by B. A. Frade
Rachel didn’t get too far before she turned back. “Be sure to hide that book where no one will ever find it.” Then she disappeared into the dancing crowd.
“I know just the place,” Tyler said.
We hurried to the library. He found a spot on a far-back shelf on the very top row, in between boring-looking books about Transylvanian history.
“I’d never look there,” I told him. Before he boosted me up so I could slip the book in the slot, we used the leftover fake blood I’d brought to smear across the pages. We couldn’t destroy it, so I wanted to mess up the book as much as possible, making it so that no one else would want it if they found it. I put blood smears on every page until the tube was empty and the book was ruined.
Then we stashed it on the bookshelf, where it hopefully would stay for infinity.
After that, we didn’t spend any more time thinking about the book or the Scaremaster. Our friends were in the gym, and we didn’t want to miss the party. It was an epic Halloween!
“Last dance,” the DJ called.
“Meet you after,” Tyler told me, before hurrying off.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“The Scaremaster ruined my first dance,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m not going to let that happen again.”
Next thing I knew, he was swaying to the beat with Soon-Yi.
I stood by the edge of the dance floor, alone, watching our friends and teachers. It was over. The Scaremaster had had his fun, and now it was done. I leaned back against the wall and wondered if things had started to shift once I’d discovered my own fear, or if that was just coincidence.
It was the teeth that made me realize what scared me most. And now that I was thinking about it, it seemed unusual for two zombies to have such large, protruding fangs. The way they’d moved in toward me made my heart race. I had been afraid they’d bite my neck. Suck my blood. Turn me into one of them.
I’d seen hundreds of vampire movies, but none of them had made me feel this terrified.
Turned out the Scaremaster had done exactly what he’d said he was going to do. He’d discovered my greatest fear.
My greatest fear was vampires.
Epilogue
“The ski slopes look amazing,” Zoe exclaimed. She was standing with her best friend Matt in front of the large glass window next to his sofa bed. The rental cabin was small, but had just enough space for both the Ortiz and Lancaster families to be together. Twelve-year-old Zoe would have to share a room with her eight-year-old sister, Chloe, while Matt slept on the pull-out couch in the living room.
“Yeah. Amazing,” Matt agreed. There was nothing blocking the view between the cabin and the steep face of the mountain. He pushed back his slick light brown hair and stared out, as if planning his first run of the day.
“Hey, Lancaster, check it out.” Matt put his hand on Zoe’s shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the slopes.
Matt was twelve, like Zoe, but because he was tall, everyone thought he was older. He pointed past the ski lift, toward a shadowed building across the road. Zoe rose on her tiptoes to see what he’d discovered.
“That’s the old lodge I read about online,” Matt said. “It’s supposed to be haunted.”
“Oh, cool!” Zoe squinted through the window, pressing her nose against the cold glass for a better look.
The old lodge was three stories high, but it was partially blocked by modern buildings. Zoe could see the pointed tips of tall, imposing spires, like on a castle. Now that she knew where to look, she pushed past Matt to a small side window in the kitchen where she could get an even better view.
Part of the roof appeared to have crumbled from the weight of several sharp icicles that hung off the side of the building. They looked like a row of deadly tiger fangs.
Along the front of the place, dark gray paint was peeling, and the steep porch was completely caved in on one side.
Zoe squinted at the house, staring at a dark spot in an upper window, when suddenly, the shadow moved. “Whoa, what was—” she started.
“Did you see that?!” Matt poked his finger at the living room window. It left a steamy print.
“I don’t know,” Zoe said cautiously. “Maybe. But it could have just been the sunset reflecting on the lodge’s shattered glass.”
“We gotta check it out,” Matt said.
“Great,” Zoe told him. It was getting dark. If they were going to go to the old lodge, it had to be right away.
Zoe went into the bedroom to ask her parents for permission to explore. Everyone said she looked like her mother, with peach skin, straight light hair, and green eyes, while Chloe had darker skin and thick brown hair like their dad.
“Can I go with Matt to check out the lodge?” Zoe asked. She intentionally left which “lodge” vague. If they got in trouble later, she could always play it off like, “Oh, you thought I meant the new lodge?” Zoe would then nod and reply, “That’s funny because I meant the old one.” And they’d all have a good laugh.
At least in Zoe’s imagination that was how it would happen.
Her mom studied Zoe’s face for a long moment, then said, “Meet us in the dining room for dinner.” Then she added, “We’re talking about the new lodge, right?”
Zoe’s mom was a mind reader. There was no other possibility. That was why she always seemed to know what Zoe was thinking. Zoe’s mom had an uncanny ability to stop her plans before anything bad—or interesting—could happen.
“Of course,” Zoe said, giving in to the fact that exploring the old lodge would have to wait.
Zoe looked at the time on her cell phone. “Dinner. Got it.” Then she noticed the phone had no service. “I wonder if the lodge has Wi-Fi,” she muttered to herself as she went to meet up with Matt, who’d been having a similar conversation with his parents.
“They don’t want us to stray from the lodge,” Matt said as they hurried outside into the bitter cold. “Dad said ‘new lodge,’ like he knew where we really wanted to go.”
“Same.” Zoe’s coat kept most of her warm, but her nose was frozen. She stuffed her gloved hands into her jacket with a mental note to take a scarf when they went skiing. “It’s okay.” She pinched her lips together and said, “We should do some research on that old place before we investigate, anyway.”
They walked around a little while, then went into the main reception area. Matt flopped down into a very soft leather couch in front of a large wood-burning fire. The overstuffed pillows made a windy, gassy sound. He laughed while Zoe sat down gently, rolling her eyes at him.
“I hope the slopes are awesome because this place is kind of boring,” Matt said, resting his head back against the fluffy cushions.
“You think the Wampir Lodge is boring?” a woman sitting nearby repeated his words. She leaned around the high wings of a small velvet chair. Zoe hadn’t noticed her when they came in.
The lady seemed out of place in her glamorous, high-necked, old-fashioned gown and small, veiled hat. She was thin, with long hair and brown eyes, No, yellow eyes. No, they were definitely green. They looked like they kept changing.
“Come with me,” the woman said, rising. “I’d like to show you something special.”
“Uh,” Zoe stalled. She didn’t think going off with a stranger was a smart idea.
“Have you seen the lodge’s library?” the woman asked, moving in closer to Zoe and Matt.
“Library?” Matt asked. “There’s a library?” He hadn’t seen one on the resort map.
“Certainly you’ve noticed that there is no phone service at the lodge,” she said, looking at Zoe with eyes that were now violet.
“We noticed,” Matt said with a groan.
The woman nodded sympathetically. “It’s quiet here at night.”
“We’re gonna want something to do after skiing, snowboarding, campfires, and carriage rides,” Zoe told Matt with a shrug. “Looks like we’re going to need some books.”
Matt considered the problem.
“I guess, if there are some scary stories.…” He was clearly trying to wrap his head around this Internet disaster. “That could pass the time.”
“Follow me,” the woman told them. “I’m certain you will find exactly what you need.”
Since they weren’t leaving the lodge, Zoe figured it was okay to go with her.
The library was a small room off the main lobby. There were two plush reading chairs, a small desk with pens and paper, and a tall shelf of books.
At the top of the shelf was a sign.
It read:
Give One/Take One
“What does that mean?” Zoe asked the woman, wondering if she worked at the lodge.
Pointing a long, bony finger at the sign, the woman explained, “If you brought a book from home, you can leave it here once you’ve finished and take a new one.”
“I didn’t bring anything,” Zoe said, wishing she had. She’d been reading a soccer biography about one of her favorite players but didn’t pack it.
“I didn’t bring anything either,” Matt said. “I thought I’d be using my laptop to watch TV.”
The woman’s eyes shifted to black as she said, “Don’t worry. Just take whichever book you want. When you reach the end of the story, you can put it back here before you leave for home.”
“Okay,” Matt said as he and Zoe began to look through the shelves, starting at the very top and going down row by row. There were romance novels, cowboy novels, and a lot of mysteries. But no scary stories.
“This stinks,” Matt declared after reaching the bottom shelf. “There’s nothing to read!”
“I don’t think you’ve looked hard enough,” the woman said, silently approaching from behind them. She reached up to the top shelf, in the middle of the row, and pulled out a strange-looking book.
Zoe swore she’d looked past that spot. How had she missed that book? It was clearly the most interesting one in the library.
The book was an antique leather-bound journal with a small brass clasp. The most fascinating part was that the cover had several strange triangles etched into the leather. They seemed to have been painted gold at some point, but the color had faded with age.
The woman handed the book to Matt. As it passed by Zoe, she thought she smelled a sharp metallic odor rising from the leather. Matt opened the book and set it on the small desk so they could both look inside. The pages were made of a thick, yellowed paper, slightly tinged brown around the edges.
On the first page were the words:
Tales from the Scaremaster
But beneath that title, the rest of the page was blank.
Zoe flipped a few pages. “They’re all blank.”
“Since you like scary stories,” the woman advised, “perhaps you could write your own tales?” Over her shoulder there was a small window that looked out toward the old, run-down Wampir Lodge. “There must be something around here that would inspire you,” she hinted, glancing back at Zoe and Matt.
She handed Zoe a pen from the desk. “You could start now,” the woman said, her voice low and even. It was a bit hypnotic, like a magician Zoe had once seen at a fair.
There was something inside Zoe that felt like the woman wasn’t going to let them leave the library until they’d written something. Not like she was locking them in, but rather, she wanted them to write so badly that she’d stay with them until they did.
Matt told Zoe, “You start the story and I’ll jump in when I have an idea.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Not wanting to let the woman down, since she was the one who had discovered the journal, Zoe wrote, “Once upon a time, Matteo Ortiz and Zoe Lancaster were looking for adventure at the Wampir Ski Resort and Lodge.”
“Wait!” Matt suddenly pointed at the page. “Look!”
Under Zoe’s writing, there were new words. She hadn’t written them. And neither had Matt.
Looking for a scare, are you? The Scaremaster won’t disappoint you. You shouldn’t have started this story. Now I get to finish it!
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You don’t have to read the
books in order. But if you want to, here’s the right order:
Swamp Scarefest
Werewolf Weekend
Clone Camp!
Zombie Apocalypse