Yeah I found most of these pictures online (though there will be a few that I did not)

Charlie and I stood outside the restaurant and looked around.

"Where do you think we should go?" I asked, searching my pockets for a cigarette, then remembering I had very stupidly left them on my nightstand at home.

"I say we go to the visitor's center." She pointed down the street at a big brick building marked with the American and Virginia flag. "Just to see what's worth seeing."

"Good idea." I said as we started walking along the sidewalk towards the visitor's center.

We were greeted by a wall of freezing air and the sour smell of coffee. Soft music played. Hundreds of glossy brochures were on display on both sides, many for the same things. We walked to the desk, where a businesslike woman, who was maybe in her mid-forties, with a headset around her neck sat waiting attentively. "Can I do anything for you?" She chirped.

I was about to say no, but then something caught my eye; there was a poster behind the woman; it showed a black-and white picture of a grown woman and five young children all standing in front of a large house by the woods. The bottom of the poster read, in loving memory of these little angels, December 1949.

"Who're they?" I asked, pointing to the poster.

She turned her head to the poster and back to me. "Oh that's just our little town's claim to fame! It's a really sad story, though."

"Tell us!" Charlie exclaimed.

"See, back in the 1940s, there was a children's home over by the edge of the woods near where the stream goes into a lake. Back then, it wasn't much of a landmark back then; they didn't often come into town, so they weren't too well or widely known. But on New Years Eve, 1949, a terrorist group came into town and killed lots of people; including everyone at the children's home." She shook her head. "My dad was seven when it happened, and he's told me about it about a million times. It really affected him; he was friends with one of the children; a little mute boy. That one right there, see?" She pointed to the youngest child in the picture; a boy of about six. His face seemed oddly familiar, but I just ignored that feeling.

"Is the house haunted?" Charlie asked.

The woman shrugged. "I don't know; you'll have to ask the folks who live there now."

"You said it was this town's 'claim to fame'. Was it national news?" I asked.

"No, not national; but all Virginia heard about it."

"Gee, what a way to kick off the new year." I said.

"The new decade." Charlie chimed in.

I decided to change the subject. "So what all is there to do here?"

The woman's eyes lit up with excitement. "Well, there's an authentic drive-in movie theater near the edge of town, and then there's the water park; it may be small, but it's quite the thrill. We have tons of boutiques and delis you won't find anywhere else, and the school play is this Friday evening."

"School play?" I asked.

"Yes; it's the kindergarten production of The Princess And The Frog. My grandson is in it."

"Thanks, I can't speak for my brother, but I know what I want to do." Charlie said.

"Well thanks for stopping by! Have a nice day!" The woman waved as Charlie pulled me by the arm out the door.

"So where are we going?" I asked, following the lead down the sidewalk.

"The old children's home; I need to know if it's haunted."

I couldn't disagree with that. "Yeah let's go! But where are we going?"

Charlie pulled a map from her jacket pocket and unfolded it. "Here's where we are." She pointed to somewhere in the middle of the gray area that indicated the town's borders. Then she pointed to another place next to a blue line. "And the river is..." She looked around at the semi-crowded street, then pointed to a corner. "Right past there!"

I had to jog to catch up with her running towards that corner.

When we came to it, we turned and there it was; a periwinkle-colored bridge crossing a wide brown river that chattered as it moved swiftly through the town.

We followed it downstream for a while, and finally got to the edge of town after almost an hour. There was no hill here, so we could see right through to the woods. We stopped in disappointment when we saw there was no house.

"Where is it?" Charlie looked at the map as if it would help us find the house.

"Maybe it's in the woods." I suggested. "She said it's by the lake."

She nodded and we kept going. I could tell she didn't like the fact that I'd said that.

The woods didn't incline for several hundred feet, and all our surroundings were just one giant red, brown, and orange tye-dye shirt; it made my head spin.

Finally, we came to the lake, but there was no house- at least not one that was immediately visible; we had to walk around the lake for a while before Charlie pointed and exclaimed "there!", her voice echoing and sending some birds flying from the trees.

I looked to where she was pointing. "Wow." Was all I could say; house? More like mansion. This place was huge, and we were pretty far away. It was made of mostly dark brown wood and pinkish brick. The house itself was about half the size of a football field, and that's not including the yard or the stables that contained whinnying cream-colored horses. Remember when I said the house was half the size of a football field? Well the yard was the other half. As we neared the barbed wire fence, we were in pure awe. The house itself had just looked like a normal-shaped house through the trees, but now it looked sort of like a Disney princess castle.

"That's insane!" Charlie whispered.

Suddenly, a girl came out of the house, walked over to the stables, and started petting the second one to the left. The girl was wearing a red flannel shirt and boot-cut jeans; her hair was a waterfall of pure liquid gold.

"Hey!" Charlie shouted, waving at her.

The girl turned around, smiled and walked over to us as if we were friends she'd known her whole life.

"Hi, what are you doing here?" The girl said when she got to us, hands on her hips and eyebrow cocked.

"We wanted to know if your house is haunted." I said, dazzling her with my most seductive smile; this girl was all-out beautiful; I mean her face was perfectly round, symmetrical, and flawless.

"Oh?" She said. "You don't want to steal anything, do you?" She asked slyly.

"Of course not!" Charlie exclaimed. "See, me and my brother are new around here and we heard a bunch of kids died in your house in the forties."

The girl now raised both her eyebrows. "Well, unfortunately, that's true. But I assure you; I've lived here my whole life and so's my Mom, and neither of us have felt any kind of 'ghostly presence'."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"That's what assure means." She held out her hand for us to shake it. "I never got your names. I'm Meghan, by the way."

I shook her hand. "Ricky. And this is my sister Charlie."

"Y'all seem awful trusting up here." Charlie said.

Meghan shrugged. "Never any reason not to be; the town jail rarely even has one inmate; and that's usually one of the same, like, three guys for public intoxication or some other misdemeanor."

"Wow." I said. "That's nothing like where we're from."

"What can I say; we're pretty laid-back out here."

"Well since there's no ghosts to see, we should head back to town and find something to do." I said to Charlie.

"Yeah." She replied, disappointed. "Bye, Meghan."

"It was nice to meet you." Meghan waved as we began our trek back through the woods.

"Well that was a let-down." Charlie said after a few yards.

"Yup; I can't believe we wasted so much time with it."

"But it was a fun little adventure; you've gotta admit."

I opened my mouth to reply, but at that moment, I felt something cave under my foot. I looked down and saw the remnants of a rotting wooden box, its contents long gone. The part I'd stepped on had blurred writing on it. I bent down to pick it up.

"What is it?" Charlie asked.

"I dunno." It took me a moment to decipher the loopy, blurred handwriting. "It says 'J.T. Utwell'. There's more, but I can't make it out" I turned it over in my hand; there was nothing else on it other than mud and mildew."

"Do you think 'J.T. Utwell' is, like, a person?" Charlie took it from my hands.

"Maybe." I replied. "Maybe Meghan knows something." I really just wanted an excuse to see that pretty girl again; the wooden box had probably been there for years.

Suddenly, I heard someone crunch the leaves behind me. "You've found it!"

We turned around and simultaneously gasped; right in front of us was a floating dress; like one from a long time ago that you'd see in pictures of little girls during World War Two; there appeared to be someone in it- a small child, no doubt- but I couldn't see her body. She had little hair ribbons on either side of where her head should've been, and her black patent leather shoes were scuffed.

"Thank you so much; I've been looking for that for years." Her voice chirped as her clothes moved towards us and grabbed the wood from Charlie's hand. If we hadn't been paralyzed in fear, we would've run. "It's my Momma's jewelry box she gave to me; I very stupidly threw it out the window when we were attacked. I was beginning to think I'd never find it!" She stepped in between us and began picking up as many moldy pieces of the wooden box as she could.

"Y-you're..." I finally managed to get out.

The child stood straight up, holding the wood to her chest, the shape of her fingers slightly visible only via dirt. "Invisible?" She found the exact word I'd been looking for. "You can bet your last dollar I am. The name's Janie. Janie Tana Utwell." She pronounced her last name "oot-well".

"B-but... How?" Charlie stuttered. "Why? People just... Just aren't invisible."

"Not all people." Janie Tana Utwell's shoulders gave a slight shrug. "I gotta go now; please don't tell anyone about me." Before Charlie or me could even say another word, she left, skipping away through the forest.

I exchanged an awkward look with my little sister.

"Let's not tell Grandma about this." I said, sure that we'd just imagined that.

"Agreed."

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Just btw: as far as I know, Cunningham Valley is not a real place as far as I know; I just made it up

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