You Never Know What You’ll Find
By: Lorne Oliver
©2013 by Lorne Oliver
“I dare you.”
“I double dog dare you.”
“Seriously, dude? Are we in some Stephen King novel now? Are you going to say, you bet your fern?” Spencer snorted. “You can dare me all you want I’m not sleeping in that barn.”
It was a long building that had probably once held cows and horses, maybe some chickens at one time, but for as long as anyone alive could remember the family that had owned the property had always just used it for storage. From the doorway Spencer Alcrest and his friends could see furniture that had been forgotten, boxes of paperwork, there was a crate of old license plates too. A lot of the items were covered in old sheets. At the very far end was an old tractor – the kind with a metal seat – that had one of its large tires flat to the floor, with pieces sticking out of the engine like people had probably come and scavenged what they needed. There were old stalls down at that end that animals had been in. From what the boys could see old ropes and tools hung over the wood sides. Forgotten leather tack, dark and cracked was left there too. They hadn’t even gone up to the second floor. It was like one of those barns you saw on those TV shows where people went looking for forgotten treasures.
Spencer wasn’t going to be picking for hidden finds, however, he had to clean out everything. His father liked to buy rural properties for the summer, fix them up, and sell it at a profit, but wanted the entire barn cleaned out first. The deal was that Spencer was allowed to sell everything and got to keep the money. It was going to help with going to college in September.
“I thought you said the haunted stories were bull?”
Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “They’re just stories. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“You haven’t lived here long, man. We’ve seen lights in here in the middle of the night.”
“Noises too. We came here last Halloween and I swear I heard a girl laughing in there.”
“Maybe it was your friends laughing at you. We’ve been in the house three weeks and I haven’t seen or heard anything.” Spencer looked away from the other two boys back to the barn. The outside walls were black from years of being untreated in the elements. You could see where some of the boards had rotted away leaving holes and lines that sunlight went through. The wind picked up and made the tin roof call out where it had broken free of the nails. He ran a hand back through his short spiky hair to try and hold the sudden chill that made his body shiver. He hadn’t seen anything because he stayed away from this side of the house the moment the sun went down.
“If you don’t think there’s anything in there then why don’t you prove it?”
“Yeah, man, prove it.”
Spencer only met the two boys three weeks earlier. Jimmy and Cam lived just down the road. The three of them had gone fishing and swimming by the Pine River falls and rode their dirt bikes around the gravel roads looking for whatever trouble they could get into.
“I’ll stay in there.”
All three turned at the soft voice behind them. Spencer’s foster sister stood there with her hands on her hips. Her pouty, Angelina Jolie, lips were in a wicked smirk. She wore blue jeans with a hole on each knee and a pink tank top with the name of the dance school she went to across her small boobs. She had the tanned skin of Aboriginal roots. Chrys waited a second then crossed her arms in front of her.
“See, she’s not afraid. I bet you, you can’t spend the whole night in there.”
“Bet?” Spencer smiled showing his dimples.
Pleasant Dreams Page 12