Robert Vaughan THE DAY MY LIFE CHANGED

THE DAY

MY LIFE CHANGED

Robert Vaughan

Some people swore that the house was haunted. My mother used to tell us stories when we drove by on our way to school. I didn’t believe them, just don’t believe in things like the supernatural, ghosts, angels. Your usual fare. So, you can imagine how shocked I was when I ended up going. My neighbor, Bennie was pressing me.

“You’re just chicken shit,” he said.

“Am not.”

“Well, then, let’s check it out? Tonight, just after dark.”

Our parents were all attending the same Halloween party at the Dixon’s. I was pretty sure I could get permission to go over to Bennie’s from Gail, our sitter. She wouldn’t even notice.

I’d never actually seen the house. It was at the hilly end of town, a run-down area, and you couldn’t see it from Penfield Drive. We biked to the entrance of the driveway, found a good place to ditch them. Bennie insisted on chaining them together. There was a huge steel gate, but we could easily pass around it. The property was heavily wooded, and the pot-holed driveway was longer than I’d imagined.

“You sure you wanna do this?” Bennie asked. He shot a look behind us.

He looked more scared than I felt. “Sure. What’re you afraid of?” I’d brought a small flashlight, but the moon was nearly full, so we didn’t need extra light. When we rounded the last curve, we stopped.

“It’s huge,” Bennie whispered.

I nodded, awestruck. I’d never seen any building this large in person. Okay, maybe our local Agway. It was four stories with a huge, warped wraparound porch, the front steps were crumbling, the overall shape of the building reminded me of an older lady I’d seen at the public library. A noise rustled close-by in the woods.

Bennie grabbed my arm. “What’s that?”

“Probably a squirrel,” I said. But I felt the hair on my arms standing straight up. “So, are we going in?”

“I don’t know.” He fidgeted. “What do you think?”

I wanted to say I think you’re the chicken shit. But I’m not like that. “I say we’ve come this far.”

**************

We got separated once inside that massive structure. I don’t remember how, all I recall are those feelings I had while standing in the driveway. If there was danger, I was curious, moving toward it; Bennie froze with fear. So, I was not that surprised when I emerged into the last shards of light on the front lawn. “Ben?” I called, not too loudly. I walked around to the back of the house, past the former, now disheveled garage. It lay in a huge heap, caved in on itself.  “Ben?” I muttered to the woods beyond. Only crickets. The hoot of an owl. I’ll bet he’s at the bikes waiting for me, I thought, forcing all other possibilities from my mind. I ran to the end of the driveway, pushing low branches from my path. I passed around the heavy gate and searched for the bikes.

They were gone.

So was Ben. When his parents called our house later that night, the story came out.: the dare, our visit, the missing bikes, everything. But the one question I couldn’t answer haunts me to this day: what happened to Bennie?

Nothing was ever the same again after that.

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry is published or forthcoming in over 70 literary journals. He was interviewed about Flash Fiction by WUWM’s Lake Effect. His work is included in 6S MIND GAMES anthology. He is a fiction editor at jmww magazine.
His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.