As Jimmy and I laid in bed I asked him about the things he was saying with the older kids. “So, that stuff at school?” I asked. “You didn’t really mean what you said about not believing?”
“I meant it,” he answered.
The moment he said it I heard the clicking and creaking of the radiator come on, blowing warm air from the living room into our room via the duct. The warm air was calming.
“How could any of it be real? And, the older boys all say it’s made up. I mean, If it was real wouldn’t they have stories to tell. Like Jacob Conners, he sure isn’t a good kid. I saw him smoking behind the Lewis’s grain silo.”
“But, mom says it’s real?” I argued.
“And she’s a liar too, just like all the other parents.”
The clacking grew louder from the vent at the floor in the far wall.
Jimmy talked on as his voice grew more defiant, “Plus, how could a person keep an eye on us all the time? It’s stupid.”
“Magic?” I suggested.
He answered, “Magic isn’t real and Black Pete isn’t real. Watch, I’ll prove it. Fuck shit fuck fuck crap”.
I was stunned by his language.
I heard a hard knock from the far wall. I looked at the vent. Inside it was dark except for two round reflections.
“Black Pete is here,” I whispered.
Jimmy ordered me to shut up.
“There. There is the vent,” I continued.
There was a pause and then Jimmy said, “I don’t see anything.”
But I did. They had vanished, but I was sure that those two round reflections were there.
Source: Black Pete
