A new story begins...

Its a web exclusive sneak preview of my brand new story! Featuring the all new adventures of Ben Thompson Brooks, boy necromancer in his first feature length novel:

Ben Thompson Brooks and the Philosopher’s Stone!


“Get in the car, Jacob,” said a creepy man in a beat up Cadillac outside of Covington Junior High. It was clear he was some sort of kidnapper or child molester. But how did he know Jacob’s name?
“How did you know my name?” asked Jacob.
“Don’t be stupid. Everyone’s name is Jacob nowadays.” It was true, three of Jacob’s friends were named Jacob.
“Are you a child molester?”
“Yes, but not in a sexual way.”
“I gotta go now.”
“Well fine, but I’ll be seeing you later,” said the creepy man with a sideways smile that was moreso a sneer. He didn’t seem friendly at all. Probably a kidnapper should be less sinister looking if he wants to be a successful one, but Jacob was nonetheless disturbed by him.

Jacob moved away as quickly as he could, hiding in the doorway of the school. Eventually the man left and Jacob’s mom pulled up. He told her about the strange man, and she said she would call the school and warn them. The next day there was an assembly about safety and avoiding strangers, and several more security guards than usual were posted outside after school.
Jacob was eleven years old and small for his age. He also had a nasty looking scar on his chin which looked like a backward thunderbolt near his lip, and a guppy nearer his neck. This did not bother him much, as his mom always told him that it was what was inside a person that was important. He had an enjoyable life, filled with all the things little boy’s lives should be filled with…video games, television, acting camp, and a recreational soccer league where everybody got a trophy at the end of the season.
A week later, on Friday, Jacob’s mom did not pick him up. He was supposed to go home with his friend Eric to stay over the night. Jacob’s father hated for him to spend the night at Eric’s, because he thought Eric was gay, so Jacob and his mom always said he was spending the night with his friend Erica instead. Probably if Jacob had known that Eric’s mother wasn’t picking them up after school, he would have had to tell his own mom. She wouldn’t have let him stay over if she knew they would be walking to his house, even though he lived nearby the school.
At first Jacob was worried about it. They walked away from the school and over to the Taco Bell. Even the prospect of crossing the road without a conveyance seemed somewhat strange; the rushing metal beasts that roared by them as they rushed through the intersection, only to be stopped by traffic shortly after, seemed menacing and dangerous. He held his breath against the exhaust fumes which the cars quietly emitted from their back ends, but Eric seemed not bothered at all.
“Come on,” said Eric in his effete way as he began crossing the street.
“But it says don’t walk.”
“Don’t be a sissy. The cars aren’t even moving.” It was true, they were covering the crosswalk, but there was enough space to go between them. With some trepidation, Jacob followed, waiting for the inching cars to close space between one another and crush his legs. A couple of cars honked as they lurched forward angrily, as though they had to stop suddenly, and Jacob looked to see angry drivers gesticulating from behind bug eyed sunglasses. Eric paid them no heed, and just kept on walking.
Things didn’t seem so bad to Jacob after they finished eating at Taco Bell. It was hotter outside, and there was even more traffic, but he had survived once, and he was pretty sure he could do it again. It didn’t take long for them to get to Eric’s house. They jumped on the trampoline for a bit, then played Eric’s Wii, then his X-Box, then they ate dinner when Eric’s mom brought home KFC. She was sweet and kept on giving them knowing looks and winks and saying things like, “You boys stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, ma’aaaam,” they would reply.
When Eric’s mom went to bed, it was dress up time. Jacob had been shocked the first time he had gone to Eric’s house and Eric had begun trying on girl’s clothing; he kept a stash of different outfits in a box in his closet. But after being over there several times, it began to seem fun, and Jacob would help Eric put on makeup and clap and whistle at Eric as he strutted and posed and made pouty lip faces. It was nothing Jacob wanted to do himself, but he didn’t mind that Eric did it. Eric always invited Jacob to join, but Jacob pointed out that if they both did it, there wouldn’t be a boy there to clap and whistle.

Eric walked with Jacob to the school in the morning for a soccer game. Eric didn’t play soccer, but he said he would watch the game. Jacob’s mom asked Eric if he needed a ride home after the game, “No, thanks, Mrs. Smith,” said Eric. “I’ll walk.”
“I’d really prefer if you came with us, Eric, it’s too dangerous to be walking around the neighborhood alone.”
“Mom!” began Jacob, thinking to kill two birds with one stone. “Can we go by Jack in the Box for lunch?”
“I guess so.”
“Come on, Eric. Come eat with us.”

Eric could not rightly decline that offer, and so he joined them. Eric and Jacob both sat in the back seat talking about whatever it is pre-adolescent boys with disparate interests talk about. Mostly video games and occasionally girls, which neither of them understood, though they both understood they were supposed to find them unavoidably preoccupying. Nobody noticed when a beat up Cadillac pulled up beside them at a light; it was gone a few moments later.
They ate their lunch in the back seat of the car in front of Eric’s house, and when they were done they said their goodbyes and he ran back into his house.
“I think I need to talk to his mother,” said Mrs. Smith on the way home. “I don’t think it’s safe for him to walk around as much as he does.”

Jacob still felt conflicted on the matter and didn’t know what to say. His mom had always taught him about being safe, and most all his knowledge derived from her. But nothing had happened when they had walked around the previous day, and nothing had happened to Eric ever, even though he walked all over the neighborhood on his own all the time. When his mom was out that afternoon, he thought he’d try it again.
“I’m going to the store,” called his mother up the stairs. “Do you need anything?”
“No, ma’am,” he called back from his video game den, where he was playing the latest incarnation of Call of Duty.
“Okay, love you, buh bye.”
“Love you too, Mom!”

He heard the garage door close and immediately he was up and out of the house. It was an oppressively hot afternoon, especially by the street, so he walked across people’s yards instead. On the grass and in the shade it felt a whole lot cooler. He hadn’t realized how far apart everything was. Even getting out onto the main street from his cul-de-sac took awhile. He knew the way, he had to take three turns to get there, but it seemed a whole lot further than he had imagined. By the main road it was even hotter still; it seemed like the cars added to the heat, and their exhaust fumes made him think he was being poisoned.
There was a bird in a tree nearby singing. Jacob stopped to look at it. The bird paid him no attention, and he wondered what sort of bird it was. Seemed like everything was just a bird. This one made a peculiar noise; actually it didn’t make a peculiar noise so much as it just made lots of different noises. He hadn’t realized that a bird would make more than one kind of chirp. He whistled at it; it looked briefly at him, and then flew away.
“That’s no way to talk to birds,” said a familiar, gruff voice. The man in the Cadillac was idling by the curb. “I can teach you how to talk to birds, though you might not like what they have to say. They’re interesting enough, but a little single minded.”

Jacob was running.

He ran as fast as he could down the side walk, but the man easily kept up, his car rolling along lazily, as he taunted Jacob through the open passenger side window. “Where you going boy? Don’t you want to know about birds? You do realize the road follows this sidewalk, don’t you?”

Jacob veered through a person’s yard, he thought to run to the door and see if anybody was home, but even if they were, and got to the door in time, how would he explain this to his mother? So he ran aside the house and over their fence. Long years of training in rules and property rights had trained him never, ever to do such a thing, and it had almost cost him his life!
“It’s a lesson in non-linear thinking,” drawled the man from the car.
Running, Jacob found it surprisingly easy to leap over the wooden fence, into somebody’s back yard. But the dog came running out after him and he jumped right back over the way he had come.
“Wrong one? Are you gonna let one little dog boss you around?” shouted the man from the still idling car.
Jacob ran to the next house and dove over the fence. The dog next door was at the edge of the fence, snarling and scratching at the treated wood. Jacob waited anxiously, holding his breath without realizing it. Was there a dog on this side too?
“I’m coming to gitcha, better run!” The man’s gruff voice was just on the other side of the fence! Jacob bolted, launching himself over the next fence and into another back yard. He would just be on the next street over, but he was already feeling lost and confused. He unlatched the gate and crossed over into the front yard, running to the street lest somebody see him wandering through other people’s property and getting him in trouble. But wouldn’t they understand if he was being chased by a scary stranger? The houses here looked familiar, but he was unsure. Was he on his own street, or just one nearby. Maybe if he had some time to think the houses wouldn’t all look so much alike as they did right at that moment.
Then the Cadillac turned the corner down the street. Across the street Jacob took to flight, leaping a sprinkler and scrambling over the fence. He could hear the squealing car tires as he ran from one backyard, over a fence, and into another again. He knew this house! He was close to home! What was more, the car still must be on the other street, and even if it wasn’t, he could stick to the back yards until he got home. He crawled slowly over each intervening fence, watching the street to see if the man passed by while he was in view, but he never saw the Cadillac once. Occasionally he thought he heard the growl of its engine and would duck low under some bushes until it subsided; he wasn’t sure he even heard it or if he imagined it sometimes.

Finally he made it home. He had to go into the front yard because that was the door he left unlocked. Since he wasn’t supposed to be out on his own, his parents had never given him a house key. He closed the door and locked it behind him, but feeling anxious in the house. There was no sign of the car, and how could that man know where he lived? Could the man have slipped in the open door while Jacob had been winding his way back home?

He thought about calling the police, but then he’d be in all sorts of trouble for going out on his own. Even if they weren’t mad, his mom would be all kinds of worried. Wasn’t it always the bad kids who were out without their parents, roaming around on the streets, getting into fights, smoking cigarettes behind the high shrubs that were supposed to hide the gas station from the neighborhood it sat adjacent to? Indecision churned in his stomach.

The prospect of calling the cops was awful, and as the seconds ticked by and the whisker faced stranger did not jump out from anywhere, calling the police seemed worse and worse than being chased through the house by a psychopath. He knew he shouldn’t, somehow, that he should stay alert, but it was too frightening to be there alone in the house. He went upstairs. He hadn’t even turned his X-Box off because he didn’t want to lose his progress in the game, so he sat down and started playing right where he left off. There were the normal creaking sounds of the house, which sent chills across his flesh momentarily, but in the warm video game induced stupor he could write them off, as distraction shuttled away the fear.
“Hi, honey.”
Jacob jumped in his skin; his mom had come up the stairs behind him and he had not heard her at all.
“Hi mom,” he said, his fingers still working the remote.
“How are you doing, sweetie?” she bent over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll have dinner ready in thirty minutes, okay?
“Alright, mom.”