Tales from the Haunted Mansion Vol. 1: The Fearsome Foursome Page 5

  “Mmm. Strawberries. The best he ever smelled,” were the only words of comfort Willa would be receiving from that little brat she called a brother. Billy was two years younger. And even though Willa didn’t have a complete memory of the world before him, she was fairly convinced they were the happiest two years of her life.

  “Billy!” chastised their mom. “Show a little respect.” Dad just shook his head. That’s all you could do with Billy.

  But Billy didn’t apologize. That wasn’t his way. Billy never said he was sorry for anything. And the funny part was Chubs had been his pet to begin with. He’d arrived one Christmas, wrapped in a bow.

  In the beginning, Billy took good care of Chubs; the best he could, Willa supposed. He even picked out the stupid name, on account of Chubs’s obvious weight issue. But by the time January rolled around, the writing was on the wall. Billy was incapable of taking care of a pet. The cage was never cleaned, the water rarely replaced. And that was when Willa inherited Chubs for good. He moved into her room and had lived there ever since. Until that morning.

  Now he lived in a frozen strudel box.

  Willa knew the rest of the routine all too well. In about an hour, her father would ask, “Do you want another one?” as if Chubs was as replaceable as an ice cream cone.

  After the funeral, Willa moped back to her room and plopped down on her bed. She wished she could sleep forever. Or at least until Friday. There was a soft knock at her door. Willa’s head shot up. Please, she thought, anyone but Billy. Then she realized it couldn’t be him. The knock was way too polite.

  Willa’s mom entered, carrying a tray with tea and fresh apricot scones. It was time for the talk. The “pets eat, they poop, they die” speech. Willa could practically recite it in her sleep. After a bite of a scone, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  To Willa’s surprise, neither did her mom. She had come with a gift. “Put out your wrist.” Willa did so and her mom slipped on a new bracelet—its four charms representing her deceased pets. “I just heard the weather report,” her mom continued, changing the subject. “It’s going to be a beautiful night. Why not have a few friends over for a sleep-out? Dad could pitch a tent in the yard.”

  To Willa, this seemed a terrible idea. The last thing she felt like doing was hearing Kayla, Tanisha, and Cassidy babble on about boys and pedicures while Chubs lay rotting under the earth. Maybe if Tim was allowed to attend…But sleep-outs had a strict no-boys policy. And besides, Tim had a big game the next day.

  Her mom wouldn’t let up. “You can make s’mores. Tell a few ghost stories. Good times for all.”

  Hmm. Sounding better. A tent in the yard was always spooky fun. Maybe a sleep-out would help her forget, if just for a little while. Willa always loved a good s’more. But not as much as she loved a good ghost story.

  It was just after midnight. The girls were huddled together in the center of the tent, Cassidy at maximum-level annoying. Too much sugar or hormones or both. She was grilling Willa about Steve’s “availability,” to which Willa replied, “We’re twelve. We’re all available.” But the endless gossip did take Willa’s mind off Chubs…temporarily.

  Now don’t go swallowing your tongue just yet. Young Willa will be thinking about her dearly departed pet soon enough. Oh, they all will.

  The breeze picked up and soon the tent was rattling like mad. So much for the weather report. Willa went outside to reinforce the stakes. Tanisha was already suggesting they pack it in. But that wasn’t happening. Mother Nature was letting them know the time was right for the next phase of the sleep-out. The final phase. And there would be very little sleeping after that.

  After returning to the tent, Willa adjusted the light on a retrofitted lantern. The mood was just right. “Kayla. Why don’t you show Cass and Tanny what you brought?” Willa already knew what was in the tiny felt pouch. It was something new and ought to be good for a few giggles.

  Kayla held up the pouch, announcing its contents. “Behold—an actual witch-bone!”

  Tanisha wrinkled her nose. “A witch-bone? What’s a witch-bone?” Now that was a mystery.

  Kayla slipped two fingers into the pouch. “The gypsy lady said it has great power.” She did her best gypsy lady voice. “But von must use de caution ven von vishes ta invok de undervorld.”

  The others looked at her cockeyed before issuing a collective “WHAT?”

  Kayla sighed, then repeated the gypsy lady’s words in her regular voice. “One must use caution when one wishes to invoke the underworld.”

  “OH.”

  Tanisha shook her head. “Those people are all fakes. My dad says that psychics and people who say they have powers aren’t real, otherwise they’d be rich. They’d know all the lottery numbers the day before and they’d win a million dollars every time. Was the gypsy lady rich?”

  Cassidy tilted her head. “Uh-duh! She worked in a carnival.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  It would be about two seconds before they were talking boys again. Willa needed to reel them back in. She held the lantern under her chin, giving her face an unworldly glow. “The spirit world has no use for money. They only want your soul!” With her best creepy cackle, Willa turned off the lantern. Click! Pitch-black.

  She was hoping for screams.

  Nothing came. She waited. Talk about a non-reaction. They didn’t even beg for the light to come back on—though they were thinking it. The wind was really doing a number on the tent. Finally, Tanisha broke down. “Lights, please!”

  Willa held out a few more seconds; then the lantern popped on and the others were looking at a face they wouldn’t soon forget. Willa’s eyes had turned white, her hair was sticking straight up, and she was chanting in a witchy voice, “I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get yooooou!”

  The girls scrambled to the opposite side of the tent. Tanisha’s lip quivered. Cassidy made a cross with two fingers. Kayla sat on a juice box. Squirt!

  Willa couldn’t hold the look any longer. Her pupils rolled down from her skull and she burst into hysterics. “Sorry, but I had to!” It was a face she’d done for the Fearsome Foursome about a billion times. Of course, it no longer had the desired effect on Tim, Noah, and Steve. “Willa’s doing the eye thingy again. Oh, I’m soooo scared.” But on Kayla, Cassidy, and Tanisha, it worked like a chilling charm.

  “That wasn’t funny,” said Tanisha. A lull of disquiet took over the tent. Had Willa gone too far? If you were reading Happy Camp Diaries, yes, too far. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is still Tales from the Haunted Mansion, which means Willa hadn’t gone far enough.

  To her relief, the silence was broken by laughter. Apparently, Cassidy and Tanisha had just gotten the memo: it was fun to get scared, as long as you knew it was pretend. Like on a roller coaster. Or at a haunted house.

  Yet for some reason, Kayla hadn’t joined in. “Silence!” she commanded. The girls settled down. “Where was I?” It didn’t sound like Kayla was asking. More like she was telling. She looked transformed, as if she was holding her own seance circle of sorts, and channeling someone else’s spirit. Perhaps it was the gypsy lady, Madam Whoever, with instructions from the beyond.

  “Proceed, Madam Kayla,” said Willa, keeping with the mood.

  Kayla shot her an icy look. “I am not Kayla.” Good one, thought Willa. She’s really selling it.

  She sold it, all right. Kayla’s manner was creepy and authentic. A well timed boo would have sent Cassidy and Tanisha skyrocketing through the roof. On any other night, Willa would have gone for it. But after the scary-eye thingy, she didn’t want to risk a mass exodus. She was having too much fun for that.

  Kayla removed the witch-bone from the pouch. If we’re being honest, it looked exactly like a turkey wishbone dipped in shellac.

  “What’s it do?” asked Tanisha.

  Cassidy cringed. “It looks like a regular wishbone. They come free with the bird. And just so you know, I’m going vegan, so I’m not touching it!”<
br />
  Willa quickly did some damage control. “No worries. It’s a witch-bone, not a wishbone. Isn’t that right, Madam Whoever?” Kayla nodded.

  And just like that, Cassidy was on board. “Oh, okay. As long as it’s not turkey.” The moment was capped off by a series of thunderclaps, loud and ominous. Suddenly, no one was laughing. Not even Willa. “Oh, man. It was supposed to be a perfect night. Maybe we should get inside.”

  “Amen to that!” seconded Tanisha.

  “But it is. It is a perfect night,” responded Kayla, channeling Madam Whoever.

  Cassidy pointed to a tiny scroll tied to one of the bone stems. “What’s that, a recipe?”

  Kayla tried to remember. “She called it…intervention.”

  Willa suppressed a smile. “An incantation.”

  “How do you know?” snapped Kayla. “Were you there?”

  “No. But I know about these things.” Cassidy and Tanisha nodded in agreement. Willa was all about the scary. “An incantation is a spell,” she continued. “When you say certain words in a certain order, they can bring about”—Willa paused for dramatic effect—“change.”

  Cassidy and Tanisha were now sharing a feeling of impending doom. Or maybe it was the s’mores. Either way, it wasn’t good.

  “Read it,” insisted Willa.

  “I shouldn’t. Not tonight!” Kayla protested. Tanisha and Cassidy agreed: just call it a night while they still had their lungs.

  “The witch-bone demands it. You must!”

  With the wind simmering down to a respectable hum, Willa raised the lantern so Kayla could read the scroll. The words were written in red ink. Red “ink.” Quite the coincidence, is it not, dear reader? “‘Whoever breaks the bone you see, a single wish shall grant to thee.’”

  Willa was watching for the girls’ reactions. Cassidy and Tanisha were spellbound. “So what you’re saying is, like, the first one to break the witch-a-majig in half gets a wish?” said Cassidy, paraphrasing what she thought she’d heard.

  “That’s right.” Willa nodded. “The first girl to snap the witch-bone gets her wish granted.”

  Cassidy rubbed her hands together. “Send it on down. Tonight I’ll be hanging with Steve-o.”

  The others got a laugh out of that. Soon there were smiles all around. The idea of having one’s wishes come true always brings out a person’s fun side.

  Try it, right now. Close your eyes and make a wish. But be cautious. There is a terrifying truth in the old saying “Be careful what you wish for.” Now read on….

  The witch-bone passed from girl to girl, each one separately sharing a favorite desire. Kayla had always wanted to see Tokyo. She twisted the bone but it would not snap. “Fail,” the other girls said.

  Cassidy wished her skin would clear up before her thirteenth birthday. She wrenched it the opposite way. “Another fail,” Cassidy said.

  Next up, Tanisha wished her father would lose thirty pounds…by morning. How’d she do? Put it this way: her dad woke up three pounds heavier. “Epic fail,” the other girls yelled. They were really getting into the game now.

  Last, the witch-bone found its way to Willa. The girls couldn’t wait to hear what the future horror writer had to say. What would she wish for? The zombie apocalypse? A vampire’s masquerade ball? Or something simpler but, to twelve-year-old girls, no less frightening: to marry Tim Maitland?

  Kayla rubbed her hands together. “This is gonna be large.”

  Willa closed her eyes and considered the possibilities. What if something like a witch-bone really did exist? What if the wishes people made on shooting stars and birthday candles actually came to pass? There was so much to ask for. So many wonderful things to accomplish. People to save, diseases to cure. Annoying siblings to eliminate. Now, now, Willa. Mustn’t go there.

  She took her time, giving it some actual thought. As if it was reality. As if the witch-bone was real. Cassidy couldn’t stand it anymore. “Uh, today. While we’re young!”

  Willa zeroed in on a wish. The perfect choice. The only choice she could make on a day that started out as terribly as that one had. Willa opened her mouth and said the words: “I wish…”

  An explosion of thunder rocked the neighborhood, setting off car alarms and swallowing Willa’s every syllable. Whatever she said couldn’t be heard—not by the girls, not by Willa herself. But the witch-bone understood.

  When the rumbling skies settled down, Tanisha was the first to ask: “Well? What was it?”

  “What?”

  “Your wish. What’d you ask for?”

  Kayla threw up her hand in protest. “No—be quiet!

  This wasn’t part of the routine. Everyone else had said theirs. “Why?” asked Cassidy. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Because.” Kayla pointed to Willa’s hand. “If she says it, it might not come true.” What was she talking about? Willa looked down. The witch-bone had snapped in half.

  Well, it didn’t much matter what Kayla had to say. Cassidy and Tanisha wouldn’t sleep until they knew, unloading a barrage of guesses, from the real to the ridiculous. Willa shook her head after every last one. She shook her head so many times that at one point she actually thought it might unscrew and roll off.

  Regrettably, it did not. (The disembodied head happened in the previous story.)

  After about the hundred and eleventh guess, with Willa contemplating pulling every last strand of hot-pink hair from her skull, she decided to give the girls something—anything—to shut them up. So Willa said, “World peace.”

  Tanisha and Cassidy glared at her like they’d been personally insulted. “World what? No way! You wasted a perfectly good wish on world peace?” This was a terrible finale for what, to them, might have included designer shoes, trips to Paris, or brand-new Ferraris. World peace? Yawn.

  Willa rolled onto her side, zipping the sleeping bag over her face. “Good night.” The ground wasn’t very comfy. Maybe she should have wished for a bed.

  Within a few minutes, the girls were conked out, dreaming of designer shoes and trips to Paris in their brand-new Ferraris. Well, except for Willa, that is.

  Willa crept into the yard, past the vegetable garden, to the muddy rectangle where the family pets had been interred. Where Chubs had been laid to rest that very morning. The ground between her pink toenails was still moist. And twelve inches below, a furry carcass that used to be Chubs began stirring inside its cardboard casket. The eyes bolted open, and before it even knew where it was, the undead guinea pig began gnawing its way out of its plastic zipper sandwich bag. Next there was the cardboard casket, which was no match for the rodent’s expanded fangs. The dirt would be an obstacle. It always was. But Chubs was a natural-born digger. Or a natural-dead one; take your pick. The guinea pig tunneled its way up through the loosely packed earth, forging a path to the world of the living. Air. Freedom. Food!

  Willa saw the dirt jiggle by her feet. It was him, her Chubsy-wubsy bear. Sort of. She dropped to her knees, scooping away the top layer of dirt by hand. She would set him free. Render mouth-to-mouth if necessary.

  The rounded face of her resurrected rodent jiggled its way up to the surface. It was Chubs—or what Chubs had become. Those once warm chestnut eyes were now blazing orbs of fire, matching the beast’s ravenous appetite. It didn’t wait for Willa, its former servant in life, to pluck its plump torso from the grave. The Chubs-thing did all the work, twisting and pulling as it extracted itself out of the ground, while Willa watched, sick with terror.

  Now it was free.

  Willa fell back onto her elbows, trying to distance herself. But the Chubs-thing kept coming, ambling toward her, a legion of writhing maggots hitching a ride on its dirt-covered form. Willa knew at once—as soon as it crawled up her leg and headed for her throat—that the pet she had so adored had little in common with the thing she now feared. The Chubs-thing opened its mouth wide—far too wide to be normal—and unveiled its upper incisors, now longer and sharper, having been nourished by the earth jus
t like her mom’s veggies.

  Rrrrreeeeech!

  It unleashed a ghastly cry, the hunger pangs of the dead. Willa recognized its foul smell: cardboard and strawberry extract mixed with rot. The creature’s intent was painfully clear—painfully being the operative word. It was way past dinnertime, and Chubs expected to be fed.

  And we all know what zombies eat!

  Willa’s eyes opened with a jolt. She found herself back in the tent, entangled in her sleeping bag. Somehow, the monstrous screech still seemed to be hanging in the air. Bad dream, right? Yeah, sure, whatever you say.

  The other girls were still asleep, but Willa heard a ghastly sound coming from the corner of the tent. She switched on the lantern to discover…Kayla, snoring like a rhino. She really had to get that deviated septum checked out.

  By then, Willa was wide awake. She thought about reading; she always brought a scary book with her. But that would only stimulate the old noggin, and then she’d be up forever. And Willa wanted to sleep. Maybe a little fresh air would do the trick. Fortunately, the weather had settled to match the earlier prediction. There was no thunder, no lightning. As her mom had said, it was a beautiful night.

  So Willa did what one always does in one of these stories. She climbed out of her sleeping bag and, with the lantern as her only companion, unzipped the tent and ventured outside. Just like in her dream. Except this time, she was awake. Good move, Willa. This should work out well for you. Heh-heh-heh.

  A thin layer of fog veiled the earth below her feet. Not a problem. Willa knew the route by heart. She would visit the pet cemetery, paying her respects not only to Chubs but to her rabbit, her parrot, and her goldfish, the pets who were represented on her bracelet.

  But as she entered the garden, something crunched under her foot. Willa didn’t want to look down. Oh, but she had to. It was the frozen strudel casket, gnawed to bits. She swung the lantern around, bringing the rest of the garden into the light.