The Haunting of Heck House (16 page)

Cindy opened her mouth and looked like she was about to snark a comeback, but just then, Artie and Pilot walked through the door. “Who is
that
?” she whispered to Hazel, giving her a sharp elbow nudge.

“That's Yeager Armbruster,” Hazel said, raising an eyebrow. “You know him.”

“Not him!” Cindy's eyes were wide and glittering in the flickering light. “The handsome one in the snappy threads.”

Cheryl blinked at her, having heard the exchange. “You … you're
kidding,
right?”

Artie obviously had heard, too. “Good eeEEee-ven-ing, ladies,” he drawled. “The name's Bartleby. Arthur Bartleby.”

It was as if he couldn't decide if he was playing the part of wickedly charming Transylvanian royalty or James
Bond. But he tucked the leather-bound book suavely under his arm and sauntered forward to lean indolently anyway.

“I don't believe we've met.” Cindy took a step forward, extending a hand and actually batting her eyelashes.

“Oh, of
course
you have!” Tweed huffed in exasperation. “It's Artie Bartleby from Bartleby's Gas & Gulp! Everyone in Wiggins knows him.”

Cindy did a double take. “Artie …”

Artie shot Tweed a glare and laughed offhandedly, with a casual wave in the twins' direction. “Arthur, please,” he corrected. “It's been ages, my dear. How have you been?”

Cindy blushed and blinked in confusion while the twins rolled their eyes and Pilot and Feedback exchanged shrugs.

“Hey,” Feedback said after a moment. “Now that we're all here, we should work together to find a way out, don't you all think?”

Cindy tore her gaze away from Artie. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “We don't need
their
help. No way!”

“I dunno, Cindy.” Hazel shifted uncomfortably. “We might not like it, but they might actually be better at this kind of stuff than we are.”

“Not better,” Cheryl said, making an honest effort to sound like she really meant it. “We, uh … we just have different methods, is all.”

Tweed nodded only a little reluctantly and attempted
an encouraging smile that was just a little bit of a pained grimace. “That's right,” she said. “It doesn't mean we can't work together—”

“Yes it does!” Cindy protested hotly. “This is
supposed
to be a challenge. We're
supposed
to be in competition!”

“Says who, Cindy?” Hazel sighed wearily. “Some guy we haven't even met? Who's locked us in this weirdo house? I mean, what's the deal with this Hecklestone dude anyway? How do we even know that there
is
a Hecklestone dude?”

“Oh, there's definitely a Hecklestone dude,” Feedback said. “At least, there was. He died a long time ago.”

“And so, what?” Cindy snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “You're going to tell us that he's haunting this place?”

“No.” Tweed shrugged. “Something is, but we don't think it's him. We think maybe—”

Suddenly, a whisper of eerie sounds shivered through the air, interrupting Tweed's explanation. “
Naugh
-ty,
naugh
-ty …” the voices, high and piping, said in singsong tones. “Daddy won't be
hap
-py … Not
a
-llowed down in the
lab
-ora-tory …”

“Why do creepy ghost children always have English accents?” Cheryl asked.

“Same reason they always do that creepy nursery-rhyme-singsong thing,” Tweed said. “Because it's creepy.”

“It's a cliché,” Pilot said uneasily.

“It's not a cliché, it's a time-honoured
trope
, Flyboy,” Cheryl said, even as she crossed her arms and glared at the empty air.

Cindy and Hazel had shrunk back into the corner of the laboratory. “Uh … who's doing that?”

“Your babysitting subjects,” Pilot said dryly.

“What?” Hazel glared at him, wide-eyed. “No way. This was supposed to be a straight-up house-sitting gig. No brats. This place is supposed to be empty!”

“It is,” he elaborated. “Except for the ghosts haunting it, that is.”

“That's seriously not funny!” Cindy fumed. “It's just some stupid trick!”

“Yup. Played on us by the dearly departed Daphne, Edwina and Roderick,” Tweed said. “Tragic, really, the old Hecklestone family curse …”

“Curse?” Cindy swallowed nervously and glanced around.

“Curse, shmurse,” Artie said, stepping forward and waving the matter away with the flick of one hand. “Stick with me, little lady. I know my way around curses.”

“This from a guy who was once whammied into a lizard,” Cheryl muttered.

Tweed snorted in grim amusement.

“Crocodile,” Artie muttered back out of one side of his mouth while he attempted to retain his suave grin on the other side. “And
ix-nay
on the
ammy-whay
. No reason to alarm the other ladies, girls …”

Cheryl rolled her eyes and Tweed murmured, “So
we're
girls now and
they're
ladies? Pff.”

Artie ignored her and turned back to the rival sitters. “It's just a big old empty house. Nothing to worry about.”

“Except the ghosts,” Hazel muttered sarcastically, but she didn't quite sound convinced that her sarcasm was entirely warranted.

“I'm on your side, Cindy,” Artie said.

“Really, Arthur?” Cindy gazed at him with doe eyes.

Cheryl made a gagging noise and Artie shot her a glare.

“Absolutely!” He launched into a leisurely stroll around the lab, plucking up random instruments as he went, and tossing them back onto the work tables in a show of casual nonchalance. “I don't think we have anything to worry about, my friends,” he said airily. “Three sadly departed kids with goofy old names.
Roderick?
I wonder if they called him ‘Rowdy Roddy'! And
Daphne?
I bet it was ‘Hey, Daffy!' around the schoolyard for her.”

Cheryl and Tweed exchanged a worried glance with Pilot. It somehow didn't seem like a good idea to taunt their haunting hosts, even if it was Artie's way of trying to put the others at ease.

“And how about that Edwina?” he continued. “Maybe she was ‘Fast Eddie.' Or ‘Eddie Munster.' Or maybe—OW!!”

The others turned to see Artie hopping on one foot and rubbing his shin.

“Stupid stool!” He glowered at the work stool he'd run into. “Where'd you come from?” Then he seemed to notice Cindy staring at him with a worried look on her face. “Heh. I mean … how clumsy of me …” Artie kicked the stool sharply with the toe of his shiny borrowed shoe, which had probably belonged to the goofily named Roderick at one time.

The stool screeched back across the floor and slammed into Artie's other shin.

“OW! Why you—” He brandished the book he was still carrying like a club. “Cut it out, you creepy little brats!”

The flickering lights in the plasma globes suddenly brightened and flared in time with Artie's angry exclamation. The faint outlines of three shadowy figures zipped across a bare wall at the far end of the room and the giggling continued, alternating between manic and mournful-sounding.

“Wait,” Hazel said coldly. “I see what's going on here. Don't fall for Mr. Charm School, Cindy—he's nothing but a clever distraction.”

“What?” Cindy frowned at Artie in uncertainty.

“And I know why Karl's with them. He's the AV Club president at school, isn't he? With access to all kinds of speakers and projectors and stuff like that? I bet they cheated. I bet they got here before we did and set all this up. I bet if you turned that stool over, there'd be fishing line attached to the legs.”

Cheryl and Tweed noticed that she didn't exactly back up her assertions by doing that, but never mind. The rivals were on a roll.

“That's it! That's what this is all about, isn't it?” Cindy took up the anti-haunting rant, eyes narrowing as she turned a nova-watt glare on the twins. “This isn't funny! We're trying to win this contest fair and square and you two weirdos and your accomplices pull this kind of spooky stuff to try and get us off our game!”

“We don't have to try to get you off your game!” Cheryl glared back. “You've got nothing on us and you know it! The only thing
you
two are is
this
tall to ride this ride!” She thrust her hand out like the carnival ride sign the twins had stashed back home in the barn.

Cindy blinked at Cheryl in confusion, her lip curling. “What on earth is
that
supposed to mean, freak?”

Pilot glanced nervously around the room. “Ladies …”

Neither Cheryl nor Cindy had noticed that the liquids in some of the beakers had started to bubble at a fever pitch. Two of them had boiled over, spilling onto the counter and leaving oozing puddles of what looked like the same sort of ectoplasmic glorp the League of Awesome had encountered in the library. Equipment started to rattle and shimmy across the surfaces of the work tables and the flickering tendrils of luminescence in the plasma balls were dancing crazily in time with the girls' verbal volleys.

“It
means,
” Cheryl said, “that the only reason you guys get more gigs than us is because you were lucky enough to be born a few months earlier! That's what!”

“Oh, really?” Cindy jammed her fists on her hips and thrust out her jaw. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you two are weirdos! Weirdos too weird even for the ‘aliens' to take away, right, Hazel?”

Hazel winced.

Cheryl gasped.

“Cindy!” Artie's jaw dropped in astonishment.

“Take that back, Cindy Tyson,” Pilot said, teeth clenched. “Or so help me …”

Feedback tried to diffuse the situation with a “Hey … guys? Can't we just—”

And Tweed—in what would normally be typically
Cheryl
-like fashion—suddenly launched herself across the lab with a growl, arms outstretched, hands grasping for Cindy Tyson's neck! Cindy screamed and would have ducked out of the way, except she didn't need to.

No one seemed to have noticed that, over the fever pitch of the babysitters' argument, the singsong ghost voices had gone from rhyming ditties and creepy laughter to gale-force howling. As Tweed lunged, a sudden spectral tornado spun in from the four corners of the room, wrapped tightly around the shrieking form of Cindy Tyson and yanked her from Tweed's reach. The wind whirled the hapless sitter across the length of the laboratory, rattling tubes and beakers in its wake, and
flung Cindy like a rag doll into the waiting maw of one of the enormous steamer trunks, built to transport lab equipment, that stood open and empty in the corner of the lab. The riveted steel lid of the heavy-duty trunk slammed shut with a booming, doomy thud. Then the three latch-locks on the trunk sprang to life and clacked shut like teeth gnashing.

The entire room went suddenly still and pin-drop silent.

After a long moment, from the pocket of Cheryl's knapsack, Simon Omar made a sound like nervously clearing his throat. “Well,” he said. “That's not very good …”

 

12
LOCKED
AND
GOADED!

H
azel stared frozen in wide-eyed horror at the steamer trunk. They could hear the faint sounds of Cindy pounding on the inside of the lid. “Cindy!” Hazel shouted suddenly. “Cindy!! Get
out
here! Don't you leave me alone with these weirdos!!”

Tweed picked herself up off the floor, where she'd landed in her missed leap for Cindy. The surge of rage that swept through her at Cindy's taunting had washed completely away in the face of the ghostly twister, and all that was left was a worried shadow in her grey eyes.

The same worry was mirrored in Cheryl's blue ones.

“Sorry about that, everybody,” Tweed said quietly, smoothing her dark hair.

“Yeah,” Cheryl said, yanking her pigtails straight. “Sorry …”

“I probably should have mentioned that ghostly manifestations feed on negative energy, right?” Simon the speaker murmured from the pocket of Cheryl's knapsack.

“Yeah,” she murmured back. “Thanks.”

Pilot's head of steam had evaporated, too, in the wake of the spectral gale. “Okay, guys,” he said, motioning to the twins and Artie and Feedback. “Huddle up.” They gathered around in a tight circle. “We're gonna have to figure something out before Hazel completely freaks or Cindy suffocates.”

“Pilot's right,” Cheryl said. “It's up to us!”

Tweed nodded seriously. “It's okay,” she said. “We're trained to handle situations like this. We just have to pool our sitter fu.”

“Right,” Feedback said. “We're gonna have to work as a team!”

“And we're gonna have to look for a crowbar,” Artie suggested.

“If only I had internet access, I could Google ‘how to open a locked trunk' …” Feedback checked his phone and shook his head in frustration. He swallowed nervously and looked like he might be having a bit of a tough time keeping it together. “Maybe we could try that ACTION!! thing again—”

“Crowbar!” Artie was clearly in smashing mode.

“Maybe we should just look for the darn key!” Cheryl exclaimed.

“C'mon!” Tweed urged. “Everybody spread out. Check the shelves, the tops of cupboards, drawers, everywhere. Nobody keeps a trunk like that lying around unless they have the key.”

The twins and their friends scattered throughout the room, searching frantically for a key that would open the trunk and let Cindy out. Nemesis or not, a fellow Wigginsian sitter was in peril, and C+T and Co. couldn't stand idly by! It felt as though a clock was ticking loudly as they searched and rummaged and ransacked and—

KLICK-
CLACK!

The sound of the heavy steamer-trunk lock springing open made them all freeze. Cheryl and Tweed and Artie and Pilot and Feedback all turned to see Hazel crouched beside the trunk. Beside her, a leather pouch lay on the floor with a dozen or so thin metal implements spread out neatly.