Haunted (NaNo 2020)

Chapter Six

"The legend involves a man who was swimming there when the water rose up around him," Allen began. He noticed Mr. Hancock had finally taken out a pen and began writing down what he was saying. "It lifted him like a giant glove, and he rose with it, higher and higher. As he did so, more and more gathered beneath him until there was nothing left in the lower pool—just the rocks. And when he was even higher than the waterfall, it dropped him and he fell to his death."

It was an old story they'd told to their friends at sleepovers to try to get a bit of a scare; one he was sure everyone in Bellum had told at some point in their lives.

"Oh no," Mr. Hancock shook his head. "That's not it at all."

"What is it then?" Allen questioned. He fought to keep any distaste from dripping into his voice, but he wasn't sure if he succeeded; it was a well known legend, and one that the students laughed about whenever anyone brought it up. He couldn't have been that far off.

"It does involve a man who was swimming alone," he said, "but it is far grimmer than yours. He was floating, going about his business, when the waterfall suddenly stopped. He sat up in the water to find the water was still flowing, but instead of crashing into the lower pool, it was snaking through the air, straight toward him. It circled a bit before creating a thin layer over him.

"It then swooped down, like a vulture, and grabbed the man—" Mr. Hancock made clawing motions with his hands "—and began pulling him from the ground. There was a shifting and he fell, plummeting back to the water. Instead of leaving him be, whoever orchestrated it began pulling the water from around him, so that he was, in fact, standing in the lower pool as if the water had never been there. It hovered over him, and then crashed into him, pulling him up into the air, throwing him to the top of the waterfall and then tossing him back off. It was after doing this many times that he fell to his eventual death. Whoever or whatever did it was never found."

Allen allowed silence to settle for a moment before saying, "Not to be too frank, but that sounds like exactly what I said with a few embellishments."

"It is entirely different!" Mr. Hancock exclaimed.

"I guess," Allen muttered, his insides yearning to scream, "The only difference is that it makes the situation all the more ridiculous."

"You should know," he said. "This is some very serious stuff. That place is dangerous; haunted, infested with some kind of spirit type. It's no place for some kids like you to be tooling around. This is very important; very important indeed."

It was now an effort for Allen to keep his face straight; to prevent it from contorting into some kind of grimace mixed with a laugh.

He couldn't actually be serious, could he? Out of everything Hancock wanted to focus on, it was the fact that they'd hung out at a place with an absurd legend surrounding it?

"How can that be true if no one else was there?" Allen said, dropping any attempt at being polite that he'd held. "If there are no witnesses, it was probably just started by some high school kid who wanted to play a prank."

"Oh, no, a woman was walking along that path and saw it all from the trees. She swears she did. And this isn't something just contained to this town; it is a story well-known around the nation," he said. His brows were creased and he was scribbling furiously at this point.

Great. Now Allen could live with the crushing shame of knowing that his town was known for a dumb legend for the rest of his life.

"Look," he said, "are we going to talk about what could have happened to Justine, because I feel like that is significantly more important!"