It had been Ashley who had stood up for Sid when Travis had knocked him down in the hallway four years before, sending his book bag flying and his books scattering across the slick linoleum floor.
“What d’you do that for, jerk?” Ashley had shouted, and though she’d stood six inches shorter than Travis, she’d shoved him.
Travis had cursed and pushed Ashley as hard as he could. She’d hit the racks of metal coat hooks, one of them jabbing into her armpit.
A teacher had witnessed the incident, and the principal had suspended Travis for three days.
After that, Travis made it his life’s work to torture them. Their shared enemy had bound them together, and now Sid couldn’t imagine a world without Ashley.
“Does your dad have Hell House? I heard a teacher talking about how ghastly it was. I’m dying to read it,” Ashley asked, as they turned onto Ash’s street.
Sid frowned and imagined the books lining the top shelf in his father’s bedroom. “I’m pretty sure, yeah. You already finished Interview with the Vampire?”
“Yep, last night. It was awesome,” Ash told him, leaning over to grab a penny she’d spotted on the pavement.
“Tails up, I wouldn’t-” Sid started, but she’d already grabbed it and stuffed it in her pocket.
“Heads-schmeads,” she said. “I’m saving for a new bike. I’m taking everything I can get.”
“The Huffy Pro Thunder?” Sid asked.
He didn’t have to ask. He’d visited the bike shop with Ashley half a dozen times. She’d sit on the bike, trace her finger over the silver spokes and grip the handlebars.
“I only need twenty-two dollars and it’s mine,” Ash said, a faraway gleam in her eye.
They had decided in school that morning to walk to The Crawford House to get wood for a raccoon den.
The Crawford House sat in an isolated stretch of woods about a quarter mile from the pit. Long before they’d been born, the house had served as the town’s funeral parlor.
Sid didn’t like the house, not that there was much to like. It had been abandoned for well over fifty years, and for whatever reason, the townspeople had never cleaned it out after the owners had died.
Sid had heard rumors of coffins still sitting in the basement and a hearse in the garage where the roof had collapsed and smashed the windshield. He and Ashley had crept around the house a few times. Mostly they went there to scavenge wood for their forts.
“Here, look at this,” Ashley said.
She unfolded a piece of paper and thrust it into Sid’s hands.
He looked at a makeshift raccoon hut complete with a steepled roof and a little archway for the raccoons to crawl in and out.
It appeared to be suspended from a tree.
“Why isn’t it sitting on the ground?” he asked.
“Because other animals might eat the babies,” Ashley said, as if it were obvious, and when he thought about it, it kind of was.
“But how will we get it to stay in a tree?”
Ashley pointed a finger at the tree in her picture. “We’ll put it in that fat oak tree by Carl Lee’s rock. The one with the low branches. That way we can reach it, but it will be sturdy enough to hold the hut. And I brought some rope from my garage.”
“What kind of rope?" he asked.
Ashley shrugged. “I don’t know. It looked like an old ski rope. My mom hasn’t water-skied ever, so I’m pretty sure she won’t miss it.”
Sid nodded. “But what if the babies fall out?”
“They won't,” Ashley insisted. “Look at the drawing. We’ll build a little gate in front of the door, like a foot high. They won’t be able to climb over it.”
Sid nodded, though he wondered if Ashley’s design wasn’t a little beyond the scope of their capabilities.
He’d brought a hammer and ten nails from his dad’s toolbox, a roll of duct tape, and an old blanket, but other than that, their supplies were limited.
As they stepped into the clearing where The Crawford house stood, Sid’s breath hitched.
Solemn fear swept over him in a wave as he gazed at the withering, derelict house.
The windows that were still intact were grimy. Some of them were smeared with graffiti while others were nearly hidden by vines. The tall nearly flat roof supported layers of fuzzy green mold, the type his own father tackled every summer with a spray bottle of bleach and the garden hose. In the center of the roof stood a cupola, the windows gone, black voids in their place.
The front of the house was flat and square, but a huge crumbling stone porch and stairs protruded beneath a double front door that Sid knew was wide to allow hordes of people through during funerals.
Sid had only been to one funeral in his life. His Grandpa Quinn had died several years before. They had held his service in a modern church with chairs instead of pews and a coffee station next to the glass doors that opened into the viewing area. He’d walked to the casket with his brother, their parents standing behind them.
As Sid had leaned down to kiss his grandfather’s powdered cheek, he’d heard the croaking sound of ‘help me.’ Sid had stood up so quickly, he’d stepped on his mother’s toes, probably already pinched in her black high heels and she’d cried out in pain. Zack had snickered as their parents led them to their seats, and Sid realized it had not been the disembodied voice of his Grandpa Quinn, but his maggot brother playing yet another shitty joke on him.
The house before him held no resemblance to the church he’d attended.
Everything about The Crawford House whispered doom and dread. He tried to imagine the house as it had been: pale green brick, windows shining, pots of flowers on the wide stone porch, but in his mind the flowers moldered to black. In every window, ghoulish faces appeared, some white and wispy, others with flapping skin and jowls hanging.
“That house is haunted,” Sid murmured, eyes darting from window to window, sure at any moment, a face would peer out. As he stood, he realized it was not any face he searched for, but the pale face of the boy in the woods.
The face of the monster.
“Help me with this,” Ashly grunted.
She’d gone to the shed, which had mostly collapsed. She tugged at a board still nailed to the frame.
“Let’s just use these,” Sid said, kicking at a pile of boards that had already fallen away.
“Those are rotted,” she said. “These are still in good shape."
He frowned and grabbed the edge of the board. Together they yanked and twisted until it pulled free.
“Do you think there are ghosts in there?” Sid asked, after he caught his breath,
Ashley glanced at the house.
“Yeah, definitely. But that’s why we’re out here. They’re probably trapped inside.”
Sid nodded. Ashley always said things with such confidence that he simply accepted them at face value. Sure, she believed in ghosts, but she wasn’t scared because they were trapped in the house.
A bit of his fear subsided as they tackled the next board and then the next until they’d ripped ten from the shed.
“This is enough,” she said, hoisting seven of the boards into her arms.
“I can carry more than three,” Sid complained.
“You’ve got the back-pack,” Ashley said, starting into the woods without him.
He quickly snatched up the remaining three boards and followed her.
As they walked away from the house, Sid tried to ignore the sense that eyes followed them.
6
“Maxy,” Jake said, giving his younger brother a loving rub on the head. Max slapped his hand away and their mother tisked. “Frank Welch came to see me yesterday. He said you were down at the station a few days back shouting conspiracy theories like a madman.”
“What?” Max and his father blurted at the same time.
Jake grinned. “His words not mine.”
“That guy’s a Neanderthal,” Max huffed, taking a plate of potato salad from his mother and setting it on the ta
ble. She’d added Sunday night dinners to their schedule as Eleanor’s due date approached. Max’s mother wanted to ensure they made up the future missed dinners ahead of time.
“Why were you at the police station, Maximilian?” their father asked, looking somber.
“Because we’ve had two students disappear from Winterberry Middle School in six months. Two!” He held up his fingers as if his brother and father might not understand the number. “I wondered if they were following any theories. It seemed strange to me that nothing has been posted. I haven’t seen an article in the newspaper. There are no safety precautions being offered to kids or parents.”
He looked at his brother and father with indignation, growing furious all over again at Detective Welch.
Herman Wolfenstein frowned. Jake cocked his head sideways.
“Any chance you’re making it bigger than it seems? Welch implied they’re runaways, no connection at all. And Max, you can’t save everyone.”
“Jake,” Max spat, “they’re kids. No money, no resources. One of them has been missing for months!”
“Okay, yeah. That’s pretty suspicious,” Jake agreed.
“And what do you think is going on, Maximillian?” Herman asked.
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue. But there are people who take kids. That’s what scares me. Is there a bad man in our town and the police are keeping it all hush meanwhile the kids are out on summer break in two days? They’ll be roaming the streets, the woods. If there is someone taking them, hurting them, whatever. The town should be aware of it.”
“That is terrifying,” Maria said, grimacing as she put a tray of roasted beets on the table. “I’ll pray for those children tonight.”
“Yeah, do that, but also tell your friends. Let people know there are kids missing and to keep a closer eye on their own kids and grandkids.”
“Lot of good that’ll do,” Herman grumbled. “Remember you boys at twelve, thirteen. It would have been easier to cage wolves.”
“Exactly,” Max agreed. “But that’s why kids need to be aware. If someone approaches them, they need to run like hell.”
* * *
Ashley sat on her back porch and gazed at the sky.
“Werewolf moon,” she said to no one.
Her mom had picked up a second shift and wouldn’t be home until midnight.
Ashley had watched a show, eaten some cereal, and decided it was too warm out for bed.
It was actually only about sixty degrees, but the first summer nights enchanted her. The air hung with the fragrance of cut grass and the perfume of blossoming flowers. Their yard backed up to the woods, and already the foliage burst forth and trickled over the lawn.
In the peak of summer, she and her mother would tackle the overgrowth with huge gardening sheers, but for now it reigned free.
Fireflies began to prick the darkness, their yellow lights like fairytale glitter in the aromatic twilight.
She used to catch them with Grandma Patty. Her Grandma would supply the jar, and Ashley would run barefoot, giggling, as her grandmother yelled out, “ooh, that one, he looks like an all-night burner. Oh, jump high, little Pan, there’s one racing for the clouds.”
Grandma Patty chose Ashley’s nickname for her long pelt of glossy black hair. According to Grandma Patty, she knew Ashley was a panther even before her hair grew in. Only Grandma Patty used the nickname, and she continued to call Ashley Pan until the end of her life.
On her deathbed, a year and a half before, she’d clutched Ashley’s hands in her own, which were so frail and soft they felt like they might turn to dust and blow away.
“Pan, take care of your mama, okay? She will need your panther spirit in the years to come. It’s not an easy thing to lose a mother.”
Ashley had wanted to tell her it wasn’t an easy thing to lose a grandmother either, but she’d only nodded, tears pouring down her cheeks. She’d watched her grandma slip into the coma that would be the final sleep of her cancer-riddled body. Ashley’s mother wept from a chair in the corner of the room.
When the doctor came in, he told Ashley’s mother that perhaps the girl should leave, wait in the hall, and Ashley had shrieked and clung to her grandma’s hand.
“You’ll have to drag me out,” she’d snarled.
Her mother had waved the doctor away.
“Leave us in peace,” she’d told him, the irritation at his suggestion clear on her face.
Together, Ashley and Rebecca had stood, arms wrapped tightly around each other as if they, too, might slip away into the underworld. Given the choice, Ashley probably would have.
The thought of waking up all the days of the rest of her life without Grandma Patty made her stomach twist into a rubber band ball.
A firefly lit only inches from Ashley’s face, and she reached out a hand, catching it in the cup of her palm. She opened her hand and gazed at the dark little bug, his butt glowing fiercely and then extinguishing once more. He took flight, his wings tiny whirring blurs in the dusk.
Hopping from the porch, she got a running start and did a cartwheel, her long dark hair twirling through the grass and then fanning up high before settling back on her shoulders. She did another and then another until the darkness and the stars and the forest all blurred together.
She laughed and dropped onto her butt in the downy grass, lying back.
Wisps of pale cloud drifted in front of the bright moon.
“Werewolf Moon,” she said again, using Grandma Patty’s name for the full moon when the funny, almost see-through, clouds surrounded it.
She shuddered, glancing at the dense forest and remembering the werewolves from the movie The Howling she’d rented with Sid the previous summer. In particular, she thought of the serial killer who transformed into a werewolf, and left her creeped out for days afterward. She’d taken to locking her bedroom window each night when she went to bed.
Sid’s nightmares had lasted for weeks after the film, and his mother had refused to let him watch movies at Ashley’s house for a month.
The vision sucked the magic from the night, and she rolled over and stood up, brushing off the back of her shorts.
As she walked back to the house, a rustling sounded behind her.
She paused and squinted toward the trees.
“Kermit?” she asked.
Her neighbor, Mrs. Lincoln, owned a stout little bulldog named Kermit that frequented Ashley’s and every other neighbor’s yard despite its owners’ best efforts to keep him contained.
The rustling grew louder, as if Kermit were digging furiously at branches and bushes.
She made it halfway across the lawn before the hideous face of Eddie, the werewolf in The Howling, rose back to her mind like a song she couldn’t stop humming.
Ash paused and stared into the trees.
“Kermit?” she repeated, but the dog didn’t come trotting out to greet her, and that was unusual.
Kermit loved attention. If you so much as coughed near him, he hurried over and offered his backside for petting.
Backing up, she trained her eyes on the outline of trees. The rustling stopped, but a shadow momentarily blotted out the moon’s glow on the grass. She glanced up to find large birds, vultures she thought, soaring above her. They circled over the trees, making eerie figure eights in the moonlight.
She’d never seen vultures at night.
Curiosity still trumping fear, she stood in place and studied the trees.
Something white appeared briefly within the dense branches, a flash of a face that she couldn’t quite make out.
“Who’s there?” she yelled, expecting a kid from the neighborhood to jump out and yell, “Boo!”
Instead, silence greeted her.
The face had disappeared into the shadows, but a moment later, a branch cracked, closer to the edge of the yard.
She took a step back and then another, her eyes still focused on the dark foliage, unable to turn away because somehow her back toward the thing would make
it worse.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mouth grew dry.
Another branch cracked, and again she saw the flash of something pale, a face, but it moved quickly, as if trying to stay concealed.
She backed up, and her legs hit the porch with force, sending her thumping hard to her butt on the edge of the wooden stairs.
The face stepped from the woods, crouched down as if he were not a person, but an animal.
Hollow black eyes stared from pale skin stretched over the sharp bones of its face.
Ashley tried to scream, but only a gasp sputtered from her lips.
The thing’s eyes locked on hers; its pale lips parted to reveal a yawning black hole.
It darted from the forest.
Ashley turned and scrambled on hands and knees, wincing as a splinter lodged in the flesh of her palm. Adrenaline coursed through her as she lunged to her feet, yanking open the back door and diving inside. Gasping for breath, she snapped the deadbolt into place, collapsing to the floor and heaving for breath against the door.
Just as her breath began to settle, something scratched at the door.
Ashley froze, eyes bulging from their sockets as she bit her teeth together and tried not to scream.
For more than an hour, she sat perfectly still, counting the passing minutes on the clock over the refrigerator and silently praying her mother would walk through the door, released early from her shift.
Eventually, her butt became so numb she could no longer feel it. Ashley scooted away from the door, staying low out of fear the monster would be watching through the open blinds.
She crawled on her hands and knees into the living room and then stood and ran to her bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her.
She grabbed her aluminum baseball bat and crawled beneath her comforter, wishing her mother hadn’t picked up the second shift.
7
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