The water was warm and clear and it seemed to make my head clear, too. What was I doing letting bad dream stuff ruin my summer vacation?
The house was haunted, sure, but it hadn’t hurt us yet. All it could do was try to scare us away. And a thing can’t scare you if you won’t let it, right?
Right?
I came back from the lake feeling refreshed. Nothing was going to scare me—not a lot of noises in the night, or spooky laughter in the walls. No way.
“Come on in,” I said to Lucy. “I’ll ask Katie if you can stay for lunch.”
I knew something was wrong as soon as we entered the front hall. The house seemed to suck up sunlight like a black hole. Dust hung in the air, making the place look even more dreary than usual.
“It doesn’t look like anyone has changed a thing in this place for a hundred years,” Lucy said in a hushed voice. “This house doesn’t need a ghost to be creepy.”
“Katie!” I called out. “We’re home!”
“Sally!” I called out. “Are you here?”
There was no answer.
“What’s that?” Lucy whispered.
I listened. At first I didn’t hear it. Then it came again.
A moan, from deep inside the walls.
A ghostly moan, like something trapped in a tomb.
22
As we went up the stairs, Lucy grabbed hold of my hand and wouldn’t let go.
The moaning noise had stopped but I knew it wasn’t over. It was like the old house was holding its breath.
I’d never known that silence could be so loud.
I tensed when we got to Sally’s room, expecting the worst. As I pushed the door open the creaking noise from the hinge went through me like a jolt of electricity.
Beside me Lucy gave a little gasp.
“Thank goodness,” she said, sighing with relief.
Sally was sound asleep on her bed. She was hugging Winky, her stuffed rabbit.
I gently closed the door. Glad that somebody could sleep around here.
“ARRRGGH.”
A long, low moan froze us in our tracks.
Lucy went white and her eyes were as big as Oreos.
“It—it’s coming from up there,” Lucy said, pointing at the ceiling.
She was right. The ghostly moaning was coming from the attic.
“It sounds like somebody is hurt,” Lucy whispered.
“Maybe that’s what it wants us to think,” I said.
Lucy got a very determined look on her face. “We’ve got to check it out,” she said.
My mind resisted. But I couldn’t let Lucy go alone.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s get it over with.”
When I opened the door to the attic stairway, shadows seemed to spill out, dimming the hallway.
“This is a really bad idea,” I said. But I started up the stairway. My Nikes made squeaky noises on the bare wooden steps.
It was hard making myself go up those stairs. It was as if lead diving weights had been attached to my feet, holding me back.
“Uuurrrggg.”
The strange sound went right through me.
I turned around to run back down the stairs and bumped into Lucy. I could tell she was just as scared as me.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
The seconds ticked away like blood dripping. I braced for another cry, but the attic stayed quiet.
“Come on,” I said, leading the way. “We’re acting like boneheads.”
I trooped up to the top of the stairs before I could change my mind and barged right through the door into the attic.
Suddenly I was blind. I couldn’t see.
I was choking on dust and the sunlight was blasting in like a laser beam. Behind me Lucy was coughing and choking.
The moaning noise came again, louder.
By now it sounded almost familiar. It wasn’t coming through the walls, it was right in the room with us. Only we couldn’t see because of all the dust in the air.
“Jason, help me. Help me please.”
I knew that voice. It wasn’t the ghost, it was Katie.
“Over here,” she said, sounding weak. “I’m trapped.”
I kept squinting and after a while I could see through the dust. A big wooden beam had come crashing down from inside the roof, smashing into the plaster walls.
And under the beam was Katie.
All I could see at first was a pink sandal sticking out from under the beam. It looked really bad. Then I saw her toes wiggle.
“Give me a hand,” I said to Lucy.
We both grabbed the end of the beam and managed to shift it over, away from where Katie was trapped.
“Are you okay?”
Katie crawled out from under the wrecked plaster. At first I thought her red hair had turned white—then I realized it was all the plaster dust.
We helped Katie to her feet. She heaved a huge sigh. “Thanks, guys. It feels so good to breathe again. It was awful to hear you calling me and not be able to answer.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Katie winced a little and limped away from the wreckage. “Just bruised, I think. I’ll tell you about it downstairs. I don’t want to spend another second up here.”
Lucy and I helped her down the stairs from the attic. She looked pretty weird with all that white stuff in her hair, but for some reason I didn’t feel like laughing. That beam that had fallen on her was big and heavy.
She was lucky to be alive.
23
The first thing Katie did when we got downstairs was wash her face in the sink and then get a big glass of water. She drank the whole glassful, sighed, and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Something very weird happened,” she said. “I saw this little boy on the stairs. He had very pale skin and he was about Sally’s age. And he was dressed in old-fashioned clothes.”
“The ghost!” I exclaimed. “You really saw him?”
Katie frowned, then slowly nodded. “He beckoned to me,” she said. “He looked so sad, I wanted to help him. So I followed him down the hall to the attic stairway. It was like he disappeared through the door, but that may have been my eyes playing tricks on me.”
“What happened next?” I
