Kindred Spirits (7 page)

“What now?” Mason asked. He stood to my right.

“I— I— I don't know,” I stuttered. Haunted houses made me nervous. Standing in a haunted house with a boy made me extra nervous.

“There's a lit-up arrow over there. It's pointing around a bend,” Mason said. His voice sounded strained. Was he nervous too?

“Let's go.” I had a plan. We'd go through the haunted house superfast. No stopping to get scared. No stopping for ghosts—real or fake. In and out, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

The narrow passageway forced us to move with our shoulders nearly touching.

“Do you want to go first?” I offered.

“Nah. You can.”

Neither of us ventured forward. We stayed squished side by side. Everything was quiet. Eerily quiet. I could hear Mason breathing. Again I was close enough to smell his minty gum. Electric candles were scattered about, casting small pools of dim light.

We turned the corner and entered what looked to be an old living room. Cobwebs covered antique lamps and a swaying chandelier. The chipped keys of a grand piano moved up and down, played by unseen hands.

Mason grabbed my wrist and pointed to the framed oil portrait of a bearded sea captain above the fireplace. The eyes blinked. I sucked in my breath. The painting was alive.

Chills tingled my neck.

Just a trick, just a trick,
I repeated to myself.

I hated being this scared.

Suddenly the top of the grand piano flew open. A mummy popped out. Dirty bandages crusted with gore hung from his outstretched arm. One eyeball dangled from its socket. He groaned and reached for us.

Mason tightened his grip on my wrist and pulled me out of the room.

“It's just a trick,” I said. “Just a trick.” I wondered if he could hear my heart boom in my chest.

“Totally. I know.” He let go of my wrist. “That kid said you were chicken, though, so I was just trying to help.”

We were in another dark hallway. A thin stream of cold air tickled my shoulders, as if someone stood behind me blowing. I glanced back. I couldn't see anyone.

“This way.” Mason quickly followed the hallway into a large formal dining room. A half-eaten meal lay abandoned on an enormous table. Skeletons sat in all the chairs but two.

“Come eat with us,” a deep voice cried.

I hesitated. “I don't think we have to stop,” I said quickly. “Unless you want to?”

“Sit!” the voice commanded.

“Hey, the food looks fresher than my school cafeteria's food,” Mason said.

“Totally,” I agreed, not wanting to act like a big scaredy-cat.

We sat next to each other in oversize wooden chairs. Body parts floated in the platters of food. A stray tooth. A severed finger. Was that an ear? I started to gag.

Then I couldn't breathe. A tightness around my chest squeezed my lungs. What was happening?

“Get off! Get off!” Mason cried.

I tried to look at him, but I couldn't turn. I couldn't move. Something was holding me down.

A snake! A ten-foot-long snake was wrapped around my chest, binding me to my chair! Its scales were a mixture of yellow and gray. This was no trick. This snake was real.

Way real.

Tighter and tighter, it squeezed around me like a rubber band.

Mason thrashed alongside me, fighting off a snake of his own. My snake focused its menacing yellow eyes, and I began to scream. Mason screamed too.

And then I could breathe again.

The snake loosened its hold. In seconds it magically disappeared back into the arms of the chair.

Gone. A trick after all. Our screams must've made it retract, I realized.

I stood, feeling foolish. My legs shook.

Mason breathed rapidly. “Cool, huh?”

“Not really.” I no longer cared if I seemed like a big chicken. I just wanted to finish and get out. Another flashing arrow appeared, sending us down a different hallway. Hands reached from the darkness. Cackling laughter echoed in the small space. Fog descended. A curtain of sticky cobwebs blocked our path. I moved as fast as I could, dodging the avalanche of scares.

Mason kept pace. Room after room. Coffins with bodies. Zombies. Then a hallway that never seemed to end. The ceiling dropped lower, until our hair nearly skimmed it. The space grew narrower. We pushed up against each other.

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. A sound effect or a real storm? I couldn't tell. The electric candles flickered.

Cool air tingled along my shoulders. I whirled around. Darkness.

“Did you feel that?” I whispered.

“What?” Mason rasped. His arms were crossed over his chest. He rocked slightly from front to back.

“Like someone blowing.”

“Here? There's no room in here for anyone else. There's no room in here for us.”

“Let's go,” I said. I was scared, but Mason sounded more than scared. Weird. Panicked. We inched our way forward in the darkness.

Mason took short, rapid breaths. He sounded as if he were fighting for air.

“Are you okay?” I stopped.

Something was wrong.

“Fine,” he rasped. “Come on.”

Goose bumps covered my body as cool air once again danced down my neck. I whirled around.

And saw her.

Just slightly. The shimmering outline of a girl a few years older than me. She was wearing an old-fashioned-looking dress. Something about her face wasn't right, but I couldn't see her clearly.

She wasn't a trick. She was a ghost. A real ghost who was following me.

She smiled as we locked eyes. Not a happy smile. The grin a cat gets when she spies a mouse. And then I heard her speak.

“You can see me? Well, come here, pretty girl,” she called, beckoning me with her shimmering hand.

Something about her terrified me. The snakes coming out of the chair to suffocate me seemed tame compared to her.

“Hurry!” I grabbed Mason's arm to pull him forward. We stumbled in the darkness. Through a narrow hallway, away from her. Into a room that was a little less dark.

I realized the ghost wasn't following us. We were safe. I turned to say something to Mason to try and downplay my minor freak-out and saw that he seemed to be having a really hard time breathing. “What's wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he wheezed.

There was no way our little run through the hallway had winded Mason this much. Something was really wrong.

We had to get out of here now. Mason needed a doctor.

“A door!” I cried, spotting a door backlit in the distance. We ran for it.
EXIT
blinked above it.

Almost there. We were almost there.

Suddenly skeletons dropped from the ceiling. A mass of limbs blocked our path. I tried to push them aside but couldn't. They were heavier than they looked.

Mason hunched forward, hands on his thighs. He didn't move to help. Through the web of bones, I saw the sign over the door. It now flashed
NO EXIT
.

Mason's breathing grew even more labored.

He has to get out. He has to get out.

I didn't know which way to turn or what to do. I let out the loudest scream I could.

Other screams echoed simultaneously around me, pulling my voice into a high-pitched chorus of fear. At that very moment, screams played over and over on the sound system. My voice was drowned out completely.

Mason has to get out.

I stared at the skeletons, unable to wait until they would be lifted on pulleys back to the ceiling. I wanted them gone now.
Now!

With a crash, the skeletons tumbled to the ground as if pulled by an invisible hand. Bones clattered and cracked in an avalanche.

I stared openmouthed. The bone blockade was now gone. The recorded screams cut off. A bell rang. Not a scary sound. A warning bell. Then the overhead lights turned on. I blinked rapidly, adjusting my eyes.

Mason's raspy gasps made me focus on the door.
NO EXIT.

Was that true?

“Follow me,” I ordered, stepping over the skeletal fallout.

Was this even a real door? Would it open?

I grasped the doorknob and twisted.

The door opened.

I fell into in a small room designed to look like an old screened-in back porch. Mason stumbled out at my heels. A girl with red hair sat in front of an antique table selling Midnight Manor T-shirts and baseball caps. She grinned at me with plastic vampire fangs. “Vould you vant a Scream-at-the-Beach souvenir?”

“What did you do?” David banged through another door. The familiar noises of the boardwalk came from beyond it. His cheeks flushed red, as if he'd sprinted around from the ticket stand. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing,” Mason wheezed. He unzipped his backpack and rummaged about. He pulled out a small inhaler, placed it in his mouth, and took a deep breath. “Asthma,” he managed when he saw our curious stares.

That explained why he couldn't breathe, I realized. He'd been having an asthma attack.

“One of you must have pulled down those skeletons in there!” David balled his hands into fists. “There is no way they just fell down! How did you do that?
Why
did you do that?”

“Not me,” I said.

“I didn't touch it.” Mason's breathing sounded better.

“They just dropped,” I said. “That's the truth.”

“Weird,” David muttered. He opened the door leading back to the narrow hallway. “Pete? You fixing that?”

Mason took another breath with his inhaler, then tucked it away in his backpack.

“That was superscary,” I said as we stepped outside. The humid sea air felt great against my face. I inhaled the sugary sweetness from the fudge shop across the way. “I'm never going in there again.”

Mason shrugged. “It wasn't so bad.”

“Seriously? I heard you scream.”

“Just getting into it. I didn't want you to be the only one screaming.”

“What about your asthma? My aunt Charlotte has asthma attacks when she's panicked.”

Mason's eyes flashed. “I'm not your aunt Charlotte. It was that fog machine. I couldn't breathe with that. And I don't like small spaces. I was so
not
scared.”

I didn't believe him, but I didn't want to argue. So far, Mason and I had never agreed on anything.

Avery and Miranda were waiting for us. Lily, Luke, Garrett, and Nate hurried out a minute later. “They cut it short,” Luke grumbled. “Something broke down.”

“It was so good, right? Epic scary,” Lily gushed. “I am definitely coming back. I need to finish it.”

We dissected the different scares as we made our way through the crowds toward the pink-and-white awning of Scoops. Lily's uncle Paul owned the popular ice-cream shop. He wasn't technically her uncle, just a close family friend, but the Randazzos all called him “uncle.” Lily had so many uncles and cousins that I guessed they figured why not add one or two more.

The eight of us squeezed into a booth made for six. I was wedged between Lily and the tiled wall. Mason ended up across from me.

“It's a good thing Sara gave Junior to David,” Lily
said. “Otherwise, it would be un-bear-ably tight.” We all groaned at her joke.

“Why'd you do that?” Mason asked me. I couldn't read his expression. Was he upset that I didn't have the bear? Had giving it to me really meant something?

“I'm going back for my bear, whose name is not Junior, later,” I assured him.

Lily shifted to talk with the others about Midnight Manor, leaving me and Mason facing each other. I pointed to the flavors printed on the blackboard. “Look,” I said, “they have one called Bear Paws. Lots of brownie pieces, caramel, and nuts in it.”

“Too much stuff,” he replied. “That's not an ice-cream lover's flavor.”

“I love ice cream, and I like Bear Paws,” I replied.

“You might think you're an ice-cream lover, but you're not really. Ice-cream lovers are purists. Vanilla. Chocolate. Strawberry. No stuff in it.”

“There's stuff in strawberry ice cream,” I said.

“What?”

“Strawberries.” I grinned.

Mason didn't grin back. “One fruit doesn't count. The rule is you can't clog up a good vanilla or a good
chocolate with tons of random stuff.”

“What rule?” I asked. “Who makes the rules? You?”

“No, not me. Everyone knows the rules.”

“Not in Stellamar. I bet Bear Paws is one of the most popular flavors here,” I countered.

“Your town's ice-cream taste is corrupt then. You need to get back to basics.” He gave me a smug smirk.

“You've got to be kidding!” My voice came out much louder than I'd planned. Everyone stopped talking and stared.

Avery reached around Lily and tapped my shoulder. “I'm going to the bathroom. Want to come?”

I knew she was trying to save me. Mason was being a pain. He still flashed that smug grin, like he was smarter than us. But for some reason, I wanted to keep talking to him. I wanted to be near him. I had that same warm feeling under my skin that I'd felt when I first saw him. I didn't know what it meant, but I wanted to find out. “I'm good, Aves, thanks,” I said.

The waitress came by and took our orders. I ordered Bear Paws. I had to.

“I just had the best idea!” Lily squealed. “I'm going to have my birthday party at Midnight Manor. How
awesome will that be? Maybe David can get his boss to close it down just for my party. And you're all invited!”

Everyone agreed it was a great idea. We'd go to Scoops afterward, and then the girls would sleep over at Lily's. Miranda and Avery threw out suggestions as the waitress placed big glass bowls with our ice cream in front of us.

Immediately, hands shot in all directions. Scoops kept all the toppings on the tables. You could take as much as you wanted. I reached for the chocolate sauce.