BSC09 The Ghost At Dawn's House (2 page)

"Jeff!" I yelled upstairs.

Still no answer.

Maybe he was in the barn.

I went out the back door, ran across the yard, and shouted into the barn. "JEFF!"

Thunk. What was that?

I stood still and listened. I could hear little rustlings. Far away, thunder rumbled.

I shivered. I love our old house and the barn, but sometimes they give me the creeps. They were built in 1795, and there's just something spooky about a place that's been around that long. So many people have lived here. . . . Some of them have probably died here, too. Right in the house or the barn.

"Jeff?" I said again, but this time almost in a whisper.

"BOO!" A figure leaped into view in the haymow.

"Aughhhh!" I shrieked. "Jeff, you scared me to death!"

He climbed down the ladder to the ground. "Well, you scared me. You come screaming in here like some kind of I don't know what. You made me fall off the rope in the haymow."

"Oh, was that thud you?"

"Yeah. What'd you think it was — a ghost?"

"Course not," I replied, sorry he'd put the idea in my head. "Come on. We have to make dinner."

Jeff and I fixed a salad with cottage cheese, pineapple, peaches, and coconut topping, and heated up a vegetable casserole Mom had made over the weekend. Then we brewed some herbal tea. Kristy kids us, but Mom and Jeff and I really like health food. We ate health food in California, and I think that's something about us that won't change, no matter how long we live on the East Coast.

"Boy, it's hot," I said, pulling my long hair away from my sweaty neck.

"I know," replied Jeff. "Sticky. Let's eat outside, okay? I could set the picnic table."

"Good idea," I said. I handed him plates, napkins, forks, and glasses, and he went outside.

I stood in our old-fashioned kitchen and stirred the tea. Then I poured it into a pitcher and added ice.

Suddenly the house seemed awfully. . . big. I heard a creak and looked over my shoulder. Nothing.

Describing the house as "big" was kind of funny, since it isn't. Big, I mean. Oh, it has plenty of rooms, but they're all kind of small. Mom explained to me that over the years, people have gotten taller. Back in 1795,1 guess we were still on the short side. At any rate,

not only are the rooms in our house little and dark, but the doorways are low, and the steps in the staircase are low (and uneven). It's like a large, creepy dollhouse.

Since the house is so old, I have this theory that somewhere in it is a hidden passage. All old houses have them, don't they? Claudia, who loves mysteries, lent me a Nancy Drew book called The Hidden Staircase. On the cover, Nancy is pushing open a section of wall at the back of a closet and discovering a hidden staircase. I know there's a secret something somewhere in our house, too. I just know it.

"Dawn?"

I jumped a mile.

"Oh, Mom!" I said with a gasp. "You scared me."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to." She kissed my forehead.

"How was work?" I asked.

"Fine. Busy, though. I'm pooped."

"I hope you're hungry. Jeff and I have supper all ready. Jeff's setting the picnic table. It's so hot we thought we'd eat outdoors."

"Oh, that's fine."

Mom was looking more absentminded than usual. Sure enough, she took off her glasses and placed them carefully in an empty butter

dish. I wonder if she does things like that at the office.

I checked her quickly to make sure she hadn't been wearing nonmatching earrings or something all day. Luckily, she looked fine.

Mom and Jeff and I ate our picnic supper in a breeze that kept blowing our napkins away. At least it was cool.

"You know," said Jeff, chewing with his mouth open as usual, "it's getting dark real early tonight."

"Well, it is almost September," Mom pointed out.

"But it's only a quarter to ... Hey!" I exclaimed. A fat drop of water landed on the back of my hand. Another landed on my head. "Uh-oh, it's raining!"

"And if s going to pour!" cried Jeff.

The sky wasn't just dark, it was black with heavy clouds.

BLAM! Thunder crashed. I remembered the rumblings I'd heard earlier.

"Everybody inside," said Mom. "Let's see if we can get all this stuff into the kitchen in one trip."

It wasn't easy, but we managed it. Jeff was the last one in and he scooted through the back door just as a sheet of water came cas-

cading down. Lightning streaked across the sky. "Made it!" he exclaimed.

Later that night I settled into my bed with a library book. I'd had my name on the waiting list for that book for most of the summer. That was how popular it was. And no wonder everyone wanted to read it. It was called Ghosts and Spooks, Chills and Thrills: Stories NOT to Be Read After Dark. Well, it was after dark, but I'd taken the precaution of turning on every light in my bedroom. However, the storm was still raging outside. The wind was howling, the rain was pelting the windows, and the thunder came and went, sometimes crashing loudly, sometimes just sort of grumbling in the distance. The grumblings were scarier than the crashes. They sounded like warnings of worse things to come.

I was right in the middle of "The Hand of the Witch" when the lights flickered. They dimmed, went out for a second, then came back on.

My heart began to pound. Weren't there tricky spirits called poltergeists that could cause things like that?

My window began to rattle. I know the wind

was blowing, but I'd never heard such a racket.

As soon as the rattling stopped, I heard a rat-a-tat-a-tat on the wall.

That did it.

"Eeee-iii!" I shrieked.

Mom was up the stairs and in my room in about two seconds. "Dawn! What's the matter?" she cried.

"Mom, the lights are flickering and something's rattling my window and tapping on the wall."

My mother took a look at the book lying open on my bed. "Dawn," she said, giving me a wry glance, "there is a terrific storm going on out there. I'm surprised the electricity hasn't gone off completely. And all the windows in this old house are rattling. Those must be twenty-five-mile-an-hour winds out there. Now which wall is the tapping coming from?"

I pointed to the wall between my room and Mom's.

"Old houses make noises as they settle," Mom told me decisively. She closed the ghost-story book and laid it on my nightstand. "Why don't you go to sleep now, honey? It's late." She gave me a kiss and turned out the lights as she left the room, closing the door behind her.

I got up and turned two of the lights back on and opened the door a crack. Sleep? Was she kidding?

It was hours before I fell asleep. That was because I kept thinking I heard someone moaning. When I woke up the next morning, I still felt creepy.

T

Chapter 3.

The storm ended temporarily, but the rain didn't. The next morning was dreary, humid, and very rainy. I baby-sat at the Barretts' and the three kids, Buddy, Suzi, and Mamie, started out sleepy and cranky, and slowly became wild and noisy. I was glad they only needed a sitter for the morning. Here's an example of why.

As I was leaving, I skidded a little on the wet grass, and Buddy shouted after me, "Have a nice trip. See ya next fall!" He laughed loudly.

Suzi, who's four, shrieked, "'Bye, Dawny-Dawny! Snap, crackle, pop!"

Mamie, the baby, blew me a raspberry.

I have to admit, I was happy to get home. Jeff and I ate lunch. Then I went to my room. Another storm was brewing, and I was planning to read some more of the ghost stories and scare myself silly. But the sight of The

Hidden Staircase on my bureau gave me an idea. It was the perfect day to search — really search — for a secret passage in the house. I'd looked a couple of times before, but never very carefully or for very long.

I picked up the phone in Mom's bedroom and called Mary Anne.

"Hi!" I said. "Want to come over? I have this great idea. I want to invite the whole club to my house and we'll search for a hidden passage."

"Ooh/' said Mary Anne. "Scary. I'd love to."

"Do you think the others are free?"

"I know they are. I was looking at the appointment calendar during the meeting yesterday. We all had jobs this morning, and we're all free this afternoon. Stacey's mother can probably drive us over."

"Perfect!" I said. "Listen, can you call Kristy? I'll call Stacey and Claudia."

"No problem."

An hour later, the members of the Babysitters Club were sitting expectantly in my bedroom.

"Now, we have to be scientific about this," I told them.

"Scientific?" asked Kristy skeptically.

"Well, sort of. See, there are certain things to do." I read them the pages in The Hidden Staircase where Nancy is searching Riverview Manor. "You tap on walls — "

"Why?" asked Kristy.

"To listen for any hollow sounds. A hollow sound might mean an empty space on the other side of the wall."

"And," added Claudia, who'd read a lot more mysteries than I had, "you have to feel around for springs or catches. And shine a flashlight over the walls. It might show up a secret opening you wouldn't notice otherwise." Claudia's eyes were sparkling. "How old is this house again, Dawn?" she asked.

I told her.

"Wow. I'd say we have a pretty good chance of finding something."

The storm that had been brewing finally let loose then with a terrific crash of thunder that banged the shutters and rattled the windows.

Stacey let out a little gasp. Then she giggled. "We're creeping ourselves out, you know. This is just a silly storm."

"I know," said Mary Anne, "but it's fun to creep ourselves out. We should take advantage of this super-creepy weather."

"Right!" I said. I couldn't wait to start!

"How do we begin?" asked Stacey.

"Let's split up," I suggested.

"Split up?!" cried Mary Anne. "I'm not going anywhere alone!"

I could see her point. The house was dark and quiet. Outside, the rain was falling hard and the wind was howling. I happened to look out my window just in time to see a bolt of lightning crackle across the gray sky in a jagged streak.

I shivered.

"Well, we don't have to go alone," I said. "We can split up into teams, one with two people and the other with three."

Everyone agreed that that seemed safe.

"Kristy, why don't you and Stacey and Claudia take the first floor," I suggested, "and Mary Anne and I will look around up here."

"What about the basement and the attic?" asked Claudia.

We froze. They were bad enough on a nice, sunshiny day, but today . . .

"Maybe the five of us should search them together. Um, later," said Stacey.

"Or — or maybe not at all," I added.

"Why not?" asked Claudia. "Those would be great places for a secret passage."

"I know," I replied. "But, well, in this story

I read — it was called Things Unseen' — this man moves into a really old house — "

"As old as this one?" whispered Mary Anne. A gust of wind blew the curtains against her face and she shrieked.

"Just about," I said, closing the window. "And he hears all these spooky noises coming from the basement, and it turns out that years ago, a crazy lady buried her — "

"Aughh! Stop!" cried Mary Anne. "I don't want to hear the end of this."

"I do," said Kristy. "Leave the room for a minute, Mary Anne."

"I'm not leaving the room. Not by myself!"

Stacey shuddered. "I'll go with you."

They went out into the hall while I finished the story. When our screaming died down, they returned.

"Listen," said Kristy, "why don't you two scaredy-cats be a team, and Claudia and Dawn and I will be the other team?"

Stacey took offense. "Scaredy-cats?"

"And you can search downstairs," Kristy continued. "Jeff is there and the TV is on. It won't seem so spooky."

"I think that's a good idea," said Mary Anne hastily. "Come on. Let's go before they change their minds.

They clattered down the stairs.

"Let's search room by room/' I suggested. "I can tap walls. Claudia, you feel around for hidden springs and buttons and stuff. Kristy, you shine my flashlight everywhere to see if, like, the outline of a door or something shows up."

Kristy raised her eyebrows. She was used to being in charge. But this was my house and my search, so I thought I was entitled to give out a few instructions.

We set to work. We searched Jeff's room first.

"Boy," said Kristy. "My brothers would kill me if I ever searched their rooms."

"Well, Jeff might kill me, too, if he knew what we were doing," I replied. "But it's not as if we're searching his stuff. We're just looking at his walls."

"Oh, hey!" cried Claudia. "We should be checking the floors for trapdoors, too."

"On the second floor?" asked Kristy.

"You never know," Claud said.

Tap, tap, tap. I tapped and rapped every inch of Jeff's walls, but they all sounded pretty much the same.

Claudia followed me around, poking and feeling along the walls.

And Kristy crawled everywhere with her flashlight. She found two Space Creatures comics under Jeff's bed, but no trapdoor. We worked without speaking for a long time, and the only sounds we heard were our rappings and tappings, the pounding rain, and an occasional ominous rumble of thunder.

We didn't really find anything. There was an area near Jeff's bureau where the molding looked different than on the other walls, but no matter how much we poked and prodded, we couldn't find anything suspicious.

"Let's look in my room next," I said.

We started over again. I rapped, Claudia poked, and Kristy shined the flashlight.

"Nothing here!" said Kristy.

"Wait, I'm not finished," I said. "I've only done three walls."

Rap, rap, rap, rap, thud.

We all looked at each other.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered.

It was a definite hollow sound.

I was standing by my bed, next to the wall that separates my room from Mom's room. There was all this fancy molding on the wall — one of my favorite things about the room — and Claudia immediately began running her fingers over it.