✓ 𝐖.𝐈.𝐓.𝐂.𝐇. | ʜᴏᴄᴜꜱ ᴘᴏᴄᴜꜱ

𝘁𝘄𝗼

"WE'RE REALLY INTO WITCHES."

"really?" max's little sister, dani, said. "we just learned about those sisters in school."

every kid who went to school in salem has heard of the sanderson sisters. they were the biggest part of the salem witch trials and history of our town. some even had a conspiracy that there were actually four, but that theory was unlikely.

"you mean the sanderson sisters?" theo asked. "we know all about them."

allison nodded her head after taking a sip of her cider. "yeah, my mom used to run the museum."

dani grinned, licking a lollipop she had taken from a bucket of candy. "there's a museam about them?"

"yeah, but they shut it down because a lot of spooky things happened there," allison said in a dark voice, crouching near dani's height.

sure, the spooky things might not have been too interesting - just a few pieces going missing because of some thieves, but it was cool to think they were because of the sanderson sisters.

"well," said max, "why don't we go to this old sanderson house?"

the mood changed suddenly. it was pretty dangerous to go back there. it even gave me the heebie jeebies, and i adored the history of the house. horrible things had happened there - especially within my family.

dani shook her head towards max, hoping she wouldn't be forced into this. allison managed to give him a good glare, but it didn't seem to work on him.

"well, come on," he said. "make a believer out of me."

a small smile grew onto allison's face as she turned towards the staircase. "okay, let me get changed. they'll never miss me."

"al, i don't think this is a very good idea," i warned. "you know about the rumors and stuff."

allison shook her head and grabbed my arm. "come on, ry, those rumors aren't all that true. women were burned for being able to read back then."

"i know, but, don't you think that-"

she continued pulling me up the stairs until i had no other choice but to follow.

*

"legend has it that the bones of 100 children are buried within these walls," allison said while walking on the sidewalk by the sanderson house.

you couldn't trust all of the legends. most of them were just to scare kids into behaving and working like they were supposed to back in the day. barely any of them had any actual truth to them.

we eventually got to the closed gate, and you could see parts of the house through the trees. you could see more than you could in the summer, which was a good thing because in the summer you could hardly make out the ground through the tree leaves.

but now you could see the rickety house with slightly more modern windows and paint so that patrons wouldn't die of lead poisoning when they entered. though, it was forbidden to enter, which was why we had to sneak in.

the hinges creaked as we coughed and entered the building. everyone waved their hands in front of their faces in hopes of clearing the dust out of the air, but there was so much of it that we weren't really doing much other than moving the dust around.

"i cant see a thing!" dani shouted through muffled coughs.

allison's hands traced the familiar walls. "well, there's a light switch around here somewhere."

"i haven't been in here in years," theo said, turning to me. "this is where we met, remember?"

"yeah," i nodded, thinking back to our kindergarten field trip. "how old were we? five?"

he grinned and nodded, slinging an arm around my shoulder. "it wasn't a good choice bringing us in here that young, was it?"

i pushed his arm off and kept looking around the house. "it really depends on how you look at it, i guess."

"hey guys," max whispered, flicking something by his side. "found a lighter."

while i was looking through the windows outside, the lights flashed on, and dani gasped louder than she had before. she'd been so scared coming up here, and i hoped i could do something to help her feel better.

"this here is the original cauldron," theo said, slapping the side of the object. "them sisters cooked up some good ol' children in this thing."

"i don't think you should be joking about that, theo," i said, inspecting it with all of its intricate cuts and blemishes. "they did some pretty horrible things with this."

"come on, rylan, half of those stories aren't even true," allison said through a groan. "they're just stories to get kids to behave."

theodore nodded. "yeah, we may be geeks, but we're woke geeks."

"the spell book!" i gasped, running towards the glass case, but making sure to watch my step because you never knew when the floor would give out.

theo nodded and winked at max. "it was given to winnifred sanderson by the devil himself."

i pushed away his mockery. "it's bound in human skin, and contains the recipes for her most powerful and evil spells."

"i get the picture," said dani from beside me. she seemed less scared than she has been when we were walking up the steps outside.

i kept looking at the book in awe, amazed that i was seeing it again. i hadn't been here for years-not since it shut down when i was in the third grade. ever since, i had only ever read about it.

"what's that?" max asked.

i pulled my head up to look in the same direction as he was. hanging over by a post was a candle covered in dust and cobwebs after not being used for so long.

"that's the black flame candle," allison whispered in his ear, trying to scare dani.

max walked over to the candle despite theo and i telling him not to go near it. we didn't know max too long or too well, but we did know that he wasn't the best at listening. especially when it came to impressing allison.

"black flame candle. made from the fat of a hanged man." he recited off of a small plaque hanging on the wall. "legend says that, on a full moon, it will raise of the spirits of the dead when lit by a virgin on halloween night."

none of us seemed very entertained by the idea of the sanderson sisters coming back. who would want some crazy people from 1666 to come back and be embraced by the modern world. if you have them a single cool ranch dorito they would disintegrate.

max turned around the pole and flicked his lighter. "let's light the sucker and meet the old broads." he held up the lighter to allison. "wanna do the honors?"

"no, thanks," she said.

but before max could say anything more to try and entice her, a black cat jumped from the top of the hut and onto his back. everyone backed away and watched as max fought the cat off of him.

i couldn't help but think that maybe this was a sign. a sign that we shouldn't be here. i mean, a black cat? everyone knows that in the legends, thackery binx was turned into a black cat.

"stupid cat!" max yelled as it ran away.

he had some pretty visible scratch marks on his face, but no one really mentioned them. everyone just crept a bit closer and slower, making sure the cat wasn't out to get them, too.

"okay max, you've had your run." dani latched onto allison's waist. "it's time to go. come on."

"she's right," i said, grabbing theo and booking it for the door. "let's go."

max laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "oh come on, it's just a bunch of hocus-pocus."