Yet another story started...

CHAPTER ONE

The harsh summer breeze lashed through the trees that lined the homes on Meadowbrook Avenue. The boiling summer heat that the residents had experienced just a year ago had vanished. This year, all over the neighborhood, and through all of England for that matter, residents were hibernating in their homes. Down every street the rumbling furnaces could be heard blazing to fight the strange cold.

Every night on Meadowbrook Avenue the businessmen and women rushed home from their jobs bundled up in scarves, gloves, and hats to scurry into their homes in the quickest most efficient way possible. The jingling of keys and locking of doors could be heard as residents secured every lock and window to keep the cold out. Yet it was a losing battle.

Were it not for the brilliant full moon in the sky the Village would have seemed deserted, yet in the icy-clear of that night, if one were looking, one would have seen a small window quietly creek open on the top floor of one of the homes. A skinny, blond haired boy sat shivering by the windowpane attempting to lower his pet lizard out into the night.

The boy seemed to be encouraging the lizard to brace the outdoors. The lizard looked at the boy and begrudgingly stepped down onto the windowpane.

“Come on Lizzy.” The boy said proding the lizard with his index finger, “You haven’t eaten a week. You’ve got to try to find something.”

The lizard wiggled back into the bedroom.

“No, no.” the boy reproved, “Back out.”

With a more forceful push of his index finger, the boy scooted the lizard out the window.

She turned and nipped at the boy’s hand. Tura rubbed his index finger, which dripped a warm shade of scarlet down onto the snow-laden windowpane.

“Silly old sod.” The boy remarked as he shut the window and watched his beautiful lizard’s scales shimmer as she shimmied down the drainpipe.

Tura heard the familiar rumble of the furnace from the basement kick in followed by the rumble of his own stomach. He walked out of his room and down the two flights of stairs. Just before he reached the bottom floor he heard the television from the living room.

“In related news,” the newsreader recited, “Another series of abnormal behavior has been captured on CCTV. You may want to put the little ones out of the room for this one. As you can clearly see, this footage you’re watching shows a man in a purple cap suddenly appearing near the Tower Bridge in London. If you watch closely you’ll see he’s pulling something from behind his cloak—that’s right he’s wearing some sort of cloak—but it appears that he is pulling a large knife from his cloak. Just out of shot we can see the bobby on guard fall over apparently knocked out. Though the man doesn’t make contact with the bobby, the screen did go fuzzy for just under one second.

“London officials aren’t commenting on this peculiar scene, but they are saying the man in the fedora may also be involved in Bus 219 missing from outside of the Kensington Gardens earlier this week. The Prime Minister, had this comment to make, ‘While the cuh-cuh-current state of the nation seems uneasy, I urge everyone to rest assured that we have cuh-cuh-contacted the—proper guard to assist in defending the good people of Britain.’

“As for other news, the weather…”

Tura wondered about these strange events. Just last week he had ridden on Bus 219 to Kensington Gardens and had sat by a man wearing an odd sort of jacket and a peculiarly colored fedora. He couldn’t remember, but it may have been purple. Or was it maroon?