Scream and Scream Again! Page 14

  Maybe that’s the problem with Felicia. Maybe sorrow is clogging her throat, paralyzing her vocal cords.

  I have to find out what’s going on with her. Maybe I can help.

  She creeps down the stairs. In the kitchen, the stove clock tells her it’s past five a.m. She doesn’t have much time.

  Her gaze falls on the supper dishes, left in the drying rack beside the sink. Something glints among the plates and forks—the blade of the big knife Aunt Milly used to cut up the watermelon for dessert. Tacey looks at it for a long time. Then she gingerly grabs the handle and puts the knife into her back pocket. When she takes a step, the blade pokes into her skin. She removes it from her pocket and holds it in her hand, fist around the handle, blade pointed down. There.

  She’s ready for wild animals or anything else that might cross her path.

  Tacey’s footsteps are accompanied by a cricket chorus as she heads toward the wooded incline. The air is warm and damp, the grass wet with dew.

  Feeling as though she’s being watched, she looks back at the house, half expecting to see her aunt on the back steps or Jax in his bedroom window. No one is there.

  She cuts through the yard next door, searching the windows and cupola for Felicia or her grandmother. They aren’t visible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

  She hurries toward the trees, eager to leave behind the open space and envelop herself in protective foliage. A gap in the underbrush reveals a sloping trail, slippery with a carpet of rotting leaves and tangled with vines and rocks. She uses the glow from her phone to illuminate the terrain and picks her way up, wondering why she still feels as though she’s under surveillance. No one is stirring in this remote place at this hour, not even forest creatures.

  High overhead, an owl hoots as if to disprove that theory.

  As the trail twists and climbs, she decides this might be a bad idea. Especially when she checks her phone for the time and sees that she’s lost the signal. What if the wild animals awaken and attack? What if she trips and falls and breaks an ankle? No one would hear her cries for help. She should have at least told Jax where she was going, or left a note.

  Turn around. Go home.

  For some reason she can’t seem to make her body obey her brain’s command. It’s as if she’s being propelled by some unseen force. As she rounds a bend, she sees a clearing.

  The witch’s house.

  It’s a small shuttered cottage with a gingerbread porch and gabled roof. Bright lamplight spills from its windows. Even in the dark she can see that it’s painted the same bright blue as Aunt Milly’s shed, which should probably reassure her. Instead, it feels like a warning.

  Go home. You need to go home right now!

  Yet her feet propel her toward the house. If she goes back, she won’t know why Felicia keeps staring up here. And if she doesn’t know why, she won’t be able to stop wondering, and worrying, and wanting to go home.

  About to set foot on the bottom step of the porch, she freezes, hearing voices.

  “It’s your turn, Felicia.”

  At the familiar name, Tacey lowers her foot to the ground and takes a step backward, away from the porch.

  “I don’t want to play anymore.” A girl’s voice floats out into the night through the open window. “I just want to go home.”

  “You are home.”

  “No, she isn’t,” a male voice pipes up.

  “Shush, Leo.” The first voice is female and authoritative, with a bit of old-lady warble.

  “No! I want to go home too.”

  “You’ve already tried that, haven’t you? And what happened when you went back? Did your family welcome you with open arms?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “A wise decision, as it isn’t your turn to speak, nor to make a move in the game. Now, then, Felicia.”

  “I’m tired of playing. Can’t I go to sleep?”

  “You’ve been catnapping all day and most of the night. Now it’s playtime. Play!”

  Tacey creeps along the porch toward the nearest window, the knife trembling in her hand, thoughts racing along with her heart. Clearly, Felicia and Leo haven’t lost their voices after all. But why are they here, at the cottage in the woods? And who is the woman? She doesn’t sound like a witch, yet there’s an ominous edge in her voice when she says “play.”

  Tacey takes another step toward the window, and then another. One more will do it.

  But when she puts her foot down beneath the sill, a twig snaps beneath the rubber sole of her sneaker.

  “What was that?” Leo asks.

  “Be still! Someone is out there!” the woman hisses.

  Tacey turns and runs, careening over the rutted clearing to the trail. As she descends she hears a distant rustling behind her. Someone has come after her. She picks up speed, clinging to the knife, frantically trying to outrun whoever—whatever—is chasing her out of the woods.

  At last she sees the gap in the undergrowth. She sprints out of the woods—and spots the last thing she ever expected to see in the yard next door.

  Felicia, sitting in the rope swing, staring at this very spot, as if she was expecting Tacey.

  “How . . . ?” Panting, she looks back over her shoulder, hearing a thrashing in the trees as her pursuer closes in. “How did you get here?”

  Felicia doesn’t respond.

  Dazed, Tacey races on toward her aunt’s house. Only when she climbs the back steps does she dare to look over her shoulder . . . just in time to see a furry creature barrel from the woods. It’s small, with spotted fur, and . . .

  “That’s a bobcat,” says a voice behind her.

  Gasping, she turns to see Aunt Milly. She’s still wearing her nightgown, along with a disapproving expression.

  “It chased me.” Breathless, bewildered, Tacey sees the bobcat come to a stop several yards away.

  “What were you doing in the woods at this hour? And why do you have my carving knife?” Aunt Milly plucks it from her hand.

  “I— For protection. I was hiking and—”

  “Let’s go. Inside.” Her aunt steers her into the house, closing and locking the door after them.

  Tacey takes one last look at the bobcat through the window. It seems to stare back at her for a long moment before turning and disappearing into the shadowy forest, under the watchful green gaze of Felicia.

  “You just need to follow the rules while you’re living in someone else’s house,” Dad tells Tacey.

  “I didn’t know there was a rule against going for a hike.”

  “Armed with Aunt Milly’s good cutlery? In the middle of the night?”

  “It’s morning.”

  “The sun is barely up.” He rakes a hand through his dark hair, making it stand up even higher than when he first got out of bed to address what Aunt Milly referred to as a “situation.” His eyes are bloodshot, underscored by dark circles.

  “Twelve-year-old girls shouldn’t roam around the woods alone in the dark. You know better. Things can happen.”

  Yes. She shivers, thinking of the strange little house, and the voices. . . .

  Felicia? Leo?

  She’d been certain they were inside, held captive by a woman—the witch? But Felicia was here, sitting calmly in the yard, and there’s no way she could have gotten there ahead of Tacey.

  “—just a little longer, okay?”

  She blinks. Her father is talking, but she’s lost track of the conversation.

  “I’m sorry, what, Dad?”

  “I just need you to hang in there a little longer. I have a job interview today.”

  “Here?”

  “Cranberry Cove is home now, Tace.” He reaches out and gives her hand a squeeze. “Aunt Milly and Uncle Doug and Jax are the only family we have. You said you liked it here.”

  She did say that.

  But now . . .

  “We need to try to make this work, because . . . I don’t know what else we can do. Can you try?” Dad
asks. “Please? For me?”

  She nods. “Okay.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jax says, sponging drippy suds from a bucket over the minivan. “How can there be another Felicia? It’s an unusual name around here.”

  “I know. And why does this Felicia keep staring up at that very spot in the woods? And what about Leo?”

  “He’s in the hospital. How can he be in the woods—playing games, you said?”

  “That’s what it sounded like,” she agrees, uncoiling the garden hose, waiting to rinse off the car. “But they both wanted to go home, and they couldn’t.”

  “You must have heard wrong.”

  “Maybe I did. That’s why we have to go back up there.”

  “Why?”

  “To see what’s going on and make sure it’s nothing bad.” If it is, she can’t stay here.

  Jax shakes his head, eyes wide behind his glasses. “The woods are dangerous.”

  “I know, poison ivy, bugs, wild animals. . . .”

  “I’m not making it up. You said a bobcat chased you home.”

  “It did,” she says, “but it wasn’t vicious.”

  “But my mom—”

  “She’ll never even miss us. She said she’s leaving for a meeting at noon. That’s in five minutes. We’ll know when she leaves.”

  “But—”

  “Man up, Jax.”

  “I’m not a man. Neither are you.”

  “I know, but . . . we have to. Come on. It’ll be fine.”

  If only she felt half as confident as she sounds.

  “Shh.” Tacey holds a finger to her lips as she and Jax stealthily cover the last bit of ground to the cottage.

  He nods solemnly. He’s clutching a butter knife, as is she. Better than nothing. Aunt Milly’s good carving knife had disappeared from the kitchen, along with the knife block that usually sits on the counter—too dangerous and too expensive, she said earlier, for kids to lose outside.

  Again, voices drift out the open window.

  “No, not like that. You creep up and then pounce.” The woman’s voice sends chills down Tacey’s spine.

  “I am pouncing,” the girl protests.

  “Show her how it’s done, Leo.”

  Tacey inches closer to the window. The sill is at eye level. She rests her hands on it and stands on her tiptoes to peer over the edge.

  For a moment she’s certain the room is empty, other than a pair of cats playing with a rolled-up sock. Both are wearing bright blue collars.

  Then she hears the woman’s voice again, and follows it to a shadowy corner of the room. “There now, see? Leo has the hang of it. Soon you will too, Felicia. Give it a try.”

  An ancient woman is sitting in a rocking chair, watching the cats. She’s dressed all in black. Her face is withered, her hair stringy, and her nose long and pointy. She looks like . . .

  Jax, pulling himself up to look into the room, whispers, “The witch.”

  In that moment Tacey realizes that the cats aren’t just cats. They’re bobcats.

  And they’re . . . talking.

  “You have to use a little more force,” the larger one says—a male, with a spotted coat, the same cat that chased Tacey from the woods this morning.

  “Like this?” The other, a tawny shade, with wide green eyes, leaps upon the sock.

  “Felicia!” Jax screams in horror. “That’s her voice!”

  The cats turn to look at the window.

  “Run!” Tacey shouts, and she and Jax take off toward home.

  “Go!” The old woman is shouting somewhere behind them. “Catch them before they tell!”

  Tacey hears a violent rustling behind her, just like before.

  This time they don’t make it out of the woods. Jax trips over a vine, and falls. Hearing him cry out, she turns to see the male bobcat pounce on him.

  But he doesn’t attack. His paws grab the collar of Jax’s T-shirt.

  “Help me!” he begs. “Jax, please. It’s me, Leo. She cast a spell on me.”

  “Me too!” The female cat is there, looking from Jax, on the ground, to Tacey. “It’s Felicia.”

  Jax just lies on his back, eyes wide in horror.

  Tacey finds her voice. “How can we help you?”

  “The collar,” she says. “Take off the collar. Hurry!”

  “Mine too,” the other bobcat begs Jax. “Please.”

  Tacey reaches out, her hands shaking so hard she can hardly grasp the blue collar. She fumbles for the clasp, tries to unhook it; tries again.

  On the third try it comes loose in her hands.

  With a bloodcurdling scream, the bobcat wrenches itself away, leaving her holding just the blue collar as it races back up the hillside, trailed by its companion.

  Jax gets up slowly, holding the other blue collar.

  “Are you okay?” Tacey asks.

  He nods.

  “Say something, Jax. You’re scaring me. Can you talk?”

  “Yeah. What are we going to do with these?” He gestures at the collars.

  “We’re going to make a fire in the fire pit and burn them.”

  “Fires are—”

  “I don’t care,” Tacey says. “Let’s go.”

  Together, they run down the hillside.

  Felicia is waiting for them at the bottom. For the first time her green eyes meet Tacey’s. She opens her mouth . . . and speaks two heartfelt words:

  “Thank you.”

  That night, Tacey’s father comes into her room to find her staring out the window.

  “The police were just here,” he says.

  “What did they say?”

  “They combed the woods. No sign of an old woman or of a blue cottage.”

  “They don’t believe us?”

  “They’re . . .” He hesitates. “They think you might be confused.”

  “All of us? Me, Jax, Felicia, and Leo?”

  That afternoon, not long after they burned the collars, Jax learned that Leo had suddenly started speaking again in the hospital, telling the same story Felicia told the police—that an old witch had cast a spell in the night that caused him to switch bodies with a bobcat.

  “You’ve always had an active imagination, Tace,” her father says. “And you’ve been through a lot. But I have great news.”

  Maybe they’re moving back to California.

  “I got the job,” her father says.

  “That’s . . . great.” Swallowing a sigh, Tacey turns away from the window. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Now get some sleep.”

  As she climbs into bed, an anguished female scream echoes outside in the night.

  “Just a bobcat,” her father assures her.

  “I know,” Tacey says as if she believes it—but really, just to hear the sound of her own voice. “Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

  “Of course,” he says, and she lies awake for a long time, listening to the rocking chair creak.

  The I Scream Truck

  by Beth Fantaskey

  “NOOOOOO!”

  My little brother Ripper’s shriek is shrill, high-pitched—and quickly erupts into laughter as my best friend, Will, and I start tickling him after tackling him. We’re supposed to be playing touch football, but at some point, when the sun went down, the game got rougher, and everybody started tackling.

  “Knock it off, Maxine!” Ripper complains, although it’s hard to make out his words. He’s squirming and breathing hard. But Will and I listen and back off—first sharing a grin that says Ripper’s being a baby. As usual.

  Brushing grass off my knees, I stand up, and Will rises too.

  “Who’s got the ball?” Will asks, both of us looking around at a half dozen other kids who are laughing as Ripper scrambles to his feet. We’re all in a vacant, weedy lot in the weird town my family just moved to. I don’t even know some of the kids’ names, and in the dark, it’s hard to see their faces let alone a brown football. I’m glad Will came to visit for a week. Sometimes
Nightingale Corners gives me the creeps, although Mom and Dad swear I’ll get used to the place once I start middle school in the fall.

  “Anybody seen the ball . . . ?” Will’s voice trails off because he’s heard something. I hear it too.

  A happy tune, playing in the distance.

  “I scream, you scream . . . I scream, you scream . . . I scream, you scream . . .”

  It sounds like little kids are singing, their voices soft, because the ice cream truck is still pretty far away. At least I assume the noise is coming from an ice cream truck. I can just barely hear the sound of grinding gears disturbing the still, hot, humid night.

  Will looks at me and grins again. I can see his white teeth. “Max, you got any money?”

  “Yeah, Maxine,” Ripper adds hopefully. He’s caught his breath. “I want a popsicle!”

  “I dunno,” I tell them. But I’d like something cold too, and I dig into the pockets of my old cutoffs. Then, just as I do find a couple wadded-up bills, I look uncertainly at the other kids. None of them seems excited about the prospect of ice cream, which is forbidden in my house because my parents are vegans. Ugh. I have to sneak it when I can.

  “Don’t you guys want anything?” I ask my mostly nameless neighbors, who’ve grown very quiet. They shuffle and stare at the ground. “Won’t the truck come by here?”

  Nobody answers my questions. The little crowd is dispersing, on some cue I don’t understand. I hear a couple kids say stuff like “I gotta go” and “It’s getting late.”

  Only one boy—I think he’s about eleven, like me—doesn’t shuffle off right away. He’s a nervous, frail kid, and I actually know his name. Dwight. He steps closer to me, Will, and Ripper, and moonlight glints off his eyeglasses. “Hey, I’m not supposed to say anything,” he whispers. Then he looks quickly from side to side, like he’s afraid somebody will overhear, before adding, in an even softer voice, “But you guys don’t want—”

  “Dwight!”

  A girl calls his name sharply, and he jolts, like he’s in big trouble.

  Will and I share confused looks over Ripper’s head while in the distance, the song continues to play. I’m not sure why it’s cut off in the middle. Maybe the recording is broken.