Author's Note: It's scary story time! Emma's story here comes from a dream I had once (which was scary at the time but made me think "that would make an AWESOME story!" once I got a bit of distance from it) that I tweaked a bit to account for the gaps in dream logic. As far as I know, it's not a book or a movie plot, so if I did steal it from somewhere, it's purely accidental. Also, because an author's note from me isn't really complete without it: you guys rock. :)
Apparently, scary stories weren't worth doing to Henry unless they were done properly. "Everyone's lanterns off!" he instructed, a grin lighting his face as he switched off his own lantern. "Except you, Mom. Yours has to stay on."
Emma playfully raised her hands in surrender as Snow and David turned off their lanterns. With the only illumination now coming from Emma's lantern, shadows filled the corners and edges of the tent. A small breeze had kicked up outside, whistling through the leaves of the trees overhead. Emma had to admit, it was an almost perfect scary story atmosphere.
After taking a brief moment to once again run the details of Kevin's story through her head, she looked up at her family. "Some towns," she said, meeting first her father's eyes, then her mother's followed by her son's, "are big. Not quite big enough to be called cities, but big enough to get lost in. Some towns, like this one, are small. And some are smaller still, but what those towns lack in size, they tend to make up for in history ... especially in this area in the country. If you look hard enough, you can find history everywhere. The thing to remember is that history is not always pleasant."
A little smile curled on her lips when she noticed Henry staring at her in rapt attention. Even her parents appeared mesmerized. Maybe she wasn't so bad at the story-telling thing after all. The details were Kevin's, of course, but the words were hers.
"The thing with history – both pleasant and unpleasant – is that it's all around you," she continued, her voice low. "It's everywhere you turn … it's in old buildings, it's in the spot marked with a plaque because something exciting happened there a hundred years ago. And sometimes, it's buried right under your nose. After all, isn't finding buried treasure what every kid digging in his back yard dreams of? What is buried treasure but something someone in the past left behind for the people in the present to find? Sometimes, though, buried treasure was never meant to be found. Just ask twelve-year-old Sarah. The buried treasure she dug up in her back yard was a simple but beautiful diamond ring."
When David gasped, Emma smiled to herself. Her family was eating this up. "Sarah didn't show her mother the ring, which was probably her first mistake. Slipping it on her finger was definitely a mistake. At the precise moment she put it on, she caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of her eyes. You know, that quick moment when you think you see someone standing just outside your line of sight. That was what Sarah thought she saw ... just a tiny inkling of someone in her peripheral vision. When she looked more closely, though, there was no one there. She instantly relaxed, cursing her overactive imagination. She was so relaxed that she forgot all about it until that night when the dreams came."
"What were the dreams about?" Henry breathed.
Emma again had to swallow a grin. It wouldn't do to start chuckling during the telling of a scary story. "Nothing that made any real sense to Sarah, but they still left her frightened. Every time she dreamed, it would be the same, and every time she dreamed, she would wake up crying. She saw a man and a woman kissing and felt … betrayed. After a moment, the betrayal faded and she felt devastated and then finally angry. She yelled at the man, asking him how he could do such a thing to her, and he yelled back. She always woke up before the fight could escalate, though. It was after she'd had the dream for the third time that she saw the woman standing at the foot of her bed."
A chill must have made its way down Snow's spine because she shivered.
"The woman had dripping wet hair and soaking wet clothes. She stood stock-still, staring at Sarah through black, hollow eyes. She was rubbing the ring finger of her own left hand but she didn't say a word. Just stared. It took Sarah a moment to find her voice but when she did, she screamed. By the time her mother ran into the room and snapped on the light, the woman had vanished. It was just a bad dream, her mother tried to tell her. If there really had been a woman with wet clothes in the room, she said, there would be a puddle on the floor. But Sarah knew she'd been awake, and she knew what she'd seen."
She noticed for the first time that Henry had bunched his sleeping bag in his fist. She smiled to herself, remembering how she always needed something to squeeze while watching scary movies at Henry's age. "The woman began to appear to Sarah everywhere she went. She followed her during the day and stood in front of her bed at night. Sarah hadn't realized that something could be so threatening just by being there before her encounters with this woman. The woman never said a word. She just stood there, staring and rubbing her ring finger."
From the look on David's face, he had figured out where the story was headed. That fact wasn't all that surprising to Emma, considering it had been made up by a ten-year-old boy. Besides, the plot wasn't the point; the creepiness was. Regardless, her father appeared to enjoying it just as much as his wife and grandson. Giving a little smile while still keeping her voice low, Emma continued. "Now, Sarah was a smart girl. Obviously, the ring she'd found and the woman were connected. She tried to rebury it in the back yard, returning it where she'd found it, but still, the woman came. By the third night, Sarah was so tired and on edge that she'd had enough. She yelled, 'What do you want?!' 'You,' was the woman's raspy reply."
Henry shivered just as Snow had earlier. On the one hand, Emma wanted to grin in accomplishment; the story was working! On the other hand, she was starting to scare the crap out of her eleven-year-old son. The ending of Kevin's story was a dark one but with a couple of tweaks …
She took a brief moment to think it over and nodded to herself. The story had accomplished its purpose already; there was no use adding insult to injury.
"Sarah was scared, of course," she said, raising her voice just a little, "but she was also determined. No ghost was going to take her anywhere, not if she had anything to say about it. By the next day, she'd come up with a plan. She went to the town library to do a little bit of digging into the history of her house. It took her a while but she eventually came up with her ghost: a young woman who had tragically drowned a few days after breaking off her engagement. She had found her fiancé with another woman. Sarah had a name now: Hannah Kensington. The town was so small there was only one cemetery, so off she went to look for Hannah's grave. When she found it, she buried the ring a few inches down in the grass in front of the headstone. It was the closest she could come to returning the ring Hannah must have buried in the yard in anger. She just had to hope it would be enough to satisfy Hannah.
And it must have been, because Sarah never saw the ghost again."
Everyone in the tent let out a collective breath of relief, making Emma glad she'd changed the ending. Something told her two fairy tale characters and an idealistic little boy would not have welcomed the ghost winning in the end. "That story?" Henry said breathlessly. "Was awesome! Did you make that up?
Emma finally allowed her proud grin to show. "I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. Kevin Browne told us that story after lights out. It scared the crap out of all of us."
"Well, you certainly have a way with story-telling, even if the plot isn't yours," Snow said, giving her daughter a gentle smile.
Emma returned her mother's smile, which then grew into an amused smirk when Henry excitedly asked, "Do you know any more?"
"Sorry, kid," she replied with a shake of her head. "One scary story per camping trip is my limit."
"Aw, man!" Henry cried, making everyone else chuckle.
David turned on his and Snow's lanterns, illuminating the tent and casting out the shadows. "I hereby proclaim scary story time officially over."
"And with that, I think it's time you two change into your pajamas," Emma reminded both her son and her father. "If we have to be out here in our PJs, so do you."
Henry wrinkled his nose, clearly equating the idea of pajamas with bedtime. David must have interpreted his expression the same way, because he said, "She's right, Henry. We're not going to want to end up sleeping in our clothes. We could play a couple of card games before lights out, though, if you want."
At that, Henry's eyes lit up. "I can get my deck when I go upstairs to change! What game should we play?"
"You choose," Emma told him, readying herself for either Go Fish or War. She had tried to teach him how to play Hearts once, just for something different, but she found that she didn't remember enough of the rules to properly teach him. One of the dangers of trying to translate a game she'd mostly learned on the computer into actual practice, she supposed.
"Okay." He grinned as he crawled past her to the door of the tent.
"Hang on. You're not going to tell me what game you're going to pick?"
"It's a surprise!" With that, he slipped through the other flap, leaving David to follow behind him.
Somehow, Emma managed to restrain herself from hollering after them for David not to let Henry out of his sight. She released a heavy breath as she lay down on her back, interlacing her fingers behind her head.
A moment later, her mother joined her, looking up at the slightly lopsided roof of the tent. "Are you all right?"
"Yep," Emma replied. She turned her head to smile wryly at her mother. "Just reserving my energy for War or Go Fish."
Snow smiled back. "I could teach him Old Maid."
Teaching Henry a new game was not a bad idea at all. The kid needed his card game repertoire widened a little bit. "Okay. Just, you know, keep in mind that you might have to teach me, too. At the very least, you'll have to refresh my memory."
"I can do that," Snow said, smiling tenderly.
Here again was something Emma had missed out on … having her parents around to teach her card games. Hell, having her parents teach her things, period. The few card games she knew, she'd learned from various foster siblings or directors of group homes.
As if she could somehow read Emma's mind, Snow said, "You know I would give anything to have been able to do this with you when you were Henry's age, don't you?"
Emma just nodded, not trusting herself to talk at the moment.
Thankfully, Snow seemed to realize that Emma wasn't in the right frame of mind for emotional conversation. Instead, she smiled, her eyes brightening. "Well, it appears as if I'll have two students again in a few minutes."
Appreciative of her mother's effort to get the conversation back on a light track, Emma grinned back. "Just like old times."