Betcha

Betcha

           “I betcha don’t have the guts to do it. I double-dog dare ya!”

           Well, everybody knew that you couldn’t turn down a double-dog dare, so when Marty heard Jack issue the challenge, he tried to turn it around.

           “Have you done it? Did you have the guts?”

           “Yeah, I did it. Now are you gonna or not?”

           “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meet me there at seven.”

           The old Hunter house had stood there for many years before the boys were born. It had been built in the early 1920s, but had stood vacant since the late 70s. The last family to live it in had suddenly moved out one day. Moving van showed up, stuff got loaded and they were gone without a good-bye. The house looked like the Addams Family mansion to start with, so it was only logical that hundreds of ghost tales had been told about it, and it was a favorite place to scare the snot out of little kids on Halloween as they passed by. But the scarers always stayed in the yard.  They never went in, because of The Kid.

           Everybody knew about The Kid. He had accepted the dare to spend the night in the house ten years ago. Or twenty, or whenever. Anyway, he went in….and he never came out. Not a trace was ever found of him again, or maybe they found his body, or pieces of it. Or he was still living in the attic, having gone crazy and developed a taste for human flesh. Or so the story went. In telling after re-telling, embellishments were added until it achieved the status of a genuine urban legend in the area. Now the dare had been issued: follow The Kid into the house and survive the night.

           Marty and Jack worked up a story to tell their parents about how they were going to camp in the back yard of the other’s house, so that their absence would not be noted. Tents were folded, backpacks loaded, sleeping bags rolled up. Everything looked like a normal kid’s expedition. Except….Marty snuck a knife out of the kitchen into his backpack.

           At seven p.m., they were crouched in the side yard of the Hunter house, hidden behind some bushes. Cautiously exploring, they found an unlocked window on the porch. After some effort, they got it open and entered what appeared to be a parlor. The few pieces of furniture remaining were covered with cloths and cast eerie shadows when their lights passed over them. Shielding the beams of their flashlights so that they wouldn’t be seen from the street, they looked into the next room, which appeared to be the dining room. Marty turned to Jack and whispered, “Okay, this will do. You set up your tent behind those bushes. Let’s move that sofa into here and I’ll sleep on it tonight.”

           They shuffled the sofa into the dining area, sneezing at the dust that came off it. Marty pulled the sheet off, revealing a faded red coloring remaining on the cushions. He then opened his backpack and pulled out a small travel alarm. After winding it up and setting the time, he set the alarm for six o’clock and then said, ”I’ll come wake you up and we can get back into your yard before your parents wake up. That way, they’ll think we changed our minds and decided to camp in your yard instead.”

           “Good idea. All right, I’ll be right outside. Don’t sneak out or I’ll let everyone know you weaseled out.”

           “Bite me, Bozo. I ain’t weaseling. But don’t you try any bullshit like scaring me. I came prepared.” He reached into the backpack and showed Jack the knife.

           “Hope your knife can cut a ghost, pal!” Jack crept back out through the parlor and out the window.

           Marty closed the door to the dining room and shuffled the sofa by himself so that one end was up against a wall. He unrolled his sleeping bag behind it, placed the alarm clock and his backpack next to it, then pulled the other end against the other wall so that the sofa formed a triangle with him inside it. After chowing down on his snacks and drinking half a bottle of water, he read a paper back book by flashlight until the light started growing dim and he started to doze off. Turning off the flashlight, he set it close by, then climbed into the sleeping bag with the knife in his hand and closed his eyes.

           The creaking and groaning of the old house kept waking him up in fits and starts. At times, the wind blowing sounded like people screaming. One particularly loud noise woke him up and he sat there listening with the knife in his hand and his heart racing until he heard it again and decided it was just a tree limb rubbing on the roof. He was able to drop back off to sleep after that and exhaustion enabled him to sleep through the creaks of the night. 

           He dreamed of the house and being in it, as if he were watching a movie of himself. In his dream, he felt a sudden, oppressive feeling move into the room with him It seemed to be upset and angry about something. It then seemed to notice him and start moving toward him. Marty shuddered in fear.

           The shuddering woke him up. He lay there trembling for a few moments, then grabbed the flashlight and shined it around the room. Nothing. He then looked at the clock. Its florescent hands said the time was 5:45.  Still shaking from fear, he turned the alarm off, rolled up his bag, put the knife back in his backpack and made his way out through the parlor and out the window. Once he was outside, he realized that he needed to pee badly. In an act of bravado, he unzipped and doused the corner of the house. “Take that,” he thought to himself as he zipped back up.

Risking a brief flash from his light, he saw the top of Jack’s tent pitched near the back of the house. He moved to it and then whacked the top of the tent while whispering loudly, “Get up, asshole. It’s time to move to your yard.”

           After a few moments, he unzipped the tent, only to find it empty.