Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Gen turned to look over his shoulder, leaving his phone where it lay. He scrambled back, almost knocking me over.

“Gen!”

I reached for him, and he twisted away. Grabbing his phone, I ran after him. At that moment, our parents pulled around the corner. If they saw him running, I would be the one to get in trouble. Gen slowed at the park’s edge, and I caught up. His breath rasped, but he wasn’t having an attack.

“What happened?” I touched his shoulder, but he shrugged me off, climbing into the car.

He tucked his fingers in his armpits; goosebumps rose on his skin. I held his phone out and he shoved it into his pack without looking at it.

“Everything okay?” Mom glanced in the rearview mirror, looking between us.

Gen’s face was pale, but blotchy with high points of color. He pressed his lips together. I shrugged. Her gaze lingered, doubtful, but she pulled away from the curb.

That night, I lay awake for a long time, watching the unfamiliar shadows slide across the ceiling of my grandparents’ spare bedroom. I woke to Gen peering over the side of my bunk bed with no memory of falling asleep. I always slept on top, because Gen was afraid of falling off.

“What’s wrong?” I sat up.

Gen didn’t answer. I made room for him, and he scrambled up. A nightlight by the door gave off a bluish glow, and orange-tinted streetlights seeped through the window. Gen had been crying. He shoved his phone into my hands, the case damp like he’d been clutching it in sweaty palms. Ghost Hunt! was open to the scrapbook page.

It took me a moment to recognize the girl from the park. On Gen’s phone, the swing she’d been sitting on hung from one chain, empty. The other chain had been cut, a length of it wrapped around the girl’s throat so she dangled from the crossbar, her bare feet high above the ground.

“She can’t breathe.” Gen touched his throat.

I dropped the phone, then picked it up again, stabbing the button to close the app. It didn’t feel like enough. I turned the phone all the way off, and shoved it under the pillow. Then I pulled Gen closer. He shivered against me. I imagined the sound of cold wind and chains, the sound of someone struggling to breathe.

“We should go to the House at the End of the Street for real and hunt ghosts there,” Holly said.

Gen drew his knees up against his chest. After what he’d shown me at our grandparents’ house, I’d thought for sure he would stay home when I mentioned going over to the clubhouse. I don’t know why I’d suggested it, why I was still playing Ghost Hunt! when I’d promised him we’d quit.

I hadn’t even been playing that much since catching the first ghost in the parking lot, but no one else had quit yet, and I didn’t want to be the first. If it wasn’t for Holly, I’m sure Adam would have quit long ago. Same thing with Heather. But there was no way Holly was giving up.

As for Gen, I don’t know if he was being stubborn, or in some weird way he was trying to shame me into keeping my promise. Surely, if he got scared enough, I would quit, right? Until then, he wouldn’t stop, no matter how miserable he was, which left us in a weird standoff. Every time I didn’t shut the app down, or suggest doing something else, it made me angry at myself, which inevitably turned into being angry at Gen. Why couldn’t I have this one thing? Why’d he have to be such a baby about it? When I wasn’t looking at the pictures on his phone, or hearing the sounds, I could forget how terrible they were. I could convince myself it really was just a game.

“We should go tonight,” Adam said.

“Mom and Dad would never let us.” Heather spoke without looking at her sister, but Holly still turned to glare at her.

“So we don’t tell them.”

“I know how we could do it,” Gen said.

As small as the clubhouse was, his voice was almost lost. I stared at him, but he ignored me, looking at Holly and Adam instead.

“All our houses are on the same security system. If we trick them into doing a maintenance cycle, we can sneak out and our parents won’t know we’re gone. I saw how to do it on the internet.”

It was simple once I thought about it, but I hadn’t thought about it, and Gen had. How long had he been planning this? Gen finally looked at me. Some trick of the light made his eyes as dark as the ghosts in my scrapbook, a stranger staring back at me.

Maybe Gen’s asthma made him vulnerable, or maybe it was his night terrors. Maybe being afraid is what let the ghosts in. Martin St. Jean’s wife was afraid. Jenny Holbrook was afraid. Candace Warren was afraid, too.

Or, what if Candace Warren’s parents did more than just leave bruises one day? What if Jenny’s parents gave her the Ambien because they just couldn’t take her nerves and wanted her to shut up? What if there’s a reason we tell so many stories about ghosts?

What if we need an excuse.

Or maybe, Dieu-le-Sauveur really is haunted. Maybe a bad thing happened here long ago, and it keeps happening, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. It’s a comforting thought in its own way.

Every town has their version of the Starving Man, The Bell Hook Witch, the Weeping Woman, Drip, Drip Drag. Ghosts have always known how to get inside people’s mouths, using them to tell themselves over and over. Before everyone had smartphones and creepypasta, and Normal Paranormal, they had nursery rhymes, and clapping games, and campfire tales.

There have always been ghosts.

And even if there weren’t ghosts, kids would still disappear all the time.

It’s not my fault. Just because I wanted Gen to quit the game. Just because he got more attention than me because he was sick and small and afraid.

There’s a reason we want to believe in ghosts. We need them.

Luke, Adam, Holly, Heather, Gen, and I gathered in the middle of our street and walked together to the cul-de-sac. At the top of the stairs, we turned right. Shadows jittered through a stand of trees, and Heather’s phone pinged. She jumped, but stopped and snapped a picture. I didn’t look at her screen. I didn’t want to see. Holly whispered something in her sister’s ear, and jabbed her with her elbow.

We kept walking, stopping at the edge of House at the End of the Street’s lawn. The streetlights threw harsh patches of darkness across the empty lot next door. I imagined the Starving Man folded away in one of those patches, waiting.

The House looked perfectly normal, even in the dark. It was two stories, painted a pale yellow like cold butter, the door and windows edged in white trim. The yard bore a scar where the oak tree had been pulled up, roots and all. The worst thing about the House was that it felt empty—hollow all the way through—the kind of loneliness that goes with a place where no one has lived for years.

“Well?” Holly nudged Adam. “You’re the leader.”

Adam didn’t move. I could just make out the willow in the park across the street, its branches swaying even though there was no wind. A glimmer of light showed through the leaves, sparkling and hard-edged, then it was gone.

“Gen, let’s go.” I caught my brother’s sleeve.

Gen glared at me, but didn’t move. It was my fault he was here, and he wanted me to know. I wanted to tackle him to the ground like my mother had when he was gripped with a night terror. I wanted him to bloody my nose. It would be easier than admitting I was wrong, saying I was sorry. Gen spun on his heel, brushed past Adam and Holly, and kept walking right up to the House’s front door.