by Ryan Brenner

Created on: August 06, 2010

Lincoln Washington took one last look around the room he had stayed in for the first thirteen years of his life.  The movers were putting the last of the family belongings into the van.  It was beautiful day, but that could not lift his mood.

The family was moving closer to Dr. Washington’s office on the other side of the city.  “It was only a half hour,” Dr. Washington had said cheerily several times over the last month.

A half hour later they pulled to a stop in front of their new home.  It was the last house on the street. Lincoln slid out of the backseat and looked grudgingly at his new home.

The house was on the edge of town miles from his friends.  Absently, he trudged up the large walk, and around the back of the home.  A large stone wall encircled the property like a moat.  At the end of the yard was an iron gate leading to the woods beyond.  Lincoln turned back to the house it cast a large dark shadow over the yard.  His father called to him, and he turned to leave.

 Something caught his eye at the gate.  A boy stood looking back at him. The boy was dressed in clothes from a bygone era, and smiled warmly at Lincoln.  Surprised by the boy’s sudden appearance he waved casually, and turned to join his family.  At the edge of the house he looked back.  The boy was gone.

Later, the Washington family stood and watched their father sign the papers officially making the home theirs.  The attorney put them in his briefcase and walked toward the door. 

On the porch he turned to the family, “One more thing,” he said, “the woods beyond the gate in the yard are off limits to anyone.  Your property stops at the gate. Do not enter the woods.”  With that he hurried to his car. 

That night Lincoln looked out his bedroom window.  He peered at the gate beyond the yard.  A move to the edge of town that he had feared for months now held a mysterious awe, as a boy clad in clothes from sixty years before waved to him from the gate.

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