Mary Anne and the Haunted Bookstore Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  I looked up from my book and listened carefully. Outside the windows all I saw were gray skies and rain. All I heard was drip, drip, drip. Or was that all? It seemed as if there might be another noise, something I could feel as well as hear. I strained to pinpoint the source, wanting to know for sure, but it seemed as if it came from everywhere.

  Was it rain or the sound of a beating heart?

  I shut the book I’d been reading, as if the sound were coming from inside it. The sound wasn’t, but the idea of the sound of a beating heart had come directly from the story I’d just finished, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe. In the story, the main character murders an old man because he doesn’t like the man’s eye (it was the eye of a vulture, according to the killer). After the man is dead, the killer hides the body under the floor. The police come to search the house, because a neighbor reported a strange noise. The killer is so sure that the police won’t be able to detect any evidence of the murder that he tells them to sit in the dead man’s bedroom, directly over the spot where he’d hidden the body. But then he hears the sound of a beating heart, and it beats louder and louder. Finally, it grows so loud that the man is sure the police are making fun of him by pretending not to hear. He confesses to his crime, because of the beating of the victim’s “hideous heart.”

  Now, why had I, someone who can’t listen to ghost stories in broad daylight, let alone on an eerie, dreary day, decided to read about such awful things? I was reading Poe for our English project on mysteries. But I wished I’d saved this part of my homework until my dad or Sharon had come home from work.

  It’s times like this — dark, stormy, lonely afternoons — when I miss Dawn more than ever. Dawn is one of my best friends and also my stepsister. She lives in California.

  Who am I? I’m Mary Anne Spier, and I was wishing hard that I could put the sound of that beating heart out of my mind. It kept replaying like snatches of an irritating song stuck inside my brain. I turned on every light in the room, glad at least that I was nowhere near the secret passage that leads from our old farmhouse to the barn. It all sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it?

  I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, in a farmhouse built in 1795. If Edgar Allan Poe had ever visited Stoneybrook (and a professor from Stoneybrook University told our English class that he had) he would have been here when my house was still fairly new. I flipped to the part of my book that told a little about the author. Poe’s stories were so sad and scary that I wondered if he’d been sad — or scary — himself. The short biography didn’t mention Poe coming to Stoneybrook, but it did say that his mother and father had died when he was very young.

  I could understand, better than most, why that would make a person sad. My mother died when I was a baby. However, unlike Poe, I still had my dad to take care of me. And now I also have a stepmother, Sharon, a stepsister, Dawn, and a stepbrother, Jeff. Sharon, Dad, and I live in Stoneybrook, but Dawn and Jeff live most of the year in California with their dad. How we became a family and moved into a farmhouse with a secret passage is a romantic story, not scary at all.

  I met Dawn Schafer on her second day at Stoneybrook Middle School (SMS). We were both in seventh grade then. We’re in eighth grade now. She was (and still is) tall, blonde, and very pretty. I was (and still am) short, with straight brown hair and brown eyes. I’m also very shy and wouldn’t normally go out of my way to make a new friend. But I was in the middle of a fight with my regular friends, and Dawn showed up at the right time.

  Dawn, her brother, and their mom had moved to Stoneybrook after Mr. and Mrs. Schafer divorced. For Sharon, Dawn’s mom, this meant coming home since she’d grown up here. One day, when we were looking through some of Sharon’s old yearbooks, we found out that she and my dad had dated each other. But then Sharon went out to California, met Mr. Schafer, and married him. And my dad stayed in Connecticut, became a lawyer, met my mom, and married her.

  By the time Mrs. Schafer returned, both our parents were single again, so Dawn and I did a little matchmaking. Our parents ended up marrying one another after all.

  Dawn is one of my two best friends. We have a lot in common, including the fact that we both love kids and baby-sitting. Most of my friends share these interests. We belong to a club called the Baby-sitters Club (more about that later), which Dawn also joined.

  Jeff never felt at home here in Connecticut. Before long, he moved back to California to live with his dad. After awhile, Dawn moved back too. She just missed her dad and California too much. We talk on the phone as much as we can and write letters constantly, so we’re almost as close as ever. Still, I wished she were in the house with me that afternoon.

  Tigger, my gray-striped kitten, jumped on my lap and began to purr. I petted him. “You always know when I need a little company, don’t you?” I said to him. He meowed, then curled up on my lap and fell asleep. I wasn’t alone. Tigger was good company.

  Before Dad married Sharon, he and I lived on Bradford Court, next door to Kristy Thomas (my other best friend) and across the street from another good friend, Claudia Kishi. Because I was so young when my mom died, I don’t remember much about her. My dad says I look like her and act like her, though.

  For a long time my dad was pretty strict, mostly because he wanted to prove he could be the best single parent ever. But that wasn’t the only reason. My dad, who is an attorney, is very precise, and he likes rules. He used to have rules for lots of things — when and how long I could talk on the telephone, what kind of clothes I could wear, how I could style my hair. (I had to wear babyish jumpers and braid my hair every day.) I also had to be home earlier in the evening than almost anyone else in the seventh grade. I finally found the nerve to talk to my dad about it, and he let up a little. The first things to go were the hair and clothes rules. He didn’t have to worry much because I didn’t go crazy. I cut my hair and styled it in a way I like a lot. I dress the way some people describe as preppy, and I use a little makeup now too.

  A lot of these changes happened before Dad and Sharon married, but Dad has loosened up even more since then. He had to. Sharon is very different from him! Combining our households took a little adjustment, especially at first.

  Dad and I are organized with a capital O. Sharon isn’t. For example, I opened the refrigerator for a snack after school today and found a stack of Sharon’s papers on one of the shelves. When she opened her briefcase at work this morning, she probably found some celery or carrots. (I hope it wasn’t a package of chicken.) Sharon and Dawn are the queens of health food, while Dad and I are big meat-and-potato eaters. Sharon has managed to ease us into healthier eating, but she hasn’t convinced us to give up red meat.

  I thought about drinking some juice, but if I stood up I’d have disturbed Tigger’s nap. Still, maybe a drink would take my mind off the creepy sounds I’d heard, whether they were in my mind or for real. I still wasn’t sure. The wind howled and groaned through the trees and around the corners of the house. I shivered a little.

  Why hadn’t I chosen an author other than Poe for my projec
t? I had to admit he was an awfully good writer, since I couldn’t stop thinking about the scenes he’d created. But the real reason I’d chosen Poe was silly. The morning the assignment was announced, Sharon had pointed out a business notice in the paper about a bookstore that would be opening in Stoneybrook. The name of the store was — ta-da! — Poe and Co. The article said that the store would specialize in mysteries. I love books and that means I love bookstores too, so this little piece of information stuck in my mind. When Edgar Allan Poe was listed as one of the authors we could choose to read, I felt it was fate. Now I was sitting alone in my house with a storm raging outside (not really raging, but it was raining pretty hard), thinking I could hear the tell-tale heart beating all around me.

  I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost time to go to Claudia’s house for our BSC meeting.

  Slowly, I opened the Poe book again. It was a collection that combined a number of his short stories, including the first-ever detective stories (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Gold-Bug”), with his poetry. Since I didn’t have much time I turned to one of his poems, “Annabel Lee.”

  By the time I reached the end, my face was as wet as the ground outside. The poem wasn’t so much scary as it was sad. I reached for a tissue and wiped away the tears. Not only did Annabel Lee’s family break up her romance, but she died.

  I keep a supply of tissues close at hand because I never know what’s going to make me cry. It’s not that I’m a baby or anything. I’m just very sensitive. I cry when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m watching movies, when I’m reading books. Sometimes even TV commercials make me cry. The other day my boyfriend, Logan Bruno, compared the amount of rain we’d been having in Stoneybrook lately with my supply of tears. It had rained every day for almost three weeks and it seemed as if we would float away soon. Of course, Logan was teasing, and everything he says comes out in that sweet Southern accent of his, so I didn’t mind at all.

  Again, I turned to Poe’s biography. His wife had died fairly young and he had had unhappy romances. As I read on I also found out that when he was alive, no one liked his work that much. Funny — today it seems as if everybody at least knows who he was. As Poe grew older, he became more and more despondent and even a little mad. He was a sad, sad man.

  I gently picked up Tigger and placed him in the corner of the couch where I’d been sitting. I hated having to move him, but he didn’t seem bothered. He gave a big sigh, wrapped his tail a little tighter around himself, and slept again.

  There was more to our mystery unit than reading. I had to come up with a project using the work of the author I’d chosen in some way. I like to read and I like school. I even like projects. But I hadn’t come up with a really good idea yet. I thought if I kept reading, something would come to me, but I didn’t know how many more Poe stories I could read and still sleep at night.

  What could I do? I could write a play based on one of his stories. But there was no way I could stand up in front of the class and perform it. I’m too shy for that.

  I could write a report on Poe’s life. Bo-o-o-ring!

  I could buy a bird and teach it to say “Nevermore” like the raven in one of his poems.

  I could try to write a story like one of Poe’s, but I didn’t think I could ever be as dark as he is. And, I’d probably scare myself silly if I tried to write one of his horror tales.

  I like to quilt and I’d seen a picture of a cemetery quilt in a magazine once. I could make a quilt with “tombstones” for all the characters he killed in his stories. But that seemed too morbid.

  If I walked slowly, I’d arrive at Claudia’s house for the BSC meeting only a little bit early. My raincoat was still damp from walking home from school, but I put it on anyway. It was a yellow slicker with a navy blue lining. I love yellow and navy together. I picked up my umbrella on the way out the door and stepped into “Waterworld,” as we’d started calling Stoneybrook.

  Even with an umbrella and a raincoat, I felt the damp chill of the rain. It had been raining so long that water no longer soaked into the ground. It stood in puddles everyplace. There was no way to avoid walking through them.

  Before Dad and I moved, I could run over to Claudia’s house without an umbrella. Now I have a short hike to our BSC meetings. We meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six in Claudia’s bedroom. Claud is the only one of us who has her own phone with her own number. That’s important, because during our meeting times people call us to arrange for baby-sitters. Since there are a number of us in the BSC, we can always find them a reliable, experienced sitter.

  I opened the front door to Claudia’s house, shook the rain off my umbrella as best I could, and removed my raincoat. A little puddle formed at my feet as I decided what to do with my wet coat.

  “Hold that door!” Kristy yelled from the street. Her brother Charlie drives Kristy and Abby Stevenson, another one of our members, to Claudia’s house for the meetings.

  Kristy ran through the rain, not bothering with an umbrella or raincoat. She had on a baseball cap, jeans, a Krushers T-shirt, a windbreaker, and running shoes. She leaped through the door, followed closely by Abby, who wore a green poncho over her jeans and shirt. When Abby threw back the hood of the poncho, I saw that the rain had made Abby’s always curly hair even curlier.

  “Thanks for keeping the door open for us,” Kristy said, taking the stairs two at a time to the second floor of the Kishis’ house.

  “Yeah, thanks,” echoed Abby, who was right on Kristy’s heels.

  I don’t know which of them moves faster or more constantly. Each one would say that she was fastest.

  I leaned my umbrella against the wall outside the door. Then I hung my raincoat on the coatrack in the hall, hoping it wouldn’t drip too much. I followed Kristy and Abby to Claudia’s room.

  Kristy was already seated in Claudia’s director’s chair, the baseball cap replaced with a green visor and a pencil stuck over one ear.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m so tired of rain. How much longer are we going to be able to keep afloat all the kids we baby-sit for?” Kristy said.

  “Lately, when I’m baby-sitting, I feel like I’m sailing on a sinking ship,” Abby said.

  “It’s sink or swim for the BSC,” Claudia put in.

  “Really, we need to come up with something. Every one of the kids I’ve baby-sat for this week is positively nutso, since they’ve been shut up inside for so long. Maybe we should talk about it under new business.” Kristy is president of the BSC. She’s the one who came up with the idea for the club, and she’s the one who keeps coming up with plans for improving it. The idea for the BSC came about one afternoon as Kristy watched her mother call sitter after sitter, trying to find someone to watch David Michael, Kristy’s younger brother. She thought how much easier it would be if there were one number parents could call to reach several sitters. Kristy’s the type who doesn’t just think up ideas, she puts them into play. The next thing we knew, we were part of the Baby-sitters Club.

  Back then, Kristy and I still lived next door to each other on Bradford Court. Kristy lived with her mom; her two older brothers, Charlie and Sam; and David Michael. Her dad left the family when David Micheal was a baby, and Kristy only hears from him once in awhile. Not long ago, Kristy’s mom married a guy named Watson Brewer and the family moved to his mansion across town. Watson is a millionaire and their house is truly a mansion. In addition to Kristy and her brothers, Watson’s two children from his first marriage, Karen and Andrew, live there every other month. And after Kristy’s mom and Watson married, they adopted a little girl from Vietnam, Emily Michelle, who’s now two and a half. When Emily Michelle came aboard, Kristy’s grandmother moved in too, to help out. Since there are almost as many pets as people in the Thomas/Brewer household it’s a good thing Kristy likes kids and animals as much as she does.

  The BSC itself isn’t the only good idea that Kris
ty has had. She also came up with the idea for Kid-Kits. Those are boxes — each of us has one — with books, toys, supplies, and activities inside. We take the Kid-Kits on baby-sitting jobs from time to time, for special occasions such as the arrival of a new baby, or to entertain a child who’s been cooped up for a while, and for rainy days. The Kid-Kits have been receiving quite a workout recently with all the rain. I had to agree with Kristy. It’s been harder and harder to keep the kids I’ve been sitting for entertained. They’re loaded with all kinds of stored-up energy from having to stay inside so much.

  Kristy and I have been best friends as long as I can remember. We look a little bit alike, since we’re both short (Kristy is the only person in eighth grade shorter than me) with brown hair and brown eyes, but we’re very different in other ways. Kristy is a real take-charge (some would say bossy) person, and very athletic. Besides playing softball, she coaches a softball team made up of many of our baby-sitting charges. They’re the Krushers featured on the shirt Kristy was wearing that day.

  “Did you have softball practice today?” I asked.

  Kristy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I may have to turn the Krushers into a swim team if it doesn’t stop raining.” Knowing Kristy, she was as anxious to be outdoors and moving around as any of our charges.

  “Who wants some chocolate?” Claudia asked, crawling out from under her bed, her hands filled with an assortment of miniature candy bars.

  I held out my hand and she tossed a couple of the bite-size bars to me.

  Claudia is vice-president of the Baby-sitters Club. As I mentioned, we use her room as our headquarters and it’s her phone number that our clients call. She is also in charge of making sure none of us starves to death. Her endless supply of junk food allows her to achieve that goal. Notice how she had to crawl under the bed to find the snacks? That’s because Claudia is addicted to junk food, and her parents don’t approve. She has to hide it all over her room. They also don’t think she should read so many Nancy Drew mysteries, which she loves almost as much as chocolate. So she hides those too.