Home, Sweet Haunt (9 page)

“Nora? Lucas?” It was their mom.

Lucas shoved the dumbwaiter panel shut as their parents entered Nora's bedroom. Nora grabbed the baby kitten poster, positioned it over the opening, and struggled to make the torn tape bits stick. When she stepped away from the wall, the poster was crooked, but the panel was covered.

Standing near the dresser, Mrs. Wilson shot the two kids a look. She had an expression that indicated she knew they'd been up to something, but she wasn't sure what. Usually that expression was pointed at Lucas, but tonight she kept staring at Nora. Mrs. Wilson studied her silently for a long time.

“Nora. Lucas. Bedtime,” Nora's mother said at last. “Be sure to brush your teeth.”

“Blech.” Lucas moaned as he turned and walked out of Nora's room toward the bathroom.

“We're locking the front door tonight with the top bolt. Now that we know there are rumors the building is haunted,” she told Nora, “we want to keep you and Lucas safe from all those ghost hunters roaming the hallways.”

“Oh, Mom,” Nora said, rolling her eyes. “I didn't know you believed in ghosts.”

“It's not the ghosts,” Mrs. Wilson said. “It's the curious strangers who are lurking around tonight. Too many strangers.”

Ugh. Nora was immediately reminded just how hard it was going to be to get permission to leave the apartment ever again. She'd thought that since she'd had such a great day, and nothing disastrous had happened, they might come around. But no. They were back to their worried, paranoid ways, not wanting her or Lucas to stray too far or anyone to come near the apartment.

Sheesh, they'd survived a fire! No matter what her parents said about lightning strikes, something that awful could never happen twice. No way! Nora was going to have
to show them it was safe for her to be out in the world.

After her parents went to bed, Nora waited a few minutes to make sure no one was coming back to check on her. She carelessly ripped her poster off the wall and dropped it on the floor. Climbing into the dumbwaiter shaft, Nora had to tuck her feet under her legs to make her body small enough to fit in the opening. It was cramped inside, and her right foot immediately fell asleep.

Nora reached out and took hold of one of the thick, rough ropes. With a yank on the pulley to loosen the rope, Nora gripped the frayed cord in both her fists. Then, hand-over-hand like Lucas had shown her, very slowly Nora began to lower herself down.

She got past her own floor without a problem, but as she tried to go below the ninth floor, the rope caught and stuck. It was so dark inside the dumbwaiter that she couldn't see a few inches in front of her. Nora stretched her arms high above her head to feel if the cord had somehow wrapped around the pulley. Everything felt as it should be, but it was almost like there was something propping the dumbwaiter up from below, causing it to stop. With no way to check underneath the base, Nora tugged on the cord to lift herself back onto her own floor. She'd get a
flashlight from her room before setting out again.

She pulled. And tugged. And shook the chains that held the platform. The platform refused to budge. It wouldn't go up or down. Nora felt her heartbeat quicken. Why wouldn't the dumbwaiter move?!

Her hands began to sweat and her nerves were on fire.

Nora was trapped inside the wall of the apartment building! Her mind started to play tricks on her. She was seeing shadows that weren't possibly there. Without light how could there be shadows? They'd already proven that the ninth floor wasn't haunted. Or had they?

“No ghosts,” she found herself repeating out loud, over and over. “No gh—” When the scratching noises began, Nora remembered what LL and science had said was lurking on the ninth floor.

Something scurried above Nora's head.

“Rats!” she screamed. “Rats!”

In a moment of panic Nora pulled so hard on the rope that it came loose through the pulley. She was no longer in control. The dumbwaiter inched past the eighth floor, the seventh, the sixth . . . The rope slid through her hands as the dumbwaiter continued down, picking up speed as it headed—hurtled—toward the bottom of the shaft.

Nora finally managed get a good hold on the rope. She held the cord so tightly her arm nearly pulled from its socket as the rope dragged her up onto her knees. The rope yanked through her hands. She didn't know which floor she was at now, but she thought maybe she was approaching the second . . . and Caitlin's apartment.

“Help!” Nora cried. She'd planned to scare Caitlin, Aleah, and LL, but now she was the one who was scared. Nora called their names and shouted “Help!” so many times that her throat hurt from screaming.

Slam. Slam.
Nora pounded her fists against the wall as the dumbwaiter plummeted toward the second floor. She rotated her body and pressed both arms and both
legs into the walls of the dumbwaiter shaft while shouting for help and begging the rats to leave her alone, all at the same time.

The force of her body pressed into the walls caused the dumbwaiter to slow. It didn't stop, but it was enough, if only her friends would open the panel. They had to open the panel!

“Caitlin!” Nora called. “Aleah! LL!”

“Nora?!” Her name was shouted in a chorus of three different voices.

The panel in Caitlin's apartment popped open, and Nora tumbled out and hit the floor with a slam.

Behind her the dumbwaiter continued down until it crashed in the basement. The cracking noise of the base of the box against the cement of the floor reminded Nora what would have happened if her friends hadn't opened the panel in time.

Nora leaped up and hugged each of her friends. “Thank you!” She felt so emotional, tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Are you all right?” Caitlin asked, leading Nora to the sofa.

Nora was shaking. She'd never been so frightened.

“Your hands are freezing cold,” Aleah said, grabbing her sleeping bag from the floor, where the girls had positioned their beds. LL and Aleah each took a side, and they wrapped Nora in the fluffy blue sack.

“Here, eat this.” LL gave Nora some chocolate. “You're so pale, you're practically blue.”

Nora let the chocolate melt on her tongue and ate a few of Caitlin's licorice sticks. The sugar, and time, calmed her nerves, and soon she felt better.

“Thanks,” Nora told her friends. “You rescued me.”

“We were getting ready to look for a movie on TV,” Aleah said, “when we heard you shouting inside the walls.”

“We were hoping you'd sneak back,” Caitlin admitted. “I somehow imagined it would be with less dramatic an entrance, though.” She raised an eyebrow.

“I planned to scare you,” Nora told them.

“Well,” LL said, “you did do that!” She put an arm around Nora. “We're glad you're okay.”

“I'm fine,” Nora said. She nodded toward the dumbwaiter shaft. “I'm not sure how I'm going to get home. That was my ride.”

“We'll figure everything out tomorrow,” Caitlin said. “For now, just enjoy the sleepover.”

Aleah read aloud a list of classic horror movies that were playing tonight. Nora had seen them all. And she loved them all.

Caitlin ran to her room and dug up a pillow and a sleeping bag. She handed them to Nora.

Nora knew she shouldn't be there. She knew she was supposed to be upstairs. She knew she had no way to sneak back into her room now. She knew her parents would be mad about the dumbwaiter. She knew all that.

Nora also knew she wasn't ready to go home.

Halloween wasn't over.

Not yet.

As Nora settled in to spend the night, she asked Aleah, “What happened at the end of the story?”

“Story?” Aleah paused the movie. “What story?”

“The soldier. The lady,” Nora said. “I left before the end.”

“Oh,” Aleah told Nora, “I was almost finished. The woman went inside and left him standing on the street.” She pressed play on the film. The opening music began. “She called a few friends to tell them what had happened. A few days later she died.”

“From what?” Nora asked.

“The website didn't say. I offered to write a better ending,” Aleah told Nora. “Caitlin and LL turned me down.”

“It's supposed to be true,” Caitlin said. “If you made up what happened next, it wouldn't be true.”

“Just saying,
my
explanation would have been better than
no
explanation.” Aleah shrugged and clicked up the volume on the TV.

“Hmmm.” Nora tucked Caitlin's pillow behind her head.

Maybe there was no ending simply because no one, except the soldier and the lady, knew the whole story, and they weren't telling.

As midnight crept closer, the girls were full of candy and growing sleepy. Caitlin's cat was snoozing at the edge of Caitlin's sleeping bag. She was curled up in a tight black fuzz ball and breathing deeply.

“One last story, Aleah. Please.” Caitlin wanted to hear another true ghost story before they crashed for the night.

The lights were off. They'd gotten bored with the movies. Aleah's computer screen glowed in the darkness. “I'll find one that will give us all bad dreams,” Aleah said with a chuckle.

“I'll sleep like a baby,” LL assured her. “Don't worry about me.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” Aleah told LL. Everyone sat quietly while Aleah browsed websites. The only noise was her fingers striking keyboard keys, until she said, “Okay. I think— Wait. What's this?” Aleah leaned forward so that her face was eerily illuminated by the screen. “Here it is. What I'd been looking for all along. A story about this exact building.”

“Ha! I knew it!” Caitlin pumped the air. “There is a ghost on the ninth floor after all.”

“No.” Aleah scanned through the story, then reported, “But I think this might be the source of the ghost rumor, Caitlin.” She began to retell the news story. “Earlier tonight, I looked for stories about people who died, or ghost stories. This is different. This is about a fire.”

“A fire?” Nora had been lying down on the sleeping bag. Now she sat up and moved to the edge of her bedding. A chill rose up her spine as Aleah began to interpret the report in her own storyteller style.

“The fire began in the kitchen.” Aleah's voice was soft and vibrated through the silence. “It was so late at night, it was early in the morning. Very few people in the building were awake.”

The way Aleah was speaking drew them all into the
story. LL came and sat next to Nora. Caitlin moved near Aleah. They were in a circle, knees touching.

“Four people lived in the apartment. A mother. A father. And two children.”

Nora knew this story. But she didn't say anything, not yet.

“The blaze quickly spread from the kitchen into the living room, turning everything it touched into hot white ash. The mother and father fought the flames with water, blankets, and an old fire extinguisher they'd had in the pantry but had forgotten to replace when it expired.”

Nora could smell the smoke on her pajamas. The constant reminder . . .

“The neighbors could hear the children screaming. They reported that the parents sent the kids to safety in a back bedroom. It isn't fire that usually kills in these situations, it's the smoke. They warned the children to stay close to the floor and not to open any windows, for fear of—”

“Backdraft,” Nora supplied the word.

Aleah glanced up at her with curiosity. Nora shrugged as if it was a common phrase that everyone should know, and Aleah went on.

“Men and women from the surrounding apartments tried to open the front door, but it was jammed. They wanted to help, but the heat was intense. Smoke was filling the hallway, making it hard for the rescuers to breathe.”

“This is horrible!” Caitlin said. “When did it happen?”

Aleah scrolled down the page. “Um, actually, just before your family moved to town.”