But Steve wouldn’t make a move until I went first. It was much less scary down here when there were two of us, I decided. And thinking about it, I didn’t really expect to find anything, certainly not a forgotten skeleton, but exploring this creepy place with Steve would be cool.
“Blak!” Steve shouted suddenly, like he was choking.
I whirled around. The shadows moved in closer.
Steve was batting at his face and sputtering. “Spiderwebs! They’re sticking to my face. Yuck!”
I laughed and the shadows retreated to their corners.
We found a bunch of moldering boxes filled with old magazines and newspapers, old-fashioned hats with net veils, unrecognizable parts of rusting metal.
“Look at these weirdos,” Steve said, holding open an old magazine.
“That’s how they dressed back then,” I said.
“What a bunch of geeks.”
“If you lived back then, that’s how you’d dress, too,” I pointed out.
“No way.”
As it turned out, none of the boxes in that corner were big enough to hide a body.
We looked behind a ripped armchair that sprouted stuffing like fungus. Wrinkling my nose against the smell, I yanked the cushions off a sagging sofa while Steve held the flashlight over my shoulder.
No body. Not even a dead mouse.
Dust swirled as we shifted heavy boxes and played the flashlight beam into corners that hadn’t been disturbed in at least fifty years, maybe more.
“What’s that?” cried Steve, tensing suddenly. “That noise.”
I paused and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
Steve suddenly grabbed my arm.
“There!” He pointed behind us, toward the corner where the owners’ things were piled. “It sounds like someone moving around back there, trying to be quiet.”
I listened. “Mice,” I said, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice. “I saw a mouse last time I was down here.”
Steve looked doubtful. While we shifted around what seemed like millions of mildewed magazines, his gaze kept drifting toward that corner.
I could feel the darkness moving in closer each time my back was turned, like a game of red-light, green-light. Small noises nibbled at my attention but always stopped when I paused to listen.
When we found nothing more behind the stacks of magazines, Steve straightened up. Absently he wiped his filthy hands on his once-clean khaki shorts. “If there’s a body down here, it’s going to be over there,” he said, gesturing toward the owners’ piled belongings.
I nodded. “You’re right. We’ll just have to be careful to put things back so my mom doesn’t get bent out of shape.”
Very carefully and slowly we approached that corner of the basement. It seemed darker there, as if the creepy shapes had a way of soaking up the beam from my flashlight.
“We can’t move all this stuff,” Steve complained. “It’ll take forever.”
“Hey,” I said, with a tingle of excitement. “Is that a trunk?”
I pointed out a large rectangular shape standing on end behind a stack of boxes. “It’s big enough to hold a body, isn’t it?”
Immediately we both began heaving boxes out of the way until the trunk was clear. For a moment we just looked at it.
Then I reached slowly for the latch. I pulled. The lock clicked.
Nothing happened.
“My mom’s calling,” Steve said abruptly, taking a step backwards. “I’ve got to go.”
“What? You can’t leave now,” I said, flabbergasted. “This could be what we’ve been looking for!”
“My mom will be mad,” Steve said weakly, looking at the trunk reluctantly.
Faintly, I could hear Steve’s mother in the distance. So he wasn’t making that up.
“Just help me with this,” I urged. I tugged again at the latch. “It’s not locked, it’s just stiff. If you hold the trunk steady I think I can get the lid open. It’ll only take a minute.”
Steve swallowed. “All right.”
I grinned at him in the gloom and pried at the latch with both hands, grimly determined to get it open. I hadn’t really believed we’d find a body down here, but now, faced with this body-sized trunk, my blood was humming. I just knew this trunk would help me solve the awful mystery of the house.
With a groan the rusted latch gave way. Eagerly I seized the lid and pulled it toward me like opening a door.
The lid creaked slowly open as if something feeble was trying to hold it closed from inside.
It was now or never, while Steve was still here. I yanked hard and the trunk came all the way open, creaking loudly in protest.
We both gasped.
There was a body.
As I stared, transfixed, it leaned out of the trunk and slowly, slowly toppled on top of me.
22
I raised my arms to fend the thing off. Gurgling noises came from my throat as I tried to fight free.
It was stiff and cold, a dead weight.
I flailed my arms and the thing rolled off me. I scrambled instantly to my feet, my chest heaving.
“A dressmaker’s dummy!”
Weak with relief, Steve and I leaned against each other, laughing.
Then a small noise shut us up.
“Mice,” I said automatically.
“Yeah,” said Steve. “But, hey, I got to go before my mom kills me.”
I nodded and picked up the flashlight from where it had fallen on the floor. “Steve, wait! There’s something else in the trunk.”
But Steve was already halfway up the stairs. “Later, Jason,” he called over his shoulder.
I hesitated, then crouched down to reach into the trunk. It was quite deep and I had to crawl forward. My hand touched paper—a packet of envelopes tied with ribbon. I trained the flashlight on the packet and saw faded, spidery writing. Old letters!
Maybe this was a clue about what had happened in the house. Who had died here. Maybe even who had been murdered here.
Eager to find out, I put the flashlight on the floor and started to untie the ribbon right there. I was in such a hurry that my fingers fumbled with the knot and the packet dropped back into the trunk.
As I leaned over to get the package of letters back something slammed me hard
