Wicked's Way

Work in progress, first draft

Chapter One

     My sister, Keagan, has really gotten herself in over her head. She’s only five, so most things are over her head quite literally, but this is no joke. Keagan has been playing with a devil! To be honest I think he was always there in the house, waiting, watching, taking notes, making plans.
     We moved into the house on Keagan’s second birthday. As always, I was stuck with her while my aunt and uncle helped my parents unload the moving van.
     “But I’m ten! I’m in double digits now, almost a teenager. I can carry the heavy stuff. Can’t Mom or Aunt Molly watch her?” I asked.
     Uncle Paul just had to say something, he always does. “Keagan’s pretty heavy if you ask me. Why don’t you try carrying her up the stairs so she’s out of the way?” He thinks he’s funny. He’s not though.
     “You’re ten, Michael, and your birthday was only last month,” Mom reminded me, as if I couldn’t remember my own birthday! “I don’t want you scratching the furniture. Now shoo!” She said.
     After a long and exasperated sigh, I carried Keagan up to my bedroom. I dragged one of the boxes of baby toys out of her room and into mine. She now sat in the corner pulling stuff out of it and dropping it haphazardly on the floor, giving me time to set up my computer, and have some fun. She had just started talking in complete sentences and I was having a great time getting her to say things she shouldn’t.
     “Hey, Keagan, uncle Paul is a dork, isn’t he?” I asked.
     She stopped mid pull and looked up at me as Loppsy the bunny dangled in one hand, neither in, nor fully out of the box. “Paul is a dork,” she repeated.
     “Good, Keagie! I don’t think aunt Molly knows yet. We’ll be sure to tell her, won’t we?” I said nodding my head at Keagan.
     “Humph,” she sighed and nodded her head back. “Micyuel, you will help? Loppsy can’t get out.” She couldn’t say my name right so in her world, I was “Micyuel”.
     “Yeah, just a minute till I get this computer cable untangled.”
     “You got Loppsy!” she squealed out of nowhere.
     “I have a cable, Keag, I’ll get Loppsy in a minute,” I told her, turning around. She stood there holding Loppsy above her head with one triumphant, outstretched arm. “Oh, I see, you got Loppsy, well done,” I told her.
     She looked at me with big eyes and shook her head, “I didn’t get Loppsy, it was that Mister,” like I should know what in the world she was talking about.
     “Okay then, tell ‘Mister’ thank you,” I said playing along, turning back to the computer as she thanked “Mister” and continued the conversation as she introduced Loppsy. Geesh!
     We finally got everything moved in and unpacked. The house was amazing! It was bigger than our last house. There were loads of places to play hide and seek where Keagan couldn’t find me, but it didn’t matter how big the house was, Keagan never far from where I was.
     Everything was pretty good for a while. Keagan was getting a bit better at playing by herself, as she had several imaginary friends now. Mom had to go back to work, but she only worked part-time. That meant she was still able to take me to school in the mornings and pick me up after, too. I really liked life in our house. It was great, up until Keagan’s fifth birthday, then all hell broke loose, literally.

Chapter Two “Night Terrors”

     I woke with a start, trying to orient myself. I held my hands over my ears as I sprung from my bed. The clock on my night stand blared 12:01am in red digital brilliance. It was the morning of Keagan’s fifth birthday and she was screaming her head off.
     I ran into her room. Mom and Dad were right on my heals. As I passed the light switch I flicked it on, but it only flickered and then went out. Keagan was still screaming. As Mom and Dad tried to find out what the problem was, the light blazed back on again.
     “Keagan, that’s enough!” Mom finally shouted, shaking Keagan slightly as she said it. “You’re awake now. It was all just a bad dream, love.”
     “They were scaring me! He made them mad at me!” Keagan shouted, still a bit hysterical, as she pointed to a pile of toys.
     Dad petted her head. “Dreams can be really scary, but that’s all it was, a dream. Now you are awake and look,” Dad pointed around the room, as Keagan watched “this is your room and here’s Loppsy in bed with you, and your ponies are right there on the shelf, and all your other little toy friends are watching you. They wouldn’t scare you, would they?”
     Keagan looked at Dad with furrowed eyebrows. “I don’t want them to watch me! I want to sleep with you.”
     “Keagan don’t be silly, they’re your toys.” Mom told her, but Keagan was having none of it.
     We all set about turning her toys around so “they couldn’t see her”. And, yes, I realise that every child psychologist in the world would’ve said it was wrong, but at this hour, half awake and very grumpy for it, we didn’t care what they’d say. Dad turned the last doll around, tucked Keagan in, and we all went back to bed.
     I laid there staring up at the ceiling to a small patch of light reflecting in from the nearest street lamp. I was so angry with my sister. I mean, I know it’s not her fault if she has a bad dream, but really, having to turn all the toys around?
     “Micyuel?”
     “Go to bed!”
     “Micyuel?”
     I sat up in bed, ready to explode. “Keagan!” As I said it I looked around my room for her. She was hiding somewhere. I head a far away giggle. “Seriously, if you don’t get in bed…” Just then she pulled the covers on the right side of my bed. “Stop bugging me or I’m telling Mom!” She pulled harder and my covers slid half off my bed, landing in a draped pile on the floor. I swung around on my stomach, pulled the covers aside, and peered under my bed. I couldn’t see her, it was too dark. I sat up and turned my bedside lamp on.
     “Who are you talking to?” Keagan asked from the open doorway.
     “You’re being a jerk, go to bed. Now!”
     She stuck her tongue out at me, crossed her arms and went off in a huff. Good. Don’t normal kids pester their parents at night, not their brothers? I turned out my light, pulled my covers up to my neck, and rolled over on to my side. I could hear Keagan whispering something in the doorway and then giggling. I buried my head under my pillow and went to sleep still angry with her.
     I woke up at 8:30. Lying across the bottom of my bed was Keagan and, of course, Loppsy. She was kind of cute, all rolled up into a ball there with her bunny in a death grip as she held tightly to its neck. I nudged her with my foot. She looked up at me a bit dreamily.
     “You cold?” I asked her. She nodded. I held open my covers and she crawled up next to me and put an exhausted head on my pillow.
     As we lay there Keagan whispered, “I’m sorry that Anna came and pestered you last night. I told her not to.”

Chapter Three “The Party”

     I was helping Mom set the kitchen table and put up decorations, when I first thought something wasn’t quite right. Mom had gone to answer the phone and I was left taping a birthday banner to the window. Keagan was outside swinging on her brand new swing set, her wavy blond hair streaming out behind her on the upswing, then masking her face as she dropped backwards and then rose up on the opposite side. As she swung forward again, I could see her talking incessantly to herself, which, surprisingly, wasn’t unusual or one bit concerning to me. What bothered me was the swinging. She sat bent-legged, not pumping at all, and continued to get higher as she rose back and forth; dangerously high. She looked upset.
     I slid the window open, “Keag, your going to tip that thing if you don’t stop going so high!”
     “What?” she yelled.
     “Don’t go so high! Dad doesn’t have it anchored to the ground yet,” I shouted.
     “I can’t help it!” she yelled back.
     Mom came back in to assess the situation, her mother senses undoubtedly tingling. “Keagan,” she yelled, “listen to your brother and slow down!” Then Mom rendered me powerless with “the look”, which always meant I was going to be asked to do something I didn’t want to do. “Michael, will you go out and keep an eye on her? The cake isn’t finished and your dad will be back with Aunt Molly and Uncle Paul any minute now. Just keep her from killing herself until she’s officially five at least.” She accompanied this with a frustrated, don’t even think about saying no, sigh.
     I didn’t talk back, but didn’t hide the fact that I was completely put out by her request either. I walked through the kitchen and out the back door to the swing set, eyeing Keagan. Why was I always stuck with her? I’m not one of her parents, am I? I knew I probably shouldn’t have said anything to begin with, but then again, if she fell and got hurt that would no doubt be my fault too, so there was no way to win in this household. She’s nothing but trouble, that Keagan, and I always have to get her out of it. I grabbed the swing and brought it, and her, to an abrupt stop.
     “Thanks.” Keagan said with tears in her eyes.
     “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “You’re not in trouble,” I pointed out. This didn’t seam to help matters much, though, as her tears overflowed onto her cheeks. She looked pitiful and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. This was weird, even for her. “You can’t cry on your birthday!” I said with as much cheerfulness as I could muster.
     “I don’t want to be five,” she sobbed. Snot was beginning to flow out of her nose and down her upper lip. I couldn’t take it.
     “Hold that thought!” My voice trailed behind me as I ran to the living room for a tissue, and back again. In the twenty seconds or so that it took me to get it, Keagan had built herself up to a dizzying height as she careened through the air on her swing, screaming all the while. Again I stopped the swing.
     “Keagan, what is the matter with you?” I demanded.
     “I want off!” she yelled, strands of her hair now glued to her face by snot.
     “You can get off yourself, you’re big now,” I reminded her, but pulled her off the swing anyway, being careful not to get slimed. I handed her the tissue and she blew like a trumpet. “What’s gotten into you, Keag? If you wanted off why on earth did you start swinging again?” I asked.
     “I wasn’t swinging!” she yelled, as if I’d accused her of doing something illegal.
     “Actually you were, and really high too!” I yelled back, not to be outdone by a five year old.
     “It wasn’t me,” she said sheepishly.
     “Right, Keagan, who was it then? Your evil twin, or better yet, your nice one? I’d like to meet her.” I teased.
     She was picking strands of hair from her face and wiping it with the tissue. “It was Mister, He was pushing me. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t, even when I tried to get off.”
     “Oh, him, well that clears it all up! Keagan you are old enough to know an imaginary friend from a real person. Pretend people don’t do real things!”
     She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Michael, he isn’t always pretend.” She looked back at the swing as if she were trying to calculate its next move.
     “Okay, you realise that’s crazy, right? You can’t just blame things on pretend people, and then expect to get out of being punished. Mom and Dad aren’t going to believe you, they’re not stupid.”
     “I know,” she looked pleadingly into my eyes, “but, Michael, won’t you believe me?”
     I didn’t quite know what to say. The way she looked at me told me she was telling the truth, or at least she thought she was, but obviously she wasn’t. I could hear dad’s car pulling into the driveway. Keagan was a mess. “It’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure her, not really reassuring myself, though. “Let’s get your face washed and then we’ll have some birthday cake, okay?” She nodded her head.
     Taking her least sticky hand, I led her into the kitchen. We got some wet paper towels and I cleaned up her face while Mom was greeting my aunt and uncle at the door. “Go see if they brought any presents for you!” I told Keagan, who didn’t need telling twice, as she bound into the livingroom all smiles. I turned and threw away the last of the paper towels. Through the window, the swing in the back yard was swinging helter-skelter as high as it would go.