First Evil Read online

  Contents

  Part One: The Cheers

  Chapter 1: The Evil Sister

  Chapter 2: Nervous Time

  Chapter 3: First Scream

  Chapter 4: A Tragic Accident

  Chapter 5: Death of a Cheerleader

  Chapter 6: “It’s Your Fault!”

  Part Two: The Fall

  Chapter 7: The New Captain

  Chapter 8: Kimmy Quits

  Chapter 9: Bobbi and Chip

  Chapter 10: Horror in the Hall

  Chapter 11: Who Was Screaming?

  Chapter 12: Chip Is Buried

  Chapter 13: “I Was Dead”

  Chapter 14: Kimmy Has a Problem

  Chapter 15: The Accusations Fly

  Chapter 16: Strange Shadows

  Chapter 17: Cracking Up

  Part Three: The Evil

  Chapter 18: In Hot Water

  Chapter 19: What Corky Found

  Chapter 20: Corky Figures It Out

  Chapter 21: Kimmy’s Surprise

  Chapter 22: Jennifer’s Surprise

  Chapter 23: “I’m Not Jennifer”

  Chapter 24: Into the Coffin

  Chapter 25: Corky Loses

  Chapter 26: Buried

  The Second Evil Excerpt

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  The Cheers

  Chapter 1

  The Evil Sister

  “You are evil,” Corky said in a hushed whisper. “You are truly evil.”

  The words made Bobbi grin, her green eyes lighting up with pleasure. She gripped the rat tighter around its rib cage.

  “Where are you going to put it?” Corky asked, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The floorboards felt cold beneath her bare feet. “Right in front of Sean’s door?”

  Bobbi nodded and tiptoed down the narrow hall toward their brother’s room. Her blond hair was still tangled from sleep. Both girls were in long, cotton nightshirts.

  “Sean is terrified of rats,” Corky whispered, her eyes on her little brother’s door, expecting him to burst out and ruin Bobbi’s little surprise.

  “I know,” Bobbi said with an evil snicker. She carefully set the rat down in the center of the doorway. When Sean came out for breakfast, he’d have to walk right into it.

  “It looks so real,” Corky whispered. “It doesn’t look like rubber.” The floor creaked noisily and Corky stopped. She set one hand against the peeling wallpaper and leaned on it.

  “It’s the hair that makes it,” Bobbi replied. Having set down the realistic-looking creature, she and her sister started to back away, their eyes on Sean’s closed door. “It’s very good rat hair. Very authentic.”

  “Girls? What are you doing?” Their mother’s voice interrupted them from downstairs, startling them both. “Are you dressed yet? You’re going to be late. Come down for breakfast. And make sure Sean is up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bobbi whispered, grinning at her sister, “Sean will be wide-awake real soon!”

  Chuckling about Bobbi’s little joke, both girls descended the creaking staircase and joined their parents in the kitchen. Mr. Corcoran, their handsome, young-looking father, was already at the table, wiping egg off his chin with a paper napkin.

  “Yuck. Not poached eggs again,” Bobbi groaned.

  Mrs. Corcoran turned around, a pale reflection of her vibrant, blond daughters. She stared at their nightshirts, frowning. “That’s how you’re going to school?”

  “Yeah,” Bobbi answered quickly. “All the girls are wearing nightshirts. It’s sort of a trend.”

  “Why do we have to have poached eggs?” Corky asked, pouring herself a half glass of orange juice.

  “You need a lot of energy,” their mother replied, dumping two runny eggs on two pieces of toast with a plastic spatula.

  Mr. Corcoran yawned loudly. “I don’t sleep well in this house.”

  “No one does,” Corky muttered, taking her place at the breakfast table. The two eggs on her plate stared up at her like giant, runny eyes. “It’s the ghosts.”

  “Yeah. This place is definitely haunted,” Bobbi quickly agreed.

  “Haunted? That’s ridiculous.” Mrs. Corcoran set down a plate in front of Bobbi, who made a disgusted face.

  “This girl I met at school—Lisa Blume—she told me that all the houses on Fear Street are haunted,” Corky said, poking her eggs with her fork, watching the yellow run over the toast.

  “Just because a house is old and creaky it doesn’t mean it’s haunted,” Mr. Corcoran replied.

  “I think someone was murdered in my room,” Bobbi said, glancing across the table at her sister. Bobbi was the one with the wild imagination. “Someone keeps whispering to me late at night, whispering and crying.”

  “Probably the wind,” their father said, straightening his tie with one hand and taking a sip from his coffee cup with the other.

  “Yeah, sure. The wind,” Bobbi said sarcastically.

  Sitting across from each other, Corky and Bobbi looked like twins, even though Bobbi was a year older. Both had blond hair, very light, very fine, which they wore brushed straight to their shoulders or sometimes in ponytails or single braids. Both had lively green eyes, creamy, pale skin, and high cheekbones like models.

  Bobbi was seventeen but nearly two inches shorter than her younger sister, which annoyed her no end. Corky, on the other hand, was envious of her sister’s figure. Corky was tall but boyish. Sometimes she felt gawky and wished she’d hurry up and fill out.

  “Well, your brother is certainly not having any trouble sleeping in this house,” Mrs. Corcoran said, heading toward the front stairs. “Didn’t you wake him up?”

  They heard a deafening scream, a hideous scream of terror from upstairs. Sean had obviously discovered the rat.

  “I think he’s up,” Bobbi said dryly.

  Both girls collapsed in laughter, lowering their heads to the table.

  “What did you two do?” Mrs. Corcoran demanded. She hurried to the rescue.

  “We didn’t do it! The ghost did it!” Bobbi called after her.

  Mr. Corcoran simply shook his head. He was used to having his daughters play tricks on Sean. They loved to take advantage of their brother’s trusting personality.

  Taking another sip of coffee, Mr. Corcoran sighed, wondering what hideous thing they had just done to make poor Sean scream like that.

  The girls were still snickering when Sean entered the kitchen, fully dressed in faded jeans and a red Gap T-shirt, swinging the rat by the tail. “It didn’t fool me at all,” he told his sisters.

  “You always scream like that when you get up, right?” Bobbi teased.

  “I just did that so you wouldn’t be disappointed,” Sean said, avoiding their eyes.

  Mrs. Corcoran followed him into the kitchen and rested her hands on his slender shoulders. “This house is creepy enough,” she scolded the girls. “Do we really need rats?”

  Sean set the rat down on the breakfast table. Mrs. Corcoran quickly grabbed it away. “Not on the table. Please!”

  “It’s not as disgusting as these eggs,” Bobbi griped.

  Sean glanced from one plate to another. “Looks like rat puke.”

  “Sean—please!” his mother exclaimed.

  “Another delightful Corcoran family breakfast,” their father said, pulling himself up and scraping his chair noisily back along the faded, old linoleum.

  “Have your breakfast,” Mrs. Corcoran told the girls, glancing at the clock. “Don’t you have cheerleader tryouts this afternoon?”

  “If they’ll let us try out,” Corky said glumly. The light in her emerald eyes faded. “The squad is already full. They say they picked everyone last spring. Before we moved here.”

  “But you girls are the best!” their
mother declared, plopping two eggs onto a plate for Sean. “You were both all-state back home in Missouri. You practically took your squad to the national championships.”

  “You both stink,” Sean said flatly.

  “No one asked your opinion,” Mr. Corcoran told Sean. “Hey—I’m outta here.” He gave his wife a quick kiss on the cheek and disappeared out the kitchen door. “Good luck this afternoon, girls!” they heard him call from outside.

  “We’ll need it,” Corky muttered.

  “When you jump up, everyone can see your underpants,” Sean said nastily.

  “Sean—eat your eggs,” Mrs. Corcoran replied sharply. She pushed the plate closer to him, then glanced down at the girls, concern wrinkling her pale face. “They should let you try out at least. When they see how good you are—”

  “Miss Green said it was up to the girls on the squad,” Corky said.

  “Who’s Miss Green? The advisor?” their mother asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  “Yeah. We met her and we met the squad captain—Jennifer something-or-other,” Bobbi said. “She seemed really nice.”

  “So they’ll let you try out?” Mrs. Corcoran asked, motioning for Sean to eat faster.

  “Maybe,” Corky said doubtfully.

  “We’ll see after school,” Bobbi said. She took a final bite of toast, pushed her chair back, and hurried upstairs to get dressed.

  “You two could put Shadyside High on the map,” Mrs. Corcoran yelled after her.

  Corky laughed. “Mom, if it were up to you, we’d have it made.”

  “But you stink,” Sean said quietly. Then he opened his mouth wide so Corky could see the yellow egg inside.

  “You’re gross,” Corky said, frowning.

  “You stink,” he replied. It seemed to be the refrain of the morning.

  “Knock it off,” their mother scolded, rolling her eyes. “Hurry. Get dressed. You’re all going to be late.”

  Corky took a last sip of orange juice, then headed upstairs, trying to decide what to wear. The kids at Shadyside were a lot more into clothes than her friends back in Missouri. She had the feeling that she’d need some new things, some short skirts, some tights, some leggings.

  “Oh!”

  She stopped on the landing and stared up at the hall railing. It took her a while to realize that she was staring at her sister.

  “Bobbi!” she called.

  Bobbi was dangling over the wooden railing, motionless, her arms hanging down. Her eyes were wide open in an unseeing stare, her mouth twisted in a wide O of horror.

  “Bobbi!” Corky repeated, calling in a shrill voice she didn’t recognize. “Bobbi!”

  But her sister didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  Didn’t breathe.

  Chapter 2

  Nervous Time

  “Bobbi!”

  Her heart in her throat, Corky lurched up the final stairs to her sister.

  Bobbi raised her head, blinked, and an amused smile formed on her face. “Gotcha,” she said softly. Pushing with both hands against the railing, she raised herself to a standing position.

  “Bobbi—you rat!” Corky cried, her heart still thudding.

  “You weren’t supposed to find me,” Bobbi said, still grinning delightedly that her little joke had worked so well. “Sean was supposed to come upstairs first.”

  “Don’t ever do that again!” Corky cried, giving her sister a playful but hard punch on the shoulder. “You know I’m nervous about this house and trying out for cheerleading and everything.”

  “Nervous?” said Bobbi, following her sister into the room they shared. “Come on, Cork—lighten up. I mean, what’s there to be nervous about?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Her friends at Shadyside High were always telling Jennifer Daly that she looked like the movie star Julia Roberts. In fact, Jennifer did have the actress’s large, dark eyes and sensual full lips. She was also tall and slender and moved with an easy grace.

  A friendly girl with a soft voice and high, tinkling laugh, Jennifer had been the popular choice for captain of the Shadyside High Tigers cheerleading squad. She and Kimmy Bass, the squad’s energetic assistant captain, had been good friends since elementary school. But Jennifer also got along well with the other cheerleaders. She was so easy to know and to like, and as Kimmy put it, “She isn’t stuck up about anything.”

  Kimmy buzzed around Jennifer like a frenetic bumblebee. With her round face topped by a mop of crimped black hair, her full cheeks that always seemed to be pink, and her slightly chunky shape, she proved a striking contrast to her friend.

  Their personalities were quite different too. While Jennifer was soft-spoken, serene, and graceful, Kimmy was loud, enthusiastic, and so full of energy that she seemed unable to stand still.

  Standing under the basketball backboard, Jennifer straightened her T-shirt over her gray sweatpants and waited for the other members of the squad to enter the gym. She glanced up at the big clock next to the scoreboard. Three-twenty. School had just let out. Time for cheerleading practice to begin.

  Kimmy was the next to arrive, the swinging double doors banging behind her as she hurried across the gym floor, waving to Jennifer. The bright overhead lights gave Kimmy’s face a greenish tinge, Jennifer noticed. And as Kimmy drew closer, Jennifer saw that she had tiny beads of perspiration above her upper lip, a sure sign that Kimmy was worked up about something.

  Jennifer didn’t have to guess what Kimmy was upset about. It had to be the two Corcoran sisters, who, Jennifer noticed, had slipped into the gym and were huddled together on the far side of the floor near a section of wooden bleachers that had been lowered during the last gym class.

  “I just don’t think it’s right!” Kimmy exclaimed, tossing her backpack to the floor, her round cheeks pink with excitement. “We already have our squad, Jennifer. We’ve practiced all summer. They can’t just barge in. I don’t care who they are!”

  Jennifer closed her eyes briefly. Evidently Kimmy didn’t realize how far her voice could travel in the big, empty gym. Or perhaps she didn’t care. But she was talking loudly enough for the Corcoran sisters to overhear every word.

  “Sshh,” Jennifer whispered, gesturing with her eyes to the bleachers.

  Kimmy turned quickly, following Jennifer’s gaze. “I don’t care,” she repeated just as loudly as before. She shook her mop of hair, as if shaking away Jennifer’s warning. “We can’t let them try out, Jen. We can’t. It just isn’t fair.”

  The other cheerleaders were filing into the gym now, dropping their books and backpacks beside the wall, greeting one another in low tones, leaning against the tile wall to stretch out. Kimmy’s friend Debra Kern entered and gave Kimmy a quick wave. She was followed by Heather Diehl and Megan Carman, who were best friends and always together. Entering last was Veronica (Ronnie) Mitchell, the only freshman to make the squad.

  “Kimmy—they can hear you!” Jennifer repeated, embarrassed. She turned to the bleachers, where the Corcorans were now sitting side by side on the bottom bench, their hands clasped tensely in their laps. “You know, they’re supposed to be terrific cheerleaders.”

  “Says who?” Kimmy snapped, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  “They were all-state back in their old hometown,” Jennifer told her. “And you know that cheerleading competition that’s on ESPN every year?”

  “Yeah. We watched it together, remember?” Kimmy said almost grudgingly.

  “Well, their cheerleading team won it last year. That’s how good the Corcorans are.”

  “But who cares, Jen?” Kimmy cried emotionally, uncrossing her arms and gesturing with her hands. “We have a great team, don’t we? We work together so well. We’ve practiced together for so long and—”

  “But maybe they can make our team even better,” Jennifer said, refusing to raise her voice. “After all, we want the very best girls we can get, don’t we? I mean, maybe we could be all-state this year. Or be on ESPN or something.”

>   “I agree with Kimmy,” Debra broke in, stepping up beside her friend. She was beautiful but cold looking, with straight blond hair cut very short and icy blue eyes. Debra was an unlikely cheerleader. Short and thin, almost too thin, she seldom smiled. The only time she ever really seemed to come alive was when she was performing a cheer or a routine.

  “Look at them,” Jennifer said softly, turning her eyes to Corky and Bobbi. “They’re here. We can at least let them do their stuff, don’t you think? It won’t hurt to watch them.”

  “But we had tryouts last spring,” Kimmy insisted.

  “Yeah,” Debra chimed in. “We can’t hold tryouts every week, you know.” She fixed Jennifer with an icy stare.

  “Is this a cheerleading squad or a debating team?” a harsh voice rang out loudly.

  All of the cheerleaders turned to see Miss Green, their advisor, step quickly from her small office in the corner and move toward them with long, quick strides. Dressed in tight white tennis shorts, a gray short-sleeved T-shirt, and black high-tops, Miss Green was a compact woman with frizzy brown hair, a plain face that naturally seemed to fall into an angry expression, and a husky voice that always sounded as if she had a bad case of laryngitis.

  She taught health and phys. ed., and had a reputation for being tough—a well-deserved reputation.

  “We have three new routines to learn by Friday night,” she called out loudly, her voice echoing off the tile walls of the vast gym. “So what’s holding things up? Or have you learned the new routines already?”

  “We’re trying to decide about them,” Kimmy said, glancing first at Jennifer, then pointing to the Corcoran sisters, who had climbed to their feet.

  “It’s up to Jennifer,” Miss Green said, staring at Jennifer. “The captain decides.”

  Kimmy, obviously miffed, made a face.

  “I’d like to see what they can do,” Jennifer said, staring defiantly at Kimmy. “I really think we should give them a chance.”

  “Okay. End of debate,” Miss Green said brusquely. She waved to Corky and Bobbi. “Okay, you two!” she shouted. “You’re on!”

  “I don’t believe this,” Kimmy muttered darkly to Debra as they went to join the other girls against the wall. They stood beside Ronnie, and the three girls whispered among themselves, their expressions unhappy, as Corky and Bobbi made their way across the gym.