Nightmare Hour (11 page)

“Well, I showed you,” I said. “Now, will you keep your part of the bargain?”

“Come here,” Gemma said. She carried the baby to the kitchen counter. I followed her, my heart thudding in my chest, my legs shaky and weak.

Gemma pointed to two green capsules on the counter. “I mixed these up this afternoon,” she said. “You swallow one, and I'll swallow one. And we'll trade bodies.”

“What?” I gasped. I grabbed the counter to keep myself from falling. “Trade bodies?”

Gemma nodded, her soft, black hair falling over her shoulders.

“You will enter my body and become Gemma the witch, with all my knowledge and powers,” she said, smiling. “And I will float into your body and be Stephanie the twelve-year-old. We will trade bodies and trade lives.”

“But
--why?
” I demanded. “You are so beautiful and so powerful. Why on earth would you want to trade places with me?”

Gemma sighed. “I'm very lonely here. And tired of spells and curses. I'm bored. I like the idea of starting over in a new body, in a new family.”

Roddy opened his eyes wide and gazed around. Gemma shifted him to her other shoulder. “Easy,” she whispered tenderly to him. “Easy, little fellow. You're going to be my brother now.”

I swallowed. “Are you sure you really want to live with my family? Do you really want to have my life?”

Gemma's eyes narrowed coldly. “Don't waste my time, Stephanie. You've come this far. You're so close to the moment you dreamed of. Will you do it? Will you swallow the capsule and trade places with me?”

I hesitated. I stared at Roddy, then at the two green capsules on the counter.

I'll be beautiful
, I thought.

I'll have power and magic
.

People will respect me. People will come to me for help. People will fear me….

“Yes,” I said. “I'll do it, Gemma. I'm ready.”

Gemma's eyes flashed excitedly. “Excellent!” she cried. Grinning at me, she grabbed a capsule off the counter, slid it into her mouth, and swallowed.

I took a deep breath. My hand shook as I reached for the other capsule.

“Hurry, Stephanie! Do it now!” the witch said.

But before I could pick it up, Roddy's hand shot out--and grabbed it.

“No!” we both shrieked.

Roddy stuffed the capsule into his mouth. And swallowed.

“No! No! No!” I screamed.

I stared in horror, helpless horror. It took only a few seconds for them to trade bodies.

Roddy was the witch now, standing at the counter in Gemma's body, wearing Gemma's black dress.

He held the baby in his arms. Gemma, squirming frantically, shot her tiny fists into the air. Gemma the baby now, in the arms of Roddy the witch.

And there I stood. Still me. Still Stephanie.

“If it's the last thing I do, I'll pay you back for this!” the witch boomed angrily at me.

I lowered my gaze to the red-faced baby.

“If it's the last thing I do, I'll pay you
both
back for this!” he squeaked.

INTRODUCTION

ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN JUDE PALENCAR

I
've never seen a ghost, but my friend Richie claims she has. Richie grew up in New Orleans, and she says a ghost lived in her house. She saw him several times, wrapped in a silvery glow, and she wasn't at all afraid. I said, “Maybe you weren't afraid, but how do you get rid of a ghost? Do you stare him down? Do you chase him away?”

Richie shook her head. “We couldn't get rid of him. We had to move.”

I remembered this conversation when I wrote this story. How do you defeat a ghost that wants to possess you? Can you
stare
it down? What happens if you try?

M
ark and I
didn't really want to go on the class trip to the graveyard. But it meant we got out of school, and that's always a good thing.

The Graystone Graveyard is at the end of our street. We pass by it every day on our way to and from school. It's a very old graveyard. It goes back to Pilgrim days. The gravestones are all cracked and tilted and broken. And a lot of people say the place is haunted.

Mark and I don't believe in ghosts. But we always walk on the other side of the street. Why take chances?

Mark and I are twins. People always try to be funny and ask, “Are you
identical
twins?” Ha ha. Mark is a boy and I'm a girl. We're Mark and Lauren, the Goodman twins. I like being a twin, except for the dumb jokes.

It had snowed during the night, just enough to leave a thin, powdery cover over the ground. Our shoes crunched over the patchy snow as our social studies class stepped up to the old iron cemetery gate.

The wind howled through the trees and made the bare branches whip around, sending showers of snow over us as we walked. I pulled up the hood on my down parka and slid my new gloves over my hands.

I loved my new gloves. My favorite aunt gave them to me on my twelfth birthday. They were beautiful--soft brown leather on the outside, and lined with some kind of fur inside that made them toasty warm.

“I hope everyone brought Ghost Repellent!” Miss Applebaum, our teacher, called. Where does she come up with these crazy ideas? Going to the old cemetery on the
coldest day of the year to do gravestone tracings?

“Do you know what to do if you see a ghost?” Rachel Miller asked, pushing her way between Mark and me.

“Yeah.
Run!
” Mark exclaimed.

“No. That's exactly wrong,” Rachel told him. “My grandmother taught me this. You give the ghost a ghostly stare.”

I rolled my eyes. “A ghostly stare? What's that supposed to mean?”

Rachel stopped walking. She grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward her. Then she raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes wide, as wide as they could go. “Lauren, this is a ghostly stare.”

Mark laughed. “You look like a geek.”

“Don't laugh,” Rachel snapped. “It could save your life. My grandmother knew about these things. She said never run. Instead, you stare into the ghost's eyes. Stare as deeply as you can, as if staring at the ghost's soul.”

Rachel gave Mark the wide-eyed stare. “Don't blink,” she instructed. “Stare at the ghost's soul.”

“Why does that work?” I asked.

“Because ghosts are dead,” Rachel replied, still staring at Mark. “They don't have souls. Your stare goes right through them. They can't defend themselves against it. It makes them shrivel up and disappear.”

Rachel talks a mile a minute. She thinks she's an expert on everything. I don't really like Rachel. She pretends to be my friend. But I know it's only because she has a crush on Mark.

“Can I be your partner, Lauren?” Rachel asked. “Miss Applebaum said we have to have partners. Do you believe in ghosts? I do. My grandmother told me she saw one rise
up from one of these old graves.”

“Remember the Klavans' dog?” Mark said. “It used to prowl around in the graveyard, and then one day it disappeared. Hilary Klavan said a ghost reached up from a grave and pulled the dog into the ground. Hilary saw it! That's why she started to stutter.”

I frowned at Mark. I'd never heard that story. I think he made it up to impress Rachel.

Miss Applebaum opened the iron gate, and we followed her into the graveyard. Rows of black and gray gravestones poked up through the shallow snow.

The old stones tilted at all angles, like crooked teeth. Most of them were cracked and broken. Several had fallen over and lay on their backs, covered with snow.

We passed some simple markers and crosses with no inscriptions at all. Leaning into the wind, Miss Applebaum led us up the sloping hill to some larger stones. Many had been rubbed smooth by time. Others had long inscriptions etched into the stone.

“Too cold for the ghosts to come out today!” Miss Applebaum joked. “Let's get to work now, everybody!”

We split up. Rachel and I made our way around to the other side of the hill. I thought it might be less windy here, but I was wrong. A strong gust pushed back my hood. My long, red hair flew up in the air like a flag.

We crunched over the snow, bending to read the old inscriptions on the stones. Some of the gravestones were from the sixteen-hundreds.

“Nothing too interesting here,” Rachel complained. “Let's try those old ones down there.”

We stopped at the first grave we came to. The tiny, old stone was cracked and chipped. I kneeled down to read the inscription: A
BIGAIL
W
ILLEY
. 1680–1692. R
EST IN
H
EAVEN
, C
HILD
.

“Wow!” I cried, staring hard at the dates. “Rachel--she was our age!”

Rachel leaned down to read it too. “I wonder how she died, Lauren. Everyone died so young in those days.” Rachel opened her backpack and pulled out the tracing-paper pad. “Let's do this one. It's a really cool one.”

The cold wind swirled around us. Rachel struggled to hold the paper against the stone so that I could make a rubbing. But the paper kept flapping up in the strong gusts.

“I'll help hold it down,” I suggested. I pulled off my gloves, balled them together, and set them on top of the stone. Then I squatted down beside Rachel, and we worked together to do our tracing.

We were just finishing when we saw Miss Applebaum come hurrying down the side of the hill, slipping on the snowy grass. “I'm sorry to cut this short, but we'd better go,” she said, brushing her windblown hair out of her face. “This was a bad idea. It's just too cold and windy today. We're all going to catch frostbite if we don't get back to school.”

Rachel and I packed up. I tugged the parka hood back over my head. Then, shivering, my feet frozen, my face tingling, I hurried to catch up to the others, eager to get out of the cold.

 

It wasn't until after dinner that night that I realized I had left my gloves in the graveyard. Mom and Dad were at their
reading discussion group. Mark and I were supposed to be doing our homework, but we were watching TV. The local weather report had just come on.

I jumped up and straightened my sweater. “Mark, I have to go back to the graveyard and get my gloves.”

He looked up from his algebra workbook. “You're kidding, right?”

“They are my best gloves!” I said. “The warmest things I have. I love those gloves. I can't leave them there.”

Mark turned back to the workbook. “We'll get them in the morning.”

“No way!” I insisted. “They just said on TV that it's going to snow later tonight. They'll be ruined.” I opened the coat closet and pulled out my parka. “Are you coming with me or not?”

He hesitated, chewing on his pencil. Finally he spit the pencil out. “Okay. I guess. Can't let you go alone.”

Macho Mark.

The wind had died down, but the night air felt icy and damp. A tiny sliver of a moon winked down at us between black storm clouds. The thin layer of snow had crusted and hardened to ice.

We kept slipping and sliding as we crossed the street. The low fence of Graystone Graveyard came into view.

“You remember where you left them?” Mark asked. His face was hidden inside his big furry hood. He kept the beam of light from his flashlight ahead of us in the snow.

I shivered. “On top of a girl's gravestone. It'll only take a second.”

I grabbed the handle on the cemetery gate and pulled.
The gate was stuck in hardened snow. I tugged again with all my strength, and it creaked open.

The yellow circle of light danced over the gravestones as Mark and I climbed the sloping hill. The storm clouds rolled over the moon, and heavy darkness swept over us. The air grew even more frigid.

I rubbed my nose. It already felt numb. “Down this hill,” I said.

All around us, trees creaked and groaned. The wind made an eerie sound, like a soft, human sigh.

Slipping on the hard crust of snow, I led the way down to Abigail Willey's grave. “Here,” I said.

Mark pointed the beam of light. I stopped and squinted at the stone. “They're gone!” I cried, raising my hands to my frozen cheeks. “The gloves aren't there! I left them on top of the stone!”

Mark shone the light over the front of the stone. “The wind probably blew them off. Search the ground.”

“Oh. Right. They must be on the ground,” I muttered. I stepped around the grave, my eyes searching the crusty snow.

The wind sighed again. The trees groaned and shook. I heard a shrill cry far in the distance. Probably a cat.

Bending low, I circled the grave. “Where are they?”

“Maybe they blew down the hill,” Mark suggested. He pulled the furry hood tighter over his face. Then he walked slowly down the hill, sweeping the light from side to side over the ground.

“Where are they? Where are they?” I repeated, rubbing my tingling nose, my frozen face.

I almost bumped right into the girl.

Her long, dark hair fell over her face, hiding it from view. She wore only a thin dress, with long sleeves and a long pleated skirt down to the ground. She stood very stiff and erect, hands behind her back.

“Who are you?” I gasped.

And then a gust of wind blew the hair away from her face.

I stared--

--stared in horror--at her skeletal face. No skin. No lips over her broken teeth. No eyes. Just empty eye sockets, so deep and dark.

“I'm Abigail,” she croaked, her voice dry, dry as sandpaper, dry as crackling leaves.

And then she lifted both arms. There was no skin on her arms, either. Only bone. And at the end of her gray, bony arms--were my gloves!

She took a silent step toward me as I stood there frozen in horror.

“I'm so cold,” she moaned through her rotted teeth. “It's so cold here, Lauren….”

“P-please…” I whispered, staring at my gloves. My gloves at the ends of those bony arms….

“I need your coat!” she moaned, reaching out with both gloved hands.

The deep, empty eye sockets…the bony head tilting toward me beneath the blowing hair…

“Lauren, I need your coat….”

“No! Please!”

I turned, looking everywhere for my brother. “Mark!” I cried when I saw him running, running full speed, arms
flying in front of him, running from a tall skeleton in a flapping black overcoat.

Get going! I ordered myself. Lauren--go
now
!

But my legs were shaking too hard. They wouldn't move.

“Lauren, I need your sweater….”

“No--stop!”

The fingers inside my gloves, grabbing for me.

“Lauren, I need your clothes…. Lauren…it's so cold here…. I need your coat…. I need your sweater….”

“No! Get away from me!” I shrieked.

“Lauren, I need your shoes….” The gloved hands grabbed at my hair.

“Lauren, I need your
skin!
”

The gloved fingers caught my hair and started to pull.