The Final Nightmare (6 page)

The witch was scared, right? That's why she smashed my mirror. Maybe she was even more scared than me.

Don't think about being scared, Jay, I told myself. Don't think at all—just do it.

I unbolted the basement door. It creaked loudly as it swung open.

Get a grip, Jay. Grab that trunk and get out before the witch-thing knows you're there.

I took a deep breath, flipped on the light switch, and plunged down the stairs.

There, I'd made it. And nothing had touched me. But where was the trunk?

I stopped, my heart pounding, and looked around frantically.

The old trunk wasn't where it was supposed to be.

I gritted my teeth in a panic. The witch-thing must have seen me by now. Any second she'd come roaring out of the shadows.

Then I saw it!

The trunk was pushed back against the wall, almost hidden behind a tall stack of boxes.

I waded into the mess, pushing boxes out of my way, heaving lamps and footstools and old shoes to the side to make a path.

Not only did I have to reach the trunk, the second part of my plan was to drag it back up with me.

I was making a lot of noise and concentrating on reaching my goal as fast as possible. So it was no surprise I didn't hear her behind me.

It was the stink that warned me.

21

All of a sudden I was gagging from the garbagey, dead-for-a-hundred-years smell.

I spun around.

The witch-thing leaped from behind a box, her eyes glowing in the dark.

“
Arrrrrggggg! You miserable boy!
” shrieked the creature.

Her sharp claws sank through the material of my shirt.

Riiiip!

My shirt tore as I slung her off me in terror.

She hissed, yellow eyes glowing and quick as a flash I raised the baseball bat and swung. I heard a crunch as the bat connected.

“
Ahheeee!
” The witch screamed and vanished back into the shadows.

I was breathing hard but there was no time to rest. I grabbed the handle of the trunk.

It was lighter than I expected.

But what had I thought was in it? A body?

I heaved and hauled the trunk through the path I'd sort of made, banging into boxes and knocking things over.

Then I was clear of the mess of junk and halfway to the stairs. The bottom of the trunk scraped over the dirt floor as I dragged it, my breath sounding ragged in my ears.

I reached the stairs and started humping it up, making an awful racket.

My heart was ready to burst with effort.

Suddenly a black shape darted out of the darkness and rushed me.

The witch was back. Hissing and spitting, she grabbed hold of the handle on the other end of the trunk.

“
Mine!
” she moaned. “
Mine!
”

I yanked back harder but I was nearly out of strength.

She pulled the trunk down a step, then another, dragging me down, too.

The witch had won again—but I couldn't let go.

My hand seemed permanently frozen to that handle. She was pulling my arm right out of its socket!

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I started to imagine all the horrible things the creature would do to me when she got me back down into the basement.

“
The trunk is mine!
” she hissed. “
And so are you!
”

Panic rushed through my veins.

With the last of my strength I braced my feet on the stairs, gripped the handle as hard as I could, and tugged with all my might.

The other handle broke!

The witch-thing tumbled down the stairs with an awful screech and sprawled on the dirt floor.

“
I'll get you!
” the creature moaned. “
I'll get you yet!
”

Then she scuttled back into the shadows like a wounded thing.

Losing no time, I hauled the trunk up into the kitchen.

Safe at last! Totally out of breath, I collapsed against the basement door—after bolting it shut.

A door opened down the hall.

“Jason? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mom.” I jumped guiltily. Where could I hide the trunk?

“What was all that noise? Is everything okay?”

“Noise?” I moved into the hallway so she wouldn't have to come into the kitchen to talk to me.

Mom had a blue pencil behind her ear and a calculator in her hand. “Clattering, banging. Was that you?”

Dad's voice came from inside the room. “Carol, I need you to look over these calculations. We may have a problem here.”

“I was just playing, Mom,” I assured her, disappointed she hadn't heard the witch's screeching.

She gave me one of those considering looks, the kind that meant she was suspicious about my answer.

My heart sank. In a minute she'd come into the kitchen and see the trunk and demand all kinds of explanations. Then my dad called her again and she reached a decision.

She turned back into the office.

“We're going to be working a while longer,” said Mom. “Maybe you could look in on Sally.”

“Sure, Mom.”

I went back to the kitchen. I couldn't leave the trunk here. I'd have to carry it up to my room. Mom almost never went in there. She might not even see it.

I called up Steve and got him to come over. He was eager to help now that it was out of the basement. We hauled it up to my room and set it in the center of the floor.

“What do you think is in there?” asked Steve, his eyes bright.

“The truth,” I said. “The solution to the haunting.”

22

I knelt in front of the trunk.

I was excited but scared, too. Who knew what was really inside, or why the ghosts were fighting over it?

“You'd better stand by the door, Steve,” I said. “You can run for help if we need it.”

The leather of the trunk was cracked and dry. My fingers trembled as I reached for the clasp.

Well, I thought, here goes. With still-shaking fingers I undid the clasp.

As I swung it open, the lid made a tremendous skreeky noise, like bones being pulled apart.

“What's in it?” cried Steve breathlessly.

I stared in disappointment. The witch-thing must have gotten everything already. “Nothing,” I sighed. “Just a few scraps of paper.”

I lifted out torn pieces of newspaper. They were crumpled, like they might have been used to wrap something. But what?

“What's that ribbon?” asked Steve, pointing over my shoulder.

“Ribbon?” There, caught in a corner of the trunk was a red ribbon. I pried at it, starting to feel excited.

A ribbon just like it had been tied around the letters I'd seen when Steve and I first found this trunk, weeks ago, but those old letters had disappeared before I ever got a chance to read them.

Slowly the ribbon came free—and with it some flattened papers! I slid the ribbon off. Here was the answer, I just knew it!

There were only two letters in the little bundle. I unfolded the first one and read:

Dear Alice,

I am beside myself with worry over the ruby. I can't imagine where it could be. Did you look in the case in my room? I thought I packed it but it's possible I never did
.

We are retracing our steps in a desperate hope of finding the jewel. It's the only inheritance I have from my mother and without it all our hopes for the next few years are dashed
.

If you find it please telegraph me at once
.

Take good care of little Bobby and give him a big kiss from his mom and dad
.

Affectionately,

Sarah Wood

A missing jewel? The witch-thing had been screaming something about a jewel that night in the attic. But what would a ruby have to do with Bobby?

I spread out the second letter, hoping it would have some answers.

Dear Alice,

We've nearly given up hope of ever recovering the jewel. I'm afraid we're going to be too poor to keep you on as a nanny for the next few years. But don't worry. We'll give you an excellent reference
.

Our last hope is that the ruby is still somewhere in the house. We're making plans to be home by next week and I'll turn the place upside down looking for it. I can't believe it's really gone!

Tell Bobby how much we love him and miss him
.

Affectionately,

Sarah Wood

I looked at the date on the top of the letter. It was written just a week before Bobby died. But I didn't see how any of this solved the mystery.

Then it started to make sense, sort of. The jewel the witch-thing was looking for must be this same ruby Bobby's mother had lost!

I turned to tell Steve. He was smoothing out a sheet of crumpled newspaper.

“There's stuff in here about Bobby,” he said, sounding excited. “All about how he died and everything.”

I scooted over and grabbed the paper, feeling my heart quicken once again. But there wasn't anything I didn't already know from the papers Katie and I had found in the attic.

The newspaper described the tragic death of little Bobby Wood. He'd fallen from the cherry tree in his backyard while his parents were in Europe. Only the nanny, Alice Everett, had been home at the time of the accident.

“But Jason,” said Steve, frowning, “how could Bobby fall from the cherry tree? When you hear him at night, doesn't he fall from the top of the stairs?”

“Exactly,” I said. “The newspapers got it wrong, that's one thing I'm sure of.”

“Hey, here's more,” said Steve excitedly. “Something about a missing teddy bear and a big ruby.”

“What?” I snatched it from him.

“Hey! I found it first,” Steve complained.

“Yeah, but it's my ghost,” I reminded him.

The beginning of the article told of Bobby's death again. Then it said: “
In an odd coincidence, the child's favorite plaything, an old teddy bear, is nowhere to be found and the same is true of the Wood family's most prized possession, a magnificent ruby. The jewel was left to Mrs. Wood by her mother and provided the collateral for her husband's business loan. If the ruby is not recovered it is expected Mr. Wood will lose his business. And if the teddy bear is not found, a little boy will go to his grave alone
.”

“That's creepy,” said Steve. “What's ‘collateral' mean?”

Proud to know a word Steve didn't, I dug into what I could remember of my parents' conversations. “It means something valuable. You take the jewel to a bank and ask the bank to lend you some money. Then if you can't pay them back the money they keep the collateral—the jewel, in this case. But since the ruby was missing, the bank must have taken Mr. Wood's business instead.”

Steve looked disappointed. “Oh. Well, I don't see what all that has to do with ghosts,” he said, tossing the bits of paper back into the trunk.

“No,” I said slowly. “I don't, either.”

But I knew there was a connection. Bobby's ghost wanted me to figure it out, that's why he'd urged me to look in the trunk.

And that worried me. Bobby was just a little kid. He expected older people to understand what he meant. When they didn't he was likely to have a tantrum.

And Bobby's ghostly tantrums were the most terrifying things I'd ever seen.

23

That night I asked for a glass of warm milk before I went to bed, just as a precaution.

“I hope you're not staying up too late, reading those scary books of yours,” Mom said as she handed me the milk.

“Not a chance,” I said. “Tonight I'm going straight to sleep.”

“Good,” Mom said with a smile. “That's exactly what you need. You've been exhausted lately, overdoing it. And you know what happens when you overdo it.”

“Right,” I said. “My imagination gets out of control.”

She was wrong about my imagination getting out of control, but I'd given up trying to convince her the house was haunted. The ghosts didn't show themselves to adults, so adults thought they didn't exist.

A pretty neat trick, if you happened to be a ghost.

The warm milk trick seemed to work. As soon as my head hit the pillow I started to doze off. Dreaming about baseball, and swimming, and how I couldn't wait to get back to our own house …

I woke up with a jolt, every nerve tingling. I gripped the sides of the bed, my eyes wide.

There was some kind of vibration in the air.

BONNNG!

The grandfather clock! It must have already chimed at least once and woke me up. I lay rigid, waiting for it to strike again.

The broken grandfather clock in the hall only chimed when a haunting was about to happen.

Dread sat on my chest, making it hard to breathe. I hated the waiting. I hated lying helpless, straining my ears for the first sound of a little kid's scared footsteps. I knew what was coming—and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The haunting had started.

Outside my bedroom door Bobby's ghost was crying. Then I heard his small feet hitting the floor as he ran.

He was running in fear. Crying so hard he was hiccuping.

Running and running, the thud of heavier footsteps chasing him, getting louder and louder as the sound of his crying went higher and higher.

Then I heard the witch's voice screaming at him.

“
Come back here, you little brat! Give me that jewel!
”

The little boy kept running. His feet went right by my door. Followed a heartbeat later by the thudding of the witch-thing, screaming, “
It's mine! Mine!
”

I tensed up, waiting. Because I knew what was going to happen. It was always the same, whenever the haunting started.

The little boy kept running. The witch-thing kept chasing him.

And then—

CRUNCH!

The little boy smashed through the railing at the end of the hallway and fell to the floor below.