The Final Nightmare (3 page)

“What's that smell?” asked Lucy in a hushed voice.

A peculiar odor rose up at us. It smelled like dirty socks and moldy bread and wet garbage. It smelled like air that had been shut up with dead things for a long time.

“Rat turds,” said Steve. “There are definitely rats down there.”

I scowled at him. “It's just the dirt floor,” I told Lucy. “The house is so old the basement doesn't have a cement floor.”

“It smells old all right,” said Lucy. “Like a mummy might come lurching up the stairs at us any second.”

“What's that dripping noise?” asked Steve.

“Dripping?” I echoed, stalling. “I didn't hear any dripping.” It wasn't a lie, really. What I'd heard sounded more like some scaly finned creature dropping into slimy depths.

I started down.

PLOP!

“I hear it!” said Lucy breathlessly.

“Must be a leaky pipe,” I said, but I didn't move. “No big deal.”

“Did you ever see
Alien?
” Steve said. “The part where the creature is hiding up in the shadows and all they can hear is the drip-drip-drip of its slimy saliva?”

My determination was slipping away. My stomach felt queasy.

“That was just a movie!” scoffed Lucy. “It's probably just a leaky pipe or something.”

She nudged my back. “We'd better check it out,” she insisted. “A leaky pipe could make a big mess and you said there's lots of valuable old stuff down there.”

So I took a deep breath and started down the stairs with my friends close behind. My ankles tingled as if something under the stairs was itching to grab them. Every time I set my foot down on a tread I half expected claws to sink into my ankles.

When I couldn't stand it another second, I crouched down and swept my flashlight beam over the dark space under the stairs.

Steve jumped. Shadows shrank from the light.

“What?” cried Lucy.

There was nothing there.

I let out a breath. “Just being careful,” I said, my voice sounding too loud, as if something was listening down below.

I went down a couple more steps. We were more than halfway.

The light from the bare bulb stuck close to the stairs, like it was afraid to venture out into the basement. I strained my eyes to see beyond it but the blackness was like a solid thing.

Anything could be watching us, cloaked in the dark, invisible.

All I could see were humped shapes. Was something lurking among the stacks of boxes and broken furniture? Waiting for us?

Then it happened.

“
Screeee-screee-screeeeee!
”

Something hurtled up out of the dark. A blur of motion, it flew flapping and screaming straight at us.

Steve screamed as it hit his face. He fell, giving the rope a sharp tug.

Lucy's arms pinwheeled as she struggled to keep her balance and failed.

The rope yanked me.

I grabbed for the railing but the flapping thing blinded me. It beat at my face, trying to get at my eyes. I threw my hands up in front of me and lost my balance.

I went down hard in the dark, the creature shrieking above me.

9

We were a tangle of legs and rope.

I kicked the coils of rope off me, rubbing my back where I'd fallen.

“I hate bats,” said Steve, hunching his shoulders around his ears and darting his eyes around, looking for it.

“It wasn't a bat, silly,” said Lucy. “It was just a poor terrified bird. A robin, I think.”

My heart whacked against my ribs.

A bird, that was all. And I'd thought it was going to pop out my eyeballs and slurp them down whole.

The three of us got shakily to our feet.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“It think it flew upstairs,” said Lucy. “How did it get in?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “All the basement windows are boarded up.”

I shrugged. “One of the boards must have come loose.”

“Yeah?” said Steve. “Maybe something pried the boards loose, you ever think of that?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said. “That's why we're down here, remember? To end the haunting, one way or another.”

PLOP! PING!

“What's that?” Lucy said in a hushed voice.

It was the sound of fat, slimy worms dropping from the ceiling into a pit of goo.

We looked at each other. Steve was clutching the banister tightly. Lucy's brown eyes looked like black holes.

We started down again.

At the bottom Lucy switched her flashlight on. Big humps rose up out of the dark and settled into the light beam as torn sofas, stacks of boxes, broken chairs.

“Sure is dark down here,” she said. “I don't know when I've seen so much junk all in one place. I bet there's a lot of great stuff here.”

“You could hide a body down here and no one would find it for a hundred years,” said Steve, his voice cracking.

I shivered. “Let's start over there,” I said, pointing with my flashlight.

“And what if we find the body?” asked Lucy, the beam wavering in her hand.

“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 junk in its way didn't even exist.

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.