Read It and Weep! (2 page)

And that's when she realized the boys had closed the door at the top of the stairs, leaving her in complete blackness. She couldn't tell the difference with her eyes opened or closed.

Still, she would not let them upset her. She would be brave. Step by careful step, she felt her way up the stairs. She prayed they hadn't locked the door. The stairs seemed three times longer than she remembered them. What if she stepped on something in the dark? A snail? She shuddered to think of squishing one in her bare feet. Were there poisonous snakes in Kansas?

But finally she made it to the top. Put her hand on the knob.

And felt an icy hand clamp down on her shoulder from behind.

With a scream she jerked away and lost her footing, somehow turning around and falling feetfirst down the stairs, her bottom thud-thud-thudding until she came to rest halfway down, landing hard on her wrist. Pain and terror coiled inside her as she squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for whatever, whoever, was on the stairs with her.

But instead the grown-ups had thrown open the door. Light flooded the stairwell from above. There was no monster, or anything else, on the stairs when the grown-ups rescued her.

The boys had gotten into major trouble for what happened, of course. And she'd broken her wrist, which meant no swimming for the rest of that hot summer. She'd had nightmares for weeks afterward. But worst of all, she'd been afraid of the dark ever since. Even now, at age twelve and three quarters, she still slept with a night-light. She had never told anyone, not even her mom, about the icy hand on her shoulder that day. It was a terrible memory she kept deeply buried. One that she always reasoned away as a trick of her terrified imagination at that moment.

Charlotte shuddered and dropped the book on the floor next to her bed. Something bounced out.
Must be an old bookmark,
she thought. She'd return the book to the library tomorrow.

The best part about libraries, Charlotte had learned, was that she could practically always rely on them, like a beacon in a storm. Her dad was in the military, so her family moved constantly—five times since the twins were born. Before her mom had gone back to work, they'd spent many happy hours together at the library, wherever they happened to live. And now that she was old enough to walk places by herself, she knew she could find comfort, solace, and all the books she wanted at the library. Even before she made friends in a new town, books were always there to entertain her and fill up her days, and libraries were calm, comforting places. Librarians were practically always nice.

Charlotte and her family had only been living in this town outside Omaha, Nebraska, since July. The library had been the first place she'd explored. It was a beautiful, redbrick building from the nineteenth century, with huge windows that let in the sunlight, majestic shady trees on the front lawn, and plenty of big, comfy chairs for reading. It had that perfect library smell: a combination of old books, dusty pages, worn leather, and a pleasant mustiness. She'd fallen in love with it at once and found herself there several days a week. The librarian, Mrs. Lazer, learned her name after only her second visit.

But Mrs. Lazer had not been at the library this afternoon. A different librarian, an older man, someone she'd never seen before, had checked out her book, barely glancing at it. He muttered something about all the reshelving he had to do as he clapped the book closed and slid it across to Charlotte without even glancing at her.

She'd promised herself she wouldn't look at the book until she'd finished her homework. It would be her reward. All evening she had felt as though the book was calling to her. But because her mom had worked late tonight, she'd had to help the twins with their homework before she could even start her own, so she'd gotten to bed later than usual. She sighed in exasperation. After all that buildup, the book turned out to be scary. She
hated
scary stories.

She turned out the light and settled back into her pillow, trying to put the scary story out of her mind. Of all things, it had been a story about a girl her age who babysat. With the lights going out. It was almost as though it had been written especially to scare her. “Think happy thoughts,” she told herself firmly. She opened one eye to be sure the night-light was working. It was.

Sleep did not come. Charlotte kept thinking back to what had happened at the library today. What was it about that book in particular that had been so compelling? She was again struck by the thought that the book had called to her, beckoning her to take it, to read it.

Suddenly Charlotte opened her eyes. She sat up in bed and flicked the light back on. She had that feeling again—an urgent, have-to-obey feeling that there was something she must do. But this time the feeling wasn't coming from the book. It was coming from the thing that had fallen
out
of it. She had to find it. Look at it. See what it was. She swung her legs around and got out of bed. Where was it? She was sure she'd seen it on the floor next to her bed.

She got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed. There were still a couple of garbage bags full of winter clothes that she hadn't yet unpacked, even after months in her new room. The thing that had fallen out of the book wasn't there. She sat back. Had she only thought she'd seen something? Maybe she'd imagined it.

Her eyes came to rest on a rectangular-shaped thing resting on her bedside table. She leaned toward it and reached for it. It was a card.

How odd,
she thought. She'd seen it fall onto the floor. Maybe she'd fallen asleep briefly, and her mother had come in, picked it up, and placed it on the table next to her bed. But the nagging little voice told her that wasn't possible.

She peered closely at it. It felt stiff and heavy in her hand, much stiffer than a playing card or an index card. Almost as inflexible as if it were made of thin wood or something. It was bigger than an ordinary playing card too.

She studied the picture on it. In the center of the card was a round orange shape, crisscrossed with measurement lines of some sort. It looked sort of like a compass, except that instead of north-south-east-west indications there were odd symbols. It was set against a blue background with floating gray clouds, and in each corner of the card was a winged horselike creature, each one a little different from the next. At the bottom of the card, in old-fashioned type, Charlotte read the words
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
.
She turned the card over. On the back was a twirly, intricate design, almost like the pattern on an Oriental carpet. And something was written—handwritten—in old-fashioned, spidery script, diagonally across the back. She brought the card closer to the light, and squinted at it.

Pass this along or you'll be sorry.

Pass
what
along, she wondered, turning the card over and then back again. The card? Was this some person's idea of a dumb chain message? She despised those, the ones that urged her to forward the e-mail to ten people or she'd have bad luck, or whatever. Her cousin Sheila was always sending them to her, apologizing but saying she didn't dare break them because she was superstitious. Well, Charlotte wasn't. She usually deleted them promptly. If it was a chain message, it was a strange way to receive it. After all, putting a message in an old library book wasn't the fastest way to communicate. She put the card inside the book again and placed them both carefully on her bedside table. Then she turned out the light and went back to sleep.

And plunged right into a nightmare.

Chapter 3

Running, running, but her legs felt so heavy. It was dark. Nighttime, with a wan gray light where the moon shone feebly behind rushing clouds. The gloom hung heavy. Fog swirled around her. What was chasing her? Something terrible. Something just out of sight, in the swirling darkness, something that was intent on harming her. Not knowing what her pursuer looked like seemed almost scarier. She knew only that she must get away.

Now she was running barefoot through cold, muddy, slimy stuff. Her pajamas were soaked from the mist. She sloshed through the swampy marsh. Who knew what lurked in that sucking mud? Her legs could hardly move. Every leaden step was a huge effort. Her bare feet squelched unpleasantly.

The thing—her pursuer—was gaining on her. She could hear it just behind her, running through the mud in big, sucking gulps. Now she could feel its hot, stifling breath on the back of her neck. She smelled something foul: putrid and rotten and sickly sweet all at the same time. And then it grabbed her, an icy hand on her shoulder, just like what had happened so many years ago on her cousins' basement steps.

She fell down, face-first, into the stinking, slimy mud. She couldn't breathe. Something was holding her face down in the muck. She was going to drown, to suffocate. She tried to scream.

And woke up with her head buried in the pillow.

It was morning.

She could smell coffee brewing. Her mother was up, of course. Charlotte glanced at the clock. Six forty-five. The alarm wasn't due to go off for fifteen more minutes. She groaned and swung her feet out of bed. That was the last time she was going to read a scary story before bed. In fact it was the last time she would read a scary story, period.

She dressed quickly, pausing to frown at herself in the mirror. Her brown hair spiraled down past her shoulders in a wildly unkempt way. She gathered it up and tied it back with a hair elastic. Her braces glinted at her in the mirror. Why had she inherited each of her parents' flaws and none of their good traits? She'd gotten her father's unruly hair, but not his startling blue eyes or his ramrod-straight military posture. She'd inherited her mom's crooked teeth, but not her glossy hair or her graceful, willowy figure. It wasn't fair. Her twin brothers had gotten good teeth and perfect, shiny hair. She sighed as she adjusted her father's framed photo on her dresser. He looked so handsome in his air force uniform. It had been a month since he'd been deployed to the Middle East. She felt the usual pang of worry in the pit of her stomach that she always did when she thought about her dad, which was often.

At least she'd inherited her parents' intelligence, she had to admit. It was nice not to have to struggle to understand everything, the way her friend Alicia, at her last school, had. She wondered how Alicia was doing. She hadn't heard from her in a while. Well. That was normal. It wasn't easy to maintain long-term friendships when you moved eight times in twelve years. She felt lucky to have met Lauren at her new school. And to have access to such an awesome public library.

Her eyes fell on the red book next to her bed. Not that she was superstitious, but the last thing she needed was to worry about bad luck. She picked the book up and slipped the card from its pages. She'd return the book to the library after school today. Then she tucked the card into a pocket of her backpack.

In the hallway outside her room she could hear her eight-year-old brothers running full speed toward the stairs.
A herd of elephants would sound quieter,
she thought, rolling her eyes. Where did they get all this energy so early in the morning? They were always having contests, racing each other to be the first one to get to the breakfast table, or arguing about who got the last cookie or whose turn it was to sit next to the window on the bus.
It must be exhausting to be a twin,
Charlotte thought, not for the first time. After all, it was exhausting to live with them.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard her mother call to her from her bedroom.

“Charlotte, did you put the boys' soccer uniforms in the wash last night like I asked you?”

“Yep!” she called back.

“Thanks, honey! Can you run them in the dryer so they'll be ready for the twins' game tonight?”

“Yep!” Charlotte called back, and ran downstairs to the laundry room. She liked being a help to her mom, who'd gone back to work for the first time since the twins were born. With her dad gone, Charlotte knew her mom was counting on her for a lot of help. Especially with the twins' math homework. Her mom was really smart, just not at math—even third-grade math.

When she opened the washer to transfer the load to the dryer, she froze, staring into the washing machine.

The mostly white load she'd put in the night before had turned pink.

Then she remembered throwing her new red sweatshirt in with the rest of the load. She began pulling out the damp, wrinkled clothes. She tugged a soccer jersey from the clump and held it up.

It was decidedly pink.

Maybe the pink will drain out somehow in the drying process,
she thought, although deep down she knew that wasn't really possible. This day had not started out well.

Her mom was in her nurse's scrubs when Charlotte dragged her feet into the kitchen a few minutes later. Her brothers were noisily arguing about which of two European soccer teams was better. Charlotte was pretty sure neither boy had ever even watched these teams play. But while they were busy arguing, she took the opportunity to speak quietly to her mother over near the stove.