1
The moment the corroded fence comes into view, the sky betrays us, clouds shifting to cover the crescent moon. I click on my flashlight, even though Fairport Village isn’t something you need to see to know it’s creepy.
You can feel it.
Not just the smooth sand from the beach below transforming into rubble and grass up on this cliff.
It’s something in the air. Something darker than a pitch-black night that seeps into your skin whenever you get this close to the ruins.
Something that makes the little hairs on your arms stand up, that whispers with a tiny buzzing voice, Go back.
I’m tempted to obey the voice. When Henry De Rossi’s wide brown eyes meet mine, I can tell he feels the same way.
But I’m going in if it’s the last thing I do. And let’s be honest, if the legend is true, it very well could be.
Everyone else has already made it inside, which means we’re missing valuable footage. “Go on, or I’ll murder you myself,” I say, because I’ve never been good at encouraging words, and I need this paycheck.
Henry adjusts his glasses. His dark-brown hair flutters in the breeze as he raises his video camera to his eye and clicks it on.
Then he waves me along, and we approach the rusted chain-link fence, broken hinges reinforced with steel chains wrapped around the posts.
The weathered No Trespassing sign has been there since before I was born.
I hike his equipment bag up higher on my shoulder and ignore the words, along with the enormous crooked Condemned sign, its letters flashing white in the silvery moonlight.
I pry the two flaps of chain link open. Henry takes a deep breath, staring down the gap while I try to avoid cutting myself on this broken, rusted metal.
Finally, he exhales, the sound lost beneath the whistling wind and the crashing waves, and ducks through. His sweatshirt snags on a sharp steel end, but I jostle it loose, and he slips free.
He turns the camera off and lowers it, meeting my gaze through the chain link. I pass the equipment bag through to him. “Well, good luck to you, sir,” I say, saluting him. “I just remembered there’s a thing I’ve got to do.” I spin around on my heels.
“Oh, come on, Eden!” Henry bites out. “Thought you weren’t afraid of some stupid curse.”
“I’m not,” I say like a defiant toddler. “It’s the tetanus that worries me.” I gesture to the fence. “And, you know, the prospect of falling through a rotted floorboard.”
He rolls his eyes in the filmy moonlight and tugs the fence open. “You want to get paid or not?”
Letting out a huff, I duck through the opening.
“Two hundred bucks seems like a lot until you crack open your skull.” I grab his equipment bag and heft it over my shoulder.
Henry and I aren’t exactly friends, but we had a film production elective together last year.
He heads the audiovisual team at school, and now he’s in the advanced film class.
As part of his application to some fancy film school, he’s chosen to make a short documentary on the Fairport Village legend.
Capturing the senior overnighter will be a huge part of it.
I opted not to stick with the film classes, but apparently Henry liked my short feature titled Fairport High Teachers Who Are Secretly Aliens enough to offer me a paid assistant job tonight.
Either that, or everyone else was too scared of the curse to take the job.
Voices trickle out of a nearby bungalow, and Henry doesn’t miss a beat, his camera rolling, its light illuminating the broken cobblestone path.
“Which bungalow is that?” I ask, struggling to keep up with his long strides, the equipment bag slapping at my side.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you?” he says without slowing.
“Oh, right.” I dig into my pocket, pulling out the little map Henry told me to study in preparation for our documentary.
In its heyday, the six cottages of this bustling clifftop resort were painted various shades of pastel—delicate pinks, greens, and blues—so they lay like seashells under a glimmering sun.
The Blackmores gave each one a charming name, like Sunnyside Cottage and the Village Jewel.
Unfortunately after the resort closed down, the effects of salt water and wind took their toll.
The new paint began to oxidize and peel.
The walls rotted and buckled. A storm tore apart roofs and the once-pristine Fairport Village sign.
Looters, either ignorant of the curse or unfazed by it, shattered windows and removed anything of value from every residence.
In the daylight, you can still make out the faded hues from the beach.
But here in the dark, they all look identical, except for the varying degrees of devastation.
I squint down at the map, still scurrying along after Henry.
“It’s the Darling Daisy,” I say, reading off my own scribbles as I add, “known to the Fairport youth as Aunt Gertrude due to the facade’s uncanny resemblance to an old lady’s face. ”
I glance up, and a chill snakes through me. There’s no electricity in the place. Of course, there hasn’t been in twenty-five years. So when light gleams through the cracked window eyes and spills through the open mouth of a door, it’s like seeing the dead raised.