Feeling horrible, Ollie lurched forward and grabbed the girl’s wrist.
“If you don’t come with me right now,” Ollie said, “she’ll get you. Come with me and I’ll keep you safe. I promise. We’ll have your lamp with us too.”
Ollie was uncomfortably convinced that she was lying; she was pretty sure that Mother Hemlock wanted her more than Gretel right then, since Ollie still had a faint chance of escaping. Also she had no idea if she could keep Gretel safe. But she was desperate.
It wasn’t nice. But it did work. Gretel stumbled to her feet and Ollie dragged her back toward Gabe.
Mother Hemlock managed to pull the cloth off her face. She was knocking over boxes to get at them.
Gretel’s frozen eyes were newly horrified. “I told him no,” she whispered to Gabe. “But you . . . you told him yes.”
What did that mean, Ollie wondered. Gabe didn’t move. Well, she could wonder later. “Come on,” Ollie snapped. “We have to go.”
Gabe was already gesturing them on—hurry, hurry. Holding Gretel’s lamp high, Ollie followed him off into the basement shadows, gripping tight to Gretel’s dry-dead ghost hand.
Behind them came Mother Hemlock’s footsteps and the dry, heavy tread of the dead bear.
* * *
—
Coco was utterly frozen. Paralyzed by the darkness. It was like the world itself had blown out and left her in outer space. It was certainly cold enough for outer space. “Thieves stay in the basement,” Seth’s voice went on, snorting with laughter. “Until they have learned some manners.”
Coco shrank away from that cold voice, quivering. Then she gathered her courage. “You’re just a liar and a cheat!” she yelled into the darkness. “It’s just tricks—all tricks!”
But no one answered. The basement had fallen silent once more. Then the oil lamp flickered back to life, as quickly as it had gone out, standing innocently on the table. Coco looked around. No Seth. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard him at all. The watch had fallen silent.
But then Coco realized that in the darkness, two things had changed in the basement. The stairs were gone. Just—gone. There was only a blank brick wall where they had been.
The Ouija board was gone too.
He must have taken it, Coco thought. Seth must have taken it when the lights were out. She didn’t know which to be more upset about, the loss of the board or the loss of the stairs.
She stared at the place where the stairs had been, blinked, stared again. It was like the stairs hadn’t ever been there. But—maybe she wasn’t remembering right? Maybe she’d gotten turned around in the dark? Maybe the stairs came out in a different place?
It was possible, she tried to encourage herself. Coco got lost easily. She picked up the oil lamp, lifted it high. She spun in a slow circle, staring at the walls.
Couldn’t see any stairs.
The watch was silent. She looked down at its display. Still blank.
Coco’s lips were numb with fear. There had to be a way out of the basement. Seth was just hiding it from her. Tricks. Like his voice in the stairwell, like the corridor that seemed to go on forever. He was trying to distract her until morning.
She had to find Gretel’s bones before morning. She had to get back upstairs, to the second-floor corridor with the closets. She wished desperately for Ollie and Brian.
Okay, Coco told herself. First things first. You have to get out of the basement.
But Coco didn’t know how to get out of the basement. She was trying not to panic again. It felt like the walls and the ceiling were going to start sliding closer and closer together any second now, until she was in a coffin, until her tiny light was extinguished and she would never get to see the sun ever again.
Coco shoved back against the panic. He was just playing a game, the smiling man. Coco could play games too. She’d beaten him at chess, hadn’t she? You outsmarted that guy once, Coco told herself grimly. But now you’re going to have to outsmart him again, and maybe again. Enough times to find the bones, and Brian, and get all three of us home. The first step to outsmarting him was not to panic. He totally wanted her to panic.
No one, Coco knew, would really describe her as particularly smart. In class, when Coco got a good grade, teachers always gave her papers back with slightly puzzled compliments. It was part of being tiny. People would think you were eight. People would smile indulgently and ruffle her pink hair. But they didn’t really think, Hey, that’s a clever girl.
But Coco actually was smart. At least she thought she was. She was good at making plans. That was why she loved playing chess. Because you had to plan ahead. You had to try to think what the other person was thinking.
Now she had to try to think what the smiling man was thinking.
At chess tournaments, people when they saw her always went, Oh, great, I’m playing the tiny girl. Easy win.
Coco was pretty sure that was exactly what Seth had thought, seeing her. That was why he’d agreed to her chess challenge. Even why he’d separated her and Brian. Because he thought she couldn’t win on her own.
But she could, Coco thought. She could.
There had to be a way out of the basement. Because all this was Seth’s game. And where was the fun of playing a game when one side had no way to win?
Coco picked up the lamp, newly determined. First things first. The most obvious. Maybe the stairs were really there, but she just couldn’t see them. She went to the wall. She started to walk along it, holding her lamp in one hand, running her fingers along the rough plastered brick with the other.
Nothing.
Now what? How much oil was left in her oil lamp? What would happen when it gave out? She stared around herself, trying to think.
Saw something on the floor.
Frowned. Peered closer. It was—snow? She reached out and touched it. It was icy cold on her fingers. Snow? Water? Tracks? How could there be snow in here? Had Seth tracked it in somehow, in the dark?
Then suddenly Coco remembered standing in front of a mirror in a long hallway. Remembered looking back the way they’d come. Remembered seeing footprints. Ghostly, snowy footprints. Her heart began to pound.
A ghost skier might make wet footprints. Gabe. Gabe had been in the basement, on Ollie’s side of the mirror. Were these Gabe’s footprints? Was he with Ollie now? Had they found another way out of the basement? Coco strained to listen. Did she hear footsteps? Heavy footsteps, moving away from her? She thought she did. But she couldn’t be sure.
“Should I follow?” Coco whispered to the watch.
Silence. Then two beeps. As though the watch were doubtful. Reluctant. But a YES.
“Okay,” whispered Coco, trying to quiet her racing heart. Bending near to the floor, straining her eyes to find the tiny drips of snow and water, Coco began to wind her way through the maze of the basement.
15
OLLIE AND GABE and Gretel hurried through a labyrinth of boxes. Ollie’s lantern lit things in flashes as she hurried. SUMMER CLOTHES. WINTER CLOTHES. GIRL SHOES. They couldn’t run in a straight line, but had to stumble left and right, going around things.
The basement was huge. Neither Gretel nor Gabe could move very fast. Gabe was wearing ski boots. Gretel just stumbled a lot. They all made a lot of noise. Gabe’s ski boots clomped on the stone floor, and Ollie’s breathing sounded loud even to her own ears.
But then again, Ollie reasoned to herself grimly, she was carrying a giant lantern, so it wasn’t like they were hard to spot.
She risked a glance back, but she couldn’t see Mother Hemlock. Only hear her footsteps. Clack. Clack. The footsteps never seemed to hurry. But they never got any farther away either. Ollie thought of zombie movies, where the zombies wouldn’t run, but wouldn’t stop either. She fought off a shiver and tried to pull Gretel along faster.
“Oh, where are we going?” Gret
el whispered. “Where? Where is it safe? You said we’d be safe.”
“Out of here,” Ollie whispered back. “I hope. And then my friend is going to help you find your bones. So you can go home. Isn’t that what you needed? You said it in my dream. Your bones, so you could go home?”
Gretel let out a soft sigh. “Do you mean it?” she whispered. She stumbled again. For a second her clumsiness reminded Ollie of Coco, and Ollie felt a terrible surge of longing for her friend. “Do you promise? If you mean it, I’ll let you have my lamp.”
Ollie would have liked to promise. She wondered what the real story was, the history of the ghost girl, endlessly hiding, endlessly lost, and Mother Hemlock endlessly chasing. But she didn’t know if any of them would make it out, let alone Gretel. And Ollie hated to lie again. So she just said, “I’ll do my best. But first we have to hurry.”
So Gretel did her best to hurry. Behind them, Mother Hemlock’s footsteps were getting fainter. Maybe they were outrunning her! All they had to do was keep ahead of her, find a good hiding spot near the bunk room mirror, keep an eye on it, and hope Coco managed to find Gretel’s bones.
Gabe halted suddenly. Ollie had to raise her lantern and squint after his pointing finger to be sure. But it was a door! Another door. Maybe a door out! It was narrow, set in a recess in the wall, and hard to spot. It had a tarnished handle and peeling paint. Ollie reached with her free hand, turned the knob, and opened the door.
Behind it was a skinny, dark staircase leading steeply up. Looking at those stairs, Ollie thought that she’d had enough of dark staircases to last her for the rest of her life.
Gretel was hanging back. “But,” she said, “those stairs—”
Mother Hemlock’s voice interrupted, whispering almost at their backs. “Where are you?” she breathed. “Where are you? I can smell deceit. I can smell bad children . . .”
With Mother Hemlock right behind them and the long staircase ahead, Ollie didn’t hesitate. She pulled Gretel after her into the staircase and started to hurry up. Behind her, she heard Gabe close the lower door softly behind them and begin to climb heavily in their wake.
“Thanks for helping,” Ollie whispered back to Gabe as she climbed. “It will be all right,” she added to Gretel. “It will, it will . . .”
There was no sound from Gabe. Ollie had a tight grip on Gretel’s wrist and was pulling her along. But the ghost girl was pulling back. “No,” she was muttering to herself. “Don’t listen, don’t listen, don’t listen . . . That’s what I tried to tell you. But I’m so confused now. He wanted me to be confused. I don’t remember why . . . Don’t listen!”
As soon as they got off the stairs, Ollie decided, she was going to find a quiet place and try to understand what Gretel was talking about. But they had to get off the stairs first. Mother Hemlock was right behind them.
And they were almost off the stairs. Ollie could see a door in the wavering light of her oil lamp. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be okay, Gretel.”
“No, it won’t,” said Gretel. Her voice shot up into a cry, like she’d suddenly understood. “It won’t because—”
Ollie didn’t hear the end of the sentence. She groped for the knob in the door at the top of the stairs, turned it.
And froze.
As the door swung open, Gretel let out a single, soft whimper of fear before she fell silent, standing rigid beside Ollie.
They were in a strange room. No, Ollie thought. Not strange. She’d seen it before.
In a nightmare.
It was the bunk room, but it wasn’t. This room was not wide, but it was long. A thick hush lay over it. There were big black metal bars in the windows, and strong moonlight filtered in between them, throwing huge stripes of white light and shadow across the room. After the darkness of the basement, the moonlight dazzled her eyes.
Just like in Ollie’s dream, the room was full of beds. In each bed was a girl asleep, with her eyes frozen shut.
Beside Ollie, Gretel whispered, her voice short and thin with fear, “Here? Why would you bring me here?”
Across from them and a little to their left, there was another door. This one had to lead out into the hall. Ollie licked dry lips. “We just have to get across the room,” she said. “Come on.”
Before they could move, someone sat up in the bed nearest them. It was a small girl. She looked a lot like Gretel. Same thin braided hair. Same frost-blackened nose.
Except that her eyes were packed with a thick layer of ice. Her eyes were frozen shut, not open.
But despite her closed eyes, she smiled, wide and empty. She turned her face toward them. And she spoke. “Gretel, you came back,” she said, in a strange dry whisper. “Get in bed now, and she won’t ever know you were gone.”
Gretel started to tremble.
Another girl in another bed sat up. “Gretel, you brought a friend? No visiting after lights-out. Mother will be angry.”
“So angry,” said a third, also sitting up, and now there were girls sitting up in all the beds, turning their ice-packed eyes, their wide smiles to Ollie and Gretel.
“It’s okay,” Ollie whispered. “Come on. I’ll get you out of here.”
She started to cross the room.
Gretel went along when Ollie pulled, but Ollie could feel her hand shaking.
“Gretel,” a girl whispered. She had swung her legs out of bed; now she was standing, blocking their way. Another girl got up behind her. And another. They were blocking the way to the door. “Gretel, why did you run away?”
“Let us through!” snapped Ollie, and began to shove her way through the dead-eyed crowd. Gretel’s hand was still shaking, and Ollie had started to shake herself. She felt like Mr. Wilson’s deer must have felt, right before they were dragged down and mounted on the wall of Hemlock Lodge. She pushed on. “Come on, Gretel!” she snapped. “Don’t stop.”
Suddenly all the girls fell back with frightened shrieks. Ollie turned and felt a huge relief. Gabe had come into the dormitory and was plowing across the room toward them, head down, shoving his way through. Moonlight striped his blue ski jacket. The girls scrambled to get out of his way. He cleared a path to the door for Ollie and Gretel.
“Gabe,” said Ollie. “Thank you so much.” All the small ghost girls were cowering, back on their beds. Mother Hemlock was nowhere in sight. It was going to be okay. Ollie reached for the door handle.
But Gabe was in front of her. Blocking her way.
“Gabe,” said Ollie, “Gabe, move.”
He didn’t move. He looked down at her. This time, Ollie was close enough and the moonlight bright enough for Ollie to see his eyes above the ski mask.
He had the saddest eyes Ollie had ever seen.
He crossed his arms. He didn’t move. He was blocking the door.
“No!” cried Gretel. “No, please let us out!” She tried to grab the doorknob. But Gabe just shook his head. He made the most terrible effort to speak that Ollie had ever heard. But nothing came out that she could understand.
Instead a voice spoke from behind her. Seth’s voice.
Slowly, Ollie turned around.
“He lied, you know,” said Seth. “Ghosts do not like to lie. But they can. If they are properly motivated.”
He looked like plain Mr. Voland. He was wearing his green shirt, his jeans. Even in the moonlight, she could see the freckles over his nose. But his eyes had a red gleam, like reflected firelight. Maybe it was just the guttering lamp in Ollie’s hand, shining in his eyes.
But she didn’t think so.
Then Ollie blinked and Mr. Voland was gone; instead she saw Seth as she’d seen him in the corn maze, with bone-colored hair and cold blue eyes. Ollie wondered, trembling, if he had a real face at all or if he just picked one as it suited him.
“Gabe’s been here a long time,” said Seth. “It was easy enough to prom
ise him freedom for a few lies, a little misdirection. And you made it so easy, when Coco stole my Ouija board.”
Beside Ollie, Gretel moaned.
“She wanted to warn you,” said Seth, with a jerk of his chin. “She might have tried, I believe. But the poor brave thing’s been here so long, she hardly knows what’s real anymore.” His smile was broad and hungry. Triumphant. He knew he’d won.
Don’t listen, Ollie thought in horror. Don’t listen to the dead voices. That was what Gretel had said. But Ollie had listened. She’d listened twice. And she’d been caught twice.
A horrible gargling sound came from Gabe’s throat. It took Ollie a second before she understood.
Sorry. He was trying to say sorry.
“Checkmate,” said Seth. “Not much of an adversary, are you, without your watch helping you?”
Ollie licked her lips, tried to think of something to say. Couldn’t think of anything. She had to get out of this room.
“Farewell,” said Seth, and disappeared.
The next second, Mother Hemlock burst into the bunk room. She was smiling. Ollie whipped around and tried once more, in desperation, to force a way past Gabe. But he blocked her, although he trembled as he did. “Have to,” he whispered. “Have to.” His eyes over the ski mask were dark and desperate.
“Girls,” said Mother Hemlock to the crowd of watching ghosts. Her thin, scratching voice rang with triumph. “Your little classmates have come back. But it seems they want to leave us! So soon! Do we want them to leave, girls?”
“No,” whispered the girls, like a chorus of snakes.
Ollie flung Gretel’s oil lamp at Mother Hemlock. It was the only thing she could think of. But it didn’t work. The lamp rolled past and away under a bed. The glass broke; the fire went out. And then the room was lit only by moonlight. Gretel cried out, “No! My light!” and knelt weeping by the broken glass.
Ollie looked left and right. There was nowhere to run. They were hemmed in by beds, by Gabe, by the little ghost girls with their eyes frozen shut but somehow still watching.
Dead Voices Page 14