Another tap on the door. And then knocking sounds coming from the wall !
My fear tightened every muscle in my body. I forced myself to breathe. “Aaron—what's up with that?” I turned back to him. “Hey—Aaron? Do you hear it?”
I didn’t see him.
The howl rose, louder now, as if it was right behind me in the room. And now the tapping came from all four walls. Taptap taptaptap —surrounding me!
“Hey, I don’t like this,” I said. I ran over to the stack of old comics. “Aaron? Where are you?”
I swept my light around the cartons and piles of old clothes. “Aaron? Come on—answer me! Is this a joke or something? It isn’t funny.”
I couldn’t find him. Why didn’t he answer?
“Hey, Aaron? Aaron?”
8
PANIC WASHED OVER ME. I swept the light rapidly around the room. “Aaron! Aaron!” No answer. No sign of him.
Howl after howl rang in my ears. The pounding on the walls grew louder and louder, as if a hundred people were banging on the other side, banging to be let in.
I turned to run—and stumbled over a wooden dollhouse. I tumbled to my knees. Trembling, I started to stand up. “Ohh.” I let out a cry as I felt something brush my cheek. Something cold and soft.
“No, please—” Something cold touched the back of my neck. Icy fingers. Invisible. “Please—”
The room grew colder. The howls rose and fell. I felt something warm plop onto my shoulder.
“Ohh.” I glanced down. It was a glob of green goo.
I raised my eyes. Thick green goo dripped from the ceiling and slid down the walls. As it dripped, it hissed with steam, hot against the cold air.
“Aaron—where are you?” I screamed over the steady drumming on the walls.
And then floating above me, I saw a face. A woman's face, long white hair trailing from her head. Her eyes shut tight. The face flickered above me. Whoa. Wait. Her eyes weren’t shut. They were missing! I gasped in horror—and she faded away.
I spun to the door. I knew I had to get out of there.
I tried to run. But icy hands tightened around my shoulders and held me in place.
The hissing green goo pooled around me on the floor. And an arm floated just over my head. A pale skinny arm without a body.
It vanished and was replaced by two bare legs and a foot. Floating … floating in the cold air. The foot had no toes! The toes had been sliced off. I could see the dark scabs at the end of it.
The foot vanished and a man appeared, sad-looking, staring down at me with pleading eyes. Hands reached for me. I saw several people floating under the dripping ceiling, all sad, all pale, their mouths moving as if they were trying to talk to me.
A hand shot out and grabbed for the silver pendant around my neck. The pendant is shaped like a bullet. My mother found it when we moved into our house, and she gave it to me for good luck.
With a cry, I jerked back. The hand wrapped tightly around my pendant and started to pull.
“No!” I slapped it away.
I spun around, holding the pendant with both hands.
“Aaron—where are you?”
The howls turned to moans. The drumming on the walls became deafening. My boots stuck in the thick hot goo. I gazed up at the sad, damaged faces and bodies moving so slowly, as if in a nightmare.
But this is real, I thought. Horribly real.
I was shivering from the cold. My teeth were chattering. Icy fingers brushed my cheeks.
I lurched away from them. Tugged and tugged—and finally unstuck my boots from the thick green ooze—and staggered to the door. I grabbed the knob and pulled it hard. To my surprise, the door opened easily. Back in the hidden hallway I ran, leaving the howls and drumming behind.
I turned a corner, breathing hard. Someone stood hunched in a doorway. A dark figure.
I stopped. And raised my light.
Aaron?
“Aaron, where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I was in that kids’ room. With you.”
“No, you weren’t. I looked for you,” I said. “How did you get out here?”
He shook his head groggily. “I … don’t really remember. I was looking for you, Max. I couldn’t seem to find you anywhere.”
I pointed toward the room. “Real g-ghosts,” I stammered. “You missed them. Real ones.”
“No way,” Aaron said. “This whole place is a fake. You were right, Max.”
I didn’t want to argue. I just wanted to get out.
We ran to the end of the hidden hallway, out the narrow door, down another long, dimly lit hall. We found the stairway and took the steps down two at a time.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to see anything following me.
Curtains fluttered in a strong breeze over a broken window. The floor creaked beneath us as we ran.
The front door!
I reached it first, gasping for breath, my side aching. I grabbed the knob and yanked the door open.
“No!” I let out a cry of disappointment. Not the front door. A closet.
I turned away and started to run again—but something caught my eye. Something shiny on the closet floor.
I bent down to investigate. And saw a pile of silver objects. Bullet-shaped objects. Just like the one I wore around my neck.
What were they doing in this closet?
I grabbed a bunch and shoved them into my parka pocket. Then I started to run again.
“Hey, Max—slow down,” Aaron called. “What's your hurry?”
“I want to get out of here!” I shouted.
The halls twisted and curved. We ran past the dining room, a den we hadn’t seen, the huge ballroom—and found ourselves back at the dining room.
Or was it a different dining room?
“Are … are we going around in circles?” Aaron asked, gasping for breath.
“I think … that way,” I said, pointing.
We trotted down another hall with rooms on both sides. A dark wooden door came into view at the end. Yes! This had to be the front door.
I recognized the entryway. “This is where we came in,” I said. “And this is where we go out!”
I grabbed the knob, turned it, and pulled.
The door didn’t budge. I tried again.
Then I tried pushing.
No way.
And then I heard the eerie, terrifying howls in the hall behind us. Growing louder. Coming closer.
Frantically, I turned the knob and struggled with the door. And then with a hoarse sigh, I turned to Aaron. “We’re locked in,” I said. “We’re trapped in here.”
9
AARON HAD BEEN PLAYING it cool, saying everything in the house was a fake. But I saw his expression change, and I heard his rapid breathing. He was afraid too. He grabbed the doorknob and yanked with all his strength.
We both gasped when the door flew open.
Aaron burst out into the snow, and I followed close behind. Back in the house, I could hear the eerie howls that had chased us through the halls.
“Yes! We’re out! We’re out!” I cried happily. My heart was racing. I dropped to my knees in the snow, took a deep breath, and held it, trying to calm down.
Aaron packed a big snowball between his hands and heaved it at the house. It splattered against the shingles over the front stoop.
“Did you enjoy my haunted house?”
Startled by the voice, I turned and saw a young man smiling down at me. His hands were jammed into the pockets of a long gray overcoat, and he had a black fur hat perched over long blond hair.
“Uh … hi,” I said, scrambling to my feet. Aaron had another snowball in his hands. But he let it drop to the ground.
“Kinda late for you boys, isn’t it?” the man said. “I didn’t see you go in.” His bright blue eyes studied us. “It's not really open yet.”
“Open?” I said. What was he talking about?
He nodded. “The haunted house. I’m not going to open for ano
ther week or two.”
Aaron and I both stared at him. “You mean—?”
“I bought the Grover Mansion last fall,” he said. “My name is Martin Morgo. When I moved to town, a lot of people told me stories about the house being haunted, and I thought it would be a good tourist attraction. So I bought it and—”
“But—but—” I sputtered. “There are real ghosts in there! I saw them. I felt them. It's not just ghost stories. They’re real !”
Mr. Morgo laughed. “Fantastic special effects, huh? I had some Hollywood guys come out and work on it. They were expensive, but they did a great job.”
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Was he kidding me? Did I let myself get terrified by a bunch of movie special effects?
Mr. Morgo stared at me. “You didn’t think it was too scary, did you?”
“Oh no. No way,” I lied. “It was … way cool.”
He smiled. “That's good. Because I want little kids to be able to enjoy it too.”
“Well … the goo dripping down the walls and the ceiling—that was pretty scary,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Do you know we had to install a really powerful spraying system to clean the room each time we do that effect?”
“Awesome,” I said. I glanced at Aaron. I think we were both starting to feel pretty stupid for getting scared at a fake haunted house.
Morgo shivered and turned to Aaron. “How come you’re wearing shorts in this freezing cold weather?”
Aaron shrugged. “Beats me. I just like shorts.”
Morgo blinked. “Well, come again, guys. Okay? Thanks for testing it out.” He shook hands with us. His hand was surprisingly hot. “You boys should get home. It's nearly eleven o’clock.”
Aaron and I started clomping through the snow toward the sidewalk.
“Tell your friends about it, guys!” Morgo shouted after us. “Tell ’em how terrifying it is—okay?”
The snow had stopped coming down, but the wind blew the icy flakes into our faces. Clouds covered the moon. I pulled up my parka hood and leaned into the wind as we walked to the bus stop.
Aaron jogged to keep up with me. He laughed. “Max, you’re the one who's totally into ghosts and haunted houses. How could you believe that stuff was real? The whole place was totally fake.”
I heard Aaron's question, but I didn’t answer. I was staring behind us, staring at the snow in front of the Grover mansion.
The snow had totally melted where Morgo had stood!
10
MONDAY AFTERNOON, AARON AND I still had the Grover Mansion on our minds.
“Look, Max—another ghost!” Aaron pointed to a big snowdrift and laughed. “Ghosts! Everywhere you look!”
I didn’t like Aaron making fun of me about ghosts. I mean, I knew the truth about ghosts, and he didn’t.
As we walked home from school, he kept talking about what a sucker I was for believing the special effects in the haunted house. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to tell Aaron the whole story of how I really was haunted. And this time I wouldn’t leave anything out. This time I’d make him believe me.
I told him about Nicky and Tara. How they showed up because they used to live in my house. How they’re dead, they’re ghosts and they don’t know why, and they don’t know where their parents are. And how I’m the only one who can see them. And how they want me to help them find their parents.
I told Aaron the whole story. It just spilled out of me. I don’t think I took a breath. And then I stopped walking and turned to him. And I said, “Well? Do you believe me?”
I waited … waited for his answer.
He stared at me through his swim goggles. And finally, he said, “Yes. I believe you, Max.”
I was so happy—for about three seconds.
Because then Aaron added, “And guess what? Godzilla lives in my basement. I sneak food down to him all the time.”
He laughed so hard, he fell backward into the snow. Howling at the top of his lungs, he rolled around and around in the snow, very pleased with his dumb joke.
Oh, well.
Aaron is my best friend. But I guess you can’t expect best friends to believe everything you say.
Heavy clouds lowered in the afternoon sky. It was dark as night. The streetlights had come on early. They made the snow sparkle.
We reached Aaron's block. “When are you going to return the camcorder?” he asked. I had borrowed it after the haunted house disaster.
“You can have it back tomorrow,” I said. “I just want to check out what's on it. You know, you left it on. You were so scared, you forgot to stop recording.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Aaron said. “I wanted to capture every moment on video.”
Yeah, sure.
I waved good-bye to Aaron, turned onto my street, and started to jog. I was cold from head to foot. I rubbed my nose to try to get some feeling into it.
I checked my watch. I couldn’t wait until five o’clock. I had a study date with Traci Wayne. An actual study date with the most beautiful, most popular, most awesome girl in school—maybe in the universe!
That morning, Traci had stopped me in the hall at school and asked if she could come over. I was so excited, I couldn’t speak. I had to write my answer on the wall.
Traci Wayne in my house? Did that mean she liked me?
My house came into view across the street. I started to cross over—then a sharp blast of pain shot through my body.
Something smashed hard into the back of my head.
I staggered forward for a step or two. Then my legs gave way, and I fell facedown into the deep snow.
11
THE PAIN SLOWLY FADED. I heard laughter behind me.
I raised my head from the snow, slowly turned—and saw the two worst kids at Jefferson Elementary. Willy and Billy, the Wilbur brothers.
These two brothers are big, freckle-faced, redheaded, blubber-bellied, fat-fisted, boneheaded tough guys. Everyone hates them. Even their parents can’t stand them. They make Billy and Willy sleep in the garage.
For some reason, the Wilbur brothers are always in my face.
At school, they like to run up behind me in the hall and jerk my shirt up out of my pants. They give me really painful wedgies in the locker room before every gym class. They trip me on the stairs and when I’m carrying a tray in the lunchroom.
I know they’re the ones who filled my locker up to the top with boiling-hot water. I can’t prove it, but I know it was the Wilburs.
And now here they were, giggling and hee-hawing at the top of their lungs and heaving ice balls at me right outside my house.
I struggled to my knees. “Hey, guys. How's it going?” I always try to treat them as human, even though they’re from a lower species.
Billy ran up and smashed a snowball into my face, grinding it to powder.
They high-fived each other. “You like snow, right, Max?” Willy asked, grinning at me, his piggy black eyes glowing. He and his brother took me by the shoulders and dragged me over to a low hedge by the curb.
“Here.” Billy scooped some snow into his gloves. “Eat some of this. It's real tasty.”
I tried to pull back, but they held my head. “What is it?” I croaked.
“Yellow snow,” Billy said. “Your favorite.”
“Hey—no way!” I cried. I stared at the heap of snow in his hands. It was totally drenched with yellow.
“Eat it,” Billy Wilbur said. “It's good. Yellow snow is the best!”
I turned my face away. I tried to squirm free. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nicky and Tara. They stood in my neighbors’ yard, leaning on two big snowmen, watching me struggle.
“Help me!” I called.
The Wilbur brothers laughed. “No one here to help you, Brainimon. Come on, eat. It's got vitamins and minerals.”
“Couldn’t we maybe talk about this?” I said, watching Nicky and Tara. “My doctor says yellow snow might be fattening.”
/> “Funny,” Billy said, pushing the disgusting stuff toward my face. “But you know what's funnier? You eating yellow snow.”
I watched Nicky and Tara bend down and start to make snowballs.
“Hey, guys—check it out,” I said to the Wilburs. I pointed to the snowmen.
The Wilbur brothers raised their eyes—and saw snowballs come flying at them.
“Whoa!”
“No way!”
Billy dropped the disgusting yellow snow. Willy let go of me and took a step back. The two snowmen grinned at us as snowballs flew one after the other.
“What's up with that ?” Billy cried.
A snowball thudded to the ground at Willy's feet.
Billy's mouth dropped open. “Who's throwing those snowballs? It c-can’t be the snowmen!”
They forgot about me and took off running. Kicking up snow, bumping into each other, they bleated like two stampeding water buffaloes.
Nicky and Tara floated over to me, and we watched the Wilburs run. “Nice work,” I said.
But Billy Wilbur turned at the corner. He scooped up snow—and heaved a fat snowball at me.
“Hey—”
Smack. The snowball hit Tara in the face.
She staggered back a few steps, then raised her hands to her cheeks and started to scream. “Ow! It burns! It's burning hot! Help me! My face—it burns !”
I grabbed Tara, spun her around, and gasped. Her face was red as fire!
12
I RUBBED MOST OF the snow off Tara's face with my glove. Then Nicky and I helped her into the house.
It was nearly five o’clock. Everyone was home.
Mom was in the kitchen. I could smell something good baking. The basement door stood open, and I could hear Dad and my older brother, Colin, having one of their Ping-Pong wars.
Ping-Pong isn’t a game with them—it's a contact sport. They smash the ball at each other and try to knock each other over. They crush about a dozen balls a game and usually knock out a few teeth, and think it's great fun.
My dad is a big loud red-faced Mack truck of a guy with a tattoo of a fire-eating dragon on one arm. It's perfect—because Dad acts like a fire-breathing dragon too.