“Jason! What happened? Are you all right?”
Mom’s face appeared behind Dad’s shoulder. She, too, was pale, her eyes wide.
“Sally,” I croaked.
Mom dashed down the hall to Sally’s room while Dad came in and helped me up. I blurted out everything that had happened, how the house seemed to be after me and Sally, and how the invisible goo had blocked the doorway and prevented me from helping her.
Dad went to the doorway and ran his hand up and down in the empty space. “There’s nothing here, Jason,” he said, his eyes troubled. He walked into the hall and then back into the room to demonstrate. “Nothing at all.”
Mom came running back. “Sally’s fine. She’s sound asleep,” she said, looking anxiously at me. “What’s going on?”
Dad shook his head and picked up my book off the bed. “Apparently Jay had a nightmare,” he said, showing the cover to Mom. It showed fighting monsters with blood that looked a lot like green Jell-O.
“You sure gave us a scare,” said Mom, rearranging my covers.”
I stopped shaking after a while. It was easier to let my parents believe I’d just had a vivid nightmare, but I knew it was no dream.
There was something evil in this house.
Something that was careful to hide itself from my parents.
Something that wanted me and Sally dead.
18
I woke up dreaming that something was screaming at me. It turned out to be a bird on the windowsill, cheeping and peeping like crazy.
Just what I needed, an alarm clock with wings.
But when I’d had a chance to shake the sleep out of my head, I decided the bird had the right idea. It was another great summer day and I didn’t want to waste it.
The bright, golden sunshine made what had happened last night seem distant, like maybe it really had been a dream. I knew it wasn’t, but I really didn’t want to think about it. The daylight made everything seem OK.
No way was I going to let this stupid old house completely ruin my summer. There were too many cool things to do in the yard and around the lake. And so far the house hadn’t really been able to hurt me—what was I so afraid of, anyhow? Ghosts couldn’t hurt you unless you let them, everybody knew that.
I was nearly finished with my cornflakes when there was a knock at the kitchen door.
Steve. Time for payback.
I took a big gulp of orange juice and held it in my mouth as I flung open the door, ready to spray all over Mr. Plastic Dog Poop himself.
“Hi, Jason.”
Oops. I hurriedly swallowed my orange juice. “Um, hi, Lucy,” I gulped.
“Some kids are going to meet behind the school to play ball,” said Lucy. She had on a lime-green baseball cap with her ponytail pulled through the back, and was dressed in cutoffs and a white T-shirt. “If you bring a lunch, we can picnic at the lake afterwards.”
“No prob,” I said, and slapped together a peanut butter sandwich.
Steve showed up just as we were leaving. He gave me a secret grin but he didn’t mention the trick with the dog poop.
“How’s it going, Jay? Get a good night’s sleep?” he teased.
“What do you care?” I said.
Steve looked hurt. “Hey, I was only asking. All that weird stuff you told me about, I was worried.”
Lucy gave us both a look. “I’ve been asking around about the house on Cherry Street,” she said. “We’ll talk about it after the game.”
My heart lurched. “What have you found out?”
“Later,” she said firmly, waving to some kids coming down the street.
The school with the softball diamond was only a few blocks away. Nothing I did could get Lucy to say more and in a couple of minutes the other kids joined us. I was so distracted I could hardly keep their names straight. What had Lucy found out about the house? Why did she look so grave?
At the ball field there wasn’t time to worry. Lucy and Steve knew everybody, so they picked the teams. Steve ended up picking me for third base, which is the position I wanted. It’s a lot better than getting stuck in right field and having to shag down all the balls that get hit out of bounds.
Me and my big mouth. Even with Steve pitching, third base turned out to be the hot spot. Some of those ground balls came at me at about a hundred miles an hour and it was all I could do to knock them down and make the throw to first.
I made a couple of stupid errors, but basically I did OK, and we ended up winning 15 to 13.
After the game we left the field and headed for the lake. I was kind of replaying the game in my head—especially the part where I knocked in two runs—and I’d almost forgotten that Lucy wanted to tell me something she’d learned about the house.
I was so out of it, I actually ate a couple of Steve’s chocolate chip cookies. I was munching down when Lucy wrapped up her picnic stuff and said, “You haven’t asked what I found out, Jason. Don’t you want to know?”
I felt like a balloon getting deflated. All the good cheer went out of me. For a couple of hours it had been as if the house didn’t exist.
“I hope it’s not something too horrible,” I said. But even as I spoke the sun went behind a cloud. That’s how it felt—as if that house was a big cloud cast over my whole summer.
“No, not so horrible,” said Lucy. “But I think maybe you do have a reason to worry. It turns out that a little boy who lived there years and years ago died there. He fell out of a tree. Or something like that. He’s probably still haunting the place.”
Steve made a farting noise. “Oh, yeah? What about the old lady? She
