The Kids and the Unexpected Visitor
Chapter 1
By Cadynce G., Grade 6
Elliot was playing a game of ping pong in his cousins’ basement, against his eleven-year-old cousin, Eleanor, oblivious to the action that awaited them.
Their score was at eleven to one, him obviously winning (no, just kidding; she was in the lead) when his aunt called them up for suppertime, which was some kind of… casserole?
“This game was just getting good,” he called out sarcastically, “but we’re coming up anyway.”
It was early evening in springtime, at approximately five o’clock. Elliot and his siblings, Isaiah, Kevin and Samantha, were visiting from Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. Here they were in Kamloops, sleeping over for six nights. The drive and ferry ride from the island here had been at least a long seven hours, which had seemed like days to Elliot, which in turn had felt like weeks to Samantha, his youngest sibling and only sister.
Halfway upstairs, the sound of the parents chatting droned into one of Elliot’s ears and out the other. This was usual for parents, at least for his mom, dad, aunt Enika, and uncle Josh. It was probably about politics, he suspected. If you listened to them talk for a single hour, you’d potentially know, like, everything.
“And here the kids are now!” remarked Aunt Enika, and, “I hope you enjoy dinner. It’s new; I’ve never made it before.”
With their bellies full, the kids, all eight of them (Eleanor had three siblings as well: Nya, Eliza, and Cody) headed upstairs to bedroom level to play video games and play with toy guns.
After a little while, Elliot said, “Let’s find something else to do. Let’s go to the basement.”
They all agreed that this was a good idea. Every kid (with the exception of Samantha and Nya) walked down to the basement to play pool, ping pong, rod/dome hockey, or air hockey.
Tonight was going to be the best night at their cousins’ house, as it was the first one this time. They hadn’t seen each other for nearly a year, and that was just a bit too long for all of them. They would go to bed in maybe around three-and-a-halfish hours. They had lots of time.
Atticus thought that the cousins were lucky to have all these games at their house, but, at the same time, he still thought they should maybe do something else. He wasn’t alone.
“Hey, guys!” one of his brothers or cousins called;he couldn’t tell who, “we could do something else. We’ve been doing this a long time, so maybe we could ask the parents to watch a movie.”
“Nah, let’s do that a little later in the week. Let’s go on a walk.”
There were many nods from everyone, so it was settled. It wasn’t too dark out, so they could still go when the night was young. The adults agreed it was okay, as long as “they all stuck together and stayed on the path”. Samantha and Nya would stay home.
About halfway through the walk around the neighborhood, they heard a call. “Hello? Hello?!”
Elliot crept forward, his coat scratching against his cotton T-shirt. The cousins and all his siblings moved forwards, but only a little. Not as much as he did.
The one who had called out was an old, exhausted man. The corners of his mouth curved up in a small smile. His pants and shirt were tattered and worn; he also had multiple scars on his face. It looked as if he himself was just a scrawny bit of skin stretched over a thin coat hanger, but he didn’t appear mean or anything. He actually looked quite kind, in fact.
“Here,” offered Elliot, “you can use my coat. Keep it, I promise.” He marched onward, not looking back. He almost said “it is not my best coat”, but decided otherwise.
There was only a small contact point between the man’s hand and Ellliot’s, but in a swift, singular motion, Elliot was whipped off his feet, the old beggar snatching the coat toward himself and shrouding it over Elliot. “What’re you doing?!” Elliot stumbled to the ground, scraping his left knee and scuffing the white edge of his left Nike shoe. “You guys, get out of here!” he yelled in sheer terror. “Stop!” he called to the man, but the demand went, of course, unheeded.
The rest of the kids looked on, so frozen into place, they could have been feeling cold. But they refused to run off, to leave their cousin in his terrible state of captivity.
“Elliot! We’re coming! Just stay there for now!” called one cousin.
“What else would I do?” he asked rhetorically, and frantically.
“I don’t know!” another cousin or sibling, he still couldn’t tell which, said, sounding exasperated. “Just… don’t do anything too stupid!”
The man continued to pull and thrash on the boy, until Elliot could do nothing but sit tight and ignore the man’s actions, which, I can tell you, was not an easy thing to do.
The bald man left him for a bit, which gave him a moment’s time to stop and think. The first thing he noticed around him was that his cousins had fled. The next thing he saw was no one but the old liar himself, emerging from a broken down shack hidden behind the lines of stunted trees. In his gnarled, callused hands he held a length of thick rope. He was playing and twiddling with it, sneering at the child.
“Here,” the man gestured at the rope in his hands, “sit tight and enjoy.”
Suddenly, Elliot was pushed and shoved in a very upright position, his wrists, being jerked behind his back. The rope was tied into an extremely tight way; he could only presume that his chances of escaping were very slim. Elliot could feel the piece of rope practically slicing into the tender skin around his hands and wrists.
All of the sudden, there came a blood-curdling scream coming from the left side of the street. The man behind him, admiring his tying job only a half-second ago, dashed toward the awful sound. A minute later, Elliot watched as his two siblings and three cousins stumbled toward his watchful eyes. He cowered before his captor.
“I expected them to fall on those little traps,” the man jeered, ordering the kids to sit on the ground. They reluctantly obeyed.
“Now!” the man exclaimed loudly, “where is the rope?”
The children had each been bound in turn. The beggar thought that his tying job was exceptional.
He turned them and released a sinister laugh.
“Psst.” said a voice. Elliot turned. It was Eleanor. Her face was scratched up, and the skin on her knuckles was dry and cracked.
“Yes?”
“What are we going to even do?”
He shook his head.
“I have no idea whatsoever.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said the man behind them. He laughed. “There will be no escape from here. I have you captive, and no one can rescue you now. No one messes with the Old Man and wins.”
He grasped at their shirt collars, their binds, anything he could get his hands on, and shoved them in a huge, white blank work car and shut the big doors on it.
There was one thing Elliot had noticed: the license plate on the car was: SKP 6OT. He had looked closer and taken out his ultraviolet flashlight, which for some reason was in his pocket, and flicked the ON button. The letters had an acronym: “Specially Kidnapped Kids – 6 Of Them”. In his mind he thought, ‘Uh-oh, he knew we were coming here!’ , but he said nothing to anyone. He continued to shine the light on the plate for any hidden clues he hadn’t seen before. It read on the sidelines in messy, eligible writing, “Blue vehicles: witnesses. Watch out! White vehicles: us kidnappers. Black vehicles, the most dangerous of all to our job: rescuers’. And a small mad emoji on the edge.
A shiver ran down Elliot’s spine. But he could see no more, as he was shoved into the back of the truck and the door was slammed shut.
The kids had been kidnapped by the Old Man.
