The Boy Who Cried Murder

Chapter 7

The police questioning was over, and no one had any doubts about their story. Mrs. Rosenfeld was driving the two of them home in her station wagon, no one saying anything. Will watched the street lights flash by out the window. It had been a long night, and he was still trying to process everything that had happened. They hadn't saved Mr. Watts... they had tried their best to solve a mystery but things had gone terribly wrong... and what was that thing that happened with Sandra? Had she really developed some kind of deadly power?

Whatever the case, he should have been able to solve it. He wondered what Trenchcoat Tucker would have done if he were in his place. Of course, Tucker wasn't psychic, but had his psychic abilities even helped at all? If he and Sandra hadn't known, they wouldn't have followed Watts to the skate park and none of this would have happened.

Suddenly, the rhythm of the streetlights was gone and Will was in a whole nother place in his mind's eye. He saw a group of lab coat-clad scientists, gathered around a strange device. A young boy of no more than five was playing with action figures in the corner. He was presumably the son of one of the scientists.

"Here we are, about to do something no one has ever done before," said one of the scientists. "If this works, we'll have the technology to halt the aging process!"

"Are you sure it will work?" asked another to the man fiddling with the device's levers.

"Oh yeah, of course it will! We've been researching and developing this thing for nineteen years, how could it go wrong?"

"As a scientist, one cannot be too careful, Leonard," cautioned a woman with a pristine lab coat and her hair in a tight bun.

"We've been careful! For nineteen years! Don't you want to finally test this baby out?" With that, Leonard flipped the switch.

Electricity sparked across the sleek metal surface, beautiful and terrifying. It let out a surge of energy and a blinding light. The power went out all of a sudden and a generator started whirring in the distance. When the lights came back on, Will could see a scene of chaos. A couple people lay dead on the ground, including the woman who had warned against it, and the young boy had vanished. The remaining scientists were in disarray, yelling in terror when they saw what had happened.

Once they had calmed down considerably, they turned towards one of the men for guidance. He had dark hair and broad shoulders. The man said, "That's it, we can't continue this any longer. I'm putting an end to the Rinehart Project."

"This is really it, huh?"

"Yes, it's too much of a danger. Come on, all we can do now is damage control. I think we might have a case of widespread radiation on our hands, we need see if the area is safe or if we need the town to evacuate."

As the scientists left the room, Leonard stayed for a second longer, gazing at the broken machine that was his life's work. As he turned to go with the others, there was an invisible tug on his lab coat, but when he looked no one was there. He was about to chalk it up to a trick of the mind, but then it happened again, more firmly this time. Suddenly, Leonard glanced towards the abandoned action figures in the corner, and put the pieces together.

"Jay, is that you?"

The vision faded, and Will snapped back to reality. He had never experienced anything like this before, only vague premonitions. But this must have been a flashback to when the Rinehart Project was shut down, back in 1999. Will was too tired from the day to think much about it, so he leaned against the car window and let the street lights send him to sleep.