The Lost Girl Read online

  I stared into the darkness beyond the mouth of the cave.

  “It’s just a cave,” I said. “Go ahead. Push me in. Big whoop. Big surprise when I’m still here. And you’re both still crazy.”

  But then I heard a hollow rush of air inside the cave, like the sound a seashell makes when you hold it to your ear. And then I thought I heard voices … distant muffled voices … a jumble of voices all talking at once from deep inside the cave … voices carried on the steady whisper of wind.

  Voices from the past?

  “Whoa.” My heart skipped a beat. Suddenly, I believed.

  Suddenly, I knew that Lizzy and Aaron were telling the truth. The cave was a time tunnel. They came from 1950. That Shadyside High yearbook photo of Lizzy in 1950 was proof. What more proof did I need?

  It was all true. And now I was staring at a time-travel adventure of my own. One that would be very short. A trip into the past from which I could never return.

  I believed it now. I knew it was true. It was happening.

  My head throbbed. Panic sent chill after chill down my body.

  Lizzy stepped up beside me and grabbed one arm. Aaron held onto the other. They forced me forward. The cave opening appeared to grow as I moved toward it, like a huge mouth silently sliding open.

  “No. Please—” I choked out. “Please.”

  They pushed me into the blackness of the cave. The rush of wind grew louder in my ears. The voices, so far away, so faint, dozens of them talking at once … the voices from deep in the darkness.

  I tried to push back. But the two of them held me tight. Moved me forward. Forced me into the deep, deep well of blackness.

  I’m fading, I thought. I feel so weak.

  Here I go. Vanishing. I’m vanishing now.

  Here I go.

  45.

  The cold darkness rolled over me like an ocean wave. Lizzy and Aaron held onto my arms. But I could barely feel them now. Standing at the cave opening, I knew I was fading into the rush of wind, the deep inky darkness.

  The time tunnel was pulling me now. I felt a strange force, a powerful tug, pulling me into the cave. I was gone … gone.

  And then a high shrill siren scream broke the spell.

  A scream from somewhere far behind me. Staring into the blackness, I recognized it. Pepper’s scream from back in the clearing.

  The scream must have startled Lizzy and Aaron, too. They took a stuttering step back. Let go of me. Let go for a second.

  I didn’t hesitate. I knew I had two seconds to act. Alert because of the scream, I summoned my strength.

  I lowered my hands behind them—and shoved Lizzy and Aaron with all my might. Shoved them into the cave. And watched them stumble forward.

  It happened too fast for them to cry out.

  Lizzy fell to her knees on the dirt cave floor. Aaron struggled to regain his balance.

  Staring into the swirling black, I gasped as they started to change. Their faces drooped. The hair fell from their heads in thick tufts. Lizzy’s eyes dimmed and appeared to sink into her skull. Her arms pulled in, shrank, disappeared inside her coat.

  I stared at her wrinkled, prune-like face—and realized what was happening. I was watching them both age. Watching them age seventy years. Lizzy’s mouth fell open, and her teeth dribbled out and fell to the ground. Her skin began to peel. Patches of skin dropped off her forehead, her face, and I could see her cheekbones. She tried to scream but uttered only a hoarse croak.

  I uttered a horrified cry as her tongue fell out and hit the cave floor. A pale blob of meat, it wriggled for a few seconds, then went still.

  Aaron was now bald and bent over, hands shaking, his body shrunken, skeletal. They were both withered and crumbling. I watched frozen in horror and disbelief. And saw that they didn’t stop at old age. As their frail bodies trembled in the swirl of cave wind, their clothes crumpled to the ground. Their bones fell to the cave floor.

  Lizzy’s face was gone. I gazed at the gaping hole where her teeth and tongue had been. And then the skull toppled off her shoulders and hit the dirt, landing upside down beside her shriveling tongue.

  Aaron was a pile of bones now, and the bones were disintegrating, turning to powder. Their bodies were gone. Their bones had slid from their clothes and were noisily cracking and crumbling.

  I don’t know how long I stood there watching. Was it minutes? Was it just seconds? I watched until Lizzy and Aaron were nothing but ashes, heaps of gray ashes, like at the end of a fireplace fire. And then the swirling cave wind lifted the ashes off the floor and carried them deep into the endless blackness of the cave.

  I stared at nothing for a while. And then my brain started to clear, and I remembered Pepper. I remembered Pepper’s scream of horror, the scream that had rescued me from the cave, from disappearing in time.

  Yes. Yes. Alert now, I remembered Pepper. I forced away the horrifying image of the two people crumbling to ashes. And I started to run, screaming at the top of my lungs, my voice ringing off the trees.

  “Pepper? Pepper, are you okay? Pepper?”

  46.

  I stumbled over a thick pool of leaves, my shoes sliding over the slick snow. “Pepper? Pepper?” My voice, hoarse and desperate, echoed all around.

  She turned as I burst through a tangle of trees into the clearing. She squinted at me as if she didn’t recognize me.

  “Michael?” She stretched her arms, rolled the stiffness from her shoulders. “Michael? What happened? I … feel like I was sleeping. But that’s impossible. I woke up with a scream and…”

  “You’re okay!” I cried happily. “The spell must have worn off. Thank goodness you’re okay.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight. Her cheeks were frozen. The cold had seeped into her coat, which felt stiff as ice. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” I kept repeating.

  I held her for a moment, then backed away. “Pepper, you saved my life. Your scream—it saved me.”

  She gazed into my eyes. “I feel like … I’m waking up from a nightmare. Where is Lizzy? I remember Lizzy was here. Where did she go?”

  “Lizzy is gone. The nightmare is over,” I said. “I’ll explain everything. But first, let’s get out of here.” I wrapped my arm around her, and we ran together, out of the dark trees, to the car.

  * * *

  My sheet of paper rattled in the wind. I grabbed it tighter to keep it from blowing away. I saw Pepper and Kathryn near the graveyard fence. They motioned for me to join them, but I waved no. I wanted to be on my own.

  It hadn’t snowed for two days, and the temperature had risen to nearly forty. Miss Beach announced it was the perfect day to finish our gravestone rubbings.

  The morning sun was climbing a clear blue sky. I stepped around some puddles of melting snow and made my way to a marble grave at the end of a row. Martin Dooley.

  My plan was to do a rubbing of my grandfather’s grave and then write a report to go with it of how he came from Ireland as a little boy, worked hard, and soon owned the biggest horse stable in Shadyside. But as I gazed at the words and dates etched in the faded black-and-white marble, I hesitated.

  I had too many questions. Was the poor half-blind man really a murderer? Was Grandpa Dooley really the cause of all the horrors my friends and I had just experienced?

  I had this crazy idea that he would rise up from the grave. Pull himself up from the snow-covered dirt to explain to me, to say, “No, Michael. I never hurt anyone. I ran the best stable in town, and I loved my family.”

  A crazy idea. I knew I’d never learn the truth. I would carry all the horror of these past days with me without ever learning the truth.

  The wind rattled the paper again. I rolled it up and decided to move on.

  Without even realizing it, I had climbed the low hill and was approaching the two Palmieri graves. I could hear the voices of the others in my class, hard at work on their rubbings. They suddenly seemed far away.

  I glanced at Angelo Palmieri’s grav
e, then turned to the identical stone beside it. BETH PALMIERI. 1934–1950. I knelt in front of the stone, cold invading the knees of my jeans.

  Maybe I’ll do a rubbing of her gravestone.

  A swirl of wind fluttered my hair, brought a shiver to my back. And over the wind, I heard a whisper, a soft voice that seemed to rise from the ground beneath the gravestone.…

  “Michael, we’re bloods. Remember. We’re bloods.”

  My mouth dropped open. The paper fell from my hand. I jumped to my feet and listened, listened to a cascade of evil laughter, icy like the tinkling of cut glass.

  About the Author

  R. L. STINE is one of the bestselling children’s authors in history. His Goosebumps and Fear Street series for young people have more than 400 million books in print and have been translated into thirty-five languages. Other popular children’s book series include Mostly Ghostly. The Nightmare Room, and Rotten School.

  Stine’s anthology TV series, R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, recently won an Emmy Award as Best Children’s Show. His Goosebumps series is the basis for a feature film of the same name, starring Jack Black as R. L. Stine. Stine says that he is proud to have frightened several generations of young people, and he is delighted to be back on Fear Street to deliver even more scares.

  R. L. Stine lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, an editor and publisher. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Also by R. L. Stine

  SERIES

  Goosebumps

  Fear Street

  Mostly Ghostly

  The Nightmare Room

  Rotten School

  INDIVIDUAL TITLES

  It’s the First Day of School … Forever!

  A Midsummer Night’s Scream

  Red Rain

  Eye Candy

  The Sitter

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE: Shadyside—1950

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  I. Present Day

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  II. Shadyside, 1950

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  III. Present Day

  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

  IV

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  About the Author

  Also by R. L. Stine

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  THE LOST GIRL. Copyright © 2015 by Parachute Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Danielle Christopher

  Cover photograph © Mark Owen/Arcangel Images

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-05163-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-8565-3 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781466885653

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First Edition: September 2015