Chapter Two

Instead of facing the awful slowness of the last hour of school, where he was probably going to get kicked out of anyway, Oliver skipped the class and ran home, the fierce sense of purpose swallowing him. The feeling was wholly new to him, as motivation was something alien, which he had thought that he had been born without. Repeatedly the name of the creature echoed in his head, the word seeming to be etched into his skull. Entering his home, he threw down his bag and leapt for the computer, impatiently wiggling on the chair has he waited for it to boost, which took a torturously long for the computer was almost as ancient as Oliver’s grandparents.

Finally Oliver was able to open up an internet page and his long thin white fingers hurriedly skittered over the keyboard, spelling the name. He put it through a search engine and although it took a while for it to show, because of the unfailingly slow internet speed, numerous responses were listed and Oliver eagerly skimmed his eyes over them. There was various information regarding the word ‘Wenher’ and Oliver found out a lifetime worth of useless facts about it; that Wenher her was actually the dog of an old forgotten English actress by the name of Gurna Westly; Wenher was also a company which made similar irritatingly itchy woollen vests to the ones his grandfather wore on a daily basis; and that Wenher grew as a fruit shaped like a boot in some far-off hard-to-pronounce country off the border of Russia. None of these however, were of the slightest interest to Oliver and after two hours of thorough searching he gave up, his head spinning with exhaustion from the rarely practised concentration he had exercised.

Realising that his grandmother was coming home at five, he turned off the computer which seemed to sigh with relief, cunningly disguised any evidence that he had been there and slumped into the armchair facing the television, switching the television on resignedly. He browsed the channels until he came to the news, where an abnormally thin and serious faced newsreader was in the middle of reporting the discovery of an American navy-officer’s body off the coast of New Guinea.

“Walter Kruskalt’s funeral,” she was saying in a matter-of-fact voice, “will be commenced at tomorrow morning at 0800 where his family and fellow officers are expected to attend. The discovery of the body is a tragic reminder of the AHG crusade, an American peace strategy which struck New Guinea ten years ago after its series of civil wars. Mr. Kruskalt and his fellow soldiers will always be remembered as heroes in the hearts of both Americans and New Guineans.” Oliver was barely listening, instead noting the unnaturally straight posture of the woman and how her over-concerned expression immediately revealed it to be false. “In other news,” she continued, “a sea craft named the Orpheus Yung has been reported missing for three days, the vessel carrying Harwick Filler and Samuel Andrews, researchers for the South American Seismology Research Unit or SASRU. The expedition was to collect information about seismic activity of the ocean floor in the Atlantic Ocean just off Antarctica, which was to last for two weeks. The disappearance is said to have been sudden and unexpected and there is little information to what has happened to the craft or the crew members although Captain Dean Yugoz sent a radio transmission before contact was lost. These are the last words of the captain before the disappearance.” Oliver was only vaguely interested, though he leaned forward to hear the radio message, which was broken up with interference so the most that you could hear was fuzz, although the emotion still poured through. Oliver read the subtitles.

“Land…something…floating…” the voice sounded brutally unnerved as he struggled to sound over the crackling of interference, “…we…abort! Abort! Tornado…on water…its…a…” The voice had become wracked with fear and no more words were uttered through the radio. The rumbling of water could be heard in the background with the confusion of screams of terror tainted again by the radio transmission’s poor quality. The news lady continued to speak again.

“This disturbing transmission has caused uncertainty amongst police and SASRU where the message had been sent, claim it to be the seismic activity of the Atlantic’s ocean floor. We go to Sean Rufold, head of the Atlantic expedition.”

Oliver switched it off. He had never given notice to other people’s opinions, as they usually spawned lies; otherwise the media twisted the information to their leisure. He leaned back in his chair, the soft folds engulfing him as he mused. For some odd reason, he felt that he had relation to the report, though this was ridiculous as he had known nothing of the expedition beforehand, particularly not SASRU. He shrugged off the feeling, his old lazy and carefree characteristics returning to him.

The jingle of keys and the click of the door unlocking caught Oliver’s attention and his grandmother Anna came in, her upper half completely disguised in the cluster of shopping bags she held in her arms, and Oliver almost laughed as she wobbled her way inside, before he pulled himself out of the chair to assist.

“They had the most wonderful – oh thankyou dear – sale at the markets today!” she exclaimed, as she stacked some of the bags onto Oliver. Oliver sank with the weight.

“Why are these so heavy?” he cried when he nearly lost balance, weaving his way to the dinner table to relieve himself of the load. “I mean – what on earth?” He had pulled out a pair of items which resembled shoes, although the heel was twisted like a corkscrew and too high to be walked on.

“Oh yes!” his grandmother continued excitedly. “They’re for Martha, you know, the girl down the road? What a lovely girl! You two would get along so nicely!”

Oliver rolled his eyes in frustration. The topic of Martha repetitively popped up in any conversation he had with his grandmother. He knew that it was an effort to make him socialize, but he resisted determinedly and it only made the shell around him thicker. Martha was in fact a girl from his school, though he was in a year younger than him and he had only ever seen her in the corridors where he fiercely ignored her, as not to give in to his grandmother’s fancies.

“I don’t see why she would ever need shoes like this,” he replied pessimistically, suddenly gloomy.

“I heard Martha’s in the school band too,” said Anna suggestively, as if she hadn’t heard Oliver’s comment. “Perhaps you should join. I’m sure you’d make some great friends.”

Oliver unpacked the bags moodily. At home was the only time when fully loosened up – at school he felt the classrooms and strange children confining to his personality and he became withdrawn, perhaps not as much as others, but all the same, different.

Anna unpacked the bags with him, for a while silent, until she piped up, “How was school today then?” To which Oliver replied his usual unrevealing answer, “Nothing much.” And the silence crept back.

“There was this woman at the shops and, ooh! She drove me mad!” began Anna again, returning to her cheerful disposition. “There was a great big queue in the supermarket and she stood there, counting out forty dollars in coins! Can you believe it?”

Oliver looked at her with amusement, but then retired to the armchair again.

“Don’t you have any homework?” Anna asked hopefully.

“Nope,” Oliver lied. In all truthfulness he had given up attempting any homework. His attention span was not nearly long enough for that sort of effort. “Besides I’m too tired.”

“Dear me, Ollie, you act as if you’re older than me!” sighed Anna, exasperated. “I only wish you’d act that mature when I ask you to do your chores!” Her brown eyes crinkled into slits of wrinkles as she smiled and Oliver realised how old she actually was and felt a pang of worry at whether she would die of old age before Oliver had the chance to grow up properly. He scolded himself at the thought though and tried to think of something else, the puzzling mystery of Wenher starting to cloud his mind once again.

“Gran,” he started hesitantly, unsure whether it was wise to mention it to his grandmother, “have you, by any chance, heard of something called a Wenher?”

Anna leaned on the table finger tapping her mouth while she thought. The word seemed to strike her as familiar and she struggled to remember where it was from. “I’ve heard it somewhere,” she said unhelpfully. “It’s on the tip of my tongue…Wenher…Wenher…” Suddenly she straightened up her face bright as she remembered the connection. “Oh yes! Wenher! Well, it’s become a little less famous over the years, although everyone my age would know,” she explained as if remembering something dear to her, a memory savoured over her life. Oliver was caught in suspense as she told him, listening intently for every last detail. “It used to be an old folk tale passed around in our day. It was a story about two little girls who ventured into an ancient cave and found a beast with fearsome red eyes and pointed ears and a row of sharp fangs permanently stuck in a nasty sneer. One girl was scared and ran away, calling the creature a devil, while the other one stayed, curious of what it really was. She asked and the creature replied that it was a spirit trapped in a gremlin’s body. The little girl was amazed about this and regularly visited after that, and they soon became friends. When the girl grew up to about your age, the enchantment which had trapped the spirit was lifted by the girl’s loyal friendship and the gremlin turned into a beautiful woman who blessed her with intelligence beyond her years as well as a little gremlin doll before vanishing. In the end, the girl became the head of her people and guided them with her given wisdom and treasured the doll for the rest of her life.” Anna stopped, looking distracted.

“That was pointless,” Oliver remarked apathetically.

“My storytelling isn’t at its best, in my old age,” she replied sounding miffed. “It was all the rage in our day. Remember that when we were kids, television and computer and such was a rich-man’s item. The majority of us who couldn’t afford it had to entertain ourselves in other ways.”

Although Oliver had seemed unconcerned with the story, he had been repeating it over in his mind, trying to fit it into his puzzle. “So is Wenher the name of the story?”

“No, no! Wenher was the little doll. The name was The Test of Intelligence.”

Oliver caught the needed information, but the story name made him raise an eyebrow. “That’s a weird name for a fold tale.”

“All our folk tales had funny names then,” said Anna with a small laugh. “But it didn’t matter! We were just there to listen to the story after all.” She smiled at Oliver before giving a gasp of realisation and spun around to check the time on the microwave. “My goodness! I need to go to Bible study in one and a half hours! And I haven’t even cooked yet!” She rushed to get a pan and was soon so engaged in making dinner, Oliver didn’t get a chance to ask her any more questions about Wenher.

After having a quick dinner of packeted pasta with his grandmother he retreated to his room, a humble place which contained a bed and a desk which was falling apart, cluttered with his drawings and black sheets of paper. A wave of fatigue swept over him, and he collapsed, exhausted onto the bed. The lack of energy confused him, and he struggled against it, trying to figure out the questions which filled his mind. He was convinced that his grandmother’s story had a connection to the picture, that the gremlin and his goblinish creature were the same. He wanted to look it up on the internet again but he was banned from the computer, at least while his grandparents were home. Even if Anna was going to her Bible study, Jack, his grandfather would be home almost immediately after her leaving and Oliver wouldn’t have a chance without being caught. He pulled at his beanie contemplatively. Could the story be real? He thought despite his doubts. Except he soon forgot that hope, as the story was so impossible it was clearly as truthful as a fairytale. Soon an idea had revealed itself to him which answered the majority of his questions. Perhaps my drawing is just like the folk tale…a fantasy character. He sighed in disappointment at this but the hunger of finding it did not disappear. Maybe I need to find the source of the story. Maybe it was made into a book somewhere. It was early in the night but he felt the weight of sleep on his eyelids and as each minute passed they seemed to become heavier until finally they closed and his head ceased to bear all the troubling thoughts and he drifted into a dreamless slumber.

<----------- Chapter One