Just something I’ve been working on :U
The farmhouse was a fourty five minute drive out of town, on what was mostly gravel roads which made the old, smoky Buick rattle and click alarmingly. The road turned into dirt after a while, and then mud as the sky clouded ahead of them and started dropping rain that felt like a warning - GO BACK it said, booming with distant thunder, YOU DON'T WANT TO BE HERE. Which was true, kind of.
They didn't turn around though, and the car got swallowed by the storm.
The car pulled behind Digg's franken-car and ran to the door with their arms over their heads. Gwen looked at the house as they ducked under the roof of the porch and frowned. She was fairly certain that this house would be prone to falling over if you threw a rock at it, let alone withstand a storm. She glanced at Lily who shrugged at her, looking unconcerned. She had said that this was the house where the Peter's gang hung out when Officer goatee was looking for trouble. No one came out all this way, apparently, and the house hadn't been occupied since probably about the 30's.
Gwen didn't think that made it ideal for hanging out, especially with lit joints and booze bottles, not to mention delicate lungs and mold problems, but as far as she knew no one had died here...yet, at least. But if Lily wasn't worried, she figured she shouldn't be either. Her friend had a very sensible personality, even if she let her brother drag her around with their friends. Gwen figured there wasn't much else to do in Kennsington, and, after all, had brought along her brothers as well. They seemed to like their new home just fine.
It was Diggs who opened the door and he looked at her like he didn't quiet recognize her. She saw Lily sign something behind her and then saw Diggs roll his eyes, but he jerked his chin toward the inside of the house and lead them inside.
"Welcome, little bird," Diggs said to her, his sarcastic drawl filling the small hallway, "You ever used a water pipe before?"
"What?" Gwen asked, frowning in confusion, "What's a water pipe?"
Diggs snorted derisively, "Figured. A bong, you know? You ever smoked with a bong before? Yeah, I thought not." He opened another door and she was immediately overwhelmed by a fug of different smells- the heavy and sweet scent of marijuana was the most noticeable, but it was accompanied by undertones of cigarettes and what might have been grape juice, with stale grease and various immature colognes following. She made a face, but her brothers had already pushed past her and into the smoky room and Lily's hand was suddenly holding hers and pulling.
The smell didn't get any better inside what may have, at some time, been a kitchen. There was a glass window miraculously unbroken with dirty rags stuffed into window frames that probably were meant to keep the cold and wet out, but also succeeded in keeping all the smoke in. A group of boys were sat around on blankets or pillows that they must have brought themselves to protect them from the splintery wooden floor. There were embers glowing in the old-fashioned stove, which somehow still worked. On the shelves up high were dusty and cobwebbed jars filled with something that she didn't want to think about.
Lily caught her gaze and grinned, Tomato, she signed slowly so Gwen could understand, Plums. Very old. Yuck. The last part was followed by Lily making a face and rolling her eyes. Gwen giggled and felt herself relax a little more.
"Gwen!" Came an excited call from somewhere on the floor. She saw Peter's signature green hoodie through the haze and his brilliant grin shined with firelight. "You came!"
"Yep," She didn't really know what else to say, "Nice, uh, place here Peter. Is it yours?"
He blinked at her, "Mine?"
"You know, your family's? Or..." She trailed off and frowned, "We're trespassing, aren't we?"
He laughed and waved his hand, "Nah, it's only trespassing if someone lives here. No one's lived here in yeeeeaaars," The way he said years seemed to last longer than the rest of his words, like he was a little lost using something to measure something as needless as time. "It was abandoned and lost, like us," He nodded proudly, "So that's why we hang here."
A voice she recognized as Jordan's piped up, "Dust killed the crops, fever killed the kid,"
"Parents killed each other," Liam finished, "Probably."
Peter scoffed, "Oh come on. That's so boring. Why don't you imagine better?"
"Because I'm not a moron," Jordan mocked, his voice scratchy, "House was built in the 20's, dust bowl kills all the food, kids get sick and they leave. Leave the toys around the yard and the jars on the shelves and the bed and the plates and the shoes 'cause they don't want 'em or need 'em. Go somewhere else 'cause back then no one was gonna care if your address changed all of a sudden out here. It happened a lot."
"Thanks professor," Liam said then laughed.
The two boys began scuffling with each other and she saw a boy she didn't know carefully pull the bong away from them. "Well, that's interesting."
"No it's not," Peter took her hand and lead her to the edge of the room. She tried to meet Lily's eyes but her friend and life line had already taken a seat in the circle and was lighting up a hit. Peter squeezed her hand for her attention. When she looked up at him, he raised his eyebrows in a way that she knew meant they were about to play a game, "We'll make it interesting. Look around the room and imagine the people that lived here." He waved his hand through a cloud of smoke like he could make it take human form by touching it, "Think about their lives if they were standing where we're standing but then not now."
"Ok..." She took a deep breath and stared into the smoke, which in turn spiraled in the air in front of her, "So a man and his wife...uhm..."
"Sure, sure. OK a man and his wife, do you seem them?"
"Maybe," Peter shrugged, "Can you see people really? Maybe it's magic."
Gwen rolled her eyes, "Sure-"
"Peter can do magic," her brother John said, "He showed us. Right, Digg? Peter can do magic."
Digg shrugged and Gwen wondered when he had sidled up behind Peter, a place he usually seemed to be. "Sure," He said in the same flat tones he always had, "He does more impossible things than magic all the time."
Peter grinned smugly and nodded as if to say yes, obviously, of course this impossible boy could do things like conjure ghosts out of smoke! For some reason, probably the THC kind of reason, that seemed pretty possible. She squinted at the smoke and slowly saw what Peter wanted her to. Two figures, blurry but impossibly there somehow, fading in and out of the background.
"A man and his wife," She said again, "He's a big man, tall, with a red shirt and a beard and she's...she's small. Like really short and skinny and younger than him in a dress."
She hummed and concentrated, still not sure if she was making up the story or really watching it unfold, "They're arguing about the kid. Their son, he's fifteen. He left years ago, got taken or ran away. She says got taken, he says ran away. He's angry. She's crying and she says...she says the kid is coming back again. She says she's gonna find him- woah." Gwen blinked. She hadn't realized that she had been talking and was suddenly aware of her mouth moving. Peter was behind her, his arms draped over her shoulders and she could smell the smoke on his breath. It wasn't as uncomfortable as she kind of wanted it to be.
"She found another man to take her away," Peter whispered in her ear and she shuddered, "She found someone better, that loves her more, that won't give up like him or hurt her like him and he's jealous and sad because he knows she's right. He's taking a jar now, see, that jar there, and he says take it too to show her new man that she's full of vinegar. Haha, and see, now she's angry too and she..."
"Throw her wedding ring on the floor," Gwen felt her hand move over Peter's as their eyes followed an invisible scene together. Maybe he was magic, after all. She heard Diggs laugh again from somewhere far away, "It was a glass diamond anyway, she says, cheap like promises."
"Nice one," Peter laughed into her ear again and she felt like she might be falling, or flying, or lost somewhere in a cloud and Peter's arms were the only thing keeping her here. It wasn't necessarily bad, "This is better than TV." She said and it came out as a whisper.
"Oh yeah," Peter nods, "TV sucks. People are much more interesting in real life, right? Just as fake but more interesting by far."
She can't do anything but nod and watch the smoke-ghosts argue and play out a story she wasn't consciously writing, Peter's voice dripping into her head like ink on a page, and painting the pictures into reality as she watched.
