â€œI canâ€™t believe weâ€™re doing thisâ€¦â€ Grayson muttered to no-one in particular, and no-one in particular answered.<br/><br/>Sitting on the curb a few blocks down from the object of his disbelief, the thin youth had one arm wrapped around his knees and his other hand held a long stick heâ€™d found earlier.  With it he traced meaningless shapes and letters in the dirt at his feet, along with occasional calculus problem, as he waited for the other members of this ill-fated venture to show up.<br/><br/>â€œThis is a really stupid idea.â€  He tried again to voice his opinion, holding out only the most distant hope that one of the others sitting on the curb or leaning against the fence behind him might finally realize that<span style="font-style: italic">holy hell he was right</span>and what on earth<span style="font-style: italic">had</span>they been thinking?<br/><br/>Predictably, he had no such luck.<br/><br/>Huffing out a heavy, long-suffering sigh that reflected off his scarf to fog up his glasses, he pulled his backpack closer and continued drawing in the sand.  He was as ready as he felt he reasonably could be for this adventureâ€”or disaster, as he was fairly certain it would become insteadâ€”wrapped in a heavy, double-layered coat with a hood and armed with an industrial flashlight, pocketknife, and an array of other things he wasnâ€™t sure he would need but certainly did not intend to leave behind.  These included rock salt, a silver cross, and two bottles of water heâ€™d filled from a drinking fountain at his church.  He wasnâ€™t sure if that actually counted as holy water, but he figured it couldnâ€™t hurt.  If nothing else, it would be nice to have something to drink throughout the course of the night.  In fact, if they were to actually meet anything remotely sinister, he didnâ€™t have much faith that any of those things would work.  A combination of TV shows and Google had been his only sources for weapons against the supernatural, and neither of those tended to be very reliable.  Well.  Except maybe Google.<br/><br/>Grayson wasnâ€™t a coward in any sense of the wordâ€”but he was a highly logical individual, and logic told him that conspiring to trespass in the dead of night onto a notoriously dangerous property was not the smartest thing heâ€™d ever done.  And that was without considering the highly suspicious number of deaths, accidents, and overall strange and foreboding occurrences that had happened in or around Cranwell House.<br/><br/>Clearly, he was the only one of the group that felt that way, because here they all were: sitting and waiting and giggling in preparation for possibly one of the stupidest things any of them would ever do in their lives.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Youâ€™re still sitting here, arenâ€™t you?</span>His mind provided helpfully.<br/><br/>He couldnâ€™t argue; he<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>here, after all, ready to follow everyone else into that hell-hole like a lamb to the slaughter.  He told himself he had to keep an eye on them; had to be the smart one, the prepared one, the one with a planâ€¦ and yet, he wasnâ€™t so sure.  Maybe he was just lying to himself, and he was secretly here because honestly, no-one had ever invited him along on any kind of adventure before, stupid or otherwise.  Heâ€™d never had many friends in high school, and he had been bound and determined not to be quite as anti-social in college.  He wasnâ€™t sure if this was really the best first step to that end, but he was in it now.  No way was he backing out at this point.<br/><br/>Now, all he had to do was make sure that everyone stayed logical, calm, and aliveâ€¦