They had just been kicked out of the water park because she had found a Styrofoam surfboard in a building marked “Employees Only” and taken it into the giant wave pool. The large LCD screen that counted down the seconds until the next round of waves had gotten to 0 as Wendy cried, “Surfs up, motherfuckers!” She had never surfed before but somehow managed to stand on the board for a few seconds before it caved in and she wiped out. Lifeguards had taken her by the arms and thrown her out of the park. Ink and Dennis had followed after them, shouting out congratulations on her surfing skills.

Now outside the water park and heading towards the place where they had locked up their bikes and boards, Dennis said, “Killer waves, brah.” They all laughed some more and Ink unlocked his and Wendy’s boards from Dennis’ bike.

“Where do we wanna go now?” asked Ink, his skin glowing from the sun.

“Let’s go hang out by the old Happynap place, maybe break a window or two,” replied Dennis his eyes humungous behind his glasses, excitement on his face for the first time in months.

Wendy couldn’t say no, even though she hated the old place, she’d go hang for a bit just to make Dennis happy. “Fine,” she said placing the wheels of her board on the hot asphalt, “but you gotta keep up with us, kid.”

“I’m on a bike,” said Dennis, slicking back his hair, “it’s you who’s going to have to keep up.

The three of them rode off to the other side of town, and they were happy.

“Ink wins!” Dennis cried.

Wendy pouted her lips and made Ink race again and again and again. He won each time. “It’s because you’re fat,” she said pink in the face not from the sun but from embarrassment.

“Let’s go cool off in the lazy river, you sore loser.” Ink slung his arm around Dennis’ neck playfully pulling him toward the lazy river. Wendy and Dennis grabbed inner tubes but Ink just jumped in and started swimming around, trying to flip people.

Wendy was glad for the peaceful moment. The park wasn’t crowded so the lazy river wasn’t its usual “bumping into every person on the planet” self. She was thrilled that Dennis was out of the house and having some fun. Sometimes, she felt too grown up with the way she cared about her little brother. She was going to miss him a lot when she went off to school. Wendy lay there in her tube letting the quiet rush of the chlorinated water pass by her, hypnotizing her into a dull sleep…

…Just as she started to really drift off she felt a hand on her butt from under the water. Panic goose-bumped her skin and sent a chill down her spine. Suddenly, she wasn’t in the tube anymore, she was being pushed into the air by the hand. She hung, suspended in space for a moment before crashing back down into the water. A rush of sound surrounded her as her head went under the water. She came up gasping and looking around. Laughter was ringing behind her and she turned to see Ink and Dennis high-fiving. Ink had gone all the way around the lazy river and flipped her over.

She splashed some water at them, “Jerks.” Then she couldn’t help but start laughing and she went over to Ink and playfully tried to drown him. The lifeguards surrounding the lazy river were blowing their whistles but the three kids played on.

“Dennis,” she said softly, “I brought some food up for you.”

He began to groggily sit up, rubbing the crusty sleep from out under his eyes. “What’s for dinner?” he asked. She plopped down the plate of steak and potatoes, letting the cooling food on the chipped china plate speak for itself. “Crap,” he mustered. He began to stretch the rust from his bones, and Wendy was again reminded of just how tall he was. Long feet, long legs, long torso, long arms, long neck, long nose… he looked lankier than Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo cartoons they would watch when they were little. Even though he was three years younger than she was, Dennis had been taller than her for six.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, “if you eat it fast, it almost tastes like something.”

He placed his thick-framed glasses on his face and said, “Yeah, something.”

Wendy made her way to the bedroom door, making to leave for her room when Dennis called out, “thanks sis!”

“No problem, big guy. Thinking about going to the water park tomorrow with Ink. Do you want in?”

Dennis paused, Wendy didn’t know this but he hadn’t left the house in a month and a half or his room in two weeks. He hummed in contemplation.

“I’ll buy your ticket.”

A small smile cracked his cold, pale face. “You’ve got a deal,” he said.

Wendy smiled and made her way to her bedroom. She hoped Dennis wouldn’t change his mind, but she would understand if he did. It had all hit him the hardest, and he spent more time in the virtual world of his computer than he did in the real one. Some fun in the sun would be good for him. Wendy kicked on the antique record player, plugged in her headphones and grabbed the book she had been reading off the shelf. Sleep came soon after.

Even though the lack of sun brought some relief from the heat, the silvery moon brought out the mosquitos that were apparently much hungrier than Wendy. She wondered if she tasted better than the steak did, and then wondered if mosquitos could even taste at all.

A future college student should know if mosquitos can taste, she thought to herself.

She brushed the thought aside as she addressed the huge scrape she had procured on her left knee during the last race with Ink. Ink was a jerk, but he was the closest thing she had to a best friend. After all the bad stuff had happened in school this past year, the bad stuff she didn’t even like talking about, Ink was the only person who really stayed friends with her. He always had her back, but not in some kind of romantic way which she appreciated. She didn’t want that with him, he was too big of a loser. She did have one other good friend, who lived a few towns over, named Lucy, but she had been a counselor at a sleep away camp all summer. Lucy was great, she did all the “girlie” stuff that Wendy couldn’t do, and she did it without being a total bitch.

Wendy finished the last of her well-done steak and decided she was going to bring some up to her little brother and then give Lucy a call. Maybe she was back from sleep away camp. Wendy thought that hearing Lucy’s voice would make her really happy. And when she got to her room, she was pleased to find out that it did.

Maybe grand romantic gestures are dead after all, she thought.

She knew the race had been lost but she finished anyway, and as she kicked up her board into her left hand, she slapped Ink five with her write. She fought to keep her breath from seeming too out of control, she didn’t want Ink to know how hard she had tried to win the race, but as she looked at him she realized he was too preoccupied with something to notice her breathing.

“What?” she asked.

“I just hate this house, it always gives me the creeps,” he replied, his voice like ice.

“You’ve been afraid of this house since you were seven, if it hasn’t hurt you in the past eleven years, what makes you think it’s going to hurt you now?”

“I’m not an idiot, Wendy, houses don’t hurt you,” he shot at her, “but that doesn’t make the place any less creepy.”

The house in question was at the end of their neighborhood. It was a pale, rundown yellow, the kind of yellow that happens to school buses that have paint jobs long past their prime. The shutters hung haphazardly from their hinges and the roof looked uneven. The last family that lived in the house, the Happynaps, packed up and left in the middle of the night five years ago. Nobody has lived there since. The family name once presented itself in full above the front door, but all that was left now was Happy. Wendy thought that the word “Happy” did in fact add a kind of chill to the house that made her uncomfortable.

“Come on,” Wendy said as she hit Ink on the shoulder, “one more race home. Let me get another shot at beating you”

The trance of the yellow, Happy house released its hold on Ink and he plopped his skateboard back down on the ground. “No way are you going to beat me.”

But Wendy had already begun to push her board with her left foot, heading towards home like a demon chasing after a nun’s asshole. If they had looked back, they would have seen a shadow at one of the windows on the second floor, a shadow that was staring straight at them.

Wendy furrowed her brow and frowned, as she tended to do when thinking about what she referred to as big things.

She finally mustered, “Why?”

“Because pretty sixteen year old girls killed the spirit of boys dumb enough to try them,” he responded.

This made Wendy sad, and as she sat on her skateboard, rolling back and forth contemplatively, a bead of sweat fell from her furrowing brow, evaporating the moment it made contact with the hot asphalt.

“I never killed any boy’s spirit,” she said, wiping her face.

He smiled, “That’s because you weren’t pretty when you were sixteen.”

“Hey!” she said, hitting him in the arm disapprovingly.

“You didn’t get pretty until you were seventeen,” he responded.

Wendy began to sweat even more, but she didn’t immediately give him credit for this, as the ground was literally baking beneath her Vans.

He got up from out of the grass, grabbed his board, and made his way to where Wendy was in the middle of the hot cul-de-sac, “Race you around the neighborhood,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, “but I don’t think grand romantic gestures are dead.”

“We’ll see.”

I

I started following a bunch of horror blogs so here are some pictures from them.