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Zoe
“What do you mean you know where he is?” Zoe cried.
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Jason backpedaled. “It was just something that Kendall said at the end there.”
“What Kendall said at the end made no sense,” Zoe said. Was Jason cracking under all this pressure? “He was scared of his father and started drunk babbling.” She should know. She’d drunk babbled a time or two herself.
“You’re probably right, but do you guys mind if I check something out? It’s close-by.”
Zoe hesitated. What was he up to? “If you have a lead, we should probably tell the people at church.”
“It’s not a lead. Like you said, Kendall wasn’t making any sense. I don’t want to get everyone excited. If I’m wrong, then no harm done. If I’m right, though, I’d rather know sooner than later.”
“All right. What did he say?”
Jason looked at her, but she couldn’t read his expression in the dark. “Did anyone else hear him use the phrase ‘devil’s house’?”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “He said they’d shoved the devil’s house together.”
“Who’s they?” Zoe asked.
“And how do you shove a house?” Emma added.
“I think he might have meant to say they left together,” Derek said. “But I didn’t know that devil’s house meant something. Does it, Jason?”
“I’m not sure.” Jason turned onto a dirt road. “But there’s an old house that some people claim to have partied in. I’ve heard it called that. I’ve heard it called devil’s house.”
“And do you know where it is?” Zoe asked.
“Sort of. I don’t even know if it’s real. That’s why I don’t want to go out on a limb, here, but I’ve been told where it is.” He took his foot off the accelerator. “If I can remember.”
“And are we going there with only one flashlight?” Emma asked nervously.
“Shoot,” Jason said. “Maybe we should go back to the church first.”
“What’s your battery at?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t know. Check.”
Feeling a small thrill at touching Jason’s phone, she checked. “You’re almost full.” Must be nice to have a new phone. She resisted the urge to shoot Alita a quick I-think-we-should-break-up text. She put the phone down before she did just that. “We’re almost there, right? Wherever there is. Let’s go see if the house is even real. If we find something, we’ll call in the calvary.”
Derek snickered. “You mean cavalry?”
Zoe was embarrassed. “Whatever.”
“Yeah,” Derek said, sounding contemplative. “Might be smarter to call in Calvary.”
Jason pulled his car onto a very narrow road.
“Is this even a road?” Emma asked.
“Used to be, I think,” Jason said, not sounding sure of himself.
Road or not, it was incredibly rough, and they bounced around as Jason made the sloping climb. When he hit a bump that made a sickening scraping sound on the bottom of his car, he stopped. “Maybe we go the rest of the way on foot.”
“The rest of the way to what?” Zoe was looking through the windshield and didn’t see anything promising. Of course, she couldn’t see anything at all. There could well be something promising out there in the wet darkness.
“There’s supposed to be a house up here. Or there used to be. Now it’s abandoned, supposedly.”
“And they named it the devil’s house?” Derek asked. “Just for kicks?”
Jason turned the car off, but he left the headlights on. “Supposedly people have done satanic stuff up there.” He seemed to suddenly remember Emma. “Not real satanic stuff, though. They were just stupid kids. Trying to pretend to be brave.”
Jason climbed out of the car then, and Zoe wished she were a little better at pretending to be brave. She looked back at Emma. “I’ll wait here by the car with you if you want.”
Emma shook her head rapidly and leapt out of the car.
So much for that ploy. Zoe climbed back out and once again stood in the rain. Jason started walking, and she followed, her wet socks making each step a squishy affair. When this was over, she was going to go hang out in a desert. She’d heard there was a desert of Maine. She’d never been there, but right now it sounded like the best possible place to be. Maybe she could winter there, hibernating like a bear. Only in the desert.
Soon, the headlights didn’t seem so powerful. “Are you sure your battery won’t die?” she asked, a little out of breath from the uphill climb.
“No,” Jason said shortly. He was moving faster now. Was he in a hurry to get where they were going so he could then return to his car, or did he sense they were close to something? “I’m not sure of anything.”
Derek started singing, “We Three Kings.”
Zoe found it oddly comforting.
