Haunted Sleepover

by B. A. Frade

  He pushed open the door, and I flashed the light in before we crossed the threshold.

  “It’s a storage room,” I said, feeling a little less scared. It wasn’t like anything in a storage room might attack us. Right?

  Connor found the light switch.

  Bathed in florescent light, this room was not scary at all. But Blake was nowhere to be found.

  The room had all the normal signs of human life. There were plans on the walls for new displays and bookcases stuffed with the kinds of books I loved to read: science, history, and anthropology.

  In the corner were boxes marked “Costumes—India.”

  “That’s for a new exhibit opening next month,” Emily said, peeking in the top box and lifting a red silk scarf. It had fine gold embroidery along the side. “Ooh, pretty,” she said as she set it back. Then, as she closed the box lid again, Emily screamed.

  “What?” I cried out as Connor and I dashed across the room to her.

  “There.” She raised her hand to where Blake was now standing near the door we’d come in. In the light of the storage room, he seemed more transparent. I could actually see the shadow of the wall behind him.

  Blake had his hands behind his back.

  Connor and I went to stand with Emily.

  “He popped up out of nowhere,” she told us. “That’s what scared me.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Me too.”

  Emily glared at Blake and said, “Stop doing that. It’s not nice.”

  He raised his eyebrows and grinned.

  Blake hadn’t spoken, and I wondered if he could. He was standing by the carved door, still holding his hands behind his back. He looked like any other middle school kid, one that we might be friends with.

  I decided to try a conversation.

  “Blake?” I asked. I felt silly. Like I should be on some paranormal TV show. The kind of show I never watch.

  He nodded.

  Before I could say anything else, Emily jumped into the conversation. “Where is Bella?”

  Blake lowered his eyes away from us and very slowly brought his hands out from behind his back. He was no longer smiling. In his hands was one of Bella’s tennis shoes.

  “No!” Emily screamed, lunging forward to get the shoe. As she flung herself toward Blake, he stepped back through the carved door, dropping the shoe as he went.

  “He has her,” Emily shrieked. She pulled open the door, stepping out into the dark hallway. “Connor, give me the flashlight!”

  He quickly handed it over, whispering to me, “Emily’s scarier than the ghost.”

  “I know.” It made me laugh, but just a little. Everything else was a nightmare. How did Blake get Bella’s shoe? Where was she?

  Emily swung the beam of light into the hall, and we were all surprised to find Blake standing there, not too far away.

  “S-S-Scaremast-t-ter,” he said, stuttering the word out. This was the first thing he’d said since we’d “met.”

  “Scaremaster what?” I asked as I grabbed the book out of the bag and fumbled around in the bottom of the sack for a pencil.

  He pointed at Emily, who was the closest to him.

  “Maybe he’s asking us to ask the Scaremaster where Bella is,” she said, pointing a long finger between Blake and the book.

  “We already asked him,” I said, “And that’s how we ended up here, chasing a ghost.”

  “Just do it, Nate,” she said as she wrinkled her forehead. “I think I’m starting to understand Ghost Boy.”

  Blake frowned.

  “We’ve asked the Scaremaster about Bella before,” Connor echoed me.

  “Ask again,” Emily said. “Ghost Boy wants us to.”

  “Bl-Bl-Blake.” The ghost pointed at himself. He was clearly struggling to speak.

  “Right,” she said, turning her gaze from him to me. “He doesn’t like being called Ghost Boy.”

  Blake gave a nod and a small smile. He pointed at the book again, shaking his finger.

  “I’m on it,” I said, turning to the first page.

  Connor and I were in the storage room. Emily was in the hallway a few feet from Blake, shining Connor’s flashlight at his face.

  I wrote:

  Where’s Bella?

  The Scaremaster wrote back:

  Want to hear a story?

  I looked at Blake. He nodded.

  I wrote: Yes.

  There was a pause while the entire Scaremaster book seemed to reset. The page cleared and all the writing, both his and mine, disappeared. Then, a new heading appeared:

  Tales from the Scaremaster

  Once upon a time, there were

  four friends on a sleepover at

  the museum. Bella and Emily

  both disappeared.…

  “Huh?” Connor looked to me. “That can’t be right.”

  I read the page out loud again.

  “That’s what the story says,” I told him.

  We felt the cold wind at the exact same time. It blew through my hair, and Connor wrapped his arms around himself.

  Slowly, very slowly, we both looked up. We knew what had happened before we even saw it.

  The hallway was dark.

  Blake had disappeared.

  Connor’s flashlight was sitting on the floor. The beam was pointing at the wall.

  And Emily was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I officially freaked out.

  Connor, on the other hand, was completely chill. I don’t know if it was the shock or what, but he was calm and in charge.

  “The Scaremaster cannot scare me,” he declared in a strong voice. I couldn’t believe this was the same Connor who had almost backed out of the sleepover because of a creepy story.

  A creepy story that turned out to be true.

  “Well I’m pee-in-my-pants scared,” I said, not ashamed to admit how scared I was. “What are we going to do?”

  Connor took the Scaremaster’s journal from me. “We have to get our friends back,” he declared with determination. “And Blake’s going to help us.” He tipped his head to a spot over my shoulder.

  I twisted around and looked up to discover that Blake was back in the room.

  “Can you talk?” I asked the ghost.

  He shrugged but didn’t say anything. I considered that he’d been alone, wandering the halls with just the animals for friendship all these months. Maybe he hadn’t spoken in such a long time, he didn’t know if he could say more than a few words at once.

  Clearly he wasn’t willing to try.

  Blake pointed at the book.

  Connor sounded 100 percent confident when he said, “So far the Scaremaster has mostly acted like a museum guide, but the book is called Tales from the Scaremaster. We just have to have him tell us the whole story about us, and then we have to figure out how to tack on a rescue scene at the end.”

  It sounded like a good idea. “When did you get so smart?” I asked Connor, giving him a wink.

  “About three minutes ago,” he replied.

  We sat on the floor of the storage room. I placed the book on the floor between us. Blake hovered in the corner by the door. He was obviously curious but didn’t come close to us.

  When I opened the book this time, I was surprised to find that an entire story was written there. Scratchy writing filled the whole page.

  “Read it out loud,” Connor told me. He closed his eyes to concentrate. “I’ll work on the ending.”

  Tales of the Scaremaster

  Once upon a time, there were

  four friends on a sleepover at

  the museum. Bella and Emily

  both disappeared.…

  And soon Connor and Nate would join them.

  At that part, I looked up wide-eyed at Connor.

  “Go on,” he said.

  I went back to reading.

  The story didn’t tell us anything about where the girls were or what it meant that Connor and I would be soon with them. It turned out that
most of the story wasn’t about us. It was about Blake, who slowly moved closer as I read the tale.

  Blake Turner was a shy, unhappy boy.

  The Scaremaster changed his life.

  I glanced up at him. Blake’s face didn’t register emotion, but he was listening intently.

  Blake came to the museum on a field trip but lagged behind the rest of the group during the tours. He wasn’t friends with the other kids. He didn’t make friends easily; he never knew what to say when he was in a group. So he hung behind the others, listening to the guides and studying the exhibits.

  A few days earlier, Blake’s parents had announced that they were going to move to a new house. When he got back from the field trip, they’d start packing. It wasn’t fair. They’d only recently moved into this house. He was going to his fourth school in two years. Blake didn’t want to move and start over again.

  At midnight, while the other kids slept, Blake stayed awake. He got up and slowly wandered the halls of the museum.

  He met the spirits that lived there.

  The bears, the spiders, and the birds were kind to him. They wanted to be his friends.

  Standing in front of the grizzly bear display, Blake made a wish. He said it out loud: “I want to stay in the museum forever.”

  The Scaremaster heard Blake’s wish. He made that wish come true.

  Now Blake lived at the museum with the animals.

  And yet, it wasn’t the happy place Blake had imagined. He was lonely. He was sad. And he wanted a friend. A human friend who was his own age.

  When another school tour came to sleep at the museum, Blake realized that there was something better than having one new friend. He could have four new friends!

  That was where the story looped back to the place it began:

  Bella and Emily both disappeared… and soon Connor and Nate would join them.

  Under that was one final sentence:

  Blake and his friends lived happily ever after.

  The End

  I took a deep breath. “Wow.” I glanced up at Blake. While it did seem kind of cool to live in the museum, there’s no way I’d pick that over my normal life. Plus, I wouldn’t want to be a ghost. I’d never make the same wish.

  “You chose to live here?” I asked him.

  Blake cleared his throat. His voice came out in a squeak as he said, “Yeeess,” then more firmly, “Yes.”

  “Come on, Blake. You know we aren’t staying with you forever. You have to let us go.” Connor closed the Scaremaster’s journal and handed it to me. “Where are Bella and Emily?”

  Without another word, Blake raised his feet off the floor and floated out through the carved door. A moment later, he popped his head back into the room. His voice was getting stronger and clearer as he gave us instructions.

  “I’ll show you, and then maybe you’ll want to stay,” Blake said. “Follow me.”

  Connor and I exchanged a look. “This might not be a good idea,” I warned.

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Connor said. “We have to find our friends and end this story once and for all.”

  I put the Scaremaster’s journal in my shopping bag and flicked on Connor’s flashlight. We’d need it again as we followed Blake’s ghost down the winding halls behind the exhibits.

  “I’m ready,” I told Connor as he opened the door to the storage room. “Try not to disappear.” It was a lame attempt at a joke.

  Connor raised an eyebrow. “Ditto.”

  Laughing made it all just a tiny bit less scary, but I had one big thought that I couldn’t shake off. While Connor’s idea to change the end of the story was good, what if it was impossible?

  If the Scaremaster wanted us to become ghosts in the museum, I didn’t think we could stop him.

  We wove our way through the dark hallway.

  “I think this is the way we came,” I told Connor. “It feels familiar.”

  We were walking side by side. He was close enough that if he started to disappear, I could grab him. And him, me. I wasn’t even sure what disappearing might feel or look like. The girls were there one second and gone the next. But if there were a way to keep Connor with me, I’d do it.

  “We can’t be going the same way,” Connor said. “Didn’t we turn left last time?”

  “We just turned right,” I said.

  “These passages are super confusing in the dark,” Connor told me.

  I still had that museum map, but we hadn’t needed it while Emily was with us. Now I thought it might be handy. Of course, if we stopped we might lose track of Blake. So we went on, following the flashlight’s beam and the outline of Blake up ahead.

  When Blake disappeared through a wall, we stopped.

  “What now?” Connor asked. He shined the light across the wall. It was solid.

  I didn’t know. Is this where the girls were? I listened and thought maybe, for a second, that I heard a bear growl. That would prove my theory that we’d come back around to where we began. Which meant that there was a door nearby since we’d come in through one.

  I tried to orient myself. If we’d walked to the left, that meant the door was just a few feet away.

  “Connor,” I said, determined to find the door. “Shine that flashlight over here.”

  There was no answer from my friend. I swung around.

  “Connor! No!” Blake’s hand was sticking out from the center of the wall. Connor was gripping the light in one hand and being dragged by Blake by the other.

  I dove forward to catch his feet as the spirit of Blake pulled Connor’s arm through the solid wall. His front foot moved quickly, and by the time I’d reached his back leg, he was gone.

  Connor was gone! That was not how the story was supposed to go! And he had taken the flashlight with him, which meant I was alone and in the dark.

  Shivers struck me hard. I couldn’t stop shaking. I thought I might be sick. What was I going to do?

  “Hang tight, Nate,” I said out loud to myself. “Be brave like Connor was. Use what you know.” My mind was blank. I tried talking to myself some more. “There’s a door. Find it.”

  I took a deep breath. Which way had we first come in? I closed my eyes since it was dark anyway. Yes… to the left. I reached my hands out toward the wall and ran my fingertips along the smooth surface at about the height where a doorknob might be.

  It was a little farther than I remembered, but once I found it, I felt hopeful that I was on the right track.

  I swung open that hidden door near the bear display and stepped into the mammals’ hall.

  It was brighter than I remembered. There were small security lights on the floor and an eerie bluish glow from the grizzly bear exhibit.

  I stepped toward the display. There was no way I’d heard a bear growl from inside the passage. The bear was as still as a statue, standing on its rear legs, just like when we’d first come in. There was no movement in the habitat.

  The display looked just like it did for regular tourists on a normal day. There was no sign that that grizzly had ever been “alive.”

  “Connor!” I shouted his name, looking all around the hall and into every display. When there was no answer, I tried, “Bella! Emily!”

  The only sound I heard was the ticking of my watch, which bugged me. Every second that passed meant that my friends were closer to staying in the museum forever. I tapped my foot and stared into the bear habitat, as if somehow that bear was going to show me what I needed to do.

  Oh, wait!

  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew who to ask!

  I dropped to my knees and pulled out the Scaremaster’s journal.

  The book fell open to the first page.

  The Scaremaster’s story was still there. I quickly scanned it. Nothing had changed since we’d left the storage room and it still said “The End” at the bottom of the page.

  I dug in the bottom of my bag for the pencil.

  I wrote the first thing that popped into my head.

 
Bring back my friends!

  That felt bold and brave, like what the old Nate—the one who wasn’t afraid of scary movies or stories—might have written.

  The Scaremaster wrote back in his scratchy handwriting.

  Okay.

  “Okay”? That was too easy. He was going to bring them back just like that? Great!

  I looked up to see if he was going to drop them right in front of me. That would have been nice.

  But it was the Scaremaster’s story, and he was writing it as we went along. A moment later, when my friends hadn’t magically reappeared, I checked the book again. This time, he had a question for me and it wasn’t nice at all.

  Which friend would you like?

  Oh, so uncool. What was I supposed to do?

  I quickly wrote:

  All of them.

  Pick one.

  This was impossible! How could I save one friend and not the others? But I remembered that it was Connor who had been saying we could change the ending of the story. He’d seemed so determined that it could happen. If I had him back, then maybe we could work together to get the girls.

  I wrote down his name:

  Connor Fletcher

  The Scaremaster wrote:

  Done.

  I half expected Connor to be standing next to me a second later, but again, he wasn’t.

  In fact, I looked around the hall and didn’t see him at all.

  Where is he?

  We’re going to play a scary game first.

  Nate’s Nightmare Hide-and-Seek.

  I was so mad. I was going to tell the Scaremaster a few things about how I felt about this game he was playing, but then, as I raised the pencil, I heard a bang.