The Water Tower

The warm summer nights in Lewton were the kind where you just couldn’t get comfortable. You would roll around your sweat-soaked bed, wishing for morning to come so you could have a cold shower to cool off. Most of the houses in the rural community cracked their windows open, hoping for a cool breeze to flow in during the night to keep their rooms cool, but this rarely happened. Instead, a warm, thick breeze would slap your body in the early hours, causing you to sit up and grab a drink of water. If you were lucky enough, you’d own a "Chillwave" unit that would be mounted bulkily to your window, conditioning the air to shoot fresh breezes into your room. However, the downside to these clunky units was that the loudness would keep you up instead of the heat.

The Lynn residence didn’t own such expensive contraptions, but instead, Wendy had purchased a few "FanTastic Flow" pedestal fans and had them strategically placed around the house in an attempt to keep the temperature down. They would turn and click with a slight hum, working overtime, as these specific brands had full 180-degree movement to keep the air circulating. Both Wendy and Richie had a fan in their room, and Richie Lynn had even become accustomed to the dull hum, believing it helped put him to sleep quicker as he concentrated on the noise rather than letting his brain lose itself in thoughts about the day’s events. But this summer Friday night at 12 Wellington Place was different, and the noise, in fact, didn’t help Richie sleep.

Although dinner with his mother was great, and she even let him watch some television after to unwind, Richie’s thoughts were preoccupied. He would normally let all his worries dissolve when he watched his favourite Friday night show, The Quest for the Cosmic Crystals, but even the protagonist, Bill Levram—Richie’s favourite actor who played the hero “Renegade Ryan”—couldn’t distract him for a brief moment. Richie’s thoughts were fixated on why Finn Unley was watching him from up in that maple tree and how he had even climbed that high. From his brief encounter with Finn at school, Richie knew Finn was a lot more athletic than him, but that tree had to be a good twenty metres tall, and Richie had never seen anyone, child or adult, climb such high vertical lengths before. His mother had asked him several times tonight if he was alright, as he seemed preoccupied, but Richie just replied that he was tired from his long week at school.

Richie wasn’t accustomed to lying to his mother, but he already knew how she would react poorly if he had said a boy from his school was spying on him. She would have gone knocking on neighbouring household doors until any boy around his age answered, and then she would have proceeded to lecture him on spying. He could hear her voice as he played it out in his head, like an alternative version of events if he had chosen to tell her: “It’s not good to spy; trust is built on open hearts, not hidden eyes.” He could hear her frustrated voice as she pointed her finger at the boy. Richie knew how protective his mother was, like a lioness guarding her cub at all costs. Instead, the lie caused Richie to have an early night, staring at his off-white ceiling, his thoughts still pondering whether Finn Unley was a friend or foe.

He tried to doze off, and though he managed it briefly in parts, it wasn’t a solid sleep, and he became more awake the harder he tried to relax. He sat up in his dim room, where only the creaking light from outside his door crawled in slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He took a sip of the water that sat on his bedside table and looked around his room. It wasn’t a big room, but he was happy with how he got to set it up himself, with little input from his mother. His bookshelf now sat across from his bed, still packed with books about plant life, but with fewer comics than in his last room. His little wooden desk sat in the corner of the room, where he did his homework nightly for the hour after he got home from school. His eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to the dark yet, but if they had, he would be able to make out all the chips in the wood of his desk—marks he had made from procrastinating with the back of his pen, digging into the cheap oak rather than actually doing his work. The rug that covered most of the floor was a shaggy grey, which Richie loved the feel of under his bare feet—a comforting squishy pillow compared to the hard floorboards. The desk was nestled close to the window, which would give Richie a view of his greenhouse if the curtains were pulled open.

Richie threw his quilt back as he quickly got out of bed, suddenly compelled to look out at his backyard. He softly snuck to the curtain, careful not to step on any of the loud creaking floorboards beyond the rug. Richie pulled the blue curtain to one side, giving him a view of the dark outside. His greenhouse had a more ominous feel now, with shadows stretching around it. But it wasn’t the greenhouse Richie was looking for; his eyes darted high up to the surrounding trees. From this particular angle, Richie couldn’t see the maple tree, as it was just out of sight to the right of the window. He put his head closer to the window, hoping the tree would come into view slightly, but the angle wasn’t in his favour, and he still couldn’t see it. Even with his face pressed firmly against the warm glass from the summer air, Richie couldn’t make out the object he was searching for.

Richie wasn’t sure what to expect if he did see the tree and whether it would make him feel more at ease or worried if Finn was up there again, in the darkness of the night. It started as just a thought but quickly grew into an impulse he couldn’t deny. Richie slowly pushed the window up as his pedestal fan clicked and hummed, turning from side to side, masking the noise of the window’s aged paint scraping up the inserts as he opened his room to the outside world. He took one last look at his bedroom door before twisting his body and jumping out the window, his feet landing on the soft grass, almost as comforting as the rug on the soles of his feet.

The sound of crickets could be heard, hidden amongst the shrubs of the garden, chirping happily as they went about their nightly routines. Richie Lynn walked further out into the dark yard in his pyjama shorts, feeling the adrenaline pulse through his body, knowing that he shouldn’t be outside this late at night. If he took about six more paces forward, he would be close to the entrance of the greenhouse where he had stood hours earlier, and the maple tree would be in sight.

The warm wind picked up, and Richie could hear branches from other trees brushing against the gutters close to the house, making a sort of shuffling noise. The moonlight, bright and casting a spotlight of deep blue when it appeared from the clouds above, illuminated the yard as Richie took several more steps forward, not looking up at the tree straight away as fear now flooded into his body, making him feel still, almost frozen like a statue. He took a deep breath, now more awake than ever, and glanced up to where he had seen Finn earlier. The maple tree shook in the wind, and the branches looked more sinister in the night than they had during the day. He darted his eyes across every branch in the tree, but it stood empty.

Of course, it was, Richie thought to himself, relief pouring over him. He now had a clear view of the maple tree, as it seemed the wind had stopped momentarily, letting the tree be still. But it wasn’t just the maple tree standing motionless—the surrounding environment was now like a dark oil painting, eerily not swaying or moving. If Richie Lynn had been more attuned to the environment around him, he would have noticed a few other things, but being a boy of twelve, these things went unnoticed. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, oddly, and the crickets in the shrubbery had also stopped chirping. It was like everything had paused. Time stood still, and Richie felt frozen in the moment, his mind racing while his eyes continuously darted around the tree. He became obsessive over making sure no one was up there, but as his eyes darted to one side, he felt a presence might be on the other. He darted his eyes back and forth, and it wasn’t until he almost felt cross-eyed that Richie realised he should head back to bed. He slowly turned his back on the maple tree, instantly feeling uneasy, and started to walk back to his bedroom window.

That’s when Richie Lynn felt something tickling the bottom of his feet. He looked down, expecting to see some type of creepy-crawly slithering across his feet, but there was nothing. He could still feel something on the bottom of his feet vibrating, although visibly he couldn’t see the cause. He lifted his right foot to see if the mystery would be solved, but nothing was obviously there that he could make out in the night. Although, when he lifted his foot off the ground, the vibrating sensation stopped. Richie Lynn slowly crouched to the ground, being careful not to dirty his knees so his mother wouldn’t find out about his late-night adventures. He pressed his right hand to the ground, and he could feel the vibrations tingling his fingers.

“What the heck?” he muttered to himself, pulling his hand from the ground. Richie had never experienced an earthquake before, but this must be what it felt like, he thought. He remembered his Environmental Science teacher from Arlington, Mr Day, who had said there were these vibrations in the Earth called seismic waves or something. Was this what he was feeling now? Richie slowly put his hand back to the earth, and once again, he felt the vibrations tingling his palm, like the sensation of pins and needles when you sit on your hand too long. Richie Lynn smiled at the sensation in his palm and then lowered his ear to the ground to see if he could hear the vibrations. To his surprise, he could. A high-pitched whistling noise could be heard distantly, like when you blow into a dog whistle and hear an occasional high-frequency sound, but nothing too loud. He waited for the earthquake to pass, but Richie must have been lying there for a good ten minutes, and this event—this rippling in the earth—hadn’t stopped. Was it even an earthquake at all? Richie thought to himself, wishing someone else were there to experience this with him. If someone else could witness this strange occurrence, he felt his story would hold more weight.

He sat back up and thought about getting his mother, but then, realising he would need to explain why he was outside in the first place, thought against it. Richie tried hard to remember more from his Environmental Science class, but his memory was blocked by the image of the oozing volcano he had made for that semester’s homework—far more entertaining than remembering details about earthquakes, in Richie’s opinion.

He would just need to—

Richie’s train of thought stopped when a loud, booming bass noise thumped up from the earth below. He slapped both his hands over his ears, trying to block out the wailing noise that reverberated all around him. The sound blasted through his bones, and he felt his head pounding with immense pressure. Richie thought the booming noise, whatever it was, was far worse than sitting next to Hugh Bassler’s “Rock Series” speakers in Hugh’s rumpus room when he blared out Thunder Steel’s latest single over the summer break. But as quickly as the sound had begun, it abruptly stopped, leaving the only evidence of its existence in the pounding headache Richie now had. His ears rang like bells, and his balance was momentarily off. He felt confused and dizzy, like he had just stepped off a whirly ride at a park that left your head spinning for minutes afterwards.

It was obvious now that whatever was happening couldn’t be written off as an earthquake.

As Richie’s headache continued thumping, he felt a cool sensation run down his cheeks from his ears, like someone had cracked an egg on the side of his face. Richie gingerly felt his ears with his fingers and, when he pulled them away to investigate, saw that they were covered in blood. The noise had somehow damaged something inside his head and caused blood to trickle from his ears. Richie imagined his eardrums as mini drum kits with torn holes in the middle, irreparable.

“Oh God,” Richie mumbled, swallowing hard. Richie wasn’t good with blood. In fact, the mere sight of it made his stomach churn. This had always been the case, from as far back as Richie could remember. Anything more than a small graze would make his stomach queasy, and he’d only feel relief after vomiting into a toilet. His throat felt stiff as he tried to swallow back his acidic stomach contents. For a few seconds, it seemed like he might overcome the urge to vomit, but as a second wave of nausea hit, there was no stopping it. Richie vomited to the left of his body, the smell of half-digested spaghetti filling his nostrils. His body convulsed as he threw up more over the grass, his throat making gurgling noises like water trying to rush down a clogged drain.

Richie spat out the remaining liquid in his mouth and, instantly, his stomach felt better, as if the food had been the problem rather than the sight of blood. He sat for a few seconds, regaining his composure.

“I’m good,” he panted to himself. “I’m good.”

Richie looked down at where he had vomited and realised spaghetti almost looked the same coming up as it did going down. He took a deep breath, and as his dizziness faded, he shifted his weight and prepared to stand. Without looking, he wiped his bloody fingers on the grass as best he could. The vibrations were gone, he thought to himself, rubbing his fingers on the ground. He stayed a few seconds longer to make sure he couldn’t feel anything, but the vibrations had disappeared. They were gone for now, that much was certain.

Richie stood up and looked toward the house, expecting his mother to have turned on a light after the loud noise had disturbed the night, but no light shone from inside. In fact, no dogs in the street were barking—not even the little pug from Mrs Henderson’s house a few doors down. That yappy dog would bark at anything, usually prompting Mrs Henderson to come outside and say, “Oh, don’t worry, poppet, his bark is worse than his bite.”

Richie thought to himself, Had no one else heard anything?

Suddenly, Richie felt a strong sense of isolation, which made him feel scared and alone. Like most twelve-year-old boys, Richie knew the safest place right now would be back in his bed, under his quilt. He was old enough to know it was a false sense of security, but it was a comfort he would allow himself tonight.

He climbed back through his bedroom window and immediately felt more at ease, the hot summer air circulating from the pedestal fan. Richie tiptoed toward his bed but stopped and turned to look at the window. He decided he would put up with the heat for the night, and he gently pulled the window down, not wanting to make too much noise, giving himself an imaginary barrier from whatever had happened outside. Seconds later, he was in bed, his quilt pulled up over his head.

Richie Lynn suddenly felt a worry come over him, and he couldn’t shake it. It was the first time he had felt this way since his move to Lewton. It was the thought of not feeling at home. He was homesick and missed Arlington. Nothing stupid ever happened in Arlington, Richie thought to himself angrily at the night’s events. He missed his friends Hugh Bassler and Kurt Engles and how they would hang out every weekend and occasionally after school, riding around their neighbourhood on their bikes together. Richie couldn’t escape his feelings, and although he knew it made his mother happy being here, he suddenly realised he didn’t like it. He felt he had sacrificed his happiness for hers, and as he lay in his bedroom at 12 Wellington Place, Richie Lynn felt a tear roll down his face.