The House Next Door Read online

  “So what do we do now? What happens if he attacks us again?”

  “We could go to the cops,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie said. “Could I get in trouble for trespassing?”

  “We could tell Mom and Dad.”

  “Then I’d definitely get in trouble for trespassing.” Sophie sighed. She was upset and not thinking too rationally. “If I could just tell him why I snuck over there — explain that I didn’t want to hurt his horse — maybe he’d understand. Do you think?”

  I shrugged and thought about it. It was doubtful, but Sophie was giving me a hopeful look, wishing I could magically make everything better. I didn’t want to say no …

  “I guess that might work,” I said. “Mom always says an apology is the superglue of life — it can repair just about anything.”

  “I know!” Sophie said, perking up a little. “We could bake some cookies and take them over, kind of like a peace offering.”

  It seemed a little naive but it was good to see my sister beginning to bounce back from the scare she’d just had. “When you say we can make cookies, you mean cookies out of a tube, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. Who doesn’t like cookies out of a tube?”

  “No one, that’s who,” I said.

  Sophie nodded and even laughed a little. “I feel a little better already. Just do me a favour and don’t tell Mom and Dad, at least not yet. They’ll never let me out of the house again. I’ll be grounded forever.”

  “All right, but if the neighbour freaks out and doesn’t accept your apology, I’ll have to tell them. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Clunk!

  We jumped and yelped in unison. One of Sophie’s old dolls had fallen off a shelf and landed on the floor. The doll wore a pink dress and had short brown hair. Her name was Sadie Sees. Sophie loved the name Sadie because it was so close to her own.

  I was about to say how creepy it had been that the doll had fallen but I was interrupted by Sadie herself.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun,” the doll said in a high-pitched, warbling voice, “if you were a doll like me?” When Sadie spoke, her oversized eyes rolled around in their sockets and her tiny mouth opened and closed out of time with her words.

  Neither Sophie nor I moved for nearly a minute. We sat frozen, staring at Sadie.

  “How did it fall off the shelf?” I asked without taking my eyes off the doll.

  Sophie shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

  We looked at each other one more time then sprinted up the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That night I dreamt of Sadie Sees’s headless body riding a giant black horse through the woods, like Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” But even without a head, Sadie could still talk.

  Wouldn’t it be fun if you were a doll like me?

  I wish you and I were twins.

  I can see through anything.

  My imagination was clearly getting the better of me.

  When I woke up, I rubbed my eyes, took a deep breath and forced all thought of Sadie out of my mind.

  “Matt! Sophie! Breakfast is on the table and it’s not getting any warmer!” It was Dad, calling up from the main floor.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt with a picture of the Millennium Falcon on it, then made my way downstairs. I was surprised to find that I had beat my sister down to the kitchen. She was an early riser, while I tended to stay up late and sleep in.

  “Morning, champ,” Dad said as he set a plate in front of me. After yesterday’s Cheerios, he’d really upped his game. Scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon, a pile of hash browns and two pieces of white toast. One piece of toast had Darth Vader’s helmet toasted on it, while the other piece had the Star Wars logo. He’d obviously used the toaster Mom had bought him for Christmas. That wasn’t surprising, since it’s the only toaster he’d used since then. “Appropriate shirt,” Dad said, pointing at my chest, then at the toast.

  Sophie stumbled into the kitchen like an extra from a zombie movie. She sat heavily on the chair across from me and could barely keep her head off the table.

  “Rough night?” Mom asked Sophie.

  “Ungh,” Sophie muttered.

  “It might take a couple of days before we’re used to sleeping in our new rooms,” I offered, covering for Sophie since she didn’t seem capable of forming thoughts, let alone words, on her own.

  Dad placed a plate in front of my sister. She latched on to a strip of bacon, raised it to her mouth and chewed it slowly, like a cow munching on grass.

  “So,” Mom said, “any big plans for the day? Going to head out exploring again?”

  Sophie continued to eat her bacon. She stared at the table. She didn’t appear to be aware of the rest of us.

  “Yeah, kind of,” I said. “The guys across the street invited us over again, and we thought we should take some cookies or something.” I didn’t like lying to my parents but I knew that if I said we were going to introduce ourselves to the farmhouse neighbours, Mom and Dad would want to go meet them too. And then they’d find out about last night’s confrontation. And that couldn’t happen, at least not yet. “Do we have one of those cookie tubes?”

  Mom tsked and took her plate to the sink. “No self-respecting child of mine is going to offer tube cookies to our new neighbours. They might be good enough for us, but not for new friends. I’ll help you bake cookies from scratch.”

  “Mom?” I said as gently as possible. “You don’t bake. Or cook. You don’t even make toast.”

  “That’s only because your father won’t let me touch his Darth Vader toaster. And I’ll have you know that I used to be a great cook when I first met your father and had more time. Wasn’t I, dear?”

  Dad looked at me and smiled. “She made a mean Kraft Dinner.”

  “You better believe it!” Mom said. “My secret ingredient was pepper.” She zipped around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards at random. “Now, where are the cookbooks?”

  “Still packed,” Dad said.

  Mom started a search on her phone. “No matter. Chef Google will help us out. Ah! Here we go. A recipe for ‘Mom’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies.’ Sounds perfect.” She scrolled through whatever website she had landed on and mumbled to herself as she read. “Ingredients … do we have? … instructions … wow, seven steps! … remove hot baking sheet from oven, that sounds dangerous …”

  “Sweetheart?” Dad said kindly.

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” Dad pointed at his apron. “After all, we have cookies.”

  Mom smiled. I laughed. Sophie groaned.

  ***

  Sophie and I stood at the end of our driveway. She had slowly come back to life while eating her breakfast, and with Dad’s help, the cookies hadn’t taken long to bake. We had placed them in an old tin and had set out soon after. Mom and Dad were returning to housework, so they probably — hopefully — wouldn’t see us head next door instead of across the street.

  “Are you sure we should do this?” Sophie asked. “The old man was really angry. He threatened to kill us. Maybe we should just pretend it didn’t happen and avoid him and his horse from now on, like he said.”

  I shook my head and zipped up my jacket against the wind. “We need to go talk to him now or else things will get really awkward. It’s not like he lives down the street or around the corner — he lives next door. We’re going to see him a lot, and things got blown out of proportion. You were just trying to feed the horse some apple slices, but maybe he thought you were trying to, I don’t know, hurt it or something. I’m sure once we explain that your intentions were good he’ll understand. Plus, he’s probably calmed down overnight.”

  Sophie didn’t look one hundred percent convinced but nodded and followed as I walked to the front porch. I handed her the tin of cookies.

  “Why are you givin
g these to me?” she asked.

  “You’re the one who got us in this mess. You give him the cookies.”

  She sighed.

  I knocked on the door.

  “Remember,” I whispered sideways to my sister, “be remorseful.”

  “Why?” she whispered back.

  “You want him to know you feel guilty.”

  “I don’t feel guilty,” Sophie said, her tone rising. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Keep it down,” I said, my whisper beginning to rise in volume. “And remember we’re here to make things better, not worse. Be remorseful.”

  “You be remorseful!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Sophie shoved the cookie tin back into my hands and threw her arms in the air. “That’s it! Forget this. I’m leaving.” She turned to storm off.

  “Wait! Did you hear that?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “It sounded like wood clacking against wood.” I pointed up. “From above.”

  We took a few steps back off the porch and looked up at the second-floor window. The same one we thought we’d seen movement in the day before.

  Someone with fiery eyes and ashen skin was peering down at us.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It wasn’t the man from the night before.

  It was an old woman. She looked at us with an expression so odd that I couldn’t tell if she was surprised, angry or merely curious. It felt weird to stand there and stare up as she stared down — no one moving, no one talking — so I raised a hand and waved.

  She receded into the darkness without waving back.

  “I don’t like this,” Sophie said. “I want to go.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  “It’s fine. She’s probably on her way down to answer the door.”

  Sophie shook her head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I’ve got a bad feeling about her.”

  “She’s just an old woman. We have nothing to be afraid of.” My voice caught in my throat as I said the word “nothing.”

  “I’m leaving,” Sophie said, but she didn’t get the chance.

  The door opened.

  Just a crack. Long, bony fingers slipped out of the house and gripped the edge of the door, holding it in place as if whoever was inside was afraid the wind might blow it open. As if whoever was inside was hiding something.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” It was a scratchy and frail voice, as if she hadn’t spoken in many years.

  I cleared my throat and stepped back onto the porch. “My name is Matt, ma’am, and this is my sister, Sophie. We just moved in next door and, well, we brought you some cookies.”

  “They’re homemade,” Sophie added, following me reluctantly. “Not even from a tube.”

  I held up the tin.

  There was no response at first, but then the door creaked open a little wider. The woman stuck her head and neck outside to get a better look at us. Her beady, sunken eyes moved from me to Sophie to the tin.

  “Open that up,” she said.

  I popped the lid off the tin and showed her the contents. “Mom’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies,” made with love by Dad. And us. And although Mom didn’t end up doing any of the baking, she Googled the recipe, so I guess she should get a little credit too.

  The woman reached a shaking hand into the tin and pulled out one of the smaller cookies. She raised the cookie to her open mouth, but before she took a bite she paused, then looked at me and my sister. Then, stranger still, she held it out to me.

  “You eat it,” she said with a sinister grin.

  “What?”

  “I said, you eat it. I can’t accept food from a stranger. What if it’s poisoned?”

  “It’s not—”

  “If there’s nothing wrong with it,” the woman said, interrupting me, “you have nothing to fear.”

  I looked at Sophie, then shrugged, accepted the cookie and took a big bite, chewed and swallowed. “See. They’re fine.”

  After a sharp nod, the woman took the tin and quickly ate two cookies before putting the lid back on. I couldn’t believe how quickly she’d eaten them, like a ravenous bear coming out of hibernation and finding a bloody deer carcass.

  “Thank you,” she said with a hint of shame. She wiped cookie crumbs off her lips and frowned. “Why did you bring these?”

  “Like I said before, we just moved—”

  She interrupted me again. “The real reason. You don’t expect me to believe a couple of kids decided to bake cookies for their elderly neighbour who they’ve never met, do you?”

  I sighed. “All right, you got us. We brought them over as an apology.”

  I paused and looked at Sophie, and when she didn’t say anything I elbowed her.

  “I’m sorry!” she shouted, snapping out of her catatonic state.

  “For what?” the woman said.

  “I, um, snuck into your backyard last night,” Sophie said. “I just wanted to give your horse some apple slices.”

  I wanted to keep things upbeat so I added, “Sophie loves horses, and she really likes Shade. He’s a beautiful animal.”

  “You saw Shade? How do you know his name? Who have you spoken to?”

  Her rapid-fire questions caught me by surprise. I didn’t know how to respond.

  “Your husband told us his name,” Sophie said.

  “My husband?”

  Sophie nodded and looked at the ground. “Yeah, he ran outside and chased us off. He said … well, he told us to stay away from the horse.”

  He told us he’d kill us if we went anywhere near Shade again, I thought, but Sophie was smart to leave that unsaid. It wouldn’t have done any good.

  Even though Sophie had softened the story somewhat, the woman looked taken aback. She cupped her cheek with a hand and looked at her reflection in the door’s small glass window. “My husband,” she said. “Yes, of course. I heard him run outside last night. I guess that’s when he chased you.”

  “He hasn’t mentioned what happened last night at all today?” I asked. That was a little weird. You’d think he would’ve talked about it with his wife by then.

  When I saw the look on the woman’s face I realized I shouldn’t have asked such a personal question. Her mouth was open a crack and her eyes bore into my own as if she was trying to mine my soul.

  “No, he hasn’t,” she said. “He’s … not here. I don’t see him during the day.”

  At all? Ever? I wondered, but at least this time I had the good sense to keep my thoughts to myself.

  Sophie reached into her pocket and pulled out her cellphone. “Sorry,” she said as she held the phone out in front of her face and typed on the screen. “I got a text from Mom.” She put her phone away and looked at me. “We have to go. She wants to see us.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  Sophie shrugged and turned to the woman. She gave her a quick smile. “Sorry again about your horse.” Then turning back to me, she added, “C’mon.”

  Sophie was acting weird. I could tell something was wrong. Mom must have been really mad at us, but I had no idea what we had done. Maybe she saw us come over here instead of across the street.

  “Enjoy the cookies,” I said, only then realizing the woman hadn’t introduced herself. “Mrs.…?”

  “Thank you,” she said, dodging my question and giving Sophie an odd, quizzical look. She shut the front door with a slam.

  “Well, that didn’t go as well as I had hoped,” I said staring at the closed door.

  “Quick, let’s go,” Sophie said. She rushed back to our house, but when we got there she didn’t go inside. Instead she led me to the narrow space between our house and the new one on the other side.

  “I thought Mom—” I started, but Sophie raised her hand and cut me off.

  “You know how the woman said she never sees her husband during the day? That he wasn’t there?” she asked.

&nb
sp; Sophie’s face was pale and she was breathing fast.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Then how do you explain this?” She held out her phone.

  I took it from her and looked at the screen.

  Sophie had taken a picture while we stood on the farmhouse porch. I could see the open door and the woman, and behind her, peering out from the shadows of the hallway with a look of hatred, was the old man.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was definitely the same old man who had rushed out of the house the night before, but he looked a little different in the picture than he had in the flesh.

  His skin looked much paler — so pale, in fact, that it seemed to give off a faint glow. A ring of white light that looked like a lens flare encircled his head. Only his face could be seen. It floated in the darkness as if he didn’t have a body — his shoulders, chest and limbs were hidden by shadow. And although the photo was in focus, the old man’s face was blurry, softening his facial features and making his eyes look like two small charcoal smudges.

  I handed the phone back to Sophie. “You took this when you said Mom texted you?”

  Sophie nodded. “He appeared right after I told his wife that he chased us off. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me since all I could see was his face, but he didn’t go away. He kept on watching us. So I pretended I got a text and took a picture instead.”

  I was impressed. I hadn’t looked inside and down the hall — I’d been focused on the woman, trying to figure out what it was that made me feel suspicious of her. “So the woman was lying about him being out, and about never seeing him during the day. I wonder what else she lied about?”

  “She gave me a weird feeling. She was definitely hiding something.”

  “I think so too. She seemed shady about their whole relationship. When you first mentioned him she didn’t seem to know who you were talking about.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. And she didn’t want to tell us her name. I wonder why?”

  “I do too,” I said. A current of cold air howled between the houses and stung my face and hands. “And I can think of two people who might be able to help us.”