The Empty Lot Across the Way
Ethan Sabetta, Southern Connecticut State University
Artist Statement: “The Empty Lot Across the Way” is a 1,967-word story inspired by the dissonance between childhood innocence and harsh reality. It uses a local legend of a murder in town to explore how children interact with a world they don’t understand. Both the narrator and the secondary character are young children, allowing their innocence about the world around them to be a narrative device that leaves the reader in suspense and instills them with a sense of surprise as the plot develops.
“You know, someone was killed here,” the boy said.
She turned around. He was standing on the sidewalk a short distance away, his backpack hanging loosely from one shoulder. At a glance, he didn’t seem much older than her. Grade school, maybe. His hair was cut short, and his brown eyes were hard to read.
She stared, and he furrowed a brow. “I’m serious.”
With a frown, she turned back to the empty lot, and she examined it again. In the depths of the cracking asphalt, plants had begun to grow. Trees stood at the edges of the lot, and the golden evening sun cast their long shadows onto the pavement. She stared into the woods.
Footsteps tapped on the pavement, and at once the presence of the older boy hovered behind her. “My mom always tells me not to play in there.”
“What’s wrong with playing in there?”
“I think she just wants me to stay in the neighborhood. She says there’s ‘too many unknowns’ in the woods.” The boy said, tilting his head. “You must be the girl that just moved in, right? Across the street?”
He pointed past the sidewalk to the house on the other side of the road. It was small, coated with a chipping off-white paint. The driveway was hardly in better shape than the empty lot, and without any cars parked atop it, the deep grooves of age were vulnerable and exposed. Despite that, nature had not yet crept into its cracks.
“Yeah,” she replied.
With that, the boy seemed to lose interest in the house. “You don’t believe me about that murder, do you?”
“No, I do.”
“No you don’t.”
She sighed, swallowing her frustration. “I told you I believed you. Why don’t you believe that I believe you?”
The boy took a moment to process the question. Finally, he shrugged. “There used to be a house here. The owner was on drugs and stuff, and he thought his daughter was an intruder. I don’t know, but I think he shot her.”
After glancing around the lot, she turned back to the boy. “How do you know?”
“So you don’t believe me!” the boy exclaimed, triumphant. She offered him nothing, so he cleared his throat and continued. “My brother told me. He’s older. Says he remembers when they tore the house down.”
“If this used to be a house, there should be a foundation here, not a lot.”
“Foundation?”
“You know, the basement that they put the house on. There should be walls and stuff in the ground. You don’t build houses on pavement.” This time, it was her turn to wait for his response. His mouth hung open slightly. “My dad did construction.”
The boy’s eyes lit up for a moment, and he leaned in closer. “Oh, like an architect?”
“No, like –”
“That’s so cool. What does he do now?”
“... Nothing.”
“Why not?”
The girl hesitated for a moment before shrugging off the question. “He got really hurt, so the doctors made it better. But now he has to sleep a lot.”
“Oh.” The boy paused. “My dad works at an office. He’s a ‘spreadsheet.’”
She blinked. “That’s not a job. It’s a computer program.”
“How do you know? Your dad doesn’t even work.”
With a sigh, she turned and headed back for her house. “No one was killed here,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s just an old parking lot.”
*****
Creeping quietly past the living room, she crossed from the mudroom to the kitchen. There were a few dishes piling up in the sink beside the fridge. A note lay out on the counter, next to an empty coffee mug.
She stood up on her toes to read it. “Working late. Mac and cheese in fridge. Love you. - Mommy.” The scent of stale coffee hovered from the mug, and she recoiled with a crinkled nose.
From the fridge, she retrieved the Tupperware containerwith the mac and cheese in it. Opening the lid, she placed it in the microwave and set it for two minutes. While the timer counted down, she stared out the front window at the empty lot. The shadows from the tree line grew longer from the setting sun behind them. The branches – reduced to creeping black tendrils – unsettled her, but she couldn’t dwell on them for long. Just as the microwave neared the end of its timer, she opened it, preventing its harsh beeping from echoing into the living room.
She sat at the kitchen table, her chair facing the window. While eating, she stared at the lot, trying to imagine a house once standing in front of those woods. Suddenly, a face popped up in front of the window.
It was the boy.
She nearly coughed up the mac and cheese as his tapping on the glass surprised her. Glancing back towards the living room for a moment, she repositioned herself closer to the window and opened one of the panels. “Did you follow me home?” she whispered.
Before the boy could speak, something behind her caught his eye, and he pointed. “Is that …?”
She turned to see what he was pointing at. It was a shotgun, leaning up against the wall in the corner by the living room door. With a finger over her mouth, she shushed him before explaining. “It’s my father’s. In case of home intrusions.”
“That’s so cool,” he said, quietly this time.
“Did you stalk me just to ask about my dad’s gun?”
“No, no. I asked my brother about the lot,” he said, getting back on topic. “He told me they were gonna make the house a park. So they filled in the fountain –”
“Foundation,” she corrected.
“– foundation, and then they paved the whole thing.”
She expected him to elaborate, but he said nothing, and she shook her head. “It doesn’t look like a park,” she noted.
“It’s haunted. So they never finished it.”
“OK.”
“You don’t believe me.”
She exhaled sharply. “No, I don’t.”
“Come to the lot tonight. 1 o’clock. I’ll show you.”
“Fine.”
*****
She stood in the empty lot. The cool nighttime air hung around her, stirred only on occasion by a faint breeze. Leaves rustled on the trees above her with each gust, but she paid them little heed. Rather, she glanced around the lot, scanning for the boy. An almost-full moon offered pale light, letting her see enough to tell she was alone.
Frowning, she began to pace the length of the lot. Her shoes trampled the weeds growing up between cracked asphalt. She circled the edge of the lot three times in that fashion. The deep blackness of the woods around the lot still unsettled her, but as the wind howled louder through the branches, she found something freeing about it.
On her fourth lap, she sighed in resignation. But, as soon as she turned away from the woods, there came a rustling from behind her. The breeze had stopped rolling cool air across her face. The gusts no longer stirred the leaves above her. Around her, the woods fell into silence. And yet, despite all of that, the rustling persisted.
Slowly, she cast a glance over her shoulder. There was a large bush growing just past the edge of the asphalt, its curling branches sprawling out into the lot. It stood a foot taller than the girl, and the moonlight caught on its leaves as it gently shifted back and forth. For a moment, she stared at it.
It continued its rhythmic trembling, and a curiosity began to grow in her. Tilting her head, she approached the bush. She felt no fear, instead drawn to its wild sound. As she neared it, a low groaning sound drowned out the tapping of her footsteps. For a moment, the girl faltered as she realized that the groaning seemed to come from a pained woman.
She thought back to what the boy had told her of the supposed murder. A chill settled on her, and she felt a pit in her stomach. Perhaps it had been true, what the boy said. All at once, she remembered that the boy wasn’t there with her.
And then she sighed again. Shaking her head, she resumed her approach with a newfound confidence. When she came to stop just in front of the bush, she kicked her foot out into its green depths. The groaning came to a stop, and from the side of the bush out tumbled the boy.
“What was that for?”
“For trying to scare me.”
The boy was sitting down on the pavement now, rubbing his shin with both hands. “Well, it doesn’t seem like I did.”
“Nope.” The girl looked around the empty lot. “So there was never a murder?”
The boy shrugged, standing up with his weight on his good leg. “I dunno. My brother says there was, but either way it’s not haunted.”
“Obviously.”
“I just thought it’d be funny if I managed to spook you. You looked really serious when I saw you this afternoon.”
“Well, nice try,” the girl said. “But some silly howling would never scare me, no matter how loud. Better luck next time.”
Before the boy could get a word in edgewise, she turned her back to him and headed home.
*****
When she arrived home, the driveway was still empty. She pulled the front door shut behind her slowly, keeping the rusted hinges from creaking. From the mudroom, she crept across the kitchen floor. Finally, she found herself in the deep black living room, where even moonlight couldn’t filter in through the windows.
The curtains had been drawn shut, leaving the room in complete darkness. Expertly, she navigated furniture, discarded beer cans, and empty pill bottles, careful not to make even the slightest sound. By the time she crossed to the far side and pulled open her bedroom door, she’d managed to avoid awakening the man on the couch.
The curtains of her bedroom window were open, and as she began to settle silently, she cast a quick glance out at the empty lot again. The boy appeared to have headed home. Now, it was nothing but a useless patch of pavement, stripped even of its morbid history. She drew the curtain shut.
As she began to settle into bed, some pollen she must have picked up at the lot floated off her clothes. She tried unsuccessfully to hold in a sneeze. Letting out the quietest that she could, she paused, waiting to hear if there was any stirring past the closed door. Her heartbeat seemed so loud that it might just wake the man up, even if her sneeze had not.
When after a minute her fears began to ebb, she sighed and finished settling in. She laid in her bed for some time, waiting for sleep to wash over her. It didn’t. She continued to wait for some time, but it still didn’t come. The familiar sensation of tense anxiety sat heavy in her stomach, the door to her living room looming over her.
Finally, she rose from bed and crossed to the window again. She pulled the curtains open, and then the window itself. Leaning out, she took a breath of fresh air. From a distance, she could still hear that faint stirring of leaves in the breeze, rustling as loudly as they wanted. She ignored the empty lot across the way, staring at the silhouetted trees beyond.
When she felt herself finally beginning to calm down, she ducked back into the room. Just as she did so, a shadow jumped up from below the sill and practically slithered through the open window. In the same motion, it landed its feet on her bedroom floor, letting out a soft but firm “Boo!”
She recognized the boy instantly, but he’d managed to thoroughly surprise her. Without a chance to think about it, she panicked and screamed. The boy, wide-eyed, seemed as surprised with her response. She stumbled backward as he mumbled an apology.
From outside her bedroom door, there came a frantic shuffling, as well as a terrifying click. Glancing around, she waved the boy back toward the window – back towards the outside – searching for words. Unaware of what was happening, the boy tried again with a cracking voice to apologize.
“I … Sorry, I … didn’t realize I’d scare you like tha–”
The bedroom door flung open before he could finish his apology. The girl spun toward it, seeing her father standing wild-eyed in the doorway. Moonlight glistened on the barrel of his shotgun as he took in the sight from beneath his unkempt hair.
Her father let out a roar and leveled his shotgun. The boy – finally realizing what was happening – scrambled for the window, and the girl lurched toward him with a scream. But neither of them were faster than a finger on the trigger.
The gunshot echoed across the empty lot.
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