Moonlighting- Chapter 1- Just Another Morning

That morning, I awoke to find I had the bed all to myself. I glanced at the clock; it was already nine in the morning. Jenn must’ve woken up already and fixed the kids something to eat. I moaned groggily as I made my attempt to sit up, but wound up rolling off the bed completely, landing on the floor with a thud. After landing directly on it, my shoulder started to ache. How is it I’ve been thrown off buildings, smashed through walls, and crushed by objects unreasonably immense, but a simple fall off the bed hurt me? Then again, I was a supernatural monster all the other times. I could take collateral damage in that form, but as soon as I was human, I mind as well be a porcelain doll.
I went into the hallway and looked off of the balcony. The ceiling of the hallway is also the ceiling of the living room, because it was expanded upwards. So there was a point just before the stairs were a little bridge stretched across the entry hall. You could look over the banisters and down at the living room, and a little bit of the kitchen, if you really tried. I barely caught a glimpse of an elbow sitting on the island counter top, so I started making my way downstairs.
“Morning, guys.” I called to my family as I walked down the rest of the remaining steps. Jenn had her back to me, flipping something around in a pan on the stove. I took a whiff of the aroma lingering in the room, and immediately identified it as pancakes. “I hope there’s enough for me?”
“Nope, there isn’t. You should’ve gotten up when I told you to.” She said in a joking tone. I sighed, and took a seat across from my three children, all looking as tired as could be.
Sitting on the far left was my firstborn, Zack. He was 15 years old, and of course, the oldest of the three. He had messy dark brown hair, and it wasn’t because he just got out of bed. There was an oddity about Zack, and that was he had bright, jade-green eyes. This would seem normal to most people, but given the fact his mother was Filipino, her Asian traits should’ve been dominant over mine. With dominant Asian traits, the children usually turn out with brown hair and brown eyes. But that wasn’t the case with Zack. I had green eyes myself, but they were nowhere close to being as bright as his. I noticed he seemed to have his headphones on- the ones that he had created and customized with a kit I got him for his birthday a couple years ago. He wore them so often, I almost forgot what his ears looked like. Of course, he was completely oblivious to the sounds around him, so saying good morning verbally was completely out of the question. After accomplishing eye contact, I simply gave him a nod, and he returned it.
Sitting to the right of Zack- or, I suppose it was his left, was my one and only daughter, Rose. It was just like her to be sitting there, her nose buried deep in a book almost as thick as a dictionary. Maybe it was a dictionary; I rarely looked at the front covers. I suppose I should’ve, being an author and all. Rose was smart for being 13 years old. In fact, she was so smart, she was allowed to skip a grade. Zack, on the other hand, was not as excited about this, as this meant Rose would get to start High School with him. They didn’t exactly hate each other or anything, just the classic sibling rivalry. I didn’t even bother saying hi to her; she was too in-depth with her book. I’d talk to her later.
I looked to the right, finding my youngest, Lucas, staring at me in anticipation. He was the only one that ever appreciated my morning greetings.
“Good morning, Lucas.” I laughed, always amused by his enthusiasm. Lucas looked the most like me out of my three children, except his hair was a dark brown and his eyes were the same color. He did, however, style his own hair differently than my own. Since a young age, Lucas was fascinated by dressing and appearing “fancy.” Of course, since he just woke up, he had not gotten a chance to throw some gel in his mop yet. Without gel, his hair looked a lot like mine.
“Morning, dad!” He returned almost immediately, a smile instantly appearing on his face. “I forgot to show you a picture I drew in art class the other day. I fell asleep before I had a chance to remember.” Without any further conversation, Lucas leaped from his stool, and ran across the living room to the entry hall. There was a set of hooks where our coats hanged, but was commonly used by the kids as a backpack hanger. Even though he was out of sight, I heard Lucas unzip his backpack, followed by the bending sound of paper, and then his light pitter-patter of footsteps running back to me.
Lucas’s head appeared suddenly from below the counter top as he clambered back onto his stool. Once comfortably seated, he slid the drawing across the fine marble over to me. I noticed the paper was turned over; I glanced up at him, and it looked like he was holding in the biggest laugh in the universe. I flipped the paper over to see a picture of a ladybug, on its hind legs, holding an umbrella. It was making a goofy facial expression, given the fact there were a set of googly eyes pasted on to it. Before I had a chance to respond to the picture, Lucas burst into laughter, somehow interrupting Rose’s reading.
“You see? It’s a ladybug,” Lucas said between laughs, “but it’s doing normal human things!” He started laughing so hard he was crying. I remembered when Jenn’s sense of humor was this bad. Oh, wait, it still is. He must’ve gotten it from his mother, I concluded. But I supposed it was a funny sight to an 8 year old regardless, a bug doing human things and such.
“Morning, dad.” Rose finally said, acknowledging my presence at last. I couldn’t help but hear a bit of sadness in her voice.
“What’s the matter, pumpkin?” I asked. “Is a character in your book going through a troubling situation?” I assumed this was the case, because she didn’t respond. Instead, she pursed her lips as her eyes continued to absorb the words from the pages of the novel.
“So, what do you think, dad?” Lucas said, interrupting my observations. Looking back to his painting, it was pretty good for a kid his age, as ridiculous as it looked.
“I think it’s great.” I told him, in complete honesty. “But there’s one thing that’s bothering me…”
“What?” Lucas frowned.
I smiled. “What if this ladybug is a guy? Is it a manlybug?”
“No, silly.” He snorted. “He’s still a ladybug. That’s their name.”
“Pancakes are ready.” Jenn said, coming over to the counter with two dishes in each hand. There were three more sitting on the L-shaped peninsula counter pressed against the wall, where all the cupboards and dishware were. Jenn gave the first two plates to Lucas and Rose.
“Hey, how come they get food first?” Zack muttered. “Are they your favorite or something?”
“Women and children are to be taken care of before men, because apparently you guys are so tough.” Jenn snickered. “Just kidding, I’m not sexist. Does it look like I have enough hands to carry all of those plates?”
“Dad does.” Zack sighed as Jenn retrieved his plate and put it in front of him. She then gave me my own plate. I just now realized what she’d done to all of our pancakes, and admired her creativity. She’d used her Zodiac cookie-cutters to make our pancakes in the shapes of our astrological star signs. I was an Aries, which looked like ram horns. Zack was Ophiuchus, which resembled that of the letter U with a tilde going through it. Rose was a Leo, which looked like a ball with a tail. And Lucas a Virgo, which was really just a fancy letter M with a funny looking tail. Each of us had five respective Zodiac-shaped pancakes each, except Jenn. While using the cookie cutters to cut the pancakes, there were a lot of scrapped parts of the pancake that did not make any shape. Instead of wasting them, Jenn decided to eat them herself, in place of making herself a set of Zodiac pancakes.
“That’s pretty spiffy, mom.” Zack admired, licking his lips as he scrambled for his knife and fork. Despise his supposed interest in the Zodiac pancake, he dug right in.
“Thanks, son from the 18th century.” Jenn retorted. “Seriously, ‘spiffy?’ Don’t be your father.” She rolled her eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Um, excuse me? Zack’s father is very snazzy.” Jenn ate one of her scrapped pancake pieces without breaking her relentless stare at me.
Rose surprisingly put down her book, and began eating one of her pancakes. “These are awesome.” She then began cutting up her pancakes into smaller pieces, and shoveling them into her mouth.
I decided to try some for myself. It was Jenn’s homemade batter recipe, and she was a good cook. I stabbed my stack of pancakes with my fork, and began to cut them horizontally. After slicing them into more bitable sizes, I plucked a piece up with my fork, and lifted it to my mouth. Before I could even put the fork in my mouth, a blunt, high-pitched noise rang through my ears for a few seconds. I dropped my fork, and it clattered to the ground.
“Mel’s Hole.” I muttered unintentionally. It was another part of my powers. Remember when I said I had random flashes of information on paranormal events all over the world? Well, it never gave me an entire update, but it would give me the name, or at least the location.
“Mel’s Hole?” Jenn echoed. She was already familiar with my powers by now; everyone was. We’d all gone on several nearby expeditions before; ones I knew wouldn’t be extremely dangerous, anyway.
“Mel’s Hole is basically an alleged bottomless pit somewhere in Ellensburg, Washington.” Rose informed us. I wasn’t surprised she knew this, given the fact she’s always reading or researching something educational. “It apparently has paranormal properties, such as emitting black rays of light, and bringing dead animals back to life if tossed into the hole.”
“This thing is all the way in Washington, you said?” I asked. “That sounds rather far.”
“I still don’t get why you can’t just teleport, or whatever.” Zack said confusedly. “That’s one of Slender Man’s powers.”
“I still think I’m not the legitimate Slender Man, I just happen to have his looks and powers. Except teleportation, or mind control, or a bunch of other stuff. Because Slender Man is basically omnipotent.”
“What’s omnippletent?” Lucas asked, a chunk of pancake falling out of his mouth as he spoke.
I pondered the definition for a moment so that I could describe it in the way an eight year old would. “It’s sort of like having any kind of power that exists.”
Lucas’s eyes lit up. “You have laser vision!?”
“I said I’m not omnipotent.” I corrected.
Rose rolled her eyes. “Slender Man doesn’t even have any eyes. How is he going to shoot lasers from something that doesn’t exist?”
“I don’t know about the real Slender Man, if I’m really just a copy, but when I transform I still keep my eyes. They’re just altered, and a layer of skin stretches over my face to cover them.”
“Maybe you’ll get teleportation eventually.” Jenn deliberated. “Remember how you randomly gained umbrakinesis?”
“Why no, I don’t remember.” I said sarcastically, instantly eyeing up a shadow being cast across the counter top by a fruit bowl. With my palm facing the ceiling, I pointed upwards, and the shadow instantly became three-dimensional. Lucas laughed and clapped to the point where he began complaining about his hands hurting.
Rose shook her head. “Actually, it’s more likely that his tentacles were always a product of umbrakinesis, and the ability to control and manipulate shadows has simply elevated over time. His tentacles can’t possibly be part of his body, due to their infinite length. However, this infinite length can be explained if you take into account that the tentacles are actually a mass of shadows created from umbrakinesis. This would also explain how his suit magically materializes onto him when he transforms. It’s all umbrakinesis.”
“Rose, stop being intelligent, please.” I sighed. “Not everyone else here is as smart as you, so it hurts our brains trying to comprehend the things you’re explaining.”
“That or you possess osteokinesis, the power to manipulate the shape and size of your bones.” Rose continued, even though none of us really understood. “In this case, your suit spawning would still be explained by umbrakinesis, but your tentacles and your ability to extend your arms and legs to extreme lengths may very well be a result of osteokinesis.”
“Just a heads up, Rose, I stopped listening a while ago.” Zack told her, letting his headphone snap back against his ear. He started nodding exaggeratedly to the, in our perspective, unbeknownst beat of whatever song he was listening to.
“That’s great, Zack. I guess you won’t get to hear all about the wonders of Kinetic Energy Absorption.”
“Good.” Zack retorted, but no sooner realized his mistake of revealing he could hear his sister loud and clear, and therefore was never listening to any music whatsoever.
“In whichever case,” Rose snickered, “we’ll leave it for future determining. Oh, wait! The tentacles and suit generation could also be a product of Spatial Constructs! It’s when you can create things from spatial energy, and would be more probable than umbrakinesis, since shadows aren’t always available.”
“Can we get back to talking about Mel’s Hole?” I asked. “This ringing in my head won’t go away unless I acknowledge it.” That was partially a lie. The ringing was still there, but to be honest, it was painful to see my children trying to conform to my own life and try to understand it. While they had a pretty firm grasp on it, they didn’t ask for this to happen. And this might seem like a cool comic book story line, but in reality, it was a nightmare for children to grow up in this kind of environment. And really, I didn’t like bringing any of them along with me at all. One mistake and I could lose them forever. But sometimes, it’s just hard to say no. Especially when your own daughter knows words you can’t even begin to guess the meanings of.
“Mel’s Hole, father of mine,” Rose inclined for an introduction, “like I said before, is a pit that can bring animals back from the dead. Or, so the stories claim. One man tossed in his deceased dog, only to have it return out of the woods sometime later. The hole doesn’t have a definite location, as it’s actually quite hard to locate. But it is, in fact, in the vicinity of Ellensburg, Washington.”
“What happens if you jump in?” Lucas asked innocently.
“That’s the thing, though. The pit is allegedly bottomless, or if anything, extremely deep. A group of people once sent down a cable, only to not have it hit any solid surface for a whole 15 miles.”
Lucas gulped. “I don’t want to go now! I’m going to fall in!”
“You won’t fall in as long as you don’t lean over the edge.” Zack reassured. He really wanted to go on a road trip. I guess everyone did; my weird supernatural responsibilities were just another random excuse to get away from the house for a while.
“Well, I suppose since summer vacation just started,” I presumed, “there isn’t anything wrong with a little road trip.” They all collectively looked at me with widened eyes, but for different reasons; Zack and Lucas’s out of excitement, but Rose and Jenn’s in more of a questioning stare.
“A road trip to Washington, are you kidding? It’s literally on the other side of the country.” Rose said on behalf of her mother.
“And that’s a problem, why?” Zack asked, shrugging it away like it was nothing.
“Yeah!” Lucas piped, wrapping his arms around his brother’s neck excitedly.
I grinned. “Majority rules, ladies. We’re going on a road trip.”
“That’s a 47 hour trip.” Rose said more sternly. “In a car.” She made an attempt to look angry, but it registered as a toddler’s pout.
“So? It’s a good experience.” I tempted. “Besides, 47 hours is a long time to read.”

So there we were, driving in my Black Ford Charger through Pennsylvania. It’d taken us all about an hour and a half to gather all of the belongings we’d need, pack them in the trunk, and leave our home state New Jersey. Jenn was fast asleep in the passenger’s seat. Also, I was pretty sure the amount of books Rose brought with her took up more room than she did. But we were well on our way through Pennsylvania, heading towards our destination surely but slowly. However, it was starting to get dark, so I figured I’d try to find a hotel soon.
I smiled to myself. “Hey guys, want to see something?”
“Okay!” Lucas said. Zack and Rose already knew he’d say yes for them, so they didn’t bother. They sat on either side of their younger brother, who waited eagerly to hear what his father had to say. Zack forced his drowsiness away long enough to see what I was about to do, and Rose even put down her book for a moment.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” I chanted into the left side mirror of the car. I watched as the ghostly pale woman with long stringy black hair appeared in the mirror, shrinking into the distance as we drove. She began running after the car, but it was no use.
“It’s times like this I really want to brag about, but it’s too bad we can’t.” Zack sighed. I rolled down the windows, and the warm summer air blew into the car. It was a nice night, but I couldn’t help but notice the sky was beginning to get a little dense. A thick fog suddenly rolled in, somehow tinted with a blue ambient. Goosebumps started at my wrists and worked their way up my arms, up my neck, and by the time it reached by head, I was suddenly given another supernatural epiphany.
I felt defenseless. I knew nothing besides the fact there was a paranormal event about to take place.