Scary Story: Chapter 1

FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life, Molly hated trees.

Hated the way the dying leaves rubbed together and sounded like voices whispering nasty rumors. Hated the long shadows the trunks cast on the weedy back yard. Loathed the scraggly branches that scraped across the windows like fingernails.

Back home in Norfolk, Molly would’ve spent this late-September Saturday lounging in the crooked boughs of the mulberry tree across the street from her house. She and her best girlfriend, Noelle, would’ve already picked the tree clean of its sweet berries – the ones that stained their lips and the sidewalk below a deep, purple-red.

When the fireflies awoke and flitted among the mulberry leaves, the girls would flop lazily to the ground. Molly would wave goodbye as Noelle headed the half block to her house. An hour later, after dinner, they’d be on the phone to continue their conversation about whether Ed, a junior, would ask Molly, a freshman, to the homecoming dance.

He might’ve done it this weekend, Molly thought, if not for her ridiculous, unfair parents.

Without even consulting her, they volunteered her to babysit her little cousins for an entire weekend at her aunt and uncle’s house two hours away, in a tiny town outside Richmond. It was the middle of nowhere.

The three little boys had figured out pretty quickly after Molly arrived Friday night that she was a reluctant supervisor, with nothing resembling the disciplinary authority of their parents. The youngest, who was 2, had cried for almost two hours after his mom and dad drove off for their getaway at a bed and breakfast.

The older brothers spent all of Saturday morning trying to make Molly cry. When she opened the door to let the dog into the overgrown backyard, they ran out and refused to come inside. The 5-year-old unlocked the gate and let the dog escape. The 4-year-old stripped off all his clothes and pedaled his tricycle inside a baby pool filled with murky rainwater.

By nightfall, with the boys finally in bed, she was exhausted, lonely and aching to tell Noelle about her troubles. But it was a long-distance call. So here she was, at the kitchen table, wondering how she was going to fill a long evening alone. And why did this town have to be so dark and lifeless?

Scraaaape.

Darn those creepy trees.

Scraaaape, scraaaaaaaaaaaape.

CRAAASH!