by P. J. Night
Emily backed up onto the porch and closed the front door. Should I just go home? she wondered. But I can’t chicken out now. I just need to go upstairs and talk to these people. After all, they’re just people, right? What can they do, bite my head off?
Emily opened the door again.
“Drew, Vicky? Is that you?”
“We’re upstairs.”
Now Emily was really confused. Wasn’t that the same thing they’d called out when she came in the first time? And why hadn’t they answered her when she called up to them? And that’s when it hit her. She’d heard Mr. and Mrs. Strig say the same thing each time Drew or Vicky opened the front door. She closed the door, then opened it again.
“Drew, Vicky? Is that you?”
“We’re upstairs.”
“Okay,” Emily muttered. “What’s going on here?”
She opened the door fully and stepped inside.
Instead of walking straight down the hallway, as she always did to go to Drew and Vicky’s rec room, Emily turned left. She followed the narrow hallway around a curve and came to a large wooden staircase. It had obviously once been a grand stairway fit for a mansion. She could picture a bride walking down its long sweeping stairs, trailing the train of her wedding gown behind her.
But, like everything in this house, the staircase had fallen into terrible disrepair. Emily carefully adjusted her weight as she took every step, making sure that each stair would support her before she committed fully to moving up onto the next one. Every stair moaned as if it resented being used after so many years.
Reaching the landing, Emily found another hallway, similar to the one on the first floor. This hallway also looked as if it had been thrown together quickly using some unpainted Sheetrock that someone had just found sitting around. At the end of the hallway, a single door stood closed.
“Mrs. Strig?” Emily called out in the direction of the closed door. “Mr. Strig?”
No answer.
Reaching the door, she knocked, her raps echoing into the room beyond.
Emily psyched herself up. “Just do it, Em. Open the door.”
She nodded to herself, then opened the door and stepped into the room.
Somehow the fact that the room was practically empty did not surprise Emily. The walls had long ago crumbled. Pieces of plaster lay scattered on the floor, exposing the beams that held what was left of the house together. A single piece of furniture, a small table, sat in the corner. But what was that on the table?
Crossing the room carefully to avoid falling into one of the many holes in the floor, Emily reached the table. Inspecting the small, square device on it, she realized that it was an old-fashioned telephone answering machine, the kind people used before voice mail.
A cassette tape sat inside the answering machine. Emily had seen these types of answering machines in movies from the 1980s. She pressed a button labeled OUTGOING MESSAGE. The cassette tape rolled, and two voices came out of the machine’s tiny speaker.
“Drew, Vicky? Is that you?”
“We’re upstairs.”
When the message finished, Emily saw the tape rewind so it was ready to play again when the next phone call came in—or in this case, the next time someone opened the front door.
Emily walked completely around the table and discovered a wire coming out of the back of the answering machine. She followed the wire down to where the wall met the floor. From there it ran toward the door.
Tracing the wire, she followed it out of the room, along the hall, and down the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase, the wire crossed the floor and ran up to the door hinge, where it disappeared into a small plastic box. Emily pulled the cover off the box and found two batteries inside. The answering machine’s wire was wrapped around a metal post. A second wire led from the box to a small speaker mounted on the wall at the top of the stairs. This was obviously where the message came out when the door was opened.
Emily sat down on the bottom step, trying to make sense of what she had just seen. For some reason, Mr. and Mrs. Strig had set up a phone answering machine to play their voices whenever anyone opened the door. But why? And where were they? They were supposed to be here, homeschooling Drew and Vicky.
Drew and Vicky. Where were they?
Emily got up and walked down the hall. Reaching the rec room door, she paused, then knocked.
“Drew? Vicky? It’s Emily. I’m off from school today.”
Silence.
She opened the door and stepped into the rec room. She saw the usual array of guitars and amplifiers, the foosball and Ping-Pong tables, but no Drew or Vicky. Again she called out. “Drew? Vicky?”
Again, no reply.
Emily had always known that there was something different about the Strigs. She knew that Drew and Vicky were not like her other friends. She wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Strig were being so weird about a simple thing like letting their kids hang out at a neighbor’s house.
But this—this was more than she could make sense of. What about the whole homeschooling thing? If Drew and Vicky were not here getting lessons, then where were they? And what was the deal with the answering machine? Why were Mr. and Mrs. Strig trying to fool people into thinking they were home when they weren’t?
WHERE WAS EVERYBODY?
Emily’s mind raced in frustration. Then she spied the bathroom on the far side of the rec room—the door that Vicky had thrown a fit about when Emily had tried to open it. Her confusion and concern quickly gave way to a rush of curiosity. She crossed the room, grabbed the doorknob, and opened the door.
What Emily saw when she stepped through the doorway was almost more than her brain could comprehend. This was no bathroom. It wasn’t even a room. It was an open expanse with a dirt floor, raw beams, and crumbling walls. The rest of the house, beyond the rec room, barely existed as anything more than a shell. Giant cobwebs filled every corner. Mice scurried along the dirt floor, pausing and sniffing, then resuming their search for food. A mass of insects crawled slowly, making the floor appear to be alive and moving.
Before Emily’s mind could wrap itself around this sight, and just when she thought this whole thing couldn’t get any weirder, it did. Sitting on the dirt floor were three long wooden boxes. As she moved closer, Emily’s eyes widened in fright.
“C-coffins!” she stammered. “Three coffins!”
CHAPTER 10
Emily backed away from the coffins and stumbled, landing hard on the dirt floor, her face just inches away from a line of crawling bugs.
“Ah!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet. She ran back into the rec room, through the hallway, and out the front door. As she hurried across the street, she wondered for a second if she had remembered to close the front door and the door leading from the rec room to the room with the coffins.
The room with the coffins.
Nothing unusual about that, Emily thought. Just a typical suburban room with a dirt floor, cobwebs as big as SUVs, and the usual three coffins. It’s all the rage this year. “What! You only have two coffins in your dirt room? Please. Everyone is going for the three-coffin look this season. I saw it on the cover of Better Homes and Coffins magazine.”
“Calm down, Emily,” she said aloud. “If you are going to completely lose your mind, the least you can do is have the courtesy to wait until you are in your own home.”
Emily threw open her front door and ran inside.
Good thing her parents were not home. Emily knew that there was no way she could hold it together and keep what had just happened from them. She slammed the front door shut, locked it, scooped up the cat for comfort, and then ran up to her room. She sat on her bed, then immediately got up and started pacing. Franklin watched her as she moved back and forth.
“How could I have been such a fool? Was I just impressed by how good those two were at everything? I thought Drew and Vicky were a little weird, but not that weird. There’s a big difference between being a little weird and living in a house that’s not reall
y a house, having a coffin or three in a secret room that they were freaked out about me possibly discovering, with parents who only exist on a recording, and—”
Emily stopped pacing, lost in her thoughts. Could it be that there is no Mr. and Mrs. Strig? That they died, and for some reason Drew and Vicky don’t want anyone to know, so they set up this complicated hoax? Do the coffins belong to Mr. and Mrs. Strig?
Emily started to turn green—this wasn’t just creepy, it was downright gross. Why? Why? Why? Why would you hide the fact that your parents are dead? And why three coffins?
She sat back down on her bed and forced herself to take a deep breath. She really didn’t know what was going on. She felt duped, taken, lied to. Whatever the deal was with Drew and Vicky, they were not who they appeared to be. Hannah had seen that there was something creepy about Drew and Vicky, but until now Emily couldn’t see it. Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to.
Well, that was about to change. She was through with them. She didn’t ever want to go back into that freak show of a house, and she certainly didn’t want them in her house. It went without saying that Drew and Vicky would most definitely not be coming to her sleepover.
Emily snatched up her cell phone and started tapping out a text message to Hannah. She had no intention of telling anyone about what she had just seen, but she did want her other friends to know that Drew and Vicky would not be coming to the party.
HEY, HANNAH. THINGS DID NOT GO SO GOOD AT DREW AND VICKY’S. THEIR PARENTS REFUSED TO ALLOW THEM TO COME TO THE PARTY. THEY DON’T EVEN WANT ME TO HANG OUT WITH THEM ANYMORE.
Emily sent the message. A few seconds later she got a reply:
SORRY, EM. I KNOW YOU LIKED THEM (EVEN IF I DIDN’T!).
Emily wrote back:
THANKS. THE REALLY WEIRD PART IS THAT DREW AND VICKY DIDN’T EVEN SEEM TO MIND. GUESS I’VE SEEN THE LAST OF THEM. CU LATER. . . . E
Emily felt better that she had at least told Hannah something. She felt bad about lying to her, but she didn’t know what to make of all this herself. She was not about to try to explain what she had seen to Hannah or Ethan or especially to her parents. She was too embarrassed about everything. She could say that she had gotten into a fight with Drew and Vicky. She could say that Mr. and Mrs. Strig didn’t want their kids hanging out with her anymore. That would get her mom’s back up. She would have a hard time believing that anyone wouldn’t want their kids hanging out with her daughter.
Emily smiled at the thought of how loyal her mom was. She began to feel a little better. The burden of trying to get Drew and Vicky to fit in with all her other friends, plus the pressure of getting the Strigs to meet the Hunters before the party, had obviously been weighing on her more than she realized. Having all that lifted off her shoulders felt like a real relief. Emily began to relax. She slid down, stretched out on her bed, and dozed off.
Bing-bong! Bing-bong!
Emily awakened to the sound of the doorbell ringing. She glanced at her clock and saw that it was eight fifteen. The sun had already set. She had slept the afternoon away.
Emily tiptoed down the stairs, dreading the two people she knew would be on the other side of the door. Franklin stood at the top of the stairs, hissing, his back arched.
“Emily, it’s Vicky!” Vicky shouted as she began banging on the door.
“And Drew!”
“We finally talked to our parents, and it’s okay. They want to meet your parents, and they’re going to let us come to the sleepover party. Just open up and let us in.”
Emily ignored them.
They pounded on the door. “Emily! Emily!” they called urgently from the other side. “Let us in! Please let us in!”
Emily felt a small pang of guilt. After all this time, Drew and Vicky finally wanted to come over. They wanted to come to the sleepover, and now she was the one resisting.
Then the image of the coffins popped into her mind, and a cold chill ran down her spine.
No. The friendship was over. Whatever was going on in that house, she had no intention of being part of it any longer.
Finally, after a few minutes, the knocking stopped. Emily peeked through the curtains and watched as Drew and Vicky headed back across the street and into their house.
Emily walked back up to her room and grabbed a funny book from her shelf. She just wasn’t in the mood to watch a scary movie as she waited for her parents to get home.
When dinner was finally ready at nine o’clock, Emily slunk down the stairs and into her seat. She didn’t even complain that dinner was especially late tonight. Her mother and father hadn’t gotten home until just a few minutes before.
“You okay, honey?” her mom asked as Emily pushed some take-out pasta around her plate.
“I’m fine, Mom. I just don’t think I’ll be hanging out with Drew and Vicky anymore.”
“Did something happen today?” her father asked.
Emily took a moment to gather her thoughts. She knew she had to tell her parents something, but she wanted to make sure that it was the same story she had told Hannah.
The last thing she wanted was to get caught lying to the people she cared about the most.
“Their parents said that they didn’t want them to come to the sleepover,” Emily said. “And the thing that upset me the most was that Drew and Vicky didn’t seem to mind.”
“I’m sorry, honey. That’s no fun,” her mom said. “But maybe someday Drew and Vicky will come around and you can all be friends again.”
“I doubt it,” was all Emily said in reply.
After dinner, in her room, Emily was listening to music, trying to put the unreal events of the day behind her. Her cell phone sounded with a text message alert.
The message was from Vicky:
HEY, EM, WHAT’S GOING ON? HOW COME YOU DIDN’T ANSWER YOUR DOOR? . . . V
A few seconds later a message came in from Drew:
EM, MOM AND DAD SAID OKAY. WE CAN COME TO THE PARTY! . . . D
Emily sat with her thumbs poised above her phone’s keys. A hundred things she wanted to say flashed through her mind. Finally she tapped out:
WHAT’S UP WITH THE COFFINS?
She stared at the message and decided not to send it. She really didn’t want to have anything to do with Drew and Vicky, starting right now.
But another message came in just a few seconds later:
ARE U MAD AT US? . . . D
“How do I answer that?” Emily wondered aloud. “I’m not mad at them, that’s not it. I just don’t really want to be friends with people living in half a house filled with coffins and parents who exist only on tape.”
Emily knew that she had to send them some kind of explanation. She typed out a new message:
I SAW THE COFFINS. PLEASE DON’T BOTHER COMING TO MY PARTY. YOU’RE NOT INVITED ANYMORE. LEAVE ME ALONE.
She sent the message.
A minute passed, then five, then ten. Emily dozed off an hour later, having received no reply from either Drew or Vicky. It was over. She’d let them know that she had seen the weirdness that was their life and wanted no part of it.
The following morning, Friday morning, the last day of school, Emily checked her phone. No messages. She could turn her full attention to the party, which was now only a day away.
CHAPTER 11
On Saturday morning Emily woke up and looked at her alarm clock.
“Six thirty!” she groaned. “That can’t be right.” She was wide awake, her brain buzzing.
On school mornings she could hardly drag herself out of bed at seven, and that was with her alarm set super loud. On weekends she barely budged before ten. But now here she was at six thirty on the first day of summer vacation, awake, alert, and positive that there was no way she was going to fall back asleep.
She threw off her covers and slipped out of bed. “Six thirty,” she muttered. “Even the birds don’t set their alarm clocks for this early.”
Over breakfast, Emily ran through the checklist of stuff she had t
o do that day. “Let’s see—decorate the home theater, set up trays and bowls for munchies, go with Mom to pick up the pizza and ice cream.”
Emily’s mom drove her to several stores. By the time they got back, Hannah and Ethan had shown up to help with the preparations.
“I am so excited that this is really happening!” Hannah cried, hugging Emily.
“So we have to turn this house into a jungle?” Ethan asked as he stepped inside and looked around.
“Not a jungle, Ethan,” Emily said, giving him a hug. He returned a halfhearted pat on Emily’s back. “A forest. And not the whole house, just the home theater downstairs.”
“Hello, Hannah, Ethan!” Emily’s mom said, stepping into the entryway. “Thank you so much for coming over to help Emily.”
“No problem, Mrs. Hunter,” Hannah said. “The three of us cooked up this idea together, and we’re going to see it through as a team.”
“I came up with an idea for eating really gross food,” Ethan said proudly. Then his expression soured. “But the girls voted it down.”
“That’s a shame, Ethan,” Emily’s dad said, joining the group. “I know that’s always my favorite part of camping out.”
“When did you ever camp out, Dad?” Emily asked skeptically.
“One time in college, when I locked my keys in my car and had to spend the night in a parking lot,” Mr. Hunter said defensively.
“That’s what I figured,” Emily said, heading for the door leading down to the basement. “We’ve got work to do! See ya later, Dad.”
“Have fun making your jungle,” Mr. Hunter said.
“Dad! It’s a forest!”
Hannah and Ethan followed Emily downstairs and they got right to work. In keeping with the theme of camping out, they took branches from trees that had recently been trimmed and hung them from the ceiling with clear fishing wire. They placed a few large potted plants around the room to act as the bushes. Emily then placed her collection of stuffed animals in and around the potted plants. The indoor wildlife included assorted bunnies, cats, and a polar bear.
“So, give me the details of what happened with Drew and Vicky,” Hannah said as she carefully placed a stuffed cougar into a tall plant to make it look as if the cougar was hiding as it stalked its prey.