Don't You Cry. Mary Kubica

had to lie to their folks, saying they were sleeping somewhere else, or climb out their bedroom windows long after they were supposed to be asleep.

      But it was an initiation of sorts, being recruited from the nerd herd to the in-crowd, all by spending the night with a spook.

      And so we did. Or tried to at least. A bunch of buddies and I packed bags full of flashlights, lockback knives, binoculars and food, and double dog dared one another to spend the night there, in that yellow house with a ghost. Why? Don’t ask me why. We just did.

      We had a disposable camera with us, too, to take pictures to show off the next day at school. Proof that we did it. We spent the night with a spook and we survived. Some guy tagged along with night-vision, another with a camcorder. Another with something he claimed was a thermal imager (it wasn’t). We climbed in through a busted window—me scratching my shin on a shard of glass—and set up camp in what was one day the living room of a happy family, with sleeping bags, pillows and all. We snapped photos, the guys and I—beside the cobwebbed fireplace, sitting on an old sunken-in sofa that seethed with bugs, crossing the threshold to her room. Her room.

      Genevieve’s room.

      From the stories I’ve heard over the years, Genevieve was a naughty little girl. In the five years before her death, she was caught more than once upsetting bird nests, and pulling the legs one by one off the thorax of ensnared bugs. It’s the kind of thing people remember about Genevieve, little Genevieve climbing a tree to jettison robin fledglings to the ground, whereby she scampered down the tree and stepped on them, while mama robin watched on, defenseless, unable to do a thing to save her babies. The kids in the neighborhood at the time, adults now, long gone—though their parents remain—recall the way their children didn’t want to play with Genevieve. Genevieve was cruel. Genevieve was mean. She pulled their kids’ hair; she called them names. She made them cry and fake stomachaches, saying they didn’t want to go to school, because once there Genevieve would punch them in the gut and kick their shins. She had a temper, a nasty temper, or so I’ve heard, and not just the typical pouting, crying, whining behavior of a usual five-year-old child, but a five-year-old who could’ve used a straitjacket or, at the very least, some mood stabilizing drugs.

      No wonder half the town is certain she came back as a ghost, to haunt them even in death.

      The guys and I made it in that old house a few hours at best before figuring out we weren’t the only ones there, and we ran. It had nothing at all to do with a ghost. It was the rats that did us in. The damn rats. Roof rats. We didn’t make it past 11:00 p.m., when they came out in search of food.

      Even these days, all these years later, there are allegations of strange noises at night. A child singing lullabies, a child’s cry.

      Me? I’m pretty sure it’s just the wind.

      But others aren’t so sure. Some people are superstitious enough not to walk past the house, and so they cross the street to my side instead. Others hold their breath the whole darn way, like passing a cemetery and holding your breath to make sure you don’t breathe in the spirit of the dead. They tuck their thumbs inside their fists, too, but I don’t know why. I just know that they do. Death superstitions are the norm around here.

      If your shadow is headless, you will die.

      An owl sighting during the day means death is coming.

      A bird crashing into a window also means death is near.

      Death comes in threes.

      And corpses should always be removed from a home feetfirst. Always.

      I don’t buy any of it. I’m far too skeptical for that.

      Funny thing is, she didn’t even die in that house. That’s where she lived, sure, where Genevieve lived, but that’s not where she died. So how could her spirit be there?

      But maybe that’s just me being overly pragmatic.