Haunted House
“SO THIS IS WHERE YOU tell me that ghosts don’t exist,” I said, peering out my windshield at what was arguably the creepiest house I’d ever seen.
Maybe not the creepiest. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it just seemed super creepy because I was here alone, in the dark, at the end of Heliotrope Lane, a dead-end street, waiting for Bess and George to show up so we could search a haunted house for a ghost.
“I . . . am pretty sure they don’t exist,” Ned’s voice piped up from my phone. He sounded sleepy, probably because it was finals week. He’d told me earlier that he’d stayed up till three a.m. the night before and hadn’t woken up until after lunchtime.
“But like, scientific proof, ” I said, leaning closer to the windshield as (I was sure) a light flickered inside the supposedly haunted house. “People’s souls have no substance, so they can’t take action against living people . . . something like that?”
Ned was silent.
“Ned!” I yelled. “Did you fall asleep?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Um, ghosts don’t exist because . . . be-caaaaaauuse . . .”
“Because it’s scientifically impossible?” I prompted. “Ned, have you eaten anything?”
He yawned. “I had some Red Hots?”
“Real food?” I urged. “Maybe you should order a pizza. I think it would help your energy level.”
“You’re probably just experiencing the spiked adrenaline that people get when they’re afraid, Nancy,” he said. “That doesn’t mean ghosts exist. It means . . . you’re psyching yourself out.”
“Right, right,” I agreed, liking this line of thinking. “Like, I’m seeing things because I’ve already convinced myself that they’re there, like—”
“BOO!”
As a figure suddenly jumped in front of my car, I jumped straight up the air, knocking my head on the ceiling and dropping my phone into the space under the driver’s seat.
Outside the car, I heard giggling.
“Nancy?” Ned’s voice, barely discernible, called from the floor beneath my seat. “Nancy? You all right?”
I rubbed my head, glaring out the windshield at my sort-of-sheepish-looking friend Bess, who was trying to stifle her giggles.
“I’m so sorry,” said George, appearing behind her, shaking her head. “I told her not to.”
I reached a hand under my seat, digging around until I found the phone, and pulled it out.
“Gotta go, Ned,” I said. “My fearless associates are here.”
I heard a buzzing sound on Ned’s side of the call, followed by muffled voices. “Oh good,” he said, “because my pizza is here.”
“You did order a pizza,” I said happily.
“You know what they say about Ned Nickerson,” he said, “he’s always three steps ahead of his girlfriend, Nancy Drew.”
“No one says that.”
“Talk to you later. Don’t get possessed.”
I hung up the phone and, very slowly and carefully, picked up my purse, not making eye contact with my friends.
By the time I got out of the car, they seemed convinced I hated them, which was not that far from the truth.
“Really sorry,” Bess said, reaching out to touch my shoulder. “It was cruel of me to startle you like that. Is your head okay?”
“Just fine. I’m going to remember this,” I said, trying to straighten up into a queenly posture, “and pay you back when you least expect it. Now, are we ready to check out this house?”
“Definitely,” said George, nodding like a soldier.
“Not at all,” said Bess, nervously twirling a lock of hair around her index finger. “Can I wait in the car? I could be the lookout. I’m a very good lookout, you always say that.”
“After you just scared the bejesus out of me? Absolutely not.” I started walking toward the house, trying to look (and feel) determined. “And I only tell you that to make you feel better when you don’t want to come in!”
I knew that was a little mean, but my head still hurt. Also, it was true.
My friends followed, a few steps behind.
Soon we were standing right in front of the supposedly haunted house. Mrs. Furstenberg’s house was a small ranch-style home, tucked alone at the end of Heliotrope Lane, which was really more of a cul-de-sac. It had probably been a cute little house while Mrs. Furstenberg had been alive. The shingles were painted a cheery light blue, and there was a low, welcoming porch, perfect for a couple of rocking chairs.
Now, though, the porch was covered with empty cans, plastic bags, and other trash. Animal feces were scattered in a corner. Mold grew near the edges of the windows, and someone had even spray-painted something indistinguishable to the left of the door. I couldn’t help wondering what Mrs. Furstenberg would think if she knew what had become of her house.
I jiggled the front door, but a heavy padlock held it closed. I could swear I heard sounds inside, and I stood still for a second, listening.
“What?” George asked behind me.
“Do you hear that?” I asked. It was . . . creaking? Breathing?
“Hear what?” asked Bess.
I shook my head. Stop psyching yourself out. “Never mind.”
“Let’s look for another way in. Maybe there’s something in the back,” George suggested.
Bess and I nodded in agreement and we all headed for the side of the house.
It looked like the yard hadn’t been tended to in ages; the grass and bushes were totally overgrown. Still, we picked our way around the house. Soon after we turned the corner toward the back, George spotted it: “Is that the broken window?”
She pointed, and we all followed her gaze to a window about four feet from the ground. Most of the glass was missing. An angry-looking holly bush had been planted right in front of it, but clearly many kids before us had forged a path, because there was a spot where the bush had been pushed to the side. In fact, a big rock had been propped in front of the window on the ground.
“A step,” Bess said, pointing.
“Yeah, those kids have really got this figured out,” I said. “I’m not into trespassing, but this makes our job a lot easier.”
George nodded. “You guys ready?” she asked.
I looked the house up and down. Here in the back, there was more graffiti—JULIE WAS HERE, spray-painted at about eye level to the right of the window, and the anarchy symbol, right next to the back door—and the shingles looked grimy even in the dim beam of the flashlight I took out of my purse. Looking up, I could see the roof already starting to sag. And there was a smell—garbage, probably.
The house did something to me—made my heart beat a little faster, made it harder to breathe. But I tried to remember what Ned said (what I had sort of forced him to say) about adrenaline. About psyching myself up.
“I’m ready,” I agreed, hoping to sound determined.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to get,” Bess added.
I aimed the flashlight beam through the window, but it caught dust and little else. It was too dark inside—I couldn’t make out much. I handed the flashlight to George.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, stepping onto the rock and grabbing the window frame. I struggled for a second to pull myself up and through, but soon I was able to get my knee up, and then wiggle through enough to get my legs inside.
I dropped onto a dusty hardwood floor and immediately sneezed.
“Good thinking, Nance,” George teased, already stepping up to the window behind me. “Sneeze and let the ghosts know right off that we’re here. If they want to possess us, bring it on!”
“Not funny,” Bess whined behind her.
I shook my head and shined the flashlight around. It looked like I was in a small living room—or what had been a small living room. What little furniture that remained was pretty well trashed. There was still a blue flowered couch, but it was stained and smelly, with rips in the upholstery where fluffy stuffing poked out. Some
splintered wood was piled in a corner—what had once been a coffee table, I figured. And across from the couch was a low fireplace, empty and dark. A mantel above it held empty bottles, cans, and chip bags. A large mirror hung over the mantel. Cracks spread outward from a huge punched-in hole in the middle.
I could see my own silhouetted figure behind the flashlight beam in the mirror, and it made me shudder. I was broken into a million pieces.
“Didja find the ghost yet?” George asked eagerly as she climbed through the window and dropped to the floor. Bess climbed through right behind her—though she looked less happy about it.
“No ghost,” I confirmed, feeling a teeny bit of relief to have my friends in here with me. “Vandalism: check. Littering: check.”
George nodded, looking around the living room. “Seems like the only forces messing with this house right now are human.”
“Let’s hope so.” Bess dropped to the floor after George, frowning as she took in the room. “It smells.”
“I’m guessing the trespassers aren’t being good little scouts and leaving only footsteps behind,” I said.
“What?” Bess looked confused.
“I think Nancy means it stinks because kids are pigs,” George said, shining her own flashlight down a hall that extended from the living room to the right. “They leave their trash.”
“That was sort of what I was getting at,” I said.
“Also, there’s probably not a working bathroom in here,” George added.
Bess glared at her. “Ewwww! Gross, cuz!”
“Sometimes life is gross.” George stepped toward the hallway. “It looks a little neater down here. Maybe this leads to the bedrooms?”
She started walking down the hall, and, feeling a little upstaged, I scurried to follow her. But really, I was glad George was here. It was a relief to have someone with me who wasn’t scared out of her wits.
The hall was neater than the living room, but the ancient striped wallpaper was still ripped off in places, revealing bits of flowered paper beneath. The paper was dark with mold around the tears and near the ceiling.
George sniffed. “Mildew and mold,” she said. “That’s part of the smell too. We shouldn’t stay in here too long. It’s not good to breathe in too much mold.”
I heard Bess snort from the end of the hallway near the living room. “That’s, like, reason one thousand we shouldn’t stay here too long.”
George shined her flashlight into an open door on the right. “Looks like it used to be a bedroom,” she said.
I drew up beside her and peered in. A nearly destroyed mattress with a huge gash in it was leaning in front of a window. On the ground was a wooden bed frame, many of the slats broken or missing. A dresser stood in the corner, but only one drawer hung open—the others were gone.
A torn poster for the movie Blood Fight curled up from the wall over the bed.
“This must be the son’s room,” I whispered. “Henry.”
Bess joined us, still not looking happy, and we looked around the room a bit more but didn’t find anything else of note.
“All right,” I said softly. “Let’s move—”
Suddenly there was a loud, scuffling, scratching sound—coming from beneath the broken bed frame.
“AAAAUUGH!” Bess screamed. “Let’s get out of—”
But before we could move, the culprit itself appeared—a huge, matted brown rat! It darted from beneath the bed frame and ran over George’s foot on its way out the door and down the hallway.
We heard it scuttle away, and then, finally, in the silence, I looked at George. “Are you . . . ?”
She looked at me with an expression of horror. “No,” she said. “No, I am most definitely not okay. You know what, let’s never speak of that again!”
Bess seemed to be struggling to control her breathing. “I want to go home,” she whined.
“You want to go home?” George asked, eyebrow raised. “You need to get out of here now? Who just had a rat run over her foot?”
Bess shook her head hard, blond hair flying, like she could shake out the memory.
“Let’s keep going,” George said, stepping back into the hallway. “We have a lot more to check out.”
I followed obediently, feeling like George had earned the right to lead. We passed a trashed bathroom and followed the hallway down to the end, where another door opened off to the right. It was closed.
Bess noticed it with alarm. “Maybe we should—”
But George reached out and opened it, without another word. She shined her flashlight inside, and I did the same.
“Mrs. Furstenberg’s room,” I whispered.
It wasn’t in as a bad shape as the other bedroom—possibly because it was farther from the living room. The bare, stained mattress was still almost on the bed, spilling off onto the floor on the other side from the door. Two sheer pinkish curtains, one ripped, hung on either side of a window that faced the street. A squat white dresser took up nearly an entire wall, all of its drawers hanging open and empty.
I shined my flashlight toward a darkened doorway on the wall adjacent to the window. I could just make out a shower rod and the pink edge of a bathtub—an en-suite bathroom. I glanced at my friends and gestured, then slowly began making my way over there. It smelled terrible. I stepped inside the doorway and realized it was probably because there was an inch or so of standing water in the bathtub. Something dark and slimy coated the porcelain that was submerged. I groaned and covered my nose with my hand.
“What’s up?” George asked.
“Nothing,” I said, turning toward her. “It’s just some wa—AAAAAAUUUGGHHH!!”
There was a mirror on the wall to the right of the door. In the mirror I could see my own face.
And someone else’s—drawn, gray, with pupilless black eyes!
“AUUUUUUGHHH!”
I was losing it, screaming and too freaked to move, when suddenly George started shaking me.
“Nancy, Nancy, it’s okay!” She squeezed my arm and pointed at the mirror. “Look! Nance! It’s painted on!”
In her flashlight beam, I could see it—a weird opaque texture on the mirror. Spray paint. I took in a deep breath and tried to stop my heart from racing off.
“What kind of sicko spray-paints a face on a mirror?” I asked angrily.
Bess was peeking her head into the bathroom now. “The kind of sicko who thinks sneaking into scary, abandoned houses is fun?” she asked, frowning at the “artwork” on the mirror. “Are you okay, Nancy?”
Breathe. Breathe. “Well, I’m definitely having an adrenaline rush.”
Bess looked at me sympathetically. “Maybe we should go now.”
“No,” I said, even though I really wanted to say yes. “We haven’t checked out the whole house. There’s the basement, we know, which . . .”
Bess’s expression darkened. “Which is where Mrs. Furstenberg was found,” she finished.
“Right.” I led the way out of the bedroom. Bess and George followed.
“The thing is,” Bess said as we walked back down the hall to the living room, “I don’t want to—I mean—”
“Spit it out, cuz,” George said, turning to Bess with a suspicious look. It’s easy to forget Bess and George are cousins in addition to being friends—they couldn’t be more different.
Bess looked a little guilty. “Maybe I should stay behind,” she blurted quickly. “You know—in the living room or something, while you guys check out the basement. I could keep watch.”
She smiled, clearly proud of her idea, even though it wasn’t the first time she’d suggested it while working on a case.
“Oh, here we go again with the ‘keep watch’ idea. Keep watch for who? Ghosts?” George asked.
“Other trespassers?” I added.
Bess nodded. “All of the above,” she said. “I mean, not to be a pessimist or anything, but let’s say there is something down there, ready to clonk you over the head with a piano.”
r /> George stared at her. “There are so many things wrong with that statement,” she said warily.
Bess ignored her and continued. “Wouldn’t you want someone up here, able to go for help?” she asked. “Isn’t it better that we don’t all get clonked?”
George sighed, and we exchanged glances. Hers said something like, Typical. Mine said, No, it’s cool.
“That’s a great idea, Bess,” I said, turning back to my fair-haired friend, and she smiled as though she hadn’t really expected that reaction. “You stay here. Yell if you see anything weird, okay? George and I will find the stairs to the basement and be back in just a few minutes.”
I walked toward what looked to be a small kitchen and gestured to George to follow me. The kitchen was modest and kind of out-of-date; it looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the seventies or so. It was also filthy and had more spray-painted graffiti on the peeling wallpaper—a name I couldn’t quite make out and a weird-looking frowny face.
George walked over to a narrow door next to the stove and opened it. “Here we go,” she said, shining her flashlight into the darkness.
A narrow staircase led downward.
We walked to the edge of the stairs and I took in a breath. I knew we had to go down there—and I still didn’t really believe in ghosts—but something made me want to grab onto the doorframe and refuse to budge. Something about the darkness at the end of George’s flashlight beam felt—more than creepy. Wrong.
George looked back at me. “Ready?”
I paused for just a moment before nodding. “Ready as I’m going to get.”
George went first—for which I was super grateful. As I slowly followed her down the stairs, I tried to remember what Ned had said. You’re just psyching yourself out. That had to be why this felt so wrong. The adrenaline spike I’d had after the scare in the bathroom had to explain why my arm was shaking so badly the flashlight beam wiggled all over.
George reached the bottom of the steps and moved to the side, shining her light around the space. We were in one large room, clearly used for storage. It was darker down here than on the first floor; small, one-foot-tall windows set into the foundation at ground level would let in only the tiniest amount of light from outdoors—almost none at this hour—and besides, many of them were blocked by plants on the other side. Tools hung on the wall next to the stairs. Shelves lined two walls, and I could make out a beat-up-looking washing machine and dryer. Many of the shelves were empty, and I wondered if they had been when Mrs. Furstenberg died, or whether the kids who’d been trespassing through the house had helped themselves to her belongings. That would make me mad enough to haunt, I thought, then chastised myself: Not that ghosts are real!