The Haunting (3 page)

As my fingers curled around the thing behind me, I realized it felt like cold denim.

Spinning, I saw a body hanging from a tree that hadn’t been there before.

This tree had sprouted through the pavement in the middle of the street. It had to be as thick as three of me and as tall as the Victorian house behind it.

On one of the lower thick limbs, there was a taut rope.

At the end of the looped rope was Cooper.

Noose digging into his throat, Cooper swung when I pushed him away. I struggled to keep my balance, but his sneakers jabbed me in the ribs once, and I fell backwards onto the pavement. Landing on my hip hard, I covered my mouth with my hand, stifling the swelling scream before it could escape. My hands were shaking, and I tried not to look at Cooper, only to find myself staring at him. Frosty crystals spiked around the edge of his face and clothes, not yet melted. He was devoid of all pink, human colors. All the light—the life—was gone.

A husk, a shell, something that shouldn’t be so empty.

Cooper’s death disarmed us all. Joel was right. If I hadn’t started throwing snowballs at our monster, Cooper might still be alive. It gave chase, dropping Phoebe, who technically was already dead, and Cooper had died.
With no help from me,
I thought bitterly.

In the end, Phoebe’s words rang true. There was no use saving a drowning man. It didn’t make me feel any better, though. I’d failed them both.

The failure wasn’t like a bad grade. It was a scar that itched and ached. Seeing him hanging from the tree, swinging like a trophy, pained my chest.

I realized, in an instant, that it was quiet.

Scrambling to my feet and turning simultaneously, I saw Neive was gone, and so were the cemetery monsters. The entire cemetery had faded, an outline in a field of black. Silence deafened, and I felt the bubbling frustration warming my stomach.

In one deep breath, I screamed. I screamed so loud and hard that it hurt my already chaffed throat. I didn’t care, though. The pain only ripped another hole in the frustration, breaking it down to a carnal hatred.

I wanted to hurt something instead of wrestling with this guilt and grief.

Part of me wanted to crumple to the pavement and cry until I couldn’t draw another tear. The other part, the tiny sane part, knew that I would have to leave Cooper behind me.

I had to fight and win this Challenge. That was the only way I could really hurt him. And I’d take Neive with me.

I glanced up at Cooper one last time, but it was brief as I forced my feet to take me away.

Hugging myself, I tilted my chin up to stare at the foreboding house. It was similar to the Birket house except it was painted black. Broken shutters hung by grimy windows. The railing was loose and falling apart along the porch. Dead bushes curled over the broken railing and clawed onto the stairs with curled tips, looking like bony fingers.

As I scuffled off of the pavement and onto the narrow, cracked cement walkway, I glanced at the yellowed grass on either side. I’d expected Read to be sitting there, but he wasn’t.

The stairs were rickety, and the gnarled bushes snagged at my socks and scraped my legs. Balancing on the slanted porch, I noticed the rocking chair in the shadows. It rocked back and forth by its own accord, creaking the boards beneath it. Ignoring it, I stepped around the precarious holes in the floorboards until I reached the decrepit door. Above it was a wooden sign.
Intruders Beware At Dusk
.

I reached for the doorknob, and the door opened on its own, the hinges shrill. It struck me as being ridiculous, and I bit back a smile. Every horror movie had a creaky door just before…

The hinges groaned to a stop, revealing the house’s musty entrails.

Spiderwebs glistened in every corner and near furniture that was covered in dusty, white sheets.

Feeling my knees shake, I stepped far enough inside to see that there were five darkened—yet open—doorways that I could go through.

Holding back the urge to glance over my shoulder and see if Cooper was still there in the street, I wished that I’d taken him down. But then what? Bury him in the fake cemetery where those things could have him?

Despite the aftermath, he didn’t deserve to stay hanging up there. If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed with losing Neive, I might have thought of that earlier. Regret stabbed, and I turned to cut him down. It was cruel for Damien to display him like that. Cooper wasn’t a plaything. His body deserved more respect than this.

As I pivoted, the front door slammed shut. The edge of the door was close enough to blow my hair back from my face. I felt it scrape the tips of my toes, not close enough to clip them, thankfully. Jumping, I heard the bolt as the door locked me inside.

“Took you long enough,” Phoebe’s voice called behind me.

Wiping my face free of forgotten tears, I turned to see them all there.

Joel leaned against the farthest wall between two chairs. Arms crossed over his broad chest, he still favored his injured hand, but I noticed new wrappings. He was looking up at me, thick eyebrows furrowed and disgruntled as usual. His tan wasn’t pale anymore.

One of the antique chairs beside him was exposed. The wooden buttons in the backing and wooden frame were coated in a shining dark stain that I decided not to think about. Its sheet was on the floor. I could see where they’d torn it for new gauze.

Phoebe brushed a strand of her greasy blonde hair away from her face and avoided my gaze. A new bandage was tied around her ankle. Red veins weren’t spiderwebbing up her leg like it had in my dream, but she still kept her weight off of it.

“Why?” I asked. “How long have you been waiting?”

Robin Thurston answered, her usually loud voice strained and hoarse. “Felt like over an hour. But Cody and I have been here for a while.”

“Yeah,” Joel sneered. “They figured out the Challenge. That screaming baby was what we should have gone after.”

Phoebe snorted and rolled her dark green eyes as if they’d argued about this before.

Cody shifted on his feet, jostling Robin, who was leeched to his side. Her hip came up to his thigh. Her head didn’t reach much past his armpit. Usually she wore heels to match their height, but she’d lost them somewhere in the Challenge, which left her barefoot.

Robin nodded, her bobbed hair looking as though it housed mice. “Cody said some poem, and
poof
, it disappeared and we walked through a door to here.”

Could it have been Bess who did that? She’d showed me how she died. Showed me a piece of Joel’s ugly past.

As a teenager, Bess became pregnant with Joel’s baby. When he left, not wanting the responsibility, she committed suicide in a swimming pool. I got to see the whole thing first hand because I tried to save Joel. Stupid me.

“Why didn’t you come back for us is what I want to know,” Phoebe piped up, unimpressed.

Robin’s pale green eyes flashed annoyance. “Who knows how long that door would be open? Besides, we called for you guys, and no one answered.”

“We thought we lost you guys,” Cody said, scratching his bare stomach. He’d lost his shirt in the zoo. His eyes were still red with popped blood vessels, making it hard to look him in the eye.

“Well, I’m glad you all made it,” I said numbly, searching the room for clues.

It was a creepy old house. It definitely squashed Aidan’s grandpa’s house.

Our little group huddled in the foyer, but all around us were doors instead of the doorways I’d seen before. But then, I hadn’t seen my friends until the front door slammed shut. I noticed none of the possibilities were black doors like I’d been accustomed to.

Nailed on each door was a wooden sign with a word. They had a similar likeness to the one over the front door.

The first one nearest Joel read:
Dragon
.

The second:
Wasteland.

The third:
Bloodwork.

Fourth:
Dead.

And finally the fifth door read:
Reaper

“Not very inviting, are they?” Phoebe said.

I glanced at her, but she avoided my eye. “Any clues?” I asked.

Robin vibrated and all but raised her hand before saying, “When Cody and I got here, Damien came to give us a clue.”

At the mention of his name, I winced. The tender scar he’d created pinched.

Phoebe and Joel both noticed my recoil, though they both responded differently.

“What
did
take you so long?” Phoebe asked.

At the same time, Joel growled, “Scared? Was he a little rough with you this time?”

If I had something in my hand, I would have thrown it at him. Ignoring them both, I asked, “What was the clue, Robin?”

I saw out of the corner of my eye that Joel had started to grin. He’d gotten under my skin with that comment, and he knew it.

Robin’s gaze flickered between Joel, Phoebe, and me. “Uh…” she said before focusing back on me. “Six, two, one, and one.”

“What have you come up with so far?” I asked.

“Well, with no help from you—”

“Shut up, Joel.” Phoebe’s voice cracked the air like a whip.

Joel rolled his eyes and leaned his shaved head against the wall, still smirking.

Robin looked between the tanned, thumb-less jerk and me with a meddling interest. “Well, we tried, like, figuring out which letter it is in the alphabet.”

“But in the end it spelled F-B-A-A,” Phoebe interrupted. “Even as an anagram, it’s useless.”

“Like I said, it’s four letters. Let’s just pick the door with four letters,” Joel said, his voice still edged with aggression. To Phoebe, he said snidely, “That would be the one marked ‘Dead.’”

That stung even me. I glanced at Phoebe, who finally made eye contact, but it was wounded and brief.

“No,” she snapped. “We’re not doing it that way.
You
be my guest.” She motioned him toward the door, her eyes wild with anger. “Better yet, jump in first and tell us if it’s safe.” She wiggled her thumbs up for him to see and said with false enthusiasm, “Oh look, opposable thumbs. I’ll open the door for you.”

Robin scolded her. “Phoebe, that’s not nice.”

“Neither is he,” she said, not looking away from him.

They stood opposite each other, both tensed and aggressive.

Phoebe was just defending me. I needed to stand up to Joel myself, and here I was allowing Phoebe to fight my battles for me.

Stepping up beside the bronze blonde, I said, “Leave him alone. He just wants attention.”

“You should talk,” I heard him snort.

I spun on him. “Pick the door you want and let us figure out what we’re doing, will you?”

“Hear, hear,” Cody added, which earned him an elbow in the stomach from his girlfriend.

Phoebe had her eyebrows raised until he looked away. Falling silent, he pouted in the corner, and I turned to face Phoebe, Cody, and Robin. We were all on edge, not just Joel.

Robin motioned to Joel with her head. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. “He didn’t like me from the start.”

Cody nodded in mute confirmation.

“Anyway,” Phoebe said after an awkward silence, “we searched the whole room here for maybe some type of clue.”

“There isn’t even gum under the chairs.” Robin pursed her lips. “I mean, there was blood on that one chair, but I’m not touching it. And like the signs don’t even make sense with the number he gave us. I thought maybe there would be graffiti or something behind…”

“The sign.” I pointed to the front door. “Like the one outside?”

Robin blinked, confused.

“I didn’t see a sign,” Joel started.

“I did.” Phoebe interrupted him before he could begin his conspiracy rant. “It said: Intruders Beware at Dusk, right?”

Robin’s shoulders sagged. “That’s doesn’t help much either.”

I said, “Actually it does.”

All eyes turned up to me. Rounding the letters out in my head, I counted on my hands to try and get the right sequence. “The sixth letter in Intruders is D. The second in the word Beware is E and so on.”

“I guess you were right.” Phoebe snorted as if she shouldn’t believe it. “Looks like we go through the door marked,
Dead
. But not
just
because it has four letters.”

Joel shrugged. “What does it matter? I was right.”

I motioned to the door. “We cannot split up this time, okay? This is our last chance to get everyone back.”

Phoebe cracked her knuckles, looking at the floor.

Robin’s lower lip trembled. “You mean, if we’re not all back, we’re stuck here for good?”

At my silence, worry crinkled her forehead until she looked up at Cody as if he could do something.

“Does everyone know about the rings?” I asked, and everyone but Phoebe nodded. At least that was one thing I didn’t have to explain. “Alright, let’s go.”

I turned to the door and half expected Phoebe to shoulder me aside. She’d done this throughout the whole second Challenge, but this time she didn’t.

Gripping the cool doorknob, I took a breath and opened it.

Squinting as if that could stop whatever horror from seeing me, I saw a railing ahead of us.

Taking the first to step onto the half-circle balcony, I shuffled closer to the elegant wooden railing. Cobwebs and dust marred the carved details between the rails.

Somewhere in the distance, a violin played a low, eerie tune, enhancing an already intense ambiance.

Beside me, Robin breathed, “Wow.”

Lined up along the edge, we overlooked a dreary spider-web-infested ballroom.

But that wasn’t the interesting part.

Below, transparent people in Victorian dresses and suits danced. The music wafting up dictated each graceful step.