I turned and saw her standing at the end of the bed. Holding the bottom of the quilt in both hands.
“We don’t have all night!” she declared. She pulled the quilt down farther. “Nothing in the bed. Come on. Let’s move on.”
A sigh escaped my lips. Stephanie had tugged down the quilt and scared me again.
No ghost in the bed. No ghost pushing down the covers to climb out and grab me.
Only Stephanie.
At least this time she hadn’t seen how frightened I was.
We worked together to pull the quilt back into place. She smiled at me. “This is kind of fun,” she said.
“For sure,” I agreed. I hoped she couldn’t see that I was still shaking. “It’s a lot more fun than tossing rubber spiders into Ben Fuller’s bedroom window.”
“I like being in this house so late at night. I like sneaking off from the group. I can feel a ghost lurking nearby,” Stephanie whispered.
“You c-can?” I stammered, glancing quickly around the room.
My eyes stopped at the bottom of the door to the hallway.
There it sat. On the floor. Wedged between the door and the wall. Half-hidden in deep shadow.
The head.
This time, I saw the head.
Not a joke. Not a cruel trick.
Through the gray-black shadows, I saw the round skull. And I saw the two black eye sockets. Empty eye sockets. Two dark holes in the skull.
Staring up at me.
Staring.
I grabbed Stephanie’s arm. I started to point.
But there was no need.
Stephanie saw it, too.
I was the first to move. I took a step toward the door. Then another.
I heard sharp gasps. Someone breathing hard. Close behind me.
It took me a few seconds to realize it was Stephanie.
Keeping my eyes on the head, I made my way into the dark corner. My heart started to pound as I bent down and reached for it with both hands.
The black eye sockets stared up at me. Round, sad eyes.
My hands trembled.
I started to scoop it up.
But it slipped out of my hands. And started to roll away.
Stephanie let out a cry as the head rolled over the floor toward her.
In the orange light from the lantern, I saw her frightened expression. I saw that she was frozen there.
The head rolled over the floor and bumped against her sneaker. It came to a stop inches in front of her.
The empty black eye sockets stared up at her.
“Duane — ” she called, staring down at it, hands pressed against her cheeks. “I didn’t think — I didn’t really think we’d find it. I — I — ”
I hurried back across the room. It’s my turn to be the brave one, I decided. My turn to show Stephanie that I’m not a wimp who’s afraid of every shadow.
My turn to show Stephanie.
I scooped up the ghost’s head in both hands. I raised it in front of Stephanie. Then I moved toward the lantern on the dressertop.
The head felt hard. Smoother than I thought.
The eye sockets were deep.
Stephanie stayed close by my side. Together we made our way into the orange lantern light.
I let out a groan when I realized I wasn’t carrying a ghost’s head.
Stephanie groaned too when she saw what I held in my hands.
A bowling ball.
I was carrying an old wooden bowling ball, the pale wood cracked and chipped.
“I don’t believe it,” Stephanie murmured, slapping her forehead.
My eyes went to the wooden bowling pins, lying among Andrew’s old toys. “This must be the ball that went with those pins,” I said softly.
Stephanie grabbed it from me and turned it between her hands. “But it only has two holes.”
I nodded. “Yeah. In those days, bowling balls only had two holes. My dad told me about it one day when we went bowling. Dad never could figure out what they did with their thumb.”
Stephanie stuck her fingers into the two holes. The “eye sockets.” She shook her head. I could see she was really disappointed.
We could hear Otto’s voice, booming from somewhere downstairs.
Stephanie sighed. “Maybe we should go down and rejoin the tour,” she suggested. She rolled the ball back to the pile of toys.
“No way!” I exclaimed.
I liked being the brave one for a change. I didn’t want to quit while I was ahead.
“It’s getting kind of late,” Stephanie said. “And we’re not going to find any ghost head up here.”
“That’s because we’ve already explored these rooms a hundred times,” I told her. “I think we should find a room we’ve never explored before.”
She scrunched up her face, thinking hard. “Duane, do you mean — ?”
“I mean, the ghost head is probably hidden in a room the tour doesn’t go through. Maybe upstairs. You know. On the top floor.”
Stephanie’s eyes grew wide. “You want to sneak up to the top floor?”
I nodded. “Why not? That’s probably where all the ghosts hang out — right?”
She studied me, her eyes searching mine. I knew she was surprised by my brave idea.
Of course, I didn’t feel very brave at all. I just wanted to impress her. I just wanted to be the brave one for a change.
I was hoping that she’d say no. I was hoping she’d say, “Let’s go back downstairs, Duane.”
But instead, an excited grin spread over her face. And she said, “Okay. Let’s do it!”
So I was stuck being the brave one.
We both had to be brave now. The Twin Terrors, on their way up the dark, creaking stairway that led to the third floor.
A sign beside the stairs read: NO VISITORS.
We stepped right past it and began climbing the narrow staircase. Side by side.
I couldn’t hear Otto’s voice anymore. Now I could only hear the creak and squeak of the steps beneath our sneakers. And the steady thud thud thud of my heart.
The air grew hot and damp as we reached the top. I squinted down a long, dark hallway. There were no lanterns. No candles.
The only light came from the window at the end of the hall. Pale light from outside that cast everything in an eerie, ghostly blue.
“Let’s start in the first room,” Stephanie suggested, whispering. She brushed her dark hair off her face.
It was so hot up here, I had sweat running down my forehead. I mopped it up with my jacket sleeve and followed Stephanie to the first room on the right.
The heavy wooden door was half open. We slid in through the opening. Pale blue light washed in through the dust-caked windows.
I waited for my eyes to adjust. Then I squinted around the large room.
Empty. Completely empty. No furniture. No sign of life.
Or ghosts.
“Steph — look.” I pointed to a narrow door against the far wall. “Let’s check it out.”
We crept across the bare floor. Through the dusty window, I glimpsed the full moon, high over the bare trees now.
The doorway led to another room. Smaller and even warmer. A steam radiator clanked against one wall. Two old-fashioned-looking couches stood facing each other in the center of the room. No other furniture.
“Let’s keep moving,” Stephanie whispered.
Another narrow door led to another dark room. “The rooms up here are all connected,” I murmured. I sneezed. Sneezed again.
“Ssshhh. Quiet, Duane,” Stephanie scolded. “The ghosts will hear us coming.”
“I can’t help it,” I protested. “It’s so dusty up here.”
We were in some kind of sewing room. An old sewing machine stood on a table in front of the window. A carton at my feet was filled with balls of black yarn.
I bent down and pawed quickly through the balls of yarn. No head hidden in there.
We stepped into the next room before we realized it was comple
tely dark.
The window was partly shuttered. Only a tiny square of gray light crept through from outside.
“I — I can’t see anything,” Stephanie declared. I felt her hand grasp my arm. “It’s too dark. Let’s get out of here, Duane.”
I started to reply. But a loud thump made my breath catch in my throat.
Stephanie’s hand squeezed my hand. “Duane, did you make that thump?”
Another thump. Closer to us.
“No. Not m-me,” I stammered.
Another thump on the floor.
“We are not alone in here,” Stephanie whispered.
I took a deep breath. “Who is it?” I called. “Who’s there?”
“Who’s there?” I choked out.
Stephanie squeezed my arm so hard, it hurt. But I made no attempt to move away from her.
I heard soft footsteps. Ghostly footsteps.
A cold chill froze the back of my neck. I clamped my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.
And then yellow eyes floated toward us through the thick darkness.
Four yellow eyes.
The creature had four eyes!
A gurgling sound escaped my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.
I stared straight ahead. Listening.
Watching.
The eyes floated apart in pairs. Two eyes moved to the right, two to the left.
“Noooo!” I cried out when I saw more eyes.
Yellow eyes in the corners of the room. Evil eyes glinting at us from against the wall.
Yellow eyes all along the floor.
Yellow eyes all around us.
Catlike yellow eyes glaring in silence at Stephanie and me as we huddled together in the center of the room.
Catlike eyes.
Cat’s eyes.
Because the room was filled with cats.
A shrill yowl gave them away. A long meeee-yoww from the windowsill made Stephanie and me both sigh in relief.
A cat brushed against my leg. Startled, I jumped aside, bumping into Stephanie.
She bumped me back.
More cats meowed. Another cat brushed the back of my jeans leg.
“I — I think these cats are lonely,” Stephanie stammered. “Do you think anyone ever comes up here?”
“I don’t care,” I snapped. “All these yellow eyes floating around. I thought … I thought … well … I don’t know what I thought! It’s creepy. Let’s get out of here.”
For once, Stephanie didn’t argue.
She led the way to the door at the back of the room. All around us, cats were howling and yowling.
Another one brushed my leg.
Stephanie tripped over a cat. In the darkness, I saw her fall. She landed on her knees with a hard thud.
The cats all began to screech.
“Are you okay?” I cried, hurrying to help pull her up.
The cats were howling so loud, I couldn’t hear her reply.
We jogged to the door, pulled it open, and escaped.
I closed the door behind us. Silence now. “Where are we?” I whispered.
“I-I don’t know,” Stephanie stammered, keeping close to the wall.
I moved to a tall, narrow window and peered through the dusty glass. The window led out to a small balcony. The balcony jutted out from the gray shingled roof.
Pale white moonlight washed in through the window.
I turned back to Stephanie. “We’re in some kind of back hallway,” I guessed. The long, narrow hallway seemed to stretch on forever. “Maybe these rooms are used by the workers. You know. Manny, the night watchman. The house cleaners. And the tour guides.”
Stephanie sighed. She stared down the long hallway. “Let’s go downstairs and find Otto and the tour group. I think we’ve done enough exploring for tonight.”
I agreed. “There must be stairs at the end of this hall. Let’s go.”
I took four or five steps. Then I felt the ghostly hands.
They brushed over my face. My neck. My body.
Sticky, dry, invisible hands.
The hands pushed me back as they clung to my skin.
“Ohhhh, help!” Stephanie moaned.
The ghosts had her in their grasp, too.
The ghost’s filmy hands brushed over me. I could feel the soft fingers — dry and soft as air — tighten around my skin.
Stephanie’s hands thrashed wildly. Beside me in the dark hall, she struggled to free herself.
“It — it’s like a net!” she choked out.
I swiped at my face. My hair.
I spun away. But the dry fingers clung to me. Tightening. Tightening.
And I realized we hadn’t walked into a ghost’s grasp.
Tugging and tearing frantically with both hands, I realized we had walked into cobwebs.
A thick curtain of cobwebs.
The blanket of sticky threads had fallen over us like a fisherman’s net. The more we struggled, the tighter it wrapped itself around us.
“Stephanie — it’s cobwebs!” I cried. I tugged a thick, stringy wad of them off my face.
“Of course it’s cobwebs!” she shot back, squirming and thrashing. “What did you think it was?”
“Uh … a ghost,” I muttered.
Stephanie snickered. “Duane, I know you have a good imagination. But if you start seeing ghosts everywhere, we’ll never get out of here.”
“I … I … I …” I didn’t know what to say.
Stephanie thought the same thing I did. She thought she’d been grabbed by a ghost. But now she was pretending she knew all along.
We stood there in the darkness, tearing the sticky threads off our faces and arms and bodies. I let out an angry groan. I couldn’t brush the stuff from my hair!
“I’m going to itch forever!” I wailed.
“I’ve got more bad news for you,” Stephanie murmured.
I pulled a thick wad off my ear. “Huh?”
“Who do you think made these cobwebs?”
I didn’t have to think about it. “Spiders?”
My arms and legs started to tingle. My back began to itch. I felt a light tingling on the back of my neck.
Were there spiders crawling up and down my body? Hundreds and hundreds of them?
Forgetting the wispy strings of cobweb, I started to run. Stephanie had the same idea. We both ran down the long hall, scratching and slapping at ourselves.
“Steph — the next time you have a great idea, don’t have a great idea!” I warned her.
“Let’s just get out of here!” she groaned.
We reached the end of the hall, still scratching as we ran.
No stairway.
How do we get back downstairs?
Another hall twisted to the left. Low candles over the doorways flickered and danced. Shadows darted over the worn carpet like slithering animals.
“Come on.” I pulled Stephanie’s arm. We had no choice. We had to follow this hallway, too.
We jogged side by side. The rooms were all dark and silent.
The candle flames dipped as we ran past. Our long shadows ran ahead of us, as if eager to get downstairs first.
I stopped when I heard someone laughing.
“Whoa,” Stephanie murmured, breathing hard. Her dark eyes grew wide.
We both listened hard.
I heard voices. Inside the room at the end of the hall.
The door was closed. I couldn’t make out the words. I heard a man say something. A woman laughed. Other people laughed.
“We caught up to the tour,” I whispered.
Stephanie scrunched up her face. “But the tour never comes up here to the top floor,” she protested.
We stepped up close to the door and listened again.
More laughter on the other side. A lot of people talking cheerfully, all at the same time. It sounded like a party.
I pressed my ear against the door. “I think the tour ended, and everyone is just chatting,” I whispered.
Stephanie scratched the back of her neck. She pulled a stringy gob of cobweb from her hair. “Well, hurry, Duane. Open the door. Let’s join them,” she urged.
“I hope Otto doesn’t ask us where we’ve been,” I replied.
I grabbed the doorknob and pushed open the door.
Stephanie and I took a step inside.
And gasped in shock at what we saw.
The room stood empty.
Empty, silent, and dark.
“What happened? Where is everyone?” Stephanie cried.
We took another step into the dark room. The floor creaked beneath us. The only sound.
“I don’t get it,” Stephanie whispered. “Didn’t we just hear voices in here?”
“Lots,” I said. “They were laughing and talking. It really sounded like a party.”
“A big party,” Stephanie added, her eyes darting around the empty room. “Tons of people.”
A cold chill ran down the back of my neck. “I don’t think we heard people,” I whispered.
Stephanie turned to me. “Huh?”
“They weren’t people,” I croaked. “They were ghosts.”
Her mouth dropped open. “And they all disappeared when we opened the door?”
I nodded. “I — I think I can still feel them in here. I can feel their presence.”
Stephanie let out a frightened squeak. “Feel them? What do you mean?”
At that moment, a cold wind came whooshing through the room. It rushed over me, cold and dry. And it chilled me down to my toes.
Stephanie must have felt it, too. She wrapped her arms around her chest. “Brrr! Do you feel that breeze? Is the window open? How come it got so cold in here all of a sudden?” she asked.
She shivered again. Her voice became tiny. “We’re not alone in here, are we?”
“I don’t think so,” I whispered. “I think we just crashed someone’s party.”
Stephanie and I stood there, feeling the cold of the room. I didn’t dare move. Maybe a ghost stood right beside me. Maybe the ghosts we heard were all around us, staring at us, preparing to swoop over us.
“Stephanie,” I whispered. “What if we really have crashed their party? What if we’ve invaded the ghosts’ quarters?”
Stephanie swallowed hard. She didn’t reply.
Hadn’t Andrew, the ghost boy, lost his head when he stumbled into the ghost’s living quarters? Were we standing in the same living quarters? The same room where Andrew found the ghost of the old sea captain?