She kept moving, around to the front door, which was hanging off its hinges. She stepped right over the two rotten steps, not trusting them with her weight, and onto the spongy floor inside. The walls inside might have once been white but had faded to a grotesque yellow, covered liberally in scrawled graffiti. The frames around the doors were carved with more scratching, names and words and symbols—pentagrams and anarchy symbols and others she didn’t recognize but that looked vaguely occult. A moldering couch slumped in one corner, pale blue with the cushions chewed through. Another door led out the back, past a narrow galley kitchen, but given the way it was swollen in its frame, she doubted it was functional.
She walked toward the sound of voices, still congratulating themselves on their own daring. When she stepped into the doorway, one of the boys, the one with the mop of blond hair, yelped and jumped up to his feet. The other one was a second behind but quicker to realize there was nowhere to go, unless they wanted to try busting through the window.
“Hey, lady, we, uh, we weren’t,” the second boy said nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He was Black, heavyset, wearing a red T-shirt with a dragon curled around a twenty-sided die. The other boy was white, and about the color of a sheet of printer paper at the moment, his hands opening and closing at his sides with nervous energy.
She imagined how she must look to him. Hair wild, shoes unlaced, wearing cotton shorts and a T-shirt that had clearly been slept in. The murderer, chasing them through the woods. “What were you doing at my house?” she asked. Her voice came out rough.
They glanced at each other. “We were just messing around,” the first boy said. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Was it you? Last night?” she asked.
They looked at each other again, eyes wide. “No?” the second boy said. “I was at home last night. Swear to God. Whatever happened, we didn’t do it.”
“He’s telling the truth,” the other boy said desperately, and she laughed. Both of them looked startled. She combed her hair back from her face.
“Criminal masterminds,” she said. The Black boy smiled nervously. “So, what? You wanted to scare the evil murderess? Then what?”
“I dunno. It just seemed … fun?” the white kid suggested.
“What are your names?” she asked them.
“Travis,” the blond boy said immediately, and his friend gave him a dirty look. Travis didn’t notice. “And this is Abraham.”
“Travis. Abraham. Don’t throw any more rocks at my fucking house, okay?” she said calmly.
“No, ma’am,” Abraham said immediately. “Look, we didn’t really think…”
“Yeah, I gathered,” she said. She crossed her arms, looked around. “This where the cool kids hang out?”
“Well, we’re here. So … no?” Abraham said.
“We’re cool,” Travis said, a touch sulkily.
Emma raised an eyebrow. He scuffed the floor with his toe. What had she expected? Kids with mohawks and nose rings, bullies out of a high school movie? “You hang out here a lot?” she asked. They both wanted to bolt out of there, she could tell, but she was still blocking the door.
“Sometimes,” Travis acknowledged with a bob of his head.
“There are parties here, that sort of thing?”
Abraham shook his head. “Used to be, I think? But with the roof caved in and everything, I don’t think so. When we found it, it was pretty fucked-up.” They were still nervous, but starting to settle down. Convinced Emma wouldn’t unhinge her jaw and devour them whole, maybe. She turned back to look at the living room. Feet shuffled behind her. One of them cleared his throat, but neither spoke.
“Kids used to come here,” she said. “When I was your age, they were out here all the time.”
“Yeah, we heard about that,” Travis said, almost eagerly. “We heard there were, like, Satanic rituals and shit.”
“There are occult symbols on the wall. There’re pentagrams and that’s called a leviathan cross?” Abraham said, pointing. “I looked it up. But, like, that stuff’s not real. Just people messing around, right?”
“Probably,” she agreed.
“We heard you came out here a lot. That you were one of the ones that…” Travis gestured at the wall. Emma snorted.
“I was too antisocial to be part of a cult,” she assured him. She walked back into the living room, sticking close to the wall to read the graffiti. There were names—people who had been there, people they wanted to cuss out. Questionable reports of lewd activity.