[#066] The Dare

"Now turn your flashlight off and step backwards down through the cellar door, staring up at the full moon as you walk."

Cass grinned at Jeffrey. Jeffrey shared a glance with Park before the two teenage boys frowned at her.

"Are you serious?" Park asked. "You're trying to get us killed, aren't you?"

Jeffrey gazed up at the filthy, brutal building before them. A yellowed stucco wall stretched about forty feet from end to end, unbroken but for three narrow window-slits left to drip in natural light. They were hung too high for anyone to peer through and spy the nasty work within the structure, which rumor held had been a butcher shop back in the 70s, before the big factory up the street closed and sent half the town packing for a better future. Brick walls over both the doors prevented access, though some enterprising explorer had managed to snap the chain wound around the big twin doors leading down into the shop's basement.

The girl sighed and rolled her eyes. "Alright, guess I win then. Cowards."

"Hold up, that's not even fair!" Jeffrey cried. "I made you hop the fence and find my baseball in the creepy railyard. We could fall over and break our necks on this!"

Park crossed his arms. "I mean, that was a pretty high fence."

"She found a way around it! I didn't even know there was a gap behind the tree, so she obviously had a better chance at it than we do!"

Moonlight filtered blue and spotty through the clouds, dancing with the shadows across the wall above them. Off and on a bright glow would flicker from somewhere within the building, like a hand waving in front of a torch a few seconds at a go. Jeff didn't like the way that light glinted off Cass's eyes.

"Right." Cass smirked. "You didn't know about the hole, so you had no problem asking me to climb a ten-foot fence."

"Alright, fine, maybe it was a little dangerous. But who knows how rickety the staircase is?" Jeff turned away from her, hoping to hide the sweat glistening on his forehead. He shined his light down the steps and illuminated the bottom some twelve feet down. The concrete floor of the basement laid out clear beneath them save a thin, uneven coat of sawdust, and the wooden railings mounted to either side of the wall still looked sturdy.

"Uh..." Jeffrey added.

"Still think it's a death trap?"

Jeffrey gazed at Cass, whose smile verged on mania. She had won, and he knew it. The basement's inviting appearance made it seem an easy dare. This terrified him, but the one thing he could not do was look like a chicken in front of his older brother.

He turned to Park, who looked oblivious to whatever invisible alarm had tapped Jeffrey's brain. Park shrugged and positioned himself at the top of the steps, pointing his gaze up at the moon after double-checking his grip on the banister. Jeffrey sighed and took his place beside the older boy, shutting down his flashlight and leaving Cass in silhouette against the moon. She stood before them, her face lit only by the intermittent glow within the shop. He shivered each time the light from the window illuminated her piercing stare, which grew colder as the pace of the torchlight quickened.

"Count of three," Cass whispered in the darkness.

"Three." Flash, and her face lit up thin and sallow.

"Two." Flash, and her face lit up thinner than possible, inhumanly angular, as though the light had caught her changing shape right before them.

"What the hell--" cried Jeffrey, but he was too late.

"One!" Cass roared as she charged at them. A solid shove with each hand sent the boys tumbling over each other into the shadows of the basement.

Red haze thundered through his eyes as Jeffrey fought to stay conscious. He placed his weight on his palms to struggle upright, crying out in pain as he drove the hard chunks of sawdust piercing him deeper through his flesh. Park sprawled out next to him, a copper halo seeping out into the air around his head as though the two lay underwater. Something enormous snorted and shuffled in the corners with elephantine footsteps, and Jeffrey picked up the torch and swept it across the room. The beam traveled no further than the narrow band of moonlight filtering down the steps, the moonlight now shadowing a figure unlike the girl he'd met at the neighborhood block party.

Cass now stood much taller and thinner, or she would if her spine hadn't bent in three places, giving her the look of a question mark with arms and legs. Her arms stretched out to her sides for several feet longer than they should, grasping the handles of the doors and pulling them closed. Something slithered from her mouth just before the doors shut, and she whispered once more down the stairs in a choked mockery of her former voice:

"Two more for the harvest, mother. You'll be free soon enough."