The Photo-album Read online



  The Photo Album

  By Rick Dearman

  Copyright 2011 Rick Dearman

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  I don't know what it is I expected to find in my grandmothers old picture album, but it wasn't unicorns!

  I suppose I should tell you who I am since you'll be wondering. My name is Alonso Petersen and I'm fourteen going on fifteen. My grandma had gone into town for the afternoon with the charity worker. The charity sends someone by once a week to help grandma with some shopping. I normally enjoy going into town but lately I've been getting bullied by Carl Stepson. He's a big dumb jock who lives in the trailer park with his drunk old man.

  It was another sticking hot Oklahoma day so I had decided to crawl down into the cellar and rummage through all the things collected under the stairs. It gets a little boring out here on the farm by yourself.

  Hey don't think that I'm scared of Carl the dipshit Stepson. I just didn't want the hassle so I made an excuse about not feeling well and my grandma promised to get me some ice-cream. Her and the charity woman set off for town. I think grandma was happy to have a little time to herself to totter around the shops and to make small talk with her friends.

  She is a nice old lady with gray hair and stooped shoulders. She don't talk to good since she had her stroke last year. That really scared me. It took almost half an hour for the ambulance to get here from Kingfisher. Without any doubt the time I really wished we lived in town the most!

  Anyway I was telling ya bout me. Grandma says I'm going to be a big-en when I hit puberty. Grandma says shit like that all the time. She reckons I'll be six-two like my dad. I'm still a runt right now and jerks like Carl think they can push me around. I got red-hair and I'm going to have it coloured when I get older. Right now I shave it real close to my head so they don't call me carrot top. Don't work on Carl but everyone else seems to forget. Carl can't remember two plus two, but he can remember I got redhair.

  Anyways after grandma left I was laying on the porch swing watching the clouds go by. I started to doze off but the sun was getting hotter as the morning ended. We ain't got no air-conditioning except in my grandmas room. She has a little AC unit in the window, the charity lady got it from a used parts store for her, but it don't work real good during the heat of the day, so I decided to go down into the cellar.

  It is always nice and cool down there even if it did smell like a damp dog most days. I turned on the light and played darts for a little while before I got bored and began to go through the piles of stuff under the stairs.

  Grandma is real tidy and her house is neat as a pin, she is always going on at me about cleaning up stuff. Down here was though it was just storage and she never bothered to clean it up. The stairs were beginning to be to much for her I reckon.

  I found the old picture album under the stair in a box right at the back. There were pictures of my mom and dad right there on the first page. I felt the tears begin to well up and I turned the pages quick to find something else to think about. Bang! There it was in front of me! Grandma with her hands around a unicorn.

  In the picture she looked about eighteen or twenty in the picture but you could tell it was her. Plus she had a picture of her and granddads wedding upstairs and she looked the same in that. So this picture must have been taken around that time. It was funny though, I never thought that people were doing image manipulation way back then so I pulled it out of the album for a better look.

  It looked real. She was standing beside the horse, and it was just out front of the house. I recognised the drive and the old iron bench beside the tree, only back then it weren't rusted.

  I took the picture outside and got blinded when I rushed straight out into the sunshine without waiting for my eyes to adjust. But the picture looked really real. I looked to see if it was a statue but it was a real horse you could see where the skin was indented where grandma was hugging it. So I looked for the glue or something that held the horn on but couldn't really see anything.

  There were really only two options, someone had done some image manipulation, or they had glued a horn on to the horse before the picture. I sat looking at the picture on the porch trying to figure out the trick when I heard the car coming back. I put the picture in my pocket and wondered if I should ask grandma.

  Na, I decided to take it to school on Monday and run it through the scanner on the school computer and get a blow up of it. It would be fun, like a mystery, and I was the determined detective.

  I helped unload the grocery's and I was sure that I'd burst before this weekend finished! I kept grinning and a couple of times Grandma asked me if I was OK.

  *

  "What you doing Alonso?" asked Kathy. "Your supposed to be researching Egypt, not messing with the pictures."

  "Oh! Hi Kathy." I said, and quickly clicked the software closed. "I'm just messing around. You want to use the computer?"

  "Nope, where were you this weekend? I thought we were going to bike over to the river?"

  Kathy is one of my best friends and has been since I moved here after my parents died. She is in my class and we've been hanging out for ages. She is on the cheer-leading team now and she has been going to cheer-leading after school so I never really see her much. I ride my bike over to her house most weekends but I'd been so preoccupied thinking about the picture that I'd stayed home.

  "I had to help my grandma. Sorry."

  "Well you could have called." Kathy sat down in the chair next to me. "What you looking at on the computer?"

  I wondered if I should tell her, after all it was my mystery, but I decided that it would be more fun if Kathy was involved. She is good at figuring stuff out and always knows who the killer is in a horror

  movie. She is way smarter than me, I think she is probably smarter than just about everybody in this kick town.

  "I found a picture in my Grandmas album and I was trying to get a blow up of it so that I could get a better look at the unicorn."

  "Unicorn? What unicorn?" she asked. She gave me a look like you give to old man Kramer. Old man Kramer was always wetting himself and wandering around town muttering. I used to get really scared of him when I was a kid, then my Grandma told me that he'd lost his mind in the war and we should pity him not be scared.

  "Look I'll show you." I turned to the computer and brought the image back up. Kathy looked over at the picture. She stood up and leaned over me for a better look. Her hands resting on the table.

  "Wow, that is cool.” she stared intently at the horn the same as I had looking for a mistake. “How did you do that, with Photoshop? I like the curve on the horn."

  While she continued to stare at the picture, then turned to look at me I was feeling kinda panicky. In the last year I had become extremely aware of the fact that Kathy had breasts. Which normally wasn't a problem only right now one of them was pressed against my arm. My arm began to ache but I didn't want to move it. I didn't answer just sat there and then heard Carl's hated voice.

  "Well, well if it isn't Carrot-Top and his girlfriend."

  I turned to see Carl's ugly face leering over the next row of computers.

  "What you doing carrot-top, showing dirty pictures to your girlfriend.” Carl grinned evilly at me, then he turned and stared at Kathy's chest, obviously perving her. “If you want to see a real man Kathy you can come with me."

  "Fuck off Carl." Kathy said.

  Carl laughed and sat down at the computer. On the other side of the blue computer station separator, and I took the picture out of the scanner and closed down the computer.

  *

  "Hey Kathy wait for me!" I shouted. I caugh
t up with her as she walked home. The bus always left us both off at the same time near the top of the main road and we walked home together. Today Kathy had walked off without waiting for me and I had to run a little to catch up.

  "What did you think of the picture?" I asked when I finally caught her, continued breathlessly. "I think it was glue and some kind of animal horn. I saw a picture in the library of a sea animal that had the same kind of horn."

  "A Narwhal.” she said absently. “Well I suppose it is glue, but wouldn't it be cool if it was a real unicorn? I mean how could your grandma keep something like that secret? I wish it were real! Do you think that unicorns really only can be touched by virgins?"

  Kathy was excited and she was really letting her imagination run wild. so I thought I'd better inject some reality.

  "I don't believe in unicorns. It is a trick for sure, but the interesting part is finding out how they did it. I guess I'm just going to have to ask grandma, I can't figure it out. I couldn't see how they kept a horn that long on with glue. They didn't even have super glue back then did they?"

  "Car coming." Kathy said pulling me to the side of the road.

  I turned to see who was coming. Nobody ever drove down here. It was a beat up old dodge pick-up and it was racing down the road. I didn't recognise the truck. I peered into the dim interior and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Carl at the wheel! He wasn't much older than me.

  Carl wasn't controlling the truck very well and he seemed to be coming right at us. Maybe he was drunk or on drugs, it wouldn't surprise me. I grabbed Kathy's arm and took off running. She was so fast she quickly overtook me. I heard the trucks engine. It was close! Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my side and I was thrown to the side of the road.

  I felt my head smack the ground and saw stars. Groggily I looked around and saw Kathy running back toward me. Carl had stopped the car just between us. Kathy seemed to be shouting but I couldn't hear anything. A wave of dizziness passed over me and the next time I looked up I could see Carl fighting with Kathy and knocking her to the ground.

  He had ripped off her shirt and was punching her in the face. I staggered to my feet and looked around for someone to help. I still couldn't hear anything, I saw Carl push Kathy to the ground and lie on top of her. He was tearing at her clothes while she hit him in the head with her fists. That bastard was going to rape her. I saw the rock just ahead of me and I staggered toward it in a daze. Carl was so busy fighting Kathy he never heard me coming up behind him.

  I smacked the rock down as hard as I could. The sound of his skull breaking was the first sound I heard since the truck had hit me. The blood spurted up and into my face and all over my hands.

  *

  We must have been a sight when we opened the door to my house. I was covered in blood and Kathy holding the shreds of her shirt around her and bruises all over her face. My grandma just sat us down while Kathy cried and told her the story. I was so ashamed. I never meant to murder Carl, my grandma looked at me hard when Kathy told her about how I'd cracked his head with the rock.

  I'd had unconsciously pulled the picture out of my pocket and I was staring at it. Looking more at my reflection than at the picture itself. My grandma pulled the picture from my hands and when I looked up she put her hand on my shoulder.

  "Don't you worry about nothing. I'll straighten it all out. I'll take Kathy home later but right now I need you to come with me Alonso." she said.

  “Why?” I said. “We need to call the police and tell them or something.”

  “I'm not going to take a chance on you going to jail. It is time that you and I left this place, you are grown enough, and you can be protected in the lands now.” she said. I just frowned and followed after her. I didn't know what she meant, and it didn't seem important to me at the moment. Everything was kinda sureal.

  Grandma stood outside on the steps of the porch. Kathy had gotten up from the sofa and trailing along behind us sobbing softly.

  "Alecsic bolecsic amecaka bilosta, Simmislar!" grandma chanted. As she chanted she danced a little dance and held her small necklace into the air. I stared at her. I suppose I thought she'd lost her mind, or gone senile or something.

  The air around her began to shimmer and behind her a small bright pinprick of light appeared. It grew until the point of a horn came through the air and then a full grown, honest to god, unicorn stepped out of the thin air and stood beside my grandma.

  You could have knocked me and Kathy down with a feather. I froze and just stared, beside me Kathy stopped crying and I glanced at her to see if she was seeing the same thing as me.

  "Alonso, you go back with Simmislar. He will take you to the enchanted lands. You'll never have to worry about what happened today and I'll join you shortly after I drop Kathy home.”

  "I can't!" I said. “I'm not going anywhere, and certainly not with that thing!”

  "You will and I don't want any arguments boy!" she said. “This thing is your grandfather and I'm not going to have you disrespecting your elders.”

  "Can I go?" Kathy asked in a hesitant voice. "Can we go together?"

  I stood looking from one to the other, then at the beautiful animal in front of me. Grandma nodded her head and Kathy's held my hand. Together we walked through the portal and into the enchanted lands.

  Coming in 2011. Two new feature length novels, two incredible new fantasy series.

  A new series: Frontiersman

  The civil war is over and the rebellion lost. Cheveyo the half-breed is travelling to the frontier to make a new life. He has two pure-bred horses and dreams of creating a ranch and a home. But in the borderlands Cheveyo discovers a murdered family and using his skill and training he tracks down the killers to take justice. But these killers are just a few of the gang working for the man they call "Big Red". Cheveyo soon discovers crossing "Big Red" is life threatening, and it will take all of his skills to just remain alive in the hellish frontier.

  A new series: The Librarian

  Book One: Ignition

  The City of Ettengard is under siege. The Library has been given an impossible mission, the Head Librarian and the Chief Mage have been poisoned. Ranperen and Tantia the young students must make their way across a war torn country to find a cure and to save the library from destruction. Inside the city the clashes between the thieves guild and the beggars are becoming bloodier as the war causes unrest and rebellion. And a mysterious group of conspirators are trying to bring back the glory days of the defeated and evil Empire.

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