“We bring it upstairs into the light,” I said, feeling a little sick at the thought. “Ghosts can’t stand the light. It’ll rob her of all her powers. And then my parents can give her a decent funeral.”
Something slithered in the dark.
“What was that?” cried Lucy, jerking her flashlight around.
PLOP! DRIP!
Startled, she swung her light the other way. We both aimed our beams at the sound.
A long, skinny, black snake hung and writhed from the ceiling beam.
“There it is!” cried Steve. “Somebody’s already put a bucket under it.”
I blinked and the snake became just an old electrical cord left slung over the rafter.
There was a bucket on the floor under a pipe with a slow drip. I felt my racketing heart slow down a little.
But wait! Who had put that bucket there? Not my dad. He had been gone for days. I was sure the bucket hadn’t been there the last time I was down here.
I was pretty sure.
“Let’s get started,” said Lucy. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Oh, yeah?” jeered Steve. “And what if we find a rotting old skeleton? What’s that going to give you? The heebie-jeebies?”
Lucy snugged the rope knot at her waist. “I don’t think there’s a body down here,” she said. “For one thing, it would smell.”
“Not if it was a skeleton,” said Steve. “Besides, if you don’t think there’s a body, what are you doing here?”
“There might be something else,” said Lucy. “A clue. We’ll know it when we see it.”
I didn’t say anything. The basement did smell. It smelled like something had been dead and rotting down here for a long time. And the smell was getting stronger.
“I want to start over here,” I said. “There’s a trunk I want to check out—”
Lucy let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her flashlight dropped to the floor and rolled away.
She backed into me, jabbering, and I fell over a box.
The flashlight flew out of my hands.
It bounced on the floor and went out.
We were in total darkness.
10
“I saw it!” screamed Lucy. “It’s coming for us. It has no head!”
Steve’s laughter rang out, bouncing off the stone walls.
He scooped up Lucy’s flashlight and aimed it over her head.
A headless, armless creature loomed at us out of the dark. I could see how it looked to Lucy.
“It’s a dressmaker’s dummy, dummy,” said Steve, howling with glee.
I got up off the floor and felt around for my flashlight. “You were pretty spooked yourself the first time you saw it,” I reminded Steve.
“That was then,” he said, grinning. “It’ll take more than a dummy to scare me now.”
Lucy grabbed her flashlight and took a closer look at the thing, a life-size figure of a woman, made for fitting clothes. “You should have warned me,” she said in an injured tone.
I shook my flashlight and, amazingly, it came on. I pointed it toward the dummy. “Steve and I found a trunk last time we were down here,” I said, scanning the area with my light. “But I don’t see—there it is!”
The trunk—a big one, big enough to hold the dressmaker’s dummy, or a body—was farther back than I remembered. There were a lot of boxes in front of it.
“Help me move this stuff out of the way,” I said. “I have a feeling about that trunk. There were some letters in it, but when I came back to look for them they were gone. Maybe they fell behind it or under it or something. Help me look.”
“We already looked in there,” Steve said, sounding irritated.
“Steve, you’re not scared, are you?” Lucy taunted him, flashing a grin at me.
We all froze at a slithering noise. It was coming from behind all the piles of junk.
“That’s the noise I heard before,” whispered Lucy.
“Mice,” I said, not at all sure.
“It’s too big to be mice,” said Steve uncertainly. “Maybe it’s a cat. Maybe it came in after that bird.”
The slithering became a scratching.
As if something with long claws was sharpening them on the stone walls.
We backed up a little and huddled closer together. I shone my flashlight toward the sound but couldn’t see anything. My knees felt rubbery.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” called Lucy in a faint, squeaky voice.
The scratching stopped. I felt Lucy and Steve stiffen on either side of me.
It was watching us. Watching us from the dark.
Then came a low hissing noise, and something heavy slid toward us across the floor.
We took another step back. Our muscles were so rigid we were like statues roped together.
I turned to whisper—I was going to suggest going upstairs, just for a minute, to find some more lights, get a drink of water, anything to get out of here—but I didn’t get the chance.
The snake-hiss noise got louder. It snarled.
The thing in the dark was angry.
Suddenly a cardboard box came flying out of the corner. It landed with a heavy thud.
Whatever kicked it was mad. And strong.
“I don’t think that was a cat,” whispered Lucy.
“Definitely not a cat,” Steve agreed.
No, it wasn’t a cat. But if it wasn’t a cat, what was it?
I didn’t really want to stick around to find out.
But when I looked back at the stairs I saw the box had landed right between us and our most direct route out.
I looked at the box. Was there something moving inside it?
Something struggling to get out?
11
“Jason! Look!” Steve gripped my arm. Lucy gasped.
I didn’t want to look away from the box. I had it fixed in my mind that if I looked away, small creatures with needle-sharp teeth would spill out and disappear into the shadows, ready to cut our ankles to ribbons when we attempted to escape up the stairs.
“Jason!” Steve’s voice cracked. His fingers dug into my shoulder.
I tore my eyes from the box.
At first I almost didn’t see it. It was a black shape in the darkness, a shadow among all the other shadows.
But it moved. It slithered along the wall around the edges of the basement.
Gliding through the shadows as if all the piles of
