Free Darkness Creeping by Neal Shusterman Page A

that he was dead, it was the way wood creaked when you walked on it—as if it could give way any moment the way it did beneath Grandfather. It was frightening to think that a house so big, which looked so sturdy, could be so fragile.
    Karin did not sleep that night—not because of Grandfather’s death, and not because of the termite-eaten floorboards. She couldn’t sleep because of the box. If a box could have a spirit, then it was beginning to possess her. It seemed Randy had the same problem.
    When he crept into her room an hour before dawn, Karin was sitting up, holding the little box in her hand and staring at the button.
    “I knew you’d be awake,” said Randy.
    She was glad he was there, because she couldn’t go on sitting alone any longer. She just had to tell somebody. She had to talk about it.
    “I can’t stop thinking about it,” she told him. “I put it back in the puzzle box, and then I put the puzzle box under my bed, but I could still see it there in my mind. It’s like a photograph that won’t go away. Then I put it in the hall, but that didn’t help, so I snuck outside when everyone was asleep and put it in our car. But no matter where I put it, I still kept seeing it.”
    “So you went back out to get it?” asked Randy.
    Karin nodded. They both stared at the button. Its gold face now seemed silvery blue in the dim moonlight.
    “I don’t want it anymore,” said Karin. “You can have it.”
    Randy shook his head. “You keep it.”
    They stared at the button in silence.
    I’m not going to push it , thought Karin, although every fiber of her body told her that she was going to do just that. It was like trying not to look at her grandfather’s body when they opened the coffin in the chapel. No matter how hard she tried not to, she just had to look.
    Randy seemed to read what she was thinking.
    “Let me do it,” he said.
    “No.” Karin pulled the box a few inches away from him. “I mean, it’s just a superstition, right?” said Karin.
    “Right.”
    “And if we push it, nothing will happen, and we can stop worrying about it and get back to sleep, right?”
    “Right.”
    Karin slipped her finger across the smooth, cold surface. She rested it on the button.
    She could hear her heart pounding, and swore she could hear Randy’s as well. Silently, she cursed her grandfather for giving her the button.
    “Get it over with,” hissed Randy.
    Karin took a deep breath, felt the cold metal beneath her fingertip . . . and pressed.
    She held the button down, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes.
    But nothing happened.
    No explosions, no demons, nothing. Only the silence of the night, and faint snores coming from the other rooms.
    Feeling stupid, they both breathed a deep sigh of relief. This was what Grandfather wanted, Karin was sure now. He wanted to show them how weak they truly were. He had called them stupid—was this his way of proving it?
    Karin stared at the button a moment longer, her finger still firmly pressing it down. Finally, she relaxed and took her finger off it.
    “Well,” she said as the button snapped back up, “I guess that’s it. I guess nothing’s going to hap—”

RESTING DEEP
    A friend was telling me a story he had read about a father who takes his son fishing with a storm on the horizon. Immediately, I constructed an entire plot about why they were going fishing and what would happen in the story. That story, of course, went in a completely different direction—the only similarity was a fishing boat going out in a storm. Many times we are inspired by other authors. The trick is to take that inspiration and create something that is uniquely your own.
    RESTING DEEP
    My parents dropped me off at his house late last night.
    Greaty’s house.
    That’s what I call him, “Greaty”—short for Great-Grandpa. He’s the oldest in the family. He’s buried two wives, two sons, and one daughter.
    His house is small: a living room, a bedroom, and a tiny kitchen. It’s