The Haunting

by Rodman Philbrick

  “That’s it?” I said.

  Steve looked stung. He looked over his shoulder and leaned in close again. “There used to be an old lady lived here. All by herself for years and years. She had bedbugs in her attic, if you know what I mean. And she was mean—she hated kids, I guess.” He sat back and reached for another cookie, looking pleased with himself. “I heard she died in here and nobody ever found the body.” He grinned at me. “What do you say we look for it?”

  The backdoor opened and sunlight fell across the table. “OK, guys, out of here.” Mom came in and the first thing she did was confiscate the cookies. “I want to get the rest of our stuff unpacked and I don’t need you boys underfoot.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Winter,” said Steve, standing quickly. “I’ll show Jason the lake.”

  Good idea. I needed to get out of that musty old house and clear my head.

  “Wait a second,” said Mom. “Put these empty boxes in the garage, will you?”

  “Sure, Mom, no problemo.”

  The garage was this old, rickety building attached to the side of the house. When we’d first come up the driveway, the overhead door had been shut. Now it was wide open.

  “What a mess,” Steve said. “Look at all that neat old stuff.”

  The garage was dark—no windows—but I could make out all the old junk stacked inside. There hardly seemed to be room for any more empty boxes.

  I stepped over a broken chair, making my way toward the rear of the building.

  Steve followed. “All this junk must have belonged to the old woman,” he said, picking up a battered lampshade. He lowered his voice to a spooky whisper. “I didn’t tell you everything.”

  “Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes sarcastically but of course Steve couldn’t see me in the gloom.

  “No, really. She was a witch. And she really hated kids. Especially little kids. Of course, now that she’s a ghost she has more power. She can do anything. Over the years lots of little children have disappeared from this neighborhood.”

  Right then I banged my shin on a rusted rake. “Ouch! You know what, Steve? I think you’re making all this up. Give me a hand here.”

  “Am not,” Steve protested as he helped me shove the empty boxes way up on a stack of junk.

  “Yeah? Then prove it,” I said. “Prove that this place is haunted.”

  Suddenly the garage door slammed shut.

  It was as if the sun had winked out. The garage was instantly, totally, utterly dark.

  “How’d that happen?” Steve whispered, his voice shaky.

  “I don’t know but let’s get out of here.”

  I pushed past Steve and began to pick my way toward the front of the garage. I kept bumping into things and stumbling over old paint cans.

  Finally my outstretched hands found the door. “I got it,” I shouted, fumbling for the handle. “We’re out of here!”

  Behind me I could hear Steve letting out a long sigh of relief.

  My fingers found the handle, turned and pulled. Nothing happened.

  The door was locked. We were trapped.

  5

  “We gotta get out of here,” said Steve, his voice rising.

  Somewhere in all the mess something rustled.

  “Was that you?” I said.

  “Was what me?”

  It came again, a scratching, scrabbling kind of sound. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

  “That’s not me,” said Steve. “I didn’t move a muscle.”

  A cobweb brushed my forehead and I jerked my head away. You never know about poisonous spiders.

  “I’ll bet there’s rats in here,” I said. “That must be what’s making that scrabbling noise. Rats.”

  Steve groaned in the dark. “Stop fooling around and open the door, Jason. It wasn’t true what I said, I admit it, OK?”

  Wasn’t true? What was he talking about?

  “About the old lady,” said Steve. “I don’t know anything about any missing kids. Now get us out of here.”

  I should have been relieved that he was making it up, but something about the darkness put a creepy-crawly feeling in my stomach. Like there were shapes in the dark I couldn’t quite see, or invisible hands reaching out to touch me.

  Yeah, right. I was acting like a five-year-old, scared of the dark!

  “Jason, get us out of here, OK?” Steve said. His voice was kind of high-pitched.

  The darkness was getting to both of us.

  We pounded on the door and shouted as loud as we could but no one came.

  “It could be hours,” I said dejectedly. “My mom’s inside and my dad’s probably helping her. They’ll never hear us.”

  “Let’s try again.” Steve’s breath sounded ragged.

  I banged again on the door and shouted as loud as I could. Steve shouted even louder and banged on the wall. We were making so much noise we didn’t hear the smooth click of the lock.

  Suddenly the door opened and sunlight blinded us. I blinked and shaded my eyes, trying to make out the looming figure coming into the garage.

  It was my dad, of course. Who else had I been expecting? Some made-up little old lady? Yeah, right.

  “You boys stop your goofing around,” my father said. “I’ve got too much to do to be watching out for you.”

  “We weren’t fooling around,” I insisted. “I was putting some stuff away for Mom and someone came along and shut the door. It wasn’t you?”

  “This is an old house,” Dad said. “I don’t want you horsing around and breaking something valuable or putting your foot through some rotten board and breaking a leg, understand?”

  There’s no point in arguing with my dad when he gets that tone. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Steve didn’t say anything until my father was gone.

  “The ’rents never understand,” he said.

  “Rents?”

  “Short for parents,” he explained. “Anyhow, I’d just as soon forget about that stupid garage door. Maybe it was the wind or something.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But there hadn’t been any wind.

  “It’s great to have a guy my own age right next door,” said Steve. “Hartsville’s OK but there’s not that many kids. How did you happen to come here?”

  “My parents are architects,” I explained. “They’re designing Hartsville’s new town complex. So this isn’t a vacation for them. A real-estate agent found the house for us.”

  “Spooky house,” said Steve as we walked under the tall pines. “Wouldn’t it be neat if it was really haunted?”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. For some reason I didn’t feel like joking about it. As we turned toward the house, I searched the upstairs windows but didn’t say anything to Steve about whatever it was that had been watching me when we first arrived.

  No way would he believe me.

  “You play baseball?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Tell you what,” Steve said. “Wait here and I’ll go get my ball and glove. We can practice. I start junior high this fall and I want to be the ace pitcher.”

  Steve went home to get his stuff and I ran upstairs to get my own ball and glove.

  Something made me stop at the top of the stairs. I don’t know what—just a feeling. As if something was watching me. Something waiting for me to make some kind of mistake.

  As if the old house itself was watching, waiting.

  I shook off the feeling—don’t be a total moron, it’s only an old house—and grabbed my glove.

  On the way back down the stairs I noticed a few shelves full of these little ornaments. Really fragile-looking vases and china figures and old glass bottles. Just running down the stairs made them vibrate and shake, and all of a sudden it came to me.

  The place was chock-full of breakable old stuff, and my mom had made a big deal about how valuable some of it was—I knew I’d be in big trouble if stuff got broken somehow, even if I didn’t do it on purpose. Maybe that’s why I was so nervous and jumpy around the
house.

  Get a grip, Jason.

  What I did was slow down and take the steps one at a time. Much better. Get used to the house and maybe it would get used to me.

  Steve was waiting in the backyard, seeing how high he could chuck a ball straight up. Which was pretty impressive—he had a strong arm.

  “Tell me if I throw too hard,” he said, whipping the ball at me.

  It stung, but I said, “Don’t worry about throwing too hard. I know how to catch.”

  Me and my big mouth. Steve did a full windup and threw a fastball right at my head. I caught it in the web of my glove, so it didn’t hurt that time, but he kept showing off and after about ten minutes my hand was so numb it almost didn’t hurt anymore.

  “Pretend like there’s a batter at the plate,” he said. “Signal where I should throw, inside or outside, high or low.”

  I signaled for a low and inside pitch, and what do you know, he did it perfectly.

  I had figured Steve was just bragging about wanting to be the ace pitcher on his school team, but it turned out he was really good. A lot better than me, in fact. You had to pay attention or that fastball of his would take your head off.

  I had to concentrate so hard that for a while I almost forgot about the house. That strange feeling it gave me. Then when we took a break, it was back.

  We were sitting under the tree, taking it easy, when I felt it. A tingling sensation right between my shoulder blades. I tried to shake it off, like a pitcher shakes off a signal he doesn’t like.

  But still I felt it, a creepy tingle moving up to the back of my neck.

  This was ridiculous! It was all those stories Steve had been telling me. I kept imagining what it would be like to stumble on the old lady’s skeleton under a pile of junk in the garage. Or what if I opened a closet and there she was.

  Someone called out Steve’s name.

  “That’s my mom, I gotta go,” he said, getting up. “See you later, alligator.”

  “In a while, crocodile,” I said right back. But my heart wasn’t in it. All I could think about was the house—that something was wrong, something that might put me and my family in danger.

  After Steve was gone I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and turned to look up at the building.

  It was just a house. A big, rambling house with lots of windows and shadowy places, but just a house. Its windows were just glass. I stared at the place defiantly, my eyes traveling from one blank window to another, across the first floor, back across the second, up to the attic—

  My heart slammed in my chest.

  A small boy was there in the attic window. Watching me. Staring down at me.

  A small, skinny boy with skin as pale as death.

  6

  I raced for the house and yanked open the kitchen door. I ran into the study, where my parents had set up their temporary office. There was a drafting table and rolls of blueprints and a couple of jars of sharpened pencils. Mom looked up from the worktable, where she was checking figures on her desktop computer. She smiled when she saw me.

  “Hey, Jay, did you have fun with your new friend?”

  “Mom,” I said, catching my breath. “Did any little kids come into the house? A boy about Sally’s age?”

  She shook her head no, and I bolted for the hallway and ran up to the second floor.

  It took me a few moments to figure out where the attic staircase was located. At the end of the hall, across from my bedroom, behind a narrow door.

  As I went up, the attic steps groaned under my feet—if I didn’t know better I’d say it sounded almost human.

  I got to the top and threw open the attic door.

  It wasn’t what I expected. Back home the attic is wide open, you can see from one end of the house to the other. But this attic was divided up into smaller rooms, one leading into another. Sort of like a maze.

  It was strange, but as I went from one little room into the next, it seemed like I was walking for miles. Impossible, of course. It was just an old attic. It couldn’t be miles long. No way. Maybe I was just tired from playing ball with Steve.

  I tried to picture where it was I’d seen the little boy—what part of the attic he’d been in when he looked down at me from the window.

  Had to be somewhere over here to the left.

  I went through a door and found myself in a small room with no windows. Not the right room. But there was a small door at the other end of the room.

  I pushed through the door and gasped in surprise.

  Somehow I’d gotten completely turned around. This bare room had a window all right, but it seemed to be facing the wrong direction. Instead of looking over the backyard I was seeing out the front, toward the street and the tall pines.

  How could I have messed up so badly?

  I’d have to go back and start over. But which way? My heart lurched as I realized this room also had two doors and I couldn’t remember which one I’d entered.

  Crazy. You couldn’t get lost in your own house, right? Right?

  When I finally decided which door to try, my feet moved like I was wearing lead boots. For some reason my heart started pounding hard against my ribs. I could hardly bring myself to reach out for the doorknob. But I did. I turned it, went through the door, and found myself in another small windowless room with a door opposite.

  It was exactly like the room I’d just left. Weird. What was going on here? And why was I in a cold sweat? Why were my hands shaking?

  Got to get out of here, I decided. Forget looking for that stupid kid. He could have this weird old attic and all these strange little rooms!

  I turned back, opened the door I’d just come through.

  And almost walked into a blank wall. It was a closet.

  “Pull yourself together,” I whispered to myself. “There has to be an explanation. You just got confused, that’s all.”

  That’s when I heard someone on the stairs. Someone was coming up into the attic. Whoever it was was trying to be quiet but the steps creaked and groaned.

  “Dad?” I called out hopefully.

  I heard the attic door open. Footsteps coming closer, very quiet.

  “Mom? Sally?”

  No response.

  Just the footsteps shuffling closer and closer.

  I started for the other door, wanting to get away from those creepy footsteps, and the door swung slowly shut, right before my horrified eyes.

  Then the laughter started. Creepy laughter echoing through the maze of little rooms, bouncing from one to another.

  It was the laughter of an evil witch at least a thousand years old.

  I stood frozen to the spot as the shuffling footsteps came closer, closer, and the laughter rose and fell.

  Closer and closer.

  The doorknob rattled.

  I pressed myself against the wall, staring at the closed door, my heart slamming so hard I thought it might jump right out of my chest.

  The knob turned and rattled again.

  The door started shaking, as if something big was outside, trying to get in. It shook so hard the screws started popping out of the hinges.

  Now the floor was shaking, too.

  I tried to grab hold of the wall as the whole room began to twist and buck. As if an earthquake was set on tearing it apart. Or as if the room itself was quaking in terror.

  I fell to the floor and covered my head.

  All around me the laughter rose higher and higher, louder and louder. An eerie, cackling noise filled my head and made me want to scream. But I clenched my teeth together—if I made any noise, whatever it was out there would know I was in the room.

  Slowly the shaking subsided, but the laughter lingered right outside the door.

  As quietly as possible I crawled and slid over to the closet. Something told me it wasn’t over, and that I’d better hide. I got into the closet, eased the door shut, and crouched in a corner.

  There, I was safe. It would never find me in here.

  I wait
ed in the darkness for what seemed like a long time. The laughter faded. Slowly my muscles began to unknot.

  It’s safe to come out, I thought. I started to get to my feet when I heard something enter the room.

  Footsteps came slowly across the floor and stopped right outside the closet door.

  It had found me.

  7

  “Jason? You up here?”

  “Dad!”

  Relieved beyond relief, I burst out of the closet and fell to my knees, gasping but happy.

  “Jason, what’s going on here? Is this some sort of game?”

  “It’s no game, Dad. There’s something wrong with this house,” I said. “It’s—it’s haunted!”

  I told Dad about the boy I’d seen in the window, the violent shaking of the room, the eerie cackling. “You must have heard that spooky laughing,” I added. “It was really loud.”

  My father shook his head slowly. “No, son, I didn’t. I didn’t hear anything but you crashing around up here.”

  “I swear I saw somebody up here. He was watching me.”

  My dad kind of smiled, as if he thought I was joking. “Tell you what, Jay. Let’s you and me walk back through these rooms and see if anybody’s up here.”

  As I followed my father back through the empty rooms, an odd thing happened. This time the attic didn’t seem to be miles long, and in no time at all we’d checked out every single room.

  No kid. No boy at the window. Nobody at all.

  “You think I’m crazy, right?” I said.

  Dad smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you’ve been reading so many of those scary books that your imagination has gotten the best of you. Think about it, Jason—you know there’s no such thing as a haunted house.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. But in my heart I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen the boy with the sad-looking eyes and the skin as pale as death. Like he’d just got up out of a coffin.

  “Come on,” Dad said, turning to leave. “You can give me a hand fixing that old clock in the hallway.”

  As we started back down the stairs, a door somewhere in the house slammed violently—BANG!—making us both jump.

  Dad chuckled. “Now you’ve got me doing it,” he said. “It’s just the wind, Jason.”