#also little detail i saw.. laura got her arm chopped at one point and gets a prosthetic arm :)

[blabberoo]

What we could've gotten 😩😩😩

[thestarkerisobvious]

Treasure

This is it.  This will be the last chapter of The Thing That Lives Under The Bed that I will post on Tumblr.  After this, the quest to put it alllll on AO3, where I will publish the conclusion.

Endless thanks to @mrstarksbaby.  He knows why.

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At 13, Peter made friends with the Thing that Lived Under the Bed.  But things change.  Nothing stays the same (not even  2000 year old demons.)

SEVENTEEN

Chapter 5         Treasure

For two hours he got to dig by himself.  As he did he turned it all over in his mind, digging through everything that Tony had said, sifting through everything he hadn’t said.  

Tom Dylan Post had ordered Tony to kill him.  Tony readily obeyed.  Finding out her brother had, in essence, killed himself, Ada ordered Tony to kill her too… no… she had begged him to do it.  Fell to his feet and clung to him and begged.

And Tony had tricked her.  Tenderly and lovingly.  Put her off until midnight.  Described a spell that required the participation of three family members.  Ada might have even pulled it off despite all that – she probably had dozens of uncles and sisters and “youngest members” she might have tricked into it.  And, hell, if Ada could have found that many family members that were willing to watch her die, it might have been a good idea.  But even in that event, could she have really gotten Nana Justina, the Matriarch of the entire family, to write a prayer for the occasion?

What Tony had said… and what Tony hadn’t said.  

He hadn’t said “No.” 

He hadn’t said “Obviously not, I work for your father.”  

He didn’t deny her.  She was collapsed at his feet, clinging to him and begging him to kill her.  He told her “I can deny you nothing” and then pointed Ada towards multiple family members that certainly would deny her plenty.

And then there was Tomas Post Sr.  Peter knew absolutely nothing about the man, except for one thing.  The man had come to Tony demanding to know where his son was, and instead of saying “He chopped up your daughters’ best friend, I killed him and destroyed the body.  You’re welcome,”  Tony had barely said anything.  He waited patiently for the family to find 3 black animals to create a spell to force him to tell what he was perfectly willing to tell anyone who asked. 

When Peter stopped to rest he sat and looked at the foundation, trying to remember the details of the house he had seen that night.  He knew he had seen it before… and now he remembered where.  Anyone looking for information on the Post family knew about the massive donation of artwork that the Post family had made to various museums in New York City, some of which Peter and his family had been to.  He had seen black and white photos of some of the paintings.  Casa do Sul they were all called.  Tony had called it the South House.

Of course, the South House wasn’t there for the artist colony of the 1920’s to paint.  Had Tony shown it to them, in their dreams, the way he had shown it to Peter? 

* * * 

Naturally Peter wanted to dig up whatever was buried beside the South House by himself.  Whatever was there, Tony had meant it for him.

So, of course, by the time evening came he was digging with 4 other people, with two people waiting at the house for news of the dig and one 12-year old person running messages and supplies back and forth.

Peter had set out with his shovel completely forgetting that the DeSlaughters would arrive for Saturday Morning breakfast-and-cartoons.  They always traveled when PeeWee’s Playhouse was on.  No one liked PeeWee’s Playhouse.  (They usually ate during Kidd Video because no one claimed to like Kid Video either.  Although, secretly, Peter thought Kidd Video himself was incredibly cute.)  So when the trio arrived and Peter wasn’t there, Mike set out to find out why.

When Mike went back to the house to get a second shovel, Matthew got involved.  And when Matthew was sent back to the house to get some rope, Uncle Ben and Mr. DeSlaughter got involved.  Soon Monica was running supplies, and messages, back and forth.  Aunt May and Mrs. DeSlaughter were at the house preparing a large celebratory meal (or perhaps a consolation dinner) for that evening.  Whatever was in the trunk Peter and Mike had discovered, Peter hoped it wasn’t too personal, because he was going to have to find out in front of everybody.  And “split the loot,” at least according to Matthew.

“I don’t think it’s loot,” Peter said repeatedly.  “I think it’s something Tom Dylan Post buried here.  Maybe right after he killed Laura Foster.  Maybe after they burned the house down, the wreckage, what was left of the house, it would have hidden the freshly filled in hole.  So they never noticed.  But I don’t know what he would have buried… certainly not his murder weapon.  He left his knife at the scene of the crime, that’s how they knew it did it.”

“What if it’s his dead body?”  Matthew had asked more than once.

“That’s possible,” Peter assured him.  “I really think that he killed himself, and that the family hid it.  In those days committing suicide was a very big scandal.  And it is a lot easier to hide a dead body than a live one.”

“Wait… we’re looking for a dead body?”  Mike asked.  “What is this, a Stephen King novel?”  

“How would he kill himself… and then bury himself, Mike?”

“His family probably killed him to stop him from killing his brother,” Matthew offered.  “He wanted to kill his brother Abe Sexton because Abe Sexton told everyone Laura Foster was going to marry him only they thought it couldn’t be true because he was only 14…”

“So we’re looking for the dead body of the annoying little brother?”

“No…” Matthew said, rolling his eyes.  Although Peter had said it too.  Peter also knew this story.

“I told you Abe Sexton lived with the sheriff’s son who lost his arm and almost bled to death because the sheriff had pissed off Lavern Post but then Lavern Post healed him anyway and Abe Sexton lived with him for like 50 years until he died, the Sheriff's son died, and then Abe Sexton moved back home to take care of his mom.  Everyone knows that.”

“So… we’re digging up the dead body of some gaywad annoying little brother?”  Mike joked.

Both Peter and Matthew glared at him.

“All the Posts are buried at the Post Graveyard which isn’t even on our property so what are you freaking out about,” Peter said,  “And  we’re digging up whatever Tom Dylan buried before anyone knew to come look for him.

“Know what Matthew?” Peter called out, hoping to ease the tension.  Matthew looked angry and ready to leave.  “We should really write a book about the history of this whole place.  We know more than anybody.

* * * *

Peter and MIke groaned when Mr. DeSlaughter arrived in his pickup truck, which he managed to pull almost up to the shed.  Even Matthew was disappointed.  All three had been excited about getting what they had found out all by themselves.  Mr. DeSlaughter and Uncle Ben had many observations and had several pieces of unwanted advice.

But in the end, some of the advice was good.  They were the ones who looked at the wooden chest at the bottom of the hole and suggested digging a ramp to bring it up.  Attaching ropes to the handles of the chest proved fruitless when the first handle snapped upon contact.  Getting the chest out of the hole in one piece was delicate business.  How it had even held together at all was a mystery.  But the long processes of getting the buried chest out of the ground was making Peter impatient, and finally desperate.  He had no way of explaining to the men around him (and the occasional Monica) why it was the contents of the chest that was more important than the ancient trunk itself. 

At least Peter didn’t have to explain why he had started digging.  Although Uncle Ben raised an eyebrow when Peter mumbled vaguely about his dream, the DeSlaughters only nodded sagely.  The entire DeSlaughter family put a lot of stock in dreams.

It was absolutely going to be evening before they could move the chest up the earthen ramp they had created for the task, but Peter would not be persuaded to leave it till the morning.  They chose to work by the light of the truck headlights.  Matthew and Mike were just as impatient to see the contents of their buried treasure.  Matthew, in particular, was convinced it was actual treasure.  Secretly, Peter had other ideas.

The massive, old fashioned lock on the front of the chest didn’t dissuade them when the trunk was clearly coming apart at the hinges.  Only Uncle Ben mourned the destruction of the possibly-valuable antique box while the other three men wrenched off the lid.  Matthew held his flashlight up to show them what was inside.

The old-fashioned rifle that sat on the top of the folded clothes naturally caught the attention of Mike and Mr. DeSlaughter, who took it to examine by the light of the cab of the truck.  Peter was grateful because that brought the witnesses down to three; himself, Matthew and Uncle Ben.  He assigned Uncle Ben to pull out the clothing, mostly dresses and what might have been billowy white nightgowns, which Ben carefully laid out on the tarp that Monica had delivered that afternoon.  That only left Matthew holding the flashlight, angrily demanding ‘where the gold and diamonds were.’

And the bottom of the chest, under all the clothing, Peter saw it.  The huge leather book.  Beside it sat a smaller black box.  Peter picked it up and shook it.  When the contents rattled, he handed it over to Matthew, who quickly disappeared.  

Peter picked up his own flashlight, his heart hammering, and reached into the bottom of the chest.

He didn’t have long before the others noticed his silence and came back with their own flashlights, demanding to know what he had found.

“It’s… I think it’s…” he said, hastily laying his hand over the seal on the leather cover before Mike could see it.  “I think it’s a diary,” he lied.  The book was handwritten, so he might be believed.  It was full of pictures and strange circles and seals with congruent and concentric triangles,  but girls sketched in their diaries sometimes, didn’t they?  As for the geometric shapes… well… was there a law that said girls couldn’t fill their diaries with geometry?

“It is, it’s a diary,” he said to the men who were crowding around him now.  With the cover open, they couldn’t see the seal.  Five flashlights shone down on the inscription on the first thick page.

“Is that...?”  Matthew was the first to speak.  “… wait does that say…?”

“Yes,” Peter said calmly as the other reacted to the two words written there in a beautiful, practiced script.  It seemed so obvious to him now.

“It’s the diary of Laura Foster.”

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This is the end of the Tumblr Publication of The Thing That Lives Under The Bed.  

The rest of the book Seventeen will be published on AO3.

Thank you for reading this far.

                                      --WW