“There’s only one way to prove it,” Will replied. He offered Emily a smile. “There’s literally nothing else to do here, and it’s not like you have to walk into the lighthouse yourself. Kenzie will go alone. That’s the point of the dare. I haven’t even asked her to say those cursed words of yours – she just has to poke her head inside. What could be wrong with that?”

“We’ll do this one dare to shut Will up, and then we’ll go back to camp and toast some marshmallows, OK?” Kenzie said, giving her friend’s arm a squeeze.

Emily tried to protest further, but it was no use. 10Kenzie knew that Will would forever taunt her for chickening out if she didn’t go through with it now, and there was no way she was going to put up with that.

“I’ll go in, count to five and then come straight back out,” she said to Emily. “You won’t know I’m gone.”

“No cheating,” Will warned. “And no lingering in the doorway. You have to actually stand inside.”

“No problem,” Kenzie replied, rolling her eyes.

She turned to go, using her phone to illuminate her way over the loose rocks and gravel. She reached the lighthouse’s front door a few moments later, and the other two saw it open at her touch. Pausing on the threshold, she glanced back once, raised her hand in a wave and then disappeared inside.

“One…” Emily muttered under her breath, “two, three, four, five.”

She and Will both looked at the door, expecting Kenzie to emerge at any moment, her blond ponytail swinging as she bounded over to them triumphantly. But there was no sign of her. As the minutes stretched on, the lighthouse doorway remained a dark, empty rectangle. 11

“I don’t like this,” Emily said. “Something isn’t right.”

“She’s probably just having a look around,” Will replied.

“Why would she do that?” Emily asked. “She said she’d be right back. She promised.”

“Well, maybe she’s just messing with us then,” Will said. “Hiding to see if we’ll go in after her.”

“I’m not going in there!” Emily said at once.

“You won’t have to, Em,” Will replied. “She’ll get bored and come out eventually. You’ll see.”

But time continued to pass, and soon Kenzie had been gone almost twenty minutes. Emily was so fidgety by this point that she could barely keep still.

“Will, I’m really starting to get worried now,” she said.

She hoped he would be concerned too, but to her dismay he only laughed.

“Let’s just go back to camp,” he said, standing up and stretching his back. “She’ll be right behind us when she realizes we’re not going after her.”

“But we can’t just leave her in there!” Emily said, scrambling to her feet too. “She might be—”