Dark Screams, Volume 3 Read online

  When she pointed across the cafeteria to Samantha and her crew, I shook my head. “Not at all. I just wanted to introduce myself. Maybe get to know you a little better. That’s all.”

  “Wow, they must be paying you a lot. Or is this a dare?”

  I frowned. “A dare? Oh, you mean, like, is this a joke? As in, am I talking to you as some kind of initiation into the girls’ club?” I glanced over at Team Spirit and tried not to laugh at their stumped expressions. I tended to do that to people. Stump them. “Or,” I said, tossing the girls a huge smile and waving, “maybe they’re blackmailing me to come talk to the freak. To make friends with her so they can plan an elaborate setup to get her on stage and dump pig’s blood all over her as the entire school looks on.”

  “I’m not a freak,” she said, from between clenched teeth.

  I looked back at her. She was now glowering at me. At least I got a rise. “I agree. And, no, they didn’t send me.”

  “Oh. Oh,” she said with a nod, a new idea coming to light, “don’t tell me. 60 Minutes fan, right?”

  “Not really.” I took another sip before digging through my backpack for my own read. I pulled out a book about a seventeen-year-old girl who led a secret life as an international spy. I figured I’d have to get to know Nancy a little before she’d spill any of her beans, and what better way to get acquainted than reading with her? Okay, that didn’t make sense. But at least we could bond over our mutual admiration for the written word.

  She eyed my book, so I held it up for her. And while I had every intention of moving slowly, of getting to know her first, wining her and dining her and all that crap, I blurted out my next question regardless.

  “So how is that book about Peter?”

  Now engrossed in reading the back cover blurb of my book, she lifted a shoulder and said absently, “It’s about a little boy who died in a fire that his mother set. Just like Peter.”

  Horrified, I eyed the book with a newfound curiosity and made a mental note of the title. “And that’s what happened to Peter?”

  She handed my book back then winced before answering. “Yes. Happy now?”

  Not by a long shot. “Is he, you know, here now?”

  She sighed aloud, then said, “Yes, and he doesn’t like me talking about him. I told you.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just really interesting.”

  “Interesting,” she said with a snort. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

  A part of me wondered why she was still in a regular school as opposed to a mental institution. But another, intrigued part wanted to believe her. Now that I got a good look at her, I could see the scratches and bruises healing on her face. Those, along with a fresh scrape that led from the corner of her eye down to the side of her mouth, made me wonder a lot more about her. About her home life. I had to question, as I was certain the school did as well, if she was being abused.

  The problem-solver in me couldn’t help but offer suggestions to her perceived problems until I could find out more. I was destined to become a counselor. Or a social worker. Or a bartender. “Maybe he’s trying to tell you something.”

  “Who?”

  “Peter. The kid who follows you around. Maybe he’s trying to communicate.”

  She smirked. “He doesn’t really talk.”

  “Exactly.” I turned toward her, suddenly excited about the prospect of getting to the bottom of Peter. Only not literally, because he was just a little boy and that would make me a perv on several levels. “Maybe he’s trying to tell you something, but he doesn’t know how. Maybe he just wants your attention, like any other little kid.”

  She thought a moment, then said, “Maybe.”

  I smiled and readied myself for a weekend of research. This would be fun. Challenging. And I hoped it would take my mind off the horrid night I’d had. I took a vow never to drink alcohol again, no matter how pretty the color.

  Just when I was about to ask Nancy if she’d like to go for a Coke after school, she leapt to her feet, looked to her side, and yelled loud enough for the citizens of Russia to hear, “Stop it!”

  A hush fell over the cafeteria, thick and uncomfortable, but it lasted only a few tense seconds before everyone realized who’d yelled. Then the entire place erupted in laughter. Nancy blushed a bright crimson. She grabbed her belongings and ran out through an emergency exit, setting off a blaring alarm, which didn’t help the situation in the least.

  But that wasn’t the strangest part of my day. As I, too, packed up my belongings to head to sixth period, I felt a sharp scratch along my back, as though someone had taken a garden rake and scraped it across my skin. I gasped and dropped my backpack to turn on the person responsible, but no one was there. Not a single living soul.

  I quickly turned back to the room. My gaze locked with Samantha’s. Her expression was an odd mixture of suspicion, worry, and dread. She rose from her table and hurried from the room.

  —

  As I fended off questions from Laura and Carrie Anne before heading to the last class of the day, I happened by Nancy in the hall. She’d dropped her book and was too busy being shouldered through the throngs of students to have a chance to get to it before someone kicked it out of her reach. I started forward but stopped short when I saw Toby MacAfee pick it up, the muscles in his long arms shifting with the effort, flexing like the swell and rise of an ocean tide.

  Still, he was a jock. He would most likely hold the book over Nancy’s head and tell her to jump for it before tossing it to a buddy down the hall. I bit down, determined to intercede on Nancy’s behalf, when he walked straight up to her, blocked the other students from barging into her anymore, and handed her the book.

  She gazed up at him, and the look on her face proved beyond a shadow of a doubt she believed that Toby MacAfee walked on water. Or, at the very least, hung the moon. “Thank you,” she said, offering him a bright smile.

  He let a grin slide into place, his too-long hair falling over his cheeks as he winked at her and continued down the hall.

  After watching him go—or, well, watching his ass go—I stepped to Nancy. “Are you okay?”

  She shrugged it off. “Sure.”

  “What’s going on?” Samantha asked. I wondered where she’d been.

  “Not much. Sorry I missed you at lunch.”

  “Not a problem.” Her gaze raked over Nancy, the disdain she felt for her like cellophane. “But I have to ask why you’re talking to the riffraff.”

  Did she honestly just call Nancy riffraff? To her face?

  “If you mean Nancy, I’m talking to her because I’d like to get to know her better.” I infused my voice with just enough edge to let my annoyance shine through. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Samantha gasped. Aloud. Like it echoed off the walls. She recovered quickly, though, and dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t expect me to join you.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  After that awkward interaction, Samantha stalked off and a flood tide of guilt washed over me. I’d been too harsh. Too—for lack of a better term—high school. She’d been nice to me. The new girl. The girl with no friends and no clue how things worked in Small Town, West Virginia. I’d have to call her after school and apologize, but first things first. I turned back to Nancy to ask her if she had plans after last period, but she was gone, too. I blew the bangs out of my eyes with a puff of frustrated air. So much for that.

  —

  As it turned out, because of my rudeness to Samantha and my inability to hook up with Nancy, I had an entire weekend to ponder my wrongdoings. Or my rightdoings, depending on one’s point of view. I kept meaning to call Samantha but put it off as long as I possibly could. Instead, I checked and rechecked the scrapes across my back a million times, wondering how anyone could’ve pulled something like that off. But gazing at my injuries took only a few minutes out of my otherwise painfully long weekend. Normally I loved weekends, but I coul
dn’t wait to get back to school to learn more about Nancy and Peter. I’d just have to learn what I could on my own until then.

  On Saturday, I began by checking with the locals about a boy named Peter who died in a fire set by his mother. It took all of five minutes before I struck gold. The librarians at Renfield Public were a font of information. They told me all about the King house that caught fire more than a decade ago under suspicious circumstances. The only fatality was that of a three-year-old boy named Peter and, indeed, his mother had been a suspect early in the investigation. But the prosecutor could never prove she had anything to do with it.

  From what the librarians told me, all of the pressure and the loss of her only child got to the young widow. She stopped eating. Her hair became thin and wiry. And she’d become increasingly volatile, blaming the death of her child on everyone from her best friend to the local sheriff until she succumbed to her own misery and killed herself a year later.

  The story was heartbreaking, but I still wondered what any of that had to do with Nancy Wilhoit. With the librarian’s help, I tracked down a copy of the Goosebumps Nancy had been reading. It was at a library in the next town over. I had to borrow my dad’s junker, as his Range Rover was getting serviced, but I finally made it to the tiny library of Trent and, after supplying proof of citizenship, address, shoe size, and blood type, checked out the book. Nancy was right. It was about a boy who died in a fire and subsequently haunted the people who lived in the house from then on until a girl came along who could see him. They became fast friends and lived quite happily until the girl turned sixteen and could no longer see him. Crazy thing was, the kid in the book was also named Peter.

  Working off a hunch, I checked to see if Nancy’s family was living in the old King house. From what I’d found out from a nice waitress at Sally’s Café and Laundry Mat, after the fire the house was uninhabitable. A shell. But it was, in fact, considered the most haunted place in the whole haunted town of Renfield. Which was a creepy name in and of itself.

  Sadly, Dad needed the car all day Sunday, so I couldn’t explore the old King house like I’d planned. And by the time I’d tracked down Nancy’s place of residence, her mother said she was at a church function and wasn’t expected back until late.

  So, with nothing else to do and no other excuse to come up with, I finally called Samantha Sunday night to apologize. I thickened my voice and hitched my breath a couple times to make myself sound more sincere. Thing was, I really did like her. I’d been to so many schools in so many different parts of the country, maybe I let my skepticism label her before I really had a chance to get to know her. No one had ever brought me a cupcake with a candle on top before. It was very thoughtful. More thoughtful than most of the in-crowd, from my experience. But those barriers of stereotype were hard to get past.

  “It’s okay,” she said, forgiving me instantly. “You’re new. You don’t understand what hanging with Nancy Wilhoit will do to you socially.”

  All right. Fine. Time to come clean. “Look, Samantha, I really don’t care about all that crap.”

  “I know,” she said, matter-of-fact. “But I do, and you’re better than Nancy Wilhoit will ever be.”

  That was harsh. “I’m not sure I am,” I said. “I mean, she seems really nice.”

  “She is. Or she was. I should know. We used to be best friends.”

  I admit it. I was shocked.

  When I didn’t comment, Samantha continued. “Up until the sixth grade, in fact. We did everything together, then she just got really weird. Like literally overnight.”

  I leaned against my headboard, which was hard and bumpy and not really comfortable at all. So I propped up a pillow then re-leaned. “Do you know what happened?”

  “Yes, she got a new friend named Peter.”

  “Ah. So just overnight she’s suddenly haunted by some kid who died in a fire ten years ago?”

  “More like thirteen or fourteen, but yes, that’s the story. All I know is her parents were having a really hard time. They were headed straight for divorce court when all that crap came down. Then something happened one weekend. Something she wouldn’t talk about and neither would her parents, but suddenly she was their world. After years of being completely ignored, she became the center of their universe, so I understand why she does what she does. I really do. And I stuck by her for a very long time. But there are only so many public outbursts a girl can take. It was drama everywhere we went. It just—it got really embarrassing.”

  I could understand that. “I’m sure it did. I guess I just don’t get how this came up so suddenly. What the catalyst was.”

  “Why is that so important? She’s a loon. End of story.”

  “I guess.”

  We talked for a while longer, but I still wasn’t convinced of much of anything when Dad pulled up. I told him I was going over to Samantha’s to study when I’d really opted for a late-night field trip. I found a flashlight in the bazillionth box I’d gone through in the garage, then drove out to Cold Creek Lane, where the old King house had burned down.

  The road was overgrown with trees and shrubs after years of neglect, but when I saw the house, I had to admit to being more than a little creeped out. It still stood for the most part, but its wooden slats were seared until they blended perfectly with the starless sky. My pocket LCD did little to illuminate the house as a whole, but I’d seen pictures while at the library. Mostly from old newspaper articles. Still, nothing could’ve prepared me for the real thing. I’d made a mental map of where the stairs were and fought through overgrown vegetation until I came across to them.

  A yellow sign across the front door proclaimed the property condemned, warning trespassers to stay out. I had issues with authority, so I kicked in a couple of boards and ducked inside.

  My biggest worry as I explored the house was falling through the dilapidated floor. It creaked with every step I took, threatening to give under my weight. I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected, however, was the strong scent of charred wood. It overpowered everything, the acrid odor stinging my nostrils and making me light-headed as I navigated through the wreckage. I took care not to touch anything, to leave the remnants of the King house as it stood. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly until I found the entrance to the basement. The fire had started there. Somehow, that fact seemed important.

  I took the steps down slowly, carefully easing my weight onto each stair until, about halfway down, I felt a tug on my hair. Not hard, but it startled me, and I stumbled down the last steps, barely managing to keep hold of the flashlight. I braced a hand on a blackened wall to get my bearings and to absorb the fact that someone had just tugged on my hair—so similar to the indecent in the cafeteria—and my first instinct was to scramble back up the stairs and run away like a little girl. But I forced my feet to stay on the basement floor.

  The nails raking across my forearm, however, convinced me otherwise. I gasped and jerked away from whatever was attacking me. A sharp spike of fear-induced adrenaline rushed up my spine. I looked toward the top of the stairs and made a run for it, but I was tripped before I got two steps.

  I dropped the flashlight when my chin slammed into a wooden slat. My teeth clanked together and I saw a million bright stars for a few seconds before fear took hold again. I needed light. After feeling around for the flashlight in vain, I turned over and crab-walked to the farthest wall. My breaths came in short, quick bursts as I gasped for air through lungs that had seized in fright.

  It was real. What Nancy Wilhoit was going through was real. I felt another tug at my hair, another scrape across my arm, another punch to my ribs, and I waved my arms around wildly, trying to fight off my attacker.

  “Please, stop!” I yelled, through the sobs that had taken hold.

  And it did. Everything stopped in an instant.

  I sat there, arms in the air, eyes squeezed shut so hard they ached, and waited. But nothing happened. Then I heard a sound, like metal rolling across the floor
.

  Slowly and with infinite care, I opened my eyes. The flashlight rolled toward me. I half expected it to rise up and bludgeon me to death, but it stopped beside me.

  All I could do was stare at it. When I didn’t make a move, it rolled closer as though to nudge me. Literally, it coaxed me to pick it up.

  I raised my gaze and scanned the area in absolute shock. “Is this a game?” I asked whoever, whatever, was there. “Are you playing a game, Peter, because this is not funny.”

  And there it was. I had fallen to the ranks of talking to ghosts. But who else could it be? What other explanation was there?

  When I finally wrapped my shaking fingers around the flashlight and pointed the beam back toward the staircase, I received a mild scratch for my efforts. It didn’t take a genius to realize I’d been warned. No more stairs. No escape. I closed my eyes and drew in a long, shuddering breath, wondering how long it would take for someone to find me. Would I die of starvation? Because there was no way in hell I was going to disobey my captor. If he didn’t want me to use the stairs, I was not using the stairs.

  I could barely move and yet I was shaking so hard I began to worry about the side effects. I decided to take my own advice, the advice I’d given Nancy, and try to find out what Peter wanted. Try to communicate with him. But before I could ask him anything, he nudged the flashlight. I almost dropped it, but managed to keep my grip when he nudged it again.

  “What?” I asked, and again he pushed on the flashlight. The same direction every time. So I pointed it to my right. After another gentle nudge, I swung the light farther until it shone into a crevasse in the charred cinder. There was something there, gleaming from between the slats.

  The moment I saw it, Peter scratched me again. Then poked and prodded until I was on my feet, and he practically shoved me forward.

  “Okay,” I said, getting defensive. “I got it. I’m looking. Chill, little man.”

  I reached into the crevasse with visions of spiders dancing in my head and pulled out a book. No, a journal. Clearly, it had not been in that crevasse during the fire. It wasn’t singed, just dirty. I turned it over in the light, opened the brown cover, and there in a flourish of script was the name Mrs. Emmanuelle King.