Free Scary Mary by S.A. Hunter

Terri
Kuwalchek’s address, the previous owner of Cy’s home, simply enough
in the phone book. It was a real stroke of luck that she still
lived in town. Mary knew that a face-to-face meeting with the woman
would be better than something over the phone or through email,
after all calls could be blocked, and emails deleted. A person at
the door was a little trickier to avoid. Rachel borrowed her dad’s
car to drive them to Ms. Kuwalchek’s current address.
    Terri Kuwalchek lived in a quiet apartment
complex on the outskirts of town. Mary got out of the car with a
touch of nervousness. She hadn’t come up with a script yet of what
to say. It’d been only an hour since finding the newspaper
articles.
    “ Rach, are you sure we shouldn’t wait a
day before doing this?”
    Rachel beeped the automatic locks. “Mary, the
sooner we have all the facts, the sooner we can go and tell Cy.
Delaying is not of the good. Delaying is synonymous with
Ricky.”
    “ But what am I supposed to say? Hi, Ms.
Kuwalchek, do you remember that house you lived in that exploded?
Yeah, did you know it was haunted? Oh, you did? Do you happen to
remember anything specifically about the haunting? We’re going to
do an exorcism. It’s a school project for extra credit.”
    “ Sounds good to me.”
    “ She’ll slam the door on us!”
    “ Fine, leave out the bit about extra
credit.”
    Mary rolled her eyes and stomped up the
stairs.
    Ms. Kuwalchek lived in a corner apartment on the
second floor. When they arrived, Mary took in the absence of a
doormat and any door decorations. It was starkly naked compared to
all the doors around it. It looked like no one lived there. She
pushed the doorbell and let out a sigh of relief when she heard
movement on the other side. The door opened a crack with the chain
still drawn. A suspicious eye looked out at the two girls.
    “ What do you want?”
    “ Are you Terri Kuwalchek?”
    The sliver of face bobbed up and down.
    “ My friend and I would like to talk to
you, Ms. Kuwalchek. My name’s Mary, and hers is Rachel. We’re
friends of someone who lives in your previous house 1118 Berkmire
Drive.”
    “ Tell your friend to move out now. Don’t
stay there another moment.” The door began to close.
    “ Why? What’s wrong with the house?” She
asked, but the door closed.
    Mary looked at Rachel, and her friend shrugged
her shoulders. If Ms. Kuwalchek refused to talk to them, they
couldn’t do anything. They turned to go but stopped. They heard the
chain to the door being drawn off. They turned back.
    The door opened fully.
    “ I don’t know what’s wrong with that
house, but it did this to me." They saw the half of her face that
the door had hidden. It looked like melted wax.
    “ Did anything lead up to the explosion?”
Mary asked. Her eyes searched desperately for something safe to
focus on. She noted Ms. Kuwalchek’s limp brown ponytail, her faded
blue sweatshirt, and the tiny silver cross hanging at her neck, but
Mary’s eyes kept sliding back to the scarred half of her face. By
some luck, the woman had been able to keep her left eye. It looked
at Mary with a clear brown intensity.
    Terri Kuwalchek stepped back and held the door
open. “Come in. I’ll tell you what I know.”
    Her living room was sparse to the point of
having an unfinished feeling to it, like half the stuff that should
be there wasn’t. Mary shuddered at the thought. She and Rachel sat
down on the couch. Ms. Kuwalchek sat down in a recliner across from
them.
    “ Before I begin, tell me what you
know.”
    Mary nodded. “We know that the house was once
the home of Ricky Moore, who killed his wife and committed suicide,
and when you moved into the house about three years later, a gas
explosion occurred that burned you badly.”
    Ms. Kuwalchek laughed. She covered the damaged
side of her face with her hand. “Yeah, that’s obvious.”
    “ And since then, no one has stayed in the
house for more than a few months. Everyone moves