“Hold on, here’s the basement door. Don’t push so close; I’ll fall down the steps.”
The dark turned the sound of her fingers moving along the wall into skittering mouse feet. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth, pushing my lips into my teeth. With a tiny click, a pool of yellow light appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
“See? We’re fine,” she said.
Even with the light, the basement was shadowy and gray, especially in the corners. It smelled even worse than it had the other day. I tried breathing through my mouth, but it tasted like wet, smelly socks.
“Becca, it smells really bad.”
“You’ll get used to it in a few minutes. It’s like when you poop. At first it stinks, and then you can’t even smell it.” She sat down, curling her fingers around my wrist so I had to, too. The floor was even colder now.
“We didn’t check the rest of the house,” I said. “What if someone’s hiding upstairs?”
“There’s nobody here except us.”
“If there’s a killer hiding here and he gets us,” I said, pulling up my knees and resting my chin between, “it’s your fault.”
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“About what? Killers hiding in this house? I just did.”
“No, I mean killing someone,” she said.
“You’re joking, right?”
She touched the tip of her tongue to the bow of her lip and scratched the house key back and forth across the carpet.
“Right?” I said, trying to ignore the key. All I could think of was being buried alive, scratching at the coffin to get out and no one would ever hear.
“No,” she said, setting the key aside. “I’m serious. Have you?”
“No. That’s awful. I thought we came here so you could tell me—”
“I have.”
“No you haven’t,” I said.
“Yes I have,” she said. “And I bet I could get away with it, too.”
I snorted. “Ted Bundy couldn’t.”
“I’m smarter than he was.”
“But you’re not crazy. You have to be crazy to do that to people.” I swirled my finger near my temple.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Her face went blank, like someone took a squeegee and wiped it away.
“Becca, that’s not funny.”
Her eyes were empty and reminded me of a house with no one home. She was only goofing off, but it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I pinched her arm. “Becca, stop, that’s freaky.”
Her face rearranged itself the right way. “Pretty good, right? I practiced in front of the mirror.”
“Why would you even want to do that?”
“Why not? It’s fun.” Becca moved her jaw from side to side, looking at the ceiling. “Anyway, what Red Lady story should I tell you?”
“It better be good, after all that.”
“Okay,” she said, scooting closer. “So you already know when the people in the village buried the Red Lady, they didn’t kill her. That’s why the hole was empty. If she was dead, they would’ve found her body.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Everything they did to her made her stronger. She was kind of a ghost, but not, and could go wherever and do whatever she wanted. After everybody in the village was dead, she disappeared.”
“Where did she go?” I said.
“No one knows. No one saw her for a long time. I think she was hiding so everyone would forget about her.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah, but she was there, watching and waiting, getting stronger than she’d ever been.”
I darted a glance into the dim corners. Gnawed the edge of a fingernail. “But she couldn’t cast spells anymore, could she? She still didn’t have hands, right?”
“Right, or a tongue, but she didn’t need spells anymore. She could do things just by wanting to, and if she talked to you, she talked to you in your mind.” She tapped her head. “Maybe I’ll just tell you this story and not Gia and Rachel. I have plenty of others I can tell them.”
I rubbed the heart between my fingers. She lifted hers and kissed it. “Best friends,” she said.
“Forever,” I said.
“So years later, there was this girl about our age, and she lived with her dad, her little sister, and their old dog. Even though her dad worked a lot, they were pretty poor, so she got picked on. Not calling her names, but throwing rocks at her and pushing her down so she got all bruised up. The leader was a boy who hated her.”
I scrunched my face. “Why?”
“Don’t know. He just did. The girl didn’t tell her dad and made her sister promise not to tell either. She didn’t want to be a crybaby. She didn’t even cry when the kids knocked her