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People joked about it and laughed in a way that didn’t exactly reach their eyes.

Everyone was too young to remember the many deaths in the 1930s. But enough of the adults were around during construction accidents through the 1950s, the disappearances in the 1970s, the terrible fire in the 1980s, and the group of kids sent to the madhouse in the 1990s.

You couldn’t just stay scared though—life blunted the edges. It was like the Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus , which Hollis’s ma made them all watch last Halloween.

No one would build in Rose Town or buy a house there, and everyone was poor because of Rose Town. But kids still went over to dare each other to cross the city line. Or went into the houses during the daytime and tried to stay until sundown without pissing their pants.

Occasionally, Hollis would sneak over in the morning and pick as much fruit as he could to save on grocery money. Nothing ever seemed to happen when it was bright outside. He didn’t go when it was overcast or too close to sundown.

Last year a group of popular kids went to stay overnight and managed to make it to 10:00 p.m. before someone got too freaked out hearing noises and they all fled.

Brandon Finnegan broke his leg, and Stephanie Moore got a concussion from falling down some stairs. But no one died, so they were doing it again this year.

In two days.