Ready for a Scare? (9 page)

“Can you hear me? Kelly, are you there?”

“We have a bad connection,” she said. “I'll call back later. Everything's okay. Love you.” She clicked the phone off, even though she suspected the call was dropped before she'd said good-bye.

With a backward glance at her brother—still sitting, still staring—she tucked her phone back into her pocket and headed across the room to the archway that
connected the family room with the kitchen. Even from here, she could see the kitchen was dark. Was Chrissie even in there?

The babysitter's name formed on her lips, but she didn't call it out. She suddenly had the strangest sensation that she shouldn't scream. Slowly she treaded silently toward the entrance.

A breeze wafted across her body. She shivered. Where was the cold air coming from? What was in the kitchen?

She tiptoed into the darkened room. A biting coldness descended on her. Goose bumps tingled her skin. All the lights were off. But even in the dimness, she sensed that something wasn't right. The wind that had been beating against her bedroom window reached out its powerful arms and grabbed at her. The force of an unexplained squall pulled her farther into the kitchen.

She reached instinctively for the switch on the wall. Instantly the kitchen was bathed in the artificial overhead light.

Kelly clapped her hand over her mouth in complete amazement.

Her eyes followed the paper tornado churning about
the room, as if guided by a supernatural hand. White napkins rose to the ceiling, then circled back around, dipping down before another gust lifted them again. Sheets of paper—lined notebook paper, colorful school flyers, old receipts—twirled across the floor and the table. The lighter pieces joined the napkins in a crazy Tilt-A-Whirl of motion.

Kelly's gaze darted to her mother's desk. The surface was wiped clear by the windstorm vacuum. The piles of paper were now airborne.

The back door banged savagely against the wall. The door itself lay wide open to the approaching storm and the night. The wind rushed into the house as if shooting through a tunnel.

After a few seconds of shock, Kelly jumped into action. Racing across the kitchen, brushing the paper out of her path, she pushed at the door. The wind created a force she had to blindly throw her full weight against. As the door latch finally clicked into place, the paper storm died. Napkins fluttered lazily to the floor.

Kelly lay, panting, with her back against the door and surveyed the mess before her. Paper littered the kitchen. A cold wetness seeped through her fuzzy socks, chilling
her toes. She gazed down. Small puddles of water dotted the floor near the door. Why had the door been wide open?

“Chrissie?” The urge to scream that she had suppressed only a few minutes ago let loose. “Chrissie! Chrissie!”

Her cries echoed through the empty house.

“Chrissie! Where are you?”

Only the faint undertones of Madonna's singing and the women counting off lunges on the TV could be heard.

The cool glass of the door's small window sent a shock through her body. Every nerve was alert.

What now?
she wondered.
What do I do now?

Her frantic gaze circled back to her mother's desk. With a jolt, she realized that the desk wasn't completely cleared of all its papers. She blinked in disbelief as she noticed one piece of paper sitting directly in the center, as if carefully placed or somehow attached.

She made her way through the carpet of trash and stood before the desk. Its distressed painted wood gleamed in the light. She rested both palms on the surface. Bending down, she stared at the lone paper.

The chills ricocheted throughout her body in an electric current much like the one she'd felt earlier in the night.

She carefully placed one finger on the paper. It yielded to her slight push. It wasn't taped into place. It stood squarely on the desk as if held there by unseen hands.

She wanted to flee but couldn't move. An energy—a force—pulled her toward the paper.

Down, down.

Kelly stared at the face on the page. The soulful eyes beckoned to her once again. The rest of the world faded into the distance. She and the girl were together. One. A bond unbreakable.

“Hello, Mary,” she whispered.

Mary Owens. The newspaper clipping that had once hung on her mother's bulletin board—the one she vividly remembered pinning up there just that afternoon—rested on the empty desk.

She couldn't explain how it had gotten there or how it had stayed there, but suddenly she felt sure of one thing: She and her friends had called back Mary's spirit. Upstairs, together, they had summoned the unhappy soul of a girl who had died a horrible, suffocating death.

Miss Mary, Miss Mary.
She remembered how they'd chanted, their voices growing louder and louder.

And now all her friends were missing.

And her babysitter.

And her brother . . . was no more than a hollow shell.

Her hand rested on the receiver of the house phone. She would call the police. They would help her. They would
have
to.

Lifting the receiver to her ear, she listened to the steady buzz of the dial tone.

Did the supernatural count as an emergency? She feared they would laugh at her almost as much as she feared staying by herself in this house. She pictured the police cars skidding up the driveway. The blaring sirens and flashing lights rousing the neighbors. People gathering on the lawn, watching in curious fascination as the officers stormed the house. And she would tell them all about what had been going on tonight.

Bad idea, she knew.

Kelly gently returned the receiver to the base.

She wiggled her toes against the dampness of her socks and thought about the puddles by the door.
Maybe Chrissie went out,
she thought. She'd been wearing boots—and she certainly had been outside earlier. Chrissie could have left the door open by mistake. That was it.

An encouraging warmth spread throughout her body as the explanation unfurled in her brain. It was the same feeling she'd gotten when, at age five, her father reached
for her mittened hand with an everything-will-be-okay smile every time she fell learning how to ski. She was overreacting, that was all.

She flung open the back door. The force of the wind struck her full on. Strands of hair blew about her face. She pushed them away from her eyes. Turning on all the lights in the yard, she saw that the snow hadn't begun falling too thickly yet.

She scanned the yard. The snow by the door looked trampled and kicked about. There was no question now that someone had been outside. A set of boot prints led away from the house, zigzagging across the white expanse. The tracks disappeared into the darkness. The spotlights attached to the back of the house shone only a short distance. There was no telling where the tracks led.

Still safely planted inside the doorway, Kelly scrutinized the boot prints. They weren't the deliberate prints of someone walking slowly through the snow. They were smeared and very close together. The snow was more compacted at the front of the boot print. The person had barely pressed any weight on the heel. Excess snow sprayed around the back of each print. She understood immediately. The person had been running. Fast.

Was it Chrissie? It had to be, she reasoned.

But why was she running? Was she running to something? Or was she being chased?

“Chrissie? Chrissie? Are you out there?” she yelled into the darkness.

The wind swallowed her cries.

“Chrissie?”

Her voice echoed back to her. Her throat grew dry and scratchy again. Panic pushed its way up.

The snowflakes fell silently from the sky. The yard remained frozen and eerily quiet.

Why would Chrissie leave?

“Ryan!” she screamed. “Ryan, can you hear me? This is an emergency!”

She waited. The television hummed in the house behind her. Her brother didn't come.

She strained her ears, hoping against hope that Spencer and Gavin would ring the doorbell. Everything would be okay if they'd just show up, she decided. As hard as she tried, she couldn't will the doorbell to ring.

She was overcome by the need to do something. She was fed up with waiting. Waiting for her friends to show up. Waiting to understand what was going on.

Her father's black rubber snow boots sat to the right of the door. He'd been outside shoveling yesterday. Suddenly it seemed like years since she'd seen her parents.

She peeled off her damp socks and shoved her feet into the oversize boots. The nubby, frayed lining scratched her toes. The boots were far too big, but she didn't want to waste time running to the front hall to look for her own boots. She grabbed her green parka with the faux-fur-trimmed hood off the back of the chair she'd thrown it on earlier. She pulled it on, not bothering to trouble with the zipper. She stepped outside, closing the door tightly behind her.

For a moment she stood, trying to formulate a plan.

But she realized she had none. The plan was to find Chrissie. Beyond that, she had no idea.

Unaccustomed to the weight of her father's boots, she wobbled as she moved into the snow. The frozen top layer crunched as her soles broke through it. The wet, heavy snow and the weight of the wind made each step forward feel as if she were pushing against a brick wall.

The cold cut through her thin flannel pajama pants, stinging her legs. She shoved her bare fingers deep into her parka pockets. Swirling snowflakes coated her hair.
Huddling against the cold, she pushed on.

Stepping in the boot prints left by Chrissie made walking easier. She placed each foot carefully, working her way farther and farther from the warmth and safety of the house.

The shadows of the trees tilted over the snow-covered yard, making it hard to follow the prints. She squinted through the frozen flakes lining her lashes. The light from the house grew dimmer and dimmer as she trudged forward. The moonless sky cast no light on her path.

Kelly concentrated on following the prints. Up, over, and down, she dragged each heavy boot. Her hot breath came out in puffs against the cold night air. Her cheeks tingled painfully. She knew they must be bright red.

“Chrissie?” she called again and again.

The wind howled mournfully. The trees shook their snow-caked branches at her. Never before had she felt more alone.

She shivered and dug her hands deeper into her pockets. She leaned into the gusting wind. Print after print. She followed the path, each step bring her closer to . . .

“Chrissie!”

Kelly stood in the far corner of her yard and screamed her babysitter's name. “Where are you?”

She stared blindly at the snow.

There were no more prints.

Gone. The prints were gone.

The vast whiteness stretched unbroken by human feet. Turning in a slow circle, she squinted through the steady snowflakes. Though there was only the slightest glimmer of light this far from the house, she was sure: The boot prints had abruptly stopped.

Forbidding darkness pushed toward her from the evergreen-lined edges of her large yard. She wished she had thought to bring a flashlight. The pines whispered, warning her away.

She knew Paige's yard lay behind the thick expanse of trees her parents had planted years and years ago for privacy. But tonight it seemed miles away. She shaded her eyes with her hands, momentarily blocking the blinding snow. She looked at the last boot print. What had happened? Had Chrissie disappeared into thin air?

A wave of chills raced through Kelly's body, and she stood shaking. She remembered promising her mother after school that she wouldn't leave the house. Now here she was in the darkness, in the snow, outside, alone. If she had known back then how the night would turn out, she would've made her parents take a dogsled back home.

Turning, she began to trudge back the way she'd come. She kept her head down, eyes on the snow. She focused only on the warmth and light of her house. Everything else was too horrible. It was better not to think about it. Just move forward.