Ready for a Scare? (5 page)

No one.

She sank into her chair, pulling her monitor close. Her heart beat fast. “Who? Who did you see? There's no one here.” She glanced again to be sure.

Shadows. The rush of the wind.

“She was there. Behind you.” June trembled.

“I saw her too,” Paige said. “For a second, she appeared on your screen. Then she was gone.”

“That was so weird,” Spencer murmured.

“Who? What did she look like?” Kelly wavered. Were
her friends tricking her? She wanted to believe so, but their faces told her otherwise. They had seen something.

“More of a shadow than an actual person,” Paige murmured.

“But it was definitely a woman,” June added. “I could see her silhouette. Hovering there. Just for a second. Oh, wow, Kel, she was totally in your room.”

A chill ran down Kelly's spine. She hugged her arms around her chest, trying to make sense of it all. “Do you think it worked? Do you think we really brought her back?”

No one wanted to speak first. To say the thing they all felt, yet couldn't explain.

“I saw it . . . her . . . too.” Gavin broke the silence. “The last time we said Mary's name. She was there. She was real.”

“Awesome!” Spencer's spark returned. “We did it. We brought back the dead.”

“I think it's creepy,” Paige said. “Don't you, Kelly? I mean, she was in your room.”

Kelly reached over and ran her fingers along the tiny black plastic box on her desk. She'd never pressed the button and sounded the scream. She'd never had the chance to pretend the supernatural could be contacted, because . . . it
might have really happened. She shifted her weight in her chair. She was unsure of what she felt. She wished she had seen what they'd seen. “Let's do it again.”

“What?” June sat straighter.

She shrugged. “To be sure. Let's see if it's really her. Do it all again. The chanting. All of it.” She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, suddenly excited by the idea.

“Sure.” Spencer was up for anything.

“It was freaky, but okay.” Paige was in.

“No way.” Gavin nudged Spencer into the shadows, making sure Kelly could see him on her monitor. His beady eyes bored into the screen. His face remained grim. “You don't mess with the dead.”

“Oh, please!” Paige snorted, no longer scared. “Let's do it.”

“I'm serious. Once was enough.” Gavin blinked quickly many times. “Trust me.”

“Why? What makes you an expert?” Kelly wanted to know.

He cast his eyes downward for a moment, still blinking nervously. “Nothing.” He paused, cracking one knuckle, then another. “You made contact. You've started things in motion—”

“What things?” she demanded.

Gavin shrugged. “Things we don't understand. Things from beyond. Things that should be left alone.”

He's so weird,
Kelly decided. She thought of texting Paige and seeing if she thought so too. It didn't feel natural to have him here with them. What right did he have to dictate what they could do?

“Well, I—” She stopped, suddenly hearing a faint melody. The notes repeated. An unsettling tune.

“You know,” June began hesitantly, “I sort of agree with Gavin. I don't think we should do it again.”

“Really?” Kelly asked. She was surprised. June usually liked adventure.

“I felt something,” June whispered. She looked embarrassed.

“What?” Kelly and Paige asked in unison.

June gnawed a hangnail on her thumb. “Didn't you? A tingling kind of thing? Right before she appeared?” She gazed at them hopefully.

Kelly hesitated. Had she felt something? She wasn't sure. Maybe . . . maybe some static electricity. But did ghosts give off that kind of energy? And sure, she was dizzy, but that could've just been from the spinning.

“I felt it,” Gavin replied.

Paige shrugged. So did Spencer.

Kelly shook her head. “No way. It's all in our heads. Come on. One more time.” Suddenly, for some unexplained reason, she wanted to show her friends that it had just been a weird group hallucination. That it couldn't be true. She would do something the next time that would scare them—the fake growl, perhaps—and then they would know it wasn't real and—

The melody sounded again. Louder this time.

The same eight sinister notes. A haunting tune.

“What's that song?” Paige asked. “Kel, did you put music on?”

“No.”

Everyone listened as the tune repeated twice more. So loud. As if right outside her door.

“Probably something Ryan is watching,” Kelly guessed. “I'm going to check. Be right back. Don't do anything without me, okay?”

She walked across her room and rested her hand on the door handle. Straining her ears, she listened for the melody. The low buzz of garbled TV voices was the only noise she could make out from downstairs. The music
had stopped. She pushed open her door and poked her head into the darkened hallway.

The smell immediately overwhelmed her.

Inhaling, she felt weightless, spiraling back in time. To a farmhouse in the snow. To a party filled with cheer . . . and despair. The scent surrounded her. Made her dizzy. She grasped the door handle to anchor herself.

She drew her breath in again, just be sure. The smell was undeniable. Peppermint.

The icy mint aroma filled her nostrils. And she knew:
Miss Mary is here.

She froze in the doorway, unsure of where to go or what to do. Her eyes darted about the hallway and over her shoulder, into her room. She had no idea what to look for. Her heart beat rapidly.

Peppermint. She smelled peppermint.

Would a ghost leave behind an odor? she wondered. Did it mean Mary's spirit was here? Now?

She wanted to run to her computer and tell her friends about the peppermint smell. She could hear the murmuring of their voices coming from her computer speakers. June's high-pitched giggle. The lower tone of Gavin. A sudden overwhelming wave of logic and disbelief prevented her from turning back.

She shook her head, trying to straighten out her
thoughts.
Get a grip. There is no ghost,
she reminded herself.
I told the story from the newspaper to scare everyone else. Not to scare myself.

She inhaled again. The crisp scent of mint wafted around her.

Then it hit her.
Chrissie must be baking something with peppermint in it,
she thought.
Maybe chocolate mint cookies or hot chocolate with peppermint oil.

Much relieved, Kelly padded down the stairs in her fuzzy socks. She stopped midway, her hand resting on the oak banister. Drawing in another breath, she noticed that the peppermint was no longer as overpowering. The farther down the stairs she moved, the more the scent weakened. At the bottom, it was almost nonexistent.

She glanced out the front window, watching as the wind swirled the flurries in crazy circles. Under the glow of the streetlamps, the snow appeared as a magical coating decorating the walkway. It reminded her of the silver glitter she used to pour onto school projects. Mounds of shiny flecks piled on gobs of white glue.

She turned toward the back of the house. To her left, she could hear the TV in the family room. Two men arguing on the screen. She continued into the kitchen,
expecting to see Chrissie by the oven or stove.

“Whatcha baking?” Kelly called out.

She was met with silence. The lights were on, but the kitchen was empty.

She could detect the slight smell of the pepperoni from tonight's pizza. No peppermint. No aroma even vaguely like peppermint.

The large chrome stove and double oven on the far left wall of the farm-style kitchen was dark and cold. Nothing cooking. The granite counter on the center island held only today's mail and a pizza box with uneaten crusts. Her mother's desk on the far right wall appeared to be in the same state of disorganization as earlier. The door to the basement at the right of the desk remained firmly shut. Even though her parents had bought sofas, a Ping-Pong table, and a foosball table to make it into a “playroom,” she and Ryan rarely went down there. Calling it a playroom did nothing to disguise the dank basement smell and the permanent chill. It was like playing Ping-Pong in Siberia.

The only sign of life in the kitchen was on the oversize wood table. At the head of the rectangular table, a high-backed chair was pushed away, slightly askew.
Her mother had bought the six mismatched chairs at yard sales. She'd delighted in sanding and staining each, and the contrast of each of their designs made them strangely go together in a homey kind of way.

A glass of clear soda sat on the table in front of the pushed-away chair. Kelly walked over to it. Tiny bubbles popped and floated along the surface of the fizzy lemon-lime liquid. The soda hadn't gone flat yet, Kelly realized. That meant Chrissie had just poured it. A sugar cookie lay beside the glass, a single bite taken out of it.

“Chrissie?” she called out. “You here?”

No answer.

She shrugged. Chrissie had probably gone to the bathroom or was watching TV with Ryan.

Then her eyes rested on the phone. Chrissie's cell with its distinctive holographic purple cover sat alongside the cookie.
Strange,
Kelly thought. She didn't think Chrissie ever went anywhere without her phone. Even to the bathroom.

She pulled open the refrigerator door and reviewed the contents inside. Same stuff as before. Nothing too good. She reached for the plastic bottle of soda, shut the door, and poured some into a fresh glass. She rested
the bottle on the island counter.

The carbonation tickled her throat as she took the first gulp. Glass in hand, she wandered through the archway that led into the back of the family room. Ryan slumped alone on the plush overstuffed sofa, totally immersed in the action on the screen. Two greenish creatures, each with three eyes, circled a lone cow in a meadow. They prodded the animal with some sort of electric device that buzzed on contact. Then there was heated discussion about returning to the ship.

Kelly sighed. Another alien movie. Her brother had a thing for sci-fi. It was all he'd watch or read.

“Hey, spacehead,” she called. “Where's Chrissie?”

Ryan grunted, barely acknowledging her presence. His eyes remained glued to the action on the screen. The cow was having convulsions.

Figures,
she thought. A total TV android. Ryan was impossible to talk to with the TV on. It was as if he inhabited the weird worlds he watched.

“Fine. Be that way. See if I care.” Then she heard it again.

Kelly listened as the eight-note melody repeated. It was louder than it had been upstairs, but it was the same
creepy song. The tune reminded her of the music played in horror films—right before the crazy guy leaps out at the innocent girl.

It's a ringtone,
she suddenly realized. And it was coming from the kitchen. She hurried back through the archway toward the noise. Then she chuckled to herself.
I'm just like the girls in those horror films,
she thought. Running toward the creepy sound. Spencer would find this funny. She couldn't wait to tell him that she had fallen into the classic scary movie trap. He was really into those old Hitchcock films.

The melody stopped as she entered the kitchen. Chrissie was back—and she was talking on her phone.

She changed her ringtone,
Kelly thought. She didn't particularly like this new one. Too creepy.

Chrissie didn't notice Kelly. She stood by the kitchen table, wearing navy sweats with her feet bare. Her back was to Kelly. Listening intently to whoever was calling, she stared out the large picture window overlooking the backyard. The outdoor spotlight illuminated the swirling flakes. Large evergreens sagged under the weight of the week's snow. The yard was an expanse of white. Nobody had been out back since the last snowfall.

Chrissie whispered into her phone. Kelly couldn't make out all the words, but she sensed that her babysitter was bothered about something. Chrissie remained turned with her shoulders slumped as she whispered somberly. Eyes still focused on the empty yard, she ran her hand along the square-panel window at the top of the back door next to the window. Huge icicles hung from the archway outside the door. “No. No way,” she said into the phone.

Kelly hesitated, about to speak. Then she changed her mind. Chrissie was obviously involved in a private conversation. It didn't seem right to bother her now about smelling peppermint. Down here in the warmth of the kitchen, the whole spooky-odor thing seemed silly. She drained her glass of soda, placed the empty glass quietly on the counter, and headed to her room.

“Hey, everyone,” she announced into her webcam as she slid into her chair. “I'm back.”

Paige lifted her head and faced her screen. “Finally! That took forever. We're totally bored. I'm even polishing my toenails.”