House of a Thousand Screams (4 page)

Sure enough, he was there, sitting on the curb. I called to him and he fell into step beside me.

“Well, how did it go?” I asked.

Freddy hitched up his glasses. His face was glum. “A couple of kids picked on me. I'll probably have to fight somebody one of these days,” he announced.

“You know what Mom says about that,” I warned. “Look. If one of those little jerks gets out of hand, let me know. I'll take care of it for you.”

He frowned. “No thanks. It's bad enough being new without hiding behind my sister!”

We crossed Park Drive, and took a right on Melinda toward Fear Street and home.

I couldn't believe how the neighborhood changed once you got to Fear Street. It was as if someone had drawn a line there and put up a big sign:
BEWARE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

The trees that lined the sidewalk were twisted and knotty. And even though spring had arrived everywhere else in Shadyside, it didn't seem to have reached Fear Street yet. There were no new leaves, no crocuses. Bare brown tree branches tossed and rattled in the wind. It was spooky.

I felt better after we got through our own front door. I closed my eyes and breathed in the friendly smells. Maybe someday I'd get used to Fear Street.

In about a million years.

Mom was out shopping for dinner. She'd left us a note.

Snacks are in the fridge. You can each have
one
cupcake and a piece of fruit. Back by four. Mom.

At the bottom of the note was a P.S.

Jill, I thought you liked your room the way it was. Why did you change it?

“Huh?” I said, confused.

“What?” Freddy asked through a mouthful of cupcake.

I showed him the note. “I didn't change anything. What's she talking about?”

Freddy and I stared at each other. After a moment Freddy said, “Maybe we should find out.”

We headed up to my room together. I stood at the door, my hand on the knob. My heart was pounding. It wasn't from climbing the stairs.

“Aren't you going in?” Freddy prodded me with his elbow.

“I'm going.” I gritted my teeth and opened the door.

I gasped.
Everything
in my room had been moved! The bed now stood against the opposite wall. The dresser, so heavy that I couldn't budge it myself, was across the room from where it had been. My posters were all switched around.

“I didn't do this, Freddy,” I said.

My little brother folded his arms. “So I guess it all just slipped out of place, like the books?”

He
would
pick that moment to go all superior on me.

I glared at him. “Don't get smart,” I warned.

“Or maybe we have mice,” he suggested sarcastically.

“That's enough. Cut it out!” I sat on the bed, got up again, and looked under it, just to make sure nothing was hiding there, then sat on the bed again. “What in the world could have done this?”

Freddy took a seat beside me. “I think I know,” he told me. “But you're going to think I'm crazy.”

“Look around you!” I waved my hand around my reorganized room. “Don't you think all
this
is crazy? I promise I won't laugh, Freddy. Just tell me your idea.”

Freddy gnawed his lower lip for a moment, making up his mind. Then he jumped to his feet. “Wait here,” he ordered and ran downstairs.

He came back up a moment later with a thick book. “I got this from my school library,” he explained.

I took it from him and read the title aloud:
“Bumps in the Night: Real Stories of Hauntings in America.”

My hands shook. I licked my lips.

“You mean . . . ” I trailed off. I couldn't say it.

Freddy could. He nodded.

“Yup,” he said. “I think this house is haunted.”

“H
aunted!” I echoed. My hands suddenly felt clammy.

“Yeah! Everything fits, Jill,” Freddy told me earnestly. He pointed to the book. “I think we've got a poltergeist.”

“A poltergeist?” I repeated. I was starting to feel like a parrot. “What's that?”

Freddy hopped onto the bed beside me. “It's a kind of spirit. Like a ghost. But its specialty is throwing things around.”

I opened the book and Freddy showed me the section about poltergeists. The stories were a lot like ours. Things flying through the air, loud noises, stuff changed and rearranged.

“Look, Freddy,” I gasped. “It says this one family
lost their house because of a poltergeist. It ran them off!”

“That's not the worst. In one house the father disappeared. His kids could hear him in the walls, but they never saw him again!” Freddy pushed his glasses up his nose. His eyes were wide. “What if that happened to Dad? Or to us?”

I decided there was no point thinking about
that.
“How do you get rid of them?” I asked. “Do you call a ghostbuster or something?”

Freddy shook his head. “I don't know. In most of those stories, it seems like the people just give up and leave. Or go crazy.”

“Or disappear,” I whispered. My mouth went dry. I felt a strange, tingly fear at the base of my spine. “What are we going to do?”

“Move,” Freddy declared.

“We can't. It would break Mom's heart! Anyway, how could we possibly convince Mom and Dad to leave this house?”

“I keep telling you. We have to talk to them! We need to tell them the truth about what's been going on,” Freddy insisted. “Do you really think they'll want to live in a house that has a poltergeist?”

“Do you really think they'll believe us?” I shot back. “Freddy, haven't you noticed that none of this stuff ever happens in front of them? Would
you
believe it if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes?”

Freddy's forehead wrinkled as he thought. “You're right,” he said slowly. “I wonder why? Maybe the poltergeist is trying to make us look bad. Maybe it wants to get us in trouble.”

That made me
mad.
I felt my hands curl into fists. “There has to be a way to get rid of this thing,” I muttered. “And whatever that way is, we're going to find it.”

“Right!” Freddy agreed.

Then we both sat there on my bed, staring at the walls. I knew Freddy was thinking the same thing I was.

We talked tough. But, really, we didn't have a clue how to get rid of a poltergeist!

After a moment I stood up. “We can't just sit around here spooked. We need to do something. Anything.”

“Let's do something for Mom,” said Freddy. “She's been pretty annoyed with us lately. Let's surprise her.”

“You want to? What should we do?”

“Let's bake her a pie,” Freddy suggested. “You make great pies.”

I laughed. Freddy was the original pie eater. “Bake
Mom
a pie, huh?”

Freddy grinned at me. “Yeah. Cherry.”

“Which just happens to be your favorite flavor.”

Freddy made an innocent face. “It's for Mom. Nothing's too good for Mom.”

“All right,” I agreed. “But let's do it now, before she gets home and tells us no.”

We ran downstairs, taking three steps at a time.

“What should I set the oven for?” Freddy called as he ran ahead.

“Three-fifty. But not so fast, bonehead. Let's make sure we have cherry pie filling first.”

Freddy rifled the pantry while I took out a big mixing bowl.

“Ta-da!” He hurried over with two cans of cherry filling.

“Okay. You open them while I start the crust.”

“We're making two, right?” Freddy demanded, licking his lips.

I shook my head, smiling. What a pig! “Yeah, sure. We're making two.”

While Freddy opened the cans, I measured and sifted the flour. I'd been baking since I was eight years old. Dad claimed I made the best pie crust in the country.

We laughed and joked as we worked. Freddy brought me a measuring cup of ice water for the crust. I moved the big plastic flour canister over to make room for rolling the pie dough. Then I sprinkled flour across the countertop.

I was reaching into the canister for a little more, when I heard a bang behind me. I turned, just in time to see all our baking pans falling out of the cupboard.

“Ow! Ouch!” Freddy hollered. Baking sheets bounced off his head.

“Clutz,” I called.

“I didn't do it!” he protested. “They just came out!”

My hand was still in the flour container.

Then something grabbed it. Something in the flour itself!

Something that held my wrist in a grip of iron!

I
screamed. I couldn't help it—it just burst out of me.

Frantic, I pulled against the thing in the canister. But it held on to my hand like a vise. Whatever it was, it had cold claws. I could feel them.

My heart hammered in my chest. “Let me go!” I yelled.

Every drawer in the kitchen flew open. Knives, forks, and spoons jangled out of their plastic holders. The mixing bowl flipped over and shattered on the floor.

“Freddy! Help!” I called frantically.

But my little brother had his own problems. He dodged a rain of flying plates. Then he slipped in a puddle of cherry pie filling and landed facedown in it.

Whatever held me squeezed my wrist. Hard. I cried
out in pain. Then I put everything I had into one big tug.

The grip suddenly released. The canister leapt off the counter and banged into my forehead.

“Ow,” I groaned. I fell back in a thick cloud of flour. It covered me, clotting my mouth and nose.

“Look out!” Freddy shouted from where he lay sprawled.

I glanced up. The measuring cup floated in midair above me. As I stared at it, it tipped. Ice water poured out.

“Aaahh!” I yelled. Icy trickles ran over my face and into my ears. The water mixed with the flour and turned my hair into a sticky, doughy mess. As soon as it was empty, the measuring cup dropped to the floor. Its job was done.

I clambered slowly to my feet. The kitchen was buried beneath a blanket of flour. It looked as if it had been bombed. Which was roughly how I felt.

“Freddy?” I groaned, then coughed out a chunk of dough. I tried again. “Freddy? Are you all right?”

His voice was so calm that I could tell he was really scared. “I've been better.”

“Oh,
no!”
a voice exclaimed behind me.

I whirled to see Mom standing in the kitchen doorway. She held bags of groceries in both arms. Her mouth hung open in shock.

There was no sound, no movement while she took it
all in. The broken plates and bowls. The spilled silverware. The thick coat of flour everywhere.

Slowly, Mom set the grocery bags down on the floor. At last she looked at me, and her face kind of twisted up.

I tried to grin. My lips stuck together a little where the dough and water had made a paste.

“We—uh, we thought we'd bake you a pie,” was the best I could manage.

“A pie,” Mom repeated.

“Cherry,” Freddy piped up from his place on the floor. He scraped some filling off the floor with his finger to show Mom.

Mom stood there, dazed, for another moment. Then she took a deep breath. “Your father will be home this evening,” she said. “I'll let him talk to you about this. Yes, that's what I'll do. Some other time, maybe,
I'll
talk to you about it. In a month or so. When I've calmed down . . . ”

Her words trailed off. She turned and sort of hobbled away.

“We'll clean it up,” I yelled. But if Mom heard me, she gave no sign.

Slowly, silently, we started putting things right. Only four dishes had broken, thank goodness. And the mixing bowl.

The more I worked, the madder I got. What did the poltergeist have against
us
anyway? What had we ever done to it?

“Jill?” Freddy asked.

“Yeah?” I snapped.