Sid grabbed Ashley’s hand. “You said we weren’t going inside,” he griped.
Ashley stared at the dark opening of the house and her mind swerved to Mr. Wolf and the story he’d shared days earlier.
Shane poked his head out. “You guys coming?” he called.
Ashley pulled her hand from Sid’s. “It’s okay. We’re safer in a group, but if you really don’t want to go in, you can wait out here.”
His eyes bulged, but she didn’t wait for him to argue.
She walked up the stairs and stepped into The Crawford House.
Shane had already started into the lower floor.
Ashley and Sid followed.
Shane walked ahead of them into the room filled with old coffins.
“Look,” Ashley whispered, pointing at a pile of discarded clothes in the corner of the room.
Shane picked something up and Sid gasped, backing into wall of cobwebs.
“Get em off, get em off,” he muttered, swiping at the back of his neck where he felt their sticky softness tickling his heck.
“Shh…” Ashley demanded. “Hold still.” She pulled the cobwebs from Sid’s hair.
Shane held up a small plastic bracelet, ripped jaggedly from whoever had worn it.
“The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane,” he read out loud followed by an address in Traverse City.
“So, it’s just some nutter,” Sid babbled, gesturing toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. The guy might be crazy.”
“These are kids’ clothes,” Shane said.
He lifted the pants from the pile of clothes. He was right. They looked to be around their size maybe a little shorter than the same pants Shane wore.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Sid argued. “Maybe the guy stole some clothes, realized they didn’t fit, and then left them here.”
Shane lifted up a coffin lid and leapt back, sending the lid crashing back down. Both Ashley and Sid jumped, Sid letting out a little squeal of terror.
“What is it?” Ashley asked.
Shane glanced at them, shuddered, and then pushed the coffin open, holding his arm out long as if he didn’t want to get too close.
Ashley walked closer, but Sid backed toward the wall holding up his tennis racket.
In the center of the mildewed silk lining lay an ugly rag doll.
She leaned close and realized the doll was not merely cloth, but appeared to have human hair and bones. She saw two yellowing bones jutting from the blue fabric wrapped over the doll’s lumpy body. Its face was a crude ball and its eyes were two blue buttons.
“Those are bones,” Shane murmured. “And teeth.”
Ashley stared awestruck at the two teeth poking from the red gash in the doll’s face.
“What?” Sid squeaked, standing on tiptoe, but not walking closer. “Like a dead person’s bones?”
“It’s a doll,” Ashley told him waving him over.
He walked toward them slowly, not lowering the racket.
He recoiled when he saw the doll and quickly spun toward the door, but they were alone.
“It’s his,” Sid whispered.
“It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Shane muttered.
Only Ashley didn’t speak. She swallowed the lump in her throat and reached a shaky hand toward the doll.
“Don’t touch it,” Sid hissed, grabbing her shoulder, but Ashley shrugged him off.
She picked the doll up and turned it around, studying it.
“This looks like Vern Ripley’s hair,” she started. “I don’t know him very well, but…”
“Whoa, yeah. His hair does look like that,” Shane said, peering closer at the doll.
The doll’s hair was a distinctive shade of red-brown.
“The shirt too,” Sid said, though his voice was barely a whisper.
“Huh?” Ashley asked.
“I saw Vern in it once. I remember because I thought my brother would like it. Zack likes to fish.”
The blue fabric was covered in little orange fish with black eyes and sharp white teeth.
She lifted the doll up and inspected it.
“I don’t think you should touch it, Ash,” Sid whispered.
Above them, the door banged open.
“What was that?” Sid squeaked.
Shane stared at the ceiling. “Just the wind, I think.”
Ashley tucked the doll into her backpack.
“What are you doing?” Sid asked, shaking his head.
“I’m taking it. I want to get a closer look at it, but I think we should get out of here.”
Voices sounded overhead. “Spray that window,” a familiar voice commanded. Travis Barron’s voice.
“Crap,” Shane muttered.
“We’re trapped,” Sid croaked.
They crept to the foot of the stairs and listened. Travis and whatever bumbling imbecile he’d brought with him worked their way through the rooms. They heard the sound of aerosol cans as the boy’s spray painted the walls above them.
“What total ass bags,” Ashley muttered.
She wasn’t a fan of The Crawford House, but it seemed awfully disrespectful to walk through and spray paint the walls and furniture that had once belonged to a family.
They heard the clomp of footsteps on the stairs.
“They’re going to the second floor,” Shane said. “Let’s make a run for it.”
They sprinted up the stairs, Sid bringing up the rear.
Above them, they heard Travis let out a high-pitched scream. “There’s something in here,” he shrieked.
Shane looked back, laughter erupting from his lips. They burst through the front door, running for the woods.
Ashley glanced back in time to See Travis running from the house, his face a white mask of fear. When he spotted Ash, Shane, and Sid, he stopped, his goon friend smacking into his back. Travis turned and shoved the friend away.
Ashley didn’t wait to see what he’d do. She ran for the shelter of the trees. They zigzagged through the forest, sprinting until Sid panted that he needed a break.
When they stopped, they all grew completely silent, save Sid’s overloud inhales and exhales, as they listened for the crunch of branches.
“I don’t think he came after us,” Shane said, a smile spreading over his lips. “But seriously, that was priceless. Did you hear him scream?”
“He… he,” Sid paused, drawing in a gulping breath. “He sounded like a little girl.”
“And his friend ran right into him,” Ashley added, her own laughter coming in unison with Shane’s and Sid’s.
Soon they were laughing so hard all three had collapsed to the forest floor. Sid was stamping his feet on the ground as he simultaneously laughed and struggled for breath.
When the fit ended, Ashley sat up, her jaw and belly aching from her guffaws.
Travis’s angry face popped into her mind, and her laughter ebbed away.
He’d be gunning for them now, no two ways about it.
“Man, I wish I could have tape recorded that,” Shane said, pulling himself up. “What a perfect prank on the last day of eighth grade. To play Travis pissing himself in The Crawford House.”
“Yeah,” Sid agreed.
The two boys high-fived. Ashley took off her backpacked and opened the zipper. She peered at the doll inside.
“What are you going to do with it?” Shane asked, stepping closer to look as well.
Sid did not move closer to the bag. His grin faded as if the realization of why they’d been in The Crawford House had just come back to him.
24
Max parked his motorcycle on the curb in front of the ramshackle apartment building. Long strips of pale yellow paint peeled from the facade. The owner had likely considered it cheery, but in its state of demise, the yellow reminded him of curdled milk rolling down the side of the building.