The Haunting
Page 10
Bobby wasn’t an evil ghost, I told myself. At least Sally never thought so. She thought he was just a sad little boy who wanted to be her invisible friend. So what if he’d been dead for years?
So what if nobody else could see him? She could.
Maybe if I could keep him talking I could make him realize what a bad thing he was doing. “I want to talk to Sally, Bobby, where is she?”
Sally pressed her lips together tight. Or Bobby pressed her lips together. I was getting nowhere.
My head was spinning with a million different thoughts.
Bobby must have heard my parents talking about going away to Mayfield on a job and leaving me and Sally alone with a baby-sitter. A seventeen-year-old, red-haired girl who giggled at the idea of ghosts.
He must have been waiting for this chance.
Maybe he’d made friends with Sally just so she’d get to trust him. Then when the moment was right he seized her body and took it over.
Maybe he’d moved in permanently! The idea of this dead thing speaking from inside my sister made me feel like I’d swallowed a chunk of roadkill.
“Look, Bobby, tell me what you want,” I said, inching closer. “I can help you if I know what you want.”
“Hey, Jason! Sally!”
It was our baby-sitter Katie. She was supposed to be upstairs unpacking. Instead here she was leaning out the front door, grinning at us like she wanted to be friends. Her thick red hair fanned across her shoulders like a halo.
“Come on in and have a snack or something,” Katie suggested.
“Uh, in a minute,” I started to say. How could I tell her what had happened to my little sister?
Just then a ferocious scowl came over Sally’s face. Blood rushed to her cheeks and her eyes seemed to glow with fire.
Something terrible was about to happen.
I reached out to grab Sally, but she was too fast for me.
She let out a scream of rage and charged straight at the baby-sitter.
3
The thing that ran up the steps after the babysitter wasn’t my sister, it was a small demon.
“Look out!” I shouted.
But Katie just stood there. Her friendly smile went kind of limp, like she couldn’t believe what was happening as Sally’s hard little fists smacked her in the knees.
“Hey!” Katie cried out. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Sally was punching and kicking and scratching like a fierce little animal, and the poor baby-sitter didn’t know what to do.
I had to save her—and Sally, too. I ran up the porch steps and grabbed my little sister from behind. Not so rough that I hurt her, but strong enough to pin her arms.
See, I didn’t want to hurt her. After all, Sally was just a little kid. So I just tried to stop her from hitting the baby-sitter.
That’s when she turned around and smacked me, hard, right in the stomach.
Ooof, the air went out of me and I sat down, holding my stomach. Sally ran off, disappearing inside the house.
“Hey, are you okay?” Katie knelt down, checking me out.
I nodded, struggling to get my breath back.
“What’s wrong with your sister?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I panted.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I’m supposed to be in charge of you two until your parents get back.”
Just then I heard Sally’s little feet running across the kitchen floor. She was heading for the back door!
“Hurry!” I said. “We’ve got to stop her!”
I started running. Horrible thoughts exploded in my brain. What if Bobby did something terrible? What if he made my sister run into the lake, or out in front of a car?
Then she’d be like him forever. Another little ghost haunting this big creepy house.
I made myself run faster. “No, Sally! Stop!” I cried desperately.
I reached the kitchen just as Sally whipped the back door open.
She was too fast for me. In a second she’d be gone.
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About the Authors
Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.
Lynn Harnett, who was married to Rodman Philbrick, passed away in 2012. She was a talented journalist, editor, and book reviewer, and she had a real knack for concocting scary stories that make the reader want to laugh, shriek with fear, and then turn the page to find out what happens next.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8535-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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