Betty was the only one uncertain about the creek when Tom suggested it. She went anyway, of course.

After school the four of them walked until they found the creek - the first time for Betty and Kai and Jane, second time for Tom - finding a spot where the greenery was thick and there was an old log to sit on.

They made that their spot. Nobody went to the creek near the sparkling water and the rotting trees, so it was safe for four teenagers to sneak away to after school. They tramped grass and got wet socks running through the creek, they ducked behind trees and chased each other up and down the bank, Kai told them everything he knew about every kind of fungus they saw.

The first time anyone found something weird, it was Kai, thinking it was a stick insect. He picked up something spindly and brown, running over to show the girls and make them squeal - Betty did, Jane looked like she was going to thump him - but when he opened his hands, they all caught a glimpse of four thin limbs and a ruddy face. Then Kai yelped and the insect spread wings, disappearing into the trees as fast as they could blink.

“It bit me!” Kai yelled, “Stick insects don’t bite!”

“Stick insects don’t fly either,” Tom said, who’d been furthest away and had only seen the flash of wings.

Betty was willing to get into a pointless argument about stick insects, but Jane spoke up with the big thing they’d avoided voicing.

“It had a human face.”

Kai rubbed his nose, head bobbing side to side. “Yeah.”

They didn’t really know what to do about that.

“Maybe you caught a fairy!” Tom said, clapping a hand on Kai’s shoulder.

Tom was the oldest - by a month to Kai, two to Betty, and only five days to Jane - and would argue he was the most mature. He was the one who would speak to grownups before the rest of them. So it seemed strange that he believed in fairies, but he struggled his shoulders and said, “You saw it, didn’t you? Fairies aren’t weirder than anything else we’ve seen.”

That wasn’t true - unless you counted the skeletal dog with mushrooms growing on it that Kai swore up and down he’d seen around the back of the school - but they all nodded their heads and moved on. It wasn’t like one fairy was going to keep them away from the creek; it was their spot.

Maybe seeing the fairy was like crossing threshold, because after that more weird things showed up at the creek. Most of the time the things kept a distance, trundling along on the other side of the water, and they’d all crowd around Tom on the log while he sketched them in his sketchbook.

Sometimes the things would watch them back, black beady eyes that may Betty hide behind Tom, flat grey eyes like pebbles, or sometimes eyes that looked much too human for the faces they were in.

Sometimes, rarely, the things wouldn’t stay on the other side of the river.

They came to their spot one afternoon and didn’t notice how still the air was, how quiet the creak was. Jane sat down on the log and then shrieked, scrambling back and falling into Tom, who also fell. They all saw the thing that crawled up where it had hidden under the log: skin muddy and patterned like a frog, long hair knotting over what must have been a face, single white eye peering out between strands. Its limbs were long and sinewy and folded over themselves in ways that they shouldn’t, tipped with claws that were dripping red. Betty shrunk back; Kai ran past her with a big stick and walloped the thing on the head.

“Run!”

Betty grabbed Kai, Tom grabbed Jane, the four of them ran and hobbled and stumbled all the way back to the main road.

When they stopped, the bleeding slash on Jane’s leg became obvious. Tom got them all back to his house because he knew where the first aid kit was, dabbing with disinfectant while Betty followed Jane’s instructions on how to get blood out of her sodden sock. They stayed together until late and got scolded by their parents for it.

The next day, Tom gave them iron nails and said he would find ways to protect themselves when they went to their spot.

“What else are friends for?”