EIGHTEEN
The boy squints into the room, like he hasn’t seen light in days.
“No way,” Robby mutters, controller falling from his hand.
“Jabari? Is it really you?” Myah says in sheer disbelief, inching closer.
That’s not Jabari. That’s a haint. It’s tricking us. That’s what they do.
The haint/Jabari shuffles into the room, holding the robot, like a little kid who just broke something expensive and gotta own up to it.
I shake my head. No, he’s not real. We’re seeing things. What was it called again? Grief hallucinations.
Myah grabs a bottle of water from her bag and offers it to him. He clutches it with both hands and chugs.
I hang back, staring at the boy, and blink several times to make sure I’m not dreaming. His clumpy curls look like a dryer lint trap. His scrawny arms and legs are ashy, his clothes are nasty, his glasses are dusty. And he smells awful.
“Everyone has been looking for you,” Myah says, picking dry leaves from his hair. “We thought you were kidnapped! Or dead!”
I finally move across the room and poke the haint with a finger. Jabari flinches away with a small “ow.”
“Yo!” I gasp, hand to my mouth. “You really are real!”
He nods and drinks more water.
I’m shook. I’m gagged. I’m all the things.
“Where were you? Didn’t you hear us calling for you?” Myah demands.
“I didn’t know who you were,” he answers in a thick Southern accent. His voice is scratchy, like he hasn’t talked in a long time.
“Well, what are you doing in here in the first place?!” Myah presses.
“Hiding,” he says quietly.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause every night … I would see the person who killed my uncle,” he says, his bottom lip trembling. “If I opened my mouth, the same thing would’ve happened to me, to my brother and mama. I didn’t want them to get hurt too.”
“Wait, hold up, you saw who murdered your uncle?” I ask, baffled.
He nods twice and begins to sob. “I didn’t see all of it, but I heard it happen.
I was supposed to wait in the van. I wasn’t supposed to be sneaking around and spying.
But I was bored, and I didn’t have Wi-Fi.
I just wanted to see if I could follow Uncle Tim without him knowing, like in the movies.
But I couldn’t save him. And after, I was too scared to move. ”
Robby’s mouth hangs wide open in shock. “How did you even last so long in this house?”
Jabari squirms. “Sometimes I’d sneak out and take food from a spot around the corner. Don’t tell my momma!”
“Why didn’t you ask anybody for help?” Myah asks.
“Were you really THAT scared you couldn’t say nothing to nobody?” Robby asks.
Jabari nods forlornly. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Myah sucks her teeth. “And what was your plan, just stay in this house forever?”
“Myah, chill,” I say. “He was scared. He’s a little kid!”
Jabari sniffs, wiping his face. It makes sense he’d stay hidden if he was so afraid.
Myah reels herself back in. “You right. You right. But, Jabari, everybody’s been worried sick over you.”
He perks up. “Is my momma okay? And my brother, Jay?”
“They fine! They been looking for you,” Myah says.
He straightens. “Not around here, right? They can’t come around here!”
“No one knew you were up in here. But we’re gonna get you out now,” I say.
“No! I can’t leave,” Jabari cries, panicking. “They’ll know that I saw who did it! They’ll kill me too!”
He turns to look at me but knocks over the flashlight. The light hits the thick lenses of his glasses, and he flinches away, the glare bright.
A bright white glare …
“Your glasses,” I gasp, pointing at him. I realize it suddenly. “The streetlights must have hit his glasses when he was looking out the window,” I tell Robby and Myah. “Those are the orbs I caught with my camera.”
Robby, too stunned to speak, nods his head and sets the flashlight back straight.
“It’s okay. We’ll keep you safe,” Myah insists, trying to nudge Jabari toward the door. “We promise. People are gonna be so happy to see you. ALIVE!”
“You don’t understand,” Jabari says, backing away from us.
He’s falling apart when I thought he’d be happy to be found. What did he see that got him so shook? What scared him so bad that he stayed locked inside a haunted house for days?
Except the house isn’t haunted, not like we thought. All the creaks and noises were just an old house being old. The EMF reader was probably just picking up static from other houses—if it even really works.
There’s no ghost in here, not the ghost of Tim Truman or Jabari. Just a regular boy stuck inside a house. So, something outside must be keeping him in.
I think back to the photo I took from the square, the shot of what we now know was Jabari peeping through the window. He would have seen the killer in the square, heard his voice matching the voice he heard kill his uncle.
“Wait, you saw this person every night?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Jabari says. “Just about.”
My stomach tenses with a hard jerk and I grab my camera bag.
“Robby,” I say, with a firm look. “Peanut butter.”
Robby’s mouth drops. He jumps up, stuffing his robot in the bag.
“Come on, we gotta go,” I say, frantically searching around the room, making sure we have what we need.
“What’s going on?” Myah asks, confused.
“We gotta get out of here,” I say, pushing her and Jabari toward the door. “Right now!”
“What? Why?”
“He said he saw the killer every night. Who comes by here every night?”
Myah thinks for a moment before it clicks. “A ghost tour!”
Asher comes here every night. Asher knew about the house. Asher lied about everything. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I should have known!
But it’s too late. I hear slow footsteps coming up from the basement, lagging like he has all the time in the world. He’s probably been watching us this entire time. Waiting until we cornered ourselves in the one room without windows, unable to cry for help.
We huddle together, watching the door, waiting for him to appear.
But it’s not Asher. It’s the blonde lady.
Britney.
And she’s holding a knife.