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Levi
“Why are we stopping here?” Something in Levi’s stomach churned.
In the front seats of the banged up Chevy Cruze, Kendall and Shane exchanged a look that intensified Levi’s foreboding. “We told you,” Kendall said. “It’s a surprise.”
Levi looked out his window. “Yeah, but there’s nothing here.”
“Exactly.” Kendall laughed as if he’d said something funny and swung his door open. It clunked against a boulder, but Kendall didn’t care. He had no emotional attachment to his car. Or to anything else.
Annoyed, Levi also got out of the car and went to stand beside Kendall. They were in a sort of clearing. Levi thought it was probably an old logging landing. His eyes scanned the bushes and landed on a sun-faded plastic gas can. Yep, probably a landing.
Beyond this landing was nothing but forest. If loggers had cut it, they had only cut some of the trees.
Shane joined them. “There’s nothing here because this is only a shortcut.”
Great. A shortcut to a mystery location. This just kept getting better.
Shane slung his tattered backpack over his shoulder, and bottles clinked together.
“I thought we were coming out here to get high?”
Shane laughed. “We are. Nobody said I couldn’t drink too.”
Levi didn’t like drunk Shane. High Shane was hilarious, but drunk Shane did stupid stuff. Stuff that could easily get them a ride in an ambulance. Or the backseat of a police car. Probably Shane would luck out and get the ambulance ride, leaving Levi with the cop car. “All right. Show me what you’re gonna show me.” He wanted to get high and then get on with his evening. He liked his friends, but he preferred to spend his Friday evenings with girls.
“Patience!” Kendall started walking.
The sun dipped behind the trees, and the shadows turned into real darkness. They were halfway across the landing when Levi rolled his ankle. “Ah,” he cried and then wished he hadn’t made a noise. Kendall and Shane weren’t the most sympathetic and were more likely to poke fun than to have compassion. He couldn’t see where he was walking. He needed light. He reached for his phone in his back pocket—but it wasn’t there. He swore and stopped walking. He turned back toward the road. The car looked really far away.
“What?” Kendall sounded impatient.
“I forgot my phone.”
“Come on.” They kept walking. “You won’t need it.”
Levi hesitated.
“What, were you planning on taking some haunted house selfies?” Shane let out a peal of laughter. He was his own biggest fan.
“Haunted house? What haunted house?”
“It’s not haunted,” Kendall said, his tone implying that Shane was an immature fool for saying such a thing. “But it is creepy. Super creepy.”
“And that makes you want to go get high there?” Levi’s bad feeling wasn’t going away.
“Absolutely. It’s a trip. I’ve done it before. Trust me.”
Levi did trust his friends. That was the problem. So he followed them toward the woods, further from the road, and deeper into the darkness.
They entered the trees, and then Levi couldn’t see anything. The woods were thick with night sounds. Levi wasn’t much of an outdoorsman and wasn’t comfortable with his current circumstances. How had he been so stupid to leave his phone in the car? He couldn’t even remember taking it out of his pocket. It must have fallen out.
“Almost there,” Kendall said, and minutes after that, they spilled out onto what looked like a very old road.
Levi looked both ways. This road was too narrow to be a road. “Is this someone’s driveway?”
“Used to be,” Kendall said.
“Then why didn’t we just drive up it?” A reasonable question, he thought.
“Because then someone might see our car,” Kendall said as if Levi were several steps beyond stupid.
They followed the driveway up a small slope. The night was still loud, but Levi felt better now that his immediate surroundings had opened up a bit. He still had no idea where he was, but there wasn’t much chance of getting lost. They were on a peninsula, so if he walked in a straight line, he would eventually hit either ocean or Bucksport.
“There it is.” Kendall sounded reverent.
Levi looked up. The outline of an old house stood ahead of them. It did look a little haunted, though it wasn’t like one of the haunted mansions in the horror movies where cute cheerleaders ran from room to room trying to escape ax-wielding ghosts. This was more like a haunted shack. And he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. In fact, something inside him was screaming at him not to go any closer. “Come on, man.” He stopped walking. “This is stupid.” He no longer cared that much about getting high. And his ankle hurt.
“Fine.” Kendall didn’t even slow down. “Stay down here. But we’re not afraid, so we’re going to keep going. We’ll be back eventually.”
Levi didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to go near that house. He didn’t want to stay alone in the wilderness either. And they were only minutes away from full dark.
He started walking again.
The house got a little bigger when they drew near but only a little. Graffiti spattered the front wall. Kendall stepped onto the small porch, and it creaked under his weight. He shined his phone flashlight on the front door, which had an upside down star painted on the front of it. The red paint was faded, so it must have happened a while ago. Levi tried to find comfort in this. Some kid had painted the symbol on the door as a joke and then gone on to become a lawyer or doctor or something. That’s all this was: kids messing around. Nothing more sinister than that.
