Colin and The Rise of The House of Horwood
Page 1
Colin and The Rise of The House of Horwood
by
M.E. Eadie
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Colin and The Rise of The House of Horwood
Copyright 2008 by M.E. Eadie
* * * * *
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Shadow Nix
Chapter Two: Pansy Patch Park
Chapter Three: Horwood House
Chapter Four: The Bank and The School
Chapter Five: Ofelia
Chapter Six: New Skills
Chapter Seven: Seven for Dinner
Chapter Eight: Waking Dreams
Chapter Nine: Slumber and Soccer
Chapter Ten: The Wind
Chapter Eleven: Costumes
Chapter Twelve: First Game
Chapter Thirteen: Maestro
Chapter Fourteen: The Clown Master
Chapter Fifteen: The Debate
Chapter Sixteen: Dad
Chapter Seventeen: Confrontation
Chapter Eighteen: Jaeger
Chapter Nineteen: The Return
Chapter One: Shadow Nix
On a tiny blade of grass, a dewdrop rested. Within its watery sphere there was a billowing, black cloud. Sometimes it just floated; at other times it gave the impression of becoming big enough to break out. Jim Thunder had to find out what this vision meant because his old body was dying. Beneath him he could feel the earth’s rhythm, its pulsating heart. He slipped into the dewdrop and around him a light blazed. Squinting from its intensity he watched as the black cloud dispelled. Then the dewdrop went blank.
Jim rolled away exhausted from the effort, and stared up at the sunless sky. It was always sunless; Inbetween, but that didn’t bother him. He wondered at the vision he had just seen. What could it mean? He sighed. In the end, even though he could see so much, there was very little he could do. True, he could suggest here, tweak there, but in the end it was free will that would reign. No matter how much persuasive talent he had, it was a person’s free will that mattered. It was what made people so magnificent. It was what made living so interesting. A person with free will could do anything! It had to be, because to take free will away was tyranny. It was so simple and so elusive in its nature that most people missed it. Only in the plain clarity of a young mind could it be fully understood: in that way, bad was always bad with no shades of gray.
Soon he would have to return from Inbetween to the floor of his tent, return to his body lying there, barely breathing. It had taken years to learn how to separate his spirit from his body, to view the visions available in this sunless place. And there were certain dangers being Inbetween, between the worlds: there were those who guarded this place jealously, and others who wanted most desperately to leave it. If the Shadow Nixes caught him here, they could tear his spirit from his body and leave him eternally floating between the worlds, neither here, nor there, neither alive nor dead.
Jim scanned the skies for any black dots that would signal the arrival of the Shadow Nixes and decided to take one last look into the dewdrop. The swirling cloud of inky darkness flooded back into the dewdrop, and, he nearly panicked. He thought it was gone, but obviously it was back. A sensation of being pulled away came over him and he knew his body was calling him back. He struggled to collect his wits, to remain Inbetween, to pursue the vision to its end.
He was now within the cloud itself, the very heart of evil. A face took form, the face of a man, his complexion a sickly shade of ashen white. Within the two dark pits of his eye sockets, black marbles glittered threateningly. There were many other eyes all around him, but they just watched, but the man’s eyes darted about, looking for something, someone. Then they found him, fixed on him, and then moved on, eyes returning to their intense, desperate search. Jim felt spiny prickles of fear crawling up the nape of his neck. He knew the man. His name was Zuhayer Bombast Horwood and he had been dead for years, or so he thought.
The vision was now replaced by another, a boy, disheveled dark hair hanging about his face, was struggling to catch a soccer ball. He kept missing, but would not give up. Jim smiled. He knew this boy. He had taken care of him since he was a baby, but what did Colin have to do with the black cloud?
The scene changed again. A girl replaced the boy. Her glowing orange-gold hair flaming in the dewdrop. A spray of mischievous freckles covered her cheeks and ran up over the bridge of her nose. Although she looked wild, he could sense there was an inner calm, a dynamic red courage that was unmistakable.
Then all the images were gone, and he was simply staring at a limpid dewdrop. He turned away letting his spirit return to his body. Even though things were uncertain, there was one thing clear, these two young people were in grave danger.