The Headless Ghost

by R. L. Stine

  Stephanie was waiting for me at the bottom of her driveway. She had pulled her brown hair back in a ponytail. Her coat was open. She wore a heavy ski sweater underneath, pulled down over her jeans.

  She raised her head and let out a ghostly howl. “Owooooooo!”

  I clapped my hand over her open mouth. “You’ll wake up the whole block!”

  She laughed and backed away from me. “I’m a little excited. Aren’t you?” She opened her mouth in another howl.

  The frozen rain pattered the ground. We hurried toward Hill House. The swirling wind scattered twigs and dead leaves as we walked. Most of the house lights had been turned off.

  A car rolled by slowly as we turned onto Hill Street. Stephanie and I ducked behind a hedge. The driver might wonder why two kids were wandering around Wheeler Falls at midnight.

  I wondered, too.

  We waited for the car to disappear. Then we continued our journey.

  Our sneakers crunched over the hard ground as we climbed the hill that led to the old haunted house. Hill House rose above us, like a silent monster waiting to swallow us up.

  The last tour had ended. The lights were all off. Otto and Edna and the other tour guides were probably all home by now.

  “Come on, Duane. Hurry,” Stephanie urged. She started to run around the side of the house. “Seth is probably waiting.”

  “Wait up!” I cried. We followed a narrow dirt path around to the back.

  Squinting into the darkness, I searched for Seth. No sign of him.

  The backyard was cluttered with equipment of all kinds. A row of rusted metal trashcans formed a fence along one wall. A long wooden ladder lay on its side in the tall weeds. Wooden cartons and barrels and cardboard boxes were strewn everywhere. A hand lawnmower tilted against the house.

  “It — it’s so much darker back here,” Stephanie stammered. “Do you see Seth?”

  “I can’t see anything,” I replied in a whisper. “Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he isn’t coming.”

  Stephanie started to reply. But a choked cry from the side of the house made us both jump.

  I turned to see Seth stagger into view.

  His blond hair was wild, flying around his face. His eyes bulged. His hands gripped his throat.

  “The ghost!” he cried, stumbling clumsily. “The ghost — he — he got me!”

  Then Seth collapsed at our feet and didn’t move.

  “Nice try, Seth,” I said calmly.

  “Nice fall,” Stephanie added.

  He raised his head slowly, staring up at us. “I didn’t fool you?”

  “No way,” I replied.

  Stephanie rolled her eyes. “That’s Joke Number One,” she told Seth. “Duane and I have pulled that one a thousand times.”

  Seth climbed to his feet and brushed off the front of his black turtleneck. He scowled, disappointed. “Just trying to give you a little scare.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” I told him.

  “Duane and I are experts at giving scares,” Stephanie added. “It’s sort of our hobby.”

  Seth straightened his hair with both hands. “You two are weird,” he murmured.

  I brushed cold raindrops off my eyebrows. “Can we get inside?” I asked impatiently.

  Seth led the way to the narrow door at the far side of the house. “Did you two have any trouble sneaking out?” he asked, whispering.

  “No. No trouble,” Stephanie told him.

  “Neither did I,” he replied. He stepped up to the door and lifted the wooden latch. “I took the tour again tonight,” he whispered. “Otto showed me some new things. Some new rooms we can explore.”

  “Great!” Stephanie exclaimed. “Do you promise we’ll see a real ghost?”

  Seth turned back to her. A strange smile spread over his face. “Promise,” he said.

  Seth gave the door a tug, and it creaked open.

  We slipped inside. Into total blackness. Too dark to see where we were.

  I took a few steps into the room — and bumped into Seth.

  “Ssshhh,” he warned. “Manny the night watchman is posted in the front room. He’s probably asleep already. But we’d better stay in back.”

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “In one of the back rooms,” Seth whispered. “Wait a few seconds. Our eyes will adjust.”

  “Can’t we turn on a light?” I asked.

  “Ghosts won’t come out in the light,” Seth replied.

  We had closed the door behind us. But a cold wind still blew at my back.

  I shivered.

  A soft rattling sound made my breath catch in my throat.

  Was I starting to hear things?

  I pulled off my hood to hear better.

  Silence now.

  “I think I know where I can find some candles,” Seth whispered. “You two wait here. Don’t move.”

  “D-Don’t worry,” I stammered. I didn’t plan to go anywhere until I could see!

  I heard Seth move away, making soft, scraping footsteps over the floor, keeping as quiet as he could. His footsteps faded into silence.

  Then I felt another rush of cold wind against the back of my neck.

  “Oh!” I cried out when I heard the rattling again.

  A gentle rattling. Like the rattling of bones.

  Another cold gust of wind swept over me. A ghost’s cold breath, I thought. My whole body shook as a chill ran down my back.

  I heard the rattling bones again. Louder. A clattering sound. So close.

  I reached out in the thick blackness. Tried to grab onto a wall. Or a table. Or anything.

  But my hands grabbed only air.

  I swallowed hard. Calm down, Duane, I ordered myself. Seth will be back in a moment with some candles. Then you’ll see that everything is okay.

  But another jangle and clatter of bones made me gasp.

  “Steph — did you hear that?” I whispered.

  No reply.

  A cold wind tingled my neck.

  The bones rattled again.

  “Steph? Do you hear that noise, too? Steph?”

  No reply.

  “Stephanie? Steph?” I called.

  She was gone.

  Panic time.

  My breaths came short and fast. My heart clattered louder than the skeleton bones. My whole body began to shake.

  “Stephanie? Steph? Where are you?” I choked out weakly.

  Then I saw the two yellow eyes moving toward me. Two glowing eyes, floating silently, gleaming with evil. Coming nearer. Nearer.

  I froze.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see anything but those two gleaming, yellow eyes.

  “Ohh!” I uttered a moan as they floated closer. And I could see them more clearly. See that they were candle flames.

  Two candle flames, moving side by side.

  In the soft yellow light, I saw Seth’s face. And Stephanie’s. They each carried a lighted candle in front of them.

  “Stephanie — where were you?” I cried in a choked whisper. “I — I thought — ”

  “I went with Seth,” she replied calmly.

  The orange glow from her candle washed over me. I guess Stephanie could see how panicked I was. “I’m sorry, Duane,” she said softly. “I said I was going with Seth. I thought you heard me.”

  “S-Something is rattling,” I stammered. “Bones, I think. I keep feeling a cold wind, and I keep hearing — ”

  Seth handed me a candle. “Light it,” he instructed. “We’ll look around. See what’s rattling.”

  I took the candle and raised it to his. But my hand was shaking so badly, it took me five tries to light the wick. Finally, the candle flamed to life.

  I gazed around in the flickering orange light.

  “Hey — we’re in the kitchen,” Stephanie whispered.

  A gust of cold wind blew past me. “Did you feel that?” I cried.

  Seth pointed his candle flame toward the kitchen window. “Look, Duane — tha
t windowpane. It’s missing. The cold air is blowing in through the hole.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Another blast of air. And then the rattling.

  “Did you hear it?” I demanded.

  Stephanie giggled. She pointed to the kitchen wall. In the dim light, I saw big pots and pans hanging on the wall. “The wind is making them rattle,” Stephanie explained.

  “Ha-ha.” I uttered a feeble laugh. “I knew that. I was just trying to scare you,” I lied. “You know. Give you a thrill.”

  I felt like a total jerk. But why should I admit that a bunch of pots on the wall nearly had me scared out of my skin?

  “Okay. No more jokes,” Stephanie insisted, turning to Seth. “We want to see a real ghost.”

  “Follow me. I’ll show you something that Otto told me about,” Seth whispered.

  Holding his candle in front of him, he led the way across the kitchen to the wall beside the stove. He lowered his candle in front of a cabinet door. Then he pulled open the cabinet door and moved the candle closer so we could see inside.

  “Why are you showing us a kitchen cabinet?” I demanded. “What’s scary about that?”

  “It’s not a cabinet,” Seth replied. “It’s a dumbwaiter. Watch.” He reached inside and pulled a rope beside the cabinet shelf. The shelf began to slide up.

  He raised the shelf, then lowered it. “See? This dumbwaiter is like a little elevator. It was used to send food from the kitchen to the master bedroom upstairs.”

  “You mean for midnight snacks?” I joked.

  Seth nodded. “The cook would put the food on the shelf. Then he would pull the rope, and the shelf would carry it upstairs.”

  “Thrills and chills,” I said sarcastically.

  “Yeah. Why are you showing it to us?” Stephanie demanded.

  Seth brought the candle up close to his face. “Otto told me that this dumbwaiter is haunted. A hundred and twenty years ago, things suddenly started to go wrong with it.”

  Stephanie and I moved closer. I lowered my candle and examined the dumbwaiter cabinet. “What went wrong?” I asked.

  “Well,” Seth began softly, “the cook would put food on the shelf and send it upstairs. But when the shelf reached the bedroom up there, the food was gone.”

  Stephanie narrowed her eyes at Seth. “It disappeared between the first and second floor?”

  Seth nodded solemnly. His gray eyes glowed in the soft candlelight. “This happened several times. When the shelf reached the second floor, it was empty. The food had vanished.”

  “Wow,” I murmured.

  “The cook became very frightened,” Seth continued. “He was afraid that the dumbwaiter had become haunted. He decided to stop using it. And he ordered everyone on his staff never to use the dumbwaiter again.”

  “And that’s the end of the story?” I asked.

  Seth shook his head. “And then something horrible happened.”

  Stephanie’s mouth dropped open. “What? What happened?”

  “Some kids were visiting the house. One of them was a boy named Jeremy. Jeremy was a real show-off, and very athletic. When he saw the dumbwaiter, he decided it would be fun to ride it to the second floor.”

  “Oh, wow,” Stephanie murmured.

  I felt a chill. I thought I could guess what was coming.

  “So Jeremy squeezed onto the shelf. And one of the other kids pulled the rope. Suddenly the rope caught. The kid couldn’t get it to move up or down. Jeremy was stuck somewhere between the floors.

  “The other kids called up to him, ‘Are you okay?’ But Jeremy didn’t reply. They started to get very worried. They tugged and tugged, but they couldn’t move the rope.

  “Then suddenly, the shelf came crashing back down.”

  “And was Jeremy on it?” I asked eagerly.

  Seth shook his head. “There were three covered bowls on the shelf. The kids lifted the lid off the first bowl. Inside was Jeremy’s heart, still beating.

  “They opened the second bowl. Inside were Jeremy’s eyes, still staring in horror. And they opened the third bowl. And saw Jeremy’s teeth, still chattering.”

  The three of us stood silent in the orange glow of candlelight. We stared at the dumbwaiter shelf.

  I shivered. The pots rattled against the wall. But I was no longer frightened by them. I raised my eyes to Seth. “Do you think that story is true?”

  Stephanie laughed. Nervous laughter. “It can’t be true,” she said.

  Seth’s face remained solemn. “Do you believe any of Otto’s stories?” he asked me quietly.

  “Well. Yes. No. Some.” I couldn’t decide.

  “Otto swears the story is true,” Seth insisted. “But of course, he may just be doing his job. His job is to make this house as scary as possible.”

  “Otto is a great storyteller,” Stephanie murmured. “But enough stories. I want to see a real ghost.”

  “Follow me,” Seth replied. His candle flame dipped low as he spun around.

  He led us back through the kitchen, into a long, narrow room at the back. “This is the old butler’s pantry,” he announced. “All of the food for the house was stored in here.”

  Stephanie and I stepped past him, raising our candles to see the room better. When I turned around, Seth was closing the pantry door behind us.

  Then I saw him turn the lock.

  “Hey — what are you doing?” I cried.

  “Why are you locking us in here?” Stephanie demanded.

  I dropped my candle. It bounced on the hard floor, and the flame went out. The candle rolled under a shelf.

  When I glanced back up, Stephanie was storming toward Seth. “Seth — what are you doing?” she demanded angrily. “Unlock that door. This isn’t funny!”

  I gazed around the long, narrow room. Shelves from floor to ceiling on three walls. No windows. No other door to escape through.

  With a sharp cry, Stephanie grabbed for the door handle. But Seth moved quickly to block her way.

  “Hey — !” I cried, my heart pounding. I stepped up beside Stephanie. “What’s the big idea, Seth?”

  His silvery eyes glowed with excitement behind his candle flame. He stared back at us without speaking. The same cold stare I had seen on his face the night before.

  Stephanie and I took a step back, huddling close together.

  “Sorry, guys. But I played a little trick on you,” he said finally.

  “Excuse me?” Stephanie cried, more angry than frightened.

  “What kind of trick?” I asked.

  He pushed back his long, blond hair with his free hand. The flickering candle sent shadows dancing across his face. “My name isn’t Seth,” he said softly, so softly I could barely hear him.

  “But — but — ” I stammered.

  “My name is Andrew,” he said.

  Stephanie and I both cried out in surprise.

  “But Andrew is the name of the ghost,” Stephanie protested. “The ghost who lost his head.”

  “I am the ghost,” he said softly. A dry laugh escaped his lips. More like a cough than a laugh. “I promised you a real ghost tonight. Well … here I am.”

  He blew out the candle. He appeared to vanish with the light.

  “But, Seth — ” Stephanie started.

  “Andrew,” he corrected her. “My name is Andrew. My name has been Andrew for more than a hundred years.”

  “Let us out of here,” I pleaded. “We won’t tell anyone we saw you. We won’t — ”

  “I can’t let you go,” he replied in a whisper.

  I remembered the story of the sea captain’s ghost. When Andrew stumbled into the sea captain’s room and saw the old ghost, the sea captain had said the same thing to him. “Now that you have seen me, I can never let you go.”

  “You — you lost your head!” I blurted out.

  “So you can’t be Andrew!” Stephanie cried. “You have a head!”

  In the dim light from Stephanie’s candle, I could see the sneer spread o
ver Andrew’s face. “No,” he said softly. “No, no, no. I do not have my head. This is one that I borrowed.”

  He raised both hands to the sides of his face. “Here. Let me show you,” he said.

  Then he pressed his hands against his cheeks and started to tug the head up from the black turtleneck.

  “No! Stop!” Stephanie screeched.

  I shut my eyes. I didn’t really want to see him pull off his head.

  When I opened my eyes, Andrew had lowered his hands.

  I gazed once again around the narrow pantry. How could we escape? How could we get out of there? The ghost was blocking the only exit.

  “Why did you trick us?” Stephanie asked Andrew. “Why did you bring us here? Why did you lie to us?”

  Andrew sighed. “I told you. I borrowed this head.” He ran one hand through the hair, then down over the cheek, as if petting it. “I borrowed it. But I have to return it.”

  Stephanie and I stared back at him in silence, waiting for him to continue. Waiting for him to explain.

  “I saw you last night in the tour group,” he said finally, his eyes locked on me. “The others couldn’t see me. But I made myself visible to you.”

  “Why?” I asked in a trembling voice.

  “Because of your head,” he replied. “I liked your head.”

  “Huh?” A frightened gasp escaped my throat.

  He gripped the blond hair again. “I have to return this head, Duane,” he said calmly, coldly. “So I’m going to take yours.”

  A frightened giggle escaped my throat.

  Why do people suddenly start laughing when they’re terrified? I guess it’s because if you don’t laugh, you’ll scream. Or explode or something.

  Trapped in that small, dark room with a hundred-year-old ghost that wanted my head, I felt like laughing, screaming, and exploding all at once!

  I stared hard at Andrew, squinting in the dim light. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He shook his head. His silvery eyes narrowed, hard and cold. “I need your head, Duane,” he said softly. He shrugged, as if apologizing. “I’ll pull it off quickly. It won’t hurt a bit.”