A Horrific Fantasy

Chapter 8

When Charlie had free time, she opened the locket that had been given to her by the owl and found that there was no photo inside. There wasn't even a place to put a photo in. No frame, nothing. Just an empty pendent. However she found herself more curious about why an owl of all things would give this to her?

"Maybe it was a show owl." Vaggie suggested when Charlie told her about it on their way to school. "You know how a zoo will sometimes train birds of prey to perform tricks. Maybe that owl was a trained performer who escaped from it's cage."

"I guess that would explain the whole collecting items and bringing them to people." Charlie said. "But why bring them to me? And how and where would an owl get flower seeds, a snowglobe, and a locket?"

"Can't say that I have an answer for that one. But that it is pretty weird. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure everything in this town is weird. Just look at Angel."

"Vaggie!" Charlie scolded.

"I'm sorry if that's mean, but you can't honestly say that he's normal."

"Well what's so great about being normal anyway? And besides, Angel is pretty much the only friend we have. You know everyone else in school pretty much ignores us or harasses us. He's the only one in our peer group who actually treats us like human beings."

"Fair point." Vaggie admitted. "But stuff he says and does-"

"It's not our place to judge Vaggie. You should know that better than anyone."

"It's alright toots." Both Vaggie and Charlie jumped in surprise to discover that Angel had been walking behind them the entire time.

"God! Do you have to be such a stalker?!" Vaggie asked in irritation.

"How much of that did you hear?" Charlie asked feeling embarrassed.

"Only the whole thing but I'm not hurt." Angel assured them. "I know what other people think of me and I've accepted it. I can be happy as a freak,"

"Hey I did not say that you were a freak." Vaggie said.

"You didn't need to. It's written all over your face."

"Okay allow me to explain." She said. "I will admit I do find you a little odd and creepy sometimes. I mean you do sneak up and pop up out of nowhere all the time. You collect bugs, mostly spiders which you know I'm afraid of, and you talk about spooky stuff. But I like some things about you. You're inventive and resourceful and funny and cute and-"

She suddenly stopped and covered her mouth, in attempt to hide the slow blush building up.

"What was that last part?" Angel asked.

"Clever!" She said while stammering. "Very clever. Heh, heh."

"Okay." Angel said awkwardly.

"Anyway, I like you Angel but when you do stuff like talking about that story the other night, can you blame me for getting a little unsettled?"

"What story?" Charlie asked.

"I told her the legend surrounding the old bridge." Angel said.

"And it was creepy." Vaggie said. "Just a creepy hoax."

"You don't know for sure that it's a hoax." Angel said.

"If I had money, I'd bet it all on the notion that it is a hoax. This whole legend is probably something made up to scare kids from playing around on the old bridge, so they wouldn't fall off into the creek. We had something similar back in El Salvador. Parents would tell their kids that el chupacabra lived under the railroad tracks to prevent them from playing on it so they wouldn't get their feet caught in the railings and get hit by oncoming trains."