Free Backward Glass by David Lomax

chill. “Yeah, but everything I find out just brings up more questions. What are these health problems? What’s she so worried about?” Luka didn’t reply at first. I looked around at her. “What?”
    “Are you that dense? Seriously?”
    “I’m with Kenny,” said Jimmy. “What?”
    Luka shared an eye roll with Melissa. “You dummies, don’t you get it? Look, January she talks about how she’s missing Clive. End of February she’s got this ‘terrible suspicion.’ March she’s really sick. By June her mother says she’s getting fat and is ignoring something, and in July she wants to hide Rose away in the carriage house. She’s pregnant, dummy.”
    I turned to face the hedgerow and thought about the dark space in the wall where I had ripped away the lath six months ago, before being driven away by the prickling in my skin.
    “That is some sad stuff,” said Jimmy. “Can’t she just, you know, take care of it?”
    Melissa gave him a scornful look. “In 1917? An abortion?” Jimmy winced when she said the word.
    “That’s just not possible back then,” said Luka.
    We went down to the creek and searched out the place Curtis called the cave. You could see there had once been something there, a space underneath three large rocks nestled into an overhang. Mud and erosion had covered the hiding place years ago. Jimmy and I got a couple of sticks and dug. We found some large pieces of broken furniture buried in the dirt that looked like they might have once been used as makeshift tunnel supports. Luka and Melissa took the top of a small table to the creek to wash the decades of muck away until we found where CB+RH were scratched deeply into the wood.
    The bigger surprise came when Luka dashed another bucket of water on the tabletop and revealed further initials below CH. LH as well as AC+MG. Further below that, KM and LB.
    “Great,” said Melissa after our shared moment of stunned silence. “Lillian Huff from the thirties, Margaret Garroway from the forties and Anthony Currah from the fifties. Then Kenny and Luka? Nothing for Jimmy and me?”
    “That’s fine by me,” said Jimmy. “I don’t want to get stuck in no long-ago past.”
    I ran my fingers over the initials. Not as deep as Clive had carved, but deeper than Curtis. I looked at Luka. “I never did this.”
    “Don’t look at me. I’m five right now. In my time there’s a bridge here. These rocks are gone.”
    We dug for a while more, but didn’t find anything. It was getting close to the time I should be expecting my mother home from work, so Luka took us back to her time for some Nintendo, but before we could even get the TV turned on, Melissa surprised us into seriousness.
    “Is it a curse?” she said, as Luka served us all sodas in her basement.
    “Is what a curse?” said Jimmy.
    “You know, how everybody says this neighborhood is haunted. I know that girl you met called us the blessed, but seriously? Margaret Garroway going missing in September? And a really long time ago some little boy went crazy and cracked a girl’s head open. Maybe it’s the mirror. Maybe Prince Harming lives in the mirror. Keisha left me a note a couple of nights ago saying she found something out about him, but she hasn’t been back.”
    “Aw, that’s just a story anyway,” said Jimmy. “Like the boogie man. Or Santa’s evil brother.”
    We all turned to look at him.
    “What, your mom never told you about Opposite Christmas, when Nefidious Claus comes to take the presents away if you were bad?” We continued to stare. Jimmy’s head sank. “Man, I had the worst childhood.”
    “Why cursed?” said Luka. “Look at the fun we get to have. Anything can be bad or good. And like Jimmy says—Prince Harming is just a story to frighten kids.”
    “Here,” I said. They all turned to me and frowned. “It’s a story here. I’ve lived in a bunch of neighborhoods, and I never heard about this Prince Harming before. And what that girl said? She said we