Radio Waves of the Macabre [On Hiatus]

Chapter 7 - Worms (Part 2)

A blue jay cried out in a high-pitched call, growing higher with each passing moment. As it did, the leaves overhead rustled and more blue jays took to flight. Tess stared up as they flew off caught in a moment of wonder and awe, hit by the iridescent beauty of the striking blue-feathered wings against their softer white underbellies.

Lost in that moment, she hadn't noticed the small gasp that she let loose, or that she was no longer holding her breath. Hurriedly taking in the air she had deprived from her lungs, her breathing echoed through the quiet of the wood. Nearby a twig snapped.

Instantly the woods took to life. Jays and cardinals darted from their perches in the branches and up into the sky above, as footfalls crashed through the underbrush and darted towards Tess with dizzying speed.

She ducked as his hand smashed into the tree behind her and then she darted out towards the stream for a new hiding place. Of course he had seen her now, and she did not think that she could outrun him. So, she dropped and slid through the dirt and down an embankment towards the water just as his hands shot out above her circling in on nothing but air.

The water sloshed into her boots, but the stream ran shallow here and she splashed across to the nearby bank, grabbed a protruding root and began hauling herself up the other side. Unfortunately she was too late. He caught her shirt and yanked her down into the soft, muddy shore!

"Tag," he said. "You're it!"

"No fair," she complained knowing perfectly well that it was.

"I found you. No tricks or nothing."

She harrumphed.

"Fine. Go hide."

Ricky smiled. "And no cheating this time. You have to count Mississippi's."

"One Mississippi," she said, closing her eyes and not bothering to acknowledge his accusation. Ricky could be a real butthead, but they were cousins and family was family.

"Two Mississippi," she continued and Ricky darted into the woods. She waited until his footfalls faded and were gone, just after twelve Mississippi, and then picked up pace.

"Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Seventeen. Twenty," she shouted. "Ready or not here I come!"

Daddy probably wouldn't have approved of her cheating, but Ricky deserved it. He used to call her Tessy Messy on the playground, and though he hadn't done it in a long time, Tess knew how to hold a grudge.

She scanned her surroundings for any sign of Ricky, but his fat butt wasn't showing from around the trunks of any of the nearby trees, nor could she see his platinum hair. Ricky had a bright white-blond head of hair cut in an upside down bowl for which he was mercilessly mocked by the other children. His mommy cut his hair herself. The other kids said it was because they were too poor to afford haircuts and they made fun of him for that too. Tess knew she shouldn't join in, but sometimes she remembered how he'd call her Tessy Messy, and she'd join in anyway.

Right now that shining bowl stood out as her best bet to find him, but despite his size Ricky was pretty good at hiding. She thought she heard him dash off away from the stream to her right when her back was turned, so she started off in that direction.

***

What must have been five whole minutes passed, and still Tess had not found him. She searched behind every tree and shrub, and in every hollow that she could see, but still there was no sign of Ricky.

She paused there, in the middle of the small wood, and fanned herself. The breeze had picked up and it howled through the trees, but even so it did not diminish the heat of the afternoon. It was a wet heat, and Tess could feel a few sweat stains pooling around the collar of her shirt. She pulled at the cloth, which clung to her pale skin, and fanned herself some more.

She had grown tired of hide-and-seek and was ready to head home.

"Ricky," she shouted. "Come on out!"

Only the piercing cry of another blue jay answered her.

"You win!" she added despite how much it pained her to do so. She hated to lose. "You hear that Ricky! You win! Now let's go!"

Another blue jay answered the first, and a squirrel darted up a nearby oak, but again no answer came from Ricky. The first hint of worry bubbled up into her young mind, but Tess did not yet connect it to that worm dangling on the hook. No, she worried that she would be out here looking for Ricky and would be late getting home and her mother would be mad at her, and all because Ricky's fat butt wouldn't haul it into gear and come out when she called.

"Ricky Michael Hill," she yelled, doing her best mother voice. "Come out this instant!"

Even that didn't work, though this didn't surprise Tess. It had been a long shot.

With no other recourse left, she resumed her search of the woods. First she double-checked a hollowed out tree not far from the stream, but it stood still empty. Next she walked the embankments looking for any nook that might house her cousin, yet she found none. So, at last, she climbed back up the bank and glanced about the wood.

Off to her left rose a small hill that she had not yet explored. A thick tangle of gooseberry brambles grew along its peak and she hadn't considered that Ricky might have ventured through their thorny barrier. She didn't look forward to that prospect herself, but not wanting to be late getting home she didn't find that she had much choice.

Tess ascended the hill, stopping near the edge of the gooseberries and dropping low to her knees to look within the empty pockets between the snarled branches. Seeing still no sign of Ricky, she resigned herself to wading into those prickly shrubs. She rolled down her sleeves and tucked her jeans firmly into her boots, then tenderly grabbed the first thorny branch, careful to press down on the tiny brown thorns, while avoiding the larger red ones that bunched near the leaves, and she pushed the branch aside.

Inch by inch she made her way through the gooseberry thicket and to the top of the hill. Down below, she saw an edge to the woods, opening upon an empty field that she had never before seen. The soil lay fallow, the morning rain still etched into the untilled land, and yet here and there were revealed hints of tended rows of earth from many years prior. Although she wasn't sure where Ricky would have hid within that field, it seemed as good a place as any to look, and so Tess pushed through the last of the brambles on a quest to investigate.

As she emerged triumphant through the gooseberry bushes, she snagged her sleeve on a large red thorn. She struggled to free it, but the shrub held fast seemingly wrenching her towards its prickly web. For a moment she imagined that it really was pulling at her, calling to her ever so softly and whispering her name.

"Tess," it called soothingly. "Tess," it repeated, and though she heard no other words, she knew it was asking her to stay.