We teased each other for years about the house at 131 Priory Path. It was a shattered shell of a home, long since abandoned by whoever had had enough sense to get outta Dodge. Furniture had been left to rot in the weed-wild front yard, a sure sign of it's vacancy, but none of us ever went in. 'It was haunted,' the bigger kids said...'It was evil!', and of course that was enough to keep us at stone's throw length away, threatening it with sticks and adolescent bravado and cuss words that tapered into nervous laughter until one of us would take yet another pane of glass from it's face with a well aimed rock and we'd run off like a pack of playful, young, wolf pups.
Years later, on Billy's 18th, he insisted we go down to that house at the end of the Path, and with all the courage a crate of Bud could muster, we did. I still remember standing outside at the ricket fence, remarking how little the place had changed since our youth. I remember the nostalgic taste of fear and how I almost hurled my half-drunk bottle of Sailor's Envy at the front door and ran away screaming all girl-like... just like Lil' Marvin did when he stood on that ant-hill back in the summer of '78. But I didn't. I gulped the other half of my bottle instead and cursed Billy under my beer-breath as we followed him in.
