Baby-Sitters' Fright Night

When I could manage to speak again, I straightened up and wiped my eyes. I made my voice deep and put my hand over my mouth and said, “Gotcha, Cary Retlin.”

  We screamed. We screamed our heads off. We backed up so fast that most of the candles went out, leaving us in near darkness. Which made us scream even more.

  Have you ever noticed how screaming is contagious?

  I heard Mr. Hewson’s voice from the far stairs calling, “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Then Sean Knowles switched on his flashlight and answered, “It’s me, Sean Knowles. I just startled some of the students, that’s all.”

  He sounded so ordinary that we stopped screaming and stood there with our mouths open.

  Doors were opening along the hall, and candles were popping out into it. Mr. Knowles stepped back through the exit door and we herded right after him.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Abby crossly. “You shouldn’t go sneaking around like that. You could scare a person to death.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Knowles. “You scared me, too, you know.”

  His face was rather ashen, I noticed. Even taking the bad lighting into account.

  “Who are you, anyway?” I blurted out. “And why are you sneaking around this inn? And how come you were right there when the Witch’s Eye was stolen?” Being scared out of my wits had given me a kind of courage.

  Mallory added, “Yes, and why are you always spying on people, like Mrs. Moorehouse?”

  To our collective surprise, Mr. Knowles smiled. “I didn’t know I was being so closely observed,” he said. “I’ll have to be more careful in the future.”

  He reached into his breast pocket.

  “He has a gun!” shrieked Abby.

  “No!” said Mr. Knowles. “I have identification.”

  Looking sheepish, Abby said, “When people reach into their pockets like that, in situations like this, they could have a gun. Happens all the time.”

  “Abby!” scolded Mary Anne. She smiled at Mr. Knowles — good old Mary Anne — and took the plastic ID case he held out. We all read it:

  SEAN COLVIN KNOWLES, ULTRAINSURANCE AGENCY, LICENSED INVESTIGATOR, ID # 69832-1-007.

  “Double-oh-seven?” gasped Mallory.

  Mr. Knowles smiled again. “Just a coincidence. It’s not what you think.”

  “So you’re investigating the theft of the diamond?” asked Abby.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of my client’s affairs,” Mr. Knowles said.

  “You won’t talk, eh?” asked Abby.

  “Abby!” I said. “Cut it out.”

  Mr. Knowles actually laughed. “Nope. I won’t talk. And, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He bounded down the stairs and turned on the landing just below. “My advice to you is to quit wandering around in this inn in the dark. You could get hurt. I can’t talk about my client’s affairs, but I can tell you this: There is a pretty desperate criminal on the loose, more desperate than you realize.”

  Then he was gone on noiseless, sneakered feet.

  Abby gasped. “Do you think that was a threat?”

  “Could be,” I said. “A not-very-thinly-veiled one, either.”

  “I don’t believe it. He has a nice smile,” Mary Anne countered.

  Mallory had sat down on the steps and was staring in the direction in which Mr. Knowles had disappeared. She appeared to be thinking hard.

  “Mr. Knowles,” she mused in a faraway voice. “What is it about Mr. Knowles?”

  “Mal?” said Mary Anne. “Are you all right?”

  “Shhh,” I said.

  “Mr. Knowles. Mr. Knowles bounded away on little cat feet. Noiseless, sneakered feet,” Mallory went on.

  Sneakered feet? I thought.

  “That’s it!” Mallory exclaimed.

  “That’s what?” I asked.

  “Remember how you kidded me about writing so much about Martha Kempner, because I even wrote descriptions of what she was wearing? Well, the morning of the theft, when we saw Ms. Kempner at breakfast, she was shorter than usual. I wrote that down, too. Shorter, because she was wearing sneakers with her suit, not her usual heels. It’s the only time we’ve seen her when she hasn’t been wearing her heels.”

  “Everyone makes fashion mistakes,” I said consolingly. “Actually, I think her stiletto heels are a bigger fashion bomb. The sneakers are an improvement. Not much of one, but an improvement.”

  “No. I mean, that’s not the point!”

  “You’re right,” said Mary Anne. “I remember her running out of the lobby. Why would Martha Kempner wear sneakers on the morning of the robbery?”

  “To move fast — and quietly,” Abby concluded.

  Mal nodded and pointed down the stairs in the direction that Sean Knowles, insurance investigator, had gone. “Just like Mr. Knowles.”

  “Whoa!” said Abby. “Excellent deduction, Mallory. Or do I mean induction?”

  Suddenly, Mallory’s elation was wiped off her face by a look of guilt. “Oh, no! Not Martha!”

  “Well, maybe you are wrong,” said Abby. “But I hope you aren’t.”

  “I hope I am,” Mallory murmured.

  I said, “Well, right or wrong, the logical thing to do, then, is to check Ms. Kempner’s room safe. Do we know which room she’s in?”

  “I do,” said Mallory with a guilty look, and led the way down to the next floor and to the author’s room.

  The door was open. The room was empty. In the closet were rows of neatly organized clothes. On the floor were rows of high-heeled shoes. Even the bedroom slippers had heels on them.

  There was no sign of the sneakers, I noticed.

  But Abby was pushing aside the clothes and saying, “What was that combination again?” so I closed my eyes and reeled it off from memory. Great. It was probably stuck in my mind for all time, along with Sean Knowles’ ID number.

  The safe (which was not, fortunately, on an electrical system) opened. There was definitely a link between the theft and Martha Kempner. The diamond wasn’t there, but maybe it had been moved.

  “I’ll go get the notebook,” Mallory said, as if she couldn’t get away from the evidence fast enough.

  “I think we’d better find Martha Kempner,” I said. “If she is planning to escape, at least there will be three of us to try and stop her. Or we can follow her.”

  “Or just keep an eye on her,” suggested Mary Anne. “But maybe she has already tried to get away.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Abby. “All her clothes and stuff are still here in her room.”

  We split up, after closing the safe and trying to make everything look as if we hadn’t been there at all. Our candles were burning low. Mallory took the longest one, and the rest of us put out all but one to conserve candlepower.

  When we reached our floor, we found a sign next to the door informing us that only doors on certain floors opened automatically from the stairwell.

  That meant, I supposed, that they weren’t on the same electrical system as the room door locks.

  We trudged up another flight of stairs. The exit door was on the opposite side there, and we found ourselves in a different wing of the inn. And then, suddenly, somehow, we were lost.

  The candle burned lower and lower. We went down a flight of stairs and found ourselves on a floor with no guests. It looked as if it were being renovated. The ribs of ghostly ladders loomed up from the darkness. White dropcloths gave hall furniture ghostly shapes.

  “Look,” said Abby. “There’s another door up there. Maybe it leads somewhere.” She darted ahead.

  I heard the door open. I had a sudden premonition. Something bad was about to happen.

  “Abby, wait!” I called. I lurched forward after her — and the candle blew out.

  “Stacey! Stacey!” cried Mary Anne, her voice rising.

  “I’m right here,” I said.

  “Where? Keep talking.”

  “Right here. Right —”

  A hand sm
acked my ribs and then clutched my sleeve. “Stacey?”

  “Mary Anne?”

  We established that we were in fact who we said we were. Then Mary Anne said, “We’d better light the candle again.”

  “Okay. Give me the matches.”

  “I don’t have the matches.”

  “Well, I don’t either …. Oh, right. Abby does.”

  “Then we’d better find her,” said Mary Anne. She sounded calmer. Meanwhile, my pulse was beginning to race uncomfortably fast. Why did I have such a terrible feeling about this?

  “Abby!” I called. “Abby!”

  Something thumped. Something bumped. Something crashed.

  And then Abby answered us.

  With a horrible, strangled cry.

  The door closed behind me and my momentum carried me forward, until I bumped into something hard.

  “Owww,” I said indignantly.

  Since nobody else said “ow” or apologized, I assumed it was an inanimate object. It was. It was a wall. And my rebound had thumped me against another wall. I was completely turned around.

  I put my hands out and began to grope along in the complete darkness. The wall turned. I stopped.

  I had the strangest sensation — strange, but not unfamiliar — that I was being followed.

  Who could follow me in the complete darkness? I thought. Naturally I came up with an answer, or rather, several answers: Vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts.

  Did ghosts make scraping sounds like the one I had just heard ahead?

  Weren’t they more apt to moan and materialize in a shimmer of ghostly white?

  Lest my pert patter make you think I wasn’t scared, I was. I was now frightened out of my mind. I was just talking to myself, to keep myself from thinking.

  I’ve noticed it works for some other people. Why shouldn’t it work for me?

  Then I remembered Sean Knowles’ words. “A pretty desperate criminal is on the loose. More desperate than you realize.”

  That would be Martha Kempner, wouldn’t it? Was I afraid of her?

  No, I told myself firmly.

  But what if she had an accomplice? A big, mean accomplice? A big, mean, armed accomplice? Or what if she was a small, mean, black belt in judo or karate? And armed herself?

  Don’t think that all this time I was standing there in the dark debating these questions. I was not. I had sense enough to keep moving.

  And I knew I heard someone else moving around in the dark near me.

  I toyed, momentarily, with the idea of calling for help. But what if Stacey and Mary Anne came running and whoever — or whatever — caught them? Suppose someone got hurt? Suppose I gave my position away, and whoever it was got to me first?

  Maybe I could reason with the person. Happened all the time on those cop shows.

  Somehow, I didn’t think it happened all the time in real life. Besides, I wasn’t feeling very reasonable. Terror and reason just do not mix.

  I reached down and touched my pet pumpkin, which was clipped by its leash to my belt loop. “Hey, fella,” I said to it (in my mind). “Don’t fail me. Be a good-luck pumpkin now.”

  The pumpkin heard me. At least about the luck part. I still haven’t decided whether it was good luck or bad.

  A light flashed into my eyes, blinding me. And someone leaped from the darkness.

  I struck out, and the flashlight flew away, thudding against a wall. Hands grabbed my shirt and spun me around. I balled up my fists and jabbed out hard.

  Someone went “oof,” and his grip on me loosened momentarily. The flashlight rolled, and the beam lit me up like I was the solo act on a stage. I scrabbled sideways, trying to get out of the beam, then thought better of it and leaped for the light.

  At the same time, the person leaped for me. I flung up my hands and felt something tug at my waist. I reached down just as my pumpkin was torn loose and dropped to the floor.

  It bounced once, and cracked open. Something spilled out. The person lunged across the beam of the flashlight for it and I saw …

  Martha Kempner.

  And what had to be the Witch’s Eye.

  In one smooth soccer move, I dribbled the diamond to one side. Then I shoved my knee into the side of Martha Kempner’s knee and she gave a choked, almost gagging sound, like someone in pain. She staggered sideways. If a ref had seen me, I would have been given a yellow card for a wicked foul.

  Not that I cared. I grabbed the diamond and the flashlight and turned the flashlight off. Then I turned to run, blundering into walls and who knew what else. Something went over with a crash.

  Out of nowhere, another beam of light pinned me.

  “Harvey, be careful,” I heard Martha Kempner say from somewhere on the floor behind me. Then she moaned.

  “I will,” said Harvey Hapgood. He stepped forward. “Hand it over,” he said.

  I threw up my hands and I heard a gasp of pure horror behind me. Harvey Hapgood stopped in his tracks. Even in the faint light, I could see his face turning a funny color.

  And then I saw why.

  It was the Witch’s Eye, with special effects added.

  Dimly, I heard someone call my name. That was when I screamed for the first time. Only it came out as a strangled cry.

  The diamond was glowing an eerie, horrible green.

  Stacey and I ran toward the sound of Abby’s scream. Behind us, something crashed in the darkness. I heard a voice, which I later realized was Sean Knowles’, shout, “This way! Over here!”

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Mallory was shouting our names.

  Somehow I reached the door through which Abby had gone and threw it open myself. Stacey and I charged through it — and stopped.

  Not in fear. That’s something else I remember now. I wasn’t afraid. Everything happened too fast to be afraid.

  No, we stopped in shock. Amazement. Disbelief.

  Abby was a little way down the hall, turned sideways to us, her back against a wall. Harvey Hapgood was standing across the hall from her, holding a flashlight trained on her. Lying on the floor, clutching her knee and breathing in short, painful gasps, was Martha Kempner.

  In Abby’s hand, something glowed with an eerie green light.

  As we watched, Abby took a step forward. “Stand back,” she said. “Or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

  “The Witch’s Eye,” breathed Stacey. “It has to be.”

  My eyes widened. How had Abby gotten her hands on the Witch’s Eye? Had she taken it away from Ms. Kempner?

  “It can’t be true. It’s not true,” gasped Martha Kempner.

  “Stand back. The curse will fall on you,” Abby intoned.

  “There is no curse, Harvey! Don’t listen to her!” Ms. Kempner cried.

  Harvey Hapgood seemed to waver. He took a step forward and stopped. Abby threw back her shoulders. She brandished the diamond. “You want this cursed diamond?” she said, lowering her voice. “It brings death and destruction to whoever owns it.”

  “No, it does not!” Ms. Kempner shouted. “Harvey, grab the diamond and let’s get out of here.”

  Hapgood shook his head as if to clear it. Then he took another step toward Abby, a big, menacing step. Abby’s fingers closed tightly around the diamond and she tensed.

  “No!” I heard myself shout, and all three of them jumped.

  And at that moment, the lights went on and a mass of people surged through the door behind us.

  “Freeze!” someone shouted. “Police.”

  Harvey turned to run. Abby did something weird (she told me later it was a soccer move called a slide tackle) and Hapgood stumbled forward.

  Sean Knowles seemed to fly out of nowhere and land on top of Hapgood. They both went down with a floor-shaking crash.

  Abby curled herself into a little ball and rolled sideways as more people filled the hallway. Someone bent over Martha Kempner. “Oww,” I heard her moan. “My knee.”

  We headed for Abby and bent to help her up.

&nb
sp; Mallory said in my ear, “It was Martha. And Harvey Hapgood, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Abby, are you all right?”

  Abby uncurled and stood up. She grinned. “That was excellent, wasn’t it?’

  “Excellent! You call that excellent?” I seldom raise my voice. Now seemed a good time.

  “Well, it was a little scary for a while.”

  “The diamond,” breathed Stacey. “I saw it. It was glowing.”

  “The diamond? You have the diamond?” gasped Mallory.

  Abby held out her tightly closed fist. Slowly, dramatically, one finger at a time, she opened her hand.

  We all gasped. A large, many-faceted stone with an icy, faintly golden tinge lay in the palm of her hand.

  “The Witch’s Eye,” said Mallory.

  “Yup,” said Abby.

  “But how? Where? Did you take it away from Martha?” Mallory asked.

  “Nope. I had it all along.” Abby was clearly enjoying herself hugely.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Cut it out, Abby, and tell us what happened.”

  Abby pointed to the floor. We saw the remains of her pet pumpkin. “It was hidden in there the whole time. I’m not quite sure what happened, but Ms. Kempner must have hidden it in there. She was in the gift shop, too, remember, that morning after the robbery. She must have stashed it in the pumpkin. And then, before she could go back for it, I bought it.”

  “Someone has been following you, then,” said Stacey. “It’s all starting to make sense, now.”

  We had been so absorbed in what was going on that we hadn’t even noticed the chaos around us. But now Harvey Hapgood was being led past, struggling. “It wasn’t my idea,” he shouted. “It was hers. She planned the whole thing!”

  “Harvey, shut up, you idiot. Don’t talk,” Martha Kempner was shouting at him. Then she said, “I demand a lawyer. I’m going to sue. I have rights.”

  “Yes, you do,” said a detective’s voice. It was Detective Frizell. He wasn’t joking. As two other officers lifted Martha Kempner to her feet, he began to recite, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you …”

  Sean Knowles interrupted, “Where’s the diamond, Ms. Kempner?”