Even when you KNOW what's going to happen, you can't look away...

Travis held the heavy window up while I slithered through into the ancient kitchen. After sneezing twice—the dust was vicious—I scooted over to a doorway, took down the keys on the hook there, and unlocked the double cylinder lock on the kitchen door.

Travis came in, grinning. “Way to go, Jonny,” he said. “I knew it would work.”

“I told you I had spotted the keys hanging there when you boosted me up to look through the dining room window,” I said.

Travis kept grinning, and his big Irish face lit up under his red hair, blue eyes twinkling. “I knew it would work because our plans always work.”

We both laughed at that because it certainly wasn’t true. In fact, our plans would be legendary for their frequent screwups if high school boys getting in trouble were the stuff of legends. Not going to happen, not in 1974.

But this one would turn out to be almost worthy of grand tragedy—or high farce, depending on how you looked at it. And it did have something to do with legends.

We had just committed breaking-and-entering at the abandoned house next to my family’s home in West L.A. The place, known as Welker’s place, had been empty for years and had turned into the neighborhood eyesore, the paint peeling, many of the windows boarded up, the yard overgrown and the fences sagging.

We didn’t intend to steal anything, but we had learned that the owners, the heirs of Josiah Welker who had died there five years ago, had settled their lawsuits and that the city had ordered the place to be fixed up, demolished, or sold.

Whatever happened eventually, it would be Halloween in two weeks, and Travis and I had decided to scout the place for maybe using as a haunted house location. It wouldn’t take much added spookiness on the outside to turn it into a good place for scaring the heck out of a few girls. But we wanted to see the inside—I guess just because we never had and might not ever get a better chance.

Despite us living next to each other for ten years, he and I made unlikely friends. Two years older than me, and eight inches taller with scads of muscles, Travis was a senior at our Westside high school, and offensive captain of the football team. (Go Buffaloes!) He had a date any time he wanted one with the best looking girls in school, including the head cheerleader, Beth Nowak.

On the other hand, I was no athlete—just Jonny Wilson, a scrawny sophomore of no particular distinction who had yet to have a date that wasn’t some fix-up with the younger sister of one of Travis’s many girlfriends.

In return, I did help Travis with some of his homework—the big guy got bored with reading and math, two subjects that I considered to be fun and not work at all. Travis wasn’t stupid, just intellectually lazy, I guess.

Whatever, our symbiotic relationship worked for both of us.

We hadn’t been inside a minute when I opened what I thought was a broom closet and found a hidden staircase. We had come prepared with dust masks, gloves and flashlights because the power had been off in the old house for years. I shined my light into the darkness of the stairwell and saw mostly cobwebs. “Check it out,” I said. “I bet the old guy kept his best stuff in the basement.”

Travis shined his light directly in my face. “Why would he do that?” he asked.

“Dude! I can’t see!” I yelped.

But what two teenagers exploring a haunted house could resist a spooky subterranean lair? Flashlights in hand, down we went, just as soon as I stopped seeing purple.

Travis used a broomstick to clear the cobwebs out of our way, and I followed him down the steep, narrow stairs. The underground chamber proved to be maybe twelve-by-sixteen feet, about the size of the kitchen above, and filled with boxes, suitcases, wooden chests, and other containers.

“Jackpot?” I suggested.

“Just a lot of old junk,” scoffed Travis.

Well, frankly I thought that, too, but I wasn’t giving up so easy. I started opening cabinets and looking in boxes. Travis was more interested in using the broom to sweep up spider webs. “I hate spiders,” he muttered. The dust he stirred up doing that would have had us coughing if not for the painter’s masks we wore.

I found one wooden box that had an odd collection of items, antique-looking bottles, a strange old mirror and a thing that looked like a powder horn made of brass mounted on a stand. I picked it up because I had never seen anything like it before. “What the heck is this?” I asked.

Travis put his flashlight on it. “I dunno. Looks a little like one of those old lamps they had in cartoons. You know, like in Aladdin?”

“No, it doesn’t. Those didn’t have a powder horn-shaped body, and they were flat like a bowl.”

Travis shrugged. “Well, other than that,” he admitted.

I snorted, looking at the thing more closely. It really could be a lamp, I decided. I ought to be more sure of that since my Dad was a professor of medieval history at UCLA and he specialized in the Middle East, but what kid pays that much attention to what their father does? A lot of musty old books in the den at home and more, I imagined, in his office on campus.

But a fancy old lamp? “It would be cool if there was a genie in it,” I suggested. I reached out to open the lid which seemed to be stuck.

Travis had wound a big ball of web on the bristle end of the broom, and now he tried to use his toe to push it off. Of course, it stuck to his shoe. “Ick,” he said, scraping the spider stuff off on the concrete floor. “Well, if it does have a genie inside, I want one like on that old TV show, not Robin Williams with a beard.”

I snorted. I remembered that show too—they ran it all the time on one of the local channels. Gorgeous blonde in a skimpy outfit, who wouldn’t want a genie like that?

Suddenly the top did come off, and a dark cloud came out of the hole. I dropped the lid which had a hinge and chain, so it fell back into place.

“Hey!” I said. “Who turned out the lights?” It had gotten completely, totally dark and I no longer had my flashlight in my hand.
 

 
In case anyone wonders where I may have gotten some of the ideas in this story, consider:

P.S. - Oh. This intro and maybe the first few chapters are really G-Rated but since I know where I'm going with this, I rated it Mature for what I intend rather than what I'm doing right now. -- Erin