The Haunted

Moments later, a garbage truck rounded the next corner with a loud rumble and started toward them. They were both getting tired anyway, so they decided to head back, but when James turned around, he saw a group of older kids skateboarding up the street. His heart lurched in his chest, and his first instinct was to run, but it became apparent almost immediately that these weren’t the kids from his old neighborhood. Still, he stepped onto the grass of a nearby house and waited until they passed by.

Back home, he convinced his dad to take a break, and he and Robbie went upstairs in the garage and guided the exercise bike through the trapdoor while his dad pushed from below. After kicking his dad out, they began rearranging things, even finding a spot for the wine rack, which Robbie said they could fill with Coke bottles or cans. The place was gradually starting to come together, and James thought it was looking pretty good.

They still needed to figure out a way to make their entrance secret, and he let Robbie stay in the headquarters and think about it while he went into the house to snag some Pringles for them to snack on. He grabbed a couple of Capri Suns as well, and returned to find his friend bent down in front of an opening in the far wall. He had apparently pulled off a board to reveal the space behind it, and James put the drinks and snacks down on top of the bookcase, walking over. “What are you doing?”

Robbie looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“What are you doing?” James repeated.

“There’s a secret compartment back here.” He motioned behind him. “I tripped over that nail sticking out of the floor, and I almost fell and my foot hit the wall, and this board came loose.”

James crouched down next to his friend. “What’s in it?”

“Nothing. I was hoping for treasure or a map or something, but …” He moved aside to let James look. “See for yourself.”

James peered into the space and at first saw nothing but a small rectangular area approximately the size of a shoe box. Then he noticed that, in the center of the space, there was a low pile of dirt. It was roughly the size and shape of an anthill, but something about the smoothness of its sides made it seem deliberately constructed. It reminded James of a sculpture he’d seen an artist working on at an arts-and-crafts fair last year. The artist had used a knife to pare down and smooth out the sides of a mound of clay, and it had looked quite a bit like this.

As James watched, the right side of the piled dirt collapsed, and that triggered something in his mind. He suddenly remembered a dream he’d had the other night. He’d been in a hole, or, more accurately, a tunnel, a tunnel he had dug in the dirt. He was sliding through this tunnel on his stomach and eating the dirt in front of him. It was a crazy dream, but the craziest thing about it was that the dirt tasted great. He’d never encountered anything like it, and he found that he not only loved the taste but the texture. Everything about the dirt was amazing. It was the most exquisite flavor he had ever come across, and he wanted more, he wanted all of it, and seconds later he was creating a new tunnel as he ate through the wall to his left.

Now, curious, James reached into the compartment and picked up a small sample of the dirt in front of him, putting it to his lips. On his tongue, the granules felt odd, rough, dry, not enticing at all, but the flavor …

Was good.

“What are you doing?” Robbie stared at him, shocked, and James suddenly realized how completely whacked-out this must seem.

Seem?

It was completely whacked-out, and he didn’t know what had come over him, why he’d done it. It was as though he’d been hypnotized or was in a trance, and he spit out the dirt in his mouth, grimacing as he wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. Standing up, he hurried over to the bookcase, grabbed one of the Capri Sun pouches, yanked off the straw, shoved it in the hole and drank. He finished the whole pouch, but he could still taste the dirt, and it—

It still tasted good.

No! He shouldn’t be thinking that, didn’t want to think that, and he tried to force his brain to concentrate on something else.

But the mood in the loft had shifted. Robbie was looking around the room as though he didn’t recognize it, as though he was a little bit afraid of it, and James, too, felt slightly spooked. He glanced toward that open hole in the wall, and it seemed somehow darker than before. Why had someone made that secret compartment? he wondered, and none of the answers he came up with were good.

Reaching for the board, he quickly covered up the space.

And everything shifted back.

The uneasiness he had felt only seconds before, the air of dread that had seemed to hang over their headquarters, disappeared. All was back to normal, and it was hard to imagine that it had ever been different. He and Robbie looked at each other.