TKAM Scout's Journal #10

What happened tonight is nothing of comparison of any other nights of horror. This is a night of unexpected violence right in front of my eyes.  I guess this night can be classified as the longest journey of me and Jem together. It all happened because of  Mrs.Merryweather’s Halloween pageant show.

 As I got to the back stage with my custom on for at least half an hour, I began to feel tired and sleepy. The custom was warm and acted like a quilt, it’s pretty easy to fall asleep in there, and so I slept without anybody noticin’. And undoubtly I missed my role as a “pork”, and undoubtly enough, Mrs.Merryweather poured all her pageant failures to me and proposed that I am the reason of it. Even though it brought some sadness, the horror did not start there. It started as we,me ‘n’ Jem, made our ways back home. As went across the school yard I suddenly realized I forgot my shoe, but as we moved back to the school we saw the school light went off , so we decided to go back tomorrow for it. It was just then; we heard a sound comin’ behind us, a shuffling sound, a small, rapid shuffling sound, like shuffling-foot. At first we thought it was Cecil Jacob, who pulled the trick of scarin’ me ‘n’ Jem form the behind, but as we called his name, there were no response. We became scared. We walked as fast as we could across the school yard, towards the live oak tree, but the person behind us seemed to be movin’ faster, too. As we reached the oak tree, the sound ran to us. “Run Scout, Run!” was all I heard from Jem. I ran as fast as I possibly can inside that custom, with ten steps of distance, I fell. Then I heard a rippin’ sound, metal against metal, didn’t know what it was, I tried to become loose from my custom.  My head got loose and Jem went back for me and dragged me along. I was so tangled that we didn’t go very far. Then, it was Jem’s turn to scream. I heard Jem fall and the next thing I know, there were four people, including me, in the scene. I then heard somebody breathing heavily.”Jem?” Nobody Answered.  From there fear took over, and I thought Jem was dead, until I saw a man carrying what seemd to be Jem across the street. I blindly followed the man and found home, where I also saw Jem lyin’ on bed with Atticus, aunty, Dr. Reynold, and a man hidin’ in the dark corner. Later Atticus introduced me to Arthur Radley, it was that man who saved Jem. And undoubtly, it was Bob Ewell who attacked us and tried to hurt me with a knife but stabbed on by custom and got himself killed. I was lucky enough to walk with Mr. Arthur home, I found out he ain’t as bad as people describe him to be, and in fact he is a very kind-natured man. Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow, and he will not be conscious until the earliest tomorrow.

Hope Jem wakes up tomorrow to see the sun rise.