The Gathering

by Dan Poblocki

  Holding his breath, he brought his attention back to Dylan, who’d gone blank again. There was something he knew he needed to do.

  You … were … there …

  Dash reached out to wipe away his brother’s tears, but Dylan released an unearthly howl, and Dash was shocked into stillness. Then the room went dark.

  FLASH.

  You … were … there …

  Dash is hiding in Dylan’s dressing room on the set of Dad’s So Clueless. It’s dark. The lamp on the table beside Dylan’s favorite chair sparked when Dash tried to turn it on, so he left it alone. The only light is coming from a crack in the door where Dash has left it slightly ajar. Dash has placed a bucket of water on top of the door—a trick—to get back at Dylan for all the cruel tricks he’s played on the cast and the crew of the show over the years. When Dylan opens the door, the water will spill down, soaking him, shocking him, making him scream. Dash will jump out and laugh, and yeah, Dylan will be mad, but he deserves it. Maybe after this, Dylan will learn his lesson, and Dash will stop getting blamed for his brother’s mischief.

  Footsteps approach, and Dash covers his mouth to hold back a snicker. The door opens and the bucket tips. Water splashes. Dylan shouts: What the … ? But then the bucket falls. It hits Dylan’s skull with a solid THUNK.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Oww, says Dylan, stumbling into the dark room. He clutches his head as he staggers toward the lamp—the same lamp that sparked when Dash had tried to turn it on minutes earlier.

  Dash sees what is about to happen. He leaps out from his hiding place, screaming for his brother to Stop! Wait! Don’t move!

  But Dylan is confused. He’s dripping wet with water and blood. He touches the lamp’s switch.

  White light fills the room—flashes like paparazzi taking pictures at a Hollywood premiere. Dash screams as Dylan’s body stiffens, and an electric buzzing blasts the room.

  Flash.

  You … were … there …

  At the emergency room, his parents give Dash the bad news. “It was an accident,” they say. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  But Dash refuses to listen. How can Dylan be dead when they’re still giggling in the backseat on the way home from the hospital? When they’re already home, playing hide-and-seek together? When they’re whispering secrets to each other late into the night?

  Dash thinks it’s a cruel way to punish him for what he did—his parents trying to make Dash believe that he electrocuted his own brother. He already feels terrible about the trick.

  But maybe Dash deserves it. A little bit. At least when Dylan played his tricks, no one ever got seriously hurt.

  Flash.

  You … are … here …

  But I am not.

  “We’re going to need you downstairs in fifteen,” says the bouncy brunette, whose name neither boy can remember. “Just a heads up. ’Kay?”

  She isn’t a producer, Dash realizes. In her white coat, he can see that she’s a nurse. Or a doctor. And she’s not just playing one on TV.

  “Downstairs?” asks Dylan with a smirk. “For what? Are we shooting the next scene?” The producer raises an eyebrow and continues to look at Dash, as if only his reply matters. Dylan waves at her, trying to get her attention. “Uh, hello? Am I invisible or something?”

  Or something.

  “She completely ignored me,” says Dylan.

  But of course she did, Dash understands now. Everyone does. Dylan is not the patient. Dash is. This is not the set of Dad’s So Clueless. It is a hospital. A real hospital where they are struggling to make Dash see the truth.

  The truth.

  He remembers now. His parents admitted him after they found him wandering far from home one night, when he was insisting that Dylan was out there and needed his help. But that had been after Dylan’s funeral. A funeral that, to Dash, is still only a vague recollection.

  The doctors insist on keeping an eye on him. Dash has been seeing things. Seeing his deceased brother. He’s been carrying a guilt so powerful, Dash thinks now, that it has managed to raise the dead.

  There are emails and texts and cards from the cast and the crew, but no one is allowed to visit. Dash is a special case. He needs special care. He knows he won’t be returning to the set again.

  Did they write Scooter off the show? Was it Dylan’s fault for always being so difficult? Or was it what Dash had done?

  Nothing makes sense anymore.

  Nothing, that is, until the email from Larkspur Productions, LLC, arrives. The email from Del.

  Dylan! Dash! … What’s up?

  Dash yanked himself away from Dylan, as if a static shock had jerked him awake after a long, long night of dreaming.

  DYLAN TURNED AWAY, unable to look at his twin any longer.

  “How long have you known?” asked Dash, still hearing music in the background. It sounded like a faint memory.

  “Just now,” said Dylan, his voice tired. “Before, I had glimpses. But now, with this music, and the house, and … I’ve seen everything.” Dash tried to take Dylan’s hand, but Dylan flinched away from him.

  The girl, Matilda, was staring into Dylan’s eyes. Her gaze was piercing, almost painful. She knew too. She knew everything.

  Poppy faced the twins, confused. “How long have you known what?” she asked.

  Dylan ignored her, looking into Matilda’s sad blue eyes instead. “I can’t say,” he said. Dash hung his head, breathless. “I don’t know how. I don’t … ”

  Matilda nodded, cradling the doll in her arms. “You will,” she said. Her voice was singsong, almost motherly, as if the girl had long practiced this character with her dolls. “You’ll do it together.”

  Suddenly Matilda’s face crumpled as if she’d been stabbed in the stomach. She bent over, moaning. “He won’t let us go.” Matilda glanced up, her gaze settling on each of them. “And he won’t let you go either.” Her voice started to fade.

  “Who won’t let you go?” said Poppy. “Do you mean Cyrus? Cyrus Caldwell? The man who hurt you?”

  But Matilda covered her face with her hands, too pained to answer.

  Marcus was still playing his harmonica, and Randolph stepped toward him. Marcus backed away, but Randolph dropped the broken violin on the ground. He listened to Marcus’s song, breathing it deeply as if it were oxygen.

  Marcus stopped. The silence was so jarring that everyone jumped. “They took away your music,” he said to Randolph. “Here. This is yours now.” He wiped the instrument off on his shirt and then held it out to the boy. Randolph’s eyes lit up, like a kid at a birthday party. “Go on. Take it. Play.”

  Randolph grasped the harmonica, holding it up to the light, looking as though he’d never seen one before. He placed it against his lips and blew tentatively. Within seconds, he was mimicking Marcus’s tune. The notes danced around the room, surrounding them with the sensation of shelter from a storm.

  Something strange was happening to Randolph. As he played, his joy coursing through the air, his body began to change. To lose color.

  Randolph was fading, Marcus realized. He could look right through him, at Dylan’s astonished expression.

  Then the boy who’d attacked them simply went away, taking the happy tune with him.

  “Randy?” Matilda asked. Now she sounded like the little girl that she was—or that she once had been. She tilted her chin as if sensing something the rest of them could not. Then she flinched, grasping her stomach again, and doubled over. She dropped her ruined doll, and it hit the floor with a soft thud. Poppy hurried over but Matilda stepped back, not wanting to be touched.

  “What happened?” Dash asked.

  “Marcus gave him back what Cyrus took away from him,” said Dylan, his voice flat. “His music.”

  “We can help you too!” Poppy said to Matilda.

  “Yes,” said Azumi, breathless. “What is it that you need?”

  “No … time,” the girl whispered. Already, her face was shifting,
beginning to resemble the mask that Poppy had ripped away from her only minutes earlier. Matilda ran across the music room and tore into the barricade.

  “Wait!” Poppy took several hesitant steps after her. “They might still be out there.”

  But Matilda wasn’t listening. As soon as she’d cleared enough room, she slipped out into the hallway and was gone.

  For several seconds, the group waited in horrified silence for the masked orphans to come piling through the doorway. But soon, they realized that the Specials had vanished, leaving Poppy, Marcus, Dylan, Dash, and Azumi alone with one another.

  “Is it safe?” asked Azumi, finally rising to her feet.

  Marcus continued to look at the gap in the doorway. “For now, maybe. I hope.”

  “Do you think if we do the same for the others,” said Poppy, “if we help Esme, and Irving, and Aloysius, and Matilda … if we give them what the director took from them … do you think they’ll be free, like Randolph?”

  “Maybe,” said Dash. Eyes closed, he added, as if desperate, “Maybe once we do that, the house will release us too.”

  Just then, Dylan shouted, unable to control himself. He fell to his knees and screamed out what sounded like the last of the life that was still inside him.

  DYLAN HAULED HIMSELF to his feet and streaked toward the door!

  “Dylan, stop!” Dash cried out after him. “Wait!” But he stayed where he stood, as if frightened to actually approach.

  At the door, Dylan turned. “No! I don’t want your help. Your help is what got me into this mess in the first place.” His expression twisted, as if he were fighting to keep an angry beast pinned down somewhere deep inside himself. “I guess we do actually get to play our own roles from now on, little brother.”

  Dash’s face crumpled. “You can’t leave.”

  Dylan sneered, heaving breath. “Apparently, none of us can! And maybe some of us don’t deserve to. So what difference does it make?” He swiveled his shoulders and, like a sigh, slipped out into the hallway and disappeared into the darkness.

  Dash stared at the others, stunned. “You can’t leave me,” he whispered, as if to himself. “That’s what I meant.”

  “You asked him how long he’s known,” said Poppy. “What did you mean?”

  “There was an accident.” Dash looked up. He chewed his bottom lip for a few seconds. “On the set of our show. Dylan … He … He was killed. It was my fault. I was trying to teach him a lesson.”

  Azumi stared. “What are you talking about? He was just here.”

  Marcus shoved his hands in his pockets. “No! You’re saying … What are you saying?”

  “He’s saying that his brother is a ghost,” Poppy answered carefully. “A spirit. Whatever you want to call it. Him. I’m sorry, Dash.”

  “A ghost?” Two blooms of color appeared on Marcus’s parchment-white cheeks. “Dylan?”

  “Yeah,” said Poppy. “Kinda like that boy who appeared next to your piano. The one who looked just like you.” She glared at him. “After everything that just happened, you’re really going to question this?”

  Marcus shuddered. “Today it’s like I’ve been going crazy, but I know I’m not crazy. What I’ve seen is real.”

  “Interesting,” said Poppy. “How do you think that feels?”

  “Crazy,” Dash whispered. “I remember now. I was in a hospital. I kept talking to everyone about Dylan like he was alive. No one believed that he was right there beside me. No one could hear him or see him like I could. It was like I thought they were all teasing us by ignoring him. When we got that email from Del, we snuck out together. Went home. Found Dylan’s secret piggy bank. I knew he’d been stealing from the cast and crew for years. But I had no idea how much he’d collected. We took a cab to the airport and bought two tickets. Nobody said a word to me about the empty seat, the one I’d paid for. They must have thought I was … Well … I don’t know what they thought. But in this house, things were different. You could see him too.”

  “I remember now,” said Poppy, her jaw dropping. “I’d read about the accident online. I’d heard one of you was hurt. But I didn’t realize—”

  “You guys must think I’m so stupid,” said Dash, wiping furiously at the tears streaming down his face.

  “No one thinks you’re stupid,” said Azumi. “Our minds can be the worst kind of tricksters. Especially when bad things happen. And bad things do happen. They’ll keep happening too. As long as we’re here.” She looked back at the busted piano. “When Marcus’s music was playing, all I could think of was my sister.”

  The four who were left in the music room didn’t know what else to say or do. Marcus tried to squeeze Dash’s shoulder, but Dash only shook him off. Poppy and Azumi found themselves holding hands. It took several long seconds for Poppy to gather herself. She went over to the door and closed it again, then shoved some of the furniture back into place.

  “So when we were downstairs, you lied,” Poppy said to Marcus in a low voice. “When I told you my story about the Girl in the mirrors”—she glanced at the portrait hanging over the fireplace—“you said that I was crazy. But you had experienced the same thing. Why would you do that?”

  “You’re right,” Marcus answered softly. “He … the Musician’s always been with me. I think he’s my uncle. I should have told you, but I was scared. I’m sorry.”

  Poppy’s eyes flashed. She exhaled and regrouped, her mind churning. After a few seconds, she added, “At least we know now what we all have in common.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Azumi.

  “We’ve all been haunted,” said Poppy. “In our own way. Maybe that’s the real reason we’re here. Maybe that’s how this place, or the spirits inside it, were able to find us.”

  “To lure us,” Marcus added.

  Azumi nodded. “To trap us.”

  “Or at least to try,” said Poppy. “We know now that we’re different. But I think whatever lives here underestimates us.”

  “Maybe not,” said Dash. “Maybe the evil inside this place knows exactly what it’s doing.”

  Quiet filled the room for a moment, like a held breath.

  “We’ll go find your brother when you’re ready, Dash,” Poppy said. “And then we’re getting out of here. Now that we have a better idea of how. We’re getting out of here together.” A flicker of motion captured her attention, as if the portrait of the Girl had caught fire, but looking once more at the painting over the fireplace, nothing had changed. Or had it? Poppy noticed Consolida Caldwell—beloved daughter and sister—smiling at her. Had the Girl been smiling before?

  When Poppy turned back to the group, Marcus and Azumi stared at her as if they expected her to spout out all the answers they needed to hear. Dash hung his head, tears dripping silently from the tip of his nose.

  Poppy didn’t have any answers. She knew that none of them did. What they did have was one another. And maybe that was enough to keep them going, to keep them strong, until they could find their way out of this nightmare. Poppy wanted to believe that more than anything. She really did.

  Making her way to the other three, Poppy held out her arms and gathered everyone together. And for the first time in a long time, she felt safe.

  From all corners of the room, there came a series of creaks and cracking sounds, as if the house were settling into the earth, satisfied.

  ENDPAPERS

  Photos ©: 2 wallpaper and throughout: clearviewstock/Shutterstock, Inc.; 2–3: hole: CG Textures; string: Scholastic Inc.; 2–3 hand: Alex Malikov/Shutterstock, Inc.; 3 girl: Larry Ronstat for Scholastic Inc.; 4: paper: Scholastic Inc.; fire: CG Textures; 5 sticker: Scholastic Inc.; 6–7: mansion: Dariush M/Shutterstock, Inc.; fog: Maxim van Asseldonk/Shutterstock, Inc.; clouds: Aon_Skynotlimit/Shutterstock, Inc.; composite: Shane Rebenschied

  INTERIOR

  Photos ©: Chapter 1: Illustration by Ben Perini for Scholastic Inc. based on masks by CSA Plastock/Getty Images; Chapter 4: main: Lewis W. Hines/Library of
Congress; feet and sheet: Keirsten Geise for Scholastic Inc.; Chapter 7: mansion: Dariush M/Shutterstock, Inc.; fog: Maxim van Asseldonk/Shutterstock, Inc.; clouds: Aon_Skynotlimit/Shutterstock, Inc.; moon: Mykola Mazuryk/Shutterstock, Inc.; composite: Shane Rebenschied for Scholastic Inc.; Chapter 8: rabbit mask: CSA Plastock/Getty Images; boy: Fancy/Media Bakery; staircase: Anna Bogush/Shutterstock, Inc.; lollipop: Hayati Kayhan/Shutterstock, Inc.; Chapter 10: background: Ppictures/Shutterstock, Inc.; bingo machine: Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images; bingo balls: GeoffBlack/Getty Images; Chapter 16: standing doll: ejay111/iStockphoto; clear-eyed doll: Prachaya Roekdeethaweesab/Shutterstock, Inc.; burnt head: AAR Studio/Shutterstock, Inc.; torso doll: mofles/iStockphoto; clothed doll: Perfect Lazybones/Shutterstock, Inc.; wall and floor: Lora liu/Shutterstock, Inc.; Chapter 21: paper: Scholastic Inc.; floor: CG Textures; Chapter 23: hallway: Peter Dedeurwaerder/Shutterstock, Inc.; violin: AtomStudios/iStockphoto; pants: michaeljung/Shutterstock, Inc.; boy: Keirsten Geise for Scholastic Inc.; dog mask: CSA Plastock/Getty Images; Chapter 25: girl photo: Larry Ronstat; pen: Scholastic Inc.; paper/folders/rubberband/scratches: Scholastic Inc.; scissors: Photodisc; wood texture: CG Textures; Chapter 27 background: phoelix/Shutterstock, Inc.; gate: Songpan Janthong/Shutterstock, Inc.; left arm: Khakimullin Aleksandr/Shutterstock, Inc.; doll top: Faded Beauty/Shutterstock, Inc.; doll bottom: Jeff Wilber/Shutterstock, Inc.; wig: exopixel/Shutterstock, Inc.; Chapter 31: room: Library of Congress; cello: DK Arts/Shutterstock, Inc.; Chapter 38 girl: robangel69/Fotolia; frame: Chatchawan/Shutterstock, Inc.; mantle: Zick Svift/Shutterstock, Inc.; wallpaper: Larysa Kryvoviaz/Shutterstock, Inc.

  Dan Poblocki is the author of several books for young readers, including The House on Stone’s Throw Island, The Book of Bad Things, The Nightmarys, The Stone Child, and the Mysterious Four series. His recent novels, The Ghost of Graylock and The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe, were both Junior Library Guild selections and made the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list in 2013 and 2014. Dan lives in Brooklyn, in an apartment with walls that happily do not move around while he’s writing. Visit him online at www.danpoblocki.com.