House of a Thousand Screams (2 page)

Weird! I frowned and reached out to run my hands over the door. There was no mark from the lamp slamming into it. No dents. No scratches in the paint. Nothing.

“It's like nothing ever happened,” I whispered to myself. How was that possible? My lamp must have weighed at least ten pounds. And it had slammed into that door
hard.
There should have been a big dent. In fact, there should have been a
hole!

Maybe it was just a freak accident.

Or maybe it's Fear Street!

No. I shook my head, trying to push the idea away. I was going to give myself nightmares if I started thinking like that.

Time to finish setting up my room. I grabbed a rag and crossed to my dresser. The powder I'd spilled before was still there.

As I was reaching to wipe it up, I stopped short. What were those strange marks in the powder?

My heart gave a slow, hard
thump.
It didn't make sense, I knew. But those marks on the dresser top . . .

They looked like tiny little footprints!

I
rubbed my eyes and looked again.

They were still there. Tiny little tracks.

There must have been a mouse in my room, I thought. Yes, that was it. I made a face. I wasn't happy about having a mouse for a roommate. But what else could have made tracks that size?

The mouse must have knocked over my lamp too. Of course! Everything was starting to make sense.

Then I peeked at the tracks again. A cold finger of doubt tickled at my mind. The little prints might be mouse-sized. But did mice really have human-shaped feet?

Or, rather,
almost
human. Only four toes on each print.

And now that I looked again, the tracks weren't
that
small.

I dug in a box and found an old Barbie doll. Not that I still play with Barbies. It's just that I never throw anything away. Mom says I'm a pack rat.

I compared the size of Barbie's feet to the tracks. The tracks on my dresser seemed a bit shorter and wider. But they were nearly the same size. Were mice feet that big? A mouse with feet the size of Barbie's would be a hefty mouse.

More like a rat!

Ugh!

Shuddering at the thought, I quickly wiped up the powder. Maybe when the lamp was thumping and bumping around it made those marks, I reasoned. It was simply a coincidence that they looked like tiny little human feet.

But even so, the question remained: What made the lamp dance like that?

I finished unpacking and put the cleaning stuff away. Whatever happened, there had to be a perfectly rational explanation. No way was I going to start off in our new house afraid of my own bedroom.

Besides, I
liked
my new bedroom. It was big and airy, with plenty of space to play board games or hang with friends.

Assuming, of course, I managed to make some friends.

My window had a big wide sill you could sit on.
Through the window I could glimpse the old mill, and the blue of the Conononka River behind it. This summer Freddy and I planned to find out if the fish in Shadyside were any easier to catch than the ones back home in Texas.

Sighing, I got up to go downstairs. I stopped in the hall and gazed past Mom and Dad's bedroom to the attic stairs.

I'd avoided the attic so far. Attics are creepy places. If we did have mice—or
rats
—that's where they'd live.

And if we didn't have mice or rats—if we had something else . . . 
something worse . . .

I shook my head, angry with myself. I had to stop thinking like that. Had to stop wondering if we'd have been better off staying in Texas. This was home now. Shadyside. Fear Street.

Just the same, I was staying
out
of that attic!

I went down to the den. Mom had finished mounting her plates. She had dozens of them. Each one was in a separate holder that kept it snug against the wall.

The room looked great now that it was all furnished. Across from Mom's plate display was a brick fireplace. Next to that we had put the entertainment center, with a big comfortable couch facing it. White bookshelves ran across the other two walls. More books sat in the middle of the fireplace mantel, special antique ones that Mom liked to show off.

Freddy was crouched by the fireplace, digging
through a cardboard box he'd dragged from the closet by the television.

He gave me an excited look. “Check these out. They're old movies of Uncle Solly's magic act.”

I peered over his shoulder. Little tin canisters were piled in the box. Labels were taped to them.
PARIS,
1968 one read.
CAESAR'S PALACE, LAS VEGAS,
1969 said another.

“Too bad we don't have a movie projector,” I remarked.

“Aha!” Freddy cried triumphantly. He rose with a videotape in his hand. “I guess Uncle Solly had a couple of them converted to video. Want to see?”

“Definitely,” I agreed. We'd never seen Uncle Solly's act. Sure, he'd done lots of tricks for us. Close-up magic and sleight of hand—that sort of thing. But his stage act was where he did the big tricks. The really excellent ones.

I popped the video into the VCR while Freddy pushed the box back into the storage closet. The two of us plopped onto the couch and put our feet up on the coffee table.

“This must have been filmed a really long time ago,” Freddy whispered as the tape began.

I nodded. Freddy had to be right. Uncle Solly looked much younger in the tape than Freddy and I had ever seen him. But he was still big and fat, and his cape flared behind him. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, perched on the very end of his nose.

Although the video was in color, there was no sound track. Uncle Solly's mouth moved, but you couldn't hear what he was saying.

Not that you needed to. Watching him was good enough. His hands blurred as they plucked cards and silk scarves and flowers from the air. His wand turned into a huge silk square. Then, from the empty square, he produced a live pig! I'd never seen a magician produce a
pig
before.

All the while, things floated around Uncle Solly. Tables, chairs, fishbowls, boxes—even a volunteer from the audience. How did they stay up? Freddy and I stared and stared, but we couldn't see any wires. Only good old Uncle Solly, calmly doing his card tricks and rope tricks.

Finally, he moved his hands as if he were twirling a lasso. We laughed as he jumped through an imaginary loop. Then he made sweeping motions with his arms, spinning the invisible lasso above his head. He turned to the side of the stage and cast his loop. It looked exactly as if he were roping a steer!

“Yee-hah!” Freddy yelled.

I stared, fascinated. Uncle Solly was hauling on his imaginary rope as if he'd lassoed a wild bull. From the stage wings floated a table with a box on top. We laughed at the way the table seemed to fight against the invisible rope. “How did he
do
that?” I cried.

Soon Uncle Solly brought the table under control.
It settled to the stage in front of him. The camera swept over the applauding audience and then back to a smiling, bowing Uncle Solly. We clapped too. “Someday I'm going to be as good as he was,” Freddy vowed.

Uncle Solly's beaming smile seemed to fade a little as he turned back to the box. The camera zoomed in, and we could see the box clearly. Its front was decorated with ugly, grinning carved faces.

Uncle Solly's forehead creased, and his hands fluttered in the air over the box. “Wow! He looks like he's really concentrating,” Freddy whispered.

“That's just part of the act,” I answered.

The box lid suddenly flew open.

A big, hairy monster stuck its head out.

“Whoa!” Without thinking, I jerked back in my seat.

The monster was ugly.
Really
ugly. It opened its mouth and we gasped at the sight of dripping greenish fangs. Its long, clawed fingers tore at the rim of the box. Its blue fur looked greasy and matted. Its eyes held an evil red glare.

Uncle Solly flicked his fingers. The monster swayed, its gaze glued to Uncle Solly's magic hands.

“That's one ugly puppet,” Freddy murmured.

So that's what it was. A puppet. I felt stupidly relieved. “How does it move?” I asked. “I don't see any strings.”

Freddy rolled his eyes. “If you knew anything about magic, you'd know the puppeteer is underneath the table,” he said in his most superior, Brainiac voice.

“Oh, yeah?” I retorted, annoyed. “Well, I'm looking under the table right now. And there's nothing there but table legs.”

“It's a mirror trick,” Freddy answered. As if that explained everything.

On the tape, Uncle Solly stopped waving his hands and stepped back.

The puppet began to move on its own! Balls and rings popped out of the air around it, and the puppet juggled them. First three. Then four. Then seven. Then nine!

“That's impossible,” Freddy said.

I was still annoyed with him. “Obviously not,” I replied.

Freddy shook his head vigorously. “No, it really is unbelievable!” he declared. “It looks like real magic! No puppeteer could do that—make a puppet juggle nine balls.”

“Just because you don't know how it's done—”

I broke off in mid-sentence. What was that scraping sound? It came from somewhere near the fireplace.

At first I couldn't figure it out. Everything seemed normal. Then I noticed. The books on the mantelpiece were on the far right end. Hadn't they been in the middle?

I turned to my brother. “Freddy, I—” I started to say.

Swish!

I glanced back at the mantelpiece. My heart beat faster. Now the books were on the far
left
end.

Freddy was so absorbed in the magic show, he didn't notice. Keeping my eyes on the books, I reached out to shake him. Just as I touched his shoulder, the books zipped to the other end.

Swish!

Fear rippled through me. “Freddy,” I whimpered. “It's happening again.”

The books began to move without stopping, back and forth across the mantel.
Swish—swish—swish!

Freddy leaned forward, peering at the TV screen. “Wow, the puppet is eating all that junk it was juggling.”

“Would you forget the video?” I squeaked. “Look at this.”

He glanced at the moving books. They were picking up speed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his mouth fall open.

All at once the books stopped, dead center, on the mantel. We sat like stone, afraid to move.

“Is it over?” Freddy whispered.

Something made me look at the tall white bookshelves. They stood on opposite sides of the room. With us in the middle.

The books on those shelves were jostling up and
down. Their covers rubbed against each other, making a noise like a crowd of people whispering.

“I don't think so,” I said in a low voice.

The movement on the white shelves increased. Dozens of books danced in place, faster and faster. Now they sounded like angry, whirring insects.

I was so scared, I couldn't move. This wasn't possible. It couldn't be happening. Why were the books shaking like that? What would happen next?

Then I had a horrible thought.

“Freddy?” I whispered. “Remember the lamp?”

“Yeah.” His voice was tense. “So?”

On his last word the books leapt from the shelves on either side. They flew through the air, hurtling toward us!

“So
duck!”
I yelled, and hit the floor.

F
reddy followed me in a flash. And just in time too!

Books shot from either side of the room. They slammed together in the air above our heads. Heavy volumes fell all over us. “Ow!” I heard Freddy muttering. “Ow!
Ow!”

Then the rain of books ended almost as quickly as it began.

I lifted my head cautiously and peeped around the room. Everything normal. Above me I heard a door slam and the sharp stride of Mom's shoes in the upstairs hall.