At 2:54:56 A.M., seventeen-year-old Roscoe Beranut crept up the faintly moonlit gravel path that wound between the trees and led up to Cariton’s only museum. His stomach curled up into a knot and butterflies flapped about in it, a feeling that told him that somebody was lurking nearby.
“This is a bad idea, Roscoe.” He muttered to himself. He had been asleep in his bed earlier when he was awoken suddenly, consumed with the thought that he must go to the museum. This was not the first time that he had had an all-consuming idea and these notions were never wrong.
But there was always a first time, for the area was clear, and nobody was nearby. No one that he could see, at least. He stood stalk still, breath held, head-cocked, as the wind blew through his dark hair and whirled up to hide the waned moon behind the thick clouds. He heard nothing. But he could sense somebody, though. He took a step up the steep path and the finely packed gravel made an almost imperceptible crunch. But to Roscoe’s hyperactive senses, it sounded terribly obvious. A snap of a stick in the forest alerted him, and he crouched down. The continuation of the snapping of pine needles informed him of the passing of something through the forest nearby. The sound faded into the distance. Roscoe exhaled silently and continued his crunchy creep up the path. As he snuck up the trail, the pine trees swayed back and forth in the teasing wind, skimming against one another and rustling impatiently for peace and quiet.
When he had gotten to the final bend before reaching the museum, his stomach had worked itself into an awful state; the butterflies in his stomach had transformed into hordes of dragons, roaring and flapping to be loosed. Somebody is following me, he thought. He took a deep breath, quenching most of the dragons in his stomach. He exhaled, turned the corner and crouched down near a large tree. He looked up at the large brick museum, all the windows dark. He shook his head. See, he thought. Everything is fine. Nobody is here. I was just being ridiculous. That is all.
But the dragons, with the fear they brought, came rushing back, for in the window nearest the door, there was a flash of veiled light, showing the outline of a man reaching for the doorknob, and, even worse, there was a crunching of the path behind him. Roscoe saw only one choice, and he acted quickly. He jumped up, sped to the museum, and made a wild leap.
The door swung open and Horace stepped out under the roofed porch. And after turning the corner, the person on the path walked over to the man from the inside of the building.
“Did you get it, Horace?” The man from the path asked.
“Sure did. Right where you said it was. In and out, without a hitch. Easy as pie. How is it out here, Giles?”
“A lot of prowlers for three in the morning. I dealt with one and was following another up the path around here when he suddenly disappeared.”
“That isn’t good news. We probably need to leave.”
“I know. I’m ready.” The two men walked down the path and disappeared around the corner, unaware that, up on the roof of the porch, there was a boy perched and that his wild eyes glinted knowingly in the torrents of darkness.
"The only thing that anybody really knows about this author is that he is a real nutcase."
-Anonymous reporter
Well...