Carl was eager to set out and get to know where they would be staying for the foreseeable future – at least until college applications came back. He had already began drafting his, a lengthy diatribe which sat ominously on the desktop, forever beckoning him to complete it whenever is parents weren't doing so.

That could wait, though. He donned a yellow jacket as the rather moist climate seemed prone to rain, and set off. The garden itself was long since dead, none of the plants having been tended to in years no doubt. That was something he could change, maybe. The land itself seemed to have no trouble growing things. Old brick paths wound around the rather ostentatious garden design, layered upon itself. Wrought iron fitting archways spotted around reminded him just how long ago it might have been since anybody paid more than a passing glance to the garden he was in.

The nearby hills were, he discovered, adrift with winding paths you could get lost in without a handy smart phone and GPS. The almost fairytale like surroundings had him wistful for a youth that, in retrospect, he realized he had never really had. He turned and looked into the trees. Foreboding darkness dwelled within as the canopies grew thicker, and who knew what lay within.

Nothing. Nothing lay in the woods, he reminded himself. Monsters didn't exist. Nobody was around, nobody could see him.

“Who cares?” he thought. “I'm going to have a childhood after all, starting now.”

Nearby, a small rustle caught his attention. Cautiously, he approached some long grass and moved it apart with a shoe. Nothing. Well, not nothing. A perfectly shaped stick... a dowsing rod! Someone must have left it here. Left it for so long grass grew up over it. He wondered who's it had been. How long ago had a child stood right where he was, holding this very thing?

Maybe it was just the anxiety of the move but such deep, drawing feelings were coming naturally to him. Maybe it was just the history of the place rubbing off on him. Ancient things rubbing and grinding against his psyche... no wonder he felt so young and spritely.

He let the dowsing rod guide him, holding it out in front. He wasn't a child, he knew they didn't work, but it felt so refreshing so... liberating to just let his inner child out for once. None of his self-entertainment for years had ever felt like this. He really did feel like a kid again.

He let big, comical steps guide him down the path, and just drank in what he saw around him. The forest was a little creepy, especially when he let his inner child's mind do the thinking for him. It made him a little giddy to be free again, to think outside of that logical, reasoned way his parents had drilled into him for so long. Being a kid again, or at least feeling like one, felt so liberating.

There was, apparently, an old well around here and he was determined to find it. That was what a kid would do, they'd spend all day looking for something that might not be there just because someone said it could be. So he would too.

Occasionally he felt a little twitch in the dowsing rod, as if something was pulling him one way or another. He knew that wasn't how it worked. It was a subconscious thing, the mind was interpreting micro-movements of the arms and hands as being from a source other than itself. He didn't mind though. Where the 'spirits' guided him he would go.

Again, it was hard to shake the feeling of being watched. Occasionally he would cast an eye back down the trail behind him, or into the woods and hills either side. Nothing was ever there. When a pebble or two came tumbling down he was sure there had to be someone up there, but even when he made little treks off the path to see, no sign of anyone, or anything was visible.

The thick canopied trees grew even darker as the day wore on, and there in the interior it was impossible not to let those stories he'd been told by his more fantastical family member, namely his Auntie Elle, spring to mind. Creatures that dwelt just outside of human sight, on the edge of the forests, luring unwary children in with songs and tricks of the light until they found themselves lost, and maybe no longer even in the forest at all...

Then he heard it. The rocks came tumbling down the hill just a short way behind him, and this time they were accompanied by the grind of rocks and sand above.

He took off running, his imagined fear just for a moment mingling with a little genuine paranoia. He had been genuinely startled, even if he had overreacted just for fun.

Panting for breath, he stood at a fork in the paths, and listened carefully as the wind picked up. It could have been anything, a fox maybe, someone's pet from a house in the land around. He lifted the dowsing rod again and, oddly, it did feel different. Probably the adrenaline, he thought, as he felt his right hand tugging stronger and stronger. He spun, partly to keep the childish fantasy alive and, partly, to make doubly sure he was alone just in case, and nothing was sneaking up on him.

The rod was tugging and tugging, and once or twice he could have sworn it wasn't him pulling it. The wind was picking up and he tugged the hood of his yellow jacket up in anticipation of the weather, and maybe just a little bit out of fear. He spun in a circle slowly, and again, and froze as he heard that crunch sound from the hill behind him.

He spun on the spot and saw a dark figure come roaring down the hill, a light beaming as a cloak fluttered behind them. He screamed, threw his hands up in front of his face, and felt mud splatter against him as whatever it was roared past within a few inches, and he hit the dirt. 

Clad in a black jacket and gloves, which were adorned with the print of a skeleton, a figure stood aside their mountain bike staring down at him. They lifted up a screen on their helmet – the source of the light – and Carl was surprised to see a girl looking down at him.

“Hi, you must be new around here. From somewhere dry, I guess,” she said in a rather stilted, awkward tone, and Carl realized she was holding his dowsing rod... or stick. “I've heard of people using these before but I don't think you know how the magic in them works.”

“What the heck's your problem you could have hit me!” he retorted.

“Right, sorry. I wanted to stop you from getting too close to the well,” and at that, she nearly dropped the rod as she stumbled down the hill, shouting “get back!”

Carl took a few steps back, more to get away from her than follow her directions, and felt the ground under him solidify. Looking down, he saw a ring of mushrooms. A faerie ring. The girl stood on the other side, looking down worriedly.

“You could have fallen in. The well is really deep. It goes... well I wouldn't want to fall down there. This is a really old place, you know. The spirits of the forest put a charm here to protect it, to stop anything bad from coming through but... that wouldn't help you if you went in by yourself.”

“Right...” Carl said, taking another few steps back from the girl he was now quite sure was a little less than totally sane, “uh, well you can keep the... stick. Nice meeting you, uh-”

“Charli-” she said, before correcting herself, “Charlotte. I'm Charlotte.”

“Carl. Carl Liene. Nice meeting you but, I really better be-”

Charlotte took her jacket off, and shook her head out. Red hair frizzed free and a tight sweater revealed a very full figure. Charlotte was, evidently, quite a bit older than Carl had first thought.

“uh...” Carl muttered, trying not to drink in her body all at once.

“Carl Liene. Hi,” she said softly, not looking up at him yet, still eyes fixed on the well as a few drops of rain caused the mud to slowly re-form, the footprints Carl had left moments ago disappearing.

“Were you following me?” Carl asked, coming back to his senses and starting to piece things together.

“No. I ride here a lot,” she replied, huffily, but the way she refused to meet his eye had him wondering, “besides if I was following you I'd have a good reason to” she added quieter, turning to look at Carl's house.

Carl stepped around the mushrooms, noticing the ground around the well was much firmer despite the rain.

“So my grandmother finally sold the old estate huh?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah. My parents bought it. I think they did it to, uh, make me happy.”

Carl wasn't sure why he had chosen to say that. Part of him was pretty sure being in such close proximity to an older, full bodied girl was getting the better of him. He hadn't had many relationships in all those years of travel. It was hard when you didn't get much chance to know anyone.

“To make you happy...” she whispered, as if she had heard those words before.

For a while he just stood there, feeling nervous, realizing he had wound up standing a lot closer to her than he had intended.

She turned to him and paused when she realized just how close the two were, but didn't move away either.

“It's a really old place. A lot of secrets. Hidden things,” she said, rather distantly, despite their closeness. “Have you looked around it?”

“Uh, no, not yet. I kind of wanted to look around the forest first. I've never really lived anywhere like this.”

“Be careful if you do. Some things are better left unexplored. Even here in the woods,” she mused, looking over at the well.

At this distance he got to see her properly, even as it was getting a bit darker. Her face was quite rounded, soft. Her eyes were a deep green, and somehow looked as if they had seen more than they should have.

“Ah, yeah. Old places. Yeah they can be, um, dangerous. Sharp nails and... stuff.”

Her eyes shot back at him, and she regarded him warily. She had to look down past her rather generous bust at him, standing quite a bit taller than the not-fully-developed guy she had stumbled across – or maybe followed.

“You're not the first kid to live in that house, you know. This house is very old, and so are... the things inside it.”

“You uh, you sound like you know a lot about it. Is there anything I should know? Apart from it being old and uh... dangerous?”

For a few moments, she looked like she was going to say something. Then she didn't. “Nothing you'd believe if I did,” she sighed, at last.

He was being bombarded by the smell of incense the longer he stood this close to her. Having to stare basically directly into her chest in order to make eye contact was making Carl's legs twitch, and his hands were planted very firmly in his pockets. Around her neck was a necklace with a strange ornament.

His eyes lingered on it a moment too long and she noticed.

“It's a holey stone,” she said, lifting it up so he could see, although his eyes lingered on where it had been for a few moments more, “it's something that lets you see what's really there.”

She held it up and looked at him through it. Just for a moment, he saw her eye's green blaze brighter. A trick of the light.

“It lets you see through disguises...” she muttered, as she slowly looked lower and lower, until her gaze was on the front of his jeans as they got uncomfortably tight.

---

“CHARLOTTE!” came a cry from the pink house in the distance, and both their eyes were drawn to it. Smoke pillowed from the chimney.

“Mum must have the dinner on,” she said, in a much less mystical and more matter-of-fact tone, turning away at last.

“You said your grandmother owned the old estate?”

“Yeah, me and my mum live there and take care of her. She's quite old now.”

“Oh,” he said, as people often did when they were told something that sounded sad and awkward.

“It's okay, she's still around,” Charlotte said with a smile, the first he had seen. “She's got lots of amazing stories about this place. I used to not believe any.”

Carl couldn't get a reading on this girl, he thought, as she saddled her bike before he realized what was happening. She handed him back the dowsing rod and did up her jacket again.

“I'd leave this where you found it. Old things can be dangerous, you know.”

With that, she took off. Carl just stood there as the rain began to patter off his hood. He'd never really encountered a girl like that in all the schools he'd gone to. She had definitely spent too much time in Wiccan shops, or Hot Topic. Carl watched as she cycled down the hills and paths, until she disappeared behind one and didn't reappear.

Looking back at the well, he decided he'd come too far not to check it. Clearing the mud aside, he found a wooden trap door, ancient and rotten. He picked up a nearby pebble and dropped it, listening to hear it hit the water.

It never did.

He decided to retrace his steps all the way back. When he got to that patch of long grass he bent over to carefully put the dowsing rod back, and thought he heard a whisper.

Turning, he didn't see anything. When he looked back, the rod was gone. Probably just lost in the grass, he told himself.

Probably.