Gravel crunching underneath our boots. The wind in the trees. The house, with its peeling paint and decrepit structure, casting eerie shadows against the dying foliage scattered around it. The moon, bright and washing the color out of everything around us. It's like when we walk through the gate that's only hanging on by one hinge now, the saturation is drained from the world.
None of it helps me feel any better of coming over here. I pull at the sleeves of my sweatshirt, curl them around my fingers in hopes of warming them up. They're stiff from the chill in the air. Or the lack of circulation.
A gust of wind blows from behind the house. Fills the air with eerie whistling and groans from the house. Leaves skitter across the gravel driveway. One sticks to the toe of my shoe before joining the rest in their dash away from the house.
Kids at school boast about coming out here at night and going inside all the time. I'm not sure any of them actually do though. They just say they do and who is gonna prove them wrong? It's not like anyone pays attention to the house. It's easier to not look at it when you pass by. To ignore the looming darkness that seems to ooze out of the moldy siding.
It's been abandoned for nearly two decades, according to town gossip. I've never heard of anyone being remotely interested in buying the property. Even though it's a decent sized lot with a house that could be amazing if it were renovated, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to live here. Not with the vibe the house gives off.
The place gives me the heebie-jeebies.
"Do we really need to go in?" I tear my gaze away from the house. The tension between my shoulders eases slightly once the eye contact has been broken.
Kristi grins from ear to ear, showing off her pearly white teeth. "Why? Are you scared already?" In the moonlight, she looks like she could be mistaken for a ghost wandering the property with her platinum hair and pale skin. When I don't answer right away, she laughs. A single huff of breath that clouds in front of her face. "Ha, come on. It's not that bad. It's just a house. Right, Case?"
"Hm?" Casey tugs at the dark strands of her bangs that are poking out of her beanie. Her eyes focus on us, seem to come back to where we're standing on the driveway to the old Victorian house. "Sorry. I spaced for a minute. What was the question?"
"Molly says she's freaking out already and we've only gone through the gate."
"I never said I was freaking out. This place just gives me the creeps." I purposely keep my eyes away from the house, but I can feel it behind me. Towering over me. Laughing at the feeling growing in my stomach that we really should not be here.
"If Molly's uncomfortable, maybe we should just forget it," Casey says.
I feel the rock in my stomach dissolve a little. Casey's always dependable for things like that. Making sure when we do stuff together that everyone in the group is ok with what's happening. I send her a silent thank you and she smiles at me, that little smile that's really only the corners of her mouth curling up.
And then there's Kris. Who forgets to think about other people's feelings when she makes decisions sometimes. "Come on," she draws the o out longer than is necessary, "everything makes Molly uncomfortable. Will you two quit being sissies? Let's do this. It'll be fun, I promise." She rubs her hands together, blows on them and gives both of us a look. "Don't you want to be able to tell people that we have actually, truthfully, genuinely gone inside the creepy old Victorian?"
I feel my resolve to fight her about this fizzling away. My shoulders drop and my breath puffs out in a cloud of white that fades into the night air slowly. "Fine. Let's get it over with. I don't like being here."
Kris' face splits in another grin that's accompanied by a fist pump and that marks the start of our journey up the driveway. "Yes! Okay, let's make this interesting. How about, first one to chicken out has to pay for the snacks later? Cool?"
Casey and I nod. Kris claps her hands together once and spins towards the house on her heel, the gravel shifting beneath her sneaker. "Awesome! Onward, ladies!"
We start in a row, the three of us marching side by side towards the house. It doesn't take long for Kris to get ahead of us though. Her enthusiasm is like a string tied around her waist that's being reeled into the darkness surrounding the front porch. I wind up being last, my heart slamming harder and harder against my chest, my feet slowing more and more the closer I get to the house.
By the time Kris makes it up the steps and does her little victory shuffle, I'm basically dragging my feet through the little rocks of the driveway. Part of me hopes that if I dig my feet in deep enough, the gravel will just solidify and cement my feet to the ground so I won't be able to go any farther than I already have.
"You two are so slow!" Kris draws out the o again, leans against a pillar on the porch that looks like if she stays there too long it'll buckle in the middle and bring the whole roof down on top of her. "Come on, the dead move faster than you two do!"
"Yeah, yelling at us isn't going to make us come any faster, Kris." Casey pauses at the steps to stomp some of the gravel that's gotten stuck in the treads of her boots out. Halfway up the steps, she turns to me. "You doing okay, Molly?"
I'm stopped a few feet from the first step, my head tilted back as I stare at the house. There's a tower on the left side, the walls made of floor to ceiling windows. Moonlight would have illuminated that entire floor if the windows weren't boarded up. I let my eyes drift down the front of the house.
Something moves behind one of the windows on the second floor. Between a couple of boards that have broken in the middle and fallen away. I swear, there was something there. A darker spot in the shadows that moved across that spot. But when I blink, there's nothing there. Only the darkness that seems to eat the space around the house, sucking any light that could possibly be there.
I chalk it up to my nerves making me see things.
"Molly?"
"I'm fine," I lie. I force myself to move from the spot where my feet have rooted themselves to the ground, fold my arms over my chest to keep the chills that keep coming at bay. "It's just a lot bigger up close, y'know?"
Casey tips her head back and nods. "Yeah, it's pretty big."
"I bet it's even better on the inside." Kris jiggles the knob on the front door. "If I can get this stupid door open."
"Maybe it's locked?" Casey turns her focus to Kris, who is now pushing on the door with her hip.
I start up the steps. Stop only when I reach the top one.
"Who would lock it? It's just..." Kris gives the door a hard shove with her shoulder and it pushes open with a drawn out groan. She stumbles forward, into the pitch black of the house. "Oof. Stuck. I'm fine! Ugh, it smells weird in here. Like old people and wet garbage. People are definitely lying when they say they hang out in here." She keeps talking, but her voice fades as she goes further inside.
"Hey, Kris? I don't know if it's safe to wander too far in there! It's pitch black. You could get hurt!" I step up the last step, move carefully across the porch to where the door stands wide open. I can't see anything when I peer inside. There are strips of light coming in from the cracks between the broken boards on the windows, but the light ends in a hard line.
Everything outside of them is liquid darkness.
"Kris?"
"I'll go in and look for her," Casey says, her hand landing on my shoulder and making me jump. She slips past me, into the house. The darkness folds around her, swallows her whole as she moves deeper into it until I can't see her anymore.
I curl my fingers into fists, dig my nails into the meat of my palms. The house creaks and sighs with another gust of wind. I glance over my shoulder. Something rustles in a bush. Gravel shifts. Crunches. There's a shadow at the edge of the house, behind the railing of the porch. A darker spot in the shadows already there.
"Guys? Don't leave me out here alone!" I shoot a glance towards the shadow before stepping over the threshold of the door, only to find it gone. The floor groans in protest to me standing on it and I don't trust it enough not to fall away beneath me. It complains with every step I take. I hold my breath when I take the first step out of the square of light from the doorway. All that's ahead of me is a thick wall of black.
I can barely see my nose.
"Guys?" I fish my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and unlock the screen, squint against the harsh light of it. A few taps later and I've got the flashlight app on and pointed in front of me. It doesn't help much.
The room seems to go on forever. Nothing but empty space, rotting floorboards and inky darkness that looks like it's moving around the beam of my flashlight. My heart threatens to beat right out of my chest.
"Guys, this is really not funny at all. Where are you?"
There's a creak from an indiscernible direction. I still. My heart beats wildly. My hand shakes where it holds my phone out in front of me. Something brushes against the hood of my sweatshirt. I spin around, pointing the light around hastily, trying to illuminate anything. There's only the darkness.
A whisper comes close to my ear, "Molly."
I won't lie. I literally shriek. I shriek and drop my phone, my hand flying to cover my ear. My phone lands with a clatter, the screen down and the flashlight beam creating a small circle of light in front of me.
Kris' laugh echoes off the walls as she bends down to pick my phone up off the floor.
"Kris! You absolute asshole!" I place one hand over my heart, will it to settle down, and snatch my phone back with the other. "What are you trying to do? Give me a heart attack or something?"
"Aw," Kris drapes her arm over my shoulders and starts walking towards the door. "I'm sorry. It was too perfect of a moment to resist."
I glare at her from the corner of my eye. "Where's Casey?"
"Isn't she outside?" Kris stops walking.
"No, she came in after you did. I thought she found you?"
Her arm slips off my shoulders. "I didn't see her. But man, this place is so creepy. I think I'm in love." She pulls her own phone out and starts tapping away at the screen. The light from it casts weird shadows on her face. "You have to see these pictures I took." Her screen flickers a few times before shutting off. "What the hell?" She slaps the phone against her palm. "I had like eight-five percent left on my battery."
"Kris! Molly!" Casey's voice carries over from somewhere ahead of us.
"We're here! Where are you?" I shine my flashlight side to side a few times before the light blips out.
"I'm by the front door! I think the wind blew it shut! I can't see anything and my phone just died!"
"Ours too!" Kris yells back. "Keep talking, we'll have to follow your voice! Come on, Molly." She slips her hand into mine and I hold onto it tightly.
We walk carefully, hyperaware of the fact that we can't see anything and could possibly trip or fall into a hole in the floor. It takes some time, but we make it to the front door. To Casey. She's jiggling the doorknob frantically.
"I can't get it open. It must be stuck again."
"Let me try." Kris lets go of my hand, pushes Casey aside and starts tugging on the door. "Man, that is really stuck." She yanks on the knob a few more times before shooting a wicked smile over her shoulder. "It's like someone is pulling it shut from the other side."
I press my lips into a tight line, remember the shadow I saw outside.
"Don't even joke, Kris. What if we can't get out?"
"There's always the windows. Those boards are already half rotted away. It wouldn't be hard to break them and climb out." Kris gives the door one last tug and it pops open. "Or, we can just use the front door." She grins goofily at us before stepping outside.
Casey and I follow her out.
"See, now won't this be so much fun to tell everyone about back at school on Monday?" Kris throws her arms over our shoulders as we all walk down the steps.
"I think I could have lived without having ever been inside this house," I tell her.
"You're a better person for having done something outside of your comfort zone. Trust me, this was a good experience for you." She takes her arms off us and runs ahead a few feet. "Well, ladies. We all made it inside, so no one chickened out. But!" She holds a hand up. "Molly took the longest getting through the front door so that makes her the loser of the night and designated cash cow for the evening! Let's go get some snacks!"
"Anything to get away from this house," I mutter.
Casey gives me a sympathetic smile and goes to catch up with Kris. I stuff my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt and focus on the crunch of the leaves and gravel beneath my boots instead of the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I look back up the driveway as we leave through the gate. If I see someone standing on the porch, I chalk it up to my nerves making me see things.
~~~
Snacks are only three blocks away. A ten minute walk if we don't take our sweet time getting over there. The air in front of us is cloudy from our breath. Casey mimes taking a long drag from a cigarette and then coughing the smoke out. It's enough to make me smile.
The stoplight on the corner before the small grocery store is red, the crosswalk's do not walk sign lit up. I bounce on the balls of my feet to keep myself warm while we wait for the light to change. Above us, the streetlight flickers on and off quickly. On and off. Then off. The stoplight casts everything in an unnerving shade of red. I glance up at the streetlight as it flickers one more time before staying on. The stoplight turns green and the crosswalk announces that it is okay to cross now. Kris pulls Casey's beanie over her eyes before hopping off the curb.
The parking lot of the store is mostly empty. Only a few cars parked in a cluster towards the front of the store remain. The store's lights reflect off the car windows and the scattered puddles in the parking lot that we all do our best to avoid stepping in.
The sliding doors open with a whoosh, a bell signaling our entry. As I walk through the doorway, I'm hit with a wall of warm air that almost burns against my chilled skin. It's an uncomfortable transition from the cold of the night to the stuffy heat of the store. I push the sleeves of my sweatshirt up to my elbows as my skin starts to thaw out.
"Alright," I look at each of my friends. "I've only got like fifteen bucks on me right now. So don't go too crazy." At that, I give a very pointed look at Kris, who sticks her tongue out at me.
"I'm going to grab some mini donuts, okay?" Casey asks as she walks backwards towards an aisle. "We'll meet up by the soda?"
"Sure," I reply, glancing back at Kris to see that she had already taken off. I head towards aisle one, not sure what I'm in the mood for yet. I absently pull my phone from my pocket to find that it's still turned off. Pushing the power button a few times proves to do absolutely nothing, so I stuff the phone back in my pocket.
Casey said hers had died too. And Kris' died when she had said she'd had an almost full charge on the battery. I can't remember how my battery was looking, but it must have been low since it didn't want to turn back on.
I wind up in the snack aisle, staring at the rows of candy. My body has mostly thawed and the longer I stand there, the warmer I get. I unzip my sweatshirt and shake my hair out, feeling the dampness from the mist outside. It must have been the bright wrappers, but candy starts to sound like the best thing in the world right then.
I wander down the aisle slowly, reading the names off each of the candies on the shelves. I make it about halfway before a voice stops me in my tracks.
"Well, well. Look who it is."
My shoulders rise towards my ears and I find myself suddenly very interested in what Skittles are made of exactly. I figure, if I ignore the source of the voice for long enough, he'll eventually just disappear.
Right.
Not likely.
He'd keep talking to me even if I melted into a little puddle on the floor. That's Carson in a nutshell right there. He lives on my street. The one with the creepy Victorian across from my house and the even creepier guy living next door to me. Though, Carson isn't so much creepy as just a creep. It's not his age, because he's not that much older than me. He recently turned twenty-three, so there's only a four year difference between us. But still. I'm still technically in high school, while it is my senior year and I am already eighteen, that doesn't excuse the fact that ninety-percent of the time, his attention is completely unwanted.
Also, I'm pretty sure Carson likes me.
"Fancy seeing you here, kitten."
His favorite pass time is pestering me.
I lift my eyebrows at the nickname—his preferred method of referring to me—but don't bother to look away from the package of candy in my hand. "Yeah, imagine that. Running into someone at the grocery store. What are the odds?" I catch him smiling at me from the corner of my eye.
"So, what are you doing out so late?"
I roll my eyes. "It's not late. Barely even eight." I put the Skittles back and grab something else at random, just for an excuse to walk away. But of course, he follows me. I head towards the soda aisle where all hopes of a quick escape are squashed upon arrival. My friends aren't here yet. I sigh, resigned to my fate of having to talk to Carson. He'd never just leave.
"What are you doing out?" I give him a terse smile. "I wasn't aware hermits actually left their houses. I actually kind of always assumed you had your food shipped to your door."
Carson smiles again, a genuine smiles with those stupid dimples of his and everything. "Ah, I see what that is." He reaches behind my head, his arm brushing against my shoulder, and grabs a soda off the shelf. "You think you're being funny." Using his free hand, he reaches up and tweaks my nose. "That's adorable."
I swat his hand away from my face and cover my nose. "Don't touch my face. Besides, I am funny. You might not understand my humor though. It tends to go over some people's heads. My friends are the only ones who appreciate it."
"Of course. Your friends. Is that who you're hanging out with right now? Are they here with us?" He waves to the empty aisle, laughing when I frown at him.
"Shut up. You can't keep making jokes like that when you've actually met my friends before. It defeats the purpose if you know they exist."
"But if I didn't make jokes about you, you wouldn't talk to me." He smiles again, though this one doesn't quite reach his eyes and the dimples are absent. It makes my stomach coil uncomfortably to see that smile on his face. It doesn't look right.
"I talk to you all the time," I tell him.
"Conversations forced by your mother do not count as conversations, Molly." He tries to keep the fake smile on his face, but it cracks about mid-sentence. "It's alright though. I'll take forced conversations over none at all."
My face feels hot. I'm sure whether it's because of Carson or if it just got warmer in the store all of a sudden. I hope for the latter. Thankfully, I don't need to respond to that because I'm saved by a dark haired angel.
"Hey! Sorry that took forever. I couldn't decide on what kind to get that would be okay with everyone. Then Kris was MIA so I had to go look for—" Casey looks up from the donuts she's holding and lets out a sputtered laugh. "Oh gosh, sorry. Did I just totally cut into your conversation?"
Kris pops up next to Casey then and wiggles her fingers at Carson, which is amazing in itself since her hands are full of junk food. "Hey, Carson."
"How's it going?" Carson smiles at them, really smiles. Flashes them teeth and dimples and little squinty eyes. I feel my mouth tug down at the corners as he glances in my direction. "Did you guys walk here? I didn't see your mom's car in the parking lot, Molly. Do you want a ride back? It's freezing outside."
I see Kris' eyes light up and jump in before she can say something that would completely ruin the night. "We're good! Thanks though. It's not too bad outside right now and we just feel like walking tonight. Especially Kristi, with all that excess energy she's got." I shoot her a look and she rolls her lips into her mouth with a nod.
"Yup, we're good with walking."
"Thanks for the offer though." I plaster a smile on my face and go to stand with my friends. "I'll see you around Carson." I grab both Casey and Kris by their arms and haul them out of the aisle. As we walk away, I can hear the faint response from Carson.
"Sure thing, kitten."
After we pay for our snacks and are out in the parking lot, Kris lets out the longest, most exaggerated sigh and says, "Carson is seriously hot."
"Seriously hot for Molly," Casey amends.
I spit out a laugh, but look over my shoulder at the store. "Yeah, right. Carson is..." My eyes land on a shadow near the edge of the building, in a spot just outside the light from the windows. A chill runs down my spine as I stare at it. It's there and then it isn't. I blink a few times before turning away. "Carson is a total weirdo. C'mon, let's get back to my house and watch a movie or something."