Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

“There are add-ons,” Adam said. “EVP Mode, Night Vision, Auto Detect, but they cost extra. The game’s still fine without them.”

He led us outside, and we swept our phones around the yard.

“I don’t see anything.” Holly sounded impatient.

“Ghosts don’t appear everywhere.” Adam put his phone away. “Anyway, I have soccer practice now, but we’ll go on a proper hunt tomorrow.”

He tried out a grin, seeing whether anyone would challenge his self-appointed role as our leader. Holly fake-pouted a moment, but no one else said anything, other than agreeing we would meet up again tomorrow. I couldn’t tell whether Holly liked Adam the way he liked her, or just considered him a means of finding ghosts. I couldn’t tell whether I liked Holly, not as a girl, but as a person. But the best place to hang out was Luke and Adam’s clubhouse, which probably meant I’d have to put up with her either way.

I ducked through the hedge, pausing when I realized Gen wasn’t following me. He stood framed by the gap we’d made over the years, the ground worn by our feet so the grass didn’t grow. I crouched, so I could see him fully. He had the look of concentration he got when he was trying to solve one of the math problems my parents gave him to practice while I was doing my homework, so he wouldn’t feel left out.

“What’s wrong?”

“What if I don’t want to see a ghost?” Gen fidgeted with the pack around his waist. It held his phone and his inhaler; he wasn’t allowed to leave the house without it.

“You don’t have to play.”

“But then you won’t play with me if you’re all doing it and I’m not.”

Gen pushed his lower lip out. Guilt stung me, making the hope that flared for the briefest of moments feel ugly and cruel. I couldn’t help the thought: would it really be so bad if Gen stayed at home and played with his own toys some days while I played Ghost Hunt! with Luke and Adam? At the expression on Gen’s face, I tried to push the thought away.

“Hey.” I crab-walked through the hedge and put my arm around his shoulders.

His bones poked at my arm, even through the fabric of his shirt. He’d always been small. Reminding myself that Gen needed my protection chased away the last bit of hope so that I could almost convince myself I’d never felt it in the first place.

“It’s just a game.” I tightened my grip into a one-armed hug. “If it gets too scary, we’ll both stop playing, okay?”

“Promise?” Gen looked up at me through his lashes.

I held out my hand. Our dad had once sealed a promise to take us out for ice cream if we cleaned up the yard with a handshake. Gen had been three years old, and the idea of a handshake had stuck with him as the gold standard for a really serious deal you couldn’t ever go back on.

“Promise.” I said it loudly and clearly, making sure I believed it, too.

“I have a good one,” Holly said.

The six of us sat shoulder to shoulder in the clubhouse. We’d been hunting ghosts all morning, but only Holly and Adam had caught anything, a regular haunt and a ghoul each. After a while, it had gotten too hot out, and we’d retreated to the shed with a fan run from the same extension cord as the mini fridge, and freezies from the corner store.

“It’s one you haven’t heard.”

At the edge in Holly’s voice, I looked up. She was looking straight at me and I blushed, realizing I must have rolled my eyes. She held my gaze for a moment longer, then launched into her story.

“Before Dieu-le-Sauveur was a real town, it was just a bunch of houses and a general store. A man named Martin St. Jean lived in the last house at the end of town, and everything after that was fields and forest. Everyone knew everyone back then, and neighbors looked out for each other, except for Martin St. Jean.

“He didn’t go to church on Sundays. He would grunt instead of saying hello to his neighbors. His wife was even worse. If she came to the general store with him, she would sit in the wagon and wait, or walk behind him with her head down, never looking at anyone. She never spoke at all.

“The last time they came into town together, Martin’s wife was pregnant. They were there to get supplies before a big snow storm. The shopkeeper’s wife tried to talk to Martin’s wife about the baby while their husbands loaded up the supplies, but Martin came back into the store and grabbed his wife’s arm saying they were done.”

Holly paused, looking around to make sure we were all paying attention. Seeing nobody was looking away or playing with their phones, she gave a half-smirk of satisfaction, and continued.

“When the storm came, all of Dieu-le-Sauver was snowed in for weeks, but no one thought to check in on Martin St. Jean and his wife, even with the baby on the way. Or maybe they did think of it, and they chose not to go because he didn’t smile and nod at them and because his wife looked so small and afraid all the time.

“Once the snow thawed, people started to feel guilty. They got a party together to check on Martin St. Jean. No one answered when they knocked, but they heard a sound like a wild animal inside his house. It took three men to break down the door.”

Holly dropped her voice, leaning forward. I found myself leaning forward, too, and Gen’s shoulder brushed mine.

“When they got inside, they found Martin St. Jean crouched in the corner, covered in dirt and blood. He snarled, and when one of the men spoke to him, Martin St. Jean tried to bite him and tear out his throat.

“Another man tackled him, and they dragged him outside. That’s when the men who were still inside found Martin’s wife. She’d been tied to the bed, and pieces of her had been carved away. In the fireplace, they found bones. Some were too small to belong to anything but a baby, and they all looked like they’d been gnawed on.”

Beside me, Gen flinched. Holly grinned.

“Martin claimed a wolf got into the house. He said he killed it and survived on its remains, even though he was too late to save his wife and child. No one believed him. They locked him up and he howled night and day, never stopping except to say how hungry and cold he was. In the end, they couldn’t take it anymore, and they strung him up from a tree without waiting for a trial.”

Holly paused again, making a point of meeting each of our eyes before delivering her last line in a dramatic whisper.

“And that’s how the Starving Man was born.”

I caught my first ghost in the high school parking lot after we’d been playing for a week. The six of us rode our bikes over together, then split up. I went to the far side of the lot near the trees, Gen sticking close as my shadow.

There was nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly a girl crouched on the asphalt right in front of me. When I looked away from my screen, I couldn’t see her, but through my phone she looked as real as Gen. She wore a bathing suit. Water ran from her skin, pooling beneath her and soaking into the ground. I didn’t remember animations from Adam’s phone, but then he’d only showed us the still pictures. I wasn’t prepared for how real she looked, the dripping water, or the way her lips seemed tinted blue.

“She’s talking,” Gen said.

I’d almost forgotten he was there. The girl’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything.

“It’s okay.” I didn’t look away from my phone.

I centered the girl and clicked the app’s camera button. The girl’s blue-tinged lips and the multi-color stripes of her bathing suit resolved into a black and white picture like the ones Adam showed us. I breathed out.