Midnight Games

  Part One

  1

  My friends and I did a horrible thing.

  We murdered Candy Shutt, a girl in our class, and then we ran away.

  Well, we didn’t exactly murder her. It was kind of an accident. But we caused it. We sneaked into her house. We tried to steal a piece of her jewelry. She came after us. She grabbed for it.

  We watched her tumble down the stairs. We heard the horrible crack her neck made when her head hit the wall. We saw her body sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, so still . . . so unnaturally still . . . her head tilted at such a wrong angle.

  We knew Candy was dead. And we ran.

  We didn’t tell anyone we were there that night. We kept our secret. Just the three of us—Nikki, Shark, and me.

  That was in October. And now it’s a month later, and we can’t stop thinking about it. Dreaming about it. Talking about it.

  Some nights I dream of Candy’s big silver pendant with the glowing blue jewels. She called it an amulet. I see Candy wearing it, using its evil, casting spells on me and my friends.

  And then suddenly, I’m wearing the amulet. And in the dream, I feel all strange, as if I’m outside my body, watching myself, falling into the blue glow of the jewels, surrounded by blue, changing . . . changing into some kind of evil creature . . . changing into some kind of roaring beast. A roaring beast in a tight blue shirt. I’m practically bursting from the shirt. I see red lettering on the front. And I know it’s blood. Words scrawled on the shirt in blood. I struggle to read them as the blood pours down the front of the shirt.

  And suddenly I can read it clearly. My name?

  NATE GARVIN, YOU MURDERED ME!

  And I wake up screaming.

  Yes, it’s happened two or three times. And I have to make up an excuse to my mom, who comes running into my room, her face wide with alarm.

  “Nate, why are you screaming in your sleep again?”

  I blink my eyes. I can’t make the blue glow fade away. It lingers like a fog in front of me. “Uh . . . just a bad dream, I guess. I was dreaming about school.”

  That’s what I tell her.

  But of course I was dreaming about Candy. Poor, dead Candy, who fell down the stairs right in front of us. Crack . . . crack . . . crack. And that amulet, which we all believed to be so evil.

  It’s hard to understand if you don’t live in Shadyside. If you grew up in Shadyside, you’d know all the stories about the Fear family. They were early settlers of the town. They built a huge mansion on the street named after them—Fear Street.

  People claim they were evil. The Fears used the dark arts and evil sorcery to get their way—and to entertain themselves. Weird howls and screams of horror were heard coming from the Fear Mansion day and night. When we were kids, most of us were too frightened to put a foot anywhere near that street.

  We even learned about the Fear family in school.

  Simon and Angelica Fear were the most evil of them all. Angelica wore a jeweled amulet that she said gave her immortality. She used it to cast spells and put curses on her enemies.

  I never believed any of the stories. I don’t believe in evil curses or casting spells on people. I always thought the stories about the Fear family were made up.

  But when Candy Shutt showed up wearing a silver amulet with blue jewels, bad things started happening to me and my friends.

  I know it sounds crazy. But we became convinced she had found Angelica Fear’s amulet. And that she was using it against us.

  So we sneaked into her house and tried to steal it.

  And that’s when the accident happened. That’s when Candy fell to her death.

  We were left standing there holding her amulet. The evil amulet. Only, it was plastic and glass.

  Yes, a total fake.

  Not Angelica Fear’s amulet. A cheap copy. With no magical powers. A cheap copy that broke in half, just the way Candy broke.

  Candy died for nothing.

  Nikki, Shark, and I ran from the house and never told anyone.

  But it’s a month later, and I wake up screaming.

  I know it wasn’t my fault. But how can I make the nightmares stop?

  2

  Some nights it helps to go hang out and talk with my friends. We wait till our parents are asleep. Then we sneak out of our houses and head for Nights, the all-night bar on Fear Street.

  We call ourselves the Night People.

  I don’t know who started it. Maybe Jamie Richards and Lewis Baransky. But now, a whole bunch of us Shadyside High kids sneak out nearly every night.

  After midnight in Shadyside, the houses are dark and silent. The streets are empty. Hardly anything moves. The whole world belongs to us.

  No one knows about our secret life except Ryland O’Connor, the bartender at Nights. Our parents think we’re snug and sound asleep in our beds.

  We usually start out at Nights. Then we wander around town. We don’t do much, just hang out. You know. Enjoy the darkness and be together in our secret world.

  And now here it is, a cold November night, a tiny crescent moon high in the sky, and I creep out the back door of my house, eager to see my friends.

  The wind is blowing the trees, making them shake and rattle. They are dark, trembling shapes behind a curtain of fog.

  I have had the nightmare again. This time, a girl was wearing the pendant. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her whispered words: “Kill again . . . kill again!”

  I don’t think I screamed. But I woke up in a cold sweat. Stood up in a blue haze, as if the pendant were in the room, the glowing blue light floating all around me.

  “Kill again!”

  So unfair. I didn’t kill anyone. Why can’t I lose the frightening dreams?

  I trot down the driveway to the street, squinting into the low swirls of fog. And I feel the fog inside and out, as if I’m part of it. Not real at all. But smoke floating through smoke.

  Whoa. Nate, get a grip, dude.

  Don’t totally lose it now.

  I lower my head and jog a couple of blocks. Nights Bar is just a few blocks farther. No people in sight, but everything is in motion. The wind bends the grass and sends pebbles dancing along the street.

  The fog grows thicker as I turn the corner. I slow to a walk, breathing hard. My breath fogs up in front of me. Fog everywhere.

  Candy Shutt’s house is on the next block.

  I stop. A chill shakes my body. I don’t want to go past her house tonight.

  The nightmare repeats in my mind, playing out in the fog. I see Candy’s dead body, eyes staring blankly up at me.

  Why me?

  I spin around and start in the other direction. I’ll walk through the woods, I decide.

  The Fear Street Woods.

  The bar is on the other side of the trees, on Fear Street. Actually, Nights stands on the very spot where the Fear Mansion stood.

  They tore down the mansion last year. It was a burned-out wreck, anyway. They tore down all the old houses on Fear Street and built a shopping center: Fear Street Acres.

  So the street isn’t scary anymore. It’s filled with cars and bikes and shoppers all day. The Curse of Fear Street is over. At least, that’s what they said on all the TV news shows.

  I wish I could believe it.

  A wall of fog rises up in front of the trees. As if trying to keep me from entering the woods. The trees are old and tangled and tilting one way and the other. But their leaves have fallen, and I can see lights on the other side. The lights of the shopping center.

  My shoes crunch on the frosty ground. Dead leaves crackle as I walk along a twisting path. The trees rattle and sigh. I hear an animal scamper through the low shrubs at my right.

  I’m about halfway through the stretch of trees. The wood
s are narrow here. Wisps of fog float in front of me. I trip over a fallen branch and stagger forward to catch my balance.

  I brush away a clump of tall reeds and start to walk again. The path has disappeared, but I can see the lights glowing hazily beyond the trees.

  I start to walk faster—then I stop. I stop when I hear the hoarse caw of a bird. High over my head.

  I stop. Another chill tightens the back of my neck.

  Everyone knows there are no birds in the Fear Street Woods.

  That’s one of the mysteries of the place.

  I raise my eyes to the dark, shivering tree branches. I squint from tree to tree. No sign of it.

  Another caw—raspy, angry.

  And then I see it. A huge blackbird, hunched on a low branch right over my head.

  Pale moonlight ripples down through the fog. The light appears to burn the fog away. And, suddenly, I can see the bird clearly.

  Its long wings are tucked back, so it appears to be wearing a black cape. I see its long talons curled around the branch. I see its curled bill.

  It stares at me with a bright, blue eye. Then the bird tilts its head, and I see the other eye. Black? No. An empty socket. Just a dark hole where the eye should be.

  I take a stumbling step back.

  Why does it stare at me so intently?

  We have a short staring match. The blue eye peering down at me, locked on my eyes.

  And then the ugly, one-eyed bird raises its head. It lets out a terrifying cry—a high scream that echoes off the bare trees.

  Before I can move, it dives off the branch and swoops down at me, pointed talons raised to attack, screeching in fury.

  3

  The big blackbird lands heavily. I let out a startled cry as its talons dig into the shoulders of my coat.

  It beats its heavy wings against my face. It opens its bill in another screech.

  I stumble back against a tree. I raise both hands to protect myself.

  Its talons dig deeper into my shoulders. I feel the sharp point of its bill scrape the side of my face. The wings pound harder.

  I swing my arms. Grab frantically at its fat body. My hands slide off the coarse feathers.

  “Owww!” I scream in pain as the bird lowers its bill to my face. Pecks at my eyes.

  I twist my head away. Shoving it. Pushing at it.

  The wings flap and scrape my face. The ugly bird grips me tightly, holding on so it can attack. Again. Again.

  I feel hot blood pouring down my cheeks.

  “Get off! Get OFF!” I scream.

  I stare into the empty eye socket. I can see torn veins and muscles deep inside, as if the eye had been ripped out of its head.

  Another shrill screech of attack rings in my ears.

  I feel dizzy.

  This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  No way I’m being attacked by a one-eyed bird in the middle of the night in the Fear Street Woods.

  But it is happening.

  And I can’t fight the bird off. Too strong. Too heavy and strong.

  And angry.

  I bat at the bird with both hands. Swing at it, twisting my body, ducking my head.

  It scrapes my face again. I feel its sharp bill dig into my skin. Blood pours down both cheeks, from my forehead, over my eyes.

  Can’t see.

  Can’t see through the flowing blood.

  I drop to the ground beneath the beating wings.

  I drop to my knees and struggle to cover my head.

  But I feel the pinch of pain as it digs its talons into the back of my neck.

  It attacks again. Again.

  I’m whimpering now. Covering my head with both hands.

  Helpless as it lowers its head to attack again.

  “Get off! Get OFF!”

  Helpless.

  Is it going to kill me?

  4

  How long was I in the woods? What happened to me there? Why do I have streaks of caked blood on my jacket?

  I can’t answer those questions.

  I feel dazed and shaken. And every part of my body hurts. But I can’t answer any questions.

  I pull open the door of Nights Bar and smell that familiar beery aroma. I blink a few times, letting my eyes adjust to the low lights.

  I squint at the yellow neon Budweiser sign behind the long bar at the front. It says: one-thirty.

  I step up to the bar and call to the bartender, Ryland O’Connor, who doesn’t pick up his head from the Biker magazine he is reading.

  Ryland is a tall, stocky, red-faced guy, with spiky blond hair, a silver ring in one ear, and crinkled-up eyes that always seem to be laughing. He has three tiny, blue stars tattooed on his right temple. And a long scar on one cheek that he won’t tell anyone how he got.

  “Hey, Ry,” I say, my voice hoarse. “I really need a beer.”

  He slowly gazes up at me. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  I blink. “Oh, yeah. For sure.”

  I back up and kiss the brass plaque on the wall by the front door.

  The plaque shows the two original Fears—Angelica and Simon—just their faces, young faces, like they’re in their twenties or maybe thirties. Underneath, it says, FIRST SETTLERS OF SHADYSIDE. FEAR MANSION BUILT ON THIS SPOT IN 1889.

  We all kiss the plaque when we come into Nights. I mean, just about everyone kisses it. Partly as a joke, and maybe some of us think it keeps bad luck away. I’m not so sure. My friend Galen kissed it one night and his lips got stuck to it. It was horrible. He wound up in the hospital. The weird thing is it happened right after he told me he knew something really important about the Fears. Something dangerous! But I kiss it, anyway.

  Ryland slides a bottle of Bud across the bar to me. He knows none of us Night People are old enough. He knows we all have fake IDs. But he’s cool about it.

  I tilt the bottle to my mouth and take a long pull. My neck aches. All of my muscles ache, as if I’ve been in an accident or something.

  I turn and take a few steps beyond the bar. I see my buddy Shark sitting with Lewis Baransky in a booth against the back wall.

  “Hey, Nate—” Jamie Richards calls to me. She’s at a table with Ada, my girlfriend. It seems weird to call Ada that. We’ve only been going out a few weeks. It just sort of happened. I’m not really sure how.

  We’ve been friends for a long time. And then, suddenly . . . wow.

  I walk over to Jamie and Ada. I lean down and kiss Ada on the lips. She raises her hands to my face—then jerks them away.

  She stares at me wide-eyed. “Nate—what happened to you?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  Both girls are staring at me now. I drop down in the chair next to Ada.

  “Your face—,” Ada says. “Is that blood?”

  I raise a hand to my cheek. It feels crusty. It hurts when I touch it.

  Ada reaches her hand into my hair. “Oh, gross.” She makes a disgusted face. “Dried blood. In your hair.”

  Jamie frowns at me. “What happened? Are you okay? Were you in an accident?”

  I shut my eyes to think about it. I have a hollow feeling in my stomach. And my brain . . . my mind is a blank.

  “You’re totally scratched up, Nate,” Ada says, grabbing my hand. “Look. There’s blood on your hands, too.”

  “Hey, Nate—you get in a fight?” Shark calls from the back. “Who won?”

  “Definitely not me,” I shout back.

  But I don’t feel like joking around. My ears are ringing. I take another long pull on the beer bottle.

  Ada and Jamie are still staring at me. Ada brushes some caked blood off my hair.

  “I walked here,” I say, thinking hard. “Through Fear Woods. I . . . uh . . . think I fell.”

  “Did you land on your head?” Shark calls.

  Lewis laughs. He has a high whinny of a laugh. He sounds like a horse.

  I make a fist. “I’m going to land on your head!” I tell Shark.

  Shark ju
mps to his feet. He sneers at me like he’s tough or something. “Dude, you want to take it outside?”

  I jump to my feet.

  Everyone laughs. They know Shark and I are good buddies. Shark is a pretty wild kid. He gets in trouble sometimes. But he’d never fight me. We look out for each other.

  Especially since that night at Candy’s house. Especially since we have that big, awful secret to keep.

  Ada pulls me back down. “So you were walking here and you fell?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I guess I cut myself on some brambles.”

  She shakes her head. “Must be really tough brambles,” she mutters. “You’re a total mess.”

  Ada pulls me up and leads me by the hand to the bathroom at the back of the bar. It’s a filthy mess. The sink is rusted brown, and there are clumps of wet toilet paper all over the floor.

  “Doesn’t Ryland ever clean this place?” Ada asks.

  I shrug. “He’s got a tough job. You know. Sitting up front and reading magazines all night.”

  Ada wets some paper towels and starts to mop the dried blood off my face. It really hurts, but I don’t flinch or anything. Gotta be tough, right?

  She frowns at me as she dabs at my cheek. “You sure you fell?”

  I hesitate. I almost tell her the truth. That I don’t remember how it happened.

  But that’s just too weird. When I think about how my mind is blank, I get that scared, hollow feeling in my stomach again.

  “Yeah. Fell,” I said. “Stupid, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she agrees. “Stupid.”

  We kiss for a while. I put my arms around her and hold her tight. I want to hold on to her for a long time. Something scary happened to me in the woods, and I don’t know what it was.

  I only know I’m really afraid.

  After a long while, Ada pulls away from me. We’re both breathing hard. I can still taste her lips on my lips.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she says, pressing her forehead against mine. “It reeks.”

  When we return to the table, Shark and Lewis have joined us. Lewis is holding hands with Jamie. They’ve been going out for years. Shark is spinning a large gold coin around on the table.

  “Is that real gold?” Jamie asks. “Where’d you get it?”

  Shark holds the coin up for her to see. “It’s very old. Know where I got it? That night we were all in the Fear Mansion last year. In that hidden room we found. Before they tore the house down. That night we swiped all that stuff?”