wrote written questions that I couldn’t answer. And every time it came back in the same handwriting, the right answers every time.
“Psycho.” I decided.
“Maybe! Wonder if the psychopath was actually a lot smarter and he made this!” Greg decided.
“No of course that’s not true, psychopaths are crazy, not smart.” I pointed out. Greg didn’t have time to debate, the class was starting and we had to shove all of our food back in our bags of pockets so the teacher didn’t see it. The entire class was spent with Greg and I writing all sorts of questions the teacher said, the book knew, the book knew everything. It was actually quite creepy. I’d have to go home to put it through further testing, my only fear was that Harry would get her hands on it. The rest of school seemed to drag on; the classes were so dull since we had all the immediate answers. When the final bell finally rang Greg and I stormed through the crowd to get our bags from our lockers, meeting again on the stinky, crowded bus and sitting in the back seat. I was really happy to get home, and Greg was probably coming with me. He was texting his mom, saying that he was coming to my house off the bus and she said, of course, that it was fine. Greg was more of another sibling than a friend; he was over all the free time he got. We didn’t talk much, nor did we annoy the book any more, there were too many people to demonstrate the magic around. It sat on my lap, both of us staring at it with fear, as if it would get up and start biting people’s heads off. If wouldn’t be that much of a shame, I could do without half the kids on this bloody bus. Thankfully we got off sooner than the rest, so we unloaded at my stop and walked into my house, where my mom was to welcome us back. She wanted to hear all about our day and if we were still okay from yesterday’s ‘park incident’. Greg just rolled with it, he was the best liar I knew and made sure to add all the small details she’d want to hear about our escape. Finally when she let us go with some bags of chips we escaped into my room. Harry was once again screaming at us to move out of her view of the TV, but I just smiled at her and kept walking. I tried to ignore the pile of now empty beer bottles left on the ground around my dad’s recliner. We went into my room and locked it, and just as I thought, there was no book on my dresser. Just in my hands, somehow it had definitely moved.