Home, Sweet Haunt

by P. J. Night

  “I’m not going to have any trouble falling asleep,” LL declared. “But I’d still like to hear the end. It’s entertaining.”

  “Of course,” Caitlin said with a wink to Nora.

  “Let me see, where was I?” Aleah lifted the lid of her laptop and settled down onto the floor.

  Caitlin asked Lucas, “Do you like scary stories? Aleah was telling us a good one!”

  “I like all kinds of stories. Can I stay?” he asked Nora.

  “Whatever.” Nora didn’t want her brother crashing the party, but Caitlin and the others didn’t seem to mind. Besides, she didn’t have time to argue with him. It was nearly ten o’clock, and she wanted to hear the end of Aleah’s story. “Sit.” She pointed to the couch that was still pulled out from the wall. The dumbwaiter panel was hanging open. “And no talking.”

  Zipping his lips and tossing the key, Lucas sat down on the sofa. He couldn’t help but open his mouth as he sank into the soft cushions, announcing, “This is so comfy!”

  “I know,” Nora told him. “Now shhhh.”

  He rezipped his lips and tossed away another pretend key.

  Aleah scrolled through the website to find where she’d been. “Here it is,” she said. “So, the woman on the street meets a strangely dressed soldier.” Aleah quickly reviewed the story so far. “He asks her for directions. The man makes the woman uneasy, but she moves closer to hear his very soft voice. There is something about his eyes that draws her in. They are glossy black, like a cat’s in the dark.”

  Nora felt that rise of anticipation. She leaned forward, eager to be scared, as Aleah continued.

  “The man opened the buttons on his jacket and removed a slip of paper from an inside pocket. The paper was yellowed with age. Tattered around the edges. Folded creases had been there a long, long time, and when he laid the page in his hand, the woman could see splattered reddish-brown stains speckled across the looping cursive words.”

  “Is all this on the website?” LL interrupted.

  “Sort of. The way it’s written is so matter-of-fact and boring,” Aleah said. “I’m fixing it as I go. Upping the fright-o-meter.”

  “Good job,” LL said. “Go on.”

  “And it’s all true?” Lucas asked.

  “Says at the top it is. The author claims he’s just reporting the facts of the legend,” Aleah said.

  “Wow.” Lucas raised his eyebrows. “What happened next?”

  “So.” Aleah took a second to read to get the story in her mind. “The man turned the paper toward her and said, ‘I’m seeking this address.’ She peered at the page. ‘You’re not lost,’ she told him. ‘This is where you need to be.’ She indicated the numbers on the outside of the nearest building.”

  Aleah described how the man reached into his other pocket and pulled out another slip of paper. “Newer than the first, this small slip was white and without folds or splatter marks. ‘I’m looking for a woman with this name.’ He handed the lady the note. She gasped. ‘That’s my name,’ she—”

  Caitlin’s doorbell rang.

  Nora jumped, not because she was scared, but because it was so unexpected.

  “Nora?” Caitlin’s father called from the hallway. “Your parents are here.”

  “Oh no!” Nora jumped up. “I forgot to check the time!” She glanced at a clock. “I’m late getting home.” Bummer. She didn’t want to leave.

  “I better go!” Lucas peeled himself off the couch and hurried into the dumbwaiter. The chains immediately began to rattle as he tugged himself up, raising the platform out of sight. “Close the panel behind me,” Lucas shouted down through the shaft.

  Caitlin shut the panel while Nora went out into the hallway. LL and Aleah pushed the couch into place.

  Nora’s mother and father were talking to Caitlin’s parents. Nora felt a surge of joy. Maybe things were going to change. Maybe they could all be friends!

  “You live upstairs?” Caitlin’s mom was asking as Nora stepped into view. She explained how they were new to town. “What apartment are you in?”

  “Oh, there you are,” Nora’s father said, as if seeing her for the first time in the hallway, though she’d been standing there a few seconds already. “It’s past curfew, young lady.”

  “Did you have a nice time?” her mother asked.

  “Yes.” Nora thanked Caitlin’s parents.

  Caitlin’s mother asked her question again. “You were about to tell us where you lived. What number apartment is it?”

  “Do you have your bag of candy?” Mrs. Wilson asked Nora.

  “And your mask?” her father asked. Then, seeing Nora’s shoes, he wondered, “Where are your flip-flops?”

  “I have them.” Caitlin appeared in the hallway. She had Nora’s flip-flops, and behind her Aleah and LL had Nora’s mask and treats.

  There was a lot of hugging before Nora left.

  “Thanks for inviting me tonight,” Nora said. “Sorry about the ghosts.” She winked.

  “We can try again next year,” Caitlin said with a big grin. “Maybe we’ll see a luminous disembodied soul next Halloween.” She gave Nora one more hug. “Will you come trick-or-treating again?”

  “Of course,” Nora said. “Nothing will keep me away!”

  “And we’ll see you soon,” Aleah said. “Right?”

  “Of course!” Nora said again. Caitlin was only a few floors down, so she could pop by anytime, and as for the others, she was determined to ask her parents about gymnastics lessons.

  As they walked out into the hallway and waited for the elevator, Nora’s dad glanced over Nora’s shoulder at her mom, then asked, “Ghosts, huh? What about ghosts?”

  “Caitlin heard a rumor that our building is haunted,” Nora explained. Her mother appeared frightened at the thought, so Nora said, “We checked around. No real ghosts. All we found was an old man pretending to be a ghost.” Then Nora told them, “Aleah did discover a really scary story on the Internet. A creepy thing that happened a block away from here.” She told them about the strange soldier as they rode the elevator to the tenth floor.

  “What happened at the end?” her mother asked when the elevator door opened.

  Nora shrugged and sighed. Her parents had picked her up, that’s what happened. But she didn’t say that. Instead she answered truthfully, “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Nora went to her room immediately. She didn’t want to go to sleep. She wasn’t tired. It was still Halloween. Nora had never ended the night without pulling a Halloween prank on Hallie and Lindsay. Well, she’d already pulled one on them today and it hadn’t turned out as planned. But Halloween wasn’t over yet. This year she decided that she’d prank her new friends, LL, Aleah, and Caitlin!

  They were all convinced now that the building wasn’t haunted. And they all thought Nora had gone to bed.

  All she needed to do was to use the dumbwaiter shaft. The panel in Caitlin’s TV room was still loose from when Lucas had fallen through. She could push through it, leap out, and scare them. Her parents would never even know she was gone.

  Ha! This would be the best Halloween prank ever.

  One of Nora’s favorite kitten posters was lying, slightly crumpled, on the floor. Just above it was the panel. Nora couldn’t believe that in all the years they’d lived in the apartment, she’d had no idea the dumbwaiter was there. When she’d started collecting posters, her dad had put them up for her. He must have covered the old panel and then forgotten it existed.

  “Hey.” Lucas stuck his head out of the dumbwaiter shaft and slipped into Nora’s room. “Your new friends are way better than your old ones. That was fun tonight!” Lucas yawned. He turned back to shut the panel door, when Nora bolted up off her bed.

  “It was fun!” She agreed that her new friends were awesome. “And the fun isn’t over.” Nora asked Lucas to show her how to work the ropes and pulleys to raise and lower the small platform.

  Lucas flexed an arm muscle. “It’s hard to move the
dumbwaiter. You have to control your speed going down.” He showed her how to put one hand over the other. “And the way up is even tougher.” Lucas imitated a pulling motion. “That’s why I got here after you. It takes a lot of muscles to pull your weight up.”

  “I’m strong enough,” Nora said, feeling insulted. She was older and bigger and definitely stronger than Lucas.

  Plus, she really wanted to get back to the sleepover. She wanted to hear the rest of Aleah’s story, eat more candy, and hang out till morning. She could ride the dumbwaiter back up early tomorrow morning before her parents noticed she was gone.

  “I’ll sneak around with you in the morning,” Nora promised her brother. “Right now, I’m going to go—”

  “Nora? Lucas?” It was their mom.

  Lucas shoved the dumbwaiter panel shut as their parents entered Nora’s bedroom. Nora grabbed the baby kitten poster, positioned it over the opening, and struggled to make the torn tape bits stick. When she stepped away from the wall, the poster was crooked, but the panel was covered.

  Standing near the dresser, Mrs. Wilson shot the two kids a look. She had an expression that indicated she knew they’d been up to something, but she wasn’t sure what. Usually that expression was pointed at Lucas, but tonight she kept staring at Nora. Mrs. Wilson studied her silently for a long time.

  “Nora. Lucas. Bedtime,” Nora’s mother said at last. “Be sure to brush your teeth.”

  “Blech.” Lucas moaned as he turned and walked out of Nora’s room toward the bathroom.

  “We’re locking the front door tonight with the top bolt. Now that we know there are rumors the building is haunted,” she told Nora, “we want to keep you and Lucas safe from all those ghost hunters roaming the hallways.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Nora said, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t know you believed in ghosts.”

  “It’s not the ghosts,” Mrs. Wilson said. “It’s the curious strangers who are lurking around tonight. Too many strangers.”

  Ugh. Nora was immediately reminded just how hard it was going to be to get permission to leave the apartment ever again. She’d thought that since she’d had such a great day, and nothing disastrous had happened, they might come around. But no. They were back to their worried, paranoid ways, not wanting her or Lucas to stray too far or anyone to come near the apartment.

  Sheesh, they’d survived a fire! No matter what her parents said about lightning strikes, something that awful could never happen twice. No way! Nora was going to have to show them it was safe for her to be out in the world.

  After her parents went to bed, Nora waited a few minutes to make sure no one was coming back to check on her. She carelessly ripped her poster off the wall and dropped it on the floor. Climbing into the dumbwaiter shaft, Nora had to tuck her feet under her legs to make her body small enough to fit in the opening. It was cramped inside, and her right foot immediately fell asleep.

  Nora reached out and took hold of one of the thick, rough ropes. With a yank on the pulley to loosen the rope, Nora gripped the frayed cord in both her fists. Then, hand-over-hand like Lucas had shown her, very slowly Nora began to lower herself down.

  She got past her own floor without a problem, but as she tried to go below the ninth floor, the rope caught and stuck. It was so dark inside the dumbwaiter that she couldn’t see a few inches in front of her. Nora stretched her arms high above her head to feel if the cord had somehow wrapped around the pulley. Everything felt as it should be, but it was almost like there was something propping the dumbwaiter up from below, causing it to stop. With no way to check underneath the base, Nora tugged on the cord to lift herself back onto her own floor. She’d get a flashlight from her room before setting out again.

  She pulled. And tugged. And shook the chains that held the platform. The platform refused to budge. It wouldn’t go up or down. Nora felt her heartbeat quicken. Why wouldn’t the dumbwaiter move?!

  Her hands began to sweat and her nerves were on fire.

  Nora was trapped inside the wall of the apartment building! Her mind started to play tricks on her. She was seeing shadows that weren’t possibly there. Without light how could there be shadows? They’d already proven that the ninth floor wasn’t haunted. Or had they?

  “No ghosts,” she found herself repeating out loud, over and over. “No gh—” When the scratching noises began, Nora remembered what LL and science had said was lurking on the ninth floor.

  Something scurried above Nora’s head.

  “Rats!” she screamed. “Rats!”

  In a moment of panic Nora pulled so hard on the rope that it came loose through the pulley. She was no longer in control. The dumbwaiter inched past the eighth floor, the seventh, the sixth . . . The rope slid through her hands as the dumbwaiter continued down, picking up speed as it headed—hurtled—toward the bottom of the shaft.

  CHAPTER 11

  Nora finally managed get a good hold on the rope. She held the cord so tightly her arm nearly pulled from its socket as the rope dragged her up onto her knees. The rope yanked through her hands. She didn’t know which floor she was at now, but she thought maybe she was approaching the second . . . and Caitlin’s apartment.

  “Help!” Nora cried. She’d planned to scare Caitlin, Aleah, and LL, but now she was the one who was scared. Nora called their names and shouted “Help!” so many times that her throat hurt from screaming.

  Slam. Slam. Nora pounded her fists against the wall as the dumbwaiter plummeted toward the second floor. She rotated her body and pressed both arms and both legs into the walls of the dumbwaiter shaft while shouting for help and begging the rats to leave her alone, all at the same time.

  The force of her body pressed into the walls caused the dumbwaiter to slow. It didn’t stop, but it was enough, if only her friends would open the panel. They had to open the panel!

  “Caitlin!” Nora called. “Aleah! LL!”

  “Nora?!” Her name was shouted in a chorus of three different voices.

  The panel in Caitlin’s apartment popped open, and Nora tumbled out and hit the floor with a slam.

  Behind her the dumbwaiter continued down until it crashed in the basement. The cracking noise of the base of the box against the cement of the floor reminded Nora what would have happened if her friends hadn’t opened the panel in time.

  Nora leaped up and hugged each of her friends. “Thank you!” She felt so emotional, tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Are you all right?” Caitlin asked, leading Nora to the sofa.

  Nora was shaking. She’d never been so frightened.

  “Your hands are freezing cold,” Aleah said, grabbing her sleeping bag from the floor, where the girls had positioned their beds. LL and Aleah each took a side, and they wrapped Nora in the fluffy blue sack.

  “Here, eat this.” LL gave Nora some chocolate. “You’re so pale, you’re practically blue.”

  Nora let the chocolate melt on her tongue and ate a few of Caitlin’s licorice sticks. The sugar, and time, calmed her nerves, and soon she felt better.

  “Thanks,” Nora told her friends. “You rescued me.”

  “We were getting ready to look for a movie on TV,” Aleah said, “when we heard you shouting inside the walls.”

  “We were hoping you’d sneak back,” Caitlin admitted. “I somehow imagined it would be with less dramatic an entrance, though.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I planned to scare you,” Nora told them.

  “Well,” LL said, “you did do that!” She put an arm around Nora. “We’re glad you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine,” Nora said. She nodded toward the dumbwaiter shaft. “I’m not sure how I’m going to get home. That was my ride.”

  “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow,” Caitlin said. “For now, just enjoy the sleepover.”

  Aleah read aloud a list of classic horror movies that were playing tonight. Nora had seen them all. And she loved them all.

  Caitlin ran to her room and dug up a pillow and a sleeping bag. She han
ded them to Nora.

  Nora knew she shouldn’t be there. She knew she was supposed to be upstairs. She knew she had no way to sneak back into her room now. She knew her parents would be mad about the dumbwaiter. She knew all that.

  Nora also knew she wasn’t ready to go home.

  Halloween wasn’t over.

  Not yet.

  As Nora settled in to spend the night, she asked Aleah, “What happened at the end of the story?”

  “Story?” Aleah paused the movie. “What story?”

  “The soldier. The lady,” Nora said. “I left before the end.”

  “Oh,” Aleah told Nora, “I was almost finished. The woman went inside and left him standing on the street.” She pressed play on the film. The opening music began. “She called a few friends to tell them what had happened. A few days later she died.”

  “From what?” Nora asked.

  “The website didn’t say. I offered to write a better ending,” Aleah told Nora. “Caitlin and LL turned me down.”

  “It’s supposed to be true,” Caitlin said. “If you made up what happened next, it wouldn’t be true.”

  “Just saying, my explanation would have been better than no explanation.” Aleah shrugged and clicked up the volume on the TV.

  “Hmmm.” Nora tucked Caitlin’s pillow behind her head.

  Maybe there was no ending simply because no one, except the soldier and the lady, knew the whole story, and they weren’t telling.

  CHAPTER 12

  As midnight crept closer, the girls were full of candy and growing sleepy. Caitlin’s cat was snoozing at the edge of Caitlin’s sleeping bag. She was curled up in a tight black fuzz ball and breathing deeply.

  “One last story, Aleah. Please.” Caitlin wanted to hear another true ghost story before they crashed for the night.

  The lights were off. They’d gotten bored with the movies. Aleah’s computer screen glowed in the darkness. “I’ll find one that will give us all bad dreams,” Aleah said with a chuckle.

  “I’ll sleep like a baby,” LL assured her. “Don’t worry about me.”