After a tedious unpacking, Geo finally found his cell and immediately ring up his friends.
"I can't believe you guys hauled me off to Twinbrook just like that!" he growled. "What do you guys take me for? A cargo load?"
"Sorry, man. It must be the vodka effect on us, but you know we're not good with goodbyes anyway."
"That aside," Geo instantly changed the topic. "You guys won't believe what's happening around here! It's crazy shit!"
So Geo explained everything from A to Z about how strange Twinbrook had become, and how abnormal it was to be among the Shadow people. He was very descriptive of every details.
But he stopped when he heard guffaws on the other line.
"What's so funny?" he frowned.
"Nothing, man," his friend replied, struggling not to laugh. He also heard other laughters from the background, apparently he was put to speaker mode and everybody heard him. "You sure you don't have a hangover? Still? Cause you had a lot that night. Waayyy mucho."
"That's like two days ago," he blurted in disbelief. "What makes you think I haven't been sober since?"
"I dunno, buddy. - But Shadow People? Gimme a break! We know you're mad at us but you don't have to m - "
Geo hangs up abruptly when his friends broke into laughs again. He's not tolerating anymore of their laid back lives. He reminded himself that moving out of town was the best decision he had ever made instead of hanging around his rockabilly buddies, being unproductive.
He never went out of his house after that one time. He still had the heebie-jeebies when he sees the Shadow people. Geo spent his time in front of the old tellie, comforting himself with the normal world he sees on screen.
It doesn't matter if he had a bad reception on most channels. At least by watching anything on it makes him feel normal in a place where he is not the normal-looking one.
But watching TV all day does makes him feel unproductive. So he got up and went out in the back to check out the rusty work table which he had remembered it being there for as long as he can remember.
There were some scrap metals lying around, and out of the blue, he thought of putting them together and make up something of it. He don't know what he's gonna make but unless he never starts, he can't finish up anything.
Also, he's venting off the anger he had for his not-so supportive friends.
Just as he was so sold into his metal clanking, an appearance from his back door shocked him terribly. The color of his face left him.
"Cripes!" he felt his heart leaped out of his rib cage.
"Gosh, Geo, you don't have to scream like you saw a ghost," said the visitor. "I was knocking your front door for a long time there. Sorry to barge in though, but your door was unlocked. So here I am! Hi!"
Great, I forgot to lock my own doors.
For once, he did thought he saw a ghost. The pitch black skin wasn't much of a help in recognizing who his visitor was, but the voice and the hot pink boots reminded him it was Sophia Carlton.
The girl who claimed to know his grandmother... the Witch of Twinbrook.
"How are you doing? I haven't seen you around," she greeted. "Any luck with the tome?"
Geo was caught by surprise the other day when Sophia mentioned Granny Olsen was also known as the swamp witch. He didn't know his grandmother had such reputation. Poor granma, how could her own townspeople say such things.
Sophia also mentioned that Granny Olsen had left her a message for the grandson;
'Find the Tome in the swamp house'.
'Find the Tome in the swamp house'.
"About that... I'm not really - "
"Sure where to look?" she finished his sentence.
"Uhm, yeah," he hesitantly nods. But the truth is, everything was still surreal for him; the Shadow people and the unreliable truth about his grandmother. He hasn't grasp everything yet, and he don't know if he ever will. It's just ridiculous. He's not really into all this nonsense.
"Plus, I'm not that really lucky to begin with," he just had to add that.
He is in fact blessed with being unlucky. It made him grow up to be more calculative of the consequences of his decisions in life. He indeed grew up to be more cautious knowing bad lucks lurking in every corner, and falling on him without warning.
This situation is one of them.
"Well, consider me a Godsend," she smiled. "I'm pretty lucky, if I must say. Granny Olsen tells me that all the time, because I don't need a charm to be lucky; you're looking at Lady Luck in the flesh!"
She giggled. And it was a normal giggle. Geo expected it would be a hysterical giggle of some kind. But that's just how it is; he has no luck, even with guessing things.
He stared at Sophia. Amazed at her perky pride. Amazed at how people can claim themselves lucky; to the point of boasting themselves as Godsend.
She was really the opposite of him.
"I kinda looked around the whole house," he brush off his thoughts aside and hope that she didn't realized him staring at her. "Granma didn't left any belongings inside other than the furnitures. I don't think it's in here. - At all."
He can't believe he said that. It would mean that he did believe his grandmother was a witch with a dying message and a hidden voodoo item left behind. But he'll say anything to drive this girl away.
"Nonsense!" was her retort. "If it's not inside, then it's outside. So let's get lookin'!"
Geo was in no position to decline a Shadow person at this moment. So he just followed Sophia down the steps and into the marsh backyard, which he wished he didn't have to explore. He had a bad feeling about the faint mists.
"Let's look through the grasses first," she suggested. "They must have grown this long for a reason. I mean, anything can stay hidden with this kind of length."
"Um, I'll go that way then," he said, trying to keep his distance.
"Eek!" Sophia squealed after a few steps. "My boots! They're all muddy now!"
This is a swamp after all, Geo thought. Shouldn't have suggested to look around then.
He sighed, wondering is he the only being on earth who would think through the consequences before walking around a muddy terrain with clean shiny boots.
"I don't like this," Geo said to himself as he peered into the long grasses. "Why am I doing this again?"
As he took a step in for a closer look, he heard a crunch under his shoe and the next thing he knows...
KABOOM!
Something behind him was splitting his ear drums.
He turned around to see that it was really an explosion right in his backyard! Wood debris were shooting out in the air. It was raining pebbles.
"GEO!" Sophia's shout was buried by the roar of the eruption. She darted towards him, kicking muds with her heels. "GEO? WHAT HAPPENED?"
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW HOW BAD LUCK HAPPENS?!"
It was the last straw. He really can't handle it anymore.
"WHAT IF I HAD BEEN STANDING RIGHT THERE?! RIGHT IN THAT VERY SPOT! I COULD HAVE BEEN ROASTED IN PIECES BY NOW! JESUS!"
He could not further emphasis on how unlucky he could be. The random-allofasudden-outofnowhere explosion kind of explained it all.
"Sweetie," she stood there, surprisingly calm as a feather. "You're over-reacting."
How can anyone be that calm after experiencing a freaky bomb a few meters away? He thought. How can you not over-react?!
"If you were that unfortunate as you said you were, it could have been you there... but then it wasn't. So pull yourself together already!" she smacked her lips. "C'mon, let's check it out."
"Huh? What?" his ears were still ringing from the horrible blast. "Did you just say check it out? - Hey! Hey, where are you going?"
"I wanna see what exploded, of course," Sophia walked away from him and went to the eye of the blast. "C'mon!"
"I am not going there!" he insisted. "Come back here, Sophia, it's dangerous!"
"Don't be such a pussy, I'm Lady Luck, remember?" she was already standing on the blackened spot affected by the blast. "Get your ass here now, Geo Vanglorious."
"Eww, what is that?" she coughed a little bit from the smoke. "Have you ever seen anything like that? - Look at it. Can you see it?"
"Yeurgh! What on earth is that?!" Geo exclaimed at what seemed to be the sight of a little dark totem, apparently unaffected by the blast... or perhaps caused the blast when it made it's appearance. "Is it alive?"
"I think it's a gnome," Sophia nonchalantly guessed like it was the normal thing to see after an explosion in a swampy backyard.
"Right? Don't you think so?" she tried to get him to agree as she continued to speculate. "Look at how that could be a beard, and don't gnomes have pointy hats? That doesn't look pointy though, but it's a hat alright."
Geo stood rigidly silent as he stared at the ground... at the gnome.
"This really looks like a gnome, no doubt about it," Sophia concluded without his help. "Hey, what's that over there?"
"Wh-Where?" nothing startles him more than unexpected surprises lurking around waiting to jump out at his face.
"That thing there..." she pointed. Sophia sounded uncertain, which was so not her, who in the first place kept on babbling confidently about everything. "Is that..."
Beneath the rocks and wood debris before the gnome, lies something else. Something seemingly out of place. Something you don't see surviving an explosion. Something you won't expect may have been the cause of the explosion itself.
Something...
"The Tome!" both Geo and Sophia exclaimed.
Unlike the very cautious Geo who weigh his actions and consequences before acting on something, upon the sight of the tome which he had been denying it's existence, he immediately bend over and grabbed it off the ground.
There was no scratch nor burns on the tome except for it looking a little worn out by time. And as unreal as it may be, Geo is starting to think that his grandmother was indeed who Sophia said she was.
And not forgetting, that she did left a message for him to search for the tome. A tome that he thought, over and over again, did not exists.
Yet at this moment, the said tome was already in his hands.
He somehow knew it was not a coincidence that all this is finally happening. He was always a loser but this time he had luck. He could have been dead in the explosion but he's still here unscathed, and still breathing. It was a timely miracle.
And he was not the kind who would ever believe in miracles, ever. He had been into various unfortunate events since he can remember. But right now, it seemed like everything was going to change for him.
"What does it say?" asked Lady Luck.
"I need to build a time machine."
It was a decision he did not need to weigh.
