Fog Descending (House of Crows), Lisa Unger [best summer books .TXT] 📗

gentleman would do. But now, hearing Matthew’s and Mason’s delighted shouts, muffled by distance, he answered the call, leaving Claire alone to wait for them.

“I’ll be right back out.”

He saw her disappointment; it pushed down the corners of her mouth. And he knew in that moment that he’d blown what might have been his only chance with the prettiest girl who would associate with him. But the wild call of boy fun—it was just too powerful. What if something amazing happened—and he missed it? The ridicule would be unbearable. You waited outside with the girl!

“I’m sorry. Five minutes. I promise.”

She didn’t even answer him, glancing back the way they’d come as if wondering whether she should brave the darkening woods alone and go home.

Inside the building, it was dark and rank. His allergies acted up almost immediately.

“Where are you guys?” he shouted.

“Down here!”

He followed the sound of their voices through the foyer and down a long hallway, through an industrial-size kitchen—everything covered with a thick layer of grime, rusted out, crumbling.

He sidestepped a hole in the floor, feeling his way along the wainscoting. In retrospect, he was way less afraid than he should have been. Back then, before, he was rarely afraid of anything. His parents were pragmatists; his father an engineer. He didn’t read Ian bedtime stories; he read to him from technical journals, books about how things worked. Ian knew how to change a tire, fix a leaky faucet, change a fuse. He hadn’t had stories about monsters and ghosts, castles and princesses, no fairy tales. So none of that imagining was part of his inner vocabulary. His worries were structural—rotting floors that you could easily fall through, and rusty nails, broken glass, falling chandeliers.

“Ian!”

He came to a doorway that led to a deeper darkness.

“Careful on the stairs,” yelled Matthew, just as Ian almost tripped.

Down below he could see the flickering glow of lights. He followed, testing each step before committing his weight, down the long narrow staircase. When he made it down, Matthew and Mason were waiting.

There must have been a hundred candles, burning on the floor, on stacked crates, on tall candleholders. Mason was carefully moving to each with a lighter he must have had in his pocket.

Ian approached and saw that on the ground a giant circle had been drawn in chalk so dark it might have been coal. Within the circle there was a gigantic X. It looked vaguely satanic, even to Ian, who didn’t know much about religion. His parents were also atheists, though his mother sometimes leaned toward the agnostic.

When Mason was done, he turned to look at them. He seemed older, taller in the dim, his shadow enormous on the far wall.

“So how does it work?” said Matthew, trying to sound bored. But Ian saw from the way he bit his lower lip and kept looking back at the staircase that he was as nervous as Ian. Mason, however, seemed right at home.

“You stand on the X, close your eyes, and breathe, center yourself. Then tell the Dark Man what you want. What you want more than anything.”

“And then what?” asked Ian.

“He tells you what he wants you to do for him. If you do it, you get what you asked for. And you can go to his mansion whenever you want.”

It sounded like the lie that it was, childish, too complicated. Stupid. Ian was starting to regret leaving Claire. Maybe he would have tried to kiss her, the two of them all alone in the woods.

“What do you mean he tells you?” asked Matthew.

Mason shrugged. “I don’t know. Like he’ll send you a message—somehow.”

“So he gives you what you want? Or he takes you to his mansion? Which one is it?”

“Whatever you want,” said Mason, flushing.

“Bullshit,” said Matthew. He kicked at a can on the ground, and it skittered into the dark edges of the room.

“And the thing you ask for, it can’t be like you want a million dollars, or all the pizza in the world. It has to be something true. Something real.”

“But what if I really want a lifetime supply of pizza?” asked Matthew with mock earnestness.

Ian laughed; then they were both cracking up, mostly just blowing off steam, acting from nerves. Once they started, they couldn’t stop. Ian was laughing so hard his stomach hurt.

Of course, Mason got mad.

“Shut up!” he yelled. His voice echoed. “You fucking morons. Shut up!”

“Okay, okay,” said Ian, reining it in, taking some shuddering breaths. He dropped an arm around Mason. “Relax. You go first, Mace. Show us how you do it.”

Ian expected hemming and hawing, but Mason stepped right into the circle as if he’d been planning this all along.

“How many times have you been here?” asked Ian.

Mason didn’t answer, just shook his head, his eyes shining in the candlelight. Ian felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck tingle.

Both he and Matthew started edging back toward the stairs. They didn’t even have to look at each other to know that the second Mason closed his eyes, they were going to run for it, leave Mason in the candlelit basement and bolt as fast as they could for Claire and home.

“Oh my God. What are you idiots doing?” Claire, who had decided to join them after all, stood on the edge of the candlelight, eyes wide and black in the darkness, skin ghostly.

“I think Mason’s going to ask the Dark Man for what he wants,” said Ian.

Mason closed his eyes and lifted his palms. Instead of running, they all stood frozen, watching. There was something electric, something thick in the air.

“This is a bad idea,” Claire said pragmatically. She looked around, seemed to assess the situation coolly. “Penny is going to start calling around to our parents. We’re going to get in big trouble.”

“Just do it, Mace,” said Matthew. “Do it now.”

Mason took a deep breath. They all did the same, riveted to the sight of Mason in the middle of that circle, the candles glowing all around