The House Next Door Page 5

  His brother. The whispers we’d heard in the closet. I’d forgotten all about him. “Does Jack, um, want to come out now?”

  Danny looked over his shoulder and into the darkness of the closet. He turned back to face us and shook his head.

  “How did you …” Sophie started to ask before trailing off. She swallowed, then started again. “What happened next?”

  Danny shook his head. It was as if the reality of the situation still hadn’t sunk in after twenty years. “Two policemen came to the door the next day, but my parents had no clue we’d snuck out so they promised we’d been in bed all night. And I insisted that I hadn’t ever gone near the horse. The police bought it, but Mr. Creighton was staring me down from his front porch. He knew. Somehow he knew.”

  Danny sighed and shifted his weight with a loud series of cracks and pops. Even though his body looked better, it still sounded broken.

  “That night, I woke up a little past three. I’d dreamt that Mr. Creighton had snuck into my house, walked down the hall and entered my room. When I opened my eyes I realized it wasn’t a dream. But it wasn’t Mr. Creighton in my doorway. It was Shade. The horse stared me down as if he enjoyed seeing how scared I was. And then Shade had his revenge.”

  My imagination filled in the rest. The horse had trampled Danny in his bed, his hooves pounding his small body.

  “And after Shade killed you,” Sophie said, “he killed your brother?”

  Staring at the ground, Danny nodded.

  “Can we talk to him?” I asked.

  “I already told you he’s easily startled.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, thinking back to the night before. If Jack was easily startled … “Were you both in the basement last night listening to Sophie and me talking? Jack knocked a doll off the toy shelf, didn’t he?”

  Danny nodded. “Yeah. That was my brother.”

  I walked around the bed and headed toward the open closet. “He has nothing to fear, not from us. Jack? You can come out.”

  “No!” Danny roared. He jumped in front of me and blocked my path, a look of pure fury on his face. It caught me completely off guard, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. But then he turned and fled into the closet. The door slammed shut behind him.

  Silence.

  For the second time that night my heart pounded and I felt like I might pass out. I sat on my bed and slowly began to feel a little better.

  “Well, that was really weird,” Sophie said.

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment, and then Sophie smiled slightly. “I guess this place isn’t as boring as I thought it would be.”

  I laughed. It felt good, a relief, but if I gave it too much thought I knew the feeling was only surface deep. I wished we’d moved to a regular, run-of-the-mill, sleepy suburb, even though that had been the last thing I’d wanted a few days ago. Not only did we now live beside a haunted house, but we lived in a haunted house. Period. Full stop.

  I had a feeling bad things were about to happen and I had no idea how to prevent them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sophie offered to let me sleep in her room for the night. I waved her off and told her I’d be fine. She left.

  I closed my bedroom door and turned off the light. I ran across my room and jumped into bed, afraid something might reach out from beneath it and grab my foot. I hadn’t done that since I was six years old.

  I pulled my duvet up to my chin and stared at the ceiling, the wall, the window … anywhere but the closet. I closed my eyes but all I could see was the horse crushing Sophie and me into a bloody pulp.

  I opened my eyes.

  I ran quietly down the hall to my sister’s bedroom.

  ***

  Light streamed in through Sophie’s window the next morning and shined in my eyes. I sat up groggily, rubbed my face, yawned and slowly took in my surroundings. I was on the floor next to Sophie’s bed, a duvet balled up at my feet. Sophie was lying in her bed, her back to me.

  I hadn’t slept well and my brain took a little longer than usual to warm up.

  “Sophie,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

  She immediately rolled over and faced me. “I’ve been awake for a while.”

  “Oh, okay. Listen, I think we should do a little digging, see what we can find out about Danny and the Creightons. It might help us deal with them both. Grab your phone.”

  She raised her phone in the air. “Way ahead of you, big brother. Check this out.” She handed me her phone.

  On the screen was a newspaper article from twenty-three years earlier. The headline read, “Parents of Slain Twin Brothers Main Suspects in Double Homicide.”

  I read the article to myself while my sister sat and watched me. “Huh,” I said.

  “Yup,” Sophie said.

  “So the police thought their parents killed them since there was no sign of anyone else breaking into their house.”

  Sophie nodded gravely. “Ghosts don’t need to break in, do they?”

  “The parents must have been a mess. Not only did they lose both their kids, but they were blamed for the murders.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I read another article that said they weren’t convicted since there wasn’t enough evidence against them.”

  “A little, I guess.”

  Sophie shrugged, then pointed at the phone in my hand. “Swipe left and read the next article I found.”

  It was Mr. Creighton’s obituary, published a week after the article about Danny and Jack. The main points jumped out at me as I raced to the end. He had died of a heart attack, and the article said he was to be buried beside his wife, Hazel, in a Toronto cemetery. It was a short article that wasn’t too revealing. Until, that is, I reached the final sentence.

  I looked at Sophie, then back at her phone. I reread the sentence to myself, then read it again aloud.

  “‘Ernest is survived by his daughter, Clara.’”

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, taking her phone back. “Which kinda raises a question.”

  I nodded. “Where is Clara now?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I was relieved when the doorbell rang that afternoon and I found Nick and Chris standing on our front porch.

  “Hey, Matt,” Nick said. “Want to go tobogganing?”

  Standing behind Nick, Chris raised his toboggan in the air as if he felt I needed the visual cue to understand.

  “Yes, yes and yes,” I said, not caring if I sounded too desperate. I was thankful for the distraction and thought it would be the perfect way to clear my head. “Let me go get Sophie.”

  The four of us were on the hill within ten minutes.

  The air was cool and dry and burned my lungs with every breath. My nose and cheeks tingled as if on fire.

  “Thanks for asking us to come,” I said between breaths, after climbing the hill for the third time.

  “No problem,” Nick said. “You seemed, uh, pretty enthusiastic.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I laughed to show that I wasn’t embarrassed. “I was beginning to feel locked up.”

  “You’ve only been here three days,” Nick pointed out dryly.

  “What can I say? They’ve been three of the strangest days ever. And after your dad told us about Mr. Creighton and his wife being dead, even stranger things have happened.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Chris said. “Like what?”

  “Um, we saw another ghost?” Sophie said, sounding like she was unsure it had actually happened.

  “Another ghost?” Chris asked loudly. “Wow!”

  “Shhh,” I said, looking over both shoulders, fearful that someone might be skulking in the bushes around us.

  “Where?” Nick asked. “In the Creightons’ house?”

  “No. In …” I paused, still not overjoyed by the thought of having a dead roommate. “In my bedroom.”

  “IN YOUR—”

  This time Sophie and Nick both joined me in shushing Chr
is. His winter-reddened cheeks reddened deeper.

  “In your bedroom?” he whispered.

  I nodded. “And that’s not all. His name is Danny, and the stories are true. He used to live in a house on our property, and he was killed by the ghost of Shade.” I paused and frowned, unsure if the Russo brothers would believe the next bit, or if Chris would shout so loudly his head would explode. “And Danny’s twin, Jack, also kind of seems to be living in my closet. Well, not living, I guess, but … yeah.”

  Luckily, Chris was rendered speechless. So was Nick.

  “So that was our yesterday,” Sophie said with a smirk. “How was your day?”

  ***

  We went on to tell them about the newspaper articles Sophie had found and the revelation that Ernest and Hazel had a daughter. Neither of the brothers had ever seen Clara in or around the house. As they’d told us before, they’d never seen anyone in or around the house. Just Shade.

  “I feel really bad,” Chris said as we walked back home, dragging our toboggans behind us along the slushy sidewalks.

  “Why?” Nick asked.

  “I can’t stop wondering what happened to Clara. What if she was just a little kid when her parents both died? What if she was younger than us?”

  “Imagine Mom and Dad died,” Sophie said to me, a note of sadness in her voice. “What would happen to us?”

  I shrugged. I’d never thought about that before. Without realizing it I guess I’d always thought Mom and Dad were invincible. “I dunno. We’d go live with Grandpa or Aunt Susan and Uncle Hank, I guess.”

  “If we get to pick,” Sophie said, “I’d want to move in with Aunt Susan and Uncle Hank.”

  “Why?”

  “They have a bigger TV.”

  “True, but Grandpa lives in Florida, two hours from Disney World.”

  “Ooh, you’re right. Grandpa wins.”

  “They don’t seem too upset that their parents just died,” Nick said to Chris with a smile and a nudge.

  But Chris didn’t look like he was in a joking mood. “I just feel bad for Clara and wonder where she went.” His eyes grew moist and he wiped his nose with the back of his glove. “It reminds me of Andrea,” he added so softly I barely heard him.

  “Who’s Andrea?” I asked quietly. I had a feeling it was a very personal question, but Chris had brought it up.

  Nick answered for his brother. “She was—”

  “Is,” Chris interrupted.

  “Is our baby sister. She died.”

  Sophie gasped.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. “It happened three years ago. She died at birth.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Sophie said. “That’s terrible.”

  “It was terrible,” Chris said. “It seemed like forever before Mom and Dad started to return to normal, and even now they argue a lot more than they used to.”

  I glanced at Nick. His eyes were squinted and his jaw was clenched.

  Chris continued, “I always had the feeling that Andrea was alone somewhere. I was sure her soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it still existed, and she was lost and scared.”

  I thought Chris was on the verge of a full-blown mental breakdown, but then he wiped his nose again, shivered and sighed, and the look of pain slowly slipped off his face.

  Nick slapped Chris on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s warm up and play some video games. You guys wanna come?”

  I was in no rush to go back home — not with ghosts in my room — but after Chris’s sad story I thought it would be awkward going over there. But how could I say no without being obvious?

  It didn’t matter. Sophie spoke up in my silence.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Chris seemed better as soon as we walked in their house and powered up the game console. I grabbed a controller and tried to put the past few days out of my mind.

  ***

  In hindsight, spending a few hours playing a game called Kill Screen, about a ghost hunter who investigates a seemingly never-ending string of haunted houses while battling all manner of ghosts, spectres, poltergeists and demons, wasn’t the best way to keep Chris’s mind off the loss of his sister, nor was it the best way to get over my fear of sleeping in my room with Danny’s spirit in my closet.

  Needless to say, I took Sophie up on her offer to sleep on her floor for the second night in a row.

  “When we start school next week,” I said as I slipped beneath the duvet, “please don’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Thanks. And thanks.”

  “Two thanks?”

  “For keeping the secret and for letting me sleep in here again.”

  “You’re welcome. You can sleep in here as long as you like.”

  “But the longer I do the sooner Mom and Dad will find out. And what do we say then? We’ve got to do something about Danny.”

  “He didn’t seem all that bad,” Sophie said.

  “No, he didn’t. But Jack creeps me out. Why didn’t he come out? And why did Danny refuse to let me look in on him?”

  Sophie nodded. “Yeah, Jack is super creepy.” She grabbed the Batman comic from her bedside table and leafed through its pages. “What about this?” she said after a moment.

  “What?” I sat up and peered over the edge of her bed at the comic resting on her lap.

  She held up a page for me to see. “Nth metal. Batman has a whole bunch of weapons made out of it. It seems to be able to hurt Gentleman Ghost and his horse. Maybe it would work on the Creightons and Shade, and even Danny.”

  I lay back down with a sigh. “Sure, that could work. Except for three things: we don’t have any Nth metal, it’s from outer space and it’s make-believe.”

  “Well, sorry for trying to help,” Sophie said. She sounded hurt.

  I sat back up. “I’m sorry. Thanks for trying.”

  She shrugged and turned on her phone, then typed something into it. “Oh, look at this,” she said, scrolling on the screen. “I just Googled ‘does metal repel ghosts?’ Guess what the top website result is? ‘Why does iron repel spirits?’”

  I held up my hands and said, “I mean it: I’m sorry. I was rude, but I didn’t mean to be.”

  But Sophie was no longer listening. She had turned her attention back to the comic.

  I was about to apologize yet again when Sophie said, “Hm.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, seriously. What?”

  Sophie sighed and said, “In the end, it’s not Batman who defeats Gentleman Ghost. Not even Superman, Wonder Woman or Green Lantern. It’s Gentleman Ghost’s own army of spirits that he was trying to control to do his bidding. They turn on him and pull him back down into something called the Netherworld.”

  Just then my phone dinged. A text message from Nick.

  HELP!!!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I immediately texted back.

  Where are you?

  “What was that?” Sophie asked.

  “Nick. He texted me asking for help.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t—”

  My phone dinged again.

  Your backyard

  “Quick,” I said to Sophie. “The backyard.”

  We quietly ran downstairs, grabbed our coats, threw on our boots and went outside. The snow squeaked beneath our feet as we sprinted around the house to the backyard. I saw Nick immediately. He was standing up against the wall as if to stay out of the wind, or maybe he was trying to remain hidden. He looked terrified and his eyes were wide and wet.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, glancing up at our second-floor windows. Luckily, Mom and Dad’s room was on the other side of the house, so I hoped they wouldn’t hear us.

  “He wasn’t there,” Nick said, shaking his head. “He just left. What was he thinking?
”

  “Who?” Sophie asked. “Chris?”

  Nick nodded frantically. “We have to help him. We have to do something.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  But I already knew.

  Nick looked past Sophie and me and pointed over our shoulders.

  The Creightons’ house.

  ***

  Nick filled us in as we crept closer to Briar Patch Farm, searching for some sign of Chris in the field between our houses but finding none.

  “He was still talking about Clara and Andrea as we went to bed. I tried to tell him that even if Clara was a baby when her parents died, she would’ve been looked after by someone else and would be an adult now, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was in his own world and kept repeating that he needed to find out the truth. I never thought he’d get up in the middle of the night and sneak out. I had this weird dream about him, so I went into his room and it was empty.”

  “How do you know that he left the house?” I asked. “Could he be in the bathroom?”

  “He’d stuffed pillows under his sheets to look like he was still in bed. You don’t do that if you’re going to pee.”

  “Look,” Sophie said. She pointed at the street, brightly lit by street lights. The asphalt was covered in a blanket of fresh snow that was undisturbed except for a few sets of tire tracks. At first that’s all I noticed, but then I saw what had made Sophie stop. There was one set of footprints leading from Nick’s house to ours, and another set from Nick’s house to the Creightons’. I followed the path of the second set with my eyes — they went up to the farmhouse’s front door, then doubled back and went around to the backyard. They didn’t come back to the front yard.

  Nick groaned. “What have you done, Chris?”

  I scanned the field and peered into the stable but saw no sign of Shade. That somehow made everything worse. I’d rather know what we were dealing with, and I had a feeling there was a lot we still didn’t know about the house next door.

  It would have been easier to turn and leave. It would have felt safer to hide in my house until morning and pretend nothing was wrong. But I couldn’t do that. Chris and Nick were our friends — our only friends in the neighbourhood.