Those Most Apt to Crash: A Halloween Story - Part 1

            Kara only discovers her bike is leaning after she rounds the bend and collides with a gust of cold air that easily seeps through her pajamas. The shock sends her juddering upright, her gaze lifting from the crumbling road before the lead tire into the night-blackened trees beyond. She braces against the chill before being distracted by the hulking silhouette of the house edging into view, its upstairs windows gazing back at her through a delta of inky black branches spilling skyward in thin rivulets carved into the yellow gray clouds. With her eyes involuntarily locked on their invisible cracked glass, she succumbs to a liquid slackening of her features and her limbs.

            The stories all the neighbor kids tell about this place typically end with some mysterious figure seen through these same windows, a sight to send even the bravest middle schooler scampering home. Kara sees nothing through the dark but the white wooden frames she knows from daylight visits to the end of the driveway are fading and flaking to a dull gray. She peers deeper. Rising from the seat and leaning over the handlebars, she barely notices her cold-stiffened skin bunching up around her eyes as the wind bites into her fingers. When she glimpses movement, she can’t tell if the shapes are real or something she’s imagining. Glaring with such intensity, she forgets to watch for the entrance to the driveway, until she’s moments from reaching it.

            Suddenly aware of her surroundings again, Kara feels her breath catch in her throat. Something is wrong. She pulls her eyes from the house to scan the road ahead. Crystal is coming up on the driveway, but she’s not slowing down. Kara watches as her sister stands up and makes a straining lurch to her left, forcing the pedal down with all her might before springing back to her right to start again. This graceless bobbing from side to side picks up momentum as the mottled white blur of her pajamas recedes into the gloom.

            She’s more mad than frightened. Crystal must be playing a joke on her. Still, determined as Kara is not to fall for it, she has no idea what to do. She thinks about turning into the driveway Crystal has already raced past and waiting defiantly at the end of it. Probably a better idea, though, to turn around and ride home.

            Yes, that’s what she should do.

            It’s decided.

            Kara passes the driveway, gathering speed, wondering what’s keeping her chasing after her sister. She wants to catch up to Crystal so she can ask her why she didn’t turn and ride up to the old spooky house like they planned. Because it isn’t a joke, as much as Kara wants it to be. The way Crystal lifted herself off the seat, driving one pedal down then the other, it tells Kara she saw something. Or heard something. She must have. Finally, she manages to take in enough air to shout, “Crystal, what are you doing?” The white of Crystal’s pajamas continues to fade. Kara lowers her head and drives down hard with one foot then the other.

            Far beyond the driveway that was supposed to mark their destination, they reach a slope that has them speeding up even more. Icy streaks of wetness stream across her cheeks and whimpers burble from her mouth even as she tells herself not to panic. The road is dark. It isn’t safe to be hurtling down the hill this fast. She keeps lifting and pushing with her feet as hard as she can. The only thing more distressing than the breakneck speed is the thought of watching the white blur ahead shrink to nothing. Now the tears are sailing toward her ears. Her mind roars with the thought, “You have to stop!” even as she strains to move faster, to keep her sister in view. The tension between thought and action fills her with a frenzied elation, like she’s breaking through some unacknowledged barrier into a new frontier of untrammeled chaos.

            They’re approaching the highway now. She won’t ride into traffic, Kara assures herself. She won’t try to cross. She can’t. Oh, what can she be thinking?

            Accepting she has no chance of catching up to her sister before she reaches the intersection, Kara keeps her head up and her eyes on the distant shape in the road. The wind splashes cold and loud over her wetted ears, but she knows if she stops she’ll hear the rushing traffic. Oh God, what if she wants to kill herself? What if this is how she’s doing it? Her elation reduces to panic. She pedals harder, as hard as she can. The road evens out. She’s losing speed. Crystal must be slowing down too.

            The bike jounces beneath her. Kara looks down for the pothole she’s ridden over as she desperately grips the handlebar, releasing a loud cry as she overcorrects in a vain search for her center of balance. She knows she’s about to crash. She squeezes shut her eyes. Moments later, she opens them to find herself still upright, still pursuing her sister. God, why is she doing this? Why won’t she just stop and tell me what happened? There’s the highway ahead now in full view, traffic lights and all. Kara has another terrifying thought. This is the road their dad takes on his way home from work, and he’ll have ended his shift by now. He’s going to see them both on their bikes in their pajamas when they should be home getting ready for bed.

            “Crystal!” she tries calling again.

            But where is she? Kara has been so distracted by the hole and the thought of their dad catching them she’s failed to notice the ghostly blur has vanished. “Crystal!” she cries again, putting her head down for one last burst. She thrusts her feet down against the pedals with all the strength she can muster, grunting pathetically, before looking up to see she’s coming up on the intersection. Crystal is nowhere to be seen. There are only the glinting colors of cars whooshing past, each bulldozing its own giant scoop of light over the pavement.

            She slows to a stop, her face contorting in preparation for a sob as she pants, snot blocking the flow of air into her nostrils. All she can do is stare ahead with wet, frantic eyes, as she’s too acutely bereft to resist taking in the horrific tragedy she knows she’s about to discover. The opposite side of the road is visible from where she stands on her toes with the bike between her legs. Where is it? Where did Crystal’s body fall?

            “Kara, get down here! Dad might be coming home right now.”

            She leaps away from her bike, letting it clang noisily to the asphalt. There’s her sister, crouched in the grassy trench running alongside the highway, her bike lying next to her. Kara has her arms around her sister’s neck before she hears, “Get your bike out of the road! Hurry up!” She drops her arms and springs back to her bike. Picking it up and turning back toward Crystal, she thinks of her mom’s habit of saying one of her kids “could be lying in a ditch on the side of the road for all I know.” Well, here is Crystal, not lying, but squatting in a ditch cut parallel to the highway, her darkening blond hair still pulled neatly back in a ponytail, her pajama legs tapering into the tops of her gym shoes.

            “Crystal, what are you doing? Why did you ride past the house? Dad’s going to see us here and we’re going to get in trouble.”

            “Just get down and be quiet for a second. I need to think.”

            “Think about what? I don’t understand what you’re doing. I was really scared. I thought maybe you were going to—”

            “I just needed to get away and think because I got really mad and I just… I just wanted to pedal as hard and as fast as I could. I don’t know why. That’s why I need a minute to think.”

            Kara hears her sister panting and notices her eyes are roving violently over the scene. “Okay,” she says, “but can we get away from the highway. I don’t think we should be this close and we need to get back home before Mom figures out we’re gone.”

            “I’m not stupid! I know we need to go home. Do you really want to go past that house again?”

            Kara opens her mouth but can’t think of a word to say. So Crystal really did see something when they rode past. She turns to look up and down the length of the highway. “Is there another way to get home?”

            “I don’t think so, but that’s the other reason I need to think.”

            The girls sit on their heels by their bikes, watching the cars and trucks stream past. Kara wants to ask more questions, but she knows Crystal doesn’t want to talk yet. Sometimes, Kara knows, you have to arrange your thoughts before you speak, and it’s annoying when someone keeps asking you questions before you know what to say.

            She can’t help turning now and looking at her sister from the side of her eye. Sure, thoughts get jumbled up, and it’s hard to figure out why you seem the way you do to someone else. But something else is going on with Crystal, something strange. Lately, it’s as if two Crystals were living in the same body. The first is the one Kara has always known. The other makes no sense. And old Crystal is always struggling to account for this new Crystal’s weird behavior. Kara figures it must be feelings, which are often confusing, at the bottom of this struggle. Yes, Crystal must be battling new feelings, wild ones, pushing and pulling her this way and that, as she stumbles, trips, and staggers to keep to some straightforward path ahead. Mom says it will happen to me too, Kara thinks, when I’m a teenager.

            “Okay, I’ve got it,” Crystal says. “There’s no other way back. We could go along the highway and take the next road, but we would end up going in a big circle and we wouldn’t be home for over an hour. So we have to go back along this road, back by the house. What we’ll do is cross to the opposite side of the street when we pass the driveway and go as fast as we can get these bikes to go.”

            “Crystal, did you see something when we passed before, something scary? Is that why you didn’t stop? Is that why you started pedaling faster?”

            Kara watches Crystal in the dim light cast by the headlights of a few passing cars. Her sister never bothers about her looks, so she has an unkempt, sporty appearance, with a habitual expression of mild impatience, like anyone she encounters is keeping her from some important task she would otherwise glide effortlessly toward completing. Now an edge of serious intensity tinged with bewilderment eclipses that natural ease of intention. Her eyes go blurry for a moment before she says, as if reading aloud in class, “No, I didn’t see anything. I just felt like I needed to go, to go as fast as I could.”

            “But why didn’t you stop like we planned? We were going to leave a message for Gloria, one she would never see. Remember? Because she wasn’t telling the truth about going in that house. Because she was too scared and we were going to prove it.”

            “I remember. It was my idea.”

            “Then why didn’t you stop?”

            “I just told you.”

            Crystal lifts her head to check the highway in the direction their dad will be coming from. Then she stands with a determined air and hoists her bike upright. “Come on,” she says walking at a tilt while gripping the handlebars. “We’ve had enough time to catch our breath.”

            Kara realizes she’s still breathing hard but thinks better of asking for more time. She lifts her own bike and hurries to keep up. But then, without deciding to, she stops. “Crystal!” she yells suddenly, almost angrily, surprising herself.

            Her sister stops and turns to face her. “What?”

            “I was really scared. Please don’t take off like that again. Please don’t leave me behind.”

            Crystal squints her eyes and presses her chin into her chest. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t want to leave Kara behind. Something just came over her. “Okay, Kara. You’re right. I never should’ve taken off without you. I promise I won’t do it again.”

            Kara opens her mouth to ask again why she did. Seeing Crystal turn around, swing her leg over the bike and raise herself up over the seat with the effort of thrusting herself onward, she decides she can ask again when they’re safe at home. She takes a few running paces alongside her own bike before leaping on.

            When they reach the hill, Kara is alarmed by the tiredness in her legs and the strain in her lungs. She stands to crank the post, hearing the teeth of the main gear grip the links of the chain. In her imagination, she jumbles the creak of steel against oily steel with the jagged ache on top of her thighs. Maybe muscles are like chains and gears. What makes them all go? How do they know when the right time is? Maybe one of Crystal’s chains has a jammed link that somehow made her need to go fast when she wanted to stop. Kara tries to feel herself forming the intention to drive her foot down before it starts its descending swoop. But all she’s aware of is the desire to move forward, after her sister, and the effortful churning of her legs, as if they somehow already know exactly what they must do. If there are chains inside her, she has no sense of them.

            Crystal, true to her word, maybe a little tired herself, takes to the hill at a medium pace. Through the darkness, Kara watches her head droop between her arms, bent at the elbows, as she leans forward to chug up the incline. No, Kara thinks, there can’t be chains or anything like that inside her sister. What’s going on under her skin and beneath her skull isn’t like some machine with tiny blocks and springs you could take apart to find out how it works. That’s the stuff that goes on in boys, which is why they like machines and trucks and tools. This is a different kind of mystery, more like what goes on in the woods when it’s dark and all the people are in their beds, a girlish type of mystery.

            Cranking her own way up the hill, Kara tries to keep her eyes on the trees to either side of the road. It’s a game she often plays to imagine all the hidden goings on in the forest surrounding their neighborhood, where no humans dwell. Even now, she thinks, if you look hard enough into the black spaces, you’ll be able to see strange movements, like you saw through those windows before you had to chase after Crystal. Yes, that kind of thing is probably much more like what’s going on with Crystal’s insides. Some shadowy figure is moving around, messing things up. You have to look close though. And even then you can’t be totally sure you saw it.

            Even though Crystal is pedaling at a more relaxed pace, Kara is frustrated to find she needs to work hard to keep up, especially since what she really wants is to ride up alongside her. What she definitely doesn’t want is to be this far back when they pass the house. Will Crystal slow down for her when they get close? But then they’d both have to speed up in another minute anyway. Kara’s own insides start to go shaky again as the distance to the house dwindles with each revolution of the main gear. Had Gloria, just one year older than Kara, two years younger than Crystal, really gone inside the house as she claimed? Sure, she opened her dark-lined eyes big and told everyone she’d been scared to death the whole time. But had she really gone? Or did she just want to tell everyone a story?

            Kara thinks back to that afternoon. Her sense of there being something off about Gloria’s story was too irritating. She had to speak up. “My dad says awful things happened to the girls who lived there, and there’s no point poking around that place now.” She knew she’d made a mistake as soon as the words left her mouth.

            “Oh, you should really listen to your dad, Kara. I’ve heard those stories and they’re not for small children. He’s right about the house too. There’s no reason to go anywhere near there. It’s just dirty inside, with lots of broken glass and things to trip on. It’s no place for kids.”

            “That’s not what I meant, Gloria. I could hear the stories too if I wanted. And I’m not afraid of glass or tripping.”

            “It’s okay, Kara. I only went myself because there were older kids going. I was scared the whole time. I didn’t mean you couldn’t go. I’m sure you would be fine. I’m just saying there’s no point, you know.”

            Kara pedals harder. Gloria talked to her like a baby. And she did it on purpose, in front of all their friends—well, in front of a couple of her friends. Kara wanted to say something witty, something that would make it plain to everyone what Gloria was doing, but without sounding too mean, without making them think she was mad. She remembers fantasizing about digging around for some of Gloria’s secrets. Then the next time she talked down to her, she would be ready to hit back. She might not even have to mention anything out loud, as long as Gloria knew that she knew. But when she told Crystal about what Gloria had done, her big sister came up with an even better idea.

            “That Gloria,” Crystal said as they sat on the couch that evening vacantly flipping through channels, “she gets under my skin.”

            Kara was surprised Crystal even knew who Gloria was. “Why does she get under your skin?” She couldn’t imagine her sister letting Gloria talk down to her.

            “So,” Crystal said, ignoring the question, “she was telling you and some other girls about how she went to that old house on Campbell Road. But you don’t think she actually went there?”

            “Well, I just don’t think it sounded like she did. She said stuff like, ‘It’s dirty.’ But she didn’t tell us anything interesting, you know? Maybe she did go and the place is just boring. But I don’t think she was there.”

            “You know what we could do?”

            That’s when Crystal hatched her scheme. Kara loved it. It was perfect. The only problem was when Crystal got to the driveway, instead of turning in, she kept going. She pedaled all the way to the highway as fast as she could. Now they’re topping the rise on their way back, and Kara knows they’ll be passing the house again soon. She leans forward to pedal harder, determined to catch up to Crystal before it’s time to sprint past the place again.

            She makes up the distance faster than she expected. Crystal is slowing down for her. Kara comes within ten feet of Crystal’s back tire at the same time the stand of trees hiding the house emerges from the gloom. Worried she may have used up the last of her energy, Kara stands up on the pedals, preparing for the sprint. To her astonishment, Crystal remains seated, pedaling almost idly. This is maddening. When she’s supposed to stop, she speeds up. When she’s supposed to speed up, she slows down. Kara gets closer, a vague reticence taking hold so that even though she’s desperate for answers, and even though she’s getting a little mad, she keeps her mouth shut. There’s no telling what that growing wildness inside Crystal will make her do next.

            Kara is so focused on her sister’s bizarre behavior she barely registers the approach of the driveway. When Crystal slows even more and turns onto the gravel, Kara is too dumbfounded to be scared—at first. Swerving in behind her sister, she casts a wary glance at the windows, which always seem to be glaring right back at her, before turning to Crystal and shouting in a whisper, “Did you change your mind? Are we going inside now?”

            Crystal coasts to a stop, leaning to post her right foot on the ground. Kara grips the break and softly skids to a halt beside her. “Listen Kara. I wasn’t forthcoming with you earlier.” She doesn’t whisper, but her voice is low.

            “Forthcoming? I don’t know what that means.”

            “It means there was something I wasn’t telling you.” Her shoulders rise and collapse as she releases a dramatic a sigh. “A couple days ago I saw Gloria talking to Nick.”

            Kara already understands. Crystal likes Nick. Not that she’s ever said she does. Kara can just sort of tell. She talks about him a lot, for one thing, often criticizing or complaining or making fun. Whenever she talks about him, Kara gets the sense that she’s putting too much effort into pretending to be casual. Her dismissiveness is a charade. Or not a charade but a mask. Kara only recognizes this in her sister because she herself likes a boy named Keith, but she’d be mortified if anyone knew about her crush—at least before Keith lets her know if he likes her in return. Kara feels compelled to commiserate but decides to keep silent in case Crystal is embarrassed.

            “I don’t even know what they were talking about,” Crystal says. “I just saw her put her hand on his forearm and then lean back and laugh and he seemed really happy and I hated it. I don’t know why. I don’t even like him. Well, I sort of like his eyes. They’re, like, complicated. But I never thought about going on dates with him or anything like that. It’s just—I don’t know—I thought he maybe liked me. And even though I don’t like him I liked him liking me. Does that even make sense? And Gloria is all frilly and tries to be all sexy and important. It drives me nuts.”

            Kara wants to say something reassuring, but she’s at a loss. She opens her mouth to tell Crystal Nick does like her, but then she’s not sure that’s what Crystal wants to hear. Does she want to hear that she’s pretty too, that she could maybe get more of Nick’s attention if she wore dresses and did up her hair like Gloria always does? Or would that make her mad? These new wild feelings are impossible to navigate around.

            Crystal turns to look at her. It’s easy enough for them to see each other’s outlines in the dark, but making out expressions is hard. Somehow, Crystal seems to see Kara is distressed. “It’s so stupid. I don’t even know why I’m telling you. I just want you to know I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m your big sister and it’s my job to look out for you. I shouldn’t have taken off and left you behind like that.”

            “Why did you?”

            “I got mad. When we rounded the bend, I saw the upstairs windows and I stared in as hard as I could. I thought I saw something move, like something swaying back and forth. But I kept looking and it was gone. Then I didn’t know if I’d seen anything at all. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just a reflection, or something in my eye. I couldn’t see it. But then there was the driveway and I… and I…”

            “You didn’t want to turn in.”

            “I couldn’t, Kara. I was terrified.” She chokes back a sob. “And that made me so mad. It made me mad because I wanted to help you prove that Gloria was lying about going into the house. I wanted to embarrass her so Nick stops liking her. But I’m the embarrassing one. Plus, I wanted to go in because I don’t believe the stories. I think they’re stupid and made up. And there’s no point in being scared. But I couldn’t help it. It made me furious.”

            “It’s okay, Crystal. I won’t tell anyone what you just told me. I promise. What are we going to do now, though? Aren’t we going home?”

            “Even if you don’t tell anyone, I’ll still know. You’ll still know. And I can’t have you thinking your big sis is a fraidy cat. If you’re too scared to go inside, it’s okay. But I have to go. I’m going to do what we said we were going to do.”

            “Crystal, I thought I saw something too. It was just like you said. I looked hard and thought I saw it, but then I kept looking and it was gone. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go in there. Can’t we just go home?”

            “You can wait here if you need to, but I have to go.”

            “But why? I don’t want to wait out here by myself.”

            Crystal drops her head again. Then she lifts her gaze toward her sister. “Kara, I’ll ride home with you if you really want me to. I’ll have to come back though. If Dad is getting home, I’ll wait and sneak back out after he goes to bed. I’m going in that house tonight. I already decided.”

            Kara thinks she’s about to tell Crystal that she does want to be taken home first. Instead, she sits silent on her bike, listening to the breeze wend its way through the millionfold branches surrounding her and her sister. If Crystal takes her back home first, she’ll be out for at least another hour. She’ll be at much greater risk of getting caught. And she’ll be right back here, by herself.

            “What do you say? You up for an adventure?”

            Kara sits not saying anything, sinking in a vat of dread. She can’t go in that house. She can’t leave her sister here on her own. The tears well up in her eyes. A sob starts to bubble up from her throat.

            “Kara,” Crystal says, “I wouldn’t take you in there if I thought there was any real danger.”

            Kara covers her mouth with her hand until she’s able to swallow back her urge to cry. “Okay, Crystal, but if anything happens, we run back to our bikes and go home as fast as we can. I mean, if we see anything. Or hear anything. Or…”

            “Kara, it’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you. Now, let’s get in there, write our message to Gloria, and get our butts back home before Mom notices we’re gone.”

            Kara closes her eyes and holds her breath for three beats before saying, “Okay, let’s go, but don’t go anywhere without me. I’m really scared.”

            They both push off with their planted foot and continue their ride up the gravel drive. Kara keeps her eyes on the space in front of her tire. A strange feeling of weightlessness and warmth, like soda left in a hot car, flows out along her arms and legs. It may be that every joint in her body is about to lock up, causing her to topple like a block of wood onto the ground. It may also be that if the situation calls for it, she’ll be able to jump ten feet in the air and remain hovering there until she needs to come back to earth.

            Kara’s pulse throbbing in her ears brings her attention to her tingling lobes and the dry hollow crunch of her tires pinching the gravel, the drawn-out owlish querying of the wind, and the creaking and clacking of the cold-hardened branches. The air is heavy, despite the cold, and smells of grass and asphalt and wet dirt. She tells herself it’s just rocks and trees and mud on a cold spring night. It doesn’t have to be scary just because it’s nighttime. You’ve got to be brave for Crystal. Whatever is going on with her, you don’t need to understand to know she needs your help right now. Plus, you’ll be able to go back to school tomorrow and tell everyone you were here, that you left a message, and that whoever wants to prove how brave she is can go see what it says.

            But what if Gloria just has some older, braver kid go in the house and read the message for her? Kara, horrified, squeezes the break and skids to a stop. The whole plan is unraveling. She looks up and sees she’s only a short distance from the giant beech tree that stands in front of the house, the one the girls tried to jump into from the windows she was looking into from the road. That’s what the stories say anyway. Crystal has already dismounted and leaned her bike against the far side of the porch. Kara is so eager to salvage their plan, she forgets to monitor her intensifying fear, almost forgets she’s afraid. “Crystal,” she shouts again in a whisper. “The plan isn’t going to work because Gloria will probably just have someone else go in the house and read the message for her.”

            Crystal, standing before the stairs leading up to the porch, leans back to look the house up and down before turning toward Kara. “How much will it matter by then?” Her voice is still low, but there’s a new facet to its tone—impatience or defiance or a seriousness that won’t be derailed by anyone’s foolishness. “Everyone will know you were here. And if she’s able to tell us what the message says, then we just ask her about the other message in the basement. If she comes back to read the message in the basement, well, she’ll just look stupid for letting you make her go back and forth.”

            After considering this strategy, Kara moves toward the porch with her sense of mission restored. Then she realizes there’s a problem. “But we can’t go in the basement. That’s where it happened. That’s where they say the horrible stuff happened to those girls.”

            “Kara, do you even know what people say happened down there?”

            A sliver of the rage she felt during her encounter with Gloria returns. “It’s not because I’m afraid,” she says, forgetting to whisper. “I just thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it. Dad said it was awful stuff and there was no reason to go poking around.”

            “Then Gloria comes along, talking all big, and you find out she not only knows the story, but she’s even been to the house. That’s why you got so mad, right?”

            Kara looks down at the hastily tied laces of her shoe. “Will you tell me?” she mutters. “But not now! Will you tell me after we’re done? When we’re back home?”

            “I talked to Dad about this place last week,” Crystal says, still facing the entrance. “Turns out, he had a lot to say. One thing he told me, which I’ll tell you now, is that as kids we all want to be the most mature. It’s like a contest. A race. There’s a whole world of adult stuff waiting for us, he said, and we look up to the kids who seem to learn about it all before the rest of us. But he said parents try to protect their kids from that same stuff they’re trying to learn about, because it’s too confusing or too scary for them. Kids need to learn how to deal with their emotions first because adult stuff makes you feel really strong ones. He said it’s nice to be kids and think the world is great and you can do anything. Once you’re old, you look around and see everyone else just gets old too, and no one gets what they want, and there’s a lot of horrible stuff that happens along the way.”

            Crystal puts her left hand on the banister and mounts the first step before craning to face Kara. “So us kids try to learn about all the adult stuff to impress our friends, but if we find out too much before we’re ready, life can start to seem worse than it really is. He said, ‘Don’t worry about the kids who are going faster. They’re the ones most apt to crash.’ But you know what I say? The slow ones are the ones most apt to get left behind. If being an adult is all about handling your feelings, then I’m going to make myself learn how to handle mine. I don’t want to just watch horrible stuff happen while I get old and never get what I want. That’s just not acceptable. That’s why I’m going inside. We’ll go upstairs first. Then I’m going in the basement. You can wait at the top of the stairs. Then when we get home I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

            “I don’t understand why you have to go in the basement.”

            “Because I’m scared!” she says stepping down and turning to face Kara full on. “I’m so scared of going down there I hate it. Look at me, I’m crying just thinking about it. But I know there’s nothing down there that can hurt me. I’m scared for no reason. So it’s a perfect opportunity to learn how to not be afraid.”

            Kara wants to object, but now she understands. Now she thinks maybe it’s a good opportunity for her too. If she goes inside and sees there’s nothing to be afraid of, she’ll have passed Gloria in that race Dad talked to Crystal about. There’s only one point in her sister’s reasoning Kara has doubts about. “How can you be sure there’s nothing down there that can hurt you?”

            “I can’t,” Crystal says, swiping at her eyes. Is she smiling? “But I’m about to find out.” She turns, climbs the stairs, steps up to the door, and twists back to say, “You coming?”

            Kara takes a fortifying breath and wills her right foot to take the first step toward the stairs. The trick she uses to overcome the fear holding her in place is to imagine Gloria’s face as she hears all about what’s really in the house, beyond the dull and obvious dust and glass and things to trip on. What’s really propelling her onto the porch and through the front door—a sheet of particle board held with loose nails to the inside of the frame, easily pushed in at the corner—is the sight of her sister entering the house in front of her. She understands now that she’ll go wherever Crystal goes. As strong as her fear is, though, the fantasy of putting Gloria in her place still proves useful.

            Ducking and slipping under the board, Kara sees the beam of Crystal’s flashlight brushing the walls, passing over peeling wallpaper with faded graffiti overwritten with fresh markings in bolder, shinier colors. None of it is legible. The vandals’ letters are too jazzy. But Crystal lets the light linger on some snatches long enough to make Kara wonder if she’s looking for some mark in particular. The air inside the house is still, even as the wind murmurs through the cracked and missing windows. Kara listens close to the ticks and creaks and scrapes of their feet on the desiccated wood floor. The only thing to really hear or see, she discovers, is the yawning emptiness of this main room. Maybe Gloria was right about there being little more than dust and glass after all. There’s not even much of a smell to the place.

            What Kara wondered about when she pushed through the doorway was whether she would immediately feel the dread all the stories refer to. That’s the word the older kids always use, dread. They say it hangs in the air, pursues you throughout the house. It’s this dread that obliterates all doubt about the stories being true. Now Kara steps closer to her sister, turning to look into the dancing oval of illumination, and if anything she feels a greater sense of calm. Having overcome her horror at the prospect of entering the house, she’s too numb or too disoriented to feel much fear. There’s nothing in here, nobody home. You can perceive it in the stillness. Kara worries now they won’t find anything she can use against Gloria.

            The other thing that’s keeping Kara calm is her sister’s air of purpose. Crystal isn’t just scanning the walls with the flashlight. She seems to be searching for something specific. “Come on,” she says, “let’s check out the upstairs.” The beam darts toward the stairway. Kara takes a half step closer to her sister, with dueling fears battling it out in her mind. There could be something up there. There could be nothing. She climbs the first few steps on her sister’s heels, noting how the completely dark room behind her suddenly seems less certain of its emptiness.

            The stairs creak as Kara figured they would. But nothing scary happens in the stairway, and nothing greets them in the hallway they step into at the top. The room where the girls supposedly jumped from the window is directly ahead of them, at the end of the hall. When they’re two thirds of the way there, Crystal stops and turns with her finger to her lips.

            “Stay right there for a second,” she whispers before moving slowly on, careful not to make a sound. With each step she seems more delicate in her movements.

            Kara assumes she’s checking the room to make sure it’s safe before she waves her in. It occurs to her now though that Crystal may have heard something she wants to investigate. Kara slowly shifts her weight to lift her foot and move it forward. She doesn’t want her sister going in that room alone. She also doesn’t want to disregard her instruction. So she walks mincingly, only making it halfway to the room by the time Crystal is stepping inside. Then she jogs two steps before her sister’s voice rings out through the empty hall.

            “Okay, don’t be scared when you come in here. There’s something gross hanging from the ceiling, but there’s no one here, nothing to be afraid of.”

            Kara freezes. Something gross? She’s already close enough to the doorway to see in the glow beyond the flashlight beam that something is indeed swinging by a string in the middle of the room. An odd moaning sound emanates from her throat instead of the question she intended to ask.

            “It’s okay, Kara. It’s just a dead animal. Someone must’ve hung it up here as a joke. Or to try to scare other kids, just like us.” Crystal continues her hasty survey of the room’s contents, which as far as Kara can see amount to little more than some scraps of paper in the corner and the long thin carcass swaying on its string. Is it a squirrel? A ferret? “I knew I saw something through the window when we were riding past,” Crystal says as she finally turns back to inspect the animal.

            Kara, arms folded over her chest, shuffles into the room. She can see enough in the indirect light to satisfy herself that it’s empty, just as Crystal assured her it was. Her eyes gravitate back to the animal, under which she sees the dark remains of puddled blood. Even though the wind freely flows in through the one glassless and the other broken window, the smell of rotting guts finds its way to her nostrils. She covers her mouth and her nose with her hand. “Why would they do this?”

            Crystal sighs. “I guess because this place is supposed to be scary. If you work up the courage to come in here, like we just did, and you don’t find anything, maybe you feel like you should leave something for the next kid who comes. You know, so they’re not as disappointed as you are. They probably didn’t even kill it themselves. I bet they got the idea when they came across this thing already dead, lying beside the driveway or something.”

            This makes so much sense to Kara the panic threatening to overtake her subsides. Gradually, something like indignation sets in instead. If Crystal’s take is correct, it means these other kids misled them, lied to them, and were gross about it. But weren’t the kids who tied this thing up trying to help in a way? Weren’t they trying to give the kids who came after them a taste of the experience they themselves were denied? And, most importantly, hadn’t they given her something to work with in her contest against Gloria?

            Kara walks to the window. The branches of the beech tree outside, ghostly pale in the dark, reach like twisted finger bones in all directions. Could she, if she was desperate, leap far enough out from the window to grasp onto one of those branches? She could reach them, sure. But hold on? No, she would end up falling just like the girls in the story. Would Gloria make it? The question forms a lens for Kara’s focus, intensifying it, so that now she’s looking for the nearest, sturdiest branch while considering the steps and swings she could take to reach the ground efficiently and safely. Maybe she could pull it off after all.

            “Looks like someone beat us to it,” Crystal says.

            Kara turns from the window. Crystal is pointing the light at a spot in the middle of the wall facing the door they both entered through. A message she has no trouble reading is scrawled in bright yellow spray paint:

To any child who reads this,

Congratulations,

by coming here, you’ve killed yourself.

Crystal drops the light a couple feet so they can read a second part:

To any child who didn’t come alone,

Your time is coming too.

Just wait.

            The girls turn in unison to look at the upturned angular shadows cast by each other’s features.

            Crystal snorts with laughter. “Wonder why your friend Gloria didn’t mention this.”

            “Did you know this was here? Did someone tell you?”

            “Mike from the end of the street told me there was a message written inside. He said he couldn’t tell me what it says. All the guys he was with took some oath to never speak of it. I think that’s kind of a tradition with this place. You can tell people there’s a message, but you’re not supposed to tell them what it says.”

            “So your idea about how to trick Gloria—you knew there was already a message here?”

            “Well, I didn’t know for sure, but we both do now, don’t we?”

            Kara considers how this may change her plan. Really, that Gloria said nothing about a message suggests she was never here. But how can this new information be used to prove to everyone else she was lying? There may be something more urgent to worry about though. “Is it supposed to be a curse?”

            “The guys dare each other to come here alone, so it’s just a way to mess with their heads. I’m not sure what the point of the second part is.”

            “Neither of us came alone.”

            “I guess we haven’t killed ourselves yet then.” She turns from rereading the message to look at her sister. Seeing her worry, she says, “Listen, Kara, don’t take this too seriously. I know the type of kids who would do stuff like this. You do too. Mike said he’s been here messing around with a group of guys on a few occasions. It could even be one of them who put this here—or someone else we know.”

            Crystal’s efforts at calming Kara only frighten her more. Her initial shock and confusion freely mingled with curiosity until she considered how the message might apply to them personally. Now she’s wondering if there isn’t some way to counteract the curse, some ritual they can perform, just in case. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe Dad was right.” She looks from the painted letters to the window and shudders. “Maybe we should have never come here.” She’s not sure if it’s dread she feels, but the possibility alone is enough to start a self-accelerating cycle.

            Crystal exhales roughly, exasperated, before walking over and draping her arm over Kara’s shoulders. “You want to know the real story of this place? You don’t have to worry about getting too scared.”

            “How long ago did you first hear the story?”

            “The first time someone told me a story about this place, I think I was younger than you. But only by a bit. It’s not because I was more mature or anything like that. I was just hanging out with some kids who happened to be talking about it. Just like a couple weeks ago I happened to be hanging out with Mike and Stan and a few other guys when they started talking about it. They call me a Tom Boy because I’m interested in stuff like this, and in sports too. It’s weird to them I’d want to hear what they’re saying, that I’m not just interested in hanging out with other girls. They don’t know what to make of me. But after a while they just start acting normal. Boys talk about different things when girls aren’t around. And I think that’s what was going on.”

            Kara considers this. It’s true. Crystal hangs out with boys all the time. Mom says she’s more “rough-and-tumble than most girls,” beaming with pride when she says it, leaving Kara to suspect it’s a positive trait, one she lacks. So maybe Crystal did only hear the story first because boys know more about this stuff, and Kara seldom goes anywhere near the boys. All they do is fight and talk about how tough they are. Or tell fart jokes. She’s always thought they were stupid, even if she likes the look of some of the older ones.

            “So the story’s not scary?” Kara says.

            “Well, it’s hard to explain. But once you hear all of what I found out you’ll understand.”

            “Don’t we need to get out of here? We’re going to get in trouble for sure now, aren’t we?”

            “Kara, we haven’t even been in here five minutes yet. If you don’t want to know, or if you want to wait until we’re home, that’s fine.”

            “No, I do want to know,” she says, sounding much surer than she feels.

            “What do you know already?”

            “I heard there were twin girls who lived here with their parents. One night something horrible happened to the girls in the basement, so they ran as fast as they could to get away. They ran right up to this room with the windows you can see from the road. Then they tried to jump from that window right there into the tree outside. But they didn’t make it. One of them died in the fall. The other walked with a cane the rest of her life. She died anyway, though, just a few years later. Maybe she killed herself or got in a car crash or something. I’m not sure.”

            “Did you ever hear anything about what happened in the basement? Do you have any idea?”

            “I think it was supposed to be something scary, like they saw a ghost. But maybe someone just did something bad to them.”

            “Is that all you know about this place?”

            “Crystal, just tell me!”

Continue to Part 2