Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook

  “There’s a snack set out for you on the table, honey,” she said. Sometimes she still treats me like a fourth-grader, which isn’t such a terrible thing. It’s nice to feel taken care of.

  I sat down with Charlotte and ate my fruit and crackers while she told me about her day. Since she’d been home all day, her story wasn’t that exciting: She’d watched TV, read, and taught my mom how to play War. But it was nice to come home to find my “little sister” waiting for me. I’d really been enjoying Charlotte’s company, probably even more than if she really were my little sister. Real sisters do things like fight and tease each other, and we never do that. We just have a good time together.

  After I’d eaten, Charlotte followed me upstairs. I wanted to change out of my school clothes, since I’d worn a new outfit that day and I wanted to keep it nice. I’d gotten this pink polka-dotted short skirt with suspender straps and had worn it with an oversized white T-shirt. I had on my pink high-top sneakers, folded down to show their striped lining. I’d also worn these great earrings Claud had given me for my last birthday. They had all these little pink plastic hearts dangling down from one bigger heart. In case you haven’t noticed, I do like the color pink!

  By the time I’d finished changing, Charlotte and I had decided to take a walk. Charlotte was feeling great — she’d be able to go to school the next day, for sure — and she wanted to get outside. Guess where we went. That’s right. There was something about that old house. We just couldn’t stay away from it.

  When we got there, the workmen were packing up their tools and getting ready to leave. It was early again, not even four o’clock yet, but they seemed to be in a hurry. Charlotte and I stayed out of their way until they had driven off.

  We decided to walk around the house again, just as we had the last time we were there. It didn’t look all that different. The workmen must have still been taking things out from the inside. A couple of windows had been pulled from the walls and they were leaning against the house. The bushes around the sides looked a little beaten down where the workers had been walking. And the railing on the back porch had come loose and was hanging at a crazy angle.

  “You know, Charlotte,” I said, “I think all those noises we heard last time were just in our imaginations.”

  She looked at me. Maybe she could tell by my tone of voice that I was really just trying to convince myself — and her — that there was nothing to be scared of. “But what about the things we saw, Stacey?” she asked. “What about the flies, and that face at the window?”

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything,” I said. “Maybe those flies were actually termites.” The face I wasn’t so sure about. Maybe I’d just imagined that. After all, I’d been the only one to see it. That must be it. My imagination had just run away with me last Friday.

  “Fire! Fire!” yelled Charlotte all of a sudden. She sounded terrified.

  She was pointing toward a window on the first floor. Sure enough, flames were shooting out of it. Uh-oh. This was not my imagination. This was serious.

  I looked around frantically. How could I put out the blaze? What if the whole house started burning? There was no hose, and even if there had been one, I didn’t see any faucets on the outside of the house. Finally I saw a wheelbarrow off to the side, almost hidden in the weeds. It was full of rainwater! I ran to grab it and started to push it toward the house. Water sloshed around and spilled all over my legs, but I kept on pushing.

  Charlotte had been shrieking all this time, but suddenly she stopped. I’d gotten the wheelbarrow almost up to the house. Now I looked at the window and saw that the flames had disappeared. I felt like I was going crazy. What was happening here?

  My heart was pounding like mad, and I could hardly catch my breath. I set the wheelbarrow down and walked toward the window. Charlotte hung back. I looked at the empty frame. The wood wasn’t charred, and the paint wasn’t blistered. I didn’t smell smoke. I reached up gingerly and touched the sill. It wasn’t even warm. I couldn’t see inside the window, but I could tell that where there once had been fire there was no fire now. The house stood silent and cold.

  I turned to look at Charlotte. Her face was white and she was hugging herself as if to keep warm. “Our imaginations again?” she asked in a small voice.

  I just shook my head, bewildered. Why had we ever come back to this place? Something very weird was happening here. This house was not at rest. I grabbed Charlotte’s hand and walked home quickly, without looking back.

  At the Baby-sitters Club meeting that afternoon, we told everybody what we’d seen, and Claud filled us in on her research. That was one meeting where not much business got done.

  I tried to shut the house out of my thoughts completely for the rest of the evening, and I think Charlotte did, too. We were both pretty quiet at dinner that night, but luckily my mom didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want to have to try to explain anything.

  At bedtime I read to Charlotte for awhile, and then we talked. We talked about her going back to school the next day. We talked about her parents and how they’d be home in just a few days. We talked about her grandpa. We did not talk about the house.

  When I went to bed I was still feeling pretty keyed up. I didn’t think I’d ever get to sleep, but finally I drifted off….

  * * *

  I was standing outside the old house. This time the flames shot out of every window and up through the roof. It was really burning this time. I tried to yell “Fire!” but my mouth wouldn’t form the word. Then I tried to run for help, but my feet were stuck to the ground. I looked helplessly at the house and saw, to my horror, a figure at one of the windows. The person, whoever it was, clearly needed help. Again, I tried to move, but I was frozen in position. I could only watch as the person gestured to me, pleading to be rescued.

  I sat bolt upright in bed. What a nightmare! My heart was beating wildly. I tried to calm myself. The dream had seemed so real. I still felt the terror of seeing that helpless person trapped in the incredible blaze. If only I could have saved him. I lay back down, but my eyes were wide open. I didn’t really want to go to sleep. What if the nightmare came back?

  I almost wished I were a little kid again, so I could tiptoe into my parents’ room and wake up Mom. I would tell her all about my nightmare and she’d tell me it was just a bad dream and that she’d take care of me. Then I’d snuggle up in the big warm bed and go back to sleep, feeling safe. But I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I was an eighth-grader who should be able to sleep alone without being scared.

  I tried to think of other things, nice things. I thought of lying on a beach, the warm sun soaking into my skin. I thought of the waves crashing against the shore with a steady beat.

  Bang! My door slammed open and Charlotte flew across the room. She leapt into my bed and buried herself beneath the covers. She was shaking.

  “Charlotte, what is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

  She wouldn’t — or couldn’t — talk at first, but slowly it began to come out. Charlotte had also had a nightmare. And hers was also about the house.

  “There was a storm coming,” she said, still breathing hard. “I could hear the thunder, and lightning was flashing in the sky. Then all of a sudden the ground where I was standing — right there by the house — started to shake!” She shivered. She was really frightened.

  “It’s okay, Charlotte,” I said. “What happened then?” I knew she would feel better if she finished telling me her dream. I hugged her close and smoothed her hair.

  “The ground was rumbling. It was like an earthquake or something. I thought it was going to open up and swallow me!” I don’t know how she knew what an earthquake was like. Maybe she’d seen one of those nature specials on TV.

  “The sky was all dark, kind of a greenish color. I was so scared, Stacey, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to run, or scream, or do something, but all I could do was stand there and stare at the house.”

  I knew that feeling.


  “Then the worst part happened. I was looking at the front of the house, and all of a sudden I saw something at the front door, or at the hole where the front door used to be. It was a pair of hands, two old, old hands. They were all skinny and bony, and they were waving at me. It was like they were saying, ‘Come in, Charlotte. Come in.’ Oh, Stacey! It was so awful!” She started crying for real now.

  I shuddered. It sounded terrifying. I just couldn’t believe it. We’d both had nightmares at the same time, and both of them were about that creepy old house.

  What kind of power did that house have? What was it that drew us there at the same time that it scared us away? Had anyone else seen what we’d seen, heard what we’d heard? I suddenly realized why it was that the workmen packed up and left so early every day. It must have been the house. It had them in its power, too. Those workmen were probably just as scared as we were.

  I almost had to laugh at the thought of those big men being as scared as two girls. But it wasn’t really funny. I pulled the covers around Charlotte and let her snuggle up next to me. I’m sure she thought she was being allowed to stay with me because she’d been scared by that dream. She didn’t know that she was as much of a comfort to me as I was to her.

  I guess Charlotte and I both managed to get back to sleep. When we woke up the next morning it was a little late, and we really had to rush to get ready for school. Charlotte couldn’t wait to get back to her classes — she was tired of being home, sick.

  She took her medicine (she still had to finish the bottle even though she felt fine) without too much fuss, for once. When we had raced through breakfast, my mom drove us to school so we wouldn’t be late.

  I don’t know about Charlotte, but my day at school was not the greatest. I was sleepy from being awake in the middle of the night, but that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that I still felt totally frightened by the nightmare I’d had, and by the fact that Charlotte had had one, too. That old house was all I could think about.

  I was having a hard time concentrating on my classes. In Math, while I was supposed to be figuring out what “X” equaled, I was really thinking about flames and bony hands and swarms of flies. I don’t even remember what we talked about in English class, because I wasn’t listening. I was remembering that face at the window. And forget about gym class. The volleyball bounced right off my head as I stood there trying to recall exactly how that moaning had sounded.

  I was a mess.

  By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was dying to see my friends. I could talk to them about this. They would understand. They were all obsessed with the house, too.

  I met up with Dawn on the lunch line. She and I were both picking and choosing very carefully from what was available. Dawn usually brings some kind of whole-grain stone-ground organic stuff, but she must have been running late that morning, too. We both avoided the “chicken chow mein” (gluey-looking gray stuff over noodles) and reached for fruit, milk, and plain cheese sandwiches.

  “Are you okay, Stace?” she asked, as we walked over to our usual table. “You don’t look so hot.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just a little tired, I guess,” I said. “I had a terrible nightmare last night.”

  By that time we’d gotten to our table, and everyone else was already there. They all wanted to hear about my nightmare, so I described it in all its gruesome glory. Then I told them that Charlotte had also had a nightmare, and I repeated her scary details.

  I guess they could tell that I was really frightened, because they took it seriously.

  “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” said Kristy. “Is there really something going on at that house? It sounds like it might be very dangerous. There are a lot of kids living in that neighborhood. What if something happened to one of them? I hereby call an emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club!”

  Wow. We rarely have emergency meetings, and when we do, they’re usually about baby-sitting or club problems.

  “I’ll be there,” said Claud. “Today’s art class was canceled. I can’t think about anything else, anyway.”

  “Me, neither,” said Mary Anne. “That house really gives me the creeps. And if the whole town of Stoneybrook really is built over a burial ground, just think of all the terrible things that could start happening.” I knew she’d seen that Stephen King movie Pet Sematary. She’d let Dawn talk her into going, but afterward they were both sorry. They were probably thinking about the movie a lot these days.

  Everybody agreed that an emergency meeting was a great idea. As it turned out, Jessi was the only one who wouldn’t be able to make it. She had ballet class.

  I felt better knowing that we were all in this together. I was able to pay a little more attention to my afternoon classes, but even so, the day seemed to drag on forever.

  When school finally ended, I ran home to meet Charlotte. She’d had a rough day, too. She was thrilled to hear that an emergency club meeting had been called and that she’d been invited again.

  “I’m almost like a real member now,” she said.

  I knew it would be a few years before Charlotte would be a sitter, but I also knew that being invited to the meeting meant a lot to her. “That’s right, Char,” I said. “Maybe someday you’ll be president of your own baby-sitters club. You could wear a visor to every meeting, just like Kristy.”

  We headed over to Claudia’s early, since we were both so eager for the meeting to start. I guess everybody felt the same way, because by four-thirty they were all there. Except for Jessi, of course.

  Kristy called the meeting to order and announced a special agenda. “This is an emergency meeting to address the mystery of Stoneybrook, and especially to figure out what’s going on at that old house. Let’s go over what we know so far,” she said.

  “We know that there are some very weird things happening there,” I said, “and that the house has — or the spirits of the people buried beneath it have — some kind of power.”

  “That’s right,” said Claud. “The power to drive us crazy!” She was sitting on her bed, chewing grape bubble gum and blowing purple bubbles, which matched her tie-dyed T-shirt dress. “I mean, really. None of us can think about anything else.”

  “I hear you had a nightmare last night, Charlotte,” said Mary Anne. “That sounded scary.”

  “It was!” said Charlotte. “Those bony old hands … I’ll never forget them.”

  “Tell us again about everything you saw and heard at the house,” said Dawn.

  Charlotte and I told the whole story once more, from faces to flies to flames. Then Kristy told us again about what she’d found in Watson’s old books, and Claud repeated the stuff she’d learned at the library.

  “There’s something else, too,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you all, because it sounds so weird. I thought you’d think I was crazy. But I went by the old house today, just before I came here.”

  We all leaned forward. She looked scared, almost as if she didn’t want to think about what had happened.

  “I was standing there looking at the house. I wasn’t even very close to it. All of a sudden, I felt a hand on my arm, but when I looked, nobody was there. It was like an invisible person was standing next to me, and he — or she — wanted my attention.” Claud was being very serious. She was not kidding about this.

  My mouth was hanging open. So was Charlotte’s. I was glad that had never happened to me! That would have really been the last straw. Maybe we should just forget all about this house, I thought. This was getting too scary. I looked around the room. Everybody looked as scared as I felt, but they all looked fascinated, too. I knew we’d never give up now.

  “What did you do, Claud?” asked Mary Anne.

  “I ran!” said Claudia. “I wasn’t about to hang around and find out what it was they wanted from me. They probably wanted to steal my soul!”

  “More likely they wanted to steal your Ding Dongs,” I said. “Even spirits like junk food.”

/>   We all laughed. I think everybody was feeling a little tense, and we just needed an excuse to giggle for awhile.

  But the laughter stopped when Mallory spoke up. “You know,” she said, “I just remembered something that happened to me a long time ago. It must have been last year some time. It was spring, and Vanessa and I had gone hunting for flowers together. We wanted to make a Mother’s Day bouquet for our mom. We walked over to that house because I had remembered that old overgrown garden there. Sure enough, there were some really pretty flowers hidden in the weeds.”

  I had noticed those old flower beds. They lay along the side of the house.

  “We picked the flowers and went home. My mom loved her bouquet, but that night I had the strangest nightmare.” Mallory’s voice was kind of dreamy. “In it, I was back at the house, staring up at it. In every window and doorway there were people, looking at me and holding out their bony hands. They didn’t say anything, but I got the strongest feeling that they were angry at me for stealing their flowers. They wanted them back.” She shivered. “Of course, I couldn’t give them back — they’d already been picked and given to my mom. What a scary dream. I just remembered it today!”

  We all sat there quietly. We’d succeeded in scaring ourselves silly. Kristy tried to calm us down.

  “Maybe we’re letting this get to us too much. You know, I showed Watson that map I found, and he said it’s just of a part of Stoneybrook — the part where the cemetery is now.”

  “I found a map, too. Remember, Kristy?” said Claud. “And at first I thought that mine showed the same thing yours did. But you know how I am at reading maps and following directions.”

  Charlotte spoke up in a timid voice. “Does it really matter if the house — and the town — is built on a burial ground? Everybody’s still having all these weird experiences.”

  As usual, Charlotte had gotten to the heart of the matter. She may be a kid, but she’s sharp.