The Haunted

Robbie shrugged.

James tried another tack. “Do you want to stay overnight next weekend?”

“No!” his friend said quickly, then hastily added, “Maybe you could stay over at my house this time,” saying it in a way that tried to make the notion seem casual and unimportant.

Actually, that sounded like a fine idea. Although James had managed to convince himself that their new home was friendly rather than creepy (with the exception of the basement—which he would never like), the truth was that he was often tense inside the house. If he was with Megan or one of his parents, or if he was busy with something such as reading, watching TV or playing a game, he was fine. But when he was by himself with nothing to do and time on his hands … well, then he started noticing things. Like the way the stairs creaked sometimes, even though no one was on them. Or the way some of the windows didn’t let in as much light as they should. Or the way he saw movement out of the corner of his eye when nothing was there.

So the thought of staying overnight at Robbie’s sounded like a relaxing respite.

“That’d be fun,” James admitted.

“I’ll ask my dad.”

Robbie refocused his attention on the batting practice, and James saw his chance at a real discussion slipping away. Glancing over at his friend, he decided to come clean. “I don’t like the basement in our house,” he said. He watched for a reaction but saw none. “I think it’s creepy.”

Robbie didn’t respond, continued to watch his brother’s teammates swing at softly lobbed balls.

James didn’t know what more he could say. Maybe he’d been wrong all along. Maybe Robbie hadn’t been scared by the basement.

“I thought I saw something,” his friend said finally. The boy spoke so softly that at first James wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Robbie refused to look at him, his eyes remaining focused on the Little Leaguers. “In the cellar. Not when we first went down there. That was cool. But later, before we went to bed, when I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I was the only one in the kitchen, and it was kind of dark, and the cellar door was open. I didn’t think it was open before; I remembered it being closed, and then I thought maybe your mom or dad was down there, getting something. So I walked by, peeked in. …” Robbie’s voice trailed off. He stopped talking, suddenly becoming very interested in the latest batter, and for a moment James thought he was going to have to prod his friend to continue. But then Robbie said, “It looked like there was a man down there. Maybe there wasn’t, but it looked like there was, and I got scared and hurried back to where you were.”

James suddenly felt cold.

“I had a nightmare about it when I fell asleep. You were right about that, but I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“What was it about?”

“The same thing that happened. I went to get a drink of water, the cellar door was open, and I walked past it and saw a man down there. It wasn’t your dad. I couldn’t see all of his face, but I could see his mouth. His smile. He was smiling up at me and it was like his teeth were glowing, and … and I knew he wanted me to go down into the basement. I think … I think he wanted to kill me. Then he said my name. …” Robbie sucked in his breath. “That’s why I wanted to go home.”

Even here in the park, in the open, surrounded by people, James was frightened. But he refused to give in to fear, forcing himself to be brave. He decided not to tell his friend that he, too, had had a nightmare about the cellar and that their two dreams were very close. Too close. Instead he said, “It’s just a dream.”

“You’re afraid of the basement, too,” Robbie pointed out.

“But it’s just the basement,” James insisted. “My room’s not scary at all. In fact, it’s great. I’d live in there twenty-four hours a day if I could.”

“I like your room,” Robbie admitted.

“See?”

“And your garage.”

“Me, too!”

“Last year, my dad read me this book. It was one of his old books, and it was about these two kid detectives, about our age. One of them was this genius named Brains Benton, and he had a secret lab above his parents’ garage. That’s what yours kind of reminded me of.”

“We could do something like that!” James said excitedly. “No one really goes into the garage, and I bet my dad would let us use the loft!”

“That would be cool!”

They started talking about what they could do, how they could make a secret entrance, have a couch and a TV up there, and they forgot all about the basement.

After baseball practice ended, Robbie’s dad drove both of them back to James’s house, telling Robbie that he’d be back to pick him up in around an hour, after he dropped Max off at home and ran a few errands. James announced to his dad that they were back; then he and Robbie went over to the garage, letting themselves in through the small side door. The garage was cool, he decided, looking around. Despite everything he’d said, he thought for a moment, when he first opened the door and his eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, that it might be scary, but it looked the same as it always had, and he gazed appreciatively at the wooden ladder attached to the far wall that led through a hole in the ceiling up to the loft.

It really was just the basement that was creepy, and James thought he could probably learn to live with that. There were plenty of people who lived in haunted houses and coexisted with ghosts. He’d seen a Discovery Channel show about celebrity ghost stories, and there were famous actors and rock stars who’d been living with ghosts for years. Some of the spirits were even friendly.

James recalled his dream of the dirty grinning man in the basement. He certainly wasn’t friendly. But even if he existed, he was probably trapped there in the basement, and as long as James stayed out of that room, there should be no problem.

“Check it out!”

Robbie had climbed up the ladder and was peering down through the hole in the ceiling. James hurried up after him, and though he’d been up here before, he saw it now through new eyes and realized that he and Robbie really could make this into some sort of secret hideout. Maybe they could be detectives, he thought, and he imagined turning this room into a crime lab, with beakers and test tubes, microscopes and chemicals. Excitedly, the two of them began planning out what they needed to do to turn the loft into their crime- fighting headquarters.

Time passed quickly, and it seemed they’d been up there for only about ten minutes or so when James’s dad called, “Boys!” Hurrying to the small window that looked out over the backyard, they saw both fathers standing on the back patio, waiting for them to come out of the garage.

“We need one-way glass on this window,” Robbie said. “So we can see out but no one else can see in.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Coming!” he yelled down to his dad, and the two of them climbed back down the ladder and exited the building.

After Robbie left, James snagged some potato chips from the kitchen—trying not to look toward the closed door of the basement—and took them out to the living room to eat in front of the TV. But there were no good movies on, and only baby cartoons, and he soon got bored. He returned the Pringles canister to the kitchen, then headed upstairs, figuring he’d play on his computer or DS. His mom was still at work, and his dad was back in his office, but Megan was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, and, as he walked by, she asked in a voice loud enough for their dad to hear, “Want to play a game?”

That was weird.

It wasn’t unheard-of—in fact, they used to play board games a lot during the summers when they were younger, before she’d turned into such a brat—but it was unusual, and he figured she was trying to show their dad how bored she was in order to get him to agree to let her go somewhere or do something with one of her friends. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, however, and he did like playing games, so he agreed, stepping into her room. She pulled something off a shelf, then sat down on the rug, showing him what she held in her hands.

Old Maid.