Maisel’s Neighbourhood Watch Log: September 17th, 2023 – 1:55 PM – The Neighbourhood Watch Clubhouse
We found the clubhouse years ago, before we even started the Neighbourhood Watch. We had been playing a game called Predator/Prey when we stumbled upon it. Sasheen and I were the “prey” and were looking for a good place to hide. It was strange; the shed had existed as long as I could remember, but it wasn’t until we tried opening the door that I realized I had never actually seen anyone use it. When we found the trapdoor inside the shed, we were initially scared that we would get in trouble, but we kept going back, and no one ever showed up.
The clubhouse was a medium-sized room that could fit a large table, several chairs, some shelves, a few corkboards, and this old stuffed bear (which was already there when we found it!)
As I stood at the bottom of the ladder and looked around the clubhouse, I realized it was still a disaster, since Pocket’s snarf training had gone wrong. The table in the center of the room was held together by duct tape and best wishes. In its current state, it was more for decoration than for anything.*
| *Comment: It is only for decoration. DO NOT put anything on the table. It WILL collapse. I CANNOT rebuild this thing again. – Sasheen† |
| †Comment: …Whoops. – Maisel |
The corkboards, the map of Harrington, and the photos on the wall were mostly intact. One of the corkboards reading, “Supernatural Leads,” was sadly empty at the moment. The other one had a list of things we needed to do, which currently just said “clean up clubhouse.” The shelves were half full of our stuff, things like rope, a camera, notepaper, old journals, badges, a sewing kit, etc. and half full of stuff that was already here, rusty tools, some old metal equipment, and several wooden boxes that were nailed shut with a stamp on them that read AD.
We tried to open one of them once, but when it didn’t budge, we figured we probably shouldn’t be going through someone else’s stuff (even if they were storing their stuff in our clubhouse).‡
| ‡ Comment: Isn’t our clubhouse in their storage room? – Murlocke |
I walked through the clutter to where the map of Harrington was. There were brightly coloured pins marking different places in Harrington where supernatural activity had been spotted. A corner of the map was torn, so it folded over itself. I grabbed a couple of black tacks and pinned the map back into place.
Looking at the map, it kind of felt like flipping back through the pages after you finished a book; page 425, that’s when Sasheen got lost in the house of mirrors, page 323, that’s when we started finding polka-dot eggs around the school, page 201, that’s when the solar eclipse lasted for an hour and 42 minutes, and page 32, that’s when we formed the Neighbourhood Watch and stuck the first pin in this map.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. The map is the reason I went back to the clubhouse. I picked up a few teal pins and stuck them in the places where we saw the butterflies duplicate. I grabbed a sheet of paper, cut it into a circle and cut a hole out in the middle. I’m no arts-and-crafts pro, but it looked like the storm formation we saw on Murlocke’s mom’s computer. I pinned the circle into place over the haunted forest and stepped back to take a look. Right in the center (or eye) of the storm was the last place Pocket was before he disappeared. Maybe it was a coincidence, but supernatural events stopped appearing after Pocket disappeared. Now the supernatural was back, and it seemed to be circling the place where Pocket vanished. Could it all be related? I hated to admit it, but it seemed like Sasheen and Murlocke were right; we needed to go to the Haunted Forest.
I glanced over to the photos beside the map. There were a ton of random Polaroid photos stuck to the wall. I grabbed one of Murlocke, Sasheen, Pocket, and me, posing in front of a three-headed rabbit. We all had massive smiles on our faces. Why couldn’t it have stayed like that forever? The four of us working together to investigate supernatural happenings around Harrington. How could anything ever be better than that?
I rubbed my thumb across Pocket’s face. He was smiling back at me with his goofy smile. It wasn’t fair. Why did he have to go and disappear? Why didn’t he tell us where he was going? Why didn’t he bring Murlocke, Sasheen, or me with him? I felt my face heat up, and my eyes started to blur. Then, out of nowhere, tears were running down my face. I lowered myself down to sit against the wall and cried as the raging storm rattled the little shed above our clubhouse.
I knew I needed to pull myself together, so we could solve this mystery, but I just couldn’t help it. I always assumed that Pocket would come back; I thought he was just lost and would return one day. Now… the idea of going back to the place where he disappeared from… It felt impossible. What if he really was not going to come back?
I could hear the butterflies rattling the shed above me.
The storm was getting worse.
And I wasn’t strong enough.
– Maisel
Leave a comment