“Me either,” Sid said.
“And I saw them again when Warren walked in the woods.”
“Probably because Simon’s body was in the woods,” Sid offered.
“Yeah, but then I saw them again yesterday on my way home from the bike shop. They were flying over our woods, the woods Melanie walked into yesterday.”
Sid chewed his apple thoughtfully. “But what does that mean?”
“I think it’s a warning,” Ashley said, growing excited. “It’s a way for us to know where the monster is at.”
Sid looked at her skeptically. “I get that Warren stinks and all, but buzzards following him around?” He laughed, waiting for Ashley to do the same.
Ashley sighed and shook her head. “We really need to work on your jokes, Sid.”
16
Max saw Ashley and Sid sitting at a picnic table outside the Swirly Cone. He pulled his motorcycle to the curb and climbed off, hanging his helmet on the handlebar.
“Hi guys,” he called, waving at the kids.
“Mind if I join you?”
Sid grinned and nodded. “Sure, yeah.”
A man standing at the window, turned and waved at Max. He knew the man from the martial arts studio he practiced at several times a week.
“See ya on Friday, Wolf?” the man called as he walked backward, holding a chocolate ice cream cone.
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Max told him.
“Did he call you Wolf?” Sid asked, impressed.
Max grinned and nodded. “Yep, beats Wolfenstein that’s for sure.”
“Your real name is Wolfenstein?” Ashley asked, picking a peanut off her ice cream sundae and flicking it to a seagull that had landed nearby. “Why does the school call you Mr. Wolf?”
“I asked them to shorten it when I started. For the kids’ sakes. But yeah, my full name is Maximilian Wolfenstein,” Max admitted with a laugh. “People started calling me Wolf in high school. It stuck.”
“People call me Butterball,” Sid complained, arranging his spoon with equal parts ice cream and hot fudge. “I sure hope it doesn’t stick.”
“How about you Ashley? Any nicknames other than Ash?” Max asked.
Ashley shrugged. “I like Ash. Seems fitting. I’m what's left after the fire.”
Max lifted an eyebrow, but Ashley didn’t elaborate.
“How’s summer vacation going?” Max asked. “I heard the sheriff is kicking around the idea of a curfew on account of the missing kids. I’ve always wondered if kids actually abide by those.”
Sid’s head shot up and a significant look passed between him and Ashley. Neither of them responded until Ash kicked Sid beneath the table.
Sid grunted. “It’s good.”
“Curfews are a joke,” Ashley said. “Whatever’s snatching kids is not likely to stop just because they’re indoors.”
“You mean whoever is snatching kids?” Max corrected.
“Yeah, sure.” Ashley directed her gaze at the table where a glob of ice cream, likely from the patron before them, melted into a blue puddle.
Max steepled his hands on the table and then, seeing how adult-ish it looked, he pulled them back down.
“Anything interesting going on?” Max asked.
Ashley’s eyes bored into Sid’s as if commanding his silence. “Nope,” she said, taking a bite of her sundae.
“Oh, come on. Nothing? You guys haven’t been sneaking into the gravel pit out on Marsh Road to swim? No scamming Paulie Goldman for free tokens at the arcade? I can’t remember a summer I didn’t do those things.”
Both the kids’ faces brightened as if his revelations put them at ease, but Ashley remained tight-lipped.
“I scored a hundred and two thousand on Donkey Kong last week,” Sid offered, holding up his hands as if he were manning the controls and mashing buttons.
Max whistled. “Impressive. Never did much Donkey Kong, but I used to kill it on Death Race. I held the highest score for two years. Finally got knocked off by my brother of all people.”
“That’s so cool,” Sid said.
“Your brother’s the insurance guy?” Ashley asked, and Max noticed a thoughtful look on her face.
“Yep. He and my dad are the Wolfensteins behind Wolfenstein and Son.”
“And they sell like insurance for houses, right?”
“Yeah,” Max confirmed, wondering where she was headed with her questions.
Sid looked equally confused.
“Do you know who owns The Crawford House?”
Max wrinkled his forehead. “The old funeral home?”
Ashley nodded, and Sid’s face lost some of its color, his mouth turning down at the corners.
“Not off-hand. The heir died in the house as I’m sure you both know. Ever been in it?” Max gave them a conspiratorial smile.
He shouldn’t condone them visiting the old abandoned house, but it was a rite of passage of sorts in their small town. All the kids did it despite their parents’ protestations that it was dangerous. And it was. The house was filled with rotted floorboards, old rusted embalming equipment, and whatever bacteria cropped up in a place like that after so many years in ruin. Still, if he took the high-handed approach, he’d never get a peep out of either of them.
Sid watched Ashley, but Ashley gazed at Max with unwavering, and somewhat unnerving, eyes. After a moment, she nodded.
“We’ve been out there a few times.”
“Ever been inside?”
Ashley glanced away and shrugged. “I ran into the foyer on a dare last year and grabbed a piece of peeling wallpaper. Scored a Kit Kat too, because Norm Phillips was too chicken to go in.”
Max nodded at her respectfully. “I went in once, all the way in,” he told them.
“All the way?” Sid gasped. “Like to where the coffins are?”
Max nodded as a shudder crept up his spine. He bit his teeth together to keep from making it visible. He hadn’t thought of that day in years, and now as he spoke of it, the terror that had gripped him slipped back in like an old unwelcome friend.
He laughed and glanced at the ice cream window, empty for the first time since he’d arrived.
“Let me grab a cone. Scary stories are better with a little sweetness. My mom used to tell me that.”
Both kids nodded, and the moment he stepped away, Max saw their heads move together and their lips start moving.
“Chocolate and vanilla twist,” he told the girl behind the counter.
As he waited for his cone, he remembered more than a decade before when he’d gone into The Crawford House. He’d been camping in his backyard with his two best friends, Andy Hayes and Jerry Cavanaugh. They’d been sitting around their little bonfire, built fastidiously by Herman Wolfenstein, who’d given them a veritable Boy Scout lesson before he allowed Max to handle the matches.
As they sat and told spooky stories, Max’s older brother Jake showed up. As the oldest amongst them and one of the coolest guys in the tenth grade, they’d listened raptly as he’d told them the story of the man who’d died in The Crawford House, the only son of the man who’d built it.
“Blane Crawford was your typical rich kid,” Jake had started. Daddy owned the local funeral parlor, and in those days with plagues and farm accidents and a million other ways to die, business was good, real good. And in true rich kid form, Blane moved off and squandered his daddy’s money on booze and women. He came home penniless just weeks before his old man keeled over on the john. Course, he could have been just fine - kept the funeral home going and had a nice little life. Except Blane didn’t just like to drink. He loved to drink, and he didn’t like to work. Instead, he threw big parties at the house.