This is the seventh part in a series, so if you have not already done so, you might want to read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI before continuing.
“I got it!” David went long, his feet struggling to keep up as his eyes tracked the arc the football was making over his head. He ran with his eyes on the football and not where he was going, so when the ball cleared the fence, David rammed into it with his left shoulder so hard he bounced off and hit the pavement. By the time he got back to his feet, his brother was already standing over him.
“I’m fine,” David assured him.
“Let’s get out of here,” his brother said.
“But the ball-”
“Forget it. Come on.”
David looked over the fence, thinking maybe the ball had been destroyed somehow, but it was just sitting in the yard on the other side of the fence, apparently perfectly harmless. “It’s right there,” he said. “Let’s just go get it.”
“No,” his brother said in a tone that brooked no argument. “We don’t go in that yard. Now come on.”
Scared by his brother’s tone, and infected by his anxiety, David started walking down the street with his brother. “Why not?”
“The lady who lives there is a crazy old witch and she’ll put a spell on you if you trespass on her property.”
“She is? I’ve never seen her.”
“No one sees her. She lives in that house all by herself. Never has anyone over. That’s how you know she’s a witch.”
David screwed up his face as his brain tried to follow that logic. “Huh?”
“It’s not natural for someone to live all alone like that, so she must be a witch.”
“Has she ever put a spell on someone before?”
“Probably lots of people.”
“Who?”
His brother shrugged.
“If you don’t know anyone who was cursed by her, how do you know she’s cursed anybody?”
David’s brother stopped and turned on his heel to face his brother. “The people she’s cursed are never heard from again. That’s why we’ve never talked to anyone who’s been cursed by her. Because she disappeared them. She probably killed them and buried them in her basement.”
“You mean people have gone into her house and never come out?”
“Only one person ever went into that house and she was seen running and screaming out the back door. She’s never been seen or heard from since that day, and that was years and years ago.”
David looked back over his shoulder at the witch’s house. It looked like any other house, but he supposed you never could tell.
“What about our ball?” David asked his brother.
“We’ll get mom to buy us another one.”
To be continued…
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