The Mangy Jackal’s Invitation

The summer I turned fifteen, my cousin Mara and I were staying at our grandmother’s farm in the dust-blown flats of West Texas. The nearest neighbor was three miles down a gravel road, but beyond that road, past a dry creek bed and a stand of twisted mesquite, stood a house that had been abandoned for as long as anyone could remember. It was a two-story Victorian that had once been white, now gray and warped, with a wraparound porch that sagged like a tired old animal. Grandmother called it the Driscoll place, and she warned us never to go near it. But that only made it more tempting.

One evening, after a supper of beans and cornbread, the heat lay heavy on the land, and the cicadas whirred in a fevered chorus. Mara and I sat on the porch, watching the sun bleed into the horizon. I was restless, and I had a flashlight with fresh batteries.

‘I dare you,’ I said to Mara. ‘Let’s go see the Driscoll place before it gets full dark.’

Mara was two years older and usually the sensible one, but a dare was a dare. She chewed her lip, then nodded. We told Grandmother we were taking a walk, and she waved us off with a warning about rattlesnakes.

The walk felt longer than it looked. The gravel crunched under our boots, and the air smelled of sage and dry earth. By the time we reached the creek bed, the last light was gone, and the flashlight carved a pale cone through the darkness. The house loomed ahead, its windows like empty eye sockets. And in the yard, scattered like fallen stars, were toys. A headless doll, a rusted tricycle, a tangle of jump ropes. They lay motionless, but they seemed to watch us.

We stepped over a sagging wooden gate and made our way to the front door. It was unlocked, groaning inward as I pushed. The smell hit us first: mold, rot, and something metallic, like old pennies. The first room was a kitchen. The cabinets hung crooked, their doors missing. The walls were pockmarked with holes, and something dark and reddish-brown was splattered across them, as if someone had thrown handfuls of mud. The stain was on the refrigerator too, smeared like a child’s finger painting. Mara’s hand trembled as she reached for the handle.

‘Don’t,’ I said, but she opened it anyway. The inside was bare, but the same reddish-brown substance crusted every shelf, and a sour, cloying odor rushed out. We slammed it shut and stepped back, our hearts hammering. To the right, a narrow staircase climbed into blackness. At the top, we heard a noise: a scratching, like claws on wood, and then a low, guttural growl that was not human. Then a voice, thin and reedy, called down: ‘Children? Did you come to play?’

We bolted. I tripped over a rusty fire truck, scraping my knee, but we scrambled to our feet and ran. The yard was a blur, and we didn’t stop until we crashed through Grandmother’s screen door, panting. Grandmother looked up from her rocking chair, her face pale.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, but before we could speak, the phone rang. She answered, listened, and her expression turned grim. She hung up and said, ‘That was Sheriff Calloway. They found a mangy jackal dead on the road, its throat torn out. He said it was nothing, but he asked if we’d seen anything strange.’

Mara and I exchanged a look. We didn’t sleep that night, and through the window, as the moon rose, we saw a silhouette on the ridge, a shape that was too tall and too thin, with arms that hung too low. It watched the farmhouse for an hour, then vanished into the mesquite. The next morning, we found a toy, a small, stained clown doll, sitting on the porch step, its painted smile facing the door. We never went near the Driscoll place again, but sometimes, when the wind blows from that direction, I swear I hear a voice, thin and reedy, calling across the fields, ‘Did you come to play?’