And its glowing eyes were fixed on us.
The thing in the shadows was circling us.
“If we don’t get out of here right now,” Steve whispered, “I’m going to wet my pants.”
We took a step backward, toward the stairs, then another.
The thing bared sharp teeth and hissed in fury.
It started moving faster.
Then it disappeared.
It wasn’t there.
We gripped one another.
One thing we knew—it wasn’t gone. We couldn’t see it, but it definitely could see us. We could feel the evil eyes probing from the dark.
We ran for the stairs.
“AHHHHHHHHHH!”
With a shriek, the thing sprang from the shadows and rushed at us, skeleton hands outstretched.
It was the witch-thing! And her weird eyes were locked on mine. I could feel the hate radiate from her. The creature hated anything alive.
It reached for my neck, clawed fingers twitching.
The creature’s foul breath stunned me like a poison cloud.
The last thing I breathed as it started to choke the life out of me was that rotten, garbage-smelling breath.
12
Something grabbed my waist and jerked me hard out of the witch’s grasp.
I stumbled and heard someone shouting from a long ways off.
“Jason! Quick! Run!”
The witch’s screech of fury blasted me with her poisonous breath. I felt like I was drowning in a sewer.
My sight dimmed.
Icy finger bones scrabbled at my collar, reaching for my neck.
I felt another sharp tug at my waist.
“Jason! Come on!”
Lucy was pulling desperately on the rope that tied the three of us together, yanking us toward the stairs.
Steve grabbed my arm and I shook my head to get rid of the foul-smelling fog that surrounded me.
“You’re mine!” shrieked the witch. “Mine!”
I tripped over a box and fell down. I felt her hot breath blister my neck.
Something rattled in the box and I rolled away, panicked with a vision of hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.
The witch cackled in triumph as her fingers dug into my shoulder.
She started to drag me back into the shadows of the basement.
I knew I was a goner.
Then Lucy grabbed the box and heaved it. Missing my head, it connected with the thing behind me.
There was a cry of pain and I was free.
“Take that you—you—you old witch!” Lucy shouted.
Steve jerked me to my feet and Lucy charged for the stairs, pulling us along behind her.
I stumbled again at the bottom of the stairs but Lucy kept going, tugging on the rope while Steve pushed me from behind.
We fell into the kitchen, our chests heaving with exhaustion.
I slammed the door behind us and bolted it.
“I can’t believe I really saw it,” said Lucy, getting her breath back. “It was even more horrible than you said, Jason.”
I rubbed my neck where the witch had squeezed me. “I was wrong about her having less power in the daytime,” I said, slumping against the wall. I felt defeated. “I don’t know what we can do to stop her.”
“We could nail the basement door closed,” Lucy suggested.
But I knew that wouldn’t work. “Ghosts get through locked doors,” I said. “That won’t stop them.”
“Let’s try it anyway,” Lucy said. “It can’t hurt.”
Steve wasn’t paying attention to us. He got to his feet and heaved a deep sigh of relief.
“Amazing,” he said to himself. “I didn’t wet my pants after all.”
13
“What on earth are you kids doing?”
Startled, I whirled around and almost dropped the hammer on my toe. We’d been making so much noise nailing the basement door shut I hadn’t heard the car or the front door.
“Mom! I didn’t expect you so early. How is Katie?” I asked, dropping the rest of the nails in my pocket.
“Hello, Mrs. Winter,” said Steve with a guilty look on his face.
“Hi, Mrs. Winter,” said Lucy. “How was your trip?”
“Fine, Lucy, thank you,” said Mom, looking distracted. She turned to me. “Jason, your dad and I need to talk to you. The doctors say Katie’s head injury isn’t serious but for some reason she’s still not making sense—babbling about ghosts and witches. What exactly happened here last night?”
Lucy and Steve exchanged glances. “We’ll be going now,” said Steve, edging toward the back door.
“But what is this?” said Mom, her glance catching on a half-hammered nail. “Jason, what are you up to? Why are you nailing the basement door?”
“It’s the witch,” Lucy blurted. “She’s in the basement. She’s real. We saw her. Didn’t we? Tell her, Steve, we saw her. She would have got Jason if we hadn’t all been roped together. It was the witch who attacked Katie.”
Steve nodded, his eyes on the floor. “It’s true, Mrs. Winter. This house is haunted.” He looked up at her and finished in a rush, “You shouldn’t stay here!”
My heart soared! Mom had to believe us now. She couldn’t think we were all making it up!
Could she?
Mom had a strange, baffled expression on her face as she looked at each of us, one after the other. She didn’t say anything. Her hair looked limp and there were dark circles under her eyes.
“We saw it, Mom,” I burst out. “Really we did.”
“You children better go now,” she said to Lucy and Steve. “Jason’s dad and I have some catching up to do.”
After my friends left Mom gestured at me to sit down at the kitchen table. “Dad will be right down,” she said. “He’s checking on Sally.”
It was kind of solemn waiting for Dad. Mom poured us each some juice but she didn’t say anything, just kept giving me these worried looks. I was relieved to hear Dad’s step on the stairs.
“Sally was really out,” he said, coming into the kitchen. “She never even opened her eyes.”
Then he stopped, seeing the expression on Mom’s face. “What’s up?” he asked, cocking his head worriedly at me.
But Mom spoke first. “I came in and found Jason and his friends nailing the basement door shut,” she said.
Dad’s face fell. I noticed he had dark circles under his eyes, too. He sat down at the table. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.
It was a long afternoon. I
