I nearly stumble flat on my face when I pass by the science room door. Someone is staring through the window at me.
A woman in a white dress.
When I look back, however, there’s no one there.
* * *
“Are you feeling okay?” Julie asks later, as we make our way to Corvidon Manor.
I nod. I don’t like lying to Julie, but I don’t want her worrying about me either. She’s been my best friend since third grade, and even though she’s not quite as into haunted houses as I am, she has always supported my passion. Even if it meant putting herself in creepy situations.
She hates being scared. Which means she’s usually a good judge for whether or not we got the scares right.
“Just tired.” I yawn, accentuating my statement. The trouble is, the yawn isn’t faked—I don’t think I slept at all last night. At least, not well. “I was up too late thinking about the haunted house.”
This, I think, should sound believable. I don’t want her to know I was researching the bride. I don’t want her to get curious. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to surprise them with the mannequin’s eventual appearance in our display. I still have to figure out how I’m going to acquire it without Mr. Evans noticing.
Julie smiles, but I can tell that that is faked. She doesn’t say anything for a while. When she does, her words are hesitant and her voice quiet.
“Do you sometimes think that—” She cuts herself off.
“What?” I ask.
She looks at me. I can tell that—despite her bravado—she’s worried.
“Well … every year you plan this big, huge, amazing room. And every year you work yourself sick to make it perfect.”
This is true. I’ve just come to expect that the entire week after the haunted house’s opening, I’ll be out with a cold. Last year, I got a full-blown flu. My dads said it was because I worked too hard and didn’t sleep enough.
“Yeah, but this year I’m prepared,” I reply. I hold up the bottle of orange juice I’ve been chugging since we left the school. “Lots of vitamin C.”
“And still no sleep,” Julie replies. She raises an eyebrow. “I just don’t want you hurting yourself over this. I know how Patricia gets under your skin. It’s happening already.”
“It’s not about her.” I take a swig of orange juice as if I’m making a point. The truth is, I’m pausing because I’m trying to think of what to say. Julie knows when I’m lying. Most of the time.
“It’s about pride,” I finally say.
I look around and take in the orange trees and crisp wind. It’s a perfectly cool day, sweater weather, and it’s days like this when I actually love being from New England. The chilly fall nights and fresh apple cider and pumpkins everywhere. It’s one of the few times when living in a small town is fun.
The trouble is, that’s only for a few months out of the year. Summers are muggy and filled with mosquitos and the winters are twenty feet of snow and the time in between is just mud. It’s more than that, though. It’s the fact that everywhere I look, I see someone I know: Mrs. Haverson sweeping leaves from her front drive, the Bruxley twins throwing a football across the road, Pete Mills smoking a pipe in front of his hardware store. I’ve seen everything in this town and this town knows everything about me.
Nothing exciting or new ever happens here. And that’s another reason why I love the haunted house. Not only because it’s my passion. Not only because it’s what I want to do when I grow up. But because it’s something new and exciting in this sleepy town, and being a part of it means that, I don’t know, I’m responsible for it. I have to bring my A game to show this place something new. To keep things fresh so people don’t die of boredom.
Myself included.
I try explaining this to Julie, but my words keep tumbling over my tongue. By the time I’ve finished, it’s pretty clear that I haven’t convinced her of anything. It’s nothing I haven’t said before, and she can hear the words that I don’t want to say: I have to do this to prove to Patricia that I am worth something.
My dads both work full-time, and even though we do okay, we don’t have as much money as her family, and she’ll never let me forget that. I’m tired of her scoffing at our decorations, tired of her telling me that her new phone is nicer, or that she just went on a vacation to Hawaii when we didn’t go on a vacation at all. I’m tired of her telling me that she is better than me because she has more money.
Once, she even laughed at my packed lunch, saying that she didn’t know how poor people could live like that. I’ve never been so insulted.
At least, not until the competition last year.
It’s like, every time I try to do something cool, Patricia either messes up what I’ve done or goes and just buys something cooler.
Case in point: The moment Julie and I arrive at the manor is the moment Patricia’s mom drops her off in their shiny new convertible. No one needs a car like that in Vermont. I doubt it even has four-wheel drive.
“Do you like it?” Patricia calls out when her mom drives off. “It cost a fortune.”
“It’s a car,” I say back. I nod to the boxes scattered around her. There are at least a dozen, and half of them are clearly new decorations. Cabinets with motion sensor–activated sound and movement, so they give the illusion of dolls trying to escape. Remote-controlled rats with glowing green eyes. Fog machines with built-in laser light shows, with scenes of lightning and ghosts preprogrammed. It makes my stomach clench. It makes me want to be mean. “Did your mom kick you out?”
Patricia just smiles sweetly. “Oh no. These are just some decorations. The first load. My dad is coming back with a moving van for the other five. I’m assuming you’re just using the junk I saw down there earlier?”
It’s not junk. “No, my dads are bringing the rest of our stuff soon, too.”
She laughs.
“And I’m sure you’ll have just tons of garbage. Is that what you’re making this year? A haunted dump? No, wait, that’s just your house.”
I open my mouth, but Julie puts her hand on my arm to stop me from saying something I might regret later.
“Come on,” she says. “We have a lot of work to do.”
I let her drag me away and toward the manor. Something moves in an upstairs window. A flash of white. I don’t really see it, but it still makes my skin crawl.
“Why even bother?” Patricia calls out, distracting me from the hallucination. “You’re just going to lose again anyway.”
I don’t respond. I won’t give her the satisfaction.
“You’re grinding your teeth,” Julie whispers as we reach the door.
“I hate her,” I reply.
I take another drink of orange juice and try to relax. I’m not going to let Patricia get the better of me and throw me off my game. I’m not.
The trouble is, I know she already has.
Tanesha is already in the basement hanging lights when we arrive. The skeletons are all along one wall like soldiers, and just seeing them makes me shiver. It doesn’t help that she starts testing the strobe light she’s hung the moment we step down there.
In the flickering flashes, it looks like the skeletons are writhing. Their heads shaking, their jaws clacking, their arms reaching. But it’s just the strobe. Right?
I watch one of them, entranced.
I watch as its eye sockets start glowing green, and I swear it begins clattering its teeth, mouthing my name …
“Kevin,” it growls in its feminine voice. “Kevinnnn—”
“Kevin!” The voice changes. No, wait, that’s Tanesha. She stands in front of me and waves her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Kevin, are you in there?”
I shake my head and look away from the perfectly normal, perfectly still skeletons.
“What? Sorry. Distracted.”
“Clearly,” she says. She peers into my eyes. “You’re not getting sick already, are you?”
“No, I’m fine.” I bat her aw
ay and try to smile.
“He just isn’t sleeping,” Julie pipes in.
“Let me guess,” Tanesha says, looking to Julie. “He ran into Patricia.”
Julie nods. I groan.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I say.
Except, of course, they want to talk about it.
“It’s not the amount of money you spend that matters,” Julie says. She places her hand on my chest. “It’s about heart.”
“And you, my friend, have one twisted heart.” Tanesha smiles when she says it. It’s probably the nicest thing she could say right now.
“Thanks,” I say. I try to mean it. “You two are the best.”
“And together, we’re going to annihilate the competition,” Tanesha says. She holds out her hand. “Because who are we?”
My smile widens and becomes sincere. I place my hand on top of hers. Julie puts hers on top of mine.
“The Bloody Banshees!” we yell out in unison.
We collapse into giggles.
Along the wall, so, too, does a skeleton.
Julie screams and Tanesha gasps and all I can do is stare in horror as a skeleton along the wall crumples to the ground in a pile of bones, laughing sinisterly.
For a while, we just stare at it, our mouths agape.
Then another picks up the laughter, deeper than the first. And another, high-pitched and skin curling.
Another.
And another.
One by one they start laughing, cackling, a demonic chorus of caustic giggles, their eyes glowing green and their skulls clattering.
It feels like the laughter goes on forever. It feels like it’s worming its way into my skull. Snaring my brain.
And then, all at once, they turn to face us.
Eyes locked with ours, in unison they let out a long, terrifying wail.
I slap my hands to my ears, but the moment the scream starts it stops, cutting off like a razor’s edge.
My friends and I stand there for ages. The silence around us is so deep, all I can hear is our frantic breathing. We stare at the decorations, entranced, waiting for them to cackle again.
THUD
Something thunks down above us, making us all wince and yelp.
“Sorry!” we hear someone yell out. Just one of the other teams, dropping something on the floor. How did no one upstairs hear that scream?
I laugh forcedly. The others do as well. Thankfully, the skeletons don’t. But we stop chuckling pretty quickly. None of us can look away from the skeletons.
“What was that?” Tanesha finally asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But one of them did it last night.”
I step forward slowly, gingerly, and it’s then that I realize I am actually, just-a-little-bit, somewhat afraid. I honestly expect the skeletons to leap at me, but I tell myself that it’s stupid. They’re just plastic toys. Like everything else in this room of scares, they are perfectly explainable.
Even if I can’t explain them right now.
I kneel down in front of the first skeleton that collapsed. My hand shakes as I reach out and poke the skull. It rolls away harmlessly.
“It must be a glitch,” Julie says nervously. “They all have voice recorders, right? The first one must have just recorded laughter from the store or something, and the others all picked it up.”
“Yeah,” Tanesha says. “Makes sense.”
I nod, but I don’t answer.
I also don’t tell them that none of the skeletons have batteries. I made sure of it.
Just as I don’t tell them that the bones scattered at my feet no longer look or feel like plastic.
They’re real.
I pack up the real bones as quickly as I can, trying not to be grossed out by the fact that they’re actually human. Julie and Tanesha go back to unpacking our boxes—I know that if they stand around, they’ll only freak themselves out more. I even let them put on some bouncy pop music to lighten the mood. I don’t tell them that it makes me feel better, too. Because if they learn I’m scared, they will be even more so.
But my brain is racing as I gather the bones.
How in the world did a real skeleton end up in our basement?
How did its eyes glow and make sound?
Everything in a haunted house has a logical explanation.
Everything, except this.
When I finally stand to head up the stairs to get rid of the bones, I don’t have any answers. Just more questions. And I can’t let those questions distract me from my goal. I just know that if I keep the bones in the basement, Julie and Tanesha will find out.
I have to get rid of the evidence as fast as I can.
I pause at the foot of the steps.
Shivers trickle down the back of my neck like ice water. Even with the music playing, all sounds seem to fade. The lights flicker and die out. Until it’s just me in the dark and the silence, and it feels like it’s no longer the basement, but a great expanse of nothingness.
And there, in the shadows, is a smudge of white.
“Why did you do it?” the voice cries out, thick with tears. A young woman.
The smudge moves closer. Becomes a figure dressed in white.
The bride. Her hands to her face.
She slowly lowers her hands.
“I just wanted to rest. Why did you hurt me?” she asks.
And there, behind her hands, isn’t a face, but darkness. Terrifying darkness, and I suddenly feel dragged back to my dream. Only I’m not dreaming. I’m awake. I’m awake and the ghost bride is here and—
“Did you forget something?” Julie asks.
I snap back to reality. To the brightly lit basement filled with boxes and pop music and my friends. There’s no bride anywhere.
I must really not have gotten enough sleep last night. I’m passing out on my feet.
I shake my head, but I can’t think of any words with which to answer. I just head up the stairs, clutching the box of bones tight to my chest and hoping for no more surprises.
“Aww, don’t give up now,” Patricia says snidely from the porch. “You only just started.”
I grimace and pause, halfway to the trash bin outside. Go figure that Patricia would be watching for me.
“I’m not giving up,” I say. Even though I shouldn’t have to say it—I would never give her that satisfaction.
“Then why are you throwing all your decorations away?”
“I’m not—” I growl. “Just, mind your own business, okay?”
“Why? It’s so much more fun minding yours.”
She tromps down the steps and comes closer. I take a step back.
“What are you hiding in there?” she asks. “Bodies?”
The bones rattle. I take another step back.
“Go away,” I grunt. “Don’t you have a space to poorly decorate?”
She laughs haughtily, tossing her perfect blond hair like she’s an actress in a bad rom-com.
“Oh, we’re taking a break until my mom gets back with the rest of our stuff.”
She takes another step toward me. I try to back up farther but my heel hits a large stone. I stop before I tumble over and suddenly have to explain to Patricia what I’m doing with a box of human bones.
“You’d be better off giving up now,” she says quietly. “Save yourself the embarrassment. Again. You don’t stand a chance.”
She flips open a flap on the box and peers inside momentarily. Then she rolls her eyes and turns around.
“I’m in the big leagues now,” she says as she walks away. “Have fun playing with your stupid plastic toys.”
I want to yell something out, but there’s nothing to say. Nothing that won’t make her think that she’s winning. Nothing that won’t make me sound pathetic.
I grumble to myself and try to breathe deep and force down the heat in my cheeks. I can’t lose focus. I can’t. Lose. Focus.
Before she can say anything else or come back to inspect what are definitely not stupid toy b
ones, I turn and stomp the rest of the way to the trash bin.
Hastily, I toss the contents of the box inside and hope that no one comes looking and thinks the bones are from a crime scene. I glance around, but no one else seems to be outside. Well, save for Mrs. Harris across the street, but there’s no way she could see anything—she’s nearly blind.
“I’m in the big leagues, too,” I say.
I peer over the trash lid, one last time. Mainly because I’m curious, but also because I refuse to believe what I saw in the basement.
Except, when I look inside, it’s just normal plastic skeleton bones and frayed wires staring back at me.
The heat in my chest immediately turns to ice, all the blood rushing to my feet.
“What in the world is going on?” I whisper to myself.
Thankfully, the skeleton doesn’t answer.
But as I turn around and head to the house, a figure in white vanishes from one of the top-floor windows.
Even after the creepy skeleton incident, we get right to work.
Patricia’s taunting has lit a fire inside of me, one that a few unexplainable skeletons can’t get in the way of. My dads bring their pickup filled with all the boxes I sorted through and loaded up before bed last night, and my friends and I immediately get to unpacking and organizing.
Tanesha takes over the haunted graves, setting out the tombstones and the pathways amid piles of pillows covered in fake grass and red leaves so they look like rolling hills. The skeletal hands reaching up through the debris is a nice touch. Julie wraps all the pillars in cardboard and tape and paper, turning them into gnarled tree trunks, complete with grasping branches and animatronic ravens. And I take the swamp, one of the more intensive sections of the graveyard. It’s just a kiddie pool we got on clearance at the end of the summer, but I’ve spray-painted it black and lined the outer edge with foam and dirt so it looks like a swamp. Throw in a few air pumps from old fish tanks, some water, and a bit of dry ice, and voilà: a bubbling, steaming pool of muck. At least, I hope that’s what it will look like. Right now it just looks like a badly painted plastic pool.
Scare Me Page 3
