“This is not a good idea.” Lauren tried to back away, but Reid held her shoulder tight.
“Come on, Lauren, for once in your life, do something that’s not safe. No one’s lived in the old place for years. How much trouble can we get into?”
Tim’s imagination had gone wild. According to him all kinds of things could happen. They might find a body. Ghosts could run them out, or the spirit of a Gypsy might take over their minds. Who knew, zombies might sleep in the rubble of old houses.
Lauren rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to think of the zombies getting Tim. A walking dead with braces was too much.
“It’s just a rotting old house,” Lucas said so low no one heard but Lauren. “There’s probably rats or rotten floors. It’s an accident waiting to happen. How about you come back in the daylight, Reid, if you really want to explore the place?”
“We’re all going now,” Reid announced, as he shoved Lauren off the road and into the trees that blocked the view of the old homestead from passing cars. “Think of the story we’ll have to tell everyone Monday. We will have explored a haunted house and lived to tell the tale.”
Reason told her to protest more strongly, but at fifteen, reason wasn’t as intense as the possibility of an adventure. Just once, she’d have a story to tell. Just this once...her father wouldn’t find out.
They rattled across the rotting porch steps fighting tumbleweeds that stood like flimsy guards around the place. The door was locked and boarded up. The smell of decay hung in the foggy air, and a tree branch scraped against one side of the house as if whispering for them to stay back.
The old place didn’t look like much. It might have been the remains of an early settlement, built solid to face the winters with no style or charm. Odds were, Gypsies never even lived in it. It appeared to be a half dugout with a second floor built on years later. The first floor was planted down into the earth a few feet, so the second floor windows were just above their heads giving the place the look of a house that had been stepped on by a giant.
Everyone called it the Gypsy House because a group of hippies had squatted there in the ’70s. They’d painted a peace sign on one wall, but it had faded and been rained on until it almost looked like a witching sign. No one remembered when the hippies had moved on, or who owned the house now, but somewhere in its past a family named Stanley must have lived there because old-timers called it the Stanley house.
“I heard devil worshippers lived here years ago.” Tim began making scary movie soundtrack noises. “Body parts are probably scattered in the basement. They say once Satan moves in, only the blood of a virgin will wash the place clean.”
Reid’s laughter sounded nervous. “That leaves me out.”
Tim jabbed his friend. “You wish. I say you’ll be the first to scream when a dead hand, not connected to a body, touches you.”
“Shut up, Tim,” Reid’s uneasy voice echoed in the night. “You’re freaking me out. Besides, there is no basement. It’s just a half dugout built into the ground, so we’ll find no buried bodies.”
Lauren screamed as Reid kicked a low window in, and all the guys laughed.
“You go first, Lucas,” Reid ordered. “I’ll stand guard.”
To Lauren’s surprise, Lucas slipped into the space. His feet hit the ground with a thud somewhere in the blackness.
“You next, Tim,” Reid announced as if he were the commander.
“Nope. I’ll go after you.” All Tim’s laughter had disappeared. Apparently he’d frightened himself.
“I’ll go.” Lauren suddenly wanted this entire adventure to be over with. With her luck, animals were wintering in the old place.
“I’ll help you down.” Reid lowered her into the window space.
As she moved through total darkness, her feet wouldn’t quite touch the bottom. For a moment she just hung, afraid to tell Reid to drop her.
Then, she felt Lucas’s hands at her waist. Slowly he took her weight.
“I’m in,” she called back to Reid. He let her hands go, and she dropped against Lucas.
“You all right?” Lucas whispered near her hair.
“This was a dumb idea.”
She felt him laugh more than she heard it. “That you talking or the Gypsy’s advice? Of all the brains dropping in here tonight, yours would probably be the most interesting to take over, so watch out. A ghost might just climb in your head and let free all the secret thoughts you keep inside, Lauren.”
He pulled her a foot into the blackness as a letter jacket dropped through the window. His hands circled her waist. She could feel him breathing as Reid finally landed, cussing the darkness. For a moment it seemed all right for Lucas to stay close; then in a blink, he was gone from her side.
Now the tiny flashlight offered Lauren some much-needed light. The house was empty except for an old wire bed frame and a few broken stools. With Reid in the lead, they moved up rickety stairs to the second floor, where shadowy light came from big dirty windows.
Tim hesitated when the floor’s boards began to rock as if the entire second story were on some kind of seesaw. He backed down the steps a few feet, letting the others go first. “I don’t know if this second story will hold us all.” Fear rattled in his voice.
Reid laughed and teased Tim as he stomped across the second floor, making the entire room buck and pitch. “Come on up, Tim. This place is better than a fun house.”
Stepping hesitantly on the upstairs floor, Lauren felt Lucas just behind her and knew he was watching over her.
Tim dropped down a few more steps, not wanting to even try.
Lucas backed against the wall between the windows, his hand still brushing Lauren’s waist to keep her steady as Reid jumped to make the floor shake. The whole house seemed to moan in pain, like a hundred-year-old man standing up one arthritic joint at a time.
When Reid yelled for Tim to join them, Tim started back up the broken stairs, just before the second floor buckled and crumbled. Tim dropped out of sight as rotten lumber pinned him halfway between floors.
His scream of pain ended Reid’s laugher.
In a blink, dust and boards flew as pieces of the roof rained down on them and the second floor vanished below them, board by rotting board.
Lucas reached for Lauren as she felt the floor beneath her feet crack and split. Her legs slid down, scraping against the sharp teeth of decaying wood.
The moment before she disappeared amid the tumbling lumber, Lucas’s hand grabbed her arm just above her wrist and jerked hard. She rocked like some kind of human bell as boards continued to fall, hitting her in the face and knocking the air from her lungs.
But Lucas held on. He didn’t let her disappear into the rubble. He’d braced his feet wide on the few inches of floor remaining near the wall and leaned back.
When the dust settled, she looked up. He’d wrapped his free arm around a beam that braced a window. His face was bloody. The sleeve had pulled from his shirt, and she saw a shard of wood like a stake sticking out of his arm, but he hadn’t let her go. His grip was solid.
Tim was crying now, but in the darkness no one could see where he was. He was somewhere below. He had to be hurting, but he was alive. The others had been above when the second floor crumbled, but Tim had still been below.
Reid jumped into the window frame that now leaned out over the remains of the porch. The entire structure looked as if it were about to crash like a hundred