Saturday Morning

They met at the end of Wren Lane at ten in the morning because ten in the morning felt safer than evening and also because Marta's mum had said she needed to be home for lunch, which gave them a hard exit time that both of them were privately grateful for.

Callum was already there, leaning against the wall at the end of the lane with his hands in his pockets, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who had suggested this.

"Ready?" he said.

"No," said Dev.

"I have been thinking," Marta said. "We do not actually have to do this."

"You said Saturday," Callum said. "It is Saturday."

"I could unsay it," Marta said.

"Can she do that?" Dev asked Callum.

"No," Callum said. "Once said, a dare is basically a contract."

"Good," Callum said. "That means it counts."

Marta had not been this close to the house since year four when a football had gone over the wall and nobody had volunteered to get it back and it had simply stayed there, somewhere in the brambles, possibly forever.

The house looked worse up close than it did from the path. The brambles had grown over the front step entirely and the front door, visible through the mass of overgrown garden, had a dark stain along the bottom that Marta decided not to think about. One of the upstairs windows was not boarded. It was just open, dark, like an eye that would not close.

"We go in, we find something to bring back, we leave," Marta said. "That is the whole plan."

"Simple," Dev agreed. He sounded slightly sick.

"I will be right here," Callum said, settling against the wall.

"If something happens," Dev said, "you call for help immediately."

"Obviously," Callum said.

"And you do not go home," Marta said. "You stay here and you call."

"I am not going to go home," Callum said. "I am literally standing right here."

Marta and Dev looked at the house. The house looked back through its open upstairs window. The brambles moved slightly in a wind that Marta could not feel on her own face.

"Right," she said.

They pushed through the garden. The brambles caught at their sleeves and their ankles and the wet grass soaked their shoes immediately and the smell of the garden was very strong up close, green and damp and underneath it something else, something older, like a room that had not been opened in a long time.