Screamscapes: Tales of Terror (32 page)

No answer.

Then Dad tried. “Hi there… uh, my boys are here for camp… we don’t want to intrude…”

He stopped speaking and listened. Nothing.

Ethan and Aidan looked up at him silently, their eyes wide as they listened.

“If you don’t want us to come in, please say something,” Dad continued. “If not, we’re going to come in and cool down for a minute… if that’s okay…”

A light, cool breeze from inside the room was the only response we received.

Dad took a deep breath and stepped into the room. We stood frozen in the doorway watching him, waiting.

“Well, come on!” Dad turned and motioned for us to follow him. “You want to look around, don’t you?”

That was all it took. We elbowed our way through the doorway into to the apartment, Ethan and Aidan
oooh-ing
and
ahhh-ing
as they examined the amazing surroundings.

Once we were all inside, I realized that the room was even
bigger
than I had thought a minute before. The ceiling rose up at least two stories tall, but the room somehow managed to feel both elegant and cozy at the same time.

The room was densely packed with furniture, and the walls were lined with bookshelves and display cases, filled to the brim with a fine assortment of treasures and curiosities. I wondered how it was possible for the caretaker of an adventure camp to have living quarters this fine.

The walls were decorated with immense drapes and silken embroidered linens, their elegance diminished only slightly by the thick layer of dust that seemed to lie, long undisturbed, on the surface of everything in this place. The weak light coming through the windows left the contents of the cluttered corners still wallowing in gloom.

I felt like I had stumbled upon Ali Baba’s treasure. Ethan and Aidan immediately started exploring, emitting small shrieks of joy at each new curious discovery.

“Look at this!” Ethan said, pointing excitedly to a rusty unicycle leaning in the corner, the padding that once covered its metal seat long gone. “Do you think I could try it?”

“Dad! Dad!” Aidan shouted excitedly from across the room. He was standing next to a barrister-style bookcase that rose from the floor to the ceiling.

I walked over to take a look. Inside the glass display case were gigantic models of World War II battleships, aircraft carriers, and submarines; all painted with painstaking attention, down to the most minute detail. There were dozens of them, all in pristine condition.

I plopped down on the sofa closest to the fireplace and began leafing through a stack of magazines. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Dad, look at these,” I said excitedly.

He came and sat down beside me, and I showed him what I had discovered: there were National Geographic magazines from as far back as 1918 and 1935; there were issues of Popular Mechanics from the 1950’s with the words “Build Your Own Flying Car” emblazoned boldly across the cover. As I flipped through the pages, I couldn’t help but notice that everything in the magazine looked bright and new, like it had been printed only yesterday.

We were entranced by shelves upon shelves of curious diversions; fragile stereoscopic glasses for viewing black and white three-dimensional images of national parks, Japanese pachinko machines loaded with shiny steel balls and garish paintings of abstract dragons.

Ethan called to me from another room; it startled me to hear his voice sound so far away.
Dad really should be keeping everyone together
, I thought as I went to see what he had found.

I found him in front of an enormous bookshelf laden with board games, grinning. It looked as though every game from every decade since board games had been invented was there, waiting to be played.

“Look, it’s
Snakes and Ladders
!” he grinned, pointing to a game that looked ancient enough to have been played by Abraham Lincoln’s children. There were literally hundreds of games stacked neatly on the shelves, some I had heard of, some I hadn’t:
The Price is Right, Cipher, Ting Tong Tang, Ka-boom, Hi-Q
, and even the predictable
Monopoly
. They all appeared to be in perfect condition, if a bit dusty.

“Want to play one?” he asked. I couldn’t think of a reason why not, so we set it up on the table by the fireplace. Aidan had found a chest full of stuffed animals, and he sat on the couch with a contented smile on his face as he hugged a ragged old teddy bear.

As Ethan set up the game, on the floor by the couch I found a little puzzle. It was made of wooden squares with letters on them that slid around in a tray. I figured the point of it was to see how many different words you could create with it. I shifted the letters around and held it up for Aidan to see. I had spelled the word “POOP” across the grid, and Aidan burst out laughing when he saw it. I got another idea for a word I could make, and started to work on my next masterpiece of hilarity.

Ethan grabbed the sliding word puzzle out of my hands, fiddled with it for a few seconds, and then held it up for Aidan to see. The letters now spelled out the word “BOOB”. Howls of delight from Aidan assured Ethan that his sense of comedic genius was still in its prime. He grinned from ear to ear with satisfaction.

That was when I thought I saw something move, out of the corner of my eye, in one of the dark corners. I figured it was just another one of the collectibles. I looked hard at the spot where I thought I had seen it, but whatever it was had been lost in the gloom.

Then something moved again. For a split second it almost looked like an old woman, hiding in the corner. I thought my mind was playing tricks, but then she suddenly lifted her head and looked straight at me, and there was no mistaking it. Her black eyes were sunken, set deep into her wrinkled face, and she glared at me from beneath a floppy bonnet. I almost jumped up from the couch, but she lifted a bony finger to her lips and made the gesture,
shhhhh.

I wanted to leave, right there and then. I glanced over at Dad, who was still flipping through old magazines, and then I looked back nervously to the old woman in the corner, but she was gone.

I noticed that the little bit of light we had in the room was rapidly fading. I jumped up and almost knocked over the board game that Ethan was hard at work setting up.

“We
have
to go,” I stated simply, motioning to the black door from which we had entered.

“But William, we just got here!” Dad protested, strangely content to stay. The other boys began to chime in.

“Yeah, Dad – we didn’t even get to play the game yet,” Ethan pleaded, making big puppy dog eyes and sticking out a pouty bottom lip.

“Dad, come on, it’s getting really late,” I insisted, as I scanned the room, trying to figure out where the old lady was lurking, watching us.

“But it’s not even lunchtime,” Dad said, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I wanted to get out of here, now.

“Stay here if you want,” I said, putting my hands on my hips to show I meant business. “I’m leaving right now.”

I headed straight for the black door. A sinking feeling began to grow in my stomach as I walked. I felt like at any moment the old woman was going to jump from the darkness and block my path to the door, she was going to lock it and swallow the key, she was going to drag me back into the shadows with her. She wanted to keep us all here forever.

That thought caused me to start running.

“Can I take this teddy bear with me?” I heard Aidan ask Dad.

“Leave it!” I yelled as I grabbed the doorknob and pulled it towards me. To my relief, the door opened easily. It was so good to have the hot summer breeze feel warm on my skin. I closed my eyes in relief and breathed in the smell of the outdoors. It smelled like a grassy field that had been scorched all day by the sun. I relaxed a little.

“Please? Please can I keep it?” Aidan continued, as the rest of my family still lingering in the room behind me.

I opened my eyes, and my stomach twisted into knots at what I saw.

It was pitch dark outside.

The small room where we had first entered the building looked the same as it had before. The lonely metal desk cluttered with papers was still there, sitting beneath the neatly handwritten signs. The door to the world outside hung ajar, but nighttime had replaced the summer morning we had left only a few minutes earlier.

I turned back around to face my family who hadn’t budged an inch. They still sat scattered across the sofas surrounding the fireplace. They hadn’t even noticed how scared I was. They were still laughing at funny words on the puzzle, still cuddling tattered teddy bears, still setting up antique board games next to an enigmatically enormous fireplace – a fireplace where an unexplained fire now burned, casting a soft glow over the interior of the residence.

The part that bothered me the most was that none of them even seemed to notice that a fire had somehow started in the fireplace all by itself.

“There’s a fire in the fireplace,” I croaked. My mouth was so dry I could barely speak.

Dad and my brothers glanced at the fireplace for a moment before dismissing it, returning their attention to their playthings.

“Did you start it?” Aidan asked happily, bouncing the teddy bear up and down on his knee.

“No,” I whispered fiercely. “Did you know it’s dark outside?” I asked.

Then I thought I noticed something moving again in the shadows, this time by the room filled with games. As soon as I looked in that direction it stopped.

“Hey Dad, can we stay here tonight?” Ethan asked all of the sudden. His eyes glistened with excitement in the firelight. “Please?”

“Yes, please Dad,
please
?” Aidan chimed in.

I turned and looked back out into the darkness of the night, straining to catch a glimpse of our stranded, out-of-gas car. It would be a long walk to nowhere, I thought, and an even longer walk to anywhere. I looked down at the floor in the front office and saw that my shadow from the firelight was dancing on the names of the children on the papers that littered the floor.

I closed the black door and walked back to the sofas.

“We can stay, but just tonight,” Dad said happily.

Ethan and Aidan cheered and hugged him like he was now officially the best dad in the world.

Most oblivious dad in the world
, I thought.

But then I found myself getting into the spirit of the evening. I quit worrying and joined in on the fun, despite the fact that I should have known better. We played old games for hours, laughed at the funny words we made up on the puzzle game, and we even found a bunch of stuffed animal friends for Aidan’s teddy bear.

I forgot all about the old woman in the shadows as I rummaged through the forgotten treasures with my family like a delighted child.

Eventually, we tired from the fun, and the fire in t
he fireplace died down. Dad tucked us each into a soft, silken blanket on the sofas, each of us with a pillow fit for a king under our heads.

After kissing us good-night, Dad settled into a high-backed chair facing the fireplace, watching sparks as they swirled into the chimney. He smiled as he watched us, each with our favorite treasure in hand, and I thought he looked happier than I had ever seen him.

Then I saw her again.

The old lady was rocking gently in the shadows by the fireplace, watching us with what looked like a mix of joy and sorrow. The firelight glinted off a teardrop as it ran down her cheek.

I was terrified, I wanted to yell, to tell Dad she was there, but for some reason I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t do anything but hang onto the edge of the sofa; I clutched it so hard I thought the velvet upholstery might rip off in my hand. I lay there for what seemed like hours, watching the old lady watching me, watching my Dad and my brothers, from the shadows, helpless.

I began to grow tired. I couldn’t stay scared forever. After a while longer I told myself it was okay if I closed my eyes, to rest them for a minute.

Only a minute.

When I opened them again, the old lady was gone, and Dad was asleep.

I kept scanning the room, looking for movement in the shadows, but all was still. My eyelids were so heavy I could hardly hold them open. The fire had died down to little more than a few dying embers, and darkness was fast settling over the room.

And then, finally, I slept.

Sunlight hit my face, and I jumped awake. My body was covered in a film of cold sweat.

What had I done?
I thought.
Why had I let myself fall asleep
?

I tried to jump off the sofa, but my legs were tangled in thick blankets, holding me down. As I struggled to free myself, a sickening panic filled me.

“What on earth are you doing?” a voice asked from above me.

It was Mom.

I stopped struggling with the blankets and rolled over to see my mom leaning over me with a bemused smirk on her face. I looked crazily around the room, disoriented.

I was in my own bedroom, in my own bed. I sat up straight, feeling giddy as a big wave of relief washed over me. It had all been a dream – the creepy camp, the crone in the corner – all of it my mind messing with me in my sleep. I felt a big smile spread across my face.

“Where’s Dad? Where are Aidan and Ethan?” I asked, eager to know everyone was really okay.

Mom sat down calmly on the side of the bed, smiled and ran her fingers lovingly through my hair before she bothered to answer.

“Still sleeping, I guess,” she said. “But everyone had better get up soon. You don’t want to be late.”

“What day is it?” I asked, still feeling confused.

“It’s Saturday morning,” she replied. “I wanted to tell you goodbye before I left to go visit your Aunt Wendy. Don’t forget to remind your Dad that you’ve got to be at camp by ten. I hope you have fun this week, and be careful.”

Just then a sudden scream split the silence in the hallway outside my bedroom.

It was Aidan, and it sounded like he was in trouble.

“DAD!” he screeched at the top of his lungs.

All the relief I had from waking up from my nightmare was gone in an instant. I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway to help.

Then Ethan started yelling for Dad, too. I was sure I was going to have a heart attack if I didn’t figure out what was going on within the next three seconds.

Dad came running out of his room into the hallway and scooped us all up in his arms, hugging us. Ethan and Aidan were shouting over each other, not in fear, but in a cacophony of joyous excitement. I was so happy that everyone was alright that I felt a tear form in the corner of my eye.