I tilted my head slightly because there was no way that was the whole story. Not to mention, his hand-wringing had gotten even worse and he’d broken out into a cold sweat. I reached out to put my hand over his. His skin felt cold even though it’d been warm just minutes earlier.
“What happened, Ford?” I asked. He didn’t pull his hands free, but he also couldn’t stop rubbing his fingers together. I took it upon myself to rub my own thumb over the back of his hand, then his wrist. I repeated the motion until he finally stopped moving his hands.
“We were hanging out in here,” he said as he looked around the room. “There was a table here, like this one,” he added as he jutted his chin at the table. “Jimmy and his friends started telling stories about all the people who’d died here since the house was built in the early nineteen hundreds. They said it was a curse from the wife whose husband had cheated on her. She killed him and their kids, then herself, and then cursed anyone else who moved into the house. I think Jimmy and his buddies got a lot of their stories from different horror movies they’d watched over the years. I believed all of it. Then we started hearing noises. Footsteps, doors opening and closing, glass breaking, moaning sounds… stuff like that. I was scared to death.”
My heart broke for Ford. I probably would have been just as scared at that age. Hell, I had been that scared when I’d heard some of those very things, only I’d known exactly whose heavy footsteps they’d been as they’d come toward me and what things getting broken along the way had meant for me.
“I begged Jimmy to take me home, but he wanted to check out the sounds. His friends too. They dragged me with them as we started searching the house. The sounds kept happening. I was shaking and crying and hanging onto Jimmy. We only had one flashlight with us and there wasn’t any power in the house. When we got to the stairs that led to the basement, Jimmy made me go ahead of him. He said he was right behind me.”
I felt my heart drop out when a single tear slipped down Ford’s cheek. He pulled his hand free of mine and wiped it away like it was nothing. I gripped the one hand I still had ahold of, but I wasn’t sure if it was to keep him from pulling it away too or to somehow make him realize I was there with him in that moment.
“As soon as I went through the door, it slammed shut behind me. It was pitch black. I started screaming and trying to open the door. Jimmy was on the other side yelling at me that the door had closed on its own and they couldn’t get it open. I… I actually believed him,” Ford whispered. “I begged him to get me out and he told me to hang on, that he was coming. I pulled the door as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. Then I started hearing these sounds coming from behind me. Moaning, footsteps… I just completely panicked. I screamed until I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see anything at all and there were hands on me. Grabbing me, shaking me, throwing me against the door. I kept calling for Jimmy. I even…”
Ford shook his head.
“What?” I asked gently.
“I wet myself,” Ford admitted. “I eventually just gave up and curled up into a ball on the landing. The moaning continued and then it changed to laughing. Then the door was opening and the light from the flashlight was on me and Jimmy and his friends were standing above me, laughing their asses off. Jimmy was bragging to his buddies about how he knew I’d fall for it. The whole thing had been a setup. Some of Jimmy’s other friends had already been in the house to make all those noises when it got dark. A couple of his buddies had waited in the basement to grab me as Jimmy held the basement door shut.”
“What did you do?” I asked as I fought the almost pathological urge to hunt Jimmy Cornell down and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
“Nothing. He took me home,” Ford murmured.
“No, he didn’t,” I responded before I could consider my words.
Ford looked up at me with pained, wet eyes. But he’d somehow managed not to let any more tears fall.
“You’re a terrible liar, Ford.”
Ford pulled his hand free of mine and stood. I waited for his demand to take him home, but to my surprise, he went to stand by the side door. “I came in here to get my backpack… it had this notebook in it where I used to sketch things and I didn’t want to leave it behind… it had some stuff I didn’t want Jimmy to see.”