In the Land of the Lawn Weenies by David Lubar

was filled with rats, and the floors were rotting to pieces. I could see myself crashing through the floor, landing in the cellar. I shuddered as I saw my legs snap like toothpicks against the hard concrete. Nobody went near the Morgan house. Even the adults didn’t like to walk past it. Most of them sort of whispered the name when they mentioned it at all. It was like a rule in our town—don’t talk about the Morgan house.
    I don’t know the story. It’s hard to know the story when nobody will tell it. But I knew it was a bad place. Ahead, I watched Jay. The leather of his jacket flexed as he walked, a deep black patch in the dim light from the streetlamps at the bottom of the hill.
    We were almost at the top. The wind gained force, stealing the heat from my body and making me shiver. I tried to tell myself that it was only the cold that made me tremble. Jay pulled up his collar. “Leather,” he said. “Nothing like it.”

    I hoped he wouldn’t start on that. There was one area where Jay drove me crazy. He’d talk about leather and how great it was and how wonderful it felt. “It breathes,” he’d say, stroking his sleeve. “Keeps you warm without getting too hot. Feels great. There’s nothing like it.” I just couldn’t get excited about it, but I certainly wasn’t going to point that out to Jay.
    I looked up. We were there. The house, dark, silent, and shut tight, towered above us. Loose shingles jutted from the roof. Most of the windows were broken. All the ones I could see were covered with boards from the inside. I wished the house would collapse before we went in. I hoped it wouldn’t collapse after we went in.
    Jay hopped the low fence, then looked back at me and grinned. “Coming?”
    I crawled over the fence, but I felt like I’d left my stomach on the sidewalk behind me. It almost felt like I’d left my spine there, too, but I managed to follow Jay up the steps to the porch.
    â€œLocked,” Jay said as he rattled the knob.
    â€œGuess we can’t get in,” I said, turning back toward the street. I hadn’t even reached the edge of the porch when the sound of a crash ripped through the night, hitting me like a jolt of electricity. I spun back toward Jay.
    He was standing half inside the doorway. He’d rammed the old wood of the door with his shoulder. Jay bowed and swept his hand forward. “Shall we?”
    â€œSure.” That word didn’t seem to want to leave my throat. I walked into a world that reeked of
dust and mildew. I had to fight to keep from coughing.
    There was a click. A beam of light splashed through the dark. Jay had brought a flashlight. “Let’s explore,” he said, walking deeper into the place I didn’t want to be.
    I followed him into a large room directly beyond the front door. Not wanting to stare into the blind darkness at our sides, I tried to keep my eyes focused on the wedge of floor that was carved by Jay’s light. There wasn’t as much dust on the floor as I expected. At the edges of the light, I could see heavier layers of dust on the furniture.
    We went deeper—through another room and along a short hall that led to a stairway. But Jay didn’t go up. Instead, he walked to a door in the wall beneath the stairs. Jay opened the door and leaned inside.
    â€œBoo!”
    I jumped a mile. Jay laughed. “Down we go,” he said. He headed into the cellar.
    I really wanted to leave. I wanted to breathe air that wasn’t heavy with dust. I wanted to stand beneath an open sky. But the rooms behind me were dark and Jay had the light.
    The steps groaned beneath my feet. I knew we’d end up in a dusty rat-filled basement—a damp hole that would swallow the two of us.
    â€œWhoa, look at this,” Jay said, swinging the beam slowly across from wall to wall.
    I froze on the steps.
    The place was neat and clean. But that