Enna woke up to bright sunshine streaming through her window. She rolled over, pulling the blanket over her head. It was Saturday, she didn't have anything to do, she could relax. Lazily, she closed her eyes and started drifting off to sleep.
She sat bolt upright when she remembered. Shit, what time was it? She grabbed the clock on her bedstand and brought it up to her sleep-fogged eyes. Ten thirty! She wasn't gonna be late after all. She rolled out of bed and creaked open her bedroom door. Her house was quiet. She knew her mom left for work at eight on saturdays, so she probably wasn't in the house. If her dad was in the house, she'd be able to hear his heavy workboots clumping around. That meant he was probably in the garage or the driveway. Sure enough, when she opened the door she heard the tell-tale sounds of metal clanging and muffled swearing. Perfect.
Enna put on socks to muffle her footsteps just in case and padded out of her room. Ulysses was probably gonna need more lunch than whatever snacks their friends brought. She grabbed a few slices of ham from the fridge and started making sandwiches, checking over her shoulder every few moments for the door to the mud room to swing open. She didn't know how much longer her dad was gonna be outside- at some point he was going to come in to grab a beer or wash his hands or something- so when the sandwiches were done she raced back up the steps and stuffed them in her backpack. Then she started digging through her drawers for her supplies.
You couldn't just go into the woods empty-handed. Years of going on adventures meant Enna had this down to a science. Food was important, but she had that covered. Flashlight- you never knew when you were gonna find a cool hole to look in. Rope- an hour spent at the bottom of a surprisingly deep ditch had taught her that lesson. Extra socks for if she fell into the creek again. Bandaids because there was no way she wasn't going to scrape her knee on the concrete like she did every time. The baseball she’d dumped on her desk last night. A switchblade she’d stolen from her dad’s workbench. And most importantly, her baseball bat. It didn't fit into her backpack, obviously, but she’d gotten Dany to sew a holster onto the side of her bag so she could take it with her everywhere. She'd had that baseball bat since she was eight years old. It was heavy wood, so heavy that Eleri could barely swing it, but when it was in her hands it felt like an extension of her arm. It had been a lot of things over the years- a pirate’s sword, a barbarian’s axe, a magical scepter, a demon’s pitchfork. Most of those games had taken place in the forest between two neighborhoods. On one side of the forest was the neighborhood where she and Ulysses lived, in all its cracked-pavement glory. On the other side, insulated from the “bad part of town” by several acres of woods, was the fancy neighborhood. A whole bunch of huge houses, the kind of place you saw on TV shows with living rooms bigger than the whole top floor of Enna’s house. One of the streets had honest-to-god mansions on it, separated from their neighbors by huge manicured lawns, with balconies and fountains and big spotlights on the outside so everyone could see how rich they were even at night. She’d only ever been in one of them, and that was Emiel’s house. That place was so big you could get lost in it, which she knew because she had a couple of times. Most of her other friends didn’t live in mansions, but they might as well have as far as she was concerned. When the house you’ve lived in your whole life is about five feet square and packed with people who hate you, anything starts to feel luxurious in comparison.
After she finished getting dressed, Enna slid a weathered piece of paper out of her top desk drawer and taped it up to the window. On it was a crude drawing of a big tree, its branches barely more than a scribble. She and Ulysses had been using this signal for years now. If one of them saw it in the other’s window, they’d know to meet at the edge of the forest. No telling when he’d see it, but it was eleven-thirty now, so hopefully soon. Those ham sandwiches weren’t gonna keep forever. Enna shouldered her backpack, jammed her baseball cap on her head, and opened her door. Still quiet in the house, but that could mean anything. Her stomach churned as she tiptoed down the stairs, wincing every time a floorboard creaked. Down the stairs, past the living room, and a straight shot through the dining room they never used to the back porch door. It took all her self-control not to slam the screen door open in her haste to get out of the house. Then she was free and clear, sprinting into the cool darkness of the woods.
It was only a few minutes before she saw Ulysses trudging through the dry grass of his backyard, backpack hanging off one shoulder, hands shoved into his hoodie pocket. She got up from the patch of grass she’d been crouching in and waved. “Hey! You ready?”
Ulysses rolled his eyes at her, mouth curved in what was almost a smile. “No, I came out here to get mud on my shoes for absolutely no reason.” He kicked at a fallen branch and shrugged at her. “Of course I’m ready.”
“Okay great, cause everyone else is gonna come too. Figured we should get everyone together since it’s been a while, you know?” Enna picked up her backpack from the ground and dug out the one remaining ham sandwich. “You had lunch?”
Ulysses shook his head and took the plastic-wrapped sandwich, tearing at it hungrily. Enna grinned, and they started walking through the woods. Leaves crunched under their feet as they went deeper, following a path they’d worn over years of coming here. As they walked, they talked about whatever came to mind- how Enna had almost given someone a black eye in practice a couple of days ago, the new book about astronomy Ulysses had found in the library, the fact that the cafeteria had stopped serving tater tots. That subject turned into a heated debate about the merits of tots vs fries that carried them all the way to the creek.
“All I’m saying,” argued Enna as she grabbed a tree branch to lower herself down onto the muddy bank of the creek, “is that tots are only good if you cover them in cheese, and fries are good by themselves, and also everyone loves them.”
“Fries are greasy messes that taste more like salt than actual potatoes and you’re an idiot for thinking otherwise,” griped Ulysses, opting to slide down the bank’s wall instead of climbing. “Eating tots is a purer potato experience, and eating fries is just stuffing your face with a bunch of grease.”
“That’s dumb and you’re dumb!!” Enna replied. The creek was low enough that muddy rocks poked out of the water, flat enough to use as stepping-stones. She had to go carefully over the rocks, but it didn’t take too long to get to the other side. “You can’t even season tater tots. You just like, put ketchup on them.” She reached the other bank and looked back at Ulysses, putting her hands on her hips. “French fries rule, end of story.”
Ulysses stuck his tongue out at her. “French fries are overcooked garbage food, and you- whoa!” He pinwheeled his arms as his foot slipped off the rock he was standing on. Enna lurched forward, her hand shooting out to grab his flailing arm, and yanked him towards her. He yelled as he collided with her, knocking her into a tangle of roots jutting out of the creek wall. She grunted as he knocked the air out of her and grabbed at the roots to keep from falling on her butt. Ulysses shoved away from her and glared.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
Enna glared right back, pulling herself to a standing position. “I saved your life, dumbass! You could have fallen on your stupid brain and gotten a concussion and drowned in the trash river!”
“I wouldn’t have died, dipshit.” Ulysses folded his arms. “I probably just would have gotten wet. Why do you have to be so dramatic about everything?”
“Oh, I’m dramatic?” Turning her back on Ulysses, Enna hoisted herself up the bank, pulling herself up by the black roots poking out of the dirt. “I’m not the one who wrote like three notebooks of fake magic spells for my fake magic wizard guy!”
“That’s called dedication to a narrative, Enna!” She couldn’t see his face as he clambered up the muddy wall, but she could tell from his voice that it had gone that blotchy red it went when he was getting defensive. “At least I had a backstory for Master Deathstaff the Unholy, your stupid demon lady didn’t make any sense!”
Enna brushed the mud off her jeans and straightened up to give him the finger. “Fuck you, Hellblood was great!! She had a backstory too, it’s your fault if you didn’t understand it!”
Ulysses laughed, leaning on a tree to catch his breath. “She was half demon, half pirate, and half barbarian. You can’t even be half pirate, that’s a job.”
“Man, fuck you.” Enna looked around for the path. They were close now. The creek was only a short walk away from the shed. In fact, as soon as she crossed that hill, she should be able to see it. Enna smiled, thinking about how great it’d be to see the old shack again. Its rotted wooden walls, rusted metal roof, filthy concrete floor- it was perfect. She jogged ahead of Ulysses, eager to get over the hill and see-
Enna stopped in her tracks. She could hear the crunching of Ulysses walking up the hill behind her, but she was frozen in place. Ulysses walked up and tapped her on the shoulder. She didn’t turn around, and he tapped her again.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked. In response she pointed down the hill to the shack. He turned to look. “Oh.” Enna nodded. Below them, they could see the shack, home of their childhood games, refuge from their homes, meeting-place for all their friends. Instead of being surrounded by dead leaves and piles of sticks, someone had put up a fence around it. The chainlink fence was as tall as the shack itself, and was plastered with signs that Enna couldn’t read from this distance but that had a lot of bright red words on them. On top of the fence, as if the people who had put it up knew they were coming, was a snarl of barbed wire, spikes jutting out in all directions like a hedgehog had had a horrible one-night-stand with a python. The shack itself was missing parts of its roof, and the bits that were still there were all rusted and caved-in.
“Guess the summer wasn’t good for the shack, huh?”
Ulysses nodded. “So what now?” He stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to the side, studying the shack.
“Dunno,” Enna said, shrugging. “Probably we head down there and wait for the others to show.” She started skidding down the leaf-covered hill, sliding as much as she was walking. It was a steep incline on all sides, another reason they’d had to avoid the shack during the rainy summer. Even a concrete floor was capable of crumbling when the ground around it was swamp. They stopped just outside the fence and waited.
Baruun and Dany were the first to arrive. Their huge dogs dragged them through the forest, barking excitedly at the crisp air and the possibility of squirrels. Lady Madeline led the charge, leaves sticking to her long white fur, pulling Baruun along behind her like he didn’t weigh a thing. Big Boof was a little further behind. Dany was able to control him a little better, but he was still making her run as fast as her short legs could carry her. When they got there, Enna was prowling around the chainlink fence, inspecting it for weaknesses. Ulysses was sitting crosslegged on the roots of a nearby tree, nose buried in some fantasy paperback. He looked up and nodded at them as they approached.
“What happened?” Dany squeaked, still out of breath from fighting her humongous dog the whole way. Baruun ignored Ulysses entirely, instead tossing aside Lady Madeline’s leash and sneaking up behind Enna.
“Based on the signs on the fence, the shack got condemned.” Ulysses closed his book, resigning himself to interacting with people. “Someone must have found it and realized it was dangerous for people to go into, so they fenced it off. They’re gonna tear it down in November, it says.”
Dany’s thick eyebrows shot up and she covered her mouth with both her hands, an expression of distress that she usually reserved for such terrible things as accidentally stepping on a dog’s foot. She opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by a loud yell from the direction of the fence. Dany and Ulysses turned to see Enna and Baruun tangled in a heap on the ground, both flailing wildly and yelling at the top of their lungs. Baruun got a handful of Enna’s hair and yanked, making her bellow in pain, but she rolled over and got him in a headlock. “Count us out!” she yelled, twisting herself on top of the smaller boy and pinning him.
“Both of you, stop it!” Dany stomped over to the two combatants, putting her hands on her hips and frowning down at them from under her scrunchie-bound cloud of hair. “Let him go, you’re going to hurt him!” Big Boof trotted up to sit beside her, his head nearly coming up to hers as he sat back on his haunches.
“Am not,” Enna said, casually shoving Baruun’s face into the leaves. Baruun’s arms flailed and he managed to smack Enna in the mouth. She yelped, and he took advantage of the distraction to wiggle out from under her. He took a few steps back, looking like he was about to launch another attack, but firm jaws clamped on the back of his jacket collar. He turned to glare at Lady Madeline, who let go and smiled an innocent doggy grin at him. He frowned, but didn’t jump at Enna, instead straightening his jean jacket and walking over to bother Ulysses.
Dany walked over to the fence and reached out a hand, then hesitated. “Is it electric?”
Enna shrugged. “Probably not. I touched it a couple times earlier.” She prodded the fence experimentally. “Yeah, we’re good. You think I should climb it?”
“No!” Dany squeaked, looking up at Enna in horror. Enna grinned at her.
“What? I could put Baruun’s jacket over the barbed wire, I’d be fine.” Dany opened her mouth to let Enna know all the ways that was a bad idea but was interrupted by a high-pitched shout. They turned to see Eleri sliding down the hill towards them, followed at a more dignified pace by Emiel and Lyle. Eleri ran up to the group, her short hair sticking out in every direction, and immediately started chattering.
“Oh my gosh you guys I can’t believe the shack is fenced off who do you think did this and why do you think they did it? I mean I guess it’s because the shack was all rusty and messed up and probably full of tetanus anyway but did you think anyone else knew about the shack because I sure didn’t except maybe some people who live in the woods do you think a lot of people live in the woods around here?” Eleri paused to take a breath, but her ramble had given the others time to get down the hill. Emiel had somehow managed it without getting leaves or mud on their pastel pink cordouroy pants. Lyle was a bit more of a mess, but the top hat he always wore when he wasn’t at school was impeccable.
The seven of them chatted for a while, sitting on the leaves and catching up on nothing in particular, but the fenced-off shack loomed over all of them. Finally Lyle broached the subject, holding his top hat in his lap and rubbing his fingers along the brim. “Where do we hang out now?” he asked, voicing the question in all of their minds.
Eleri, as usual, was the first to speak up. “We should look for a new place!” Lyle looked like he was about to argue, but paused, considering the idea.
“That’s a great idea!” Dany chirped. “Maybe we could find an even better place, like a secret treehouse!”
“What are the odds that we’re gonna just find a treehouse nobody’s using?” Ulysses replied, sullenly shredding an orange leaf. “There’s no way we’re gonna find somewhere as good as the shed.”
Enna gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes back at her, managing to convey the fact that he knew he had just been talking about how lame the shack was and she didn’t need to bring it up. She shrugged at him in a way that said it was up to him if he wanted to be an asshole about it but it wouldn’t hurt to go look at least. He shrugged one shoulder in acknowledgement.
Baruun, who had totally missed this exchange, tossed a handful of dry grass at Ulysses. “Stop being such a party pooper. It’s a good idea, and besides it’ll be fun to go explore.”
“Fine, but don’t blame me if we all get lost.” Enna knew this meant Ulysses was down with the idea, so she got up and grabbed her backpack. She knew these woods like the back of her hand, and she also knew that Lyle carried a compass with him everywhere he went. They’d be fine.
The seven friends trudged through the woods. Conversation flowed easily between them, lifting Enna’s spirits. She took point, like she had ever since the time Baruun ran ahead and fell into some animal’s burrow and sprained his ankle. Ulysses walked a few feet away from her, slightly to the side of the group. He was slouching like he didn’t care about whatever they were doing, but Enna could see his eyes darting around, looking for interesting groves of trees or forgotten old buildings. Weirdly, Emiel was walking closest to him. They weren’t trying to talk to him or anything, and mostly seemed to be ignoring him, but they kept adjusting their course to stay close. They were talking to Eleri, who Enna had been mostly tuning out but who she was pretty sure was either explaining a dream she’d had or the plot to Swiss Family Robinson. Baruun was trying to get Lyle to ask him what updog was, making Dany giggle behind her hand. Lyle was in the middle of stubbornly insisting that he had never heard of updog when Enna crested a hill and stopped in her tracks for the second time that day.
There, down a gentle slope, half-hidden by gnarled trees, was a massive house. It sprawled over the forest floor, its dark wood weathered by time and the elements. An enormous oak tree had punched up through the roof, its limbs tangling around each other and stretching up into the sky. The walls were still standing, though the entryway yawned open, its double doors rotted off their hinges. It was an old, old house, the kind that either gets carefully preserved by historical societies or gets paved over to make room for an expressway. Ivy marched up the walls, grass grew through the cobblestones of the front walk, and broken dusty glass wavered in the windows.
Enna knew these woods like the back of her hand. She’d been tramping around them since she was old enough to sneak out of her house. She’d been up and down every inch of them, knew every creek and hill and grove. That was how she knew that there was no way this house had been there for as long as it looked like it had.
“Whoa,” Baruun whispered, coming up behind Enna. “That’s perfect.” The rest of the group crested the hill, murmuring.
“How have we never run into this place before?” Emiel asked, looking eagerly at the ruined house. “It’s huge!”
“It looks like it’s been here for a really long time so you must have just missed it somehow because it looks like it’s been here for a hundred years or maybe more than that I don’t know a lot about architecture but this house looks really old don’t you think it looks really old?” Eleri was already bounding ahead of the group down the hill, Dany following after her.
Baruun shrugged. “Guess we’re checking it out! Come on, Lady.” The rest of the group began scooting down the hill. Enna started forward, but paused. Ulysses was standing frozen on the edge of the hill, his eyes locked on the ruined house. His head was tilted to the side, like he was listening to something far away, and his hands were flat at his sides. A breeze stirred the leaves around his feet. As she watched, he blinked once, slowly, his gaze never leaving the house, then shivered and headed down after everyone.
As they approached the house, even Eleri’s chatter slowed to a halt. The house looked much bigger up close. From where they were standing on the front walk, it seemed to go on and on in either direction, rows on rows of broken windows and clinging ivy curling around the children in semicircular wings. The middle of the house was shaped almost like a church, with a huge arched window above an empty double doorway and the massive oak tree forming the steeple. Dany drew close to Enna, her hand fisted in Big Boof’s thick fur for support. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go in there?”
“Yeah, of course,” Enna said, looking at Baruun, who was already climbing the stone steps up to the entrance. “It can’t be more dangerous than the old place.”
“What if the floors got rotted out, though?” Lyle replied, taking a hesitant step forward. “What if there’s a murderer living in there? What if it’s full of bats? Come on guys, spooky mansion in the woods never ends well for a group of plucky kids.”
Emiel tossed their head, their permed ponytail very nearly whipping Ulysses in the face. “We’re not kids anymore, Lyle. I’m going to be thirteen in March.” Lyle grumbled something about already being thirteen as the group followed Baruun up the steps.
Wind tossed the branches of the trees and rattled the empty hinges on the enormous doorframe. There was more than enough room in the entrance for them all to cluster together at the top of those steps, peering into the abandoned house. Baruun had one hand on the frame’s dark wood, but that was as close as any of them dared to go. They could see enough from where they were. The foyer of the house, bigger even than any in Emiel’s neighborhood, was filled with drifts of brown leaves and broken pieces of former furniture. The only light came from the shattered roof above, and it filtered down through drifting motes of dust made golden by the autumn sun. There was a stillness to the inside that kept the children from talking as they took it in. The trunk of the enormous oak tree dominated the scene. It was gnarled and dark brown, almost black, the branches bare this far down. It stretched high up through the floor of the upper story and down through the floor out of sight. As Enna stared at the trunk, the twists and turns of the bark seemed to resolve themselves into shapes- faces, figures, words- but as soon as she blinked she lost them.
The group became aware of a low rumbling coming from beside them, and Dany tore her eyes away from the house to look down and see that Big Boof was growling. His teeth were pulled back in an uncharacteristic display of aggression and there was a ridge of hair down his back that was raised in anger. He was staring straight ahead at the tree, straining against the hand Dany hadn’t realized she’d slipped into his collar. On the other side, Lady Madeline was nosing at Baruun, almost knocking him over. “Hey,” Baruun complained, breaking the silence and stepping away from the door to lead Lady away.
Author's Notes:
Written (at least the end) 9/24/2018. I wish I'd finished this! Maybe I could turn it into a comic someday.