Meadowview Acres

by Donna Cain

  “Oh no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I felt great. I pulled into the station and got out. I said hello to a couple of students and then, boom, down I went! I must’ve looked like a rag doll. I’m sorry if I scared you, Randy. You were so nice to come out and help me.” She started to get her feet under her, and Randy steadied her as she stood.

  “No, Ms. Leezil. It was no bother at all. I’m just glad you’re alright.” Randy glanced back to the mini mart. Another car had just pulled up. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back in there. No one’s manning the cash register.”

  “I’ll take it from here”, Sheriff Buchanon said, taking her arm.

  “Thanks again, Randy!” Julie Leezil called after him. “You’re my hero!”

  Randy turned back and smiled. Sheriff Buchanon could see the man blushing.

  He took hold of Julie’s elbow and guided her around to the driver’s side door so she could sit down for a minute. She was feeling better, but he thought she would need to rest a bit before driving.

  “You said that you said hello to some students?” He had a weird feeling that he knew what she was going to say.

  “Yes, Eli and Hunter were gassing up when I pulled in. They were in such a hurry, though. You should have seen them take off. Anyway, that’s when my little episode happened. I think I was falling right as they were driving away.” She dabbed at her forehead with a paper napkin she had retrieved from her glove box.

  That was exactly who Don thought she would name. “Do you remember smelling anything unusual, or maybe seeing anything?” He wanted her to say that she had seen a metal box and that there was a sickening smell coming from it but no such luck.

  “No, not a thing. They weren’t even here long enough for me to notice anything. They left right when I got out of my car.” She dabbed her forehead again and looked up at him with that sweet smile of hers. “I hate to be a damsel in distress, Sheriff, but would you mind? I didn’t pump my gas, yet.”

  He looked at her and realized that she was asking him to do it for her. “Oh, sure, no problem. You just sit there.” He took the card from her and stuck it into the machine at the pump. It accepted the card and told him to select the type and begin pumping.

  His mind wandered as he filled Ms. Leezil’s car with gas. What in the world could those boys have to do with all of this? He had been ready to chalk it up to coincidence, but this was getting to be a little too much. The pump kicked off, and he replaced the cap.

  She looked much better now, so he felt comfortable letting her drive. “Are you going straight home?” He asked.

  “Yes. No more stops for me. And thank you, Sheriff Buchanon. You’ve been such a sweetheart today.” She smiled and closed her door. As he watched her drive away, Sheriff Buchanon tried to remember the last time he had been called a sweetheart.

  He looked at his dashboard clock when he got back into his cruiser. School was out for the day. “I think it’s time I sat down and had a little talk with Mr. Andrews and Mr. Massey,” he thought to himself.

  He pulled out onto Main Street and made his way toward Meadowview Acres.

  CHAPTER 28

  Eli, Hunter & Mr. Just

  “That’s the last one,” Eli said as they watched the white pickup exit the student parking area. He started the engine and slowly drove down to the now vacant lot. He parked in the fourth row just in case another student were to return to school for some reason.

  “Okay, here we go. Are you good with the plan?” Eli was more focused now. They had talked the last half an hour about how to go about getting the relic into the lab without coming into contact with anyone, even Mr. Just.

  Hunter was still exhausted. His body was betraying him at a crucial moment. He looked at Eli and said, “I’m ready. I know my part. I stay here with the suitcase while you go in and talk to Mr. Just. When you text me to bring it in, I wait until I see Mr. Just come out of the building and then bring it in.”

  “Right,” said Eli. “Hopefully, he’ll have told me what to try, and we can get started right when you come in.”

  Eli noticed that Hunter was looking pretty bad. He had known that his friend had been acting like he wasn’t worried for Eli’s sake, and now he was just too tired to continue the farce. Eli felt guilt rise up in him again. He was responsible for getting Hunter involved, too.

  “I’m going in. Take it easy and I’ll text you soon.”

  Eli got out of the car and went into the school straight to Mr. Just’s classroom. It was empty except for the teacher behind his computer screen. He obviously heard Eli come in because he said, “Just hang tight a sec. I need to finish reading this.”

  Eli propped himself against the main lab table and waited. He noticed that there were still beakers of chemicals that had been left on the table from experiments earlier that day. He read the labels – alcohol, boron, potassium chlorate, picric acid and a few other beakers with substances that had no labels. There were safety glasses lying around haphazardly along with rolls of paper towels and notebooks. Eli had never seen Mr. Just’s table so messy before. All of the lab tables were positioned at the back of the room, behind the classroom desks. Mr. Just had the biggest lab table at the front of the others. Eli guessed that he hadn’t had time to clean it up before getting started at the computer.

  Mr. Just finished reading and looked up. Sitting back in his chair, he gave Eli a level look and said, “I believe you.” He got up and crossed the room to where Eli stood. “When you two left here earlier, I was a little concerned about your frame of mind. I thought that maybe losing your sister and coming back to school so soon after was making you a little freaked. But when I read the name on the paper that Hunter gave me, I started to wonder. You see, I had read the name of that professor before, as early as this morning.”

  Eli was confused. “You know about Monroe?”

  “No, not exactly, but, I know more now. This morning I read his name in the Hallston Daily Journal, in the obituaries. Eli, he died yesterday afternoon.” He reached out and steadied the boy. Eli had wobbled a little after hearing the news.

  “He’s dead, but, how? Just yesterday morning he talked with the girls. How could he be dead?” Eli was feeling light-headed.

  “What girls? Who talked to Professor Monroe?” Mr. Just asked.

  Eli sat down in one of the lab chairs and said, “Shasta Port and Bug. Bug Hamilton, she’s the daughter of the editor of the paper. They’re in on it, too. They were trying to help, so they found the Professor and went to talk to him yesterday. Shasta said that they left around lunch time.”

  “Well, they must’ve been the last people this dude talked to. The paper says he died yesterday afternoon of natural causes. It also mentioned that he was a blind man. I’m assuming that wasn’t the case before he started researching this rock?” Mr. Just walked back to his printer and picked up a few papers. “According to this, he quit his job to go to a remote island to research the Varuupian Curse.” He handed the papers to Eli.

  “Now, listen. I’m a scientist. I usually don’t go in for all that mumbo-jumbo crap, but this curse is well documented. There was another crew that went in before Monroe and lost like half of their people. And read that last page. That was an interview with some native of Shaali who, lucky for him, left the island before the chief’s burial. According to him, curses were commonplace.”

  Eli glanced at the papers then put them down on the table beside the beakers. “Look, Mr. Just,” he said. “I don’t need to read these. I’ve seen firsthand what the Rock of Varuupi is capable of. It’s nothing to take lightly. That’s why you can’t be here when we try to dissolve it. We just don’t know how it’ll affect you. Just tell me what to do and then go out to your car. We’ll have you on speaker phone the whole time. That way, we know you’re safe.”

  Mr. Just looked at Eli like he was crazy. “No way, Man! There is no way I’m leaving. Now look, I’m not a fool, I know it could get dicey, but I’m not leaving you kids to do it yourselves. We’re g
oing to be working with hydrofluoric acid; I’m not letting you do that unsupervised.” He saw Eli’s expression and understood what he was feeling.

  “Eli, I saw Hansen die, remember? I didn’t know it at the time, but he was holding the rock. I was standing right next to it when I tried to give him the Heimlich. It didn’t make me sick. It didn’t seem to affect Clara, either. You may not have realized that I was there that day with everything else going on, but Eli, I’ve already been exposed.”

  He was right. Eli hadn’t remembered or connected the fact, but he thought Hunter should have. Hunter was as exhausted as Eli, though, and, things had been getting overlooked lately. Anyway, the revelation solved the problem. Eli was more relieved than he wanted to admit.

  “That does make sense,” he told Mr. Just. “If you have already been in contact with it and you don’t remember having any symptoms, I guess it should be alright. Are you sure that you didn’t feel anything that day?”

  “Not a twinge, and I’m sure that’ll be the case today, too. Now let’s get going and get this over with. Where is it?” He glanced around the room.

  “In my trunk, Hunter’s going to bring it in. Just let me text him.”

  While Eli composed and sent the text to Hunter, Mr. Just slid most of the clutter to one side of the lab table. Next, he got out a heavy plastic tray, a hammer and a chisel. Finally, he went to the locked cabinet where all of the chemicals were stored and brought back a small plastic jug filled with clear liquid. He placed it on the table beside the other things.

  “Hunter’s coming in with it now,” Eli said as he walked over to Mr. Just and looked over the materials. “Do you really think this will work?”

  “It’s a great place to start,” Mr. Just replied. “Hydrofluoric acid is highly corrosive, it can dissolve glass with no problem. That’s why it’s stored in heavy plastic. It’s actually quite coincidental that we need to use this. If you had been awake in class today, you would have heard me explaining oxides. An oxide is a compound that contains at least one oxygen atom along with another element in its chemical formula. Most of the earth’s crust consists of solid oxides, the result of elements being oxidized by the oxygen in air or water. This rock is an oxide; hydrofluoric acid dissolves oxides.”

  Eli was about to ask Mr. Just another question, when Hunter appeared at the classroom door, the suitcase on wheels trailed behind him. “Are you sure it’s okay for him to be here?” Hunter asked nodding his head at the teacher.

  “He’s already been exposed and didn’t seem to be affected. When Hansen died, remember? I do think that we should watch him really closely while we’re taking it out, just to make sure,” Eli answered.

  “Hey, Dudes,” Mr. Just interjected. “I’m here. You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not. And I’m fine. Look.” He walked over to Hunter and took the handle of the suitcase from him. He rolled it over to his desk, then picked it up and laid it on the top. To demonstrate even further, he unzipped the large suitcase and took out the smaller one nestled inside.

  The familiar feeling in Hunter’s stomach started again. The bile rose in his throat, and he was clammy. He looked at Eli and could tell that his friend was getting another headache, although he wasn’t sure if Eli’s headaches ever truly went away. Looking at his teacher, Hunter could see no affects whatsoever. Mr. Just got down to the backpack and stopped.

  “Are you guys alright? Do you want me to stop?” He asked looking at the pain registered on their faces.

  “No,” Eli said forcefully. “This has to happen. I’m fine.” He looked over at Hunter.

  “I’m sorry,” Hunter said. With that, he grabbed the nearest trash can and went to the front of the classroom, as far away from them as he could get. There he commenced to reacquaint himself with the lunch he had eaten a few hours previously.

  “Tell me if you want me to stop,” Mr. Just told Eli. “Otherwise, I’m just going to keep truckin’.”

  He saw Eli nod his head and returned to the backpack. He unzipped it and pulled the metal box from within. He still felt nothing. He hadn’t told the boys, but, when he had touched the handle of the suitcase, he had felt a jolt, like the earth shifting just a little. It didn’t hurt, it was just an odd feeling. It reminded him of that last little bump that an elevator makes right before the doors open. Right now, though, he felt nothing. He could hear Hunter at the front of the room still retching.

  He took the metal box from his desk over to the lab table. Phillip placed the metal box carefully beside the large plastic bin. Then, he opened the box. As he inspected the artifact with his eyes, he surveyed his body for any discomfort. Nothing, continue.

  He put on his gloves and reached into the box. It looked like a piece of ordinary rock that had been broken off of a bigger one. Its shape was not quite a triangle but looked like it had been part of a corner. It was much larger than he had expected, about six inches at its widest point and around two at its tip. Phillip picked it up and brought it to his face for a closer examination. There were no markings on the rock at all. Nothing remarkable could be seen by the naked eye. He placed it in the bin.

  “Mr. Just?”

  The sound of Eli’s voice startled Phillip. He was so intrigued with his experiment that he had almost entirely forgotten about the boy. “What is it?”

  “Are you feeling alright?” Eli asked.

  “So far, I’m cool.” Something in the way Eli was looking at him made him ask, “Why?”

  Eli pointed to the sink in the corner of the classroom. There was a mirror attached to the wall above. “I think you should go look.” The boy’s eyes were a little wider than normal causing Phillip’s stomach to do a little flip. As he walked over to the mirror, he could still hear dry heaving at the other end of the room. Then he heard Hunter say, “Whoa!”

  More curious than afraid, he got to the mirror and peered at his reflection. His mouth became an “O” as he stared. He still wore his hair in a long pony tail down his back. That was about the only thing he had saved from the seventies. But while just a few moments ago it was mostly dark brown with a few gray strands running through, now, it was completely white. What the hell?

  He reached up and shook it loose from the elastic band. He ran his fingers through it from scalp to ends. Every strand of his hair was white, through and through. It was amazing. He couldn’t seem to look away until he heard Eli again. He sounded defeated.

  “You’re not untouchable. We don’t know what else it’s doing to you. We can’t see what’s going on inside of you. I think we should stop now. Or you should. Hunter and I’ll finish.”

  Phillip Just turned from the mirror and walked quickly back to the lab desk. “No way, Kiddo, I’m in this now. We’re moving full steam ahead. Go get those safety goggles and put them on.” He motioned to Eli and then got his own goggles fixed in place.

  Reaching for the hydrofluoric acid he said, “I don’t have enough for the whole artifact. I wasn’t sure of its size, but looking at it now I know I don’t have enough. The good news is, once we test this out to see if it works, I’ll be able to get more and we can finish the job. For now, I need to break off a little chunk to see how gnarly this will get.”

  Eli watched as his teacher got the chisel and placed it on the very edge of the pointiest end of the rock. Then, he took his hammer and hit the end of the chisel. What happened next surprised them all.

  The second the chisel’s sharp end went into the rock, a huge spark flew from the crevasse that was created. The spark jolted them both. Mr. Just jumped back and lost his footing, causing him to fall. On the way down, the back of his head connected with the desk directly behind him with a loud “CRACK!” He slumped to the floor unconscious.

  Eli involuntarily jumped at the sight of the huge spark. His elbow hit the stand of beakers to his left causing their contents to spill. Reaching out like long fingers over the top of the lab desk, the chemicals soaked through the paper towels and notebook papers that had been strewn about. Eli looked
quickly back at the rock and saw that a flame was now issuing from the crack. The last thing Eli remembered seeing was a spark from the rock igniting the wet desk.

  Hunter was on his feet in an instant. He had been watching their progress as he held the trash can to his chest. He saw Mr. Just raise the hammer and bring it swiftly down. Then, unexpectedly, Mr. Just startled and fell. He heard a loud crack! Hunter could see the rock. A flash of fire was emitting from the rock itself. He saw Eli’s shocked face looking down at the table, then Eli slowly closed his eyes and collapsed. Hunter watched in horror as the entire lab table burst into flames.

  Panic spurred him into action. His adrenaline masked the nausea enough that he dropped the trash can and started toward the back of the room. The smoke was getting thicker by the instant. It was happening too fast, he had to get to Eli and Mr. Just. “Eli!” He yelled. “Mr. Just? Eli?” There was no answer.

  He dropped to all fours to get out of the thickest part of the smoke. He could smell the acrid odor of chemicals burning which made it hard to breathe. He made his way on his hands and knees slowly. The smoke was thicker still. He could see a flame up ahead. He knew he had to get Eli and Mr. Just out of there somehow, but he couldn’t see anything. He was coughing, and tears clouded his vision. He bumped into something on the floor in front of him. Grabbing it, he recognized the backpack. The rock! He had to get the rock out too.

  He knew he was close when he found the pack. He remembered Mr. Just had put it on the desk behind him when he had taken the box out. Hunter reached into the smoke before him, stretching out his arms as far as they would go. He felt something. It was one of the lab table’s legs. He pulled himself up and coughed uncontrollably. The odor was so intense up there. He could barely make out the rock from around the smoke. Being careful not to touch anything else, he opened the backpack and scooped the rock inside. He immediately felt the heat coming from inside the pack.

  Hunter dropped back down to his knees and felt around. There was nothing. He crawled slowly forward, still feeling the ground in front of him. It was so hard to breathe, he was getting lightheaded, but still he pushed onward. His left arm grazed something, and Hunter reached out with his hand – a shoe. “Eli!” He sputtered. His voice sounded odd and somehow far away. Eli didn’t answer.