The Haunting (8 page)

I bolted down the stairs and tripped. Hanging on to the stair rail, I lost the bat. It was so loud thumping down the steps that surely it would wake my parents. And Steve would be scared off, right?

Right?

The noises stopped. I fumbled around for the light switch and clicked it on.

Nothing happened. The lights weren't working. It remained so dark I could barely see my own hands.

I heard a rustling noise. Cloth on cloth, somebody moving.

“Who's there?” I called out, my voice echoing in the darkness.

No answer.

I advanced slowly into the downstairs hall. A movement at my shoulder made me jump.

The clock. It was just the grandfather clock rearing up out of the dark, moonlight catching on its face. Just the clock—but my heart thudded.

“Sally?” I called softly.

No answer. I moved farther into the dining room.

Behind me a floorboard creaked. I whirled around. The shadows under the stairs stirred and parted. Cloth whispered against cloth.

If only I hadn't dropped the baseball bat.

“Dad?” I breathed, hopefully.

From under the stairs came a raspy, whispery voice. “
Where is it? You stole it from me, give it back
!”

My skin crawled. It was like the voice was getting inside me, making my blood freeze.

“Who—” My voice cracked. “Who's there?”

“
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
!”

Above me a child let out a piercing scream. It sounded as if it came from the top of the stairs. The scream seemed to free me and I tried to run up the steps.

Something hurtled out of the darkness. I ducked and it whistled past my ear, just missing me.

“
Ahhhh
!”

Behind me, right behind me, there was a cry of pain as the object connected with something and bounced, striking an end table and knocking it over.

An antique lamp smashed to pieces.

I dropped to the floor, feeling around for the missing bat. My hand closed over something heavy and coldly metallic. I held it up. A bronzed baby shoe.

Something had hurled the heavy shoe at me—or maybe at something else on the stairs. Something behind me.

Then the shoe was torn from my grasp. Wham—it flew into the air and smashed into the chandelier, raining glass everywhere.

A piece of glass hit my leg and glanced off, cutting me slightly.

Got to get out of here! I stumbled for the stairs. The air seemed to crackle around my ears. My only thought was to reach my room. It wanted me, I had to get away!

Long, cold fingers came out of the shadows and snagged at my pajamas.

I jerked free and tried to run.

It was right behind me, gaining. Another whispery touch grazed my ankles.

Then I was at the top of the stairs, my room only steps away. My breath wheezed in my chest. I reached for my bedroom door, threw it open and dived inside.

I flung myself against the door and held it closed.
Don't come in
, I prayed,
don't come in
!

Ghostly fingernails scraped along the door—
skreeeek, skreeeek
—and then moved on to rake the length of the wall.

On the other side of the door a hollow voice spoke right into my ear. “
I'll get you, Jason. You can't hide. I'll get you
.”

Then the ghostly voice slowly faded and the house settled into silence as deep and soundless as the grave.

20

My skin was clammy and hot. When I opened my eyes the sun was beating down on me, already high. I had overslept, no surprise.

I dressed as fast as I could, eager to tell my parents what had happened last night. This time it would be different. They'd have to believe me, with all the damage downstairs. Finally they'd have to listen, they'd have to realize that both me and Sally were in danger. Like it or not we'd have to get out of this house.

Opening my door, I heard both Mom and Dad down in the kitchen. Good, I'd tackle them both at once.

Suddenly I felt a little uneasy. Why hadn't they come to wake me up when they found all that broken glass?

They were laughing down there in the kitchen. Weird. Very weird.

At the top of the stairs I stopped in surprise.

The bronzed baby shoe was back on its shelf.

Well, I realized, naturally Mom would have cleaned up the mess.

My jaw dropped in amazement as I started down the stairs. The chandelier was hanging in its place, completely undamaged!

I closed my eyes and opened them again. The chandelier was still there.

I went down a few more steps. There was the little end table. On it was the antique lamp that last night had been smashed to bits. It was untouched.

I picked it up and examined it. There wasn't so much as a crack.

What was going on here? Was I going crazy? Had it really all been a dream?

Then I looked down at my leg. There it was—the small cut where the chandelier glass had hit me, beaded with dried blood. It was no dream. It had really happened, just as I remembered it.

But Mom and Dad would never believe me. No point even telling them about it. Not until I had proof.

21

It was the bottom of the ninth, two out, with runners on second and third. I was holding down third base, keeping the runner on the bag. Our team was up by one run.

Just one more out and the game was ours.

“Hey, batter! Hey, batter!”

Steve pitched without a windup, holding the runners on. He threw a fastball right down the middle.

The batter swung and hit a soft ground ball right at me. An easy out. All I had to do was throw to home. No problemo.

I bent down to scoop up the ball and it went right through my legs.

Unbelievable. One runner crossed home plate, and before I could make a move, Lucy came around from second and passed me in a blur to score the winning run.

It was all my fault. After the game nobody said much. Steve just looked at me and shrugged.

I should have felt terrible, losing the game like that, but I didn't feel much of anything at all. A stupid baseball game, what did it matter?

“Hey, Jason, wait up!” It was Steve. “What happened to you? You looked like a zombie today. A real no-brainer.”

“Thanks, Steve. You're a big help,” I said. “If you'd had the kind of night I had, you'd still be hiding under your bed.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve's eyes lit up. “More ghost stuff, huh?”

“It's not funny,” I said. “I'm really worried.”

“Tell me,” begged Steve. “I won't laugh. Maybe I can help. Two brains are better than one no-brainer.”

Not that I expected him to believe me, but I told Steve everything that had happened. The noises, the things moving around downstairs, the voice outside my door. His eyes got bigger and bigger.

“When the chandelier smashed, a piece of flying glass hit my leg.” I showed Steve the small cut. “I didn't get this in a dream. I keep looking for rational explanations but this time I have to admit, there aren't any. Broken lamps don't fly up and put themselves back together.”

“Wow,” said Steve, looking at the scratch. “So what do you think? Is it an old lady ghost or a little kid?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe there's two of them. The voice was definitely not a child's. It sounded like a witch's voice. But I heard a little kid, too.”

“Two ghosts? How come there'd be two ghosts haunting the same house?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe they're connected somehow.”

“You mean like because of a murder or something? They say a ghost has to keep reliving the moment of its death. So if there's a little kid ghost, maybe he had something to do with the old lady dying!”

For some reason the very idea gave me the creeps. What if Steve was right? What if my little sister was playing with a ghost who had killed someone in real life?

Suddenly Steve turned in the road and slapped my arm. “I've got it,” he said excitedly. “We can search for the old lady's body. The way to get rid of a ghost is to find the body and lay it to rest. Once the old lady's body is properly buried, maybe the child ghost will be at peace, too. Maybe that's what it wants, for you to find the body and get it out of the house.”

It was a gruesome idea, searching for a body. But we had to try something.

“I'll bet it's in the basement,” Steve said. “That's why nobody found it.”

I didn't want to go down into that basement, not after what happened with the slimy hand grabbing my ankle, but Steve would think I was a chicken if I didn't. And besides, maybe I really had imagined that creepy hand.

So we did it, we went down into the basement.

My dad had fixed the broken step and the piece of wood was the only new and clean thing in the whole place.

I tensed when I put my foot down on the new step, listening for noises from under the stairs. But with Steve chattering away like a real motormouth, I couldn't hear a thing.

“Now I see why you brought that flashlight,” said Steve. “It's pretty dim and spooky down here. The perfect place for a dead body.”

We stopped within the circle of light from the overhead bulb and I switched on the flashlight. The flashlight beam turned hulking shadows into perfectly ordinary piles of junk—boxes, old tools, broken furniture.

We both stiffened when the door at the top of the stairs opened with a creak.

“Boys!” It was my mother. “Don't disturb those boxes in the corner,” she said. “They belong to the owners of the house.”

“OK, Mom,” I called back. I aimed the flashlight at the other side of the basement. “We'll start there,” I told Steve.

But Steve wouldn't make a move until I went first. It was much less scary down here when there were two of us, I decided. And thinking about it, I didn't really expect to find anything, certainly not a forgotten skeleton, but exploring this creepy place with Steve would be cool.

“Blak!” Steve shouted suddenly, like he was choking.

I whirled around. The shadows moved in closer.

Steve was batting at his face and sputtering. “Spiderwebs! They're sticking to my face. Yuck!”

I laughed and the shadows retreated to their corners.

We found a bunch of moldering boxes filled with old magazines and newspapers, old-fashioned hats with net veils, unrecognizable parts of rusting metal.

“Look at these weirdos,” Steve said, holding open an old magazine.

“That's how they dressed back then,” I said.

“What a bunch of geeks.”

“If you lived back then, that's how you'd dress, too,” I pointed out.

“No way.”

As it turned out, none of the boxes in that corner were big enough to hide a body.

We looked behind a ripped armchair that sprouted stuffing like fungus. Wrinkling my nose against the smell, I yanked the cushions off a sagging sofa while Steve held the flashlight over my shoulder.

No body. Not even a dead mouse.

Dust swirled as we shifted heavy boxes and played the flashlight beam into corners that hadn't been disturbed in at least fifty years, maybe more.

“What's that?” cried Steve, tensing suddenly. “That noise.”

I paused and listened. “I don't hear anything.”

Steve suddenly grabbed my arm.

“There!” He pointed behind us, toward the corner where the owners' things were piled. “It sounds like someone moving around back there, trying to be quiet.”

I listened. “Mice,” I said, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice. “I saw a mouse last time I was down here.”

Steve looked doubtful. While we shifted around what seemed like millions of mildewed magazines, his gaze kept drifting toward that corner.

I could feel the darkness moving in closer each time my back was turned, like a game of red-light, green-light. Small noises nibbled at my attention but always stopped when I paused to listen.

When we found nothing more behind the stacks of magazines, Steve straightened up. Absently he wiped his filthy hands on his once-clean khaki shorts. “If there's a body down here, it's going to be over there,” he said, gesturing toward the owners' piled belongings.

I nodded. “You're right. We'll just have to be careful to put things back so my mom doesn't get bent out of shape.”

Very carefully and slowly we approached that corner of the basement. It seemed darker there, as if the creepy shapes had a way of soaking up the beam from my flashlight.

“We can't move all this stuff,” Steve complained. “It'll take forever.”

“Hey,” I said, with a tingle of excitement. “Is that a trunk?”

I pointed out a large rectangular shape standing on end behind a stack of boxes. “It's big enough to hold a body, isn't it?”

Immediately we both began heaving boxes out of the way until the trunk was clear. For a moment we just looked at it.

Then I reached slowly for the latch. I pulled. The lock clicked.

Nothing happened.

“My mom's calling,” Steve said abruptly, taking a step backwards. “I've got to go.”

“What? You can't leave now,” I said, flabbergasted. “This could be what we've been looking for!”

“My mom will be mad,” Steve said weakly, looking at the trunk reluctantly.

Faintly, I could hear Steve's mother in the distance. So he wasn't making that up.

“Just help me with this,” I urged. I tugged again at the latch. “It's not locked, it's just stiff. If you hold the trunk steady I think I can get the lid open. It'll only take a minute.”

Steve swallowed. “All right.”

I grinned at him in the gloom and pried at the latch with both hands, grimly determined to get it open. I hadn't really believed we'd find a body down here, but now, faced with this body-sized trunk, my blood was humming. I just knew this trunk would help me solve the awful mystery of the house.

With a groan the rusted latch gave way. Eagerly I seized the lid and pulled it toward me like opening a door.