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him?”
    “Not really, but I know
of
him,” Erin answered. “Or should I say I know about his family.”
    “Fill us in,” my brother invited.
    “Well … everybody in town knows about the McCurdy family. They were always a little strange. There used to be stories about what went on at the farm. You know, ghost stories.”
    “Ghost stories?” I questioned.
    “They said the place was haunted, that old McCurdy was into strange voodoo things.” She looked like she was actually a little spooked just talking about it.
    “Come on, Erin, you don’t actually believe all thosestories?”
    “Maybe not all of them, but I’ve got friends who’ve seen things.”
    “Yeah, everybody always has a ‘friend’ who has a ‘friend’ who knows somebody who saw something,” I scoffed. “But did
you
ever see anything?”
    “Well … I didn’t actually see anything.”
    I flashed a smug smile at Nick.
    “But I was up there when …”
    “You’ve been to the farm?” I interrupted.
    “Well …” she answered, her voice just above a whisper. “Once.”
    “When was that?” Nick asked.
    “Promise you won’t tell anybody?” she asked, again in a low voice.
    “Who do you think we’re going to tell?” my brother asked.
    “I don’t know, but promise me what I say will be just between the three of us.”
    “Sure, no problem,” Nick answered.
    She looked at me. I nodded in agreement.
    “It was a couple of years ago. One of my ex-boyfriends used to go up there sometimes … late at night … and wander around the farm and the fields. It was a dare, and I went up with him.”
    “And?” I asked.
    “And what?”
    “And what did you see?”
    “See? I didn’t really see anything, but I could tell that evil things were going on.”
    “How could you tell?” I asked.
    “I just knew. I’m one of those people who are very sensitive to things like that, spirits and ghosts and UFOs. I think I even have ESP.”
    “I knew you were going to say that,” Nick deadpanned.
    I gave him a dirty look.
    “And I knew that you’d give me that look,” he continued.
    “What?” Erin asked.
    “Nothing.” He chuckled. “So you think you have extrasensory perception?”
    I bit my tongue to stop from laughing.
    “Either way, if that was a few years ago, then you would have been up there when the other brother was running the farm.” I said.
    “Yeah. But then his brother — none of us even knew he had a brother — showed up and I hear that he’s even more strange.”
    “Strange, how?” Nick asked blankly.
    “Bizarre sounds from the barn,” she answered, her voice once again a whisper.
    “I don’t know how you can make claims based on rumours,” I protested. “Today, Nicholas and I went —”
    “For a walk by old man McCurdy’s farm,” my brotherinterrupted, “and now that we know about it we won’t go by there again.” He gave me a knowing look. “And, Erin, our mother gets spooked easily so we’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to her. Okay?”
    “I don’t even like talking about it. It makes me nervous.”
    I started to get dinner ready while Erin and Nick went into the living room to watch TV. We didn’t mention to Mom that I was the one fixing suppers when Erin was taking care of us. The first night Erin had tried to fix us dinner, but it was inedible. After that I was the one who made supper.
    •
    “Good morning, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”
    I turned over, toward the sound of Mom’s voice. The bright morning light hurt my eyes as I struggled to open them.
    “I see Erin took good care of you. The kitchen was even cleaned up.”
    Of course it was cleaned up. I did it while Erin was having another lengthy telephone conversation with her boyfriend.
    “Erin took good care of us,” I said.
    “I was talking to Nick. He’s been up for a while. He mentioned you met one of our neighbours.”
    I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
    “He said that he was a nice older man and he knew