Free Darkness Creeping by Neal Shusterman

held just a day later.
    It was more convenient that way, since the whole family was already in town for the annual reunion. No one had expected him to die that night, especially the way it happened. He had fallen through a termite-eaten floorboard, right in front of all the relatives. Leave it to Grandfather to make such a dramatic exit from the world.
    Karin’s mom had cried hysterically for most of that night. She had been talking to him when it happened. “Just like that,” she kept telling everybody. “He was talking to me—he was in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word —and then suddenly he wasn’t there. All that was left was a hole!”
    To Karin this was more than an accident. Somehow the old man knew his time was coming. It made Karin wonder what else he might have known.

    At the funeral, Karin watched as Randy, on the far side of the casket, squirmed away from his parents and came around to her. His mind, like hers, seemed to be less concerned with Grandfather and more concerned with what Grandfather had left behind. Randy began whispering to Karin while an old woman spoke a Chinese eulogy.
    “Do you have it?” whispered Randy.
    She knew what he was talking about. “Yes.”
    “Where?”
    “It’s in my purse. Leave me alone,” said Karin.
    “Are you carrying it with you everywhere now?”
    Karin sighed, and her parents threw Randy an angry look. Randy shut up, for a little while.
    When the ceremony was over and everyone was walking back to the cars, Randy pulled Karin off on a detour through a maze of high tombstones—a place Karin didn’t want to be, but she didn’t resist. She didn’t want to think or talk about the button anymore, and yet at the same time, she wanted to talk about it more than anything.
    “You must be curious,” said Randy.
    “I thought you didn’t believe in the button,” Karin said.
    “I don’t, but I can still be curious about it, can’t I?”
    Karin reached into her purse and pulled out the little black box. She opened it to reveal the gold button.
    Randy stared at it, practically drooling. He wanted that button, and Karin was beginning to wish that their grandfather had given it to him instead.
    “I mean, look at it,” he said. “It’s not attached to anything.
    If we took it apart, it would probably just be a gold button and a hollow box. Nothing but air inside.”
    “You are not taking it apart,” Karin said sternly.
    Randy leaned up against the back of a huge black stone and crossed his arms. “So what do you think it’s supposed to do? You think it’s supposed to send off nuclear missiles or something?”
    “Don’t be dumb,” said Karin, chalking up another mark on her list of Stupid Randy Comments. “When this button was made, there were no missiles.”
    “So then how is it supposed to end the world? Is it supposed to release evil spirits or something? Or send out poisonous gas? How?”
    “I don’t know,” said Karin, and then she smirked. “Why don’t you go back to the grave and ask Grandfather?” And then she whispered, “Put your ear close to the ground. He might answer you.”
    Randy punched Karin in the arm for that, and Karin whacked him back, hard.
    “I don’t believe in that dumb thing for a second,” insisted Randy. “It’s not scientific. I don’t believe it.”
    “Well, whether you believe it or not,” said Karin, “you don’t have to worry about it anymore, because you’re never going to see it again.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m putting it away for good, just like our ancestors did. I’m putting it in a safe place where no one will ever find it, until it’s my turn to pass it on.”
    Karin slipped the little box back into her purse, thinking of all the places she could put it where it would be safe until she was about ninety years old. The problem was, she didn’t know of such a place.

    That night was their last in Grandfather’s house. No one wanted to stay there anymore. It wasn’t just