What The House Forgot

Land Devoid of Logic

"What the h*ll was that?" Sherlock demanded, looking towards Victor before turning around completely to face Rosie, who was still leaning her calves against the bottommost bench.
"What was what? What did you do, shock him?" Victor demanded, approaching in a step that was intended to be intimidating. Instead he wobbled forward like a toddler, his knees hardly bending to his will as he waddled straight legged towards his shocked companion.
"Where was I?" John demanded, his voice weak and struggling as he tried to gasp in the breath that had been stolen from him. In their excitement with Sherlock, no one had recognized that John's lungs had been compressed in his fall, thus knocking all of the available breath from his body. For now the boy gasped, gathering as many words as he could without making sure they made sense.
"I'm sick of this," Rosie decided. "Sherlock, if you've been lacing that weed with something hallucinogenic I swear, I'll report you."
"I'm not hallucinating. John saw it too!"
"Saw what?" Victor whined, nearly stomping his feet in the grass like a toddler in order to call the needed attention to his question.
"A house," John announced, his breath finally retuning to conform into his normal octave. The boy sat up, rubbing the back of his head before letting his fingers drop down to his side, massaging over the spot where Sherlock had made contact. He winced, as if the flesh was still burning. Victor pursed his lips, looking between the two of them to see who would be caught in the lie first.
"A house?" he confirmed at last.
"The house," Sherlock agreed, running his finger though his curls before ducking his hand into his jacket for another smoke. Perhaps he was too sober for this, even after smoking a joint down to a nub just minutes before.
"I was here...I was here. And then I wasn't," John explained lamely. "I was in a house, and you were there but you weren't...you."
Sherlock blinked in response. He didn't seem to have any protests against his jumbled personification, almost as if he had seen something equally confusing in his own vision.
"I don't think we should think about that house anymore," Rosie suggested, jumping up on the bleachers for a height advantage over all of the boys in her presence. "That thing has been creeping me out since the moment we stepped onto the porch. It's been what...months? And still, still I can't get over it."
"I don't think we have a choice now," Sherlock admitted. "I've seen it in my dreams."
"But that's...that's normal," Victor offered weakly, nervously. "I've seen it too. It's just a particularly good dreamscape, that's all."
"It would be better burnt to the ground. That's what my mother says," Rosie reminded them. "There's a reason people go missing from that place. There's a reason it's still standing."
"I should like to go there," John insisted, pulling himself to his feet and brushing off the excess grass that hung onto his clothes. Sherlock was silent, staring contemplatively at the newcomer as he wiggled a newly lit joint between his teeth. His body was poised, his knee bent, his weight shifting back and forth as if in a rhythmic dance. Victor watched guilty, feeling as if he was obligated to look away at one point or another, as if he was supposed to be equally interested in all of his friends. And though, for all of their qualities, neither Rosie nor John could hold his attention for so long.
"I was in a bedroom," John admitted. "I've seen it before."
"Stop with this...this mysticism! I'm sick of all of you! I don't know if you're just trying to see who can creep each other out the best, trying to see who's the most macho of the group, but it's exhausting!" Rosie whined.
"I'm not lying!" John defended.
"It's too much coincidence," Victor decided at last, trying to draw Sherlock's eyes to him yet proving unsuccessful. Sherlock seemed fascinated with John; his eyes were trained upon the boy's face, staring intently as if trying to notice any shifting details he might have first overlooked.
"I don't think there's such a thing as coincidence," Sherlock admitted at last. "I think Rosie's right. The house is haunted. The house is cursed."
"We should stay away!" Rosie demanded.
"We should go back," Sherlock corrected. Victor's jaw dropped, though whatever protests he might have uttered were lost within the back of his throat, gurgling uselessly until he couldn't even remember how to form a syllable. It felt as if someone had grabbed his tongue, rending it useless in forming any words. He forgot how to say no, he forgot how to question if one was really crazy. The only word he seemed to remember, in fact the very word that was beginning to form without his consent, began to twist upon his tongue and spit out through his lips. Before Victor permitted it, before he even understood what he was agreeing to, his own voice betrayed him.
"Yes," said Victor's voice, much without his consent. Yes.