“All right, we’ll do rock, paper, scissors, and whoever loses has to go in first, got it?” Mike O’Shea said in a sharp whisper, his pale face barely visible in the streetlights beneath his dark green hoody. A sharp wind blew the leaves around them, causing them to screech across the concrete sidewalk, and a shiver went up his spine.

“There’s no way I’m going down there at all,” his girlfriend, Tiffany Dickens, cried. She was wearing a faux fur coat and no hood, leaving ...