The Horror
The House on Cherry Street, Book Two
Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
For Gillian, Nate, Ian,
Kate, and Cassie
1
The baby-sitter didn’t believe in ghosts. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “There’s no such thing as a haunted house.”
Her name was Katie, and she was a teenager with red hair and an attitude—meaning she thought I was a total dweeb for trying to tell her about the ghosts in the house on Cherry Street.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said stubbornly.
She smirked at me and then shaded her eyes, looking up at the decaying mansion my family had rented for the summer. “What a place!” she said. “It really is kind of spooky looking.”
My parents didn’t believe in ghosts, either, and they’d left Katie in charge while they went away on a business trip. Not that I needed a babysitter or anything. At twelve I can pretty much look after myself. But my little sister Sally was only four and the ghosts were very interested in her.
“I better go inside,” Katie announced cheerfully. “Check things out.”
And then she marched up the steps and walked right through the door of that creepy old house as if nothing could possibly hurt her.
Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe the haunting would be as invisible to her as it had been to my parents, who blamed everything on my “overactive” imagination.
Maybe. But I didn’t think so.
As the door shut behind Katie the glass in the windows shivered. And so did I.
“Sally?” I said, calling to my little sister. “We better go in, too.”
That’s when I noticed that something was wrong with Sally’s face. Her expression was stiff and her eyes were blank. As if she was in a trance or something.
A chill zapped me.
“Sally?” My voice was shaky.
Sally’s head jerked to one side and then the other, like a puppet. Her eyes smoldered and glowed.
I fought the urge to leap away from her.
Then she opened her mouth and spoke. “I’m not Sally.”
The voice that came out of her mouth was rough, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. And it had a hollow ring. As if it was coming from the inside of an empty tomb.
Sally’s face scowled at me and the strange voice growled again. “My name is Bobby and I’m dead,” she said.
I was paralyzed. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream.
My little sister was possessed!
2
Her face was like a mask. A mask that looked just like my little sister. Except for the eyes.
“Sally?” I said. “Please talk to me.”
Her face scowled at me. Out of her mouth came that strange rough voice again. “I’m not Sally. My name is Bobby and I’m dead, dead, dead!”
She danced away, taunting me.
“Where’s my sister?” I demanded.
I recognized the voice coming from Sally. I’d heard it night after night, crying in the hallway outside my room. It was the voice of a child ghost and I had never figured out what it wanted.
But lately I suspected what it wanted was Sally. And now it had her.
“My name is Bobby,” it repeated, and Sally danced farther away from me.
I shivered, remembering when I’d first seen the ghost. It was the first day we arrived. We were driving up the long driveway under the tall whispery pines and I saw his pale, sad face.
A little boy peering at us from the attic windows. Little Bobby, who’d been dead for years and years.
Of course, no one believed me then.
They still didn’t believe me. And the ghost had been careful to make sure they wouldn’t. Now he had taken possession of my sister.
“Let me talk to Sally,” I demanded, my voice cracking with fright.
Bobby wasn’t an evil ghost, I told myself. At least Sally never thought so. She thought he was just a sad little boy who wanted to be her invisible friend. So what if he’d been dead for years?
So what if nobody else could see him? She could.
Maybe if I could keep him talking I could make him realize what a bad thing he was doing. “I want to talk to Sally, Bobby, where is she?”
Sally pressed her lips together tight. Or Bobby pressed her lips together. I was getting nowhere.
My head was spinning with a million different thoughts.
Bobby must have heard my parents talking about going away to Mayfield on a job and leaving me and Sally alone with a baby-sitter. A seventeen-year-old, red-haired girl who giggled at the idea of ghosts.
He must have been waiting for this chance.
Maybe he’d made friends with Sally just so she’d get to trust him. Then when the moment was right he seized her body and took it over.
Maybe he’d moved in permanently! The idea of this dead thing speaking from inside my sister made me feel like I’d swallowed a chunk of roadkill.
“Look, Bobby, tell me what you want,” I said, inching closer. “I can help you if I know what you want.”
“Hey, Jason! Sally!”
It was our baby-sitter Katie. She was supposed to be upstairs unpacking. Instead here she was leaning out the front door, grinning at us like she wanted to be friends. Her thick red hair fanned across her shoulders like a halo.
“Come on in and have a snack or something,” Katie suggested.
“Uh, in a minute,” I started to say. How could I tell her what had happened to my little sister?
Just then a ferocious scowl came over Sally’s face. Blood rushed to her cheeks and her eyes seemed to glow with fire.
Something terrible was about to happen.
I reached out to grab Sally, but she was too fast for me.
She let out a scream of rage and charged straight at the baby-sitter.
3
The thing that ran up the steps after the babysitter wasn’t my sister, it was a small demon.
“Look out!” I shouted.
But Katie just stood there. Her friendly smile went kind of limp, like she couldn’t believe what was happening
