"Who said that?" Thomas asked.
"You can hear me?" the voice asked. "But I'm not talking."
"It sounds like you're talking to me," Thomas said. "Where are you?" he asked, still looking around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. Really, it didn't seem to be coming from anywhere, just all around him.
"That's kind of hard to explain."
"Well try."
"Have you seen a green-colored stone anywhere?" the voice asked.
"Yeah, I'm holding it."
"I think I'm inside it," the voice said.
"Excuse me?"
"I think I'm inside the stone."
Thomas looked around, a little more desperately this time. The voice belonged to a boy. He knew that much. And the boy must have been hiding somewhere. Thomas was definitely not going to believe that the voice was actually a disembodied one.
He looked under the car - no boy. He looked behind a row of bushes - no boy. He looked down the nearest alley - no boy. He started to worry that maybe the voice was right, as impossible as it seemed.
"Hello? Are you still there?" the voice asked.
Thomas wasn't sure what to say. Part of him wanted to help this "boy trapped in a stone", but another part of him wanted to be as far away from that place as possible and just forget that any of it happened. The last place he'd want to find himself was in a mental ward.
After some thought, Thomas decided to ...
