“Shrunken Head”

Molly carefully studied the graffiti on the walls, tracing her hand over each letter as if doing so would decode some secret layer of meaning.

BEWARE ALL WHO ENTER HERE

“Well, that’s pretty dumb,” Maggie thought to herself. “I’m already inside. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have that kind of signage on the outside of the house?”

“Hark! Who goes there?!”

Molly spun around at the sound of the angry pubescent voice. It was Brandon, the most annoying boy in her seventh-grade class.

“It’s me, Brandon. You know who I am,” Molly responded, annoyed.

“Yeah I know that, Molly, but you’re not supposed to be here. This is the guys’ clubhouse.” Brandon replied.

“I can see that from all the lotion,” Molly quipped, but it flew over Brandon’s head, who just gave her a blank stare. “Anyway, your clubhouse is lame. You should see mine.”

“What are you talking about? This clubhouse is rad,” Brandon insisted.

“If by ‘rad’ you mean looks like a Spirit Halloween vomited everywhere,” Molly said, surveying the cheap fake spider webs and poorly hung paper posters of zombies and bloodied, masked-men on every wall. “What do you chodes do here all afternoon?”

“Mostly play video games and read comic books,” responded the now-sullen Brandon. “But whatever, I’m sure it’s still cooler than your My Little Pony, Babysitter’s Club pajama party clubhouse.”

“You’re so clueless,” Molly said, as she nudged past him and exited the little boy’s Halloween party room. “But why don’t you come and see for yourself?”

She waited but got no response.

“That’s what I thought. See you in school on Monday, nerd.” Molly had better things to do than entertain the likes of twelve-year-old dweebs who think they’re better than they really are.

Brandon knew he had to go and see for himself if Molly’s clubhouse was really all that cool. But he didn’t want to. For a girl with as much confidence as Molly had, she was a bonafide weirdo. Neither he nor any of his friends could quite place what was up with her, but she just had a vibe that surrounded her. A bad one. She was cute, mousy, demure, but her voice boomed when she spoke and she could out-trivia all of them on horror movies and she always pulled out these random grotesque facts about the occult. Girls weren’t supposed to be like that. It made her equal parts intriguing and off-putting.

Plus, why did she even have a clubhouse? She didn’t have any friends.

No one knew what Molly’s deal was. She was the new kid in school last year, but she showed up more than halfway through the school year, a bizarre time to transfer schools considering her family didn’t even move or anything. She never offered up any explanations as to why she had to leave other than “things just didn’t work out.” And she never talked about any of her friends from her old school—except for one, her supposed “best” friend: a girl named Teri that apparently lived in their neighborhood but no one had ever heard of or seen.

“Do you and Teri hang out there a lot?” Brandon heard himself asking out loud, almost as if he had no control over the words that were emanating from his mouth.

This caught Molly off-guard. “Uh, yeah. Why?” She replied.

“Well, I mean, who else would be there?” Even Brandan was shocked by how bold he was being.

Molly gave him the finger and left. Brandon knew he crossed a line but it was too late to go back now. Maybe he’d give her the benefit of the doubt and check out her clubhouse, even if it sucked it would give him the opportunity to try and make amends.

‘The remains found near Wapper’s Lake have now been identified as belonging to the missing 12-year-old girl who mysteriously disappeared two summers ago.”

Brandon’s mother sat in front of the TV, biting her nails as she watched the news. She jumped at the sound of Brandon slamming the door behind him as he entered the house.

“Brandon! What did I tell you about getting home after dark? You know I want you home no later than 5:00 PM.,” she was a nervous wreck.

“Geez, Mom, it’s a Friday,” Brandon replied as he grabbed a snack from the kitchen cupboard.

“I don’t care what day it is,” his mother was getting annoyed, “bad things are happening in this town. I don’t want you going out as much.”

Brandon turned his attention to the news report.

“The most shocking part of this story that’s still developing is the state of the remains. Police has disclosed that the head of the pre-teen, unfortunately, was separated from the rest of the body remains.”

“Gross, she was decapitated?” Brandon asked as he took a bite of his pop tart.

“Brandon watch how you talk!” His mom yelped.

“The murderer is still at large,” the news report concluded as Brandon made his way to his room. He thought his mom was being overdramatic. Sure, the missing girl was around his age, but how likely was it that another gruesome murder like that would happen again? Their town was small, whoever did it had to be long gone by now. Brandon didn’t spend too much more time thinking about it. He turned his attention to his video games that he played until he drifted off to sleep, tomorrow he’d figure out a way to get past his mom to go to Molly’s stupid clubhouse.

Brandon was surprised to hear voices coming from his living room the next morning when he woke up. Normally his mom would just be in her usual spot on the couch, watching TV and chain-smoking cigarettes, but today he could distinctly hear to different voices alongside his mother’s. As strange as it was her to have guests over, he also figured this would give him the perfect opportunity to leave for a few hours. He threw on a baseball hat and made his way downstairs.

“Sure do have a lot of trophies, huh?” A woman in a pantsuit asked his mother.

“Those are my son’s. Soccer, mostly,” his mother replied in her usual nonchalant way.

“You must be very proud,” another woman in a turtleneck sweater and trousers added.

“He gives me Hell sometimes, but I love him,” his mom said. “You don’t know how scary things have been, though.”

Brandon paused in the hallway to listen in.

“We could imagine, Nadine,” the first woman said. “That’s why we’re here. We want to talk to as many parents in the neighborhood as possible to get an idea of what the general community is like.”

Brandon rolled his eyes. Everyone was so overdramatic. He quietly made his way out the front door while his mom was distracted.

“You see, the other thing is,” the other women continued, “we believe that, based on a number of factors, the culprit of this crime may have actually been someone around your son’s age.”

But Brandon didn’t hear that. He was already on his way to Molly’s clubhouse.

“Of course this place sucks,” Brandon said out loud as he surveyed the poor excuse for a treehouse that Molly tried to pass off as a clubhouse cooler than his own. “It’s just a plain treehouse.”

Brandon climbed his way up and knocked on the shabby door. No answer. He carefully pushed it open and peeked his head in.

Quiet. Small. Nothing noteworthy to see other than some magazines lying around. The pages were all torn out and cut up, probably for scrapbooking or some other lame girly hobby.

“Don’t you know you’re never supposed to enter a clubhouse without saying the password?” Brandon jumped at the sound of Molly’s voice.

“You entered mine without doing that,” Brandon replied, trying to cover his fright.

“Yours doesn’t even have a door.”

Brandon didn’t feel like talking to her much longer. He was already starting to get that uneasy feeling he often got around her. He really just came to apologize and move on, but he was annoyed at how plain her clubhouse was for someone who was condescending about his own. His unease turned to frustration.

“Here’s the password: this place sucks.”

“Do you have any trophies, Brandon?” Molly asked, unphased.

“What?”

“Trophies? Like, for your accomplishments?”

Brandon didn’t know where this was going, but he knew where he wanted to be: out of there as soon as possible.

“I mean yeah, I do.”

“So do I,” Molly replied. “Just one.”

“Okay…” Brandon answered with trepidation as Molly went over to a small box nestled in the corner of the treehouse. As she got onto her knees to pull something out of it, Brandon tried to make his exit only to realize that the door seemed to be locked from the outside.

“What the Hell?”

“This is mine,” Molly said, as she held up a tiny ball.

A tiny ball with long flowing hair.

A tiny ball with long flowing hair… and a face.

“What the Hell?!” Brandon said again.

“It’s my greatest accomplishment yet,” Molly said as she moved closer to Brandon.

Brandon had seen one of those before, in some old movie. The mouth was sewn shut. The eyes were closed. He knew what it was but he didn’t want to ask any more questions.

“You asked me if my friend Teri hangs out here, didn’t you?” Molly asked.

Brandon just shook his head to indicate that she was right.

“Well, here she is.”

”While the search continues for the murderer, the grieving family of Teri Mitchell can now finally put their young daughter to rest.”

Brandon’s mom watched the news yet again, her eyes darting back and forth from the TV to the clock, it was 4:58. She hoped he’d be home soon.