Chapter 4 - The Haragcstic Theory

Imaan stared at Sybil for a quarter of a second, "Excuse me?" she said to Sybil, in the most respectful voice she could. Sybil continued to stare at Imaan. "This isn't very funny, guys," Imaan grumbled as she walked away. As she walked she looked at Nelson who was looking back at her and shaking his head. Imaan stopped walking and turned her whole body toward them and looked at Sybil, who made immediate eye contact.

Imaan walked toward Nelson and Sybil again and sat next to the paper with all of the information on the figure and the Haragcstic. Imaan said nothing as she sat down only looking at the piece of paper. Sybil let her look at the paper for a moment before saying, "Yesterday when we were all playing tag, we saw Matt..." and explained the whole situation.

As Sybil was explaining everything, Nelson looked at the Haragcstic and attributes of the figure Sybil had seen. He looked at the colorless attribute of the figure and thought "Would it be able to change itself to not have colors?" He then looked at its weakness to lizard saliva, "How are we supposed to get that?" he thought to himself. He had many questions about what Sybil planned to do.

"...and every one of the adults are in on it," Sybil told Imaan.

Nelson looked up toward them and interrupted, "No, I don't think they are." As he said this he straightened the paper out and continued looking at it.

"Do you have any proof?" Sybil challenged, as she leaned forward. Imaan said nothing as she continued to process what Sybil had just said to her.

"No, but do you have any proof that they are?"

"We should try our best to be careful."

As Sybil finished that sentence, Imaan's eyes widened as she remembered something. "I can't tell them that," she thought to herself, deciding to keep it a secret. She thought about it as Sybil and Nelson continued to bicker. As she thought she heard, "Wait, Imaan?" come from Sybil.

"Yes?" she asked, moving her head up to make eye contact with Sybil.

"What was in the book you gave to Matt?"

Imaan thought about it, she tried to remember what was in the book. "The book had no cover, it was completely black. I must've seen it while I was at home, sick," she thought. She ended up coming to a conclusion and told Sybil, "I have no idea, dad kept that a secret."

Sybil immediately walked toward the slope, connecting the bank and the land, without saying a word. "Sybil, what are you doing?" Imaan asked. Sybil didn't hear her, as she was lost in her own thoughts. She made her way up the slope at a faster pace than usual. When she made her way to the top, she held her gown up to avoid it getting muddy, and ran. As she ran Nelson and Imaan ran after her. Imaan was the oldest, and physically the most powerful. She could hold things none of the other children could and was abnormally fast, but Nelson was just as fast.

Sybil made her way to the bank the ceremony for Matt was on and looked down the creek. She tried her best but couldn't find where Matt was, he had gone down far enough to be out of sight. Once she had seen that Matt was already out of Rivumpt, she stormed back away from the creek. As she passed Nelson and Imaan they stopped and started walking with Sybil. "What was that?" "What did you go do?" they asked her.

"We don't know what that book was, I was going to try to get it off of Matt," she exclaimed as she let go of the bottom of her gown causing it to drop.

"It's just a book, it couldn't have done that much right?" Imaan suggested as she looked at both Sybil and Nelson who were both weary. A moment after she said that, Sybil started to make her way back to the creek, "I'm going to wash my gown, you two should go home and sleep for the short while you have left before everyone else is back up again," she yelled to them, with her back turned.

"We can talk about this later, she's obviously upset" Nelson said shortly, before running back to his house. Imaan stood for a moment before walking back to her home. She ended up coughing more on the way home, "I guess I'm not completely back to normal yet," she thought to herself.

"What was in that book?" Sybil asked herself out loud, as she washed the end of her gown in the creek. The current of the creek then moved her foot, and she fell into the water. When she looked back up, she saw the figure standing in the water. The figure and her just stared at each other, Sybil was examining it to find more potential attributes. The figure sat there without doing or saying anything. "There's no way I'm the only one who can see this, there must be someone else," Sybil thought to herself as she looked away before feeling a fish at her fish, which made her immediately get out of the water. When she looked back, the figure had disappeared.

When she returned home all of her younger siblings were asleep, except for Leopold. Leopold was sitting over a pot, boiling water. "Are mom and dad back?" she asked her brother, as he continued to watch over the water.

"No," he said. As he did he looked around the pot to try and see more of the water. Once he did he looked up to Sybil and told her, "Roy skipped the ceremony."

Sybil walked to her room as she uttered, "We'll just tell mom and dad when they get back, you don't need to do anything harsh to him." Once she got to her room she fell into her bed, with her gown still on. "What is the figure's goal here?" she thought to herself as she fell asleep.

Two hours after the ceremony, the sun rose high enough to be seen on the east side of the town and the children in the Benson and Gibbs family all woke up. Meanwhile the west side were still asleep because the trees blocked the sun out. The only person awake on that side was Woody Kemp who was continuing to write on the paper he wrote on at the ceremony. The paper had tally marks next to the names of each candidate in the town. The list was sorted in order of oldest to youngest, with the oldest on the top and the youngest on the bottom. Sybil had six tally marks next to her name, Otis had six, Leopold had four, and all of the other children had two. "Otis did the most, leading the whole group but had the worst mannerisms, unlike Sybil who had some of the best mannerisms I've seen in years. Leopold also had some of that but nowhere near what Sybil had. This is definitely an interesting group."

As he finished adding tally marks to various candidates, he grabbed his leather vest and left the house. "Warren can join me later," he thought.

Nelson had slept in Chris's bed that night, and Warren had slept in his room. Woody slept on the floor in the dining room and Nelson's father had slept in his usual room with his mom, who didn't have any fits that night. When Nelson woke up, the first thing he did was readjust the pillows. All of the beds in Rivumpt were the same size, because everyone was too poor to order new ones, but the pillow sizes varied from person to person and often depended on their age.

Nelson woke up before his dad and Warren had, so he left the house as soon as he could to avoid making noises to wake them up. He walked out the door with his shirt half on and putting his shoes completely on his feet. He hopped out toward the bridge as he put his final shoe on and put his shirt all the way down, once he had done that he ran toward the east side to meet everyone else up. When he arrived only about one-eighth of the children in the town had arrived. Although there weren't many people there, Otis was there, he sat under a tree and was eating a large apple.

Nelson approached him and asked once he got close enough, "Where did you find that apple?"

Otis looked up, continuing to eat the apple, and responded to him after swallowing the chunk of apple in his mouth, "There's a tree over there..." as he pointed to a tree at the far east of the east side "...they're actually really good apples, they're juicy enough."

Nelson sat down next to Otis, "Do we have any plans today?" he asked. As he did he started to pick at the grass at his feet, tying them in knots shortly before they tore in half.

"Nope, we're probably all just going to do our own thing today," Otis said as he chewed on an apple, not waiting to swallow before following it up with, "I'm kind of tired from doing a funeral ceremony two days in a row, so I may just relax." Nelson nodded his head once Otis had finished talking.

Imaan decided to stay home today and rest more, but she would definitely be out of the house by tomorrow to help Sybil and Nelson with whatever they were planning to do. "The Haragcstic can't tolerate lizard saliva, so maybe they're going to make a weapon from that to kill it. But how do they even know it's connected to what happened to Matt? They don't, they're just assuming since Sybil's only started to see it recently," Imaan thought to herself, as she layed in bed. She sat for another moment, before smelling smoke. Once the smell hit her nose she leaped from her bed and ran to where he smelled to be coming from, her dad's study. She opened the door and found her dad was burning some of the plants from outside.

He looked behind himself and at Imaan, "Hey Imaan, I'm working on potentially new soil to plant the flowers on," he boasted. He then looked back at the pot the burning plant was in and put a towel over his mouth to avoid inhaling the smoke.

"That sounds nice, can you do this outside? The smoke's probably not good for either me and mom," Imaan mumbled.

"Oh, yes, I'm so sorry. I didn't think about that, you can move mom outside," he said, not seeming to pay attention. Imaan was flabbergasted, her dad had never acted this way before. She walked out of the room stomping her feet, and walked to her mother's room. She picked her frail mother up and helped her move outside. Once they were outside she didn't know what to do with her. "Lean on this wall, and I'll go get a chair," she said as she put her mother next to the outside wall of her house.

She came back out with a chair and had her mother sit in it. Her mother had an unidentified illness and no one in Rivumpt was able to identify what it was, her father had also had it until recently where it went away. "Can the Haragcstic control people?" Imaan thought to herself, "That's the only reason dad's acting the way he is."

Sybil laid in her bed and didn't get up, she had spent the previous night researching the Haragcstic and had woken up early yesterday so she decided to spend today getting those lost sleeping hours back. The only issue was it was hard for her to fall asleep, the light from outside wasn't a problem but there was something else. She felt as if she was being watched by something and had felt this the night before but no one else was in the house, they were all outside playing. "The Haragcstic is watching me," she thought to herself, but she didn't check to see if it was true.

She tried sleeping for another 10 minutes before giving up and deciding to go to her study. Once she got up she looked at the window, and sure enough, the figure was there and was staring at her. This time, the figure immediately scampered away. Sybil ignored it and went to her study. Once she closed the door she looked out the window of the study to make sure the figure wasn't around to watch, and it wasn't in sight. Sybil closed the blinds and lit the handheld candle in the study. "We need to make a weapon to use against the figure, before it does anything else," she thought to herself.

The first thought that came to her mind was something with lizard saliva. "How will we be able to get that?" she asked herself out loud as Leopold came into the study.

"We're all going to play something, do you want to join?" he asked as he leaned against the doorframe.

"I'm good," she responded, looking back at the blank piece of paper in front of her. As she continued to think, she heard loud footsteps run from the front of the house to her study. As the steps got closer to the room they slowed down, she looked behind to see Lewis standing there and Leopold walking away.

"What are you doing?" Lewis asked excitedly as he ran to her desk. He wasn't tall enough to see the paper, so Sybil got out of her chair and let him stand on it to see that the paper was blank. "Are you drawing something?" he asked.

"Kind of," she said, as she continued staring at the paper. "When your dad hunts outside of the town, what kind of weapon does he use?" she asked him.

"It's a long stick with string on it," he said as he took the pen on Sybil's desk and started to draw on the paper.

"A bow and arrow?" Sybil asked him as she looked at the scribbles slightly resembling a person that Lewis drew.

"Oh yeah, that!" he said excitedly. "He also uses a knife," he added, as he finished drawing the person and started to draw a tree before asking her, "Do you want to make a book?" as he stopped drawing and looked back. Sybil nodded her head.

"So what are we playing?" one of the older kids asked the group of children standing around the tree Otis and Nelson were sitting under. "We played hide and seek tag yesterday so not today," one of Otis's younger sisters said. "I have my own idea," Otis announced to the group.

Otis sat up and threw the apple he was eating on the floor. Once he did he told everyone, "The idea is, there are four teams and five individuals. The teams try their best to catch the individuals and the team who catches the most individuals wins. We can have four teams of five, and the oldest five can be the individuals. The teams can create traps and try to corner the individual by the way."

Everyone liked the idea of a new game, but some of the children were concerned about the actual game itself. Even with some of the sceptics, the game was decided on. The four teams were quickly constructed and the five oldest kids were chosen to be the individuals.

"We have almost everyone here. The only ones not here are Sybil, Imaan, and Lewis," Otis told Nelson, noticing Nelson was trying to count everyone there.

"That's only 28 people though, there are 29 children-" Nelson cut his sentence short and looked at the ground, realizing there were 29 children yesterday, before Matt died. When he looked back up he saw a reassuring face from Otis. The teams were all constructed after that and Otis said "The individuals will have 20 seconds to hide before you all start chasing after us, so count to 20 for us," as he ran away. The other older children then ran shortly after Otis finished his sentence, but they all quickly passed him.

Nelson ran far away from all of the groups before deciding to climb up a tree. Once the 20 seconds had ended all of the groups started to chase the older kids. One group decided to split but most teams stayed together. The group that had decided to split up had found Nelson hiding in the tree and two of the kids started to climb up, while one stayed at the bottom. Nelson immediately dropped to the bottom and sprinted away. He had only barely managed to escape the small group of three.

Otis was the first one caught by the group that had split up, one of them outran Otis and managed to get him. Nelson continued to run as a larger group started to chase him, he ran to the far east of the east side. He continued running until he came across a bush next to the tree that Otis had gotten an apple from. Past this bush was the flowerfield, which the children weren't allowed to play near. Nelson stopped and got ready to turn around, but as he started to move his head away from the bush he saw a short figure move in the bush. He stopped and looked directly at it and saw the figure moving again. The figure was short and looked to be a kid, but as Nelson got closer the figure ran away.

Nelson tried to look at it while it ran away, "Is this the figure Sybil had seen? No, this was shorter than the one she drew and it's black while the one Sybil saw was colorless. But the Haragcstic can change its shape," as he thought the figure moved away from Nelson and toward the flowerfield. At this point, Nelson was lost in thought when suddenly, he felt a hand touch his leg.

"Caught you!" Chris boasted to Nelson. Nelson looked at Chris and smiled before walking away with him. As he walked away he looked behind to see the figure was gone, but was sure that he would see it again.