The Final Nightmare

by Rodman Philbrick

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” called Lucy in a faint, squeaky voice.

  The scratching stopped. I felt Lucy and Steve stiffen on either side of me.

  It was watching us. Watching us from the dark.

  Then came a low hissing noise, and something heavy slid toward us across the floor.

  We took another step back. Our muscles were so rigid we were like statues roped together.

  I turned to whisper—I was going to suggest going upstairs, just for a minute, to find some more lights, get a drink of water, anything to get out of here—but I didn’t get the chance.

  The snake-hiss noise got louder. It snarled.

  The thing in the dark was angry.

  Suddenly a cardboard box came flying out of the corner. It landed with a heavy thud.

  Whatever kicked it was mad. And strong.

  “I don’t think that was a cat,” whispered Lucy.

  “Definitely not a cat,” Steve agreed.

  No, it wasn’t a cat. But if it wasn’t a cat, what was it?

  I didn’t really want to stick around to find out.

  But when I looked back at the stairs I saw the box had landed right between us and our most direct route out.

  I looked at the box. Was there something moving inside it?

  Something struggling to get out?

  11

  “Jason! Look!” Steve gripped my arm. Lucy gasped.

  I didn’t want to look away from the box. I had it fixed in my mind that if I looked away, small creatures with needle-sharp teeth would spill out and disappear into the shadows, ready to cut our ankles to ribbons when we attempted to escape up the stairs.

  “Jason!” Steve’s voice cracked. His fingers dug into my shoulder.

  I tore my eyes from the box.

  At first I almost didn’t see it. It was a black shape in the darkness, a shadow among all the other shadows.

  But it moved. It slithered along the wall around the edges of the basement.

  Gliding through the shadows as if all the piles of junk in its way didn’t even exist.

  And its glowing eyes were fixed on us.

  The thing in the shadows was circling us.

  “If we don’t get out of here right now,” Steve whispered, “I’m going to wet my pants.”

  We took a step backward, toward the stairs, then another.

  The thing bared sharp teeth and hissed in fury.

  It started moving faster.

  Then it disappeared.

  It wasn’t there.

  We gripped one another.

  One thing we knew—it wasn’t gone. We couldn’t see it, but it definitely could see us. We could feel the evil eyes probing from the dark.

  We ran for the stairs.

  “AHHHHHHHHHH!”

  With a shriek, the thing sprang from the shadows and rushed at us, skeleton hands outstretched.

  It was the witch-thing! And her weird eyes were locked on mine. I could feel the hate radiate from her. The creature hated anything alive.

  It reached for my neck, clawed fingers twitching.

  The creature’s foul breath stunned me like a poison cloud.

  The last thing I breathed as it started to choke the life out of me was that rotten, garbage-smelling breath.

  12

  Something grabbed my waist and jerked me hard out of the witch’s grasp.

  I stumbled and heard someone shouting from a long ways off.

  “Jason! Quick! Run!”

  The witch’s screech of fury blasted me with her poisonous breath. I felt like I was drowning in a sewer.

  My sight dimmed.

  Icy finger bones scrabbled at my collar, reaching for my neck.

  I felt another sharp tug at my waist.

  “Jason! Come on!”

  Lucy was pulling desperately on the rope that tied the three of us together, yanking us toward the stairs.

  Steve grabbed my arm and I shook my head to get rid of the foul-smelling fog that surrounded me.

  “You’re mine!” shrieked the witch. “Mine!”

  I tripped over a box and fell down. I felt her hot breath blister my neck.

  Something rattled in the box and I rolled away, panicked with a vision of hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.

  The witch cackled in triumph as her fingers dug into my shoulder.

  She started to drag me back into the shadows of the basement.

  I knew I was a goner.

  Then Lucy grabbed the box and heaved it. Missing my head, it connected with the thing behind me.

  There was a cry of pain and I was free.

  “Take that you—you—you old witch!” Lucy shouted.

  Steve jerked me to my feet and Lucy charged for the stairs, pulling us along behind her.

  I stumbled again at the bottom of the stairs but Lucy kept going, tugging on the rope while Steve pushed me from behind.

  We fell into the kitchen, our chests heaving with exhaustion.

  I slammed the door behind us and bolted it.

  “I can’t believe I really saw it,” said Lucy, getting her breath back. “It was even more horrible than you said, Jason.”

  I rubbed my neck where the witch had squeezed me. “I was wrong about her having less power in the daytime,” I said, slumping against the wall. I felt defeated. “I don’t know what we can do to stop her.”

  “We could nail the basement door closed,” Lucy suggested.

  But I knew that wouldn’t work. “Ghosts get through locked doors,” I said. “That won’t stop them.”

  “Let’s try it anyway,” Lucy said. “It can’t hurt.”

  Steve wasn’t paying attention to us. He got to his feet and heaved a deep sigh of relief.

  “Amazing,” he said to himself. “I didn’t wet my pants after all.”

  13

  “What on earth are you kids doing?”

  Startled, I whirled around and almost dropped the hammer on my toe. We’d been making so much noise nailing the basement door shut I hadn’t heard the car or the front door.

  “Mom! I didn’t expect you so early. How is Katie?” I asked, dropping the rest of the nails in my pocket.

  “Hello, Mrs. Winter,” said Steve with a guilty look on his face.

  “Hi, Mrs. Winter,” said Lucy. “How was your trip?”

  “Fine, Lucy, thank you,” said Mom, looking distracted. She turned to me. “Jason, your dad and I need to talk to you. The doctors say Katie’s head injury isn’t serious but for some reason she’s still not making sense—babbling about ghosts and witches. What exactly happened here last night?”

  Lucy and Steve exchanged glances. “We’ll be going now,” said Steve, edging toward the back door.

  “But what is this?” said Mom, her glance catching on a half-hammered nail. “Jason, what are you up to? Why are you nailing the basement door?”

  “It’s the witch,” Lucy blurted. “She’s in the basement. She’s real. We saw her. Didn’t we? Tell her, Steve, we saw her. She would have got Jason if we hadn’t all been roped together. It was the witch who attacked Katie.”

  Steve nodded, his eyes on the floor. “It’s true, Mrs. Winter. This house is haunted.” He looked up at her and finished in a rush, “You shouldn’t stay here!”

  My heart soared! Mom had to believe us now. She couldn’t think we were all making it up!

  Could she?

  Mom had a strange, baffled expression on her face as she looked at each of us, one after the other. She didn’t say anything. Her hair looked limp and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  “We saw it, Mom,” I burst out. “Really we did.”

  “You children better go now,” she said to Lucy and Steve. “Jason’s dad and I have some catching up to do.”

  After my friends left Mom gestured at me to sit down at the kitchen table. “Dad will be right down,” she said. “He’s checking on Sally.”

  It was kind of solemn waiting for Dad. Mom poured us each some juice but she didn’t say anything, ju
st kept giving me these worried looks. I was relieved to hear Dad’s step on the stairs.

  “Sally was really out,” he said, coming into the kitchen. “She never even opened her eyes.”

  Then he stopped, seeing the expression on Mom’s face. “What’s up?” he asked, cocking his head worriedly at me.

  But Mom spoke first. “I came in and found Jason and his friends nailing the basement door shut,” she said.

  Dad’s face fell. I noticed he had dark circles under his eyes, too. He sat down at the table. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

  It was a long afternoon. I told them everything. No matter how crazy it sounded I went ahead and told about it.

  My stomach was in knots. I could tell they didn’t believe me. They were trying to look understanding but the strain of it kept breaking through.

  I felt like I was beating my brains out on a wall of soft pillows.

  Finally Dad stood up. “Well, there’s one thing we can check,” he said. “This witch of yours is still nailed in the basement, right? Let’s go find her.”

  14

  Dad got his big torch flashlight out of the car.

  He pried the nails out of the door and headed down without hesitation. I followed, feeling queasy.

  It was different going down there with Dad. For one thing his big light cut through the gloom like a knife through butter. All the junk looked lifeless and ordinary.

  And I knew the witch would never show herself to Dad. I could feel those eyes burning holes in our backs as we picked our way through the junk. I could almost hear her cackling silently.

  Dad shone his light into every corner but we didn’t see a thing. No ghosts. Not even a mouse.

  “What about the attic, Dad,” I said when we were back in the kitchen with the basement door closed and bolted. “You can see what she’s capable of up there.” I was pretty sure from things that happened before, that Bobby couldn’t fix things the witch did on her own.

  “Okay, son. Let’s take a look.”

  He marched all the way upstairs to the attic. I followed—my stomach felt rotten and my knees were shaky, but I couldn’t let him go up there alone.

  “I don’t believe it!” Dad said, stepping into the attic.

  The walls were still smashed up and there was broken plaster everywhere. So I hadn’t imagined this attack, that was for sure.

  My dad looked stunned and baffled as he examined the wreckage.

  “See, Dad?” I couldn’t help being a little excited. “Now do you believe me? Now do you see how dangerous it is in this house?”

  “I see that something very strange has been going on,” he said slowly. “This is awful. This kind of destruction is very serious.”

  He thought I did it!

  “But Dad—”

  “Let’s go downstairs, son. We’ll talk about this later.”

  I shivered, feeling cold from the roots of my hair to my toes.

  Nobody said much at supper.

  I wasn’t hungry—the hamburgers tasted like sawdust to me. My brain was numb and I didn’t know what to say.

  I escaped to my room as soon as I could.

  After a while I heard Mom and Dad go into the living room. They were talking in quiet, urgent voices and I knew they were talking about me.

  I opened my door and snuck down the hallway to the stairs.

  “I can’t believe Jason would deliberately smash up the attic,” said Mom. “He’s not like that. And what about the baby-sitter? She thought she saw something, too.”

  “I can’t believe Jason would do it, either,” Dad admitted. “But what other explanation is there? You’re not saying you believe all this nonsense about a haunted house?”

  “No, of course not. All I’m saying, Dave, is that I think we should move to another place for the rest of the summer. Ghosts or no ghosts, something weird is going on in this house.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Dad. “We’re out of our depth with this. I’ll go see the real estate agent in the morning.”

  I wanted to jump up and down for joy.

  My parents still didn’t believe in the haunting. But they were going to get us out of here. By tomorrow, maybe.

  Sally and I could survive anything for one more night.

  Couldn’t we?

  15

  No matter how much I tossed and turned I just couldn’t get to sleep that night.

  I tried sitting up and staring out at the windows, but the tall, shadowy trees made the yard look spookier than ever. So I got back in bed and pulled the covers over my head and tried to relax.

  Not a chance. A million thoughts were racing through my mind. Thoughts about the ghosts and what they really wanted and why it had been my rotten luck to spend summer vacation in a haunted house.

  I even tried counting sheep, but nothing worked.

  Maybe if I fixed myself a glass of warm milk. That was supposed to make you sleepy, right?

  But that would mean getting up and going downstairs to the kitchen, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. Because whenever I ventured outside my room at night in this house, something terrible happened.

  I was thinking about that when I heard somebody tiptoe down the hall to Sally’s room. Must be Mom, checking to see that my little sister was okay.

  I lay there waiting, expecting to hear Mom go back to her own room. But there was nothing.

  Nothing but a faint, creaky noise.

  Something was wrong.

  I got up and went out into the darkened hallway.

  Sally’s door was a few inches open, like always.

  And light was coming from the door. Not the little night lamp by her bed, but a strange, glowing light.

  I pushed open the door.

  “Sally?” I whispered.

  The bedclothes were rumpled and bunched up. But the lump underneath was too small to be Sally. Wasn’t it?

  Maybe I was wrong.

  I tiptoed to the bed and eased the blanket back. Winky, the stuffed bunny, lay in the center of the mattress where Sally should have been.

  The room seemed to get darker as the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  I heard a moaning noise and whipped around, only to realize it was coming from me.

  Then I noticed that Sally’s closet door was open. She liked it closed. Maybe something had frightened her—a dream maybe—and she was hiding in there.

  Without Winky? I knew that was a no-hoper even as I tiptoed to the closet. The door creaked as I eased it open the rest of the way and looked in.

  It was black in there. Totally dark.

  I leaned in. “Sally?” No answer.

  It was a deep closet. I got down on my hands and knees and poked my head in, hoping to see Sally curled up in a corner.

  I didn’t see Sally. But what I did see hit me like a punch in the stomach. Sally’s favorite nubby blanket was balled up and stuck into the back of the closet like a rag!

  I pulled out the old blanket. Was it my imagination or was it still warm? Sally might have been here just a moment ago. But where had she gone? Down the hall, maybe, to my parents’ bedroom.

  Right. She got scared and went to Mom and Dad.

  Pleased with my new idea, I was starting to back out of the closet when I saw something much worse than a discarded balled-up blanket.

  A faint light was coming from the back of the closet. A sickening, greenish light. And shimmering in the light, stuck in a crack in the wall, were two long blond hairs.

  Sally’s hair.

  As I reached out the greenish light grew brighter and the crack shot up the length of the wall!

  I fell back on my heels. A doorknob was forming before my eyes right in the wall! It was an old metal doorknob—and I knew what I was supposed to do if I wanted to get Sally back.

  Swallowing past the huge lump in my throat, I made myself reach up and touch the doorknob. It was icy cold. But it turned easily.

  The door that I knew couldn’t be
there swung open without a sound. Cold air poured out on me, smelling of things shut up for years.

  In the green glowing light I saw a steep, narrow staircase disappearing up into darkness. There was a strange smell. A stink that made my nose wrinkle.

  Shivering in the cold, I groped my way into the open doorway. I had to go up. That was the only way to save Sally! But the cold seeped through my clothes and gripped my heart in an icy fist.

  Suddenly I recognized the smell.

  The phantom stairway reeked of fear.

  16

  I crouched to fit through the strange little door. The stairs were so narrow my elbows scraped the damp stone walls as I climbed.

  I was shivering. Shivering so hard I was afraid I might fall.

  How could Bobby ever have gotten Sally to go up these stairs? Poor Sally! Wherever she was, I knew she was terrified.

  “I’m coming, Sally,” I said through chattering teeth. I’d never been so cold. This nightmare cold seeped into my bones and curled up there without getting any warmer as I climbed the stairs. Dreading every step.

  The horrible dim green light moved with me but I still couldn’t see where I was going.

  Then suddenly I was at the top of the stairs. I was standing in front of a heavy wooden door with big metal hinges. Like the door to a dungeon.

  A thick iron bar lay across it, as if to keep some huge monster from escaping. I put my ear to the door but there was no sound from the other side.

  Of course, Sally could be screaming her head off in there and I wouldn’t be able to hear her through that door.

  The stink of fear was worse up here. It got into my nose and worked its way into my brain until I wanted to turn tail and run down those stairs like a gibbering idiot.

  If I did that, Sally would be stuck behind this door with whoever or whatever put her there. She’d be stuck here forever on the other side of the ghost world.

  With a tremendous effort, I blew out my breath and took hold of the iron bar. It was as heavy as it looked. But finally I lifted it out of its holders. I propped the bar against my leg and twisted the big metal ring that served as a doorknob.

  With a shriek of metal on stone, the door opened.