Mikey tugs my sleeve. “Do you think I could get a doughnut too, Josh?”
I shine my flashlight under my face to make it look scary. “A doughnut? Mwahahahaha!”
Mikey slaps my arm. “Stop it! That’s weird. Can I get a doughnut or not?”
I pull the flashlight down, point it up the path to the house. “Sure. You can get a doughnut.”
I head toward the house, but Mikey hangs back.
“What?” I ask him.
“What if we see a real Wagner ghost?”
“What’s a real Wagner ghost?”
“If a Wagner dies in there, the body becomes a zombie . . . or something. They call it a Wagner ghost.”
“A Wagner ghost.”
“Yeah!”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone knows that.”
“That’s why my dad picked this place. Because of Rule Two.”
“What’s Rule Two?”
“Start with a scary backstory.”
“What’s a backstory?”
“It’s a story about what happened in the place before. Usually you have to make it up, but this place had its own backstory.”
“You mean the zombie ghosts?”
“Exactly. People will be scared before they go in.”
“So it’s just a backstory? The zombie ghosts aren’t real?”
I smile. “Who knows.”
“They might be real?”
I shrug.
“Oh no!” says Mikey, holding back. “I don’t want to be a zombie!”
Scaring Mikey is almost as much fun as scaring my dad, but we had to move.
“Oh come on. It’s just a story.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“You think?”
“There probably aren’t even any Wagners left.”
“You sure?”
I lead the way. We climb up the front steps, the little switches my dad installed clicking under our feet. If the house had power, they would have caused holograms to pop up. But I’d killed the power at the main box to get my dad to go inside in the dark.
Mikey stops at the front door. “We shouldn’t go in there.”
I smile because of Rule Three: make people say “Don’t go in there!”
I creak the front door open.
“Dad!”
Nothing.
Mikey calls, “Mr. Hornsby!”
Still nothing.
“Dad?”
We step into the front hallway. I point my flashlight around the room. The haunted house is laid out in a big circle. People follow a path through the different rooms, each one getting scarier.
Mikey takes a step down the path, slips, and falls.
“Eww!”
He’s sitting in a puddle of ooze on the floor. That’s not supposed to be there. That’s supposed to be dripping down an ooze fountain, not leaking on the floor. We needed the ooze fountain for Rule Four: go for the gross out.
I help Mikey stand. Run my flashlight along the floor, looking for the ooze trail back to the fountain. There isn’t one. Just this puddle. Flies buzz around the edge of the puddle, landing at the edge and sipping.
“Is this that ecto stuff?” asks Mikey.
“You’ve been watching too much Ghostbusters. That’s just glue and water.”
“Really?”
“And borax.”
“Flies sure like borax.”
I’ve made a lot of borax slime, and this slime is different. More like pure boogers. Also, flies don’t like borax.
“Yuck,” I say.
“It’s just glue, right?”
“Yeah.” I look around the room. “Just glue.”
I call out, “Dad! The ooze is leaking!”
The house creaks.
“Where is he?” asks Mikey.
“Must be checking out my prank. He likes to study a good prank.”
I point my flashlight through the dining room. We walk. Plastic ghouls, cloth ghosts, and rubber zombies all sit in their coffins, nooks, and armoires. They’re quiet because there’s no power to activate them. When the power is on, they’ll pop up and scare people. Well, mostly scare little kids. But little kids are people too, I guess.
The house creaks again. And again. Footsteps?
“Mr. Hornsby, c’mon!” yells Mikey.
The footsteps stop.
“I’m leaving,” says Mikey.
“We’re almost there,” I say. “Besides, we have to clean up the ecto so nobody falls.”
“Ecto?”
“I mean the glue.”
“Why did you call it ‘ecto’?”
“Dad!”
The key to scaring Dad was to make a joke that didn’t use electricity. That way he wouldn’t see it coming. He had told me never to go down the basement in this house, but I had snuck down there to set up the gag and turn off the power. Then I ran and got him. Told him that we must have blown a fuse. That’s why he came in. My gag is right next to the power box, deep in the basement.
We push through some spiderwebbing. Flies buzz, trapped in the sticky mess.
“Yuck,” says Mikey. “This place is gross. Someone should clean it.”
“I just dusted this morning,” I say. “I put in fake webs.”
Mikey watches a spider suck on a wrapped fly. “These aren’t fake webs.”
There shouldn’t be any spiders in these webs. “Dad?”
We enter the dining room, and I look up. If we had power, there would be holographic ghosts flying around the chandelier. It’s part of Rule Five: misdirection. We get people to look up at the ghost, and then a stuffed werewolf runs at them, or actually glides at them on a track. But now the room is quiet and empty except for the creaking.
We push through into the kitchen, where the door to the cellar stands open, a black rectangle in the wall. It’s pitch-black in the cellar because of Rule Six: keep them in the dark.
“Is he down there?” asks Mikey.
“Should be. That’s where I put the gag,” I said. I shine my flashlight down the cellar stairs. “Dad?”
No sound.
“Did he have a heart attack?” asks Mikey.
“That’s not funny.”
“It sounded like you really scared him.”
We start down the steps, heading for the fuse box. Cellar air blows on our faces. It smells like dirt. I shine the flashlight around. Nothing. We keep going.
“Mr. Hornsby!” call Mikey. “Come out!”
We listen. Silence.
“Let’s turn on the lights,” I say.
“What? Down there?”
“Yeah.”
Mikey sits on the step. “I’m not going.”
“Okay. Sit up here in the dark.”
“I don’t want to sit in the dark.”
“I’ve got the only flashlight, and I’m going down.”
“You suck.”
“I need to find my dad.”
We reach the bottom step, our sneakers touching the bare dirt floor.
“Didn’t your dad say never come down here?”
“Yeah, because of the rats.”
“Then why are we down here?”
I hear a sound, and point the flashlight at it. Beady eyes look back at me from a corner of the room. A big gray body scurries away. I move the flashlight to the wall. A metal box hangs there, the big switch on the side pulled down to kill the electricity. “We need to turn on the lights.”
“Finally!” says Mikey, and he pushes the big switch up.
The lights blast on in the cellar, just as a screeching sound hits us. We turn, and a zombie—a man with a torn, bloody face—rushes at us, mouth open, teeth snapping. Mikey screams and runs toward the stairs.
He yells, “Run! Run!”
I stand my ground as the zombie zooms at me, its jaw popping, its arms outstretched. They reach for me, encircling me, pulling me close as the teeth snap. And then it stops. Just like it
was supposed to.
That was my gag. The zombie was supposed to scare my dad, but he had never seen it. My hands twitch as fear rushes in.
Why did he scream?
Mikey stands on the staircase, hands to his mouth, eyes wide.
I duck out from under my zombie on a string. “Don’t be a baby.”
The lights go out.
I aim my flashlight at the fuse box and see one of the fuses has melted through.
“Replace it! Replace it!” says Mikey.
“We can’t,” I say, remembering what my dad taught me about tech. “It’ll just burn out again. We need to find the short circuit.”
“Let your dad find it.”
“Why did he scream?”
“What?”
“My dad screamed. But he never sprung the trap. Why did he scream?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
We stand in the pitch-black cellar, with only my flashlight on Mikey’s face. “We have to find him.”
I start up the cellar stairs. “C’mon.”
“There really are zombie ghosts.”
“No, there aren’t. There isn’t a rule for real zombie ghosts.”
“Yes there is,” says Mikey. “Sherlock Holmes’s rule. If you eliminate everything else, all that’s left is the zombie ghosts.”
“There are no zombie ghosts.”
“They made your dad scream.”
I lead Mikey up the stairs, through the kitchen, past the dining room, and back to the front door.
“Watch out for the ecto,” I say, playing the flashlight beam over the puddle. It’s gotten bigger. More flies crowd around it.
“You said it was just glue.”
“Yeah, it should just be glue.”
Mikey looks from the puddle to me to the front door. We had left it standing open.
“I want to go home.”
“We need to find my dad.”
“We should call the police.”
“We need to look for him.”
Another scream like the first one echoes through the house. Mikey bolts out the front door. “I’ll get help!” he yells over his shoulder, and he’s gone.
I’m alone.
Another scream? Is it even my dad? Was it ever my dad?
“Dad?”
I know he is in here.
Mikey was right about one thing. Once you’ve eliminated all the possibilities, the only thing left has got to be true. I’d looked for my dad on the first floor and in the basement. He wasn’t in either. He must be upstairs.
I shine my light on the big curving staircase that leads to the second floor. He’d told me never to go up there, either, but that’s where he has to be.
This whole idea of scaring him was stupid. For what. A doughnut? I could have just bought my own doughnut. I shine the light on the staircase. It looks safe enough.
Step on the first stair, hear a switch click. My dad would have used that to have a holographic ghost tell people not to climb the stairs. But there’s no electricity, so no ghost.
I start climbing the stairs, stopping on each creaky step to listen.
“C’mon, Dad, this is ridiculous!”
A low moan drifts through the house.
“Jossshhh. . . .”
“Dad?”
The moan turns into a rumble, then stops.
I reach the top of the steps, and the smell hits me. The stink of rot, like hamburger left in a cooler for a week with no ice.
“Dad?”
I walk along the hallway, shining my flashlight at the doors, then over the railing down to the entryway. The smell gets stronger with each step.
Another moan. “Jossshhh!”
I walk past a door. The smell recedes. I stop. Turn. Sniff. Use my nose to find the source. The second-bedroom door. I put my ear to the door. I hear buzzing. Like a distant lawn mower, or bees.
I push the door open, point the flashlight inside. The buzzing blasts me.
Flies fill the room like smoke. A living cloud. They see my flashlight, fly at me, surround me. Surprised, I gasp; inhale three flies. I spit them out, drop to the floor, let the cloud swirl overhead, shine my light again into the room.
Flies wriggle over a body in the center of the room.
“Dad?”
I cover my mouth, step farther into the fly room. They land on me, crawl on my ears, tickle my neck. I walk up to the body on the floor. I aim my flashlight on its face. A gross mess looks back at me, skin peeled back, eyes gone, maggots boiling out of the nose.
Glowing blue smoke slips from the lipless mouth. I back up and watch as the smoke forms itself into a blue glowing man with black eyes and a scruffy beard. He opens his mouth.
I whirl to run out the door, but stop. My dad is standing behind me, blocking the door.
I point at the hologram. “Dad, that’s not funny. That’s gross!”
My dad shakes his head. “Jossshhh,” he moans. He takes a step toward me, still blocking the door.
The glowing man says, “You thought I was one of your pathetic pranks.”
I gasp, inhaling another fly.
“I AM NOT!” the glowing man yells.
I point at the man. “Dad, who is he?”
The ghost points to the pile of meat on the floor below him. The body boiling with flies. “I was that,” he says. “Monroe Wagner.”
Now I remembered. Monroe Wagner had been a homeless guy in town.
He continues, “Now I am the Zombie Lord.”
I run toward my dad. Grab his hand, try to spin him toward the door. “C’mon, Dad, let’s go!”
My dad takes my hand, then grabs my wrist.
“Yes,” says the glowing man floating above Monroe Wagner’s body. “Bring him to me.”
“What?” I yank on my arm, trying to pull free.
“Bring him to me,” says the ghost.
Pulling me by my arm, Dad shuffles toward the fly-ridden corpse with the glowing ghost rooted to its mouth.
“No, Dad, no!”
My dad looks at me, his eyes sad. He says, “Josh, I can’t . . .”
“You have to fight it!”
Another step. Wagner’s ghost reaches out a hand, smoke fingers reaching for my face. He says, “Soon I will have two in my army.”
My dad keeps dragging me. I yank and tug. “No! Dad, no!”
He takes another step, his hand clamped over my wrist. I drop to the ground, swing in his grip, lose my flashlight. It rolls out of reach. My dad takes another step. The flies buzz in my ears.
I shift in my dad’s clutches, get my feet under me. Reach out with a foot. Remember that there was one rule we hadn’t used yet: Rule Seven. It’s a rule my dad would use in movies, but never in real life. “Don’t want to cause a heart attack,” he would say.
I kick the flashlight toward my hand. Grab it.
It’s time for Rule Seven: make them jump!
I flip the flashlight under my chin, shine it up so that my face looks like a scary death mask, and scream as loud as I can. My dad’s eyes go wide, startled. He screams. We scream together.
My dad’s eyes change. He looks from me to Wagner’s ghost, says, “Let’s get out of here!”
Before we can run, one of the smoky fingers grazes me, touching my face. I stop, turn, realize that I want to stay here with Monroe Wagner.
My dad drags me out of the room. I kick and struggle to stay. It’s not until I’m halfway down the staircase that the spell breaks. Then I start running with my dad down the stairs, past the ecto puddle, and out the front door. We don’t stop running until we’re standing in the street, far away from the Wagner place and its zombie ghost.
My dad leans down, his hands resting on his knees as he catches his breath.
He says, “Josh, that thing took over my mind. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“I’m sorry I scared you. Using the flashlight was all I could think to do.”
“It was smart. You’re a smart kid. Come here.” My dad hugs me. “Bo
y,” he says. “You really did scare me.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“I guess I owe you a doughnut.”
Cat Got Your Tongue
by Wendy Corsi Staub
“A SCREAM,” JAX STILLMAN WHISPERS.
“A scream?” Tacey Bennett shivers in the summer sun. “Was it a word?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like ‘Owww!’ or ‘Nooo!’ or . . . ?”
Jax shakes his head. “Just a scream. It was the last sound she ever made.”
Tacey looks again at the girl, Felicia Roberts, sitting on the rope swing in the yard next door. She looks just like every other seventh-going-into-eighth-grader Tacey knows. Well, not just like them. But close enough.
Felicia is medium-size—not tall and not short, not heavy and not thin. Her tawny hair hangs past her shoulders. No braces or glasses.
Tacey had both until a few weeks ago. The orthodontist removed her braces before she left California, and she lost her glasses somewhere along the three-thousand-mile cross-country road trip. She can see pretty well without them, but Dad said they’ll have to replace them now that they’ve arrived in Maine.
She used to be a little larger than medium-size, but she lost her appetite when her mom got sick. She started growing taller then, too, which probably has nothing to do with losing her mother or with the move, although if she thinks long enough, she can trace all the bad things in her life back to those events. Now she stands a head above all the girls and a few boys, Jax included.
Her hair is the color of macaroni and cheese—not the good, rich homemade kind Mom used to make, but the fake kind with the powdery sauce that lumps no matter how much you stir.
She spent all last year trying to grow her hair long. Instead, it grew up and out in a wiry mess. She had it cut before they moved in June. It was supposed to look swingy and carefree like the model in the salon’s magazine. Unfortunately, it looks more like . . .
Well, like Jax’s hair.
That makes sense, since they’re cousins.
Tacey would prefer to look like Felicia and the other girls her age. That might make it easier to fit in here.
Not that Felicia does. According to Jax she used to be a regular person, until she suddenly stopped speaking.
“Don’t stare at her,” Jax says in a low voice. “She’s going to notice.”
“I doubt it.”
Felicia isn’t facing in their direction. Nor is she swinging. She isn’t even moving. She’s just sitting there, looking up into the wooded hillside above a neighborhood that looks nothing like the flat-roofed stucco condos back home. Here, houses are huge and old, topped by gables and turrets and iron grillwork. They look like haunted manors on cartoons—the kind where bats fly out of attics, and creepy caretakers sneak around in tunnels behind bookcases.