A Place So Wicked Patrick Reuman (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📖

showering down, was no long changing from green to brown. The color was holding strong against the water. His dad must have noticed as well because he turned the hose off.

As soon as his dad set the hose on the ground, Toby raced forward through the sloppy, wet grass. He wanted to see what was going on firsthand. Part of him felt like this was his mystery, since he was the one that discovered the whole thing, and he wanted to be on the frontline of the investigation.

Toby and his dad hurried over to where the grass was still green. Toby reached down and plucked up a handful of grass. He rubbed his finger against its waxy surface. The grass in the front did not feel waxy like this at all. It felt rugged, like it was ready to crumble into nothing if enough pressure was applied.

He looked at his dad, who was staring at the grass in his own hand, probably thinking the same thing. This was grass, normal grass, how all of it should have been. Toby looked down at his feet, to where the grass turned from brown to green. He had to step back, to take it all in.

The brown ended in a sort of crescent wave, like someone had actually spilled brown paint and where he had been staring was where the paint had run out. The line separating the green from the brown was smooth and continuous, almost perfect.

“I’m going to keep spraying,” he said in a near whisper.

Toby walked back over to the others, and Richard returned to the hose. He cranked it up and aimed it along where the colors separated. Like magic, one half of his water beam uncovered brown while the other half seemed to have no effect. This continued all the way across the yard until a clear area of separation was established. But Richard didn’t stop there; he continued hosing down the grass within the barrier, uncovering all the brown across the yard. He didn’t stop until water had touched almost every inch of the back yard.

Everybody looked on in fascination. The brown began by the house and stretched across the yard, stopping just beyond the halfway point where it sputtered off in a distinct half-circle shape. Toby had no idea what to make of it, and neither did the others.

Everyone remained in silence for a long minute until Richard started winding the hose back up.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

8

Toby had been upstairs for a little while, setting up what little he had brought to the new house, when a combination of boredom and a delicious aroma eventually dragged him downstairs. He followed it to the kitchen, where he found chicken cooking slowly in a crockpot. He licked his lips involuntarily. His stomach, which had been subdued and out of mind just a minute prior, was now groaning and rumbling, demanding he find something to eat soon or it was going to get angry.

He wondered what exactly the chicken was going to be used to make, but when he looked around for his mom to ask, he didn’t see her. He peeked into the living room and didn’t see her there, either, or his dad for that matter. Robbie and Paisley were there, though, watching something on the television. Trevor was absent. Perhaps Trevor was gone somewhere with their mom and dad.

“Anybody know where Mom and Dad are?” he asked.

Paisley looked at him, just now noticing him standing there. She pondered the question for a moment and was just opening her mouth to answer when Robbie beat her to it.

“Out front, I think. Maybe taking care of the lawnmower or something.”

He should have done that. Even though his dad had told him and the others to go inside, he should have stayed out there and taken care of the mower really quick. It was he who had gotten it out, after all, and his dad seemed stressed enough.

When he went outside, his mother and father stopped talking like he had interrupted something. The look on his dad’s face told him he was probably just about to get sent back inside.

“I should get back inside,” his mom said.

His dad simply nodded like he had other things on his mind.

“It smells great in there,” Toby said.

“Well, it’s going to smell even better when it’s chicken noodle soup.”

The idea of his mother’s chicken soup sent Toby’s taste buds into a pleasure spiral. His mom’s soups were legendary, especially the chicken. The last she made it, she had made an entire gigantic pot full that lasted them days, and he wondered if she would be doing the same this time.

She walked past him and into the house. His dad looked down at the mower like there was still something wrong with it. Maybe cleaning it off had not done the trick.

“Everything okay?” Toby asked.

His dad scratched his head and sighed. He was about to lie and say everything was just fine when he stopped himself. Toby was growing up. He was sixteen now. While he wasn’t an adult, maybe he was old enough to be treated like someone who could handle some mildly sensitive information.

“Honestly, I’m not really sure.”

Toby remained quiet, and his dad continued on.

“We paid a pretty decent lump of money for this place, and I don’t like the direction things are headed. The lawn is dead. The soil, like you said, is weird and black. Might have to have that checked out. And the basement smells like shit.”

Richard noticed his son raise his brow, obviously not having visited the basement yet. He supposed there was no reason for him to have been down there.

“It smells like something died down there. I don’t know if I remember the smell being there when I first looked at the place.