59 - The Haunted School

  Ben opened his mouth. Probably to make another lame joke. But I guess he changed his mind. He closed his mouth without saying anything.

  “We were here,” Seth repeated, his voice shaking with emotion. He slammed the desk with his fist. “We weren’t in the library anymore. We weren’t in the real school anymore. We were here. Here in this black-and-white world.”

  “As if we were trapped inside a photograph,” Mona broke in. “Trapped forever inside a black-and-white photograph.”

  “Trapped in Grayworld,” Eddie said bitterly. “That’s what we call it. Grayworld.”

  “We’ve tried everything,” Eloise added. “We’ve tried every way to get back. We still call out for help. We still think maybe someone will come….”

  “I heard you,” I murmured. “I was in class. And I heard you calling.”

  “But—but—” Ben sputtered. “I don’t get it. Where exactly are we?”

  No one answered for a long moment. Then Seth walked up to Ben. Pressing his hands on the desktop, he lowered his face close to Ben’s, staring Ben in the eyes.

  “Ben,” he said, “did you ever see a wall and wonder what was on the other side?”

  Ben glanced uncomfortably at me. “Yeah. I guess,” he replied.

  “Well, we’re on the other side!” Seth cried. “We’re on the other side of your world. And now, you are too.”

  “Soon you will be one of us!” Eddie said.

  “No—!” Ben cried.

  He said more, but I didn’t hear him.

  I glanced down at my hands—and opened my mouth in a high scream of horror.

  17

  “My—my fingers!” I shrieked.

  I held both hands up to show them. My fingers had turned gray. The gray was spreading onto my palms.

  Ben grabbed my hand and pulled it close to examine it. “Oh no,” he murmured. “No…”

  “Ben—yours too!” I cried.

  He dropped my hand and studied his hands. His right hand was almost entirely gray. The fingers on his left hand were gray, and the color in his palm was starting to fade.

  “No… no…” he repeated, shaking his head.

  I raised my eyes to the five gray kids. “You—you weren’t joking,” I choked out.

  They stared back at us with blank expressions.

  Mary stared at my hands. “It moves quickly,” she said finally. “You’ll see.”

  “No!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “What can we do? We can’t turn gray! We can’t!”

  “You have no choice,” Eloise said sadly. “You are in Grayworld now. All color fades so quickly here.”

  “You are one of us now,” Seth repeated. “Once you turn completely gray, you will never be able to turn back.”

  “No!” Ben and I both protested.

  “We’re getting out!” I cried. I kicked my chair aside and ran back to the classroom door. I turned the knob and struggled to pull it open.

  Ben stepped up beside me, and we both pulled until we were groaning and our faces were bright red.

  “It’s bolted shut from the other side,” Seth called. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “No—” I insisted. “We’re getting out. We’re getting out now!”

  With a desperate cry, I raised both fists and started pounding on the wall. “Help us!” I screamed. “Somebody—help us! Can you hear me? Please—help!”

  I pounded until my fists hurt. Then I lowered my hands with a sigh.

  “Don’t you think we already tried that?” Mary asked bitterly. “We pound on the walls and call for help all the time.”

  “But no one ever answers,” Eloise added. “And no one ever comes to help.”

  I gazed down at my hands. They were completely gray to the wrists. I pulled up my sleeves. The color of my arms was starting to fade.

  “Ben—!” I started. He was staring at his graying skin too.

  My mind whirred. I suddenly felt dizzy.

  “How do we escape from here? How do we get back to our world?”

  “Maybe the elevator?” Ben suggested.

  “It’s no use,” Seth warned.

  But we ignored him and bolted through the aisle between the desks. To the alcove in back of the big gray classroom. The narrow alcove that held the elevator.

  “There’s no elevator button,” Mary called after us. “No way to call the elevator.”

  “It never runs,” Seth added. “It hasn’t run in fifty years. When we heard it moving tonight, we couldn’t believe it.”

  “There’s got to be a way!” I cried.

  I smoothed my hand over the wall beside the elevator doors. “There’s got to be a hidden button.” The wall felt warm and smooth.

  I pounded it with my fist until my whole hand ached.

  Ben pressed his hands along the crack between the two doors. With a groan, he struggled to pry the elevator doors open.

  No luck.

  “A screwdriver?” he called over his shoulder. “Does anyone have a screwdriver?”

  “Or maybe a knife, or a stick, or something?” I added. “To pry the doors apart?”

  “We tried it,” Eloise moaned in her hoarse, scratchy voice. “We tried everything. Everything!”

  I kicked the metal doors hard. I felt so frustrated, and angry, and frightened—all at the same time.

  Pain shot up my foot and leg. I hobbled back against the wall, breathing hard.

  My shirtsleeves were graying. I pulled up one sleeve. The gray on my skin had moved past my wrist.

  “Sit down with us,” Mary called. “Sit down and wait. It really isn’t that bad.”

  “You get used to it,” Seth added softly.

  “Used to it?” I cried shrilly, still breathing hard. “Used to a world without any color? Used to being totally in black and white? And not being able to go home? Or go anywhere?”

  Mary lowered her head. The others gazed back at Ben and me, their gray faces solemn and sad.

  “I—I’m not going to get used to it!” I stammered. “Ben and I are getting out of here.”

  I raised one hand and rubbed it with the other. I guess I thought maybe I could rub the gray off. My skin felt warm and soft as ever. It didn’t feel any different.

  But the color was gone. And the gray was creeping up, creeping up fast.

  “What are we going to do?” Ben cried. His eyes were wild. His voice came out high and shrill.

  “The window!” I shouted, pointing. “Come on. Out the window!”

  “No!” Seth shouted. He moved quickly to block our path. “No—don’t! I’m warning you—”

  “Don’t go out there!” Eddie cried.

  Why are they trying to stop us? I wondered. They don’t want us to escape! They want to keep us here! They want us to be as gray as they are!

  “Out of the way, Seth!” I cried.

  Ben dodged one way. I dodged the other.

  Seth made a grab for me. But I slid away from him.

  And dove to the window ledge.

  Staring out into the gray night, I shoved up the window.

  “Stay away from the kids!”

  “They’re crazy! They’ve all gone crazy!”

  “They’ll take you to the pit!”

  We heard their cries and warnings behind us. But they didn’t make any sense to us. So we ignored them.

  Ben and I climbed onto the window ledge—and scrambled out.

  18

  Ben dropped onto the ground with a hard THUD. I followed him, landing on my feet on soft grass.

  The night sky spread overhead, a solid black. No stars. No moon.

  Seth and the others appeared at the window, shouting and signaling for us to come back. But we both took off, jogging over the dark grass.

  We crossed the street and saw low, dark houses set far back on gray lawns. No lights shone in the windows. No cars came by. No one was out walking.

  “Is this Bell Valley?” Ben asked as we crossed another street and kept jogging. “Why doesn’t it l
ook familiar?”

  “These aren’t the same houses across from the school,” I said.

  A chill of fear made me stop running.

  How could there be a whole different town out here? And where were the people who lived here?

  Was it deserted? Was it like a movie set? I suddenly wondered. Not a real neighborhood at all?

  The kids’ warnings repeated in my ears. Maybe Ben and I made a mistake, I thought. Maybe we should have listened to them.

  I turned back toward the school. Wisps of fog came floating up from the ground. The school rose darkly behind the spreading gray mist.

  Startled, I squinted hard at it. “Whoa—Ben,” I gasped. “Check out the school.”

  He was studying it too. “That’s not our school!” he exclaimed.

  We were staring at a low, square building with a flat roof. Only one story high. Gray light flooded from the only window facing the street.

  The light fell on a slender, bare flagpole planted near the street. And a small set of swings, silvery gray in the dim wash of light.

  “We’re in a different world,” I said, my voice shaky and shrill. “We’re in a different world—so close to ours.”

  “But—but—” Ben sputtered.

  The clumps of fog began to float together, forming a billowing wall. It moved quickly up from the ground, hiding the bottom of the building from us now.

  “Let’s keep going,” I urged Ben. “There’s got to be a way out of here!”

  We started to jog again, moving past darkened houses and empty lots. Running under black-trunked trees, all winter bare. Our shoes clattering over streets without cars or streetlights.

  I kept gazing up at the sky, hoping to see the moon or the blinking light of a star. But I stared up at a ceiling of solid black.

  We’re like shadows, I thought. Shadows running through shadows.

  Stop it, Tommy! I scolded myself. Don’t start thinking weird thoughts. Just keep your mind straight ahead on what you have to do.

  Which is to find a way to escape from this place.

  We jogged past a black mailbox, across another empty street. And as we ran, the fog swept around us.

  It floated low at first, clinging to the dark grass, billowing over the streets. There was no breeze. No wind at all.

  But the fog quickly began to rise. It rose all around us. Hiding the houses behind it. Hiding the bare trees and streets and driveways—hiding everything behind a thick, swirling curtain of gray.

  With a groan, Ben stopped jogging.

  I ran right into him. “Hey—!” I cried out breathlessly. “Why did you stop?”

  “I can’t see anything,” he choked out. “The fog…” He lowered his hands to his knees and leaned forward, struggling to catch his breath.

  “We’re not getting anywhere—are we?” I asked softly. “I mean, we could probably keep running forever. And we’d never get out of this place.”

  “Maybe we should wait till morning,” Ben suggested, still bent over. “Then the fog will probably be gone and we can see where we’re going.”

  “Maybe…” I said doubtfully.

  I shivered. I wondered how much of me had turned gray. Did I have any color left?

  I pulled up my shirt and struggled to see. But it was too dark. Everything looked black and gray. I couldn’t tell.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked Ben. “Go back to the school?”

  The fog swept around us. So thick, I could barely see him.

  “I—I don’t think we could find the school in this fog,” he stammered. I could hear the fear in his voice.

  I turned back.

  He was right. I couldn’t see the street or the trees on the other side of the thick mist.

  “Maybe we can retrace our steps,” I suggested. “If we keep going in that direction—” I pointed.

  But in the thick, spinning fog, I wasn’t sure it was the right direction.

  “This was dumb,” Ben muttered. “We should have listened to those kids. They were trying to help us, and—”

  “It’s too late to think about that,” I said sharply. “I have an idea. Let’s try to find our way through the fog to one of the houses and spend the night there.”

  “You mean break in?” Ben demanded.

  “They seem to be empty,” I replied. The fog swirled thicker, wrapping us up tightly. I tugged his arm. “Come on. We’ll find a place to wait until morning. It’s better than standing out here all night.”

  “I guess…” he agreed.

  We turned and began walking up a sloping front yard. We had to move slowly because we could barely see.

  We took six or seven steps—and then I let out a scream as someone knocked me to the ground.

  19

  “Ohhhhhh!” A terrified moan escaped my throat.

  I rolled onto my back.

  A black cat tumbled beside me.

  A cat?

  It had jumped onto my shoulders from a tree limb.

  The cat stared up at me with gray eyes. Its black fur bristled. Its tail stood straight up.

  And then it took off, vanishing into the fog.

  I pulled myself shakily to my feet.

  “Tommy, what happened?” Ben demanded.

  “Didn’t you see that cat?” I cried. “It jumped down on me. Knocked me to the ground. I thought… I thought…” The words caught in my throat.

  “Are you okay? I couldn’t see it,” Ben replied. “The fog—it’s so thick. All of a sudden, you screamed. You scared me to death!”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. Why did the cat jump on me like that? I wondered.

  Maybe it’s lonely, I decided. With no other people around.

  And just as I thought that, I heard a girl’s voice. “Over here!” she called.

  And then a boy, very nearby, shouted: “Don’t let them get away! Grab them!”

  20

  Ben and I squinted into the fog. We heard shrill voices. And then the thump of footsteps over the grass. But we couldn’t see anyone.

  We didn’t know which way to run.

  “This way! Over here!” the girl repeated breathlessly to her friend.

  “Stop them!” another girl chimed in.

  Ben and I spun around. “Who’s there?” I tried to shout. But my voice spilled out weak and frightened. “Who is it?”

  And then, figures appeared in the swirling fog. Shadowy, gray figures. Running toward us and then stopping just near enough to see through the curtain of gray.

  Staring, surprised faces.

  Their arms out. Bodies tense. Hair blowing in the circling mist.

  I backed up to Ben. We stood back to back, gaping out at them as they formed a tight circle around us.

  “They’re—kids!” Ben exclaimed. “More kids!”

  Are they the rest of the missing class? I wondered.

  “Hey—!” I called to them. “What are you doing out here?”

  They stared back at us in silence.

  The fog billowed and shifted. I saw a short, black-haired girl whispering to a big kid in an old-fashioned-looking black jacket. And then the fog covered them again, and they seemed to vanish before my eyes.

  Other kids appeared and disappeared. There must have been about twenty of them.

  They spoke softly to one another, gazing out at us, keeping in a tight circle.

  “What are you doing out here?” I repeated, trying not to sound as frightened as I felt. “My friend and I—we’re lost. Can you help us?”

  “You still have color,” a girl murmured.

  “Color. Color. Color.” The word was repeated among the circle of gray kids.

  “They must be the other kids from the class,” Ben whispered. “The kids Seth and the others warned us about.”

  Seth’s warning flashed back into my mind: “They’re crazy. They’ve all gone crazy.”

  “We’re lost!” I cried. “Can you help us?”

  They didn’t reply. They whispered excitedly among them
selves.

  “Turn, turn,” a boy called suddenly. So loud, I jumped back.

  “What did you say?” I demanded. “Can you help us?”

  “Turn, turn,” a girl repeated.

  “We don’t belong here!” Ben cried. “We’re trying to get away from here. But we’re totally lost.”

  “Turn, turn,” a few voices murmured.

  “Please—answer us!” I begged. “Can you help us?”

  And then they all chanted, “Turn, turn.” And they began to dance.

  Keeping the circle tight, they moved to the right in a rapid rhythm. They raised one leg high, and stepped to the right. Lowered the leg and gave a little kick. Then another high step to the right.

  Some kind of weird dance.

  “Turn, turn,” they chanted. “Turn, turn.”

  “Please—stop!” Ben and I both pleaded. “Why are you doing that? Are you trying to scare us?”

  “Turn, turn.” The dark, dancing figures moved in and out of the swirling fog.

  The fog lifted for a moment, and I saw that they were holding hands as they danced. Holding hands tightly. Keeping the circle closed.

  Keeping Ben and me inside.

  “Turn, turn,” they chanted. A step, then a kick. “Turn, turn.”

  “What are they doing?” Ben whispered to me. “Is it a game or something?”

  I swallowed hard. “I don’t think so,” I replied.

  The fog shifted again. It lowered over the grass, then billowed away.

  I squinted at the chanting faces as they moved in the circle.

  Their expressions were hard.

  Their eyes cold.

  Cold, unfriendly faces.

  “Turn, turn. Turn, turn.”

  “Stop it!” I screamed. “Give us a break! What are you doing? Please—somebody explain!”

  “Turn, turn.” The chant continued. The circle of kids moved to the right. They stared at Ben and me, as if challenging us—as if daring us to stop them.

  “Turn, turn.

  Turn to gray.

  Turn, turn.

  Turn to gray!”

  The circle spun around us. The kids danced in rhythm in the billowing fog. A steady, frightening rhythm.