Will You Play with Me?

I’ve ridden my bike past the old, dilapidated children’s hospital a hundred times but never had the guts to go inside . . . until today. The building is covered in thick vines, the windows are smashed in, the brick walls are crumbling. People say it’s haunted by the patients who died there years ago.

“We have to spend at least ten minutes inside,” Elias says, holding out his pinkie for me to swear.

“Deal,” I say. I wasn’t scared. I shake his finger, take a deep breath, and climb in through a broken side window, jumping down onto the dusty, rotten
floorboards, sending cockroaches skittering.

“You first!” Elias says, as we walk up the stairs, past rusty steel hospital beds and odd piles of pans.

I stop in my tracks halfway up the stairs and listen; squeaky wheels roll along the floor above us.

“Did you hear that?” I whisper, heart in my mouth. “There it is again!”

Elias drops the tough guy act and grips my arm.

“Let’s get out of here!” he says.

“We can’t, ten minutes remember?” I say, swallowing my fear.

I force one foot in front of the other, climbing the stairs higher into the building.

There is a figure in a wheelchair at the top of the stairs; a pale-faced boy wearing striped pajamas, a ball in his hand.

“Will you play with me?” he asks, dropping the ball down the stairs toward us.

I pick up the ball and look up to the landing again, but the boy is gone.