I couldn’t keep quiet anymore, not after that. “He’s lying! Where’s Hannah? I know it was Hannah screaming.”
Shivers smiled at the cops—or at least, he tried to smile. It was even creepier than his normal expression. “Happy” didn’t really suit him.
“Hannah is my daughter,” he said. “She was staying with me for a while until her mother sorted a few things out with her new husband. She went back to London yesterday afternoon.”
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, because Hannah had told me she’d never even met her mother. So the question was, why was he lying?
And what had he done with her?
Behind Shivers, a woman’s scream echoed.
That was all it took to get Brooks and Stevens inside. Finally!
My mom and I chased after the officers, following the sound of the screams—all the way to the big-screen TV, where a woman was screaming in black-and-white while some cheesy old-school monster chased after her.
Shivers muted it with his remote. “Surround sound,” he said smugly. “I didn’t know it was a crime.”
Officer Brooks’s eyes widened. “I’ve seen this movie. The girl turns out to be a monster, too.”
“Spoiler alert,” his partner said, rolling her eyes. “You just ruined it for everyone.”
Brooks shrugged. “Sorry. Rookie mistake.”
My mom stepped in front of them and extended her hand to Shivers. I couldn’t believe it. My own mother, shaking hands with this guy like he hadn’t just done something terrible and then lied to our faces about it!
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m Gale Cooper, your new neighbor. Beautiful home.”
“A pleasure,” Shivers said. He almost sounded like he meant it. “Thank you so much for stopping by—and bringing your delightful son. And the police.”
“Again, I’m so sorry.”
It galled me the way she kept apologizing like I was the one who’d done something wrong.
There was something wrong, all right, but it was Shivers. Why couldn’t the rest of them see it? He was breathing too fast and fidgeting like he couldn’t wait to get us out of his house. Like he had something to hide.
“Hannah!” I shouted.
Shivers glanced toward the stairs. It was subtle, and fast, but I saw it.
“Hannah!” I ran for the stairs—or tried to. The cops grabbed my arms and held me back.
“Whoa there, big guy,” Stevens said.
“Should I tase him?” Brooks asked eagerly. “Let me tase him.”
“Love your moxie,” Stevens said, “but let’s hold off.”
So they didn’t tase me, but they did muscle me out of the house.
“Do you know what the punishment is for filing a fake police report?” Stevens asked me.
“Three years?” Brooks guessed.
“Close. It’s actually just a written warning.”
I ignored them. “Mom, tell me you don’t believe him! Surround sound? Seriously?”
“Zach, enough!” It was her I-mean-business voice. “We’re going home.”
She was the mom, and I was the kid, right? So that’s what we did. We went home.
I paced around the kitchen like a caged animal. “Mom, Hannah’s in trouble, I know it.”
She shook her head. “I know what you’re doing, Zach. I’m not an idiot. We’re not leaving because you are afraid of our neighbor. You know that, right? You need to accept that this is our home now.”
She had it all wrong. Except she was a little bit right, too. And suddenly that little bit grew into a great big angry bit, and I couldn’t keep it inside anymore. “No, it’s not my home,” I snapped.
“Zach—”
“I’ve tried, Mom. But I don’t want to be here. You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to move.”
“Zach, we had to leave New York.”
“No!” I shouted. “You did.”
The truth landed like a giant boulder, smashing us both. She didn’t say anything, and I didn’t have anything left to say.
I shut myself up in my bedroom. A few minutes later, I heard the front door close.
She was gone.
Aunt Lorraine came over to baby-sit me while my mother was chaperoning the dance. Like I needed a baby-sitter—I am sixteen years old! But there was nothing I could do about it, just like there was nothing I could do about Hannah being stuck in that house with a madman, and there was nothing I could do about being stuck in this town, hundreds of miles from my real life.
It wasn’t Aunt Lorraine’s fault, though, so I tried my best to be nice. I even sat there with her while she bedazzled a pair of jeans with sequins and told me about her love life. It’s not like I had anything better to do.
Even pretending to pay attention was hard, though.
“… so, we went out to Sushi Wednesday, both of us had the chicken teriyaki, which was sensational, and then I haven’t heard from him since, not that I even really care …”
As she droned on and on, I couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah. I was thinking about her so much, in fact, that when I saw her shadow in Shivers’s upstairs window, I thought I was imagining it.
I blinked, hard.
No, not my imagination: real. That was Shivers’s silhouette against the curtain, with Hannah right beside him. She hadn’t gone to London—she was right here. And she was in trouble.
I knew it.
“So, do you think he’s playing hard to get?” Aunt Lorraine asked. “Or, the more likely scenario, he lost his phone?”
I barely heard her. “I think he lost his phone,” I repeated. “You know, Aunt Lorraine, I totally forgot, but I have a huge test tomorrow, so I’m just gonna be studying for the rest of the night.” I backed toward the stairs, hoping to make it up to my room before she could start asking questions or poke holes in my story. “So, definitely don’t come in, okay? See ya.”
She bought it. “ ’Night, sweetie!”
As soon as I made it upstairs, I made a quick phone call. Then I dug up my old flashlight. And quietly as I could, I eased open the window and climbed through it.
I wasn’t alone outside for long. Champ came wandering up our driveway, wearing a suit that looked like it belonged to someone’s dead grandfather.
“Psst,” I whispered, loud as I could from my perch beside Shivers’s fence. “Over here!”
Champ changed course and headed toward me. “Wait, where are the girls?” he asked. “Is that what you’re wearing to the dance?” He was obviously confused, and I couldn’t blame him. It’s possible I hadn’t been precisely, absolutely honest with him when I’d called.
“Get down,” I hissed.
He looked at me like I was nuts. “No way! This is a new suit. Where are the girls?”
“Yeah, about that … I just said that to get you over here,” I admitted. “I need your help.”
His face fell. “So, there are no girls?”
“Well, there is one girl …”
“Okay!” He held up a hand for a high five. “My man!”
“… but she’s locked in the house and her dad’s a psychopath.”
Champ considered this for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Does she have a friend?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “And since the police don’t believe me, we need to break into this house and get her out.”
Even I could hear how crazy it sounded.
“You know, you said there’d be girls,” Champ complained. “Not only are there no girls, there’s a psychopath. And I’m in a suit—”
“You look very nice,” I told him. A little sucking up never hurt anyone.
“Thank you. But this is really not how I saw my night going. If we’re gonna be friends, no more lying about girls!”
I nodded. Deal.
Before we could shake on it, the front door swung open. Shivers stepped out.
I yanked Champ down into the bushes with me.
“It’s wet grass!” he hissed.
We crouched in
the dew, watching Shivers climb into his car and squeal out of the driveway.
This was our chance: It was now or never.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s go!”
While I was waiting for Champ to show up, I’d scoped out the grounds. Did a little reconnaissance, like they say in the movies. I’d decided there was no way we could bust through the front door. It was thick, steel reinforced, with at least four locks. No, our best bet was the cellar on the side of the house. There were two giant wooden doors embedded in the ground, held together with a rusty old padlock. And I knew what to do with a padlock.
I gave it a light tug, just in case. Some people are forgetful about their locks.
Not Shivers.
“Well, we tried,” Champ said hopefully. “Let’s go to the dance.”
I shook my head. Then I rifled through my pockets till I came up with a paper clip. After snapping it in half, I threaded both pieces into the lock.
Champ laughed. “That’s not gonna work.”
I ignored him. It was all a matter of feel. If I could find the right pin positions, hold them down while I spun the lock with the other wire, then maybe, just maybe—
Yessss. The lock popped open.
So did Champ’s eyes. “Whoa,” he breathed. “Where’d you learn to do that? New York?”
“YouTube.”
Opening the cellar had been the easy part. Now we actually had to climb down inside. Into the darkness, deep down beneath the earth. Who knew what a guy like Shivers might be hiding in his cellar? I decided to give Champ a break.
“Stay here and watch the driveway,” I suggested.
“Wait here? By myself?” His voice broke on the last word. “Out in the dark?”
“Yeah, you’re the lookout. If Shivers comes back, just give me a sign.” I cupped my hands over my mouth and gave him my best imitation birdcall. “Ha-hooo! Ha-hooo!”
Champ nodded solemnly.
I had to admit, I felt a little better knowing a friend had my back. At least until he spoke: “Just so we’re clear, if I sense danger, I will run the other way.”
Hannah’s waiting, I reminded myself.
Then I turned on the flashlight and lowered myself into the pitch-black cellar, trying not to think about what else might be waiting down there for me.
Down in the cellar, the air was thick with dust and cobwebs, and every once in a while the flashlight beam caught a spider scuttling past.
It’s no different from the subway, I told myself. Nothing scary about being underground. Nothing to worry about at all …
“Yaiiii!” I shrieked, as a fluttering black missile shot past my head, uttering a terrifying cry.
My heart pounding, I swiveled the flashlight beam toward the creature. “Whoa.” I sighed with relief. Just a bird, and not even a real one.
A wooden cuckoo, popped out of a cuckoo clock. As I watched, it receded back into its nest of gears and clockwork.
I took a deep breath and waited for my heart to stop beating against my chest. Then I moved the flashlight away from the clock and scanned the room.
“Ohhhh.” I froze with one foot in midair. The floor was littered with giant metal traps, their jagged teeth wider than my hand. I’d seen plenty of mousetraps in my time. But no way were these traps designed to catch anything the size of a mouse. Or even a rat. No, these had to be bear traps.
What kind of a lunatic covers his cellar floor with bear traps?
Was it the kind of lunatic who had a pet bear?
What had I gotten myself into?
I was seriously thinking about getting out of there—when a hand reached out of the darkness and clamped down on my shoulder. I stifled a scream and whirled around.
There was Champ, grinning at me in the darkness.
“What the heck, man?” No way was I letting him know how happy I was to see him. “Hey. You’re supposed to be the lookout.”
“And that’s not going to change,” he said. “I’ll just be the lookout in here.”
“By definition, you have to be somewhere out looking,” I said. It was kind of useful having such a scaredy-cat around—it gave me a good excuse to act tough.
Champ didn’t seem to care if he looked tough or not. “Let me explain something to you, Zacharias. You know how they say teenagers have no fear of death, that they’ll never get hurt? Not me.” He sounded almost proud. “I was born with the gift of fear. I remember being four and being pushed on a swing and thinking, This is how it ends.”
That explained a lot.
“You’re not going to die,” I promised him. “At least, not today.”
“You’re right, I’m being crazy—” Then he noticed the sharp metal teeth scattered across the floor. “Oh … bear traps.”
Somewhere above us, there was a noise. Someone was up there.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“I agree.”
I was already halfway up the stairs to the first floor before I realized Champ was scrambling in the opposite direction.
“I’m going back outside,” he said. “I mean, like, somewhere without bear traps.”
I didn’t bother trying to talk him into following me. After all, this wasn’t his fight. But I was maybe just a tiny, secret bit relieved when he changed his mind and decided he was better off following me. Even if he did manage to have two spider-web-related hissy fits by the time he made it to the top of the stairs.
The house was dark. But it wasn’t empty. Up on the second floor, a floorboard creaked.
“Up there,” I whispered, nodding at the ornate staircase. “Hannah?” I said it as loudly as I dared. (Which, admittedly, wasn’t very loud.)
No answer. So we started to climb.
Shadows reached for us with long, dark tendrils. The steps creaked beneath our feet—which meant whoever was upstairs would know we were coming.
The darkness felt heavy. Oppressive. Behind me, I could hear Champ’s teeth chattering, and I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck. We were closing in.
But on what?
I stopped at one end of a long, narrow hallway. At the far end were two double doors, light seeping from the crack beneath them. The creaking noises were definitely coming from there.
I glanced over my shoulder at Champ. His face was a pale moon in the darkness. He shook his head, hard, message pretty clear: No way. Not going in there.
I nodded. Oh, yes, we are.
The doors opened easily into some kind of study. It was crowded with thick wooden shelves and a giant desk.
I skidded the flashlight beam over the shelves—and really wished I hadn’t. A row of shrunken heads stared back at me with hollow eyes. Was that what happened to the last guys foolish enough to break into Shivers’s house?
Champ reached for the desk lamp and tugged on its chain. The room lit with a warm orange glow. Which didn’t make it any less creepy, because now we could see everything piled on the shelves—not just withered heads, but tribal masks with terrifying expressions, a giant gold sarcophagus, and a bunch of lumpy, homemade figures with pins sticking out of them.
“Please tell me those aren’t voodoo dolls,” Champ whispered, shuddering.
A second set of shelves was stacked full of thick, leather-bound manuscripts—each of them bound with a shiny brass lock. It wasn’t any weirder than the bear traps or the shriveled heads. But there was something about those manuscripts that I didn’t like. Something that gave me a bad feeling.
Maybe it was the fact that the locks were rattling.
On their own.
Champ didn’t seem to notice anything. He’d already pulled a couple manuscripts off the shelf. “Whoa, check this out,” he said. “The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. The Ghost Next Door. Night of the Living Dummy!”
I’d never heard him sound so excited.
Champ gazed at the books in awe. “These are Goosebumps manuscripts,” he said in a hushed voice.
“You mean, those kids’ books?”
Champ looked at me like I’d suggested the earth was flat. “No way. Kids’ books help you fall asleep,” he corrected me. “These books keep you up all night.” He turned a manuscript on its side and examined the author’s name on the spine. “R.L. Stine. Man, whatever happened to that guy?”
That rang another bell. I felt like I’d heard some story a long time ago, but I couldn’t bother thinking about some old guy who wrote books for little kids a million years ago.
“Who knows?” I said. “He just disappeared one day. Does it matter? Let’s go.”
But Champ wasn’t going anywhere. “The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena.” He shook his head in wonder. “My grandmother lived in Pasadena. I stopped visiting her after reading this book.”
“We’re not here for a book club,” I reminded him. I didn’t know why he was making such a fuss. They were just books. How scary could they be?
He tugged at the book, trying to open it, but it was locked up tight like all the rest of them. “Why do you think they’re locked?” he asked. “Can you pick it?”
I could have, but I didn’t have to—there was a bright gold key sitting on the bottom shelf. I stuck it in the lock: perfect fit. The key turned, the lock popped free. “Mystery solved.” I took the book out of his hands, set it back on the shelf, then flicked out the lights and headed for the door. “Now, let’s get back to why we’re—”
A shadowy figure materialized right behind Champ.
“Get down!” I shouted.
I pushed Champ out of the way just as the shadow swung a baseball bat at his head. The bat whooshed through the space where he’d been a second before.
Then our enemy spoke.
“Zach?”
I flipped on the light. “Hannah?!”
She didn’t look particularly happy to see us. “What are you doing in my house?”
“I, uh, thought you were chained up? Possibly?”
“Why would you think that?” She tried to sweep both of us into the hallway.
Was she serious? Why would I think she was in trouble? “Have you met your father?” I asked her.