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  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Two

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part Three

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part Four

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Acknowledgments

  About R.L. Stine

  Reading Group Guide

  For Jane

  But Zeus sent from heaven a show’r of blood-stain’d rain. In sign of many a warrior’s coming doom.

  —The Iliad

  Prologue

  By morning, the hurricane had passed. But not before destroying every home, every building, every life on the island.

  Lea lowered her hand from her eyes and waited for them to adjust to the yellow-gray glare. The light reminded her of a sickroom, a hospital room, that chilling light that carries no warmth at all.

  No clouds in the sky, but the sun was hidden, lost behind the swirling dust and mist and chunks of dirt that clogged the air.

  The light feels dirty.

  Now, two dogs began to wail. Not in pain. Howling a mournful song. Sharing the horror of what they saw.

  Lea took one step, then another, concentrating on keeping her balance.

  Stay on solid ground. Don’t stumble and fall off the edge of the earth, into the ragged piles of death. Keep moving and you won’t be buried here.

  Lea’s thoughts were a jumble. No way to straighten them out, not with the dogs howling and the children crying, and the corpses all witnesses, all of them, lying so still and watching the living in silent accusation.

  Her sandals sank into a deep puddle of cold water. She kept walking. Ahead of her, she could hear the rush and roar of the waves. She was walking to the beach without realizing it.

  The winds and thundering rains had burrowed deep trenches in the sand. Lea stumbled and slogged through them, not seeing them, paying no attention to the mud and wet sand that invaded the bottoms of her jeans and clung like wet plaster to her legs.

  The sweaty mist carried by the wind off the raging waves didn’t revive her. It seemed to blind her even more, as if she were stepping into a whirling, warm cloud, swallowed by it, vanishing. The roar drowned out the howls of the dogs. Drowned out everything, even its own sound. A kind of noisy hollow silence Lea never knew existed.

  The beach was soaked and soft, soft as quicksand, she thought. And as her sandals sank deep into the muck, she pictured herself sinking down . . . down . . . until she disappeared forever into a dark, quiet world.

  In the water, a canoe bobbed crazily, upside-down. Something pale and flimsy tossed on the waves. Was it a sail? A bedsheet?

  Something crunched beneath Lea’s sandal. She stopped with a gasp. She pictured a human hand. “Oh no.”

  She lowered her eyes to the sand. Tentacles. A pile of wriggling creatures. She jumped back. Struggled to keep her balance. No. They weren’t moving.

  Salt air off the ocean made her eyes water. When she could finally focus, she recognized them. Starfish. Dozens of them. Stiff and already dry. A pile of a hundred dead starfish, trailed by hundreds more, a long line all down the shore. They must have been washed from the sea by the storm.

  Lea bent to examine them. She had never seen so many starfish. Never imagined so many would travel together. Travel together to their deaths.

  She picked one up. Prickly. Nearly as hard as a seashell. She turned it over in her hand. The arms so stiff. As if it had never been alive. She dropped it onto the pile.

  This has to be a symbol of bad luck.

  But how can the luck get any worse?

  She was still leaning down, her eyes trailing the long line of starfish corpses, when she felt the first warm drop on the back of her neck. She brushed it away with the palm of her hand and stood up.

  A high wave crashed onto the beach, more violent than the others, sending up a spray of white foam before retreating. Lea felt another warm drop, this time on her forehead.

  She took a step back from the ocean, shoes squishing on the mucky sand. A soft patter made her gaze around.

  It had started to rain. She felt a few warm taps on the top of her head, another on her forehead. She raised a palm and felt warm raindrops on her skin.

  Gazing up, she saw only white glare. No rain clouds. But the raindrops made a pit-pit-pit sound on the sand all around her. And the shoulders of her sweater were already wet. And her hair—

  She uttered a soft cry and squinted into the falling rain. Something strange. Something not right. Like the dead starfish all gathered in a line on the shore.

  Something wrong with this rain. The brightness of the sky and the darkness of the raindrops . . .

  Very wrong.

  Lea began to shiver. So unnatural. The darkness of the raindrops . . .

  As the storm grew stronger, it became easier to see that the raindrops were red. A shimmering deep scarlet.

  “Holy shit,” she murmured. “It’s raining blood!”

  She raised both palms and watched the red raindrops bounce onto her skin. Fascinated and horrified, she didn’t move. Stared at her hands as the red drops trickled down her palm. She lifted her eyes to the raindrops falling all around her.

  Red . . . As if the blood of all who had died here last night was raining down on her. The blood of all the victims pouring doom over the island, a final terrifying drenching good-bye.

  It soaked her hair and poured down her face. Bloodred raindrops pattering down from a cloudless sky. A blood rain.

  Where had she heard that
phrase before?

  Yes. She had read about a blood rain in southern India several years ago. For real. The sky had opened up and red rain poured down on a village. And the people were terrified. Lea remembered. They were frightened that the red rain was the onset of the world’s end.

  Now sheets of rain fell, driven by the gusting winds off the ocean. Like red curtains, blowing and parting and closing again.

  Yes. Red curtains of rain all around her.

  So wrong. So unnatural and wrong.

  And as the billowing blood curtains appeared to part, two boys came stepping out. Two blond-haired boys with bright blue eyes, walking solemnly side by side.

  Identical blond boys, wavy hair brushed straight back off their broad, gleaming foreheads, bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only ragged, torn white shorts stained by the red raindrops.

  Their faces glowed pink. Not a healthy pink but a reflection of the red rain falling around them. They gazed straight ahead at Lea, unblinking, faces drawn, their expressions stern, wooden, unreadable.

  Angels, she thought, unable to move, forced to stare back at them. Like blond angels.

  Two angels floating out from a curtain of blood and horror.

  How strange to see these two rays of light appear from all this darkness. Strange even for this island of mystery.

  Pale chests and arms, white as angel feathers. Hands tucked into the pockets of their stained shorts.

  Glowing figures, they moved in unison, walking together lightly over the soaked sand. Blue eyes locked on Lea. Closer.

  Until Lea was forced to cut the spell. She blinked a few times. Then, squinting harder at them, she called out, shouting over the roar of the dark rain, “Can I help you?”

  PART ONE

  Two Days Earlier

  1

  BLOG POST

  BY LEA HARMON SUTTER

  Travel_Adventures.com

  (April 10) Well, here I am on this island everyone calls mysterious and frightening, and I hope you are as curious as I am to find out if any of the stories are true. I tend to be skeptical. I have a bunch of older brothers who loved making up stories to terrify me, and I quickly learned not to believe any scary story anyone ever told me.

  I suppose it’s odd to begin a travel blog by saying that no one comes here. But before I can begin to describe the unique charms and dark mystique of Cape Le Chat Noir, I really have to start with that fact.

  No one comes here.

  Of course, no one really believes the island is cursed. But there are too many frightening stories from its past to ignore. The dozens of Spanish ships that mysteriously sank off the island shores in the 1600s? The rumors of dark-magic rituals? The stories—that many believe to this day—of the living dead walking the island in broad daylight?

  If you are an adventure traveler like me, those all seem like good things!

  But the fact is, no one has paid much attention to this island of whitewashed shacks, tall pine forests, fishing villages, and eccentric islanders—despite the fact that you can almost reach out and touch the place from the Outer Banks beaches of South Carolina.

  Located a hop, skip, and a splash from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, vacationers have avoided Cape Le Chat Noir like—shall I say it?—a black cat crossing their path.

  For you history nerds, here’s the 411: The island was annexed by the English sometime around 1650. They had little interest in it. Too small and too far from the mainland. Most English settlers chose the Roanoke Colony to the north (and we all know how that worked out).

  Small groups of nomadic American Indians found their way to the island. Spanish pirates arrived later, sometimes unhappily, because they watched their ships go down just offshore.

  Yes, this part of the ocean is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. You can Google it. Don’t bother to look for a reason why all the ships sank. No one can tell you. But this was the beginning of the island’s bad reputation.

  When French traders arrived and heard the stories, they gave the island its unlucky name. I haven’t been able to find out what they were trading. Most likely rum or some concoction like it. The islanders I’ve met seem to drink from morning till night. And if that’s your idea of travel adventure, go ahead—pack your bags.

  I’ve saved the best (or worst) for last. Here’s the most interesting historical detail—and it’s definitely creepy. Especially with frightening forecasts of a big hurricane heading this way.

  I don’t want to talk about the hurricane now. I’m pretending it’s not going to happen.

  You see, Le Chat Noir was devastated by one of the most powerful storms in hurricane history. It was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. And I have every finger crossed that history is not going to repeat itself now.

  I heard the story of that dreadful hurricane shortly after arriving at Cape Le Chat Noir and stepping off the bouncing, wooden dock. Believe me, folks—it did not exactly make me feel as if a welcome mat had been put out for me.

  The jeep-taxi to take me to my hotel was late. Squinting in the bright sunshine, I glanced around. The dock area seemed to be deserted, except for two ragged-looking fishermen setting off in a tiny flat-bottomed skiff. Definitely no official tourist greeter waiting with a rum punch or even a friendly smile.

  I spotted a tiny brown shack across the dirt road with the sign Tea Shop. So, with suitcase, laptop case, and camera in hand, I made my way there to wait for my ride.

  Inside, the room was dimly lit, with red neon lights over the mirror at a bar and small gas lamps on each table. The tables were round cylinders, like conga drums. Wall posters from tea companies provided the only cheeriness. I liked a poster that showed a grinning Chinese child holding a big steaming cup, and the words How Long Since You OOLONG?

  The place was totally empty. I took a seat at a table near the bar. I coughed, hoping it might summon someone from in back. A wooden overhead fan squeaked as it slowly made its rounds.

  An old woman emerged—white bristly hair under a black bandanna, pale skin tight over her cheekbones, silvery gray eyes, a little hunched over. She wore a long black dress, not exactly island wear. Without asking, she set a cup of dark tea down on my table with quavering hands.

  “Thank you.” My voice sounded muffled in the heavy air of the tiny room. The squeaking fan seemed to grow louder.

  “Why have you come?” Her voice was velvety smooth, much younger than her looks. Not exactly a friendly hello, huh, folks?

  I stammered an answer about writing a travel story about Le Chat Noir.

  “There’s a big storm on the way,” she said. “Hurricane Ernesto. Didn’t you hear about it?” She had no accent at all. Her eyes were so glassy, I thought she might be blind. But then I remembered she had set the teacup down on the little table with ease.

  “Yes. My husband warned me not to come here in hurricane season,” I said, inhaling the bitter steam from the cup.

  Mark is so sweet. He always wants me to stay home. But exploring my backyard would make for a dull travel blog, don’t you agree?

  Well, to cut to the chase, the woman told me her name was Marguerite. She procured her own cup of tea, sat down across from me, stared unblinkingly into my eyes, and began to talk in her smooth whisper of a voice.

  “The hurricane of 1935 didn’t have a name. They didn’t name them then. But it didn’t need a name to be remembered.”

  I blew on the cup, then sipped the tea. “You mean it was a bad one?”

  She nodded. Her throat made a rattling sound. I pretended not to notice.

  “The storm showed no mercy. It swept over the Outer Banks, up to Chincoteague Island and the Virginia coast, flattening everything in its path. Nothing was left standing on this island. Not a house, not a shack, not a bait shop, not a teahouse. All shattered. All ruined. Even the lighthouse on the south shore was toppled over, into the ocean.”

  I tsk-tsked. “That’s horrible.”

  “My friends . . . people I knew, members of my family . . . Many
were crushed, buried, drowned. I was a child. I saw the corpses. They were floating in lakes and rivulets caused by the storm. Even at my age, I knew the horror. I knew the pain, the suffering. No one could decide where to pile the bodies. They lay sprawled in the sand and sea grass and on piles of wreckage. The corpses . . . They were feasted on for days by seagulls and starving dogs.”

  She took a long sip of tea. Her throat rattled as she swallowed. She gripped the cup with both hands, I guess, because her hands were so shaky.

  I felt a shiver go down my back. The story was terrifying and sad, but her whispered voice made it even more frightening. I had to remind myself that this took place in 1935.

  “I was a child but the pictures never faded from my eyes. The island was devastated. Turned to rubble. But it took only weeks to rebuild Le Chat Noir. Why? Because of a miracle. You might not call it a miracle, dear. You might call it a nightmare.”

  She waited for me to react. Her silvery eyes still hadn’t blinked.

  I set down the cup. “What do you mean? What kind of nightmare?”

  She swallowed. She leaned closer, close enough for me to see the thick layer of powder on her tight cheeks. “Le Chat Noir returned to normal in weeks. Because the old dead—the dead from centuries past—came back to life. All the dead of the island returned to help rebuild it. No eyes, flesh rotting, bones yellowed and broken, they floated up from their flooded graves and went to work. They joined the survivors to bury the recent dead and restore and rebuild Le Chat Noir.

  “When the job was done, did they return to their graves? No. The dead were proud of their handiwork. And they enjoyed the sunlight. It healed them and made them look almost normal, so normal most of them could blend in with the living. They decided to stay.”

  I squinted at her. “The dead? The dead people stayed?”

  She nodded, her expression solemn. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her hand was dry and hard, like solid bone. “That’s what makes Le Chat Noir special, dear. It’s the only place on earth where the living share their space with the living dead.”

  I glanced down at my empty teacup. The tea leaves on the bottom appeared to form an X. Of course I didn’t believe Marguerite’s story. But it left me feeling strange, kind of cold and tingly.