The Dare Read online

  I let out a gasp. “But then you shot him. You killed him. Why?”

  “I thought you might wimp out,” Dennis replied. “I couldn’t take that chance. So I did it. But the police will think you did it. Everyone will think you did it.”

  Something inside me exploded. The volcano went off. My anger, my hurt, burst out of me in a flood of cries and furious words.

  “I trusted you! I trusted you! I cared about you!”

  I heard the words escape my lips, but I didn’t feel that I was saying them. I was too hurt, too broken to think clearly, too angry, too betrayed to see!

  Caitlin and Dennis held on to each other. They stared back at me defiantly, coldly.

  My anger and hurt meant nothing to them. Nothing.

  Dennis had killed Mr. Northwood. And now I was going to be blamed.

  My life was ruined so that Dennis could rejoin the track team and live happily ever after with Caitlin.

  I heard sirens approaching from the street.

  They blended with my own furious screams.

  I was out of control. Out of myself. Out of my head.

  “I can’t let you do this to me!” I shrieked at Dennis.

  The pistol was in my hand.

  I raised it to Dennis’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  chapter 30

  No, I didn’t.

  I couldn’t. I’m not a killer.

  I was breathing hard, gasping for air. I felt as if I were choking, drowning, going under, down, down into frightening darkness.

  What was that angry wail?

  Was it my desperate cry?

  Was it the police siren?

  Why was it so dark? So terrifyingly dark?

  Why couldn’t I breathe?

  “Drop the gun! Drop it!” A man’s stern voice broke through the darkness.

  Before I could move, powerful hands grabbed me roughly. I saw a flurry of movement. Dark uniforms. Grim faces. A hand pulled the pistol away by the barrel.

  “Don’t move!” the man ordered.

  Someone stepped behind me, grabbed my arms, and forced them behind my back.

  The darkness lifted slowly.

  Four police officers came into focus.

  Two of them bent over Mr. Northwood. One of them held on to me tightly from behind. The other stepped up to Dennis and Caitlin.

  To my surprise, I saw that Caitlin had started to cry. “It was so horrible!” she wailed to the solemn-faced officer.

  “We saw the whole thing,” Dennis said, his features tight with sorrow, his arm still around Caitlin’s trembling shoulders.

  Caitlin let out a sob. She took several deep breaths. “We tried to stop Johanna,” she told the police officer, wiping her tears off her cheeks with her hands. “We tried to stop her. But we weren’t in time.”

  “If only we’d arrived sooner,” Dennis added, shaking his head. “Just a few seconds earlier, and Mr. Northwood would still be alive.”

  “But she shot him!” Caitlin cried. “Johanna shot him!”

  The other officer pulled my arms up behind me until I cried out from the pain. “Read Johanna her rights,” he instructed his partner. He lowered his face close to mine. “The charge will be first-degree murder.”

  chapter 31

  “Hey—he’s still alive!” one of the officers bent over Mr. Northwood declared.

  “Get an ambulance unit,” his partner instructed. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s hanging on. He can make it if they hurry.”

  Mr. Northwood wasn’t dead!

  The good news made my heart jump as the officer droned on, reciting my rights.

  “My mother,” I murmured, struggling to think clearly. “My mother is at work.”

  “We’ll get your mother,” the officer holding my arms said in a low, gruff voice. “And you’ll need a good attorney, miss. Even if the guy lives, you’re in a lot of serious trouble. Assault with a deadly weapon. Intent to kill.”

  “But I didn’t—” I choked off my words with a defeated sob.

  There was no way they would believe me.

  Caitlin and Dennis had seen to that.

  I could deny my guilt forever, but no one would ever listen.

  The whole school knew that I was going to shoot Mr. Northwood. There were a hundred witnesses who could tell the police about the bets on whether or not I would do it.

  Besides, the police didn’t even need other witnesses.

  They had caught me with the gun, the gun that had shot Mr. Northwood.

  No one would believe I was innocent. No one.

  The officer started to drag me to the police cruisers. I glanced back to see Caitlin crying her eyes out. Dennis had his arms around her, comforting her.

  “Why did she shoot him? Why?” I heard Caitlin mumble through her tears.

  Quite a performance.

  The officer had pulled me to the driveway when we heard the other policeman’s surprised cry. “Hey, Walt—come back here! Take a look at this!”

  He turned me roughly around and pulled me back toward the woodpile. Dennis was still comforting Caitlin. Two officers were staring at something in their partner’s hand.

  “I pulled this from the victim’s coat pocket,” the officer said. He held up Mr. Northwood’s tiny cassette recorder.

  “So what?” another officer demanded.

  “It’s on. It’s recording,” his partner replied. “I’ll bet we have the whole shooting on tape here.”

  Caitlin abruptly stopped crying. She and Dennis stared in silent horror as the policeman pushed a button and started to rewind the cassette in the tiny recorder.

  “I don’t believe this!” one of the officers exclaimed.

  We heard jabbering backward voices at high speed. Then the officer pushed another button, and we heard Dennis say, “It was all a dare. Caitlin dared me to let you take care of our Northwood problem.”

  No one moved. No one breathed.

  “Turn it off!” Caitlin shrieked. She made a grab for the tape player. But an officer pulled her back by the waist.

  Dennis let out a defeated sigh and lowered his head. Caitlin struggled to get to the recorder, but the officer held on firmly.

  “You shot him,” I heard myself say through the tiny tape player speaker. “You killed him. Why?”

  And then we all listened to Dennis’s confession: “I thought you might wimp out. I couldn’t take that chance. So I did it. But the police will think you did it. Everyone will think you did it.”

  An officer moved to grab Dennis. But Dennis made no attempt to run. He stood with his head bowed, his black hair falling down over his face.

  ‘The charge will be assault with intent to kill,” an officer was saying.

  Caitlin was crying for real now. A policeman recited her rights to her in a low monotone.

  I heard a loud siren out front. I knew it was the ambulance for Mr. Northwood.

  The officer let go of my arms. He apologized. “We’ll need your statement, but you can give it later,” he said softly.

  He gestured to Dennis and Caitlin and frowned. “Some friends you got,” he said sarcastically. “I never heard of anything like this. What was that he was saying on the tape about a dare?”

  I watched the officers guide Dennis and Caitlin to the police cruisers. Caitlin was sobbing loudly. Dennis walked with his head bowed.

  “The dare? It was all just a fantasy,” I told him. “Just a crazy fantasy that got too real.”

  I turned away from the flashing red lights and hurried to my house.

  About the Author

  “Where do you get your ideas?”

  That’s the question that R.L. Stine is asked most often. “I don’t know where my ideas come from,” he says. “But I do know that I have a lot more scary stories in my mind that I can’t wait to write.”

  So far, he has written over a hundred mysteries and thrillers for young people, all of them best-sellers.

  Bob grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Today he lives in an a
partment near Central Park in New York City with his wife, Jane.

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to Fear Street—where your worst nightmares live! It’s a terrifying place for Shadyside High students—and for YOU!

  Did you know that the sun never shines on the old mansions of Fear Street? No birds chirp in the Pear Street woods. And at night, eerie moans and howls ring through the tangled trees.

  I’ve written nearly a hundred Fear Street novels, and I am thrilled that millions of readers have enjoyed all the frights and chills in the books. Wherever I go, kids ask me when I’m going to write a new Fear Street trilogy.

  Well, now I have some exciting news. I am writing a brand new Fear Street trilogy right now. The three new books are called FEAR STREET NIGHTS. The saga of Simon and Angelica Fear and the unspeakable evil they cast over the teenagers of Shadyside will continue in these new books. Yes, Simon and Angelica Fear are back to bring terror to the teens of Shadyside.

  The new FEAR STREET NIGHTS will be published Summer 2005. Don’t miss it. I’m very excited to return to Fear Street—and I hope you will be there with me for all the good, scary fun!

  Feel the Fear.

  FEAR STREET® NIGHTS

  A brand-new Fear Street trilogy by the master of horror

  R.L. STINE

  In Stores Now

  Simon Pulse

  Published by Simon & Schuster

  FEAR STREET is a registered trademark of Parachute Press, Inc.

  FEAR STREET®—

  WHERE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES LIVE

  By bestselling author R.L. STINE

  Simon Pulse

  Published by Simon & Schuster

  FEAR STREET is a registered trademark of Parachute Press, Inc.