PUFFIN
THE HAUNTING OF HECK HOUSE
LESLEY LIVINGSTON’s books have received many awards and accolades. How to Curse in Hieroglyphics, co-authored with Jonathan Llyr, was longlisted for the CBA Libris Award and shortlisted for the CLA Book of the Year for Children Award. Once Every Never, the first book in her Never series, won the Copper Cylinder Award and was named a YA science fiction book of the year by Quill & Quire. It was also shortlisted for the CLA Young Adult Book Award and the Stellar Book Award. Livingston lives in Toronto.
JONATHAN LLYR is the co-author of How to Curse in Hieroglyphics (see above). He is also well known for being the on-air host and writer for Canada’s nationally broadcast Space Channel from 1999 to 2007, where he routinely found himself in close contact with major science fiction and fantasy stars, and was a voice for genre fans everywhere. Llyr continues to write and act in film and television. He lives in Toronto.
ALSO BY LESLEY LIVINGSTON AND JONATHAN LLYR
THE WIGGINS WEIRD
How to Curse in Hieroglyphics
ALSO BY LESLEY LIVINGSTON
(for young adult readers)
THE NEVER TRILOGY
Once Every Never
Every Never After
Now and for Never
THE STARLING TRILOGY
Starling
Descendant
THE WONDROUS STRANGE TRILOGY
Wondrous Strange
Darklight
Tempestuous
FOR SIMON EVANS. MAN.
MACHINE. DRIVE–INSPIRATION.
CONTENTS
1 IT CAME FROM THE THIRD DIMENSION!
2 IT CAME FROM THE FOURTH DIMENSION!
3 THE THING FROM (REALLY) BEYOND
4 DIAL S FOR SITTERS
5 HARRIED AT THE HOUSE!
6 OPERATION: DING DONG
7 A ROOM WITH A BOO!
8 PANICKED ROOM
9 SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE
10 THE LEAGUE OF AWESOME
11 THE MAGNIFICENT TWO THREE FIVE SEVEN
12 LOCKED AND GOADED!
13 THE GHOSTS AND MR. SPEAKER
14 THE REALLY GREAT ESCAPE
15 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOUSE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 IT CAME FROM THE THIRD DIMENSION!
‘‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you …” Tweed Pendleton murmured in a gravely singsong monotone.
“Save your breath, pal,” Cheryl Shumacher whispered breathlessly. “They are totally going in there.”
“They never learn.”
“They never do.”
The two girls—both twelve years old, cousins and best friends—watched the action unfold on their beloved Drive-In movie screen as Freddy and Marlene, a young, dewy-eyed, newlywed couple, decided not to turn around and leave the attic of the creepy old house they’d only just bought as a fixer-upper. Even though the storm raging outside had knocked the power out and the flashlight in young Freddy’s hand was running low on juice, they weren’t leaving.
After all, they’d already completely ignored the inexplicable warnings of “Get out!” and “Don’t go in the attic!” that kept appearing in bathroom-mirror fog and splattered in ketchup on the kitchen walls.
Near giddy with excitement, Cheryl and Tweed kept their eyes glued to the screen.
Creeeeeeeaaaakkk … The attic door slowly opened. Freddy’s watery flashlight beam swept the shadowy gloom.
“See, honey?” he said. “Nothing to worry ab— AAAGGHHH!!”
“EEEEEEEKKKK!!!” Marlene shrieked in terror.
Ghostly, skeletal hands reached right out toward Cheryl and Tweed, seeming almost to brush within inches of their faces before wrapping around Freddy’s arms. The malevolent spirit of Old Lady Brakenbiscuit screamed in hysterical triumph and dragged poor Fred into the darkness as the attic door slammed shut and Marlene tore down the staircase, out the front door and ran for her life!
Cheryl and Tweed laughed, toasting each other with their chocolate-dipped ice cream cones and shovelling more popcorn into their mouths with contented sighs. Their sage advice had once more been ignored and they couldn’t be happier. Cheryl Shumacher and Tweed Pendleton had dedicated their young lives to watching movies (particularly B-grade ones), studying the teachings of the silver screen, learning its lessons, listening to its wisdoms and living their lives according to its hidden truths. High up on that list of truths, of course, was “Don’t go up into a creepy old attic during a thunderstorm.”
Cheryl pushed her cardboard 3D glasses up her nose with one knuckle so they fit more securely on top of her own regular glasses.
“Thank goodness they never learn!” she said, her braces creating a hint of a lisp. “If they did, we wouldn’t have had such an embarrassment of riches to choose from for this awesome-tastic triumph of three-dimensional double-bill programming.”
“You got that right,” Tweed agreed in her signature monotone and pointed at the screen. “Oh good— look—Marlene is out in the yard running straight for the abandoned caretaker’s shack where all those rusty old garden tools are stored.”
Cheryl and Tweed had been given the duty of choosing what movies would go on the weekly double and triple bills for the Starlight Paradise Drive-In Double- Screen Movie Theatre by their grandfather Jefferson “Pops” Pendleton, only a week earlier. This was their second effort and it had been a hard choice to make. Thematically, they’d decided early on to go with ghost stories. That was the easy part. But there were so many gems to choose from!
Should they go for the funny? Like, say, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (classic Don Knotts fare, complete with goofy faces and funny voices). Or, perhaps, the campy? Like, say, the Ed Wood–directed low-budget classic Night of the Ghouls, with its floating-sheet ghosts and truly bizarre seance scene attended by skeletons and complete with a hovering trumpet? Or should they just go straight for the terror? Like, say, Seance in Suite 777. Or Sleepover Slaughter … Or even the offbeat? Like, say, Spookapalooza—a ’90s grunge-era pic, shot handheld-style like a documentary of a music festival, but on ancient burial grounds.
The girls had wanted quality—they had both immediately rejected the box-office flop Don’t Turn Around! along with its even floppier sequel, No, Seriously, Don’t Turn Around! Also the less-than-B-grade efforts This Ghoul’s for Hire, Ghost with the Most, Moon over Splatter Manor and Shriek Shack. Those movies were all overstuffed with characters they called, “Too Stupid to Live” (or TSTL for short). No, the girls valued the intelligence and discerning tastes of their prospective patrons.
Ultimately, they’d gone with truly timeless fare for their double bill: the classic haunted mansion picture Menace of Maison de Casa House, followed by the horror-comedy masterpiece Ding Dong, You’re Dead!
And the icing on the ghoulish cake? Both pictures were available in 3D! Cheryl and Tweed had been dying to hand out the cardboard green-and-red-lensed 3D glasses, which had been languishing forever in a box on a shelf in the projection booth, to the Drive-In’s patrons, and finally this was their chance! The town of Wiggins Cross would be abuzz on Monday morning with water-cooler movie chat!
Now, as they sat in Pops’s pickup truck at the back of the Starlight Paradise’s (full-to-capacity, thanks to their excellent choices) Drive-In movie lot, the girls revelled in the squeals of gleeful terror that occasionally drifted over from the other cars parked in the lot. Every time a ghostly hand or ghastly face or—as in the scene they now watched, wide-eyed—floating garden implement seemed to leap off the screen and through the windshields of the parked cars, the girls could see the vehicles shudder with the responses of their occupants. And they would trade worldly glances, knowing that—although enjoying their audie
nces’ reactions—they, themselves, were far too steeped in the traditions of the cinema to ever fall for the sudden-shock scare.
“Amateurs,” Cheryl said. “Nothing scares us.”
“Oh, absolutely.” Tweed nodded, her solemn grey eyes unblinking behind the parti-coloured 3D lenses. “Nothing in the world could possibly—GAH!!”
The inside of the truck cab suddenly exploded with snacks as a ghastly creature leaped up from right in front of the front bumper, landing loudly on the hood and, contrary to the girls’ recent assertions, scaring the ice-cream-loving socks right off both of them! Cheryl’s double-dip ice cream wound up stuck to the roof of the cab when she launched it into the air in involuntary terror. The cracked cone dripped ice cream onto her freckled nose. The fringe of Tweed’s straight, dark hair had lost some of its gothy seriousness, dotted as it now was with gummi worms and popcorn puffs. Beneath the fringe, her 3D glasses sat askew at a hilarious angle.
Outside, on the hood of the truck, their grandfather Pops laughed as he pulled the inside-out clown mask off his head, pleased that he had once again managed to startle his unstartleable granddaughters. The girls had to give him credit. His usual methodology was to wait until they had been lulled deep into their movie-watching groove, then he would climb quietly up into the truck bed and—during a suspenseful scene—pound on the roof of the cab. This time, Cheryl and Tweed had secretly rigged up fishing line tripwires connected to jingle bells in the cab so they’d be alerted to his approach. But Pops had been on to their booby trap and, sneaking around to the front of the old pickup, had made good use of the 3D effects emanating from the big screen.
“Well played, Pops,” Cheryl murmured, plucking her ice cream stalactite from the ceiling and plopping its sticky remains into her empty soda cup.
“Well played, indeed,” Tweed agreed, untangling a gummi worm from her bangs.
Still chuckling, Pops came around to the driver’s-side window, where the car speaker, removed from its resting post, hung inside. He knocked a knuckle on the glass pane. Tweed rolled the partially open window down far enough for Pops to stick his head inside the truck.
“Picture’s over in fifteen minutes, girls,” he said. “I expect you both to be in bed with your teeth brushed and PJs on right after the end credits roll, all right?”
“Okey-doke,” Cheryl said.
“Affirmative.” Tweed nodded.
“That’s my girls,” Pops said and wandered back toward the Drive-In’s Snak Shak.
The girls had lived with their grandfather in his farmhouse at the edge of the Drive-In lot ever since they were five years old. Everyone in Wiggins referred to them as “the twins” and they were, in fact, identical twins—just not with each other. They were cousins. But one day seven years earlier, on a double family outing, Cheryl and Tweed and their twin sisters and parents had all boarded a small plane and headed out for a weekend vacation in the mountains west of Wiggins.
That was the last anyone saw of Cheryl’s family, or Tweed’s family, or the family friend who had piloted the plane. Cheryl and Tweed were found alone in the foothills two days later, unharmed but with no recollection of what had happened beyond a flash of bright white light. No one in Wiggins liked to talk much about “The Incident,” but, whatever had happened all those years ago, it had forged an unbreakable bond between the cousins. Well, that … and a mutual love of B movies and buttered popcorn. Along with a burgeoning babysitting business!
As Pops ambled off, the girls braced themselves for the movie’s big finish—wherein the clueless couple, Freddy and Marlene, hire a wacky mystic who holds a seance to rid the house of its wicked ways and evil attitude. Only, of course, to have the whole thing spectacularly backfire with huge amounts of supernatural fireworks and running and screaming as the old film fades to the end credits. Giggling and satisfied, Cheryl and Tweed punched each other in the arm.
Another successful movie night at the old Drive-In.
After the flick, the girls took a bit of a detour on the way to the white farmhouse they called home, bypassing the Drive-In’s mini-putt range and swinging by the big old red barn—which housed C+T headquarters—to drop off their 3D glasses, customized with sparkle stickers and glitter glue, and stash their favourite movie-watching blankets and pillows.
They were on their way out of the barn when they caught sight of a small square envelope, lying on the floor just inside the barn door.
“Hey! Look at this!” Cheryl bent down to examine the rather fancy-looking stationery illuminated by a single shaft of moonlight. The envelope was made of heavy, cream-coloured paper with a ruffle-edged flap. Inside was an antique-looking formal invitation.
Tweed leaned over Cheryl’s shoulder as she read the precise, elegantly embossed, gold lettering.
An OPEN INVITATION to the Notable Young Sitters of WIGGINS CROSS
You are hereby invited to a friendly overnight competition—comprised of skills challenges—for the purpose of determining who is best suited to be awarded a contract to House-Sit at the noble and prestigious residence of Sir Hector Hecklestone the Third, while his Lordship and Family travel abroad.
Please present yourselves, along with this invitation, at sundown, tomorrow eve.
44678 Eerie Lane, Wiggins Cross
H. H. III
Participants must be 13 years of age or older.
“Holy moly!” Cheryl exclaimed. “This could be our ticket to the big time!”
“Oh, absolutely.” Tweed nodded vigorously. “Our sitting skills are honed. Razor sharp. Especially after the carnival incident and the addition of our pet-minding services par excellence.”
The girls grabbed hands and began to jump around the barn in a crazy little dance of super-sitter glee.
A week earlier, a travelling carnival had set up shop— or, rather, tents—in the empty field across the road from the Drive-In, and through a series of unfortunate events had unleashed a cursed mummy princess on the unsuspecting Wiggins folk. Thanks to the timely intervention and curse-foiling pizzazz of Cheryl and Tweed, along with their best friend, Yeager “Pilot” Armbruster, and their ten-year-old nemesis-turned-trusty-sidekick, Artie Bartleby, the town was saved. All this had happened at the same time as the girls had been engaged in cat-sitting fifteen—fifteen!—furballs for the town’s middle school librarian, Marjorie Parks.
“I’ll bet you Miz Parks has been chatting up friends and acquaintances,” Cheryl surmised, slapping the stiff paper invite in the palm of her hand. “No doubt regaling them with tales of our superior customer care and the overall satisfaction of her passel of puddins.”
“No doubt,” Tweed agreed. “Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. And our new flyers and capital W-O-W slogan branding should get us some serious sitter traction.”
W-O-W stood for “While-O-Wait.” The slogan had started life as a typo on Cheryl and Tweed’s business cards—the girls took their fledgling sitter business very seriously—and had been meant to read “While-U-Wait” but instead had come back from the printer reading:
Cheryl & Tweed’s
Expertitious Child-minding Services
(and Auto-vehicular Detailing)
While – O – Wait
Instead of correcting the glitch and shelling out allowance money for another print run, the twins had embraced the quirky phrase and used it as both a catchy (if somewhat nonsensical) slogan and motivational expression.
“Totally,” Cheryl said, in answer to Tweed’s assertion. “Odd to think that, in light of all that, this Sir Heck-en-whatzits fellow wouldn’t just offer us the contract right off the bat.”
“Sure,” Tweed said. “Although, to be fair … I don’t remember delivering any flyers to anywhere on that street.”
“Good point. In fact, I’m not even sure I know where that street is.”
Tweed trotted over to the work table on the other side of the Moviemobile, a 1964 Mercury Comet convertible with an old TV bolted to the hood and a VHS player retrofitted u
nder the dash (perfect for movie watching on the nights when the Drive-In was dark), and fished through a stacked pile of envelopes and papers, looking for a map of the town of Wiggins Cross. The girls had been using it to plan their flyer routes and distribute freshly printed info sheets in the wake of their successful retrieval of a quartet of escaped toddlers—the Bottoms boys—advertising a one-time-only discount for new clients. Never mind the fact that the very next day the girls had then had to rescue the boys from an ancient curse that had transformed them into the reptilian minions of an Egyptian mummy princess. In the end, disaster had been averted and Mr. and Mrs. Bottoms had been none the wiser.
Of course, Cheryl and Tweed hadn’t been able to use any of that in their promotional material. But they’d been buoyed by their successes nevertheless, and it had spurred their advertising efforts. They must have stuffed fifty mailboxes with flyers. At least. Maybe this Hecklestone House had been one of them.
After a few moments of paper shuffling, Tweed found what she was looking for and spread the map out on the work table, smoothing down the creases and flattening the edges. There were marks on the map made in neon marker—streets and neighbourhoods circled and crossed off—all places where the girls had covered territory in their bouts of flyer blitzing. Which meant that, with the exception of the downtown business district and a somewhat industrial zone on the eastern edge of town, most of the map was a brightly coloured patchwork.
“Eerie … Eerie …” Tweed muttered, running her finger in a zigzag pattern from side to side across the town’s contours. “I don’t see any—wait! Here it is … Eerie Lane.”
“Lessee!”
Cheryl leaned on her elbows over the map and looked at where Tweed’s finger pinned the paper. She blinked, not certain what her cousin was pointing to, at first. But then, sure enough, there was a line—barely more than a half-inch squiggle—that branched off at a right angle about three-quarters of a mile down past where Rural Route #1 crossed a dilapidated old covered bridge on the western edge of town. It was well within bike-riding distance, and yet the girls had never encountered the little street. Maybe it was because that particular bit of map seemed … faded. Foggy. Just a bit out of focus compared to the crisp lines that criss-crossed the rest of the paper’s surface. Probably a printing error.
The Haunting of Heck House Page 1
