I miss Jerry a lot; he was my best friend. The sheriff said he fell out of the tree and cracked his head on a root. That’s not the way it happened, but nobody believes me. Now Dad says we’ve got to let things be and move on.

I can look up the next block across the street and see that big tree from our front yard; the top goes way up over that old house. Its leaves have almost all fallen now, but no one has bothered to rake them up. The yard is all brambles and tall weeds ‘cept for under the oak tree where nothin’ seems to grow.

Most of the paint has peeled off the walls of the house, but you can tell it had been painted white once. It’s weird that the windows still have glass in them. Everyone says the house is abandoned; they said that when we first came to town, but I’ll never believe it. Nobody has ever seen a light in the window. Some things don’t need light to live by, that’s why.

Jerry and I had to walk by that house to get to the playground. Jerry was new in town last summer, too, and we didn’t know the house was haunted, but then we met Stevie.

Stevie was younger than Jerry and me and was always talking big. He was one of those fat little kids who’s always talking about the bathroom. He claimed that he had hit one of the big boys, Jimmy Stover, in the head with a rock and then tied him up to a tree, and when he came to, he gave him a chocolate candy bar for make-up, but it wasn’t a candy bar, it was Ex-Lax and Jimmy pooped all over himself and went home crying.

We didn’t care for Stevie, and I was secretly wanting a chance to tell Jimmy Stover what Stevie was saying about him. But Jerry and I just figured we weren’t going to meet many other kids before school started, and so we mostly put up with him.

Stevie said that a long time ago a crazy kid lived in the house, and one day the boy got mad and killed another kid while playing marbles in the front yard. We didn’t believe Stevie, but then he claimed he had one of the boy’s marbles and would prove it. The next day, he showed us a red cat’s eye.

Jerry and I had never seen a marble like that before. Stevie said he got it from his grandpa who was the sheriff when it happened and had picked it up in the yard afterwards. It was deep red like a ruby, but cloudy inside, and seemed to stare back at you when you looked into it.

We looked at it a long time and finally Stevie let us hold it. I guess Jerry and I were both thinking we wanted to win it, but we couldn’t get Stevie to play it, not even for an easy game like pit. Jerry tried to swap him his shooter, an aggie. I offered him my Green Hornet and two bloodies, and finally threw in my bumblebee, but he wouldn’t swap.

Jerry told Stevie just because he had a red cat’s eye didn’t mean anyone had gotten kil’t over it. Stevie got mad and tried to grab his marble back. He and Jerry were pushing and shoving over it and finally Jerry just threw it as far as he could. That made Stevie really mad; he was screaming, “You’ll be sorry!” so Jerry and I just picked up our marbles and walked back to my house while Stevie went searching for his cat’s eye.

The next day, Jerry and I were walking back over to the playground. We couldn’t help staring at the old house as we passed. The windows seemed to look back at us like the cat’s eye had. We had to watch our step because the sidewalk was uneven; the concrete squares were tilted and cracked because of the roots of the tree which spread out along the ground like the veins on the back of my Dad’s hands.

Jerry saw them first, little flecks of light laid out in a cross on the bare ground between two big tree roots. He grabbed my arm and pointed. We wanted to examine the shiny specks close-up, but we were scared to go into the yard. Our feet were glued to the sidewalk. It was very still; not a cricket chirped. “You don’t believe what Stevie said, do you?” Jerry whispered.

I wasn’t sure whether I did or not. I wanted to say I didn’t, but I couldn’t move. “I dun’no,” I hedged.

We strained to see more; it was gloomy under the tree. A perfect circle was drawn in the dirt, and under our breath we counted thirteen marbles perfectly set up in a cross for a game of ringer. In the center, we recognized the ruby glow of Stevie’s cat’s eye.

“Stevie did that,” Jerry said aloud. There was no other way to figure it.

“He’s trying to dare us,” I said, growing brave for the first time. “Are you back there, Stevie?” I yelled, craning to see around the tree. Jerry and I finally stepped off the sidewalk and looked around it, but he wasn’t behind it or up in it.

“Aw, he had to have done it,” Jerry said, dropping down to his knees to admire the marbles. Besides the red cat’s eye were marbles we could only wish for: a zebra, a wasp, two grey-coats, a Superman, a rainbow, several Indians, a rebel, a Cub Scout, a flaming dragon, and a Spider Man.

At first, we were afraid to touch them, and we squatted, duck-walking from one side of the circle to the other, all the time expecting to hear Stevie yell, “Surprise!” But he didn’t show up.

“Wanna play?” I asked Jerry, digging in my pocket for my steelie.

“Sure,” Jerry replied, pulling out his aggie. “What we knock out of the ring are keepers, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. We were stretching the rules somewhat because the marbles weren’t ours – at least not yet – but we meant them to be, and winning them seemed to give us an excuse. First, we had to lag, and Jerry won. He usually did. I wasn’t a bit surprised when after he knuckled down he went straight for the cat’s eye. But, he didn’t hit it square, and it collided with the zebra and stayed in the ring.

I couldn’t get a clear shot on it, so I went for the Spider Man and got it. The cat’s eye was easy now, but for some reason it was creeping on me so I left it. Instead, I got a grey-coat, but when I went for the Superman, I missed and lost my turn.

Kneeling in the dirt, Jerry went straight back to the cat’s eye, hitting it hard and thwacking it at an angle out of the circle in my direction. I stopped it with my hand, and in that instant it happened. I didn’t see it but I heard it, the awful thunk when that stick hit Jerry’s head. I didn’t see where the guy came from, it was that quick, he was just there.

I remember he was bent, his bony head jutting forward from his spine, a hump behind his right shoulder. His big hooked nose stuck out from the middle of his narrow, scowling face. He had bushy, black eyebrows, and glared at me through small, dark eyes as hard as steelies. He hissed through yellow teeth, pointing at me with his heavy hickory stick.

“Get out of my yard!”

I looked at Jerry; he laid crumpled across the marbles. My knees quivered as I started to get up. The stick swooshed once at my head. I turned and ran like the devil. When I stopped and looked back there was no one there, just Jerry’s body.

The sheriff searched the house and didn’t find anyone, but I know what I saw. I kept the red cat’s eye. It was Jerry’s; he won it. But it doesn’t remind me much of him. When I look at it, it seems to be staring back at me.