Baby-Sitters' Fright Night

Byron said, “I’ll help you, Jordan.”

  “I will, too,” said Adam.

  “Jordan, you have to know when to stop pretending and tell the truth,” said Logan sternly. “Pretending to cast spells to get what you want isn’t right.”

  “I know,” said Jordan. “I know.” He took Claire from Claudia and hoisted her to his shoulders. He handed Claire his wand.

  She waved it in the air.

  “Poof!” she cried. “Parade.”

  Claudia nodded and said once more, “Let the First Annual Stoneybrook Halloween Costume Parade begin!”

  And this time, it did.

  The wind began to howl and so, I’m afraid, did we, along with most of the other people in the inn.

  “It’s just the storm,” said Stacey. This observation was underscored by another crack of thunder immediately followed by another flash of lightning, which illuminated the whole room. I did not like the effect. It made the dark afterward seem even darker.

  “Did anyone pack a flashlight?” I called out.

  No one had. After all, it wasn’t as if we were going camping in the woods.

  Just then I heard a familiar voice in the hall. “Calm down, everyone. Calm down.” A knock sounded on the door, and I groped my way toward it. Coach Wu was standing there, a flashlight in one hand, and a box of candles in the other. Around the bottom of each candle was a little cardboard disc, or skirt, to catch dripping wax, just like the ones they give you for candlelight services in church.

  “This is only temporary,” said Coach Wu in a voice that brooked no argument, from people or storms. “Each of you come take a candle and a book of matches. Be very, very careful. Stay in one place until the storm is over. The electricity is temporarily out because of the storm, that’s all.”

  With that, she was gone.

  I realized that with the storm and the lights out, no one had yet discovered that Kristy was missing — except us.

  We waited until Coach Wu was gone and the coast was clear. Then we ventured out into the halls of the inn.

  It was very dark. The candlelight made long, jumpy shadows on the walls. Since the electricity was out, the elevator wasn’t working.

  “Look on the bright side of the dark side,” said Abby. “At least we weren’t in the elevator when that lightning threw the switch.”

  “You know,” said Stacey in a low voice, so that we instinctively drew nearer, “this would be a good time to try to get into certain rooms and check out some of the safe combinations.”

  “Get into the rooms how?” I asked.

  “Easy,” said Stacey. “These doors don’t use keys, they use computer-coded cards. That means that, with the electricity out, the doors probably don’t lock automatically behind you when you leave. So if someone has left his or her room since the lights went out —”

  “The door isn’t locked,” concluded Mary Anne. “Wow.”

  We made a U-turn and walked to Harvey Hapgood’s room. But his door was locked. Wherever he’d gone, he’d either come back and locked his door from the inside, or he hadn’t come back at all.

  That didn’t stop Abby. She actually knocked on his door. We all gasped. And breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t answer.

  “What were you going to do if he answered the door?” I asked.

  “Tell him he was wanted at the front desk. He’d have had to leave his room, and we could’ve slipped in after he left,” explained Abby. “Too bad.”

  We headed for the stairs and stopped again, listening to the sound of heavy breathing and heavier thumps. Then a voice said, “Careful,” and another said, “Okay, okay, next step, one, two, three, now.”

  With only the candles to light our way, we couldn’t move all that fast. We crept down the stairs and stopped at the landing. One of our theories about one of the suspects had been right: Mrs. Moorehouse could walk. But barely. She was inching down the next flight of stairs with the help of Ms. Furusawa and Mr. Hewson. As we watched, she carefully lowered one foot to the next step, then the other. Then she stopped, breathing heavily.

  “Agatha,” said Ms. Furusawa. “The lights will be back on in a minute and we can take the elevator. This is too much for you!”

  “No,” said Mrs. Moorehouse harshly. “I will not sit up in my room like a trapped animal! Suppose there was a fire. How would I get out of the hotel in time then, eh? Now, help me down these stairs!”

  Clearly using every ounce of her energy, Mrs. Moorehouse made it to the next step. And then the next.

  We went back up to our floor.

  “I guess we can eliminate Mrs. Moorehouse,” I said. “No way could she flee the scene of a crime. She can walk, but just barely.”

  “She could still be the mastermind behind it all,” said Abby, then paused. She looked down the long, dark hall. It was so quiet. So dark.

  “What is it?” asked Mary Anne.

  Abby cocked her head, as if listening for something. Then she said, “I don’t know. I guess I’m just a little twitchy. But I have the weirdest feeling we are being … watched.”

  We all stared down the hall then, realizing how easy it would be for someone to stand in the dark, just out of the light of the candles, watching us.

  Waiting for us.

  “Nah,” said Abby after a moment. “Just twitchy, that’s all. Come on, let’s go. There is the emergency exit at the other end of the hall.” We made our way back down the hall, past our rooms. I couldn’t help myself. I kept looking over my shoulder.

  Now that Abby had mentioned it, I was sure she was right. I knew it in my bones. Someone was watching us. Someone was following us.

  As it turned out, I was half right. Someone wasn’t following us.

  But someone was watching us.

  He stepped out of the shadows and in front of us just as we reached the exit door.

  Sean Knowles.

  I jammed my fist up against my mouth. It kept me from screaming. It kept me from running, even though my brain was screaming: run, run, run!

  My foot touched something small and solid, and I stooped and ran my hands over what felt like a footstool. A plan — not much of a plan, but a plan — squeezed itself in around my screaming thoughts.

  Further groping brought me to a chair.

  I moved the footstool out to where I had been standing. I edged around the chair.

  I backed up slowly until I touched something else:

  A bed. I remembered a book I’d read about someone hiding in a bed. Was it The Mixed-Up Files of … no, no time to think about that now. I leaned forward, gave the chair a tremendous shove, and in the cover of the noise, made a dive over the foot of the bed.

  It was an old-fashioned featherbed, and I sank into it like a stone into a pool of water, yanking covers over my head. No one would think to look for me in the bed in the museum, would they?

  I heard the footsteps shuffle forward again. Someone was breathing heavily, as if through his nose. Good. A clue to identification, I thought, and was pleased that I was back in my Agatha Kristy mode in spite of my pounding heart.

  The shuffling came closer. Closer. Something bumped against something else and a voice said, “Oww,” and then stopped abruptly.

  I drew my brows together. Cautiously, I lowered the covers and peered out into the darkness, straining to see.

  When the person lit the match, the light was so bright, I blinked.

  But that wasn’t all that made me blink.

  With a banshee yell, I leaped from the bed.

  “Alan, you are dead!”

  Alan Gray screamed like I had never heard him or any human being scream before. He didn’t leap into the air, he levitated. The match inscribed an arc in the darkness and went out.

  In spite of the terror I had just been through, the moment was sweet. I couldn’t help myself. I began to laugh.

  “W-who, w-who …” I heard Alan stammering.

  I laughed harder. I gasped for air and leaned weakly against the bed, giddy with relief and lau
ghter.

  Alan lit another match and held it up. “K-Kristy?”

  “You shouldn’t play with matches,” I said, and went off into another storm of laughter.

  “Kristy Thomas?” said Alan.

  I got a grip. “Who did you think it was? You’re the one who lured me here in the first place with that bogus clue.”

  “Clue?” Alan looked puzzled, then said, “Oww!” and shook the match out. He lit another and looked around. A table stood nearby with a candlestick on it, and there was a candle in it.

  Alan grabbed the candle and lit it.

  I hoped the candle wasn’t some kind of antique, but I didn’t say anything. My thoughts were now darkening like a storm cloud. Why had Alan sounded so puzzled? Why had he been so, well, surprised to see me?

  “What clue?” asked Alan, returning with the candle.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, and then, suddenly remembered I was in a museum, which is sort of like a library, so you’re not supposed to talk loudly, plus I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Didn’t you set me up to scare me?”

  Alan lowered his own voice to match mine. “No! You scared me! Are you the one who left the note saying I could solve the mystery of the Witch’s Eye if I came to the museum this afternoon?”

  “No!” I paused. At least my clue had been more subtle. I would never have fallen for such a clearly artificial lure. But then, subtlety has never been one of Alan’s strengths.

  But it was definitely the strong suit of someone else who liked to play jokes. Someone who had been egging Alan on. Someone with whom I had engaged in a battle of wits before, more than once.

  “Cary Retlin,” I hissed.

  Alan looked around.

  “No, not here. At least, I hope not. Alan, this is all Cary’s doing, don’t you see? He lured us in here, and I bet he was going to scare us both out of our wits.”

  “Well, it worked,” said Alan glumly.

  It had worked for me, too, but I wasn’t about to admit it to Alan. “How did you get in?” I demanded. “Can we get back out that way?”

  “The side door was unlocked,” said Alan. “But then it locked behind me.”

  I suddenly remembered Cary’s ability to fiddle with locks. I wondered what he had done to make that door open so easily from the outside, and then lock so securely from the other side. Then I realized how smug I felt about sneaking in as the museum employee was leaving and realized that I hadn’t had to be so sneaky at all. Thanks to Cary, the door was probably unlocked the whole time.

  “Listen, there has to be another way out,” I said. “Even if it’s one of those exit doors with the alarm.” I paused. “Although I think we should avoid that if we can.”

  Alan nodded vigorously. We headed for the far door.

  The museum looked much bigger by candlelight than in the ordinary light of day. And much bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. I don’t know why that was true, but it was.

  We did find one exit, lit by a bright red EXIT sign. It also had a warning on the door: EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND.

  Was I ready for that? I was not.

  I realized that finding Cary, who was bound to show up sooner or later, and forcing him to unlock a door that wasn’t alarmed was the only way out.

  That was when I came up with plan number two. We would not only force Cary to free us, we would scare him to the middle of next week. It was the least we could do to repay him.

  “Alan,” I hissed, pulling him to one side. “Listen. I’ve got an idea.”

  * * *

  “Aaaaaah!” Alan screamed. He screamed pretty convincingly. I almost believed him. Except that I had heard him scream for real not that long before. This time, I knew it was an act. I was using Alan as bait to catch Cary.

  Alan stammered (also very convincingly), “Who-who …”

  I had to hand it to Alan. He wasn’t stupid. In some cases, he learned from his experiences.

  “Cary!” he gasped. “Cary Retlin?”

  Alan must have found Cary, who laughed triumphantly. Ha, ha, to you, too, Cary Retlin, I thought, as I listened to Alan’s questions and Cary’s explanations from my hiding place in the next room.

  I ground my teeth and thought of revenge.

  Alan said loudly, so I could hear from where I was waiting, “You have one of those little flashlights. I wish I had one.”

  “It’s a keychain light,” said Cary. “So you want to help me scare Kristy?”

  “Sure … when?”

  “Any minute now.” Cary lowered his voice. “She’ll be up in the room where the diamond was on display. We’d better head up there.”

  “But Kristy is baby-sitting for Ms. Garcia,” said Alan.

  “No, she’s not,” said Cary. “That’s Mary Anne.”

  Interesting, I thought. Cary clearly kept us all under close surveillance.

  “I don’t know about that. But Mary Anne hadn’t been on one of the tours she needed for her project and Kristy had, so Ms. Garcia asked Kristy …” Alan’s voice trailed off. “Maybe that’s why Kristy tried so hard to weasel out of it!”

  “But she didn’t?” asked Cary.

  “Nope. She went with Nidia and a couple of other kids and Mrs. Bernhardt to the wax museum to make tomb rubbings. As they left the inn, Kristy was explaining how they couldn’t make tomb rubbings of real tombs because that would wear away the stone just like the wind and the rain did.”

  I grinned appreciatively at that. It was a nice touch.

  And Cary fell for it.

  “Bummer,” he said. “I guess we could wait, but —”

  “Yeah, let’s do that!” said Alan. “What’s the plan? We jump out and say boo?”

  “Sort of. But we can’t wait around here all afternoon. For one thing, we’ll be missed. And for another, it’s already getting late.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m with someone else,” said Alan proudly. “They won’t miss me for hours.”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have said at that point that no one would miss Alan, ever. But I was experiencing a moment of chagrin that he and I had used the same ruse to slip away. Was it such a common one? If so, why had the chaperons fallen for it?

  Did they actually trust Alan as much as they trusted me? It was a very lowering thought.

  “No,” said Cary. “Come on. Even the best laid plans of mice and ratmen sometimes go awry. Or something like that.”

  “You know how to get out?” asked Alan. Then he added, his voice apprehensive, “Without setting off any alarms?”

  “Yup.”

  They walked quickly across the hall. Then Alan stopped.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?”

  Alan listened a moment longer, then said, “I don’t know. I guess I’m just jumpy.”

  They opened a door. Alan said, “Cary?”

  Cary had stopped, too, his head cocked.

  Then Alan laughed nervously. “You don’t think Kristy like, you know, brought Ms. Garcia’s kid here, do you?”

  “No. No way,” said Cary. “Kristy is a totally responsible baby-sitter. She’d never expose any kid she was in charge of to any kind of danger.”

  I almost forgave Cary. Almost.

  Cary muttered, “I hope it’s not some guard coming on duty or something. It shouldn’t be, according to my information. The police were supposed to keep this place closed all day.”

  “This museum isn’t, um, haunted, is it?” asked Alan.

  “No. Not unless you believe in ghosts,” Cary replied cryptically. But he sounded unsure of himself. Even a little — afraid?

  “I don’t like this,” said Alan. “Let’s get out of here. Can’t you go any faster?”

  “I’m going. I’m going.” Cary’s hand closed on the door handle. He turned it.

  It didn’t open. I was holding it from the other side. I had wedged myself against the door, and a sturdy chair beneath th
e knob (not one of the antiques, but the guard’s chair that stood next to the door).

  “It won’t open,” Cary said.

  “Let me try.” Alan tried. Noisily. Dramatically. But not very hard.

  Cary squatted and examined the knob. “It’s not locked,” he said.

  “It must be stuck, then.”

  Alan tried again.

  Then Cary did.

  Alan said, on a nice note of rising panic, “We have to get out of here! Is there any other way out?”

  I held my breath, but Cary answered, to my relief, “I’ve only got that one door rigged. All the others would set off the alarm.”

  Alan hurled himself at the door again. And again.

  “Hey, Alan, calm down,” said Cary. But he didn’t sound so calm himself.

  “Got to get out, got to get out,” Alan panted. “What are we going to do?” His voice rose hysterically.

  “I don’t know,” said Cary, sounding thoroughly rattled.

  “Is there a phone anywhere? We could call for help!”

  “If we do that, we might as well just set off one of the alarms,” said Cary, sounding more and more uncertain.

  It was wonderful.

  Then Alan said, “Okay, if we both hit the door with our shoulders …”

  That was my cue. As they backed up and Alan began to count (loudly) to three, I whisked the chair off to the side of the door, stepped up on it, and raised the cover from the bed high.

  The door flew open, the guys sprawled out into the room, and I dropped the cover over them. Alan began to scream hysterically, and Cary’s nerve broke.

  He began to scream, too.

  Alan crawled out from under the cover and came to stand next to me. We watched Cary scream and writhe below.

  As his screams died down and he began to fight his way free, I said, in as deep a voice as I could produce from behind my hand, “You are under arrest. Please keep your hands in sight. We have you covered.”

  Cary’s hands came out from under the cover. “But I can explain everything. It’s all a mistake. I … I … I …” His voice trailed off as he emerged, and looked up to see Alan and me illuminated by the light of the candle that I had just relit.

  We all went laugh ballistic. Even Cary.