Bewitched - Chapter #2 - Free To Read

“Shouldn’t he be here by now?”

Instead of answering immediately Darren hurled the basketball to Tony, who dropped his pool cue in order to catch it.

“Here,” T.J. said from the opposite side of the pool table. Tony tossed the ball to him. Without warning, T.J. bulleted the ball past Darren to the leather couch where Seth, the pony-tailed giant, reached out with one hand and caught the ball, which stuck to his palm like a magnet against a sheet of steel. Shelley, Seth’s beautiful, half-Japanese girlfriend, sat undisturbed by his side.

Darren grinned and nodded in approval as Tony and T.J. laughed appreciatively at Seth’s one-handed catch.

“He said he’d be here at seven. It’s only a few minutes past.” Darren opened his palms toward Seth, who threw him the ball.

“Why do we always wait for Mike?” Andrea, a short, perky brunette with elfin features stood before him with her head cocked to one side. She was an irritated little cheerleader, but she was cute.

“He’s part of the team,” Darren explained. He slipped an arm out around her waist and kissed her on the top of the head. “And besides, we’d wait for you.”

Andrea appeared skeptical, but let the subject drop. Instead she gravitated over to Lindsey and Sandy, who were spinning the handles of Tony’s foosball table.

Darren glanced quickly at the now darkened windows of Tony’s game room. He could have sworn there’d been movement out there, a shadow ducking out of sight. But he’d been seeing a lot of that sort of thing lately, or thought he had. He wasn’t one to be paranoid, but recently he had this feeling someone was watching him. Of course, that was crazy.

The exterior door from the patio burst open. Mike bounded into the game room, striking a pose from his taekwondo class. “Hi-yah!”

Tall, with chestnut colored skin, Mike was quite the sight. He was still wearing his white robe and black belt with three stripes, indicating his third-degree black belt status. As everyone’s attention turned on him, he leapt into the air, coming down on his hands and rolling across the floor before jumping back to his feet.

“Miss me?” He leaned toward Darren, and they waggled fingers at each other, a gesture they’d been using since they were six-years old.

The others applauded; Mike’s entrances were always entertaining. Darren glanced over at Andrea who had wandered back toward him and sat down on the arm of the leather sofa. Instead of clapping, she gave Mike a tolerant smile and shook her head. She considered Mike a goof-off, too foolish for her tastes, which bothered Darren. His girlfriend and best friend tolerated each other, but only for Darren’s sake.

Darren had met Andrea during a pep rally, shortly after Ethan’s death. She had approached him and asked what position he played. Later he found out she knew very little about basketball. When he’d said, “I play point guard, like John Stockton,” it had meant nothing to her. She had just wanted to talk to him. As it turned out, that was okay with him. He had been instantly enchanted by her—particularly her liquid brown eyes.

Lindsey, her ginger colored hair flying behind her, hurried from around the foosball table and struck a pose in front of Mike. “Hi-yah!”

Mike smiled. “You sure?”

“Come on, scaredy-cat! Afraid of a little girl?” Lindsey jumped around, holding her hands held in front of her in the typical karate chop position. She swung at him, and he blocked without really thinking.

They leaped about in a fake fight, Lindsey lunging and Mike parrying her moves with unmistakable fluidity. T.J and Tony stopped their pool game to watch the sparring.

“Go for the eyes,” Tony urged.

Lindsey threw a straight-fingered chop at Mike’s face. He grabbed her wrist and turned her about like a dancer performing a spin. She quickly recovered and bounced back at him, saying, “Hah,” with each strike. “Hah! Hah!”

“What’s gotten into this girl tonight?” Mike grinned. “I’m gonna end up hurting her.”

“Come on. I’ll bite your legs off,” she challenged, borrowing the line from Monte Python.

“Oh, girl, you’re in over your head.” Nevertheless, his smile suggested a competitive invitation.

“Sweep her up,” Darren suggested.

“That move? You sure?” Mike continued blocking her blows, though he’d turned his attention toward Darren.

“She’ll love it.”

“Okay.” He turned to Lindsey. “Remember, this was Darren’s idea.”

Mike jumped toward her, swept her legs out from under her with a spin, and using his own momentum, rolled beneath her so she landed on his chest, breaking her fall. It was a weird move, but never failed to please.

Lindsey giggled and Mike laughed. He rolled from beneath her and jumped to his feet. He reached down to help her up. “Come on. I’ll play you at Wii.”

“I thought we were going to do karaoke when Mike got here.” T.J. banged his cue stick on the ground.

“No,” Darren said. “We were going to use the Wii to work some plays for the game tomorrow.”

“Boring!” groaned the four cheerleaders in unison.

“But tomorrow’s game will determine whether we’re in the state championship.” Darren turned to his friends for support.

Andrea stood up, grabbed his arm, and gazed into his eyes. “Everyone knows you’re going to win the game tomorrow. You need a break from it tonight.”

Mike took center stage. “We don’t need to run those plays, Dare. And I know what we should do instead. Yesterday coach had me return some equipment to his office, and I saw something I’d never seen before.”

“A chest hair?” Tony quipped.

“Humility?” T.J. followed.

“Very funny,” Mike griped.

“Actually, it was pretty funny,” Darren chuckled.

Mike turned to his best friend and shook his head. “Et tu, Brute?” His face fell into an exaggerated expression of betrayal, and he dropped to his knees. “Maybe I should stop the story there. I’m sure there are some friends somewhere who’d like to follow up on my discovery.”

“No, tell us,” Sandy said, jumping up.

“Yes, please,” Lindsey blurted. She raised her arms into the karate forms she’d been using moments ago. “Don’t make me break these out on you again!”

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you.” Mike jumped back to his feet. Scanning his male friends he added, “But only because you sent the girls out to kick my butt.” Then slowly he articulated, “Coach has a chair on wheels that rolls around on a rug. Well, the rug was out of place, and so I saw that under his desk is a trapdoor.”

“Oh, yeah,” T.J. said. “There are several of them in different classrooms. When they built the school, they ran all the pipes and ductwork for heating and cooling underneath. It’s just a crawl space.”

“Au contraire,” Mike corrected, pointing a long finger in his direction. “You can stand down there.”

“You went down there?” Darren asked incredulously. “You’re a felon.”

“I’m a felon? A felon? I’m freakin’ Marco Polo is what I am.”

“What did you find?” Andrea asked, curiosity getting the best of her.

“Well,” he shrugged, looking sheepish, “pipes and ductwork.”

His friends laughed. Tony tossed a pool-cue chalk at his head.

“So, you want us to break into the school to see a bunch of pipes?” Seth’s deep voice resonating from the couch surprised them all. They had a tendency to forget he was there, even though he was the biggest one of them.

“If it’s dirty, I’m not going.” Shelley grabbed Seth’s arm for emphasis.

“Oh, I see.” Mike pointed at her teasingly. “You’re okay breaking into the school as long as you don’t get dirty?”

“There’s got to be more to this,” Darren insisted. “You don’t want us to break into the school and climb into a hole to see pipes.”

“Indeed I do not, compadre. Before I went down into the hole, I noticed there was a flashlight on a cabinet to the side of coach’s desk. I grabbed it, dropped down into the hole, and started poking around. One of the basketballs fell inside with me and rolled away into the darkness. I tried to find it among all those grimy pipes and stuff. But I realized it was really dirty down there, and I’ve got my face to worry about.” He smiled and went on. “Finally I found the ball, but before heading back, I decided to look around a bit. I went a little deeper into this tunnel, but missed one of those dirty little pipes and hooked my foot beneath one and down I went.” His hands made a sliding motion to indicate his descent. “Well, of course I threw my arms out in front of me to break my fall. I kept hold of the flashlight, but dropped the basketball. I started looking for it. And this is where it got kind of weird. It would be better to show you, really.”

“Show us what?” T.J. asked.

“Yeah, what was down there?” Tony demanded. “Was it a dead slimy baby, come back to life, that sucks the blood out of anyone it can find in the school late at night?”

Everyone gaped at Tony.

“Where did that come from?” Darren asked.

“You’ve been watching too many of your dad’s movies.” Mike laughed, referring to Tony’s movie-star father. “No, nothing quite that bizarre I’m afraid. But, it was strange. And I’m not kidding; this really happened. I walked a little farther along the passage to this area that ramped upward. I shone the light in front of me, and there at the top of the dirt ramp, I found the basketball.”

Everyone stopped and stared at him.

“So, you found the ball?” T.J. asked. “That’s it?”

“You weren’t listening. I said it was at the top of a dirt mound that ramped upward. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things right. The ball had rolled to the top of this little mound and stopped. So, I walked over to the side, took it down, and set it at the bottom of the ramp, and it rolled up it again. Only this time, it hadn’t already been rolling toward it. This dirt ramp was three and half feet high.”

It was silent for a moment as everyone considered what he was saying.

Shelley snuggled closer to Seth. “That is weird.”

“I don’t know why, but that makes my skin crawl,” Sandy confessed, the spring having gone out of her former bounciness.

“Hey, don’t get freaked out,” Mike said. “It’s not scary. It’s just trippy. But you’ve got to see it. It’s totally sick!”

“And you’ve figured out a way for us to get in?” Darren asked.

“Of course. Come on; let’s go.”

The others shared looks between them. Darren glanced at Andrea. She shrugged.

Seth rose from the couch, towering above everyone else. “I want to see this.”

Shelley took his hand but obviously didn’t share his enthusiasm.

They parked their cars east of the main lot where the entrance to the Smithfield Recreation Center—that was incorporated into the school—was located. There were several cars parked about. The bright lights of another vehicle sliced through the night as it entered the parking lot not too far behind them.

The cars idled next to each other. It was chilly outside, and the girls were complaining about how cold Utah was in March.

“We’re going in through the Rec Center?” Darren asked.

Mike nodded. “Yeah.”

“Aren’t the doors between the Rec Center and the school locked?” Tony called from the window of his Mazda RX-8, humming proudly beside Mike’s Jeep.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Mike talked over Darren and Andrea who were holding each other to keep warm. “Let’s go inside and see what we can do.”

The motivation of the group had decreased considerably because of the weather. Seeing a basketball roll up a hill didn’t seem to be that important anymore. To forestall any backing out, Mike killed the engine and jumped out. Darren opened the side door, and he and Andrea rolled out as well. The rest reluctantly followed.

Inside the Rec Center, where the heat was on, everyone began feeling better. They approached the front desk, manned by a girl of about twenty and a lady in her forties. The two women checked their cards and reminded them that the Rec Center closed at ten o’clock—forty minutes from now.

The group headed down the hall, whispering about how ridiculous the whole adventure was. Mike led the way, followed by Darren and Andrea. The rest straggled behind, giggling and teasing each other. They passed the door that led to the pool and walked around a turn where middle-aged residents rode stationery bikes while watching flat-screen TV’s set in the wall. They passed through two metal doors that led farther into the recreational center. On their right was a glass-enclosed room complete with machines, free weights, benches, and fans scattered throughout. There were treadmills and stair-climbers across the hall, as well as an exercise room where aerobic classes were normally taught. People were scattered throughout, busy increasing their heart rates or taxing the endurance of their muscles. At last the group came to two metal doors that separated the recreation center from the high school.

Tony pushed on the double doors. They moved together as one and flexed back into place. Locked.

“Well, it was a fun idea,” Darren said.

Mike pushed Tony out of the way. He reached inside his white robe and pulled out two little metal tools. “This is called a tension wrench.” He held up a small flat, metal tool. “And this is the pick.” This time he flashed them a little tool that could have been the instrument the dentist used to scrape plaque off teeth, only smaller.

Mike inserted his tools into the door’s lock. The others gathered around him as he set to work.

“What are you doing?” Lindsey asked from the back of the group.

Mike glanced up. “Lindsey, head back around the last turn and make sure no one comes around the corner,” he instructed.

Lindsey hesitated, then took off to do as he’d said.

“Are you picking that?” T.J. asked.

“As I apply pressure on the plug,” Mike said, maneuvering the pick as he spoke, “I find the pins inside the lock and push them up into the housing.” He moved the pick up and down, listening as he did so. “Until, all of them are up, held in place by the pressure I’m putting on the cylinder.” There was more shifting inside the keyhole. “Then I can…” There was a small click, followed by Mike pushing at the locked door. “Open the door.”

“Ah!” and “Cool!” quietly filled the hallway.

Sandy ran down the hall and brought Lindsey back. They passed through the door Mike held open.

“Nice,” Seth intoned as he took Shelley by the hand and disappeared into the dark school halls.

“That was cool!” Tony said. “You gotta show me how to do that.”

“Do you do parties?” T.J. joked.

Lindsey and Sandy giggled as they passed through. Lindsey gave Mike an appreciative chop with her hand.

“Let’s hope there’s not a silent alarm,” Darren stopped to point out.

“On the outside, perhaps,” Mike replied. “But the school’s too cheap; this door just has a simple tumbler lock.”

“Well, once again, life is never boring with you around, Mike.” Darren waggled fingers with Mike.

Andrea stopped long enough to say, “Why does it not surprise me that this particular ability is part of your skill-set?”

Mike grinned at her, but as soon as she caught up with Darren, he pulled a face at her back.

Through the now dark halls of the school, the basketball team and cheerleaders snuck around like thieves down corridors that, during the day, they ruled like royalty. Darren wondered if the cameras in the ceiling were on at night, and if so, how much they could see in the dim lighting. Getting Mike’s attention, he pointed silently to one of the dark semi-spheres attached to the ceiling. Mike only shook his head. Whether that meant they didn’t work at night, or they needn’t worry about them, Darren wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Julander, one of the school’s vice-principals, hated him, and if he got his hands on film of Darren sneaking around the school after hours, he’d ruin Darren’s life with it.

Darren cocked his head for a moment, believing he heard something back down the way they’d come. It might have been the door they’d entered being opened again, or it might have been some ambient noise the school produced on its own when no one was around. This feeling of being watched and followed was a nuisance. He shook it off and caught up with the rest of them.

After passing down the long halls, they came to the new gym. Mike whipped out his lock picking tools and started to work on the door. They all gathered around him as he worked, sensing that as long as they were in the school at night, they were safer while on the move. For some reason, standing still increased their anxiety of being caught.

Nervous laughter from the girls started to annoy Darren. He stared back the way they’d come and could have sworn he saw someone duck behind the wall just as his gaze passed over it. He was positive this time it wasn’t his imagination. Someone was back there.

Mike was taking longer than he had on the previous door.

“How’s it coming?” Darren asked.

“Not so good,” Mike admitted.

“What’s wrong?”

“There are pins all around the cylinder. It’s probably a tubular lock. They’re almost impossible to pick.”

Andrea, who’d overheard, shared a look of concern with Darren.

“What’s going on?” Sandy asked from the side of the door next to T.J.

“He’s dragging this out so we get caught,” Tony complained.

“You can’t open it?” Seth rumbled from behind the others.

“I didn’t say that,” Mike groused, but he was obviously losing his battle with the lock.

Darren watched Mike’s frustration grow as he fumbled with the lock. Andrea squeezed his hand, and a funny tingling shot up his spine as if she’d breathed cold air on his neck. He shivered. Certain it was the fear of being caught, he almost mentioned it when Mike announced, “Got it!”

With an audible click, the door popped open.

They rushed into the gymnasium and scurried across the long wooden floor, down past the bleachers, which were automatically pulled into the side walls beneath the balcony seating.

At the far end of the gym were the coaches’ offices. The group scuttled around the turn at the end of the bleachers and entered the small hallway. Mike tried Coach Hawthorne’s door, and thankfully, it wasn’t locked.

Once inside, a strange giddiness descended upon the group.

“I can’t believe we’re in here!” Sandy screeched. She brushed her long curly hair back over her shoulders. Lindsey bobbed on her toes next to her.

“We should have brought a video camera,” Tony said. “We could add a soundtrack and do some Mission Impossible stunts. Pretend we’re hanging from the room suspended over Coach’s desk.”

Tony leapt on top of the desk. “Hey, you could shoot me up here, like I’m diving into the room from the window.”

“Get down from there!” Darren snapped. “You’re going to break something.”

Tony jumped down, but whispered to T.J. they’d have to come back later and try it.

There wasn’t much room in the small office, so all the movement was causing others to bump into cabinets or the ball bags.

Pushing the others out of his way, Mike rolled the coach’s chair to one side. As a maintenance entry point, the coach had simply thrown a small rug over the top and forgotten about it. Mike pulled up the worn mat and exposed the trapdoor.

Silence settled over them as the first proof of Mike’s claim became visible. There was an entrance to a cavern below.

Darren, who was next to the credenza, grabbed the flashlight Mike had replaced earlier and flicked it on. “Looks like we’re ready.”

Mike pulled another small flashlight from his robe. “I wasn’t taking chances.”

As soon as the trapdoor was moved out of place, Shelley reminded everyone, “I’m not going down there.” She shook her head and backed away as far as she could, given the size of the small room.

“Come on, Shell!” Sandy said. “I’ll go if you go. Plus, you’ll have Seth to protect you.”

Shelley was unconvinced, but Seth’s gaze and squeeze helped. She nodded, but her watery eyes made it clear she was still scared.

“Anyone else feel like chickening out?” Mike had moved the wooden trapdoor to one side so the opening had free access.

“Not me,” T.J. said. “I want to see this thing!”

“Me too,” Tony agreed.

“I kind of want to,” Lindsey said, although her tone left plenty of doubt.

Seth didn’t say a word, but it was clear he intended to go down. Andrea squeezed Darren’s hand. She was in for the excursion. He loved that she was such a good sport about stuff like this, especially since this escapade had been Mike’s idea.

After grabbing a basketball, Mike dropped down into the hole, followed by the others. They bunched together in the dark. Mike struck out with his smaller light, and the rest formed a line and followed. They walked along in the semi-dark, just the two flashlights providing weird, elongated shadows before them. There were indeed pipes down there, mainly running along the top of the shaft, covered in white insulation as well as dust and cobwebs. At their feet, metal pipes climbed the earthen walls, ran along the ceiling, and disappeared through the top to some room above. At this point in the tunnel, they all stood up straight with the exception of Seth who, at six-foot six, was forced to stoop the whole way.

“It’s right up here,” Mike said. “Watch out for that crosswise running pipe on the ground; that’s what I tripped over.”

Mike stopped them, indicating with his light where the ramp began. Darren experienced that strange cold sensation on the back of his neck and spine again. He actually wanted to tell someone to quit breathing down his shirt, but no one was behind him.

“Do you see here in front of me, where the dirt forms a small ramp running upward?” Mike aimed his flashlight on the spot. They all crowded forward to see. It was a slight graded area that gradually tilted upward for about ten feet, climbing to a height of just over three feet. “Notice how it goes up?”

They all agreed. Darren noticed they were whispering, even though there was no danger of being heard. It added to the creepy, cold feeling Darren couldn’t shake. He did his best to ignore it.

“Now watch.” Mike stooped down and set the ball where the slope and the flat ground met. At first the ball sat there, but before long, it began to rock slightly back and forth as if it were teetering on the edge of a basketball hoop, deciding to fall in or out. All of a sudden, it rolled right up the incline and stopped at the top.

A hushed “Whoa!” in unison filled the dark cavern as each witnessed the strange physics the ball obeyed.

“That is creepy!” Sandy said. She and Lindsey had become one, they were hugging each other so tightly.

“That is weird!” Darren agreed, his eyes meeting Mike’s. He turned his gaze to Andrea, whose lips were slightly parted as she shook her head in bewilderment.

“Do it again,” Tony whispered.

Mike retrieved the errant basketball and brought it back to the same spot. The same strange occurrence happened. They expressed their amazement again. It shouldn’t be happening, but there it was, rolling up a hill.

“Maybe there’s some sort of magnetic pull around here coming from up above,” Tony suggested.

“The ball’s made of rubber,” T.J. pointed out.

Darren tried to reason it out, but came up with nothing. Finally, he tried the only thing that made sense to him. “My dad told me about the funhouse that used to be at Lagoon.” He was referring to the amusement park in Farmington, Utah that drew thousands each year from Utah, Idaho, and other surrounding areas. “He said there was a part of the funhouse called the tilted room. You had to hang onto these bars as you walked up and down through the room. There was a spot where you could see through this dark glass and watch glowing ping-pong balls as they appeared to be bouncing up hill. Maybe it just seems like it’s slanted, but it really isn’t.”

“For that to be true,” T.J. explained, “we would have to be on a slant right now.”

“Which we’d feel if we were,” Andrea finished for him. Though obviously puzzled, Darren could see the concentration on her beautiful face as she tried to reason out what was going on.

“My mother grew up in Salt Lake,” Sandy said, her face as white as her hair under the weak glow of the flashlights. “She said they used to go to a place where the cars, once put in neutral, would roll up hill. They called it Gravity Hill.”

“It’s one thing to hear about it,” Seth said. “It’s another thing to see it.”

Silence filled the dusty, dirty corridor for a few moments. Mike set the ball down. Only this time, he gave it a little shove. The ball shot to the top, accelerating as if it were thrown downhill.

“Check your watches,” T.J. suggested. “Maybe they’ve stopped working.”

“Nope,” Mike said. “Mine’s still ticking.” He paused, then dramatically exclaimed, “Wait a second, I don’t have a watch.” The flashlight jerked about crazily until it was under his chin shining gruesomely at the freakish face he’d pulled.

His teammates laughed, but Sandy and Lindsey screamed, which made the boys laugh harder. Andrea’s grip on Darren’s hand grew tighter. She shouted, “I could kill you, Mike!” Darren knew she hated being scared. Mike was not helping to make their friendship any friendlier.

From the far end of the tunnel, near the hole through which they’d entered, a creaking sound from above brought a halt to their talking.

Someone was walking overhead.

“Shh!” Darren commanded. They all froze, paralyzed in the dark by the fear of the unknown and the possibility of being caught. Mike shut off his flashlight, and so did Darren.

They listened as the creaking came to a stop. Darren could sense each of his friends trying to breathe through their noses to make the least sound possible. Somebody’s nose was actually whistling, but very quietly. From his side vision, he saw Sandy’s eyes wide with fear and her platinum blonde hair quivering in the dark. Darren squeezed Andrea’s hand. She looked serious, but somehow confident, like she knew they’d come out of this okay.

Each of them stared down the dark tunnel to where a faint bluish glow of the school’s emergency lighting filtered in through the trapdoor. Was someone about to come down? They definitely heard a person above grumble and move about. The floor creaked again under the stranger’s weight. This was followed by a scraping sound, more creaking, and then a clunk. The bluish light coming in through the trapdoor winked out. Someone had replaced the trapdoor.

Shelley and Sandy muffled their cries of panic. Both Mike and Darren brought their flashlights back to life.

Still afraid to talk, they listened while the creaking noise moved out of the coach’s office and disappeared. Darren and Mike’s eyes met.

“Custodian?” Darren mouthed.

“Maybe,” Mike replied.

Tony started toward the entrance, but Mike caught his arm and motioned for him to stay. “Wait,” he said in a whisper they all could hear.

Darren understood Mike’s thinking. Though the creaking had faded away, who was to say the person up there wasn’t waiting to catch them as soon as they started talking again?

“We’re not trapped down here, are we?” Shelley’s voice trembled.

“No,” Seth replied definitively.

Darren figured no matter what the person had stacked on top of the trapdoor, Seth would be able to push it off.

“Do you think it’s safe to leave?” T.J. asked.

“Let’s get out of here!” Shelley answered.

They clamored through the darkened passage toward the trapdoor. Darren aimed his flashlight upward, as did Mike. Without verbally agreeing, Seth moved forward and lifted the door. As he pushed, they heard the rattle of the coach’s chair as it rolled to one side and fell over onto the floor. Seth heaved it away without any trouble.

They scrambled out of the tunnel like there were demons ready to yank them back down into an eternity of darkness. Back in the coach’s office, they glanced about, afraid that whoever had shut them in might return at any minute.

Smiling in relief, Darren faced Mike, and they waggled fingers. Whatever that had been, they seemed to have dodged it.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Darren led the way this time. As a group, they scurried through the new gym, out the door, and down the dark halls of the school. In much less time than it took them to get to the coach’s office, they were bursting through the metal doors that separated the school from the Rec Center. Through these well-lit hallways, they continued at a brisk pace, laughing a bit, but also glancing about as if someone might stop them and ask what they’d been up to.

They passed by the front desk, the ladies that manned it watching them curiously.

Once they were out the doors, a lone figure standing at the check-in desk turned and observed them scattering for the two vehicles they’d arrived in. He’d only been at the desk, browsing a schedule, a few minutes before they’d come bustling through.

He pulled out his notebook and scribbled a few lines. Darren would no doubt be on his way home from here. His instructions were clear: he was to follow and record all of Darren’s actions. Replacing that trapdoor had not been part of the instructions; however, he hadn’t been precisely forbidden from doing it, either.

His night wasn’t over yet. He would spy on the young man as long as he could see in his house, recording everything he did. Once the lights went out, he’d only have a phone call to make, and he would finally be excused from this duty.

Of course, he’d have to pick up where he’d left off first thing in the morning.