Chapter Three: Exploration Perils

"This is a bad idea!" Scott shouted after his friend. He was beginning to sound like a broken record. How many times did he need to repeat himself before Stiles finally realized he was right? He was the practical one, the reasonable one; how did he constantly let Stiles talk him into these ridiculous endeavors?

"Just come in here already! I think – AHHH!" Stiles screamed.

"Stiles!" Worry for his friend crowded out the minor incessant anxieties in his head. Without thinking, Scott dashed into the dark Hale House. Soot sprinkled into his hair, but he didn't have time to think about the dead bodies those ashes might have once belonged to. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light. There was Stiles, safe and sound, standing in the middle of the foyer. A goofy self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"Awe, you do care!"

Of course Scott cared! Stiles was his best friend – his annoying, deceiving, heedless best friend. "Don't do that!" Scott whined. "I thought you had gotten hurt."

"It was the only way I could think to get you into the house." This kind of logic came naturally to Stiles. He could read people, look inside them to their core, perceive what made them tick, in a way too eerie and insightful for a boy of his tender age. It both frustrated and amazed Scott, and he hated being on the receiving end of Stiles' cunning manipulation.

"Yeah, well, now I've seen the inside, so let's go." Scott scanned the house warily, and hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulders. The walls and floor weren't just covered in soot, but completely blackened. They shivered with each gust of wind that blew, breathing in and out in the unearthly silence, so that the entire house seemed alive. A great sleeping monster into which they had trespassed, waiting for the perfect moment to swallow them whole.

"I want to look around." Stiles tramped lightly into a room to their left, a parlour of some kind, Scott right at his heels. "Woah." The wallpaper was singed, the glass in the window panes warped, their glimpses to the outside world twisted and fat, like reflections in fun house mirrors. The blackened furniture pieces were mostly whole, scattered around a useless fireplace, waiting for their owners to return. Stiles could almost feel their presences there – the Hale family – watching from the dark shadows. Were they friends or foes? He could feel Scott's hot, hurried breath exhaling into his ear and down his neck, making his hairs stand straight on end. Like ghosts stalking him. Watching. Waiting. "Will you stop that?" he demanded, suddenly stopping and wheeling around. Scott stumbled and nearly face-planted on the dirty floor.

"Stiles, let's just go," he whispered, nearly begged, afraid to break the house's supernatural sleep with his voice. Beware all ye who enter here.

"What about the séance?"

"The séance was a stupid idea, and you know it. Your dad wouldn't want you to be here." Stiles heard the mutinous fear bubbling under the surface of his friend's tone.

"You wouldn't snitch, would you?"

"Yes, I would." Scott, unlike other prepubescent males, had no great objections against tattling. Especially when he knew he was in the right. He didn't like having to play the Sheriff Stilinski card, but it was the only way he seemed to win an argument against Stiles anymore. Since his mother had died, Stiles had been more daring, almost reckless, and the only thing that seemed to rein in his rash abandon was the mention of his father.

Stiles sighed in defeat, his feigned disgust all but covering his secret relief. "Alright. Just give me a few minutes to keep looking around." Scott nodded, but ran for the front door. He preferred to spend the last of his time in the Hale house straddling the threshold, inhaling the sweet scent of Californian autumn air.

Stiles tiptoed gingerly back through the main hallway and into a kitchen, so charred as to be almost unrecognizable, and a gigantic hole in the floor. Stiles peered over the edge into the dark basement below. The muted sunlight revealed vague shapes; he began to imagine the seared bones of the Hale children, their scorched flesh clinging to their black skeletons like overcooked meat, reaching up with their mutilated fingers and dragging him down into their infernal grave.

He backed away.

The rest of the first floor was more of the same – blistered wallpaper and flame-licked furniture, stale air thick with soot and dust and memories. Scott could hardly breathe. He took three quick inhales of his puffer, and begged Stiles to hurry up. Stiles wasn't sure what motivated his morbid curiosity, what pulled him to continue looking through the house; he needed to see all of it, to know, to leave no corner hidden, no stone unturned. What was he looking for? He didn't know, but he couldn't lose face in front of Scott. He had to keep going.

The rear of the house had received the most damage, where the flames had licked up the side, melting and twisting, crumbling away in the wind. Stiles had finished exploring the downstairs – being sure to keep a wide berth around the gigantic hole as he ventured from one room to the next. That just left the basement, which not even Stiles could ever muster up the gumption or sick curiosity to explore, and the upstairs.

Standing in the decrepit front foyer, amid rubble and junk, the peeling wallpaper, Stiles looked much smaller than his twelve years. He was standing at the bottom of the staircase looking up. The stairs looked safe enough. Dirty, sure, covered half an inch think in black dust and plaster, but relatively sound.

"Don't even think about it." Scott stood with the tips of his toes pressed against the threshold, as though a magical barrier hindered him from entering. "C'mon. You've seen the inside of the 'haunted' house – and it's a dump that looks like it could fall down any second-"

"If it's lasted this long, I'm sure a gust of wind isn't going to blow it down now."

"Don't roll your eyes!" Scott huffed. Stiles was missing the point, as usual. "You know what I'm saying. We came; we saw. Now, let's leave. What's up there that you haven't already seen down here?"

"You're right. It's probably just bedrooms and bathrooms, or whatever."

Scott breathed out a sigh of relief, and allowed his tense shoulders to relax ever so slightly. "Yes. Exactly. Let's go. You promised me pizza."

"Then again," with those two words, Scott knew he had lost Stiles; anything he said now would go in one ear and out the other, without stopping in the brain in-between. "Those are probably the most interesting rooms, right? Where else would I be the most likely to interact with specific ghosts? I bet I could learn a lot of about the Hales by looking at their bedrooms."

"Stiles, don't."

Stiles' right foot landed on the bottom stair.

"Come on, dude. Let's just go."

The second stair. The third.

"I'm practically begging you here!"

Left. Right. Left. Right.

"Stiles, come out!"

Up, up, up.

Stiles stepped onto the landing and smiled down at Scott triumphantly. His friend was backlit by the setting sun, his silhouette a dark figure at the threshold, a terrified being straddling the edge of two worlds. "What were you so afraid of, scaredy-pants? It's fine."

Above him, the orange and pink sky shone through a wide opening that had once been the third floor. He turned to the right, where the house was the most intact, intent on starting his investigation in that direction. He took a couple strides forward. Raised his right leg, stepped on board, when his foot suddenly crashed through the rotted wood. He stumbled forward, falling face first. Stiles barely had time to thrust his hands out in front of him, keeping his face from smearing on the floor. His leg had disappeared in the hole up to the mid-thigh.

"Stiles! Are you alright?" Scott had watched his friend go down. One minute he was walking along the landing, the next he had crashed out-of-sight behind the railing.

"I'm fine. I just fell." Stiles winced and tried to right himself.

Swallowing his fear, Scott re-entered the house. This was exactly the kind of thing he knew was going to happen. But did Stiles ever listen to him? No! Of course not! Taking the stairs carefully, clinging to the bannister as a lifeline and testing each step with his foot before he put his weight on it, Scott made his way up the stairs. Stiles had managed to free his leg from the board; his jeans were ripped, and Scott could see blood seeping slowly into the denim. Unbecoming red stripes.

"Can you stand?"

"Of course!" Stiles pressed his back against the wall. Using his left leg, and bracing himself with his hands, Stiles pushed himself into a standing position. He smiled reassuringly at Scott, but his smile was thin, his eyes wet and growing wetter. Scott was aware of the sweat already beading on Stiles' hairline. Even standing had clearly cost him a lot of effort.

"You're injured. You're in pain."

"No. I'm fine. You're right: we should get out of here." Stiles tried to walk forward, but his right ankle collapsed underneath him, unable to support his weight. All 87 pounds of him slammed forward on the landing. "OW!"

Scott slung Stiles' arm around him and helped pull him into a sitting position, propping him against the wall. He rolled up Stiles' pant leg. Stiles whimpering as he did so. "This isn't good." Stiles' leg was covered in scratches and scrapes; his skin already starting to turn a gross eggplant purple. Worst of all, his ankle was swelling. Scott brushed his fingers along the darkening area, and Stiles cringed. Uh oh, just as he had suspected. "I think you have a severe sprain. That's why your ankle is unstable." Lines appeared between Scott's eyebrows as he frowned. "You won't be able to walk. There's no way I can support you all the way downstairs and home. I have to go for help."

"What?!" Stiles glanced up again through the makeshift skylight. It was starting to get dark. Soon the sun would be down. "You can't leave me here alone!" Being in the Hale House with Scott and having two working legs was one thing, but this… he didn't know how he would survive.

Scott placed a warm hand on his shoulder. "You need help, Stiles. If I don't go now, we could be stuck here all night. No one knows where we are." One of the disadvantages, Scott would have pointed out, of lying to your parents about your plans and going on 'adventures' you knew they would disapprove of. "I'll go now on my bike and be right back. I promise."

"Isn't there another way?" Stiles bit down on his lip. His eyes were watering; he hated that. He would not start sobbing like a little child. He would not!

"You know I wouldn't abandon you, Sty." Stiles looked into his friend's eyes, and nodded. He knew Scott wouldn't leave him. Scott was a good person to have around in an emergency. Stiles remembered when his mother had died, and Scott had spent hours just sitting there beside him in silence. Just sitting. He had the intuition to know when to talk and when to listen, when to just be a comforting presence.

"I know." Stiles managed a small grin. "Isn't this the part when you should be telling me 'I told you so'?"

Scott smiled in return. "I totally did tell you, but there's plenty of time for that later. First we got to get you out of here. I'll leave my pack with you." Scott slipped his pack off his shoulders. "There's supplies in here, if you need them." He unzipped the bag, took out the extra sweater, and helped Stiles slip it over his head.

"Thanks, Mom."

"You must be okay. You're still sarcastic." Scott stood. A chill shot up his spine, making the ends of his hair stand straight. Looming over his friend in the dark, Stiles pale and ashen, cradled in dust and shadows, he looked like a little ghost boy. A forgotten corpse.

"Ugh, my dad's going to kill me!"

"Probably, but that'll be better than spending the night here!" At the mention on the impending night, Stiles glanced up again at the encroaching darkness. Scott knew what he was thinking. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Stop talking and just go!"

First Scott made sure Stiles was comfortable, propping the backpacks on either side of him, putting his pillow under the injured ankle. "I'll be alright," Stiles promised, putting on his brave face. He pulled out a bottle of green Gatorade and a can of pizza flavored Pringles. "At least I won't starve."

Scott nodded, and without further fuss, hurried down the stairs and outside, leaving the door wide open. Stiles heard him pick his bike off the ground with a rustle of leaves, the card pinned to his spokes snapping with each turn of the wheel. The sounds faded and faded, until they were gone.

The silence enveloped Stiles like a plastic bag – tight and suffocating. He was completely alone.