Amanda hoisted her arms onto the window ledge. I turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and tugged her into the house.
Silent now, except for our wheezing breaths.
“Maybe it was a cat,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Maybe I startled a cat when I dropped to the floor.”
She stared at me. “A cat in an abandoned house? You mean … a ghost cat?”
“No. Stop trying to scare me. I’m scared enough as it is,” I said. “You know, sometimes cats find a way into houses. A hole in the wall or something.”
I turned and gazed around. We were in a kitchen. The windows were so thick with dirt that almost no light came in. I felt like we were surrounded by a deep gray fog.
Amanda slapped the sleeves of her coat. “Cold in here,” she muttered. “Cold as the grave.”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “Seriously. Stop saying things like that. It’s an old, empty house, that’s all. Of course, it’s cold in here and the air smells rotten and it’s caked with dust. But look. We made it inside, right? That was our mission, and we made it. So stop saying scary things.”
“You don’t have to shout,” she answered in a tiny voice.
“Look at that old refrigerator,” I said, taking a few steps toward it. “It’s so small, and it doesn’t have a freezer.” The door hung open, tilted on one hinge. I saw dark puddles of things on the fridge shelves. I didn’t want to think about what they were.
“There’s a rusted old-fashioned-looking oven,” Amanda said. “But no stove.”
“Take my picture in front of the fridge,” I said. “Quick. We have to take a lot of pictures to prove to everyone we were in here.”
I started toward the fridge but stopped when my shoe sank into something soft. “Ohhh.” I let out a moan. I tried to lift my shoe, but whatever I’d stepped in was thick and sticky.
“Ooh, what did you step in?” Amanda asked. “It smells putrid.”
“I … don’t know,” I said. “I’ll clean it off later. Be careful where you walk.”
I stepped up to the fridge. My shoe made sticky sounds on the wood floor. I turned toward Amanda, and she snapped a picture with her phone.
The flash was so bright in the darkness, it blinded me for a second. I had orange circles in front of my eyes. “Let’s check out the other rooms,” I said.
I heard a low moan. Like someone groaning in their sleep.
“Amanda? Was that you?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were wide with fright. We both stood totally still, listening hard. “That sounded human, right?” she whispered.
I shrugged. “Old houses groan,” I said. “Haven’t you seen any scary movies? The houses always creak and groan in those movies.”
“How would you know?” she snapped. “You don’t watch scary movies.”
“I … I read about them,” I replied. I waved my hand to signal her to follow me.
The floorboards squeaked under my shoes. “I’m not afraid to be in here,” I said. “I knew we could be brave. After today, we’ll be brave enough to —”
I didn’t finish my sentence. Another long, low moan made me stop. And then I felt something wrap itself around me, my face, my coat, my whole body. Something wrapped around me. It covered my eyes. It clung to my nose. Covered my mouth.
I tore at it with both hands. It stuck to my fingers. I clawed at it, struggling to tug it off my mouth, pull it away from my face, tear it off my eyes.
Finally, I sucked in a deep breath and managed to croak: “It’s got me! Help. I … I can’t breathe!”
Amanda dove across the room toward me. With a cry, she began to tear at the disgusting sticky sheet over my face. “It’s cobwebs,” she said. “Stop screaming, Scott. You walked into a curtain of cobwebs.”
She pulled the thick, dry strings off my face. I tore at the webbing that clung to my neck and the collar of my parka. “It’s … as thick as … as …” I started.
“As thick as hundred-year-old cobwebs.” Amanda finished my sentence for me.
We tore and grabbed and tugged the sticky webs off. I took a step back. And glanced down. “Oh, wow.” Thousands of dead insects were wrapped in the cobwebs.
“They’re in my hair!” I screamed. I began slapping frantically at my head. “They’ll crawl into my ears! Into my brain!”
“Calm down, Scott. They’re dead.”
“Dead bugs! Hundreds of them in my hair! Oh, wow. It itches!” I cried. “My face itches. My hair itches. I’m going to itch forever, I know it.”
She pulled an enormous dead spider off my forehead. “Remember when we talked about being brave? Remember that part?”
“Okay, okay,” I muttered. I shuddered. My whole body itched like crazy. Still pulling the sticky stuff off my face, I followed Amanda into the next room. “This must be the living room,” she said. Shoes thudding on the bare floorboards, we crossed the wide room to the windows. Through the dirt-caked glass, we could see the graveyard across the street.
I turned and gazed around. The fireplace still had a pile of logs inside it. The logs were covered with dust. Above the fireplace, the mantel had cracked. One side hung down to the floor.
Some old ripped-up furniture was scattered around the room. A long couch and two armchairs with stuffing poking out from the cushions. And what did I see on the floor beside the couch? “Ohh, yuck.” Was that a nearly skeletal corpse of an enormous rat?
“Something to add to my nightmares,” I said. “Think there are live rats all over the house?”
“Dunno,” Amanda muttered. “Over here. Take my picture.” She handed me her phone. “By the fireplace.”
“Do you want to hold the rat bones in the photo?” I asked.
“Shut up and take the picture. I … I’m starting to think we’ve spent enough time in here.”
She struck a pose next to the cracked mantelpiece. As I walked closer, I smelled something really gross. Like rotten eggs. From under the couch, I think.
I held my breath and snapped her picture.
“Sit on the couch,” she said. “I’ll take your picture.”
I gazed at the couch, with its mold-covered cushions. I inhaled the rotten egg odor again. “I … I don’t think so. There’s something dead under there.”
“Oh, go ahead.” Amanda gave me a push.
I stumbled toward the couch. The sour odor filled my nose. I stopped when I heard the howl.
Not an animal howl. A human howl. Like someone in pain, someone crying out for help. I froze. Another howl rose and fell. It seemed to be coming from the dining room.
With a startled cry, I turned to Amanda. “Did you hear that? Hey —”
Amanda was gone.
“Amanda? Hey — Amanda?”
I froze in panic. I tried to shout, but my cries came out as choked whispers.
“Where are you? Hey — Amanda? Where are you?”
I spun around, squinting hard, as if I could make her reappear.
I heard another long, sad howl, and a chill rolled down my back. As the howl faded, I heard Amanda’s voice, muffled as if she was calling from a distance.
“Scott — help me! Hurry!”
I turned toward her voice — and spotted the missing floorboards in front of the fireplace. Like a hole in the floor.
“Amanda?”
“Get me out of here!”
I hurried across the room and peered down into the hole. I let out a gasp as I saw her down below, her head just beneath the floor.
“It’s like a trapdoor in the floor,” she said. “I was standing there, and it just dropped down.”
She raised both hands. “Pull me out of here.”
I grabbed her hands and started to tug, and the floor rose with her. The floorboards clicked back into place. Amanda leaped away from them. “Why did someone build a trapdoor in the living room floor?”
“Beats me,” I said. “Hey, I was scared. You disappeared. I heard those howls and —”
“I heard them, too,?
?? she said. “Definitely not a cat. Someone doesn’t want us in here. Let’s go. We’ve been brave enough for one day.”
Another howl rose like an ambulance siren, the mournful sound ringing off the bare walls.
I started to run.
“Look out!” Amanda’s shout made me stumble to a stop. I realized at once I’d been running right back to the trapdoor in the floor.
I spun away and, lowering my head, darted out of the living room. I saw Amanda close behind me. “Wrong way,” she said breathlessly. “We’ve got to get back to the kitchen.”
I gazed around. Something was pulling me … pulling me to the room behind us. A dining room? A den?
Amanda motioned for me to follow her. But something tugged me. Something pulled me into the other room….
And then I saw an object on a low table that made me freeze.
In the dim light through two tall windows, I squinted at it. A small box. A small box of polished, dark wood.
“Weird,” I muttered to myself. The box was the only thing in the room not covered in a thick layer of dust.
It was about the size of a shoe box. The wood gleamed in the gray light.
I can’t explain it. Something about the box tugged me closer, pulled me to it. I knew I should leave. My brain was telling me to get out of there as fast as I could.
But I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed the box. I slid it off the table and tucked it under the arm of my coat. And then I spun away and began to run, following Amanda to the kitchen.
She already had one leg out the window. She slid her body out the opening and balanced on the stone ledge. Then she lowered herself to the ground.
I moved to the window, turned and edged one leg out and onto the ledge. The box nearly fell from under my arm. I grabbed it and pressed it tight to my waist and somehow managed to lower myself out the window.
When I hit the ground, Amanda and I ran.
The sun had come out, but the air still carried a chill. Two kids on bikes raced past the graveyard wall across the street. A brown UPS truck was double-parked at the corner.
Amanda and I ran full speed past everything and everyone. We didn’t slow down at the corner. We just ran blindly across the street. As if we were being chased. As if that howling creature in the old house was coming after us.
I pressed the wooden box against the side of my coat. It made it awkward to run, but I stumbled and staggered forward.
We both reached my house, gasping for breath. I pulled open the kitchen door, and we burst inside. No sign of Mom. The basement door was open. Maybe she was downstairs. Amanda and I stood still, struggling to catch our breath. I still had the wooden box pressed against my side.
We climbed the stairs and made our way down the hall to my room. Through the windows, the late morning sun made everything glow orange. I set the box down on my desk beside my laptop, pulled my coat off, and tossed it onto my bed.
Amanda let her coat fall to the floor. She brushed back her hair with both hands. Her eyes were on the wood box. “Scott? Did you take that from the house?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She squinted at me. “Why?”
I stared at the box. “I don’t know. It was just … just a crazy impulse. You know. I didn’t really think about it. I just took it. It was kind of, like, asking me to take it.”
“Weird,” she muttered. She reached out a hand to the lid, but quickly pulled it back. “It’s creepy. I don’t want to touch it. I mean, what’s in it?”
“We’ll have to open it to find out,” I said.
She crossed her arms in front of her, as if shielding herself. “But what if it’s something horrible? What if it belonged to that ghost or whoever it was, the one howling at us? Scott … what if it has a curse on it?”
I didn’t have an answer to that question. I was feeling all weird. I mean, why did I take it?
“I think we’ve been brave enough for one day,” Amanda said. “We went into the haunted house, and we have the pictures to prove it. The next time the Klass brothers try to be mean to us, we can show them who the real brave kids are in this neighborhood.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked. “Don’t open the box?”
“Why look for more trouble?” she replied, her arms still tightly crossed. “I don’t think you should open it.”
“But I can’t just leave it sitting here,” I said. “I can’t just have an old wooden box on my desk and not know what’s inside it.”
“Then take it back where it belongs,” she said.
“No way, Amanda. No way I’m taking this back into that house.”
We both gazed at the box. Outside, a cloud rolled over the sun, and a blue shadow filled my room. I felt a chill at the back of my neck.
“I’m going to open it,” I said softly.
“No, Scott. Don’t.”
She tried to brush my hand away. But something was forcing my hand forward. Something was pulling me like a magnet, almost against my will.
I grabbed the wooden lid and started to pry it open.
“OHH, NOOOOOOOO!”
A cry of horror escaped my mouth, a cry from deep in my throat.
I staggered back from the box as a thick purple mist shot out of it. The dark mist came spraying out like water from a fire hydrant, billowing to the ceiling and filling my room with a sour odor, a putrid odor of rot.
“Shut the box! Shut the box!” Amanda screamed.
But I staggered away from the foul-smelling mist, my fingers pinched over my nose.
Amanda dropped to her knees. She covered her face with both hands, trying to keep out the smell. “Is it poison? Poison gas?”
I couldn’t stop gagging. I lowered my head and ran across the hall to the bathroom. I washed my face with cold water. I held my breath until my stomach was back in control. Then I hurried back to my room.
The purple fog had vanished. Amanda was still on her knees. Her cheeks glistened with tears. Her body trembled. I helped pull her to her feet. “That smell …” she choked out.
I glanced around. “The fog is gone,” I said.
“It shot out the window,” Amanda said, nodding her head toward my open bedroom window. “It’s gone, but it still stinks in here.”
“It … it must have been trapped inside the box for a long time,” I said.
Amanda sniffed the front of my sweatshirt. “It’s in your clothes,” she said. “The smell. Mine, too. I’m going home and taking a two-hour shower.” She shuddered.
The box sat on the corner of the desk, the lid open. I took a few steps toward it.
“Don’t touch it!” Amanda said.
“Too late,” I told her. “We already opened it.”
I stepped up to it and peered inside. “There’s a red scarf in there,” I said. “A long red scarf, very silky.”
Amanda stepped up beside me. She wrapped her fingers around the scarf and started to pull it out of the box. “Weird,” she muttered. “It’s in perfect shape. A perfect silk scarf.”
“And it doesn’t smell bad,” I said. I glanced around the room, as if expecting the putrid purple fog to return.
“The scarf is wrapped around something,” Amanda said. She dropped it back into the box. “Maybe we shouldn’t unwrap it.”
“We’ve gone this far,” I said. “We can’t stop now.”
Amanda took a few steps back. Her eyes were on the rolled-up red scarf. “I … I’m scared. I think this could be something dangerous.”
“Well … it’s our day to be brave,” I said.
I lifted the scarf in both hands. The material was silky but heavy. It was wrapped around something hard. The scarf was longer than I thought. It took me a few minutes to unwrap it all the way.
And then Amanda and I gazed at the object inside. “A mask,” I said. “It’s a wooden mask.”
“It’s so ugly,” Amanda whispered. “It’s the scariest mask I’ve ever seen.”
The wooden mask was brown and red. Two slits had
been cut out of the wood for eyeholes. The nose was raised and pointed. The mouth was turned down in a frightening scowl.
“What’s that on its forehead?” Amanda asked, keeping her distance.
“It’s another head,” I replied. “The mask has a tiny head poking out of its forehead.”
Amanda shuddered. “So, so ugly …” she murmured.
“It-it’s a death mask,” I stammered.
She blinked. “A what?”
“A death mask. My dad brought one home from Mexico last year. They have this holiday called Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. My dad said they make these death masks for that holiday.”
Amanda squinted at it. Her mouth dropped open. “Does it mean someone is going to die?”
I held the mask in both hands, squinting hard at it.
“I … I don’t think so,” I said.
The mask shook in my trembling hands. I stared at the open eye slits. Then my eyes moved up to the ugly, carved head — the size of a thumb — poking out from the forehead.
My head swam with questions. Why was this death mask tucked away in the wooden box, wrapped so tightly in the red scarf? What was that disgusting purple spray that shot out of the box?
I suddenly wanted to be far away from this strange mask. But my hand raised it … brought it closer to my face. My hand was lifting the mask closer — as if it was being commanded by someone else.
Try me on.
Try me on.
I heard a hoarse whisper inside my head. Was the mask communicating with me? Was a powerful force inside the mask trying to force me to cover my face with it?
I knew I had to fight it. I couldn’t let it win.
But then I heard the words out loud: “Try it on!”
Nooooooo.
Not inside my head. A voice beside me: “Try it on!”
I screamed and dropped the mask on the floor. Its white painted mouth scowled up at me.
I heard laughter. Familiar laughter. I turned and saw Rita beside me. “Try it on!” she repeated.
“Get out of my room!” I shouted.
Her eyes flashed. “I made you really think that mask was talking. Admit it.”