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

boyfriend, right?” asked Claire. Her voice had a defensive edge to it.

She stopped sweeping to wipe a sheen of sweat from her brow; when she lifted her arm, her shirt popped up to reveal her midriff, her pretty navel. Claire didn’t even notice at first how they all stared at her. Over the school year, there had been some dramatic changes—makeup, breasts, hips that swayed. She wore her wild red hair longer. Even the tiny bit of acne on her chin couldn’t dim her outrageous sexiness. It was distracting.

“What?” she said when they said nothing, just watched her gape jawed.

“Her sister doesn’t think she ran away,” said Mason. “She said there was a man she met on the internet. She . . . did things for him.”

“What kind of things?” Matthew wanted to know.

Mason’s smile was tight, uncertain, nervous, and embarrassed all at once. “Bad things.”

“My mom said she fell in with the wrong crowd,” said Claire. “That she had an older boyfriend with a car. And she took off. That she’d be sorry soon enough and come home.”

“She stabbed someone, right?” said Ian, interest piqued, a rumor he’d heard coming back to him. “They sent her away, to a hospital for a while.”

“I never heard that,” said Claire.

“I did,” said Matthew. He seemed angry to Ian. But sometimes Matthew was just angry when Mason was around. There was something weird between them.

“Have you heard of the Dark Man?” asked Mason, moving closer to them.

“Like the supervillain,” said Matthew. He tied off the garbage bag they’d filled with junk. Ian felt dirty, like he needed to wash his hands. The condoms grossed him out. There were three. He didn’t like that people were having sex and smoking in the fort. Then he imagined himself having sex with Claire in the fort, making himself blush for even thinking about it. He’d never even kissed a girl.

“No, that’s Darkman,” said Mason. “This is different.”

“So who’s the Dark Man, then?” asked Ian. He’d heard about the Dark Man before, but he ignored stuff like that. It was stupid.

“You do things for him,” said Mason. “And he gives you something you want.”

The sun dipped behind the clouds, and a coolness leaked into the air. Storms had been threatening all day.

“The Dark Man? That’s an urban legend, an internet hoax,” said Claire. “Don’t be stupid.”

“You do what he wants,” Mason asserted, jutting out his chin a little. “And he rewards you. There’s a mansion deep in the woods. You go there and it has everything—a pool, a hot tub, any food you want to eat, your own room, big television, every video game system.”

“Are you high?” asked Matthew. He glanced uncertainly between Claire and Ian.

There was a nasty bite to his tone, so Ian could tell Matthew was a little scared. Matthew had no end of stories about Merle House, and things he had supposedly seen there, noises he’d heard, cold spots. Ian, on the many occasions he’d slept over, had never seen anything at the old place but dusty old antiques and once a mouse under one of the grandfather clocks. Back then, he didn’t believe in things he couldn’t see. He lived in a ticky-tacky suburban house; his dad owned a construction company, and his mom was the receptionist/bookkeeper/administrator there. Ian had been their midlife surprise; his much older brother and sister were off at college and working in publishing in the city, respectively. Not that he wasn’t loved, just that his parents were busy, had moved on from the whole parenting thing. His life was very suburban and predictable, solid.

“That’s kid stuff,” said Ian. “There’s no Dark Man, no mansion in the woods.”

“How do you know?” asked Mason.

“Everybody knows that,” said Ian. Claire and Matthew nodded.

“You’re wrong,” said Mason. This was the other annoying thing about Mason. Sometimes he got mad. Sometimes he cried. He’d get a little red; his bottom lip would start to roll up into the line of his top lip. Man, when he did that, Ian really wanted to smack him—even though Ian still cried sometimes when his mom and dad fought, or he had to bring home a bad report card, or accidentally made a goal for the other team.

“I can prove you’re wrong.” Mason puffed his chest out, almost comically.

“How?” challenged Matthew.

“I’ve seen him. I’ve seen the house.”

“Bull. Shit,” said Matthew.

They were all staring at Mason now, moving closer. This was scary, yeah. But it was also, suddenly, super interesting. There were rumors about a place out in the woods, some kind of abandoned structure, like an old school or hospital or something. But Ian hadn’t believed that either.

“I can show you.”

“I’m going home,” said Claire. Of the three of them, she was the bravest, the boldest—but she was also the smartest. She put down the broom and picked up her backpack. She’d been jumpy since the whole hide-and-seek thing yesterday. She’d really freaked out when she’d gotten stuck in the basement.

“Yeah, okay,” said Matthew. “Show us.”

It was a dare. Mason issued a weird little smile, turned to start walking, and motioned for them to follow. Claire and Ian hung back, looking at each other. Matthew and Mason had already disappeared through the trees. Ian shrugged. Finally Claire did too.

It was just a game, after all. Mason was messing with them. There was no Dark Man, no mansion deep in the woods where all your desires were satisfied. Of course there wasn’t.

5.

Jewel slammed her door as hard as she could, but the house was so old and solid that it just absorbed the sound. She leaned against it, vibrating—the girl in the woods, her father’s insistence that she was dreaming, that weirdo Avery March. God. She hated this place and everyone. She sank to the floor, put her head to her knees, and wept.

A soft knock at the door. “Jewel, honey, let’s talk.” Her mom.

“Mom, I just want to be alone.”

She waited. Would she try to push inside?

“Okay,” she said. “Just—come