“I swear to God if Joey bugs me one more time about homecoming, I’m gonna die!!” Jill Kowalski said. It was her house, her get together, and she was basking in all the attention.

“Hey….I’ll come to your funeral, and, you know…I’ll bring a date,” this from Hannah, the future prom queen.

“Leave it to you to bring a date to a funeral,” sighed Kara. She was the brainiac of the bunch and had a comment for almost everything.

“And leave it to you NEVER to have a date. You can’t have sex with a book, Kara. You’ll get paper cuts.”

“I’m not even going to reward that with a response, Hannah. But beware. It’s really hard to ask “do you want fries with that” with a baby on your hip.”

“Oh jesus don’t you two start,” the heretofore silent Gina chimed in. “I swear I don’t know how you’re friends.”

“We have no short term memory,” Kara said.

“Girls! I was talking about Joey Donder! At school! Hello. Why should I go to homecoming with a guy that asks me ten times and gets on my nerves the way he does?” Jill asked.

“Because he was in last month’s “Seventeen” magazine, that’s why,” Gina answered. “‘ Teen poet with eyes of steel’, I believe the headline for the article was.”

“Ugh. They sure did use the term ‘poet’ very loosely,”Kara grumbled.

“You are so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art…flow….over you,” Hannah said.

“Who said that? Freud?” Kara asked.

“As a matter of fact.”

“Freud was a shrink, you retard. That shows exactly what you know about art and psychology. And the only thing you’ve let flow over YOU is Donald Whatley’s hands. So don’t lecture me on art again.”

Even Ginah had to laugh at that one. Hannah, sensing when she had been bested, did what all masters did. She changed the subject.

“Well…it’s storming out. The perfect night for ghost stories. Does anyone know any?”

“What about Joey?!” Jill whined.

“If I have to hear about Joey one more time, I’m going to wash my hair and puke!!!” Gina yelled.

“What??!” All three girls yelled in unision.

“It sounded better in my head,” Gina conceded.

“I know one. That is to say, Hannah and I both know one.” Kara said. Her voice was distant and a furrow creased her brow.

“Know one what?”Jill asked, perplexed.

“Ghost story. Hannah asked about a ghost story. I think it’s because she wanted to talk about the Henderson kids.” Kara cast a glance at Hannah, who immediately nodded her assent.

“Henderson kids?” Gina asked.

“Yeah. They were abused kids that lived in Hannah’s house before she and her family moved in. Two years before she moved in, in fact.”

“They were murdered there. By their parents.” Hannah said, her voice nearly a whisper.

“No way!” Jill said. “We would have heard about that, I think.”

“You wouldn’t have. There are no parents in this town that would tell their kids what went on in our house now four years ago, but it all happened. I reasearched it in the library.”

“You’re lying,” Gina breathed.

“Ohhh, we’re telling the truth,” Kara chimed in. “I’ve stayed over at Hannah’s house a bunch of times in the last year, and something is definately not right there. I went to the library with her last week, and we read all about it.”

“Read about what?” Jill asked. “What happened?”

“Did you all know Mike and Tina Henderson?” Hannah asked.

“Sounds familiar,” Gina said.

“Now that you mention it, I had algebra with Tina back in the sixth grade,” Jill said. “Everyone kind of figured that she moved away the summer after. But no one made a big deal over it.”

“She didn’t move,” Kara said. “You’ll find her grave in Billings cemetary. Right next to her younger brother Mike’s.”

Gina shivered. “Well that’s creepy and screwed up alright, but what about the ghost part of the story.”

“Well….that all starts with my mom,” Hannah said. “She told me ‘ If you’re going to sleep this late, you’re going to miss a few mini-dramas’, so I took her up on that. Two months ago, I woke up at 6 AM for no real reason, but rather than try to go back to sleep, I went to the kitchen, put on a pop tart and went back to my room. The sun hadn’t come up yet, so there was still gloom all over the place. I remember that I was sitting on my bed when the big chill came over me. I started shivering from my head to my feet and I heard something shuffling around in my closet. I know that’s cliche, but I swear to God it was true. Something started crying in there and scratching the door. I was so freaked out I almost peed myself. I couldn’t move. After a few minutes in got real quiet, but the chill would not leave me. That day, I called Kara to come over and spend the night. If I could get her, the girl so heavy into books and logic that she makes Stephen Hawking look like a daydreamer, if I could get her to see what I’d seen then I knew I wasn’t crazy…..”

Jill and Gina turned to Kara.

“Well? Did you see anything?”

“Every morning I’m there,” Kara practically whispered. “It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard.” A tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek. “What those kids must have gone through…..”

“The second time she stayed the night, Kara and me finally got up the nerve to have a look around in that closet. And that’s when we found them……”

“Found what?!” Gina almost screamed.

“Claw marks. Hannah said. “Claw marks on the inside of the closet door. They were fresh and close together, like they were from the hands of a sixth grade child….”

And outside, the thunder shattered the stillness.