The Haunting of Heck House (4 page)

“Gah!”

Both girls screamed and Tweed jumped, involuntarily launching the speaker into the air.

“GAH!!” the speaker screamed back as it flew in an arc. And then, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” as it bounced along the hard-packed ground. “Ow …” When the speaker came to rest against a raised clump of crabgrass, the light dimmed and the voice moaned softly to itself.

Tweed glanced around wildly to see if anyone was nearby. The coast was clear. With Cheryl standing by, muscles tensed and ready to provide any necessary backup, Tweed tiptoed toward the groaning, inert speaker. From a distance of three feet, she pounced and landed on the thing, trapping it beneath her catcher's mitt.

The speaker squealed and hissed in tinny-sounding, electronic rage.

“Unhand me!” it cried, crackling loudly from beneath the worn leather mitt. “Where am I? What's going on?”

Tweed leaped backward through the air like a startled grasshopper. Her gothy footwear—big black boots with lots of buckles—tangled in the skipping-rope vines and upended her. She landed nose-to-nose with the speaker, her big grey eyes wide.

“Did … um. Did you say something?” she asked, her usually solemn tones gone a bit squeaky from astonishment. “Mister … um … Speaker?”

There was a faint sound of static.

Tweed tentatively reached out and plucked up the end of the wire.

Cheryl crouched down and examined it closely. It looked as though it had suffered a miniature explosion. The hole in the speaker housing where the wire attached was blackened with scorch marks. Cheryl poked the thing with one finger.

“Hey! No poking!”

The twins exchanged a look. Then Cheryl glanced around the Drive-In lot to see if anyone was nearby. Maybe Pilot was joking around and trying to scare the girls. But no. Pilot was nowhere in sight. And so, clearly, not playing some kind of practical joke.

The lot was deserted.

“Dudley?” the speaker asked suddenly. “Is that you? Dudley!”

Cheryl and Tweed both jumped at the sound of that name and shared an alarmed glance.
Dudley?
The only Dudley the girls knew was the shady carnival owner, Colonel Winchester P.Q. Dudley, whom they'd had a hand in running out of Wiggins only a few days earlier. And, frankly, the girls were still in a bit of shock that they'd gotten away with such high-adventure monkey-shines without their beloved grandfather discovering their secret and grounding them for life. So, really, it wouldn't do to have Pops's own Drive-In equipment spouting the name of Cheryl and Tweed's nefarious nemesis at the top of its lungs.

Not … that it actually had lungs.

Or a brain.

Or any capacity, really, to be speaking on its own in any way.

It had to be some kind of a trick.

But a trick that was going to land the girls in a heap of trouble if they had to explain it to Pops Pendleton. Cheryl and Tweed had made the decision not to tell Pops
about the carnival/mummy princess shenanigans, and Pilot and Artie Bartleby had heartily agreed to keep the whole adventure under wraps.

Wiggins folk already regarded the “twins” with some skepticism. Long ago, in the days following “The Incident,” people in the town had been convinced that the Shumacher/Pendleton/Armbruster disappearance was due to some sort of unfortunate accident. The girls had developed ideas of their own—
alien
ideas—and, at first, the Wiggins folk had indulged them. After all, they'd been very young. But when the passage of time did little to lessen the twins' growing certainty of paranormal meddling, and their developing obsessions with B movies began to colour their increasingly offbeat world views, well … that was a bit much for the inhabitants of the quiet little town.

The twins had been trying to keep low (relatively normal) profiles since the start of summer—largely for the sake of their sitter biz—and tales of ancient curses and a mummy run amok would have torpedoed those efforts handily. Likewise, a possessed speaker.

“Hell
oooo
…” came the sound of the voice again, the plummy English accent muffled somewhat—as if it was the actual person speaking that was lying face down on the ground.

As silently as possible, and with a flurry of hand gestures and head nodding, Cheryl indicated to Tweed that she wished to converse in private, out of earshot
of the Drive-In speaker. By the time they'd finished talking, Tweed had shrugged out of the jacket she'd been wearing—even on summer days, her gothy ensembles (and milk-pale skin) rarely allowed for bare arms—and was holding it out in front of her like a bullfighter's cape. Slowly, carefully, the girls crept back to where the speaker lay on the ground.

“Now!” Cheryl exclaimed. “Get him!”

Tweed threw the jacket over the speaker and leaped upon it, wrestling furiously with the—inanimate and not exactly wrestling back, but never mind—speaker. As Tweed frantically wrapped the material around it, the speaker squawked like a chicken with a walkie-talkie. Cheryl held out her knapsack and Tweed stuffed the protesting piece of equipment inside, tugging the drawstring shut and effectively muffling its outrage.

 

3
THE
THING FROM (REALLY) BEYOND

T
he girls ran for the big red barn at the far edge of the Drive-In lot, wherein the headquarters for C+T Enterprises was located. Once inside, with the bolt lock slammed shut on the door, Tweed fished the (inexplicably still yapping) jacket-bundle of what should have been inoperative electronics out of the knapsack and carried it over to the workbench. She set it down hesitantly and took a quick step back.

“Grab a sleeve?” she asked her cousin.

Cheryl reached out and grabbed one cuff as Tweed grabbed the other.

“On the count of three?” Cheryl suggested.

Tweed nodded solemnly.

“One … two … thr—”

“Wait!” Cheryl held up a hand, frowning.

“What?”

“Are we doing one … two …
go-on-three
?” she asked. “Or one … two …
three-and-then-go
?”

Tweed's brow furrowed to match Cheryl's as she contemplated. It was, in the light of, say, a movie-based action sequence, a matter to be given serious thought. “Good question,” she said. “I can see merit in either technique. The first option is probably, statistically speaking, the classic. But I can see how it would leave room for inaccuracy to creep in. The second option establishes the count rhythm more soundly.”

“So …” Cheryl was torn. The jacket sleeve hung limply in her hand. “I say classic?” She didn't sound so sure.

Tweed nodded. “If you think that's bes—”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” the bundled speaker suddenly exclaimed. “Pick one! I'm suffocating here!”

It startled the twins so badly that they both yanked their respective sleeves, the jacket flew up into the air and the defective speaker spun like a top on the workbench. Its red indicator light pulsed in time with the speaker's wails of “WoowOOooWOOOwoooo” as it spun. It looked a little like the light from the top of one of Wiggins Cross's handful of police cruisers on the one and only time the girls had ever seen one speeding down Main Street with light and siren flashing and blaring. That was three years earlier when there had been reports of a stray dog in town.

The twins watched in astonishment as the speaker slowed and stopped, tipping over on its side. There it lay, making strange gurgly sounds.

“Um.” Cheryl peered closely at the little piece of equipment. “Sir? Are you … y'know … gonna barf?”

“Don't be vulgar,” the little metal box responded. “Also … maybe.”

“I can put a bucket out,” Tweed suggested, “only, you don't have a mouth.”

The red light, which had gone dark as the speaker lay there inert, slowly gleamed to life—almost as if it were a bright red eye opening.

“Harry Houdini's ghost!” the speaker exclaimed.

The girls got the distinct impression that, if it could, it would have skittered backward across the table.

“Where am I?” the thing demanded. “Who are you two urchins? Why do I sound like an old Victrola?”

“An old what-now?” Cheryl asked, agog and still glancing around to see if Pilot or Pops or maybe Artie Bartleby was hiding somewhere, pulling the twins' collective leg.

“A phonograph,” the speaker said in answer to her question. “A talking machine.”

“You are,” said Tweed.

“I'm what?”

“A talking machine.” She peered at the speaker from beneath the dark fringe of her bangs, fascinated. The voice was definitely emanating from the defunct
speaker. It wasn't a trick—or, if it was, it was the best bit of ventriloquism ever.

“Don't be ridiculous.” The speaker sniffed haughtily. “I'm no machine, I'm a magician. I am the Great Simon Omar! Although, I confess that I do feel somewhat strange at the moment … Fetch me a looking glass.”

The girls blinked at each other.

“A mirror, you dim bulbs.”

They blinked some more. “Um ...” Cheryl tried to put it delicately as she said, “You … you don't actually have eyes, though.”

“A mirror!” The glowing red light pulsed madly.

“Okay, okay! Don't get your woofers in a knot.”

Shaking her head and muttering in disbelief that she was actually taking orders from an inanimate object, Cheryl trotted around to the other side of the workbench. The twins had collected a plastic bin full of mirrors large and small, useful in the vampire-hunting trade for identifying the fiends by their lack of reflection. Cheryl found the bin and rummaged through it, extracting a lady's compact that had a magnifying mirror on one side and a regular one on the other. She passed it over to Tweed who, uncertain as to exactly which bit of the speaker would actually be able to “see” its reflection, held it up toward the front side of the little metal box, where there was a mesh grill through which the sounds of the movie would normally filter. But now, it made the sound of a horrified gasp!

The red indicator light on the top of the speaker blazed alarmingly bright. Tweed and Cheryl found themselves staring at it, and then realized that it wasn't a light at all. Rather, it looked more like some kind of faceted red jewel—like a big fake ruby—that had somehow wound up embedded in the metal housing of the speaker. Apparently, that's exactly what it was.

“The jewel! That's the jewel from my mystic's turban!” the speaker exclaimed as Cheryl poked it with a finger. “Ow!”

“What's it doing in our speaker?” Cheryl asked.

“Well, how should I know? I don't even remember how I got here. Wherever ‘here' is …” The glow from the stone seemed to oscillate, as if it were a crimson eyeball, rolling a glance around its surroundings.

Cheryl and Tweed exchanged a glance.

“What
do
you remember?” Tweed asked.

“Erm … I'm not sure. I don't know. Why do you ask?”

“How do you know who Dudley is?” Cheryl said in a menacing tone. The whole carnival thing was still something of a sore spot for her, and the mere mention of Winchester P.Q. Dudley's name was generally enough to light her up like a stick of dynamite with a too-short fuse.

The speaker seemed to sense that he'd just set foot, so to speak, on dangerous ground and backpedalled furiously. “Er … who?” he asked.

“You said his name a few seconds ago.”

“Never heard of the colonel.”

“Except you know he's a colonel.”

“Oops.”

“Spill it, Speakie.”

“Shutting up now.”

Cheryl reached out with both hands as if she was about to grab the speaker by the throat before she realized what she was doing.

“Wait a minute …” Tweed frowned fiercely, suddenly reminded of something. “Did he say something about a ‘mystic's turban' …?”

“I think so.” Cheryl shrugged one shoulder.

“Hang on,” Tweed muttered and jogged over to a corner of the barn stacked with an assortment of seemingly random objects the girls had collected from the field across the road after the carnival had so hastily cleared out.

The girls had mostly done their trash collection out of a sense of duty—keeping the field tidy and all, town pride, don't be a litterbug, that sort of thing—but they discovered it was a treasure trove of useful stuff. Things like an enormous Styrofoam mini-donut that must have fallen off the top of one of the food shacks, a jumbo bag of unused industrial-strength glitter and a “You Must Be This Tall to Ride this Ride!” sign.

Who knew when such awesome oddments might come in handy?

Tweed shifted over the height requirement sign so she could get at the contents of a plastic bin they'd filled with the smaller bits of carnival detritus and, after a moment's digging, found what she was looking for: a bunch of note cards from the curiosities tent that had been left behind, scattered amongst the empty display cases (empty because Cheryl and Tweed and Pilot and Artie had loaded most of the assortment of stuff into Pilot's plane so they could send the mummy princess into the Great Beyond, accompanied by her worldly goods). The cards had been printed with paragraphs that described individual items on display and the words
jewel
and
mystic turban
had twigged something in her memory. Tweed shuffled through the little stack of typewritten cards until she found the one she was looking for.

“Aha!” she exclaimed in a triumphantly deadpan monotone. “I thought I remembered something about that …”

“Remembered something about what?” Cheryl asked.

“One of the artifact note cards the carnies left behind had a description on it for something called ‘The Spirit Stone of Simon Omar, World-famous Wizard of the West End,'” she said.

“What?” Cheryl blinked. “Who?”

Tweed handed the card over to Cheryl, who held it
up in front of her face and read the faded, typewritten words out loud.