The Dead End (10 page)

For the rest of the afternoon, Casey felt a confusing mix of emotions. She felt sad and sickened whenever she thought about Millie and the terrible way she’d died. But thoughts of Erik kept creeping into her mind, pushing out the sadness. Each time she remembered hugging him, she felt a little thrill.

For the first time since she’d come to Stillness, Casey found herself looking forward to something. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

By evening, she was still thinking about Erik. “I’m going nuts,” Casey laughed at herself as she climbed into bed. “I’d better watch out or I’ll dream about him, too.”

But she didn’t dream about Erik. That night, for the first time, Casey dreamed of Millie’s fire. She smelled the harsh, acrid smoke and heard the ferocious crackling. It was just as Millie had described it in her diary. Casey even dreamed that she could hear Millie herself. She was shouting at Casey,
Get up! Get up! Get up!

Casey opened her eyes. There was light outside her window, but it didn’t look like sunrise. The air in her room smelled bitter. Casey sucked in a breath and started to choke.

She squeezed her eyes shut again. “It’s just a dream,” she told herself, digging her fingernails into her palms. “Wake up! Wake up!”

A loud crash made her jerk upright. Her room was awash in glowing light. Looking out the window, Casey could see that the porch, a floor beneath her, was on fire. Part of it had collapsed, sending orange flames shooting toward the sky.

She leaped up from the bed.
Dream or not,
she thought,
I have to get out of here.

Smoke hung like a blanket over the room. It stung her eyes, blinding her. Casey moved forward slowly,
arms outstretched, yelping as she tripped over a pair of sneakers she’d left in the middle of the floor.

At last she felt the edge of the door beneath her fingertips. It felt warm, and Casey knew the fire must be close. But she had to open it. The door was her only way out.

Using her T-shirt to protect her hand, Casey grasped the doorknob and pulled open the door. A wave of blistering heat washed over her.

The corridor was filled with flames. Beyond it, she could see more flames climbing up the stairs.

“Mom!” Casey screamed. “Dad!”

There was no answer. All she heard was the roar of the fire. She didn’t know if her parents were trapped on the other side of the blaze, or if they’d somehow made it out of the house.

“Mom! Dad! Are you there? Help me!”

Bits of ash swirled around Casey’s head like a blizzard. The flames reached toward her, hungry for the air in her room.

Casey slammed the door against them, and backed away. “Help me!” she screamed again, even though she knew no one could hear her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. Casey spun around and came face-to-face with her reflection in the dressing table mirror. Through a haze of smoke and tears, she caught a glimpse of tangled black hair, a soot-smudged face. Her dark eyes were wide with terror.

Casey had a sickening sense of déjà vu. Then she realized why.

I read this,
she thought.
This was in Millie’s journal. She saw it all, every detail.

But Millie had misunderstood one thing. The girl she had seen in the mirror, the one who’d been trapped in the fire — it wasn’t Millie, after all. It was Casey.

The wallpaper around the door had started to blister, the printed ferns twisting and curling from the heat. Soon, Casey knew, the wall itself would be on fire. Then it would be only a matter of moments before the whole room was swallowed in flames.

Casey could barely breathe now. Smoke filled the room. Vaguely, she remembered from lessons at school that you were supposed to get low in a fire. On her hands and knees, she crawled as far away
from the door as possible. When her hand struck a wall, she huddled against it.

From beyond the door there came a crash that made the floor shudder. Casey guessed it was the staircase giving way. She hoped at least her parents had made it out in time.

I’m going to die here,
Casey thought. Dimly, she wondered if Millie had had the same thought before she died.

As she sat there with her head tucked into the crook of her elbow, Casey felt a hand grasp hers; solid, real fingers laced through her own. Someone was pulling her to her feet.

Mom?
Casey thought. But it wasn’t her mother’s hand. Through her tears, Casey could barely make out the figure of a girl. The hand grasping hers felt small and strong.

Casey allowed herself to be pulled upward, toward the small far window, the one that had never opened.

The window!
Casey thought. And suddenly, she realized there was still a way out.

Just then, the fingers holding her let go. Casey reached out blindly, desperate for the return of that
reassuring grip. But her fingers brushed against nothing. There was no one there.

But now she was on her feet and she knew she had a chance to save herself. She grabbed the bedside lamp and broke the window on the second try. Suddenly, she could hear her parents. They were somewhere on the ground, screaming in voices she’d never heard before. Voices full of panic.

Casey used the base of the lamp to knock the rest of the glass away from the frame and managed to get one leg out the window. The fire lit up the area bright as day, and she could see the ground clearly, a scraggly patch of dirt and weeds. It lurched before her eyes, and her heart seized up with fear.

“I can’t do it!” she cried.

Yes you can,
a voice said clearly. It came not from the room, but from somewhere within her mind, and Casey recognized it at once. It was the voice from her dreams. Millie’s voice.

Behind Casey, there was a roar. The fire had eaten away the door and was spreading across the wall of her room.

Now, go!
the voice said.

Casey looked down at the ground again. It
seemed to swim in the smoky haze. She closed her eyes against the sight. As she swung the other leg over the windowsill, Casey cried out, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Then she jumped.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, most of the house had been destroyed. After they’d put it out, the firefighters guessed that the fire had started in the kitchen, then spread quickly to the dining room and up the stairs.

“An old wooden house like this is a tinderbox,” the head fireman told Casey’s parents. “You’re lucky we had that storm the night before. If the wood had been dry, the fire would have spread even faster.”

Casey shivered at the thought. Any faster and she wouldn’t have made it out.

She leaned back against the side of the fire truck, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
Not long after the fire trucks had shown up, Erik and his mother and the twins had arrived with blankets and thermoses of coffee. Erik was the one who’d called the fire department. He’d spotted the blaze over the tops of the trees.

“Do you have any idea how it started?” Casey’s dad asked. He was still in his pajamas, wrapped in a plaid blanket. In one hand, he held a thermos lid full of coffee, which he seemed to have forgotten about. He hadn’t taken a single sip.

“Hard to say. Often in these old places the problem is electrical,” the fireman said. “They’ve got old, frayed wires, sometimes with nothing but some rotten cloth for insulation. You plug in a few modern appliances — computers, coffeemakers, and whatnot — and, well, the worn-out wires just can’t take the heat, if you pardon the expression.”

“You think that’s what it was, then? An electrical fire?” asked Casey’s mother, who looked pale and shaken. She had both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee as if holding on to it for dear life.

“Could be,” the fireman said. “Often there are clues. Lightbulbs flickering. Things shorting out. You folks have anything like that?”

Casey’s father nodded. “We did have some flickering lights.”

“Well, then,” said the fireman. “Anyway, I expect the insurance company will do a full investigation. You had insurance on this place, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Casey’s mother. “Thank goodness for that.”

The fireman looked back toward the charred remains of the house, and Casey followed his gaze. The front portion was still standing. But the porch, the kitchen, Casey’s room, and most of the attic were gone.

“Darn shame,” the fireman said, shaking his head. “What I don’t understand is living all the way out here without a phone. You’re lucky this boy happened to see the fire, and had the presence of mind to call us.” He patted Erik’s shoulder with a gloved hand.

Erik just nodded, accepting the praise but not relishing it. As Casey’s parents and the fireman continued to talk, Erik moved over to Casey’s side. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she said. The firemen had bandaged her sprained ankle and one of her hands, which
she’d cut climbing through the broken window. Her eyes burned fiercely and her lungs still ached from the smoke. But she was alive.

Erik took Casey’s good hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Casey was startled. What was he thinking, holding her hand right in front of their parents?!

She started to pull away. Then she stopped. Erik’s words from their afternoon at the stream suddenly echoed in her head:
What’s the worst that could happen?

Nothing,
Casey thought.
Or nothing bad, anyway.
And instead of pulling her hand away, she squeezed back. Then she laughed.

“When you said you’d come by tomorrow, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she joked.

But Erik didn’t laugh. He leaned toward Casey with a worried expression. “Do you think she did it?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Millie, I mean. Do you think she could have started the fire?”

Casey shook her head. “No, definitely not.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Erik. “After the other things that happened. How do you know she didn’t do this, too?”

Casey thought of Millie’s voice, clear and firm, urging her,
Get up!
Millie had been the one to warn her that the fire had started. In fact, Casey realized, she had been warning her all along.

“She was trying to protect us,” she said, thinking aloud. As she said it, she knew that it was true. “She knew what was going to happen, and she was trying to scare us out of the house, so no one got hurt. Only it didn’t work.”

She was like my guardian angel,
Casey thought.

Erik’s mother came over to them. She held one of the twins, who was asleep on her shoulder.

“You poor thing. You look exhausted,” she said to Casey. “Why don’t you all come over to our house and get some sleep?” she added, turning to Casey’s parents. “Once you’re rested, you can use the phone to make some calls.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you,” Casey’s mother replied. “We’ll need to find a hotel to stay in until we can make arrangements with our subletters back in New York.”

Back in New York.
Casey felt a sudden pang. Of course they would be going back to New York, since
they no longer had a house here. Why hadn’t that occurred to her until this moment?

Suddenly, Casey wasn’t ready to leave Stillness. Who knew if she would ever come back? And what if she never saw Erik again?

She looked into his face and realized he was thinking the same thing.

Calm down,
Casey told herself.
You’re going to be fine.
After all, she had just escaped a fire, jumped from a second-floor window, and held hands with a boy right in front of everyone. In the last twelve hours, Casey had surprised herself more than she ever had in her entire life. It seemed like this new obstacle was probably something that she could deal with.

The sun was just starting to rise as Casey’s parents helped her into the backseat of the car. Casey rolled down the window and leaned out, looking back at the house one last time. She was hoping she would see some sign of Millie.

But there was nothing. In the cold, morning light, the remains of the house looked utterly empty. The house was gone, and, Casey thought, so was Millie.

“Thank you,” she whispered, anyway, just in case.

Casey watched the house until they turned around the bend and it disappeared from sight. Then she turned to face forward, ready for whatever came next.

The Dead End
by Mimi McCoy

This Totally Bites!
by Ruth Ames

Miss Fortune
by Brandi Dougherty

This Totally Bites! by Ruth Ames.

Over a delicious dinner of perfectly cooked hamburgers, Great-aunt Margo talked about her hometown in Romania. A small village with a funny name, it was nestled deep in the Carpathian Mountains, and it sounded beautiful. Margo described lush green forests, clear blue streams, narrow cobblestone streets, and ancient castles.

As she spoke — and Mom chimed in with memories of photographs her parents had shown her — I glanced out the window at the Manhattan skyline. Though I loved the tall buildings and concrete sidewalks of New York City, I liked the idea of such a rural, quaint place … the place my ancestors had lived! Suddenly, I realized that Great-aunt Margo had given me a great starting point for my social studies project.

Excited, I helped with the dishes and excused myself for the night. Then I headed into my room, grabbed my laptop, and sat cross-legged on my bed.

I opened Google, then typed in the name of my family’s Romanian village, grateful for the
Did you mean?
feature after I’d misspelled it twice. Then I clicked on the Wikipedia page; it showed a pretty picture of the forests Great-aunt Margo had talked about, and gave the basic facts: population, map coordinates, and weather. Then, as I skimmed the page, I spotted a sentence that made my jaw drop.

I sat back, my pulse racing.
Transylvania?
As in, Count Dracula territory? I had no idea that my family came from
there.
Intrigued, I started to read more, but then my IM pinged. It was Gabby.

Bad news!
she’d written.
Dentist said I have to get braces!

I was still preoccupied by the whole Transylvania thing, but I tried to turn my attention to my best friend.

That totally bites!
I typed back, hoping to make her smile.

Her response popped up immediately:
Am so not LOL-ing. Of course u can joke about it, Em. U have perfect teeth!

I shook my head. Though my dentist had recently declared that I wouldn’t need braces (I’d celebrated with a candy feast that had resulted in three cavities), my teeth were
far
from perfect. I rose up on my knees so I was facing the mirror above my dresser, and I opened my mouth in an exaggerated smile. There they were, in the corners of my mouth — my super-embarrassing, super-pointy teeth. My dentist called them “incisors” and had even remarked that mine were sharper than most. I knew he was being nice by not calling them what they really were: fangs.

I heard another
ping!
and glanced back at my computer.

And ur “fangs” don’t count!
Gabby had written.

She seemed upset, so I decided to call her. By the time we said good-bye, it was late, so I finished the Edgar Allan Poe story I had to read for English, brushed my imperfect teeth, changed into my pj’s, and crawled into bed.

As usual, I crawled into bed but I couldn’t sleep.

First, I flipped onto my side, then my belly, then my back. Passing headlights from cars threw strange shapes onto my ceiling. The falling raindrops sounded like fingertips tapping against my window-pane. Then I remembered the Wikipedia page I’d stopped reading, and I sat up.

Without turning on the light, I eased out of bed and walked over to my desk. Sinking into my chair, I opened my laptop, and went back to where I had left off:

BANG!

The loud sound made me jump up so fast that I almost knocked over my chair. The bang hadn’t been a clap of thunder, or one of the many sirens I was used to hearing at all hours. It hadn’t even come from outside. It had come from right next door.

From the guest room.

Maybe Great-aunt Margo, like me, had trouble sleeping. Maybe she was unpacking, and the two of us could have a midnight snack. Maybe we could even discuss the vampire legends of her town. I was curious to learn more. For someone who enjoyed horror stories, I knew very little about vampires.

I tiptoed into the hallway. A window was open somewhere in the apartment, and I shivered in my thin pajamas. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the door to the guest room was ajar.

Moving as silently as possible, I crept over and paused on the threshold. The long, narrow room was blanketed in darkness, and the one window at its far end was open. The damp breeze lifted the gauzy white curtains, making them dance like restless ghosts. Piles of fancy-looking luggage were in the center of the room, and the scent of Great-aunt Margo’s perfume filled the air. But Margo herself was nowhere to be found. The bed was still neatly made, and the room was empty.

Except for the cages and cages full of bats.

Stuffed bats,
I reminded myself as I stepped inside.

I was still getting used to the fact that Great-aunt Margo was Romania’s leading expert on vampire bats. She seemed like someone who’d have a more glamorous job. I held my breath, spooked by the sight of the dark, silent creatures. They all hung upside down from the bars of the cages, their leathery wings tucked against their furry bodies and their beady eyes shut tight.
Like they’re sleeping,
I thought, shuddering.

Great-aunt Margo was even weirder than I’d thought! Did she put her stuffed bats into these poses every night, as if they were her dolls or pets or something? And where
was
she? She couldn’t have gone outside in the rain. Was she in the kitchen?

Before I could turn to leave the room, lightning flashed outside, and I gave a start. For a second, the bat cage nearest me was lit up, and I saw that the cage door was swinging wide open. That must have been the bang I’d heard earlier: the wind blowing open the cage. I leaned over to close the small door.

Suddenly, one of the bats inside opened its eyes.

Its tiny, bright red eyes.