My eyes snapped
open. As I groggily lifted up my head, another soft tapping came from my
window. I turned to look at the clock on my bedside table. 1:17am. I rolled
over on my back and blinked, letting my eyes adjust in the dark. Slowly, I
began to see the photographs of smiling faces, dogs, and random objects all
peering down at me from the ceiling. My two favorites are tacked right above my
head. One is a faded photo of two sleeping babies both wrapped in a fluffy blue
blanket: a boy with messy dark black hair lay next to a little girl with long
eyelashes and pink pouty lips. Their hands were curled around each other’s
fingers as they slept facing each other. Directly below it, a tall boy of about
thirteen or fourteen, wearing a black Blink 182 t-shirt, dark jeans and a black
belt, stood erectly in front of a wooden bench beside a thick and wide tree
trunk, his thin arms folded across his chest and a small smirk on his thin
lips. He had messy black hair and his face was directed towards the camera but
his dark eyes, partially hidden behind black rectangular wire-rimmed glasses, looked
sideways at the girl standing next to him. Almost, but not quite, he seemed to
be thinking. She was shorter than he was, with a full head of tight black curls
that she wore short, just below her chin. Her chocolate eyes shone beneath her
thick eyelashes. She was standing on the tips of her toes, her flowered dress
billowing a little behind her as she tried her hardest to be as tall as the
boy. Her mouth was frozen in laughter because the top of her head only reached
his raised eyebrows. The two teenagers were surrounded by books. Hardcovers
were stacked one on top of the other on the park bench behind them and
paperbacks littered the ground around their bare feet.
I smiled as the
picture reminded me of today’s date. September 21st. Then I instantly frowned
when I remembered what today really means.
I shook my head
as another round of tapping, this time louder and more urgent, came from the
same window.
“Wake up!” a
voice whispered through the curtains. “Wakeupwakeupwakeup!”
I kicked my
blanket aside and quickly tapped the base of my lamp, bathing my bedroom in a
dim orange glow. I shuffled towards the window, careful not to step on the
three separate piles of school work I had made on the carpeted floor the night
before—Finished, In Progress, and Procrastination Wins Again. Unfortunately,
the last pile was the tallest of the three. I guess they will all have to wait
until Monday, in addition to the homework that I’m going to miss in school
today.
As soon as I
pushed the purple curtains to the side, I heard the familiar click of a shutter
and saw a blinding flash. When I regained my sight again, I turned my head back
toward the window and was greeted by the top of someone’s head, someone with a
mop of messy jet black hair. Carson reached his hand toward me, clutching his
camera, so that I could see the reason why he was so pleased with himself on a
very early Friday morning. He was comfortably straddling the tree branch
nearest my bedroom, his argyle Chuck Taylors resting on the small sill outside
under the window’s frame. A petite girl with short black curls, wearing gray
sweats, a charcoal gray hooded jacket and a sleepy expression, standing behind
windowpanes peered up at me through the glass. I shook my head and rolled my
eyes at him as I unlocked the latch and quietly opened the window. Without
waiting for an invitation, Carson expertly reached his right hand through the
window and gripped the wooden door handle that he had screwed on my wall many
years ago specifically for this purpose. Using the sill as a secure foothold,
he eased himself through and into my bedroom. When we were younger, he could do
it in a matter of two seconds but these days, he averaged six seconds. Seven,
almost eight, when he’s half-awake.
He sat down on
my bed and rested his elbows on his knees as he scrolled through his pictures.
He was also wearing gray sweats, a white shirt and a gray jacket with the hood
up—all Carson regulars.
As I turned to
close the window behind him, he asked, “Did you get a lot of sleep?”
“Nah, I
finished what I could just a little after midnight,” I answered. “Then, after I
packed, I decided to take a nap.”
I plopped down
next to him and lay down.
“I didn’t even
bother with homework last night,” he said. “I just went straight to sleep.”
I yawned and he snapped another photo of me.
“Stooopppp,” I groaned sleepily, imagining the embarrassing photo that I knew
would inevitably end up on a slideshow, Carson’s photo wall in his bedroom, or
worse, online.
“You stop,” he
said, nudging my side with his elbow, eyes still on the camera’s screen. “Don’t
go back to sleep, Nic. We’re leaving in a couple of minutes.”
Sighing, I got
up and rubbed my eyes open. Carson was still looking through his pictures.
“What, d’you have new pictures?” I asked. “Can I see?” When he didn’t answer, I
sighed and crawled under his arms, plopping my stomach on his lap and reaching
for my pillow again.
“Nic,” he said,
“get up.” Without warning, he stood, pushing me off the bed. I landed on the
floor with a loud thud and an accompanying “Ow!” escaped my lips.
As I rubbed my
right temple where I had hit the floor, I scowled at him and said, “You’re
supposed to be nice to me, Cars. It’s my birthday.” I pouted for good measure
and batted my thick eyelashes (just once though because I can’t stand those
girls who do it more than once).
He had moved to
the old maroon couch near my desk, the one we had carried together from a
neighbor’s garage sale when were twelve. “Yeah, well, it’s my birthday, too,
sweets.” He finally looked at me for the first time. “So you have to be nice to
me as well.”
I gasped and
sat up from where I was lying on the floor. There was a large gash on Carson’s
cheek.
-----------------
CARSON
“It’s nothing,”
I said impatiently. “Don’t worry about it, Nic.” I set my camera on her desk,
next to the open sketchbook with her colored pencils strewn over the open blank
page.
She came back
from the bathroom down the hall with a wet paper towel in her right hand. I
rolled my eyes as she began dabbing at the open wound. It stretched from my
right ear, down to right below the right corner of my lip, but it didn’t even
hurt. I told Nicole so, but she just continued dabbing. Dab, dab, dab, Pause.
Dab, dab, dab.
“It’s not even
bleeding!”
In response,
she stopped her dabbing only to show me the paper towel splotched with red.
“Wait, what the—” I shot up and crossed the room to reach Nic’s rosewood
dresser. I peered into the mirror, trying to catch the light. Blood pooled
around the edges of the wound, shining under the lamp’s orange rays. “It’s
bleeding?!” I asked incredulously. Nic’s concerned face appeared next to mine
(she had to stand on the tips of her toes just to stand level with my face).
“It’s bleeding,” she said matter-of-factly before turning to go back to the
bathroom. Getting the first-aid kit, no doubt.
I stared at the
wound. “But it’s not supposed to bleed,” I whispered to the thickening blood.
“Yeah, well, it
is.”
I jumped. Nic
stood behind me with a menacing look in her eyes. She violently grabbed a
band-aid from the kit before slamming it on the dresser.
“Which can only
mean one thing,” she continued, waiting for me to explain myself. Her hands
were shaking so much as she opened the band-aid that it started ripping along
the middle.
“Shh, stop
making so much noise,” I whispered as I saved the poor blameless band-aid from
her murderous hands. I turned again to escape her glare but she continued to
look at me through the mirror. “See, it stopped,” I said as I attempted to
affix the band-aid over the wound. I missed.
Nic sighed
exasperatedly before turning me by the shoulders (her strength despite her pocket-sizedness
always surprises me) and ripping another band-aid out of the box. She
carelessly slapped a second band-aid next to the first one, pressing on the
wound just a tad bit too hard for my liking that I almost cried out loud.
“There,” she
huffed. As she started putting away the first-aid kit, I turned back to the
mirror and ran my finger down the two band-aids, making sure that any and all
blood left over would be absorbed by the cotton lining. It’s not supposed to
bleed.
Nic stomped
back to the bathroom to return the first-aid kit and I turned to get my camera.
I had just put the lanyard around my neck when she came back. “Come on, let’s
go,” I said, glancing at her clock on the bedside table. 1:26am.
But Nic started
climbing back into bed, fluffing her pillows. I sighed, “Niiiiics.” She turned
to give me that thunderous look again (God, she was so good at that) and I shut
up. Her look was clear, “I’m not going anywhere with you today, you filthy and
disappointing excuse for a best friend.” I gulped before forging on.
“Nic, come on,”
I reached over and took hold of her favorite blanket (which I had given her one
Christmas, by the way. It’s brown with orange and red leaves printed all over,
and looks exactly like fall—not only was it warm, it looked warm, too,). I put
it on the side, near the foot of the bed, and sat down in front of her. She
folded her legs and arms and waited for me to continue, her eyebrows knitting
in the middle just a centimeter like they always do when she’s thinking, “I
don’t want to listen to you but fine, hurry up and make your case because we
both know I’m right in the end” but doesn’t want to show it for fear of
backlash. You would think that having her just sit there patiently, quietly
staring at me, daring me to speak, would make it easier for me to say whatever
it is that I have to say. But the thing is that every time Nic does this, it’s
because she and I both know that what I have to say is the farthest thing from
the best thing to say, but true nevertheless. Like now, for instance.
I inhaled
first. “I know I promised that I wouldn’t go and see Dark without you.”
Nic opened her
mouth and I instinctively knew that she was about to say, “Yeah, you did,
Carson, you promised” in that condescending tone she uses so well in these
kinds of situations, but she decided against it. She’s currently on a “I
promise I’m going to be a better person this school year” phase, the same one
she has undergone each first quarter of every school year of our lives so far,
and I silently thanked the heavens that she was actually keeping her word and
doing her best this year. I breathed an inward sigh of relief as she nodded for
me to go on.
“Buuuuutttt—” I
continued.
“I knew it!”
Nic suddenly exclaimed, self-righteousness glinting in her eyes. So much for
keeping her word and doing her best. “I knew it! There’s always a rear end to
your promises!”
I opened my
mouth to retaliate. Then I sighed as I caught what she had just said. Yep, Nic
is pretty mad, but not mad enough to miss an opportunity to pun her way through
an argument. I’d rather she be not mad at all, but I’d pick angry-but-punny-Nic
over too-furious-for-clever-wordplay-Nic any day.
“But I had to
talk to him,” I continued. Nic cocked her left eyebrow, a classic Nic face.
It’s her “Really, now? Try saying that again and let’s see if I don’t punch
you” face, daring me to go on.
“Because,” I
paused. “Well, because I thought he might be able to help me talk to Mrs.
Fields.”
Nic’s face
softened faster than a stick of butter in one of Paula Deen’s saucepans. “Mrs.
Fields?”
I nodded.
“Cars,” Nic
slowly began, her face confused and full of concern. “Mrs. Fields is dead.”
-----------------------
NICOLE
“Okay, so let
me get this straight,” I began warily, stuffing the old big Jansport with
whatever food Carson handed me from the fridge. “Dark can bring people back to
life? Why didn’t he tell us before?”
“No,” Carson
answered as he placed six tangerines in my hands. “Well, only temporarily. Kind
of,” he continued as he opened one of the drawers inside. He emerged with
cheese in his hands. “And only for special cases. I don’t think he’s the one
that does it, though. Motts or Parm?” He held up the two cheesy choices for me
to see but before I could say, “Defs the motts” he read my mind and handed me
the mozzarella.
“And your cut?”
I asked. “Why did you say that it wasn’t supposed to be bleed? Don’t you always
bleed whenever you see Dark?” Carson doesn’t usually bleed. It’s a rare genetic
thing, the exact opposite of hemophilia, and it has plagued the Dames men for
centuries. However, whenever we get our customary cuts and wounds from being in
Dark’s presence, Carson gushes red blood.
“I wasn’t in
one of your nightmares,” he shook his head. Which made sense, I guess, because
I didn’t have the slightest hint of a nightmare earlier when I was asleep. “I
was in one of my own. I had never bled in my own dreams before, with or without
Dark being there.” Which, this time, did not make sense. Carson rarely has
nightmares. When I told him so, he answered, “Yeah, I know, but I actually
tried to have a bad dream earlier, and it worked,” he shrugged. “Plus, when I
talked to Dark, he said he sensed my attempts and helped out with some negative
energy of his own so that he could actually appear in one of my nightmares this
time. Is that all we need?” The refrigerator was the only source of light in
the kitchen, but Carson’s eyes shone in the dark anyway. They have always
reminded me of onyx stones.
“Water.”
Carson rolled
his eyes. “You’re such a hydroholic,” he said as he opened the freezer and
passed me two plastic water bottles. He moved to close the door but I made a
tutting sound and held up my empty palm again. “You need three?” he asked
incredulously as he handed me another one.
“I need more
than three, actually, but we’ll get some more later.” I slipped it on top of
the croissants, zipped up the bag and handed it to him. He closed the
refrigerator’s door and we were, once again, in the dark.
“Ready?” Carson
hitched the well-worn backpack on his shoulders and I nodded. I glanced at the
time on the microwave. 1:42am.
“Let’s go.”
With my tennis
shoes in one hand, we tiptoed across kitchen, lightly stepping on the tiles and
using the island’s countertop as a guide toward the back door. Carson suddenly
stopped in front of me. “Wait, why are we sneaking around?” he whispered,
turning his head to look at me.
“ ‘Cause
discreetness is half the fun,” I shrugged. “Why are you whispering then?”
It was his turn
to shrug. “We’ve been doing this for eleven years, sweets. I’m sure your
parents already know.”
“Twelve years
today, actually, to be exact. And they do know.” I pointed to a post-it note
affixed on the doorknob. Carson carefully took it and read the message out
loud, his nose almost touching the paper because he had stuffed his glasses in
his jacket pocket earlier. He may have
the onyx eyes, but his eyesight is terrible.
“Carole slash
Nicson—psh, they think they’re so clever!”
I scoffed at
the disgusting nicknames and prodded his back to continue. “Please make sure
you lock the door behind you this time,” he read. “And be back for dinner on
Sunday, 7 sharp. Love you both, Ma and Pa.”
“Seven sharp?”
I asked, “Isn’t it supposed to be eight?”
“Well, Sunday’s
The Day.” He avoided my eyes as he placed the yellow post-it on the counter
behind me.
French the
llama, how could I have let something like that slip my mind?
“They’re giving
us more time that day, I guess,” Carson continued, fiddling with the straps of
the backpack. His voice was hollow.
So was mine, I
realized as I could only say, “Oh. Right.”
Carson turned.
His eyes weren’t shining anymore. He looked like he was about to say something,
but he hesitated and closed his mouth. Then he seemed to snap out of it and
said, “All right, time to go.”
I followed him
out into the cool night. After eleven years of neglecting to lock the door
properly, I made sure that it was secure this year, the twelfth and final time.
--------------------------
CARSON
After jumping
over the white fence that bordered the subdivision, we scurried across the main
street (though we didn’t really need to—there aren’t any cars out at almost two
in the morning). The land on the other side of the road sloped steeply, almost
vertical, so we had to use our hands as much as our feet to climb up to the
top. When Nic and I first crawled up this hillside years ago, we swore to
ourselves that we would carve a staircase right down the side to make it easier
to climb. Every year, we would bring it up, but every year we would ignore it.
The climb has to be hard in order for the top to be sweeter than the bottom. As
always, I reached the landing just a couple of seconds ahead of Nic and, as
always, I offered her my hand to help. She ignored it and pulled herself up. As
always. I shook my head, took my hand back and smiled.
From the top,
you could see only about a fourth of Sillview, an unfinished
supposed-to-be-circle-shaped subdivision. Two of our friends, Jay and Cammi (or
Jammi slash Cay when we feel like being “clever”), who live on the other side
nicknamed it “the croissant” but we think it’s more like a kidney bean than a
croissant. While they live at the crook of the kidney bean, we live on its
perfect arc at the exact opposite side.
We waited to
catch our breaths before moving on but, really, we both knew we just wanted to
see the view from the top for the last time as we were now. Most of this outing
will be similar to what we’ve done for years in the past, like The House and
The Food, but we knew that it’s also our last outing like this. So it’s really
not that similar to the others.
Since we turned
five, Nic and I have been doing this on our birthday weekends, skipping school
when necessary. Our parents never had to cover for us either. Everyone just
knew about September 21. The whole neighborhood called our little outings our
“adventures” but no one really poked their nose into it too much. Our parents
don’t even know where we usually go. Just last year in homeroom, when Nic and I
decided to “go to school under an invisibility cloak” (it’s a long story), Mrs.
Dyliacco took roll and said, “The duo is absent tod---Ope, wait! It’s September
21st.” Then she changed “Absent” to “Excused” on the attendance sheet.
Good times,
but, yeah, we have good reason to think this weekend will be our last.
Nic reached
over and lightly tugged at the camera’s lanyard around my neck. For some
reason, I didn’t want to snap a photo (which is weird because I’m always taking
pictures of everything I see). Taking a picture now seemed to have such
finality to it that I can’t help but think that each click of the camera’s
shutter this weekend is going to be one click closer to the last picture on
Sunday.
I don’t want
this to end. And from the way Nic hasn’t said a word since I mentioned Sunday
back at the kitchen, I was certain that neither did she. Reluctantly, I peered
through the eyepiece and clicked. Nic seemed to understand because she squeezed
my free hand before turning away from the houses and walking toward the sea of
tall grass that awaited us.
We walked in
silence, me leading and Nic following behind me. Some of the grass had grown
taller since summer when we had trod through this way, but the beaten path our
feet have paved for years was still clear. The cool breeze made the tall grass
sway and rustle like languid dancers in the dark.
Suddenly, I
heard Nic’s soft voice behind me. “Do you remember,” she softly sang, “the 21st
night of September?”
“Love was
changing the mind of pretenders,” I continued, though a bit off-key. Her
well-trained musical ears detected it, of course, but she didn’t say anything
so I stopped in my tracks and I just belted out the next line of the first
verse. “While chasing the clouds awaaaaaaayyyyyy!”
Nic caught up
to me from behind, trying to sing through a fit of giggles, “Our hearts
were—were ringing in the key—the key that our—that our souls were singing!”
She clutched
her stomach to keep from making too much noise as I finished it for her. “As we
danced in the night, remember how the stars stole the night away, yeah, yeah,
yeah!”
Nic suddenly
straightened up, her eyes bright under the moon. “BA DE YA! SAY, DO YOU
REMEMBER? BA DE YA! DANCING IN SEPTEMBER!” we both yelled at the top of our
lungs before collapsing into laughter. I thumped my knee and tried to control
myself but everything was just too funny—the song, Nic’s giggling, the fact
that we were singing it together the loudest we’ve ever sang it in the middle
of a sea of tall grass on this very night. Funny stuff, man.
After what
seemed like forever, Nic finally straightened up, a foolish grin on her face.
Another classic Nic face, the one that said, “This is what life is all
about—laughter and love.” This was my favorite classic Nic face of all time,
partly because it has always seemed to me that Nic only put on that face when
she was looking at me. A surge of warmth passed over my body and it felt
amazing with the cool breeze brushing against my face. Nic, on the other hand,
shivered.
“Hey, did you
know that if you lie down flat on the ground, it won’t be as cold as it is when
you’re standing up?” Nic suddenly asked.
Without even
thinking about it, I immediately dropped to the ground and felt the temperature
go down.
“How is it down
there?” Nic asked, peering down at me.
“Less cold,” I
answered. She smiled and looked up at the sky.
“So,” she
started. “What did Dark say?”
I shifted
uncomfortably before speaking. “He didn’t seem too happy to see me.”
Nic looked down
at me, her eyebrow cocked.
“Okay,” I
admitted, “So he’s never really happy to see me. But this time, I felt like he
especially didn’t want to see me.”
“What did he
say about Mrs. Fields?”
I pursed my
lips and folded my arms behind my head. “He said, ‘Just wait.’”
Nic sighed
before setting herself down next to me, crossing her legs in front of her.
“That’s it?” She looked at me hopefully.
“That’s it.”
Sometimes, it seemed that Dark was the only one who could help us out. He
looked young, but we know that he knows it all, or at least a lot more than we
do. But at the same time, Dark was also the least helpful. Or the least willing
to help us out.
“But we’ve been
waiting for ten years,” she said dejectedly. She shook her head and got up,
dusting herself off. “Come on,” she offered me her hand. I took it and she
helped me up.
As I dusted off
the dirt and blades of grass on the seat of my gray sweats, Nic sighed. I
turned to her and asked, “What is it?”
She now had a
look of sadness about her, another classic Nic face. She could be dying of
laughter one moment, high on life the next, and heartbroken the following
second. But she still had a small smile on her face, despite the heaviness that
clearly showed through her eyes. “Happy 17th, Cars,” she murmured.
“Happy 17th to
you too, sweets,” I said softly. I gave her a small smile. If you think about
it, that was all I could really give her today.
----------------------------
NICOLE
“On the Sunday
after your 17th, you will both lose what you will never have and gain what you
already have,” Dark’s velvety voice came back to me in my thoughts.
“So,” I had
immediately said, scoffing, after hearing Dark say those words, “nothing will
change.”
Carson had
nodded beside me, agreeing, his hands folded across his chest. “Essentially,
right?” he had asked.
I still
remember the smirk Dark gave me in response. Then his all-knowing eyes flicked
toward Carson. “Essentially, no matter what happens, you will no longer be
friends after your 17th,” he had said.
The first time
I met Dark, I was seven. My nightmares were the worst that year so, naturally,
Dark visited me several times. He always made sure to drop by during the weird
ones, the ones that don’t really make sense but scare the hell out of the
dreamer anyway. As a seven-year-old girl who was deathly afraid of needles,
pineapples, and falling off from high places, I had a lot of those types of
nightmares. During the first couple of times he appeared, I was more intrigued
than afraid. His face was young, soft, almost kind, but his gray eyes were
steely. As he revealed himself bit by bit, I liked him less and less.
I had been
chasing after a bumblebee in that first dream. I was running and running, first
down a hill, then a winding road, then through a never-ending corridor. I
couldn’t stop, I just kept chasing the bumblebee. As the sun set, it began to
get dark in my dream world. The bumblebee slowed down and I finally jumped with
my palms wide open and caught the black and yellow bee in my hands. It
continued to buzz loudly even after I held it prisoner between my fingers. I
opened my palms up just a little bit, peeking through the opening. It had
already grown very dark. As my right eye neared the small slit between my two
hands, the buzzing suddenly stopped and my hands dissolved. I was holding two
large golden pineapples. I flinched and flung them as far away from me as I
could, my heart racing. The pineapples continued to grow menacingly until they
loomed over me, their green tops quivering with ferocity. I had tried to scream
but I was frozen in place, as always. And then I died. I don’t know how. I just
know that I died. All of my nightmares then always had the same ending—me,
dying.
Until Dark came
and messed everything up. I felt myself about to wake up right after dying in
front of two terrifying pineapples (embarrassing, I know) when I felt a sudden
jolt in my spine as if I had been hit by electricity, yanking me back into the
dream and away from reality. There was a strange beating from inside my head,
like a finger softly tapping the side of an aquarium, deep and hollow. Tap-tap-tap.
Then everything went black.
When I finally
came to, I was lying on a purple cloud. At first, I panicked because I thought
I was awake-awake. But the strange shine that accompanied everything signaled
to me that I was still in one of my dreams. Two gray eyes stared at me above my
head. I hadn’t known it then but he was trying to figure out whether I had
really died or not, his eyes merely looking but checking for my vitals—blood
pressure, temperature, heart rate, etc.
“Interesting,”
he murmured before straightening up. The young man’s voice was rich and
velvety. He was seventeen, I found out later. He’s still seventeen to this very
day. As Carson and I aged, Dark stayed seventeen. Tall and thin, he always
wears a sharp dark black suit. His dress shirt and tie are also black. He held
his hands behind his back and thoughtfully tilted his head to the side, his
blood red hair swept up in a neat ponytail.
“What is?” I
asked, sitting up.
“You’re not
dead. And you’re a little girl.”
“Um, yeah, I
know I’m a girl, thanks. I’m dreaming so I’m not dead.”
“No, that’s not
what I meant,” he shook his head. “Tell me, how many times have you had these
dreams?” He gestured with his hand before he started pacing up and down in
front of me.
“The one with
the bumblebee and the two pineapples? Or just weird nightmares in general?” I
followed his movement with my eyes, back and forth in front of me.
He stopped.
“There are others?” His voice was suddenly breathless, amazed.
“Well, yeah,
I’ve had ones where Mrs. Dyliacco is yelling at me for no reason,” I answered,
crossing my legs and shifting my weight around to get comfortable. For a purple
cloud, it was surprisingly hard to sit on it. The young man suddenly looked
confused. “She’s my math teacher,” I explained. He nodded for me to continue.
“Anyway, there’s one where my best friend is attacked by tiny needles and then
won’t stop bleeding. I dreamt that I was drowning in a pool full of sharks
once. Just last week, I had one where I fell of a cliff and then got caught by
a giant pterodactyl that could talk. He told me that Chuck Norris isn’t real!”
“Interesting,”
he murmured again.
“I know! Chuck
Norris is so real.”
He looked at
me, now with a slightly irritated face. I decided to shut up. I got up and
peered over the edge of the cloud. I hadn’t noticed but we were moving, and
fast. We were rolling over green fields. We weren’t very high up so I decided
to jump. As I got ready to do so, the young man interrupted me, “What do you
think you’re doing?”
I turned to him
impatiently. “I’m going to jump. You’re boring me.”
“But won’t you
die?” he asked, his face quizzical.
“No,” I sighed
exasperatedly. He was giving me a headache. “I told you, I’m dreaming!”
“Yes, exactly.”
His face was serious. I shook my head and gave up. Without another word, I
turned and jumped.
--------------------
CARSON
When we got to
the House, it was already a little bit past 3 in the morning. The moon shone
brightly in the west. Nic had taken out her flashlight a couple of minutes ago,
knowing that we were nearing the gate. She never liked seeing the House in
complete darkness. “It looks so creepy,” she explained. “And it shouldn’t look
creepy.”
I reached down
to lift one of the stone cherubs that guarded the gate, meaning to take the key
hidden underneath. But there was no need.
“What the--?”
Nic whispered, her flashlight directed toward the low metal gate. It was
unlocked. She pushed and the gate opened easily. She looked at me and I
understood. Someone has been or is here. Which is impossible. Nic and I are the
only ones who know about or even have the ability to find this place. Unless…
Our eyes
widened in unison as we both thought the same thing. Without a word, we
sprinted across the grass, past the wishing well and the Japanese garden and
through the alcove. We were nearing the house now and sure enough, a light
shone through the second bedroom’s window in the second floor. Mrs. Fields’
bedroom.
I got a sinking
feeling in my stomach. What if this was what Dark meant about our 17th
birthday? I stopped in my tracks but Nic kept on running. I stopped myself from
yelling out her name. If I yell, whoever or whatever it is that’s up in the
house would also hear me. I gritted my teeth and ran as fast as I could to
catch up with Nic. I reached for her arm and jerked her back right before she
bounded onto the porch.
“What are y—”
Nic turned around. But she stopped when she saw my face. “You’re pale.”
“I don’t think
we should go in, Nic,” I whispered. “We don’t know who’s in Mrs. Fields’ room.
It could be anyone.”
“Or it could be
her.”
“Or it could be
anyone. It could be an axe murderer.”
“You and I both
know no one else alive besides the two of us can find this place. It could be
her.”
It hurt to look
at Nic’s face because I knew how badly she wanted it to be her. I did, too, but
I didn’t have a good feeling about going into an old house in the middle of
nowhere at dawn, alone. Well, not technically alone; we were together. But
still. I sighed as Nic continued to look at me expectantly, her expression
pleading for us to go in. I looked around and the shed caught my eye. “Wait
here,” I told her before trotting over. Leaning against the door were the two
rakes we had neatly left propped against the side when we came for our annual
cleaning this past summer. I grabbed both and jogged back to Nic. “Here,” I handed
her one of the rakes.
She shook her
head. “Carson, I have a black belt.”
“Fine,” I
retracted both rakes so that they were just half their original size. I held
one in each hand and turned toward the front door. It was probably already
open, too, if the gate was left unlocked. “Let’s go.”
No sooner had
we stepped onto the porch when the front door creaked open.
