The Hills Behind the House
Steele Filipek
Issue #3 (May 2008)
"Are we there yet?" Tom gasped. Chris was already near the top of the hill, but his older brother had struggled on the rocky climb.
“Almost,” Chris said. “Hurry up.” He bounded out of sight again, his thin legs and arms pumping in an almost comical fashion. Tom cursed under his breath. Even though the air was cool and the season had finally started to turn from summer to fall, sweat poured off the teenager’s body, collecting in damp pools on the pits and back of his t-shirt.
“Better be ‘almost,’ you little…” Tom said. The rest of his muttering was lost as he grunted and pulled at a weed to help him up. Dirt caked his hands, with a dozen small scratches and cuts crossing his palms and arms from the walk through the brambles that had taken him to the hill.
Finally, with a heave, Tom threw himself over the lip of the rise. He slid down some gravel a few feet and came to a rest in a patch of grass and dandelions. Chris was all the way across the clearing, a thicket of trees on his left and a steep drop off to the valley floor in front of him.
Tom caught his breath, coughing and spitting the phlegm out of his throat. “I don’t remember that being so steep,” he said, more to himself than to Chris. Tom looked up to see where his seven year-old brother had gotten to, but he was gone.
His stomach rumbled. Tom looked down to find that his jeans were torn a bit at the knee. He swore under his breath. He stood up with bad intentions for Chris on his mind and walked forward, scanning the summit. He sneezed as the dust from his ascent and the pollen from the wildflowers mixed together. He wiped his eyes with his tee-shirt and gritted his teeth, then stumbled into the woods near where Chris had disappeared.
“Chris? Chris?” he yelled, then shouted.
A small breeze blew through the air as Tom tensed up, finding himself alone in the grove. The leaves shimmered in the sunlight overhead. A few twigs cascaded down, landing lightly on Tom’s shoulders. Tom had been there a thousand times, especially when he was younger, but there always seemed to be something not quite right. It was… off.
Tom’s hair raised on the back of his neck as something cawed out in the distance. He stepped into a ring of mushrooms, then back out again as he almost tripped on a branch. He forced himself to stop, and took several deep breaths, despite the alarms in his head that were screaming at him to run.
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