What Peter Saw

Here is my story "What Peter Saw" :

"Hey Tom? Tell me about Old-Man What's-His-Name, down on the
corner, you know who I'm talking about. What IS wrong with him?"
Peter asked his older brother. "Old-Man Timber? Well kiddo, I don't
know, because he spends all his time cooped up in that house. But I
heard Mom talking about him to a friend on the phone, and she said
he's mute! He can't talk! Weird, huh?". Peter mulled this over in
his head. Knowing that the Old-Man couldn't talk wasn't satisfying
at all, it simply doubled the intrigue, and he needed to know even
more.

Tom patted him on the shoulder as he headed to the door. "I gotta
go to work now sport, but you remember the rules, right?" asked Tom,
"Stay in the yard, don't watch too much TV, don't play too many video
games..." Peter replied sulkily. Tom laughed and said "It's not that
bad. Mom will be back at 8 tonight, before I get home, so be good!".
Tom smiled, winked and waved goodbye, chuckling as he left.

As soon as the front door closed, Peter raced to the living room.
Tom had left all his games out! A smile cracked across Peter's face.
He turned on the TV, blew the dust out of a game cart, and plugged it
in to the Nintendo. "Today I will finally beat Mega-man!" he exclaimed
to no-one in particular. Time slowed as he watched the pixels drift
across the screen, and the tinny music put him into a trance.

Something kept bugging Peter as he played, and he soon noticed that
he kept dying as his play was punctuated with a "Game Over" screen.
"Old-Man Timber!" he suddenly thought. He had been overwhelmed with
glee upon seeing Tom's sly gesture of kindness. It was summer
vacation; his last summer before high-school; and his best friend had
gone on away to some island with his family. Video-games were about
the only thing he had to do when Tom and their Mom were at work -
they had a small yard which he wasn't SUPPOSED to leave when he was
home alone. What he thought now, was that he might be able to just
cut through the ravine that ran behind all the houses on the street,
and investigate Timber's property, just a little...

With his hiking boots Peter picked his way through the trees that
clung to the rocky slope - mostly cedars and birches. He could see
into his neighbor's back yard, and then their neighbors, and theirs.
It would be 3 more houses to the timber residence. As the property
came into view he noticed that where his other neighbors had lawns,
Old-Man Timber had an extension of the woods in the ravine, with
thick unmanaged underbrush. Through gaps in the trees, he spotted
the house; the dark brown dilapidated siding seemed almost a natural
part of the forest, but the white stucco on the lower half of the
first floor gleamed dully like bleached bone. The muggy heat of the
day seemed to be intensified by the thickening of the gloomy clouds
overhead.

He walked carefully onto the grounds, barely able to see the last
house he passed to the right for the growth. The back of the house
became clear as he approached. Old aspens, black pines and
bedraggled birches with dark eyes watched as he passed and the trees
opened in to a semi-circle around the back of the house. The
vegetation seemed old and sickly, and the grass nearest to the house
was just plain dead or dying. Peter stayed in the shadows of the
wood, and tried to determine if anyone could see him snooping.

The back of the house was practically shuttered up. Any window
that wasn't closed over had a shade drawn, the color of each drained
over time by the sun. The vertical wooden siding looked as if had
been stained, and it was cracked and rotting where it could. The
stucco was pale and dirty where the rain from broken gutters had
tirelessly splattered mud against it every spring and fall. Little
snags of moss clung to the larger cracks. A cement patio protruded
from the back door - it's window shuttered, and tears of rust
streamed across it running from foundation towards the earth, frozen
in time.

Peter made his way up to the house, satisfied that no-one could
see him, and noticed that the window into the basement was not
covered or obscured in anyway, and he decided to steal a glimpse into
the dingy portal. He knelt on the dusty dry ground around the
house and peered through. As his pupils widened he noticed movement,
and finally the dark-gray figure of Old-Man Timber came into focus in
the broom.

Old-Man Timber was pacing back and forth manically. He shook his
head violently and often, and waggled his skeletal hands almost as
frequently. He kept turning to a part of the basement that Peter
couldn't see, and seemed to be yelling at someone there. As angry as
he looked, he seemed just as frightened. The scene continued as if
it was always on; everything was framed in a tangled silhouette of
what looked like cords or wires, boxes, and strange angular antenna-
like filigrees.

"He isn't mute!" Peter thought to himself. "Nobody sees him or
talks to him, but he's talking to someone!". He put his ear close
to the window to see if he could make it out, but could hear nothing
other than the river in the ravine rushing quietly some distance
behind him. What He had seen through the window had bothered him,
but now he had to figure out what was happening. The one thing he
had found out about Old-Man Timber (aside from his name), was that he
was mute, something that had now been directly contradicted. If he could
just get inside the house a little, he might be able to hear what was
being said so vividly.

Creeping to the back door, Peter tried the handle curiously, and
to his surprise, it turned, the hollow and dented matte brass knob
grinding and squeaking as it did. The inky kitchen greeted him
slowly as he opened the door. With some courage he walked into Old-
Man Timber's house, determined to solve the mystery he believed he
had found. Closing the door blocked out the glare of the day, and
slowly as before he began to be able to see. The kitchen smelled
musty and old, and looked the same. Dishes were piled everywhere, and
moldy bread sat in a pile of dry crumbs, lit by the sliver of
sterling light that made it's way in through a crack in the shade.

As he moved into the living room to his left, he noticed that it
was filled with electronics of every kind. Boxes that had been pried
open leaked wires into the boxes below them and green leds blinked
pointlessly in the hum it all made. Tool and bits of wire and metal
parts and things he didn't recognize at all covered every available
surface that Peter could see. On a whiteboard he was able to make
out "Developing the signal" amongst all sorts of strange characters
and equations. He also noticed that aside from the hum, everything
was still very quiet. "Maybe Old-Man Timber isn't yelling, maybe the
conversation is over!" He thought, panic flushing through him.
However, he couldn't hear movement or any signs of life at all.

Almost automatically he moved through the room, using the thin
path that Timber himself had founded through the techno-debris, and
realized that he must be above where Old-Man Timber and his guest
were. Turning into the hallway that led to the front of the house
and the garage, he saw the door to basement, open. The bottom of the
stairs was bathed in a dark red light, their sides enclosed by bare
wooden framing alone, only blackness seen through the gaps. The hum
which he thought had come from the machines in the living room was
louder, a low bass drone that sounded almost like a continuous growl
or purr.

Without thinking, Peter began to make his way slowly down the stairs,
because he could hear nothing but this grating hum, and he was sure
he had seen Old-Man Timber, sure of it. Ever so slowly he moved from
step to step, everything dull and crimson in the light. The basement
too was filled with strange equipment and wires. Peter thought that
perhaps the house was so dark so that all the power could be diverted
to these machines. The noise had developed in a ticking and churring
symphony of artifact sounds. One of the sources of light became
visible to Peter, the kind they must use in photo labs. He was
nearing the bottom of the stairs, and was intensely focused on the
basement to the right, which was divided by a wall preventing him
from seeing into the back, where he was sure Old-Man Timber still
was.

Finally his view gave way, and he was able to see part way into
the back room. Everything was bathed in the hellish haze of the
photo lights. Old-Man Timber was indeed still there, hectically
pacing and gibbering in his puzzling way. He was completely silent.
His wild gesticulations were as intense as ever, but there was still
no sound. He paced and shook, his eyes rolling and gleaming, and
looked like a mad man. His guest was still out of view. Peter began
to move, even slower than before, into the basement. He had to see,
to complete the scene, to try to understand.

He moved through the shadows of boxes and Timber's equipment, and
finally spied red light from a hole in the shoddy wall separating the
back room. The hum became louder, and introduced to it was a strange
electronic chirp, which reminded Peter of when the Nintendo had stopped
working properly, or when he had picked up a fax for his Mom.

Gingerly, he put his eye to it. This is what he saw:
Old-Man Timber was ever pacing. To the right, in a dark corner, was
where he pointed angrily and gestured accusingly. Filling most of
the wall was a wooden Bureau without doors, easily 9 feet high. Affixed
to it's outsides were endless wires and antenna, all kinds of boxes
attached to it. The interior of the box looked grainy and strange. It
looked like the snow on TV, Peter thought. Within this distorted recess there was a man,
easily 8 feet himself. He was ashen and dark, black and white in the lighting. From
the nose up he was completely obscured in the darkness. From the terrible and
menacing grin on his face came the glitchy chirping sound, a mewling and distorted buzz,
syncopated above the horrible bass chug of the machinery, an unending stream of ghostly
nonsense, and it was to this that Old-Man Timber was responding with his voiceless wrath.

When he finally saw this, Peter stumbled back from the hole, knocking a box over
with a clatter. The mumbling digital whisper stopped, and the soft sound of Old-Man
Timber pacing did also. Without thinking, Peter got on his feet and bolted. He ran
through the basement. He ran through the hallway. He ran stumbling through the living
room. He ran out the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. He ran through the
ravine all the way home.

That night Peter's Mom came home from work, and noticed the video-games in the
living room that Peter had meant to put away when he got back. She climbed the stairs
and called sternly through Peter's closed door: "Peter! Have you been playing video-
games all day?!". After a moment, his tired and shaken voice said "...No.".

The End.