“Well, it is almost September,” Mom pointed out.
“But it’s only a quarter to … Hey!” I exclaimed. A fat drop of water landed on the back of my hand. Another landed on my head. “Uh-oh, it’s raining!”
“And it’s going to pour!” cried Jeff.
The sky wasn’t just dark, it was black with heavy clouds.
BLAM! Thunder crashed. I remembered the rumblings I’d heard earlier.
“Everybody inside,” said Mom. “Let’s see if we can get all this stuff into the kitchen in one trip.”
It wasn’t easy, but we managed it. Jeff was the last one in and he scooted through the back door just as a sheet of water came cascading down. Lightning streaked across the sky.
“Made it!” he exclaimed.
Later that night I settled into my bed with a library book. I’d had my name on the waiting list for that book for most of the summer. That was how popular it was. And no wonder everyone wanted to read it. It was called Ghosts and Spooks, Chills and Thrills: Stories NOT to Be Read After Dark. Well, it was after dark, but I’d taken the precaution of turning on every light in my bedroom. However, the storm was still raging outside. The wind was howling, the rain was pelting the windows, and the thunder came and went, sometimes crashing loudly, sometimes just sort of grumbling in the distance. The grumblings were scarier than the crashes. They sounded like warnings of worse things to come.
I was right in the middle of “The Hand of the Witch” when the lights flickered. They dimmed, went out for a second, then came back on.
My heart began to pound. Weren’t there tricky spirits called poltergeists that could cause things like that?
My window began to rattle. I know the wind was blowing, but I’d never heard such a racket.
As soon as the rattling stopped, I heard a rata-tat-a-tat on the wall.
That did it.
“Eeee-iii!” I shrieked.
Mom was up the stairs and in my room in about two seconds. “Dawn! What’s the matter?” she cried.
“Mom, the lights are flickering and something’s rattling my window and tapping on the wall.”
My mother took a look at the book lying open on my bed. “Dawn,” she said, giving me a wry glance, “there is a terrific storm going on out there. I’m surprised the electricity hasn’t gone off completely. And all the windows in this old house are rattling. Those must be twenty-five-mile-an-hour winds out there. Now which wall is the tapping coming from?”
I pointed to the wall between my room and Mom’s.
“Old houses make noises as they settle,” Mom told me decisively. She closed the ghost-story book and laid it on my nightstand. “Why don’t you go to sleep now, honey? It’s late.” She gave me a kiss and turned out the lights as she left the room, closing the door behind her.
I got up and turned two of the lights back on and opened the door a crack. Sleep? Was she kidding?
It was hours before I fell asleep. That was because I kept thinking I heard someone moaning. When I woke up the next morning, I still felt creepy.
The storm ended temporarily, but the rain didn’t. The next morning was dreary, humid, and very rainy. I baby-sat at the Barretts’ and the three kids, Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie, started out sleepy and cranky, and slowly became wild and noisy. I was glad they only needed a sitter for the morning. Here’s an example of why.
As I was leaving, I skidded a little on the wet grass, and Buddy shouted after me, “Have a nice trip. See ya next fall!” He laughed loudly.
Suzi, who’s four, shrieked, “Bye, Dawny-Dawny! Snap, crackle, pop!”
Marnie, the baby, blew me a raspberry.
I have to admit, I was happy to get home. Jeff and I ate lunch. Then I went to my room. Another storm was brewing, and I was planning to read some more of the ghost stories and scare myself silly. But the sight of The Hidden Staircase on my bureau gave me an idea. It was the perfect day to search — really search — for a secret passage in the house. I’d looked a couple of times before, but never very carefully or for very long.
I picked up the phone in Mom’s bedroom and called Mary Anne.
“Hi!” I said. “Want to come over? I have this great idea. I want to invite the whole club to my house and we’ll search for a hidden passage.”
“Ooh,” said Mary Anne. “Scary. I’d love to.”
“Do you think the others are free?”
“I know they are. I was looking at the appointment calendar during the meeting yesterday. We all had jobs this morning, and we’re all free this afternoon. Stacey’s mother can probably drive us over.”
“Perfect!” I said. “Listen, can you call Kristy? I’ll call Stacey and Claudia.”
“No problem.”
An hour later, the members of the Baby-sitters Club were sitting expectantly in my bedroom.
“Now, we have to be scientific about this,” I told them.
“Scientific?” asked Kristy skeptically.
“Well, sort of. See, there are certain things to do.” I read them the pages in The Hidden Staircase where Nancy is searching Riverview Manor. “You tap on walls —”
“Why?” asked Kristy.
“To listen for any hollow sounds. A hollow sound might mean an empty space on the other side of the wall.”
“And,” added Claudia, who’d read a lot more mysteries than I had, “you have to feel around for springs or catches. And shine a flashlight over the walls. It might show up a secret opening you wouldn’t notice otherwise.” Claudia’s eyes were sparkling. “How old is this house again, Dawn?” she asked.
I told her.
“Wow. I’d say we have a pretty good chance of finding something.”
The storm that had been brewing finally let loose then with a terrific crash of thunder that banged the shutters and rattled the windows.
Stacey let out a little gasp. Then she giggled. “We’re creeping ourselves out, you know. This is just a silly storm.”
“I know,” said Mary Anne, “but it’s fun to creep ourselves out. We should take advantage of this super-creepy weather.”
“Right!” I said. I couldn’t wait to start!
“How do we begin?” asked Stacey.
“Let’s split up,” I suggested.
“Split up?!” cried Mary Anne. “I’m not going anywhere alone!”
I could see her point. The house was dark and quiet. Outside, the rain was falling hard and the wind was howling. I happened to look out my window just in time to see a bolt of lightning crackle across the gray sky in a jagged streak.
I shivered.
“Well, we don’t have to go alone,” I said. “We can split up into teams, one with two people and the other with three.”
Everyone agreed that that seemed safe.
“Kristy, why don’t you and Stacey and Claudia take the first floor,” I suggested, “and Mary Anne and I will look around up here.”
“What about the basement and the attic?” asked Claudia.
We froze. They were bad enough on a nice, sunshiny day, but today …
“Maybe the five of us should search them together. Um, later,” said Stacey.
“Or — or maybe not at all,” I added.
“Why not?” asked Claudia. “Those would be great places for a secret passage.”
“I know,” I replied. “But, well, in this story I read — it was called ‘Things Unseen’ — this man moves into a really old house —”
“As old as this one?” whispered Mary Anne. A gust of wind blew the curtains against her face and she shrieked.
“Just about,” I said, closing the window. “And he hears all these spooky noises coming from the basement, and it turns out that years ago, a crazy lady buried her —”
“Aughh! Stop!” cried Mary Anne. “I don’t want to hear the end of this.”
“I do,” said Kristy. “Leave the room for a minute, Mary Anne.”
“I’m not leaving the room. Not by myself!”
Stacey shuddered. “I’ll go wi
th you.”
They went out into the hall while I finished the story. When our screaming died down, they returned.
“Listen,” said Kristy, “Why don’t you two scaredy-cats be a team, and Claudia and Dawn and I will be the other team?”
Stacey took offense. “Scaredy-cats?”
“And you can search downstairs,” Kristy continued. “Jeff is there and the TV is on. It won’t seem so spooky.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Mary Anne hastily. “Come on. Let’s go before they change their minds.”
They clattered down the stairs.
“Let’s search room by room,” I suggested. “I can tap walls. Claudia, you feel around for hidden springs and buttons and stuff. Kristy, you shine my flashlight everywhere to see if, like, the outline of a door or something shows up.”
Kristy raised her eyebrows. She was used to being in charge. But this was my house and my search, so I thought I was entitled to give out a few instructions.
We set to work. We searched Jeff’s room first.
“Boy,” said Kristy. “My brothers would kill me if I ever searched their rooms.”
“Well, Jeff might kill me, too, if he knew what we were doing,” I replied. “But it’s not as if we’re searching his stuff. We’re just looking at his walls.”
“Oh, hey!” cried Claudia. “We should be checking the floors for trapdoors, too.”
“On the second floor?” asked Kristy.
“You never know,” Claud said.
Tap, tap, tap. I tapped and rapped every inch of Jeff’s walls, but they all sounded pretty much the same.
Claudia followed me around, poking and feeling along the walls.
And Kristy crawled everywhere with her flashlight. She found two Space Creatures comics under Jeff’s bed, but no trapdoor. We worked without speaking for a long time, and the only sounds we heard were our rappings and tappings, the pounding rain, and an occasional ominous rumble of thunder.
We didn’t really find anything. There was an area near Jeff’s bureau where the molding looked different than on the other walls, but no matter how much we poked and prodded, we couldn’t find anything suspicious.
“Let’s look in my room next,” I said.
We started over again. I rapped, Claudia poked, and Kristy shined the flashlight.
“Nothing here!” said Kristy.
“Wait, I’m not finished,” I said. “I’ve only done three walls.”
Rap, rap, rap, rap, thud.
We all looked at each other.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
It was a definite hollow sound.
I was standing by my bed, next to the wall that separates my room from Mom’s room. There was all this fancy molding on the wall — one of my favorite things about the room — and Claudia immediately began running her fingers over it.
The three of us were expecting something to spring open or fly out at any moment, but not a thing happened.
“False alarm,” said Claudia at last.
I knew she and Kristy felt as disappointed as I did.
“Hey, you guys,” said Kristy, forcing a smile. “Let’s show those two cowards downstairs how brave we are. Let’s explore the attic.”
“The attic?” I squeaked.
KER-RASH. A clap of thunder shook the house.
“I think that was a sign,” I said. “A sign saying we’d be stupid to go in the attic.”
“Oh, come on,” said Kristy. “It’s all this ghost stuff that’s stupid.”
Maybe to her. I couldn’t stop thinking about “Things Unseen.” Or another story I read where a man picks up a woman he finds hitchhiking one night. He decides to take her home, but when he gets to her house, she’s disappeared — and the couple in the house say the woman was their daughter and had died ten years earlier.
Kristy grabbed my arm. “Come on.”
I must have been crazy. I opened the door to the attic. We were greeted by stale, musty air, and the sound of the rain on the roof. We started to tiptoe up the stairs. The light switch was at the top. Halfway up, the door slammed shut.
“Yikes!” I cried.
The three of us piled back down the steps.
“I hope the door didn’t lock behind us!” I whispered. We were closed into total darkness.
I was reaching for the handle when the door began to open slowly, all by itself. We heard a low moan.
“Oh, no,” I whimpered.
Then we heard a growl.
“You didn’t get a dog, did you,” said Kristy.
It was a statement, not a question.
I shook my head, and looked at Kristy and Claudia with wide, terrified eyes.
Then the three of us let out eardrum-shattering screams.
“Gotcha!” Stacey and Mary Anne jumped out from behind the door. “Who are the scaredy-cats now?” asked Stacey.
“You guys nearly gave us heart attacks!” gasped Kristy.
Mary Anne and Stacey laughed hysterically. The three of us had to sit down to recover. We didn’t think it was funny at all.
“Did you find anything?” I asked them, when I was able to speak.
They shook their heads. “But we haven’t looked in the den yet,” said Mary Anne.
We split up again. As soon as Stacey and Mary Anne were gone, I turned to the others and said, “This is war. We’ve got to get back at them.”
“How?” asked Claudia.
“There’s a heating vent in Mom’s room that goes down to the den. I have an idea.”
The three of us sat on the floor and crowded around the vent.
“Ow-oooh,” I moaned into it.
Kristy and Claudia caught on immediately.
“Heeeelp meeee,” wailed Kristy.
“Wheeeere aaaaaaam IIIIIII?” whispered Claudia.
Then we moaned some more. The howling wind helped us along.
“Shhh,” I said. “Listen.”
Downstairs we could hear Stacey and Mary Anne shrieking.
I looked at Kristy and Claudia. We began to giggle. Then we took up the moaning again.
“Woooo … Ow-ow-ooooh … Ooooooeeeeee …”
And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I dared to look around. The hand was green.
“Kristy,” I whispered. “Claudia.”
We all looked up.
We were gazing into the green face of a deformed, one-eyed monster.
“BOO! Scared you!”
It was Jeff in a Halloween costume.
“Aughh! Aughh! Aughh!”
Kristy and Claudia and I were screaming upstairs. Mary Anne and Stacey were screaming downstairs.
Jeff fell over laughing.
That was the end of our search for a secret passage. We didn’t find a thing.
Wednesday
I know Kristy said the Perkinses are nice, but I have to say, I really didn’t want to baby-sit for them. I’m still mad (only a little) that they live next door instead of the Thomases. Looking out my bedroom window just isn’t the same anymore. (I look into Myriah’s room now, not Kristy’s.) But what I didn’t know this morning was that “different” could be fun, too.
I did sit for the Perkinses today and guess what — Kristy was right. Myriah and Gabbie are great. And boy is there exciting news at the Perkins house! It sort of slipped out by accident while the girls were coloring.
I think I understand how Mary Anne feels about the Thomases and the house next door. Replacements can be hard to adjust to. Even if they’re better than the original thing, sometimes you don’t like them (at first) just because they’re different.
Whatever Mary Anne’s feelings, though, she had agreed to baby-sit at the Perkins home, so she showed up at ten-thirty on the dot on Wednesday morning.
She felt funny ringing the doorbell and not going right on inside like she used to do. Instead, she had to stand and wait. She heard a dog barking and feet running — not as many feet as when the Thomases lived there, but several pairs.
When the door was opened, two blonde-haired, brown-eyed faces were peering up at her. Behind them was a woman who was struggling to hold back a huge black dog.
There were a couple of moments of confusion.
“Chewy! Behave!” said the woman.
“That’s Chewbacca, our dog,” said the older of the two girls. “He’s eight months old.”
“I’m wearing Myriah’s baldet shoes,” announced the younger one, holding up her foot to show Mary Anne a pink ballet slipper.
Chewy struggled out of Mrs. Perkins’ grip, lunged for the door, and jumped up, resting his front feet on the screen and grinning a happy doggie grin. In the process, he knocked the littler girl to the floor. She giggled and stood up unsteadily.
“Baldet shoes are slippery,” she said.
Mrs. Perkins got Chewy under control and let him out in the backyard. Myriah let Mary Anne in.
“Well, you’re Mary Anne, right?” said Mrs. Perkins as she returned.
Mary Anne nodded.
“I’m Mrs. Perkins,” she went on. “And this is Myriah” (the older one) “and Gabbie.” (The one wearing the “baldet” slippers.) “Girls, this is Mary Anne Spier.”
Myriah smiled shyly at Mary Anne.
Gabbie smiled, too. “Hi, Mary Anne Spier,” she said, and I remembered that Kristy had said Gabbie called her by her full name.
“I’m going to the doctor for a checkup,” Mrs. Perkins told Mary Anne. “I have to run some errands, too. I should be back in about two hours. There are no special instructions, really. The girls will show you their playroom. And you can go outside, if you want.” (The rain had miraculously stopped.) “Oh, one thing — leave Chewy in the yard. If you take a walk, don’t try to bring him with you. He’s a bit of a handful.”
“He’d take us on a walk, instead!” said Myriah.
After Mrs. Perkins left, Mary Anne and the girls looked at each other. Sometimes a first babysitting job can be a little awkward, especially if you’re on the shy side, like Mary Anne is.
But Myriah got things going. “Want to see our rooms?” she asked.
“Sure,” replied Mary Anne.
“I have a doll,” said Gabbie, skipping ahead.
“It’s not really her doll,” Myriah whispered confidentially to Mary Anne as they climbed the stairs. “It’s mine, but I let her use it.”