Baby-Sitters' Haunted House Read online

  That was when I realized it was Jill walking into my room. She was wearing a long white nightgown. Phew. Spooky jumped off the bed and bounded out of the room. I drew a deep, shaky breath.

  “I found Spooky under my bed, Dawn,” Jill said. “I wanted to tell you. But he jumped out of my arms and you scared him away again.”

  I scared him?

  I finally found my voice. “Sh-sh,” I told Jill. “We’ll wake the others.” I climbed out of bed. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your room.”

  I turned on all the lights in my room and the one in the hall. And I made sure to close my door behind me. I didn’t want anyone — or anything — coming in while I was gone.

  “There go our outdoor plans for the kids,” Kristy said.

  We were in her room helping Andrew get dressed for the day. A rainy day.

  “Boats,” Andrew said. “Kristy, I want to go see the boats again.”

  Kristy handed Andrew a pair of clean socks. “Today you can draw pictures of boats,” she told him.

  Dawn, Claudia, and Jill burst into the room then.

  “I know the perfect rainy day activity,” Claudia announced. “We can explore the attic.”

  “That’s a super idea!” I exclaimed. “I bet there’s a lot of stuff up there.”

  “And we can make an inventory for the Menderses,” Kristy suggested. “The contents of the attic are part of their inheritance.”

  “What about what Georgio said?” I asked.

  “He was just trying to scare us,” Claud said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I bet there’ll be some wonderful old things up there,” I said.

  “Like old photo albums,” Dawn said.

  “And antique clothes,” Claud added. “We might find some ideas and costumes for our float.”

  At breakfast Seth and Lisa and the Menderses told us that their plan for the day was to visit the business district in Reese and a couple of nearby towns to make a study of how many people shopped on a rainy summer day. When we told them our plan, they agreed that it was a perfect rainy day activity.

  “There’s just one problem,” Claudia said. “The door to the staircase that leads to the fourth floor is locked.”

  “I know,” Mr. Menders said. He told us that he’d been up on the top floor once, when he surveyed the house after the reading of his uncle’s will. “But after that,” he said, “the key disappeared.”

  “And the Coopers’ set of keys doesn’t have one either,” Mrs. Menders added.

  Mr. Menders handed Claud his set of keys. “Give my keys one more try,” he said. “If none of them works for you either, ask Elton to break the lock. We’ll have to go up there sooner or later.”

  “What’s the fourth floor like?” Dawn asked.

  “Well, as you know,” Mr. Menders answered, “the stairs begin in your third-floor hallway. At the top of the stairs to the right is a door to the attic. To the left is a hallway with bedrooms off of it. I only went into a couple of them. It’s pretty obvious that they haven’t been used in generations.”

  While the rest of the sitters and kids searched through old bureau drawers and cabinets for the missing key, Claud and I ran upstairs and tried all the keys on Mr. Menders’s keyring. He was right. None of them worked.

  By then Kristy, Dawn, and the kids had brought us the handful of keys they’d found around the house. While Claud tried those, I returned to my room to find a pad and pen for making a list of the contents of the attic. When I looked out my window to see if the rain was slowing down, I noticed Georgio working in one of the gardens. I thought it was strange for him to be working outside in a heavy downpour. I thought it was even stranger that he wasn’t paying much attention to his work. He kept glancing up at the mansion, as if he were looking for something — or someone. I backed away from the window. I didn’t want him to see me. I had a feeling that Georgio was spying on us.

  I found a notebook and a pen and headed back to the locked door where Kristy was saying, “I’ll go ask Mr. Cooper to break the lock.”

  “Can I help you with something?” a male voice asked.

  Claud jumped about a mile, and I yelped.

  It was Georgio. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

  “Sorry I scared you,” he said. “I just wondered if I could help.”

  What was he doing in the house? How did he know we needed help?

  “We are going to explore the attic,” Karen said. “But we cannot get in.”

  “I really don’t think you should go up there,” Georgio replied.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Menders told us we could,” Claud said.

  “My dad lost the key,” Jill added.

  “Do you have a key?” Karen asked.

  Georgio hesitated a second. Then he said quietly, “I might.”

  “Then try to open the door for us,” Kristy said. “Please.”

  Georgio took a set of keys from his belt. He selected a key and easily unlocked the door with it.

  “Oh, goody,” Karen said. “You are our hero.”

  I didn’t think Georgio was a hero. I was just about convinced he was our fourth-floor “ghost.”

  Before he left us Georgio said, “Be careful. If you need me for anything I’ll be in the garden. You can call me from the window.”

  As we climbed the stairs I felt as afraid of Georgio as I did of the attic. But after the first few minutes up there I was so interested and busy that for a while I forgot about being afraid.

  The attic was everything we had hoped it would be — and more. I was so busy writing down what everyone else was finding, that at first I didn’t make any discoveries myself. But I did see a lot of wonderful antiques.

  Here are just some of the things we found:

  While Kristy and Jason pawed through the trunk of toys with the younger children, the rest of us continued the survey of the attic.

  I tested the handle of the armoire. “It isn’t locked,” I told Dawn. “But I’m afraid to open it. There might be bats in there.” I backed up while Lionel pulled the doors open. Of course he had to say something about bats and Dracula while he did it. “Don’t you know, my dear, that we sleep in our coffins during the day? Not in some dusty old cupboard.”

  There were no bats in the armoire. It wasn’t dusty either. It held three white cotton garment bags. Two were snapped closed, but the middle one was open. We looked inside the open bag first. It held two gowns. One was yellow satin with a smocked bodice. The other was dark blue velvet with black lace trim. I inspected the smocking and handmade lace. “The handiwork on these is amazing,” I told the others. “It’s so intricate.” (I love to do what Claud calls “the sewing arts.” I’ve learned how to embroider, smock, and make quilts.)

  Claud and Dawn opened the other two garment bags. All the gowns were distinctive and beautiful.

  “Oh, I wish we’d found these before our dress-up dinner!” exclaimed Claudia.

  “Why are there three gowns in each of these bags,” Dawn wondered out loud, “but only two in the middle one?”

  “Maybe there were only eight gowns to put away,” I said.

  “Then why wasn’t the bag closed?” Dawn asked. “Whoever put these gowns away was very careful with the others.”

  Claud looked around to be sure the kids couldn’t hear her when she asked, “Do you think these were Lydia’s gowns?”

  But Lionel heard her. “Lydia,” he intoned. “Oh, my beloved Lydia. They can’t separate us. I will rescue you. A team of wild horses couldn’t keep me away from you.”

  When he finished his performance, Dawn asked him, “How’d you know about Lydia?”

  “Elton told me. I assume that’s who told you.”

  “He told me, too,” Jill piped up.

  I was surprised that Mr. Cooper had told Jill the story of Lydia. I thought that was a pretty scary story to tell a kid.

  “It’s probably not true,” I said. “Sometimes people make up a story, like on Halloween, and the people w
ho hear it think it’s true.”

  “I don’t care,” Jill said. “Dawn and I don’t scare easy. Do we, Dawn?”

  Dawn just sighed.

  While Dawn and Claudia snapped the garment bags closed, I peered in the toy box. I wanted to include some of the larger toys on my list. “What did you guys find?” I asked.

  “Stuff you’d love,” Kristy responded. “They’re ancient.”

  “We have to be very careful with these toys,” Karen said, holding up an antique porcelain doll, “because they might be worth a lot of money.”

  Andrew showed me a faded red wooden boat about the size of a loaf of bread. “This is my boat,” he said. “I like boats.”

  Kristy explained to Andrew that he could play with the boat while we were in the attic, but that it wasn’t his, and it would have to go back into the trunk.

  The next big discovery of the morning was two photo albums in the drawer of the armoire. Claud opened one book to a black and white photo of a beautiful young woman. “I bet this is Lydia,” she said. I recognized the woman’s dress. It was the satin gown with the smocked bodice. Looking at that picture gave me chills.

  The photo albums were fascinating. I loved seeing the way people dressed, and how Reese looked so long ago.

  “This guy looks so much like somebody I know,” Claud said. She was pointing to a photo of a middle-aged man. He had on one of those stiff pointy collars men used to wear in the early nineteen hundreds.

  “Someone in Stoneybrook?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Claud answered. “I wish I could figure out who.” She turned the page. “It’ll come to me later.”

  “I’m sick of being up here,” I heard Jason complain to Kristy. “All we’re doing is looking at old toys and dresses.”

  Kristy glanced out the attic window. “The rain’s letting up a little, Jason,” she said. “After lunch maybe you and I can head over to that playground.”

  “Martha and me, too,” Karen said.

  “Karen, you can do something with the others this afternoon,” Kristy said in her I-mean-what-I-say voice. “Jason and I are going alone this time.”

  “Oh, boo,” Karen said. “Boo, boo, and triple boo.”

  Just then I felt a gentle tap on my arm. It was Dawn. “Mary Anne,” she whispered to me, “before we go back downstairs, Claud and I are going to try to figure out which bedroom was Lydia’s.”

  “And find the stairs to the widow’s walk,” Claud added.

  I couldn’t imagine doing such an unbearably scary thing.

  “Do you want to come with us?” Dawn asked.

  “No, I do not,” I said emphatically. “And I don’t want you to go either. Please, let’s all go back downstairs together.”

  “We’ll be down in a minute,” Dawn said. But I noticed she didn’t look too relaxed herself. She and Claud headed down the hall while Kristy and I took the kids downstairs. Kristy continued with the kids to the first floor while I waited in our hall for Dawn and Claud. I was wondering how they could do such a scary thing, when suddenly I heard feet running along the floor above me. Did they belong to two people? Or to two people being chased by a third? What if our villain were chasing Claud and Dawn?

  Footsteps were pounding down the stairs. Even though I was terrified I opened the door to the stairwell. Dawn and Claud practically tumbled down the last few stairs. As soon as they were in the hall I banged the door shut.

  “What did you see?” I managed to say.

  “The cat’s up there,” Claud answered. “At first we thought it was a person . . . or ghost.”

  “I think that cat is a ghost,” Dawn said.

  “Or belongs to one,” Claud added.

  We shuddered.

  “But we had time to figure out that the doors to the widow’s walk and to the bedrooms on the back side of the house, including the one that was Lydia’s, are locked,” Dawn said.

  I couldn’t help wondering if Georgio had keys to those rooms, too.

  “Come on, Jason, grab your glove. We’re going to the playground.” It was after lunch on Tuesday and I was determined to help Jason Menders meet some guys his own age.

  “But it’s still raining,” he protested.

  “So we’ll see what the kids do here on a rainy day. I bet they’re in the recreation barn.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Jason said. “Those guys are stuck-up.”

  “Would you rather stay here and play dress-up with Karen and Martha?” I asked.

  That did it. Jason ran upstairs and returned with his glove. “Let’s go to the playground,” he said.

  The rain was still coming down hard when we reached the playground. No one was outside, so we headed for the rec barn. It was kind of small — about the size of a two-car garage.

  I was happy to see that the place was filled with the guys we’d seen playing softball the day before. Four of them were playing Ping-Pong. They looked at us when we came in, but didn’t say hi or anything. Another group was sitting on an old couch playing a hand-held computer game. More kids were sitting at a table playing a board game.

  Not one kid greeted us. Also, they didn’t seem to be having much fun. I figured they were sick of being cooped up because of the rain.

  “Do you know how to play Ping-Pong?” I whispered to Jason.

  “There’s a Ping-Pong table in the cellar of my building in Boston,” Jason whispered back. “I’m the best player on the block.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Ask them if you can play.”

  “I can’t do THAT!” Jason hissed.

  “Of course you can!”

  Jason turned his baseball cap backward, handed me his glove and ball, and walked to the Ping-Pong table. “Can I play the winner?” he asked. I was so proud of him.

  But no one would have been proud of those other kids. “We’re not playing for points,” one of them said. Not another word out of any of them. They kept hitting that Ping-Pong ball back and forth, back and forth, and ignoring Jason.

  It was time for more aggressive action. I walked over to the table. “Hi,” I said, “I’m Kristy Thomas.”

  “And I’m Jason Menders,” Jason said.

  None of them said a word to us. But I heard a boy behind me say, “The summer boy has a nanny.” I was glad Jason was on the other side of the Ping-Pong table and didn’t hear that comment.

  “I coach a softball team in Stoneybrook, Connecticut,” I announced to anyone who would listen. “I wish my team was in Reese with me, because if they were I’d challenge you guys to a game. Who’s your coach?”

  “Our coach is gone,” a red-haired kid muttered. “He went to be a counselor at a sleep-away camp.”

  “Oh. I guess if he were around he’d be able to help you guys with that problem you have making the double play.”

  “And your hitting,” Jason added.

  “What’s the matter with our hitting?” a tough-looking kid asked.

  I dodged his question by saying, “I guess you’re not playing in a league or anything if you don’t have a coach.”

  “And I noticed you only have one pitcher,” Jason added. (He was doing great!)

  “Our other pitcher went to sleepaway camp, too,” one of the computer game kids muttered.

  “And Chad was no help,” the red-haired kid said.

  “Who’s Chad?” I asked.

  “He was our best pitcher last summer. But he’s a summer kid. They all leave in September. And September’s when the regional softball playoff is. We lost last year ’cause Chad wasn’t here. So we don’t play with summer people or tourists anymore. It’s our rule.”

  I began to get the picture. These guys were avoiding Jason because they thought he was one of those “summer people” who leave in September (and have nannies).

  “I might move here,” Jason told them. “If I like it. My uncle died and left us his house.”

  “Yeah?” one of the Ping-Pong players asked. “You’d go to school here and everything?”

  “Su
re,” Jason answered. “If I like it.”

  “I’m not moving here like Jason,” I said. “But I’ll be around for another week. Then I have to go back to my own softball team. My team is called the Krushers. What’s your team called?”

  “We don’t have a name,” the red-haired kid said.

  “That’s too bad,” I told him. “I guess you don’t have T-shirts either.”

  “Who’d want to sponsor us?” I heard one guy whisper to another.

  I looked out the window. The rain was letting up.

  I tossed Jason his glove across the Ping-Pong table. I made sure it was a toss he would really have to reach for. He caught it back-handed. And all those guys saw him do it.

  “I watched you play yesterday. And you know what I saw?” I asked them.

  All eyes were on me. No one was pretending to play a game. No one was hitting a Ping-Pong ball. Finally I had their undivided attention. I said, “I saw a lot of talent on that field. As a matter of fact I saw so much talent that I want to help you. I’m willing to help you.” For good measure I added, “For free.”

  They looked at one another. These guys needed a leader so badly they couldn’t pull it together to turn me down — even though I’m a girl and they were the kind of boys who’d ordinarily have trouble with that. Which, of course, made me want to play ball with them more than ever. “I’m glad you agree,” I told them. “You won’t regret it. Let’s start by getting out on that muddy field and playing some ball.”

  There was a chorus of “yeahs” and “okays” as kids grabbed gloves and bats and hustled out the door.

  Jason flashed me a thank-you smile as we followed them.

  * * *

  That night, after the kids were asleep, Claudia and Dawn came into my room. Dawn said, “We have an idea about how to clear up the mystery of the ghosts once and for all.”