Ann Martin - Stacey And The Mystery Of Stoneybrook

I tried to think of other things, nice things. I thought of lying on a beach, the warm sun soaking into my skin. I thought of the waves crashing against the shore with a steady beat.

Bang!My door slammed open and Charlotte flew across the room. She leapt into my bed and buried herself beneath the covers. She was shaking.

"Charlotte, what is it?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

She wouldn't — or couldn't — talk at first, but slowly it began to come out. Charlotte had also had a nightmare. And hers was also about the house.

"There was a storm coming," she said, still breathing hard. "I could hear the thunder, and lightning was flashing in the sky. Then all of a sudden the ground where I was standing — right there by the house — started to shake!" She shivered. She was really frightened.

"It's okay, Charlotte," I said. "What happened then?" I knew she would feel better if she finished telling me her dream. I hugged

her close and smoothed her hair.

"The ground was rumbling. It was like an earthquake or something. I thought it was going to open up and swallow me!" I don't know how she knew what an earthquake was like. Maybe she'd seen one of those nature specials on TV.

"The sky was all dark, kind of a greenish color. I was so scared, Stacey, but I couldn't move. I wanted to run, or scream, or do something, but all I could do was stand there and stare at the house."

I knew that feeling.

"Then the worst part happened. I was looking at the front of the house, and all of a sudden I saw something at the front door, or at the hole where the front door used to be. It was a pair of hands, two old, old hands. They were all skinny and bony, and they were waving at me. It was like they were saying, 'Come in, Charlotte. Come in.' Oh, Stacey! It was so awful!" She started crying for real now.

I shuddered. It sounded terrifying. I just couldn't believe it. We'd both had nightmares at the same time, and both of them were about that creepy old house.

What kind of power did that house have? What was it that drew us there at the same time that it scared us away? Had anyone else

seen what we'd seen, heard what we'd heard? I suddenly realized why it was that the workmen packed up and left so early every day. It must have been the house. It had them in its power, too. Those workmen were probably just as scared as we were.

I almost had to laugh at the thought of those big men being as scared as two girls. But it wasn't really funny. I pulled the covers around Charlotte and let her snuggle up next to me. I'm sure she thought she was being allowed to stay with me because she'd been scared by that dream. She didn't know that she was as much of a comfort to me as I was to her.

Chapter 11.

I guess Charlotte and I both managed to get back to sleep. When we woke up the next morning it was a little late, and we really had to rush to get ready for school. Charlotte couldn't wait to get back to her classes — she was tired of being home, sick.

She took her medicine (she still had to finish the bottle even though she felt fine) without too much fuss, for once. When we had raced through breakfast, my mom drove us to school so we wouldn't be late.

I don't know about Charlotte, but my day at school was not the greatest. I was sleepy from being awake in the middle of the night, but that wasn't really the problem. The problem was that I still felt totally frightened by the nightmare I'd had, and by the fact that Charlotte had had one, too. That old house was all I could think about.

I was having a hard time concentrating on

my classes. In Math, while I was supposed to be figuring out what "X" equaled, I was really thinking about flames and bony hands and swarms of flies. I don't even remember what we talked about in English class, because I wasn't listening. I was remembering that face at the window. And forget about gym class. The volleyball bounced right off my head as I stood there trying to recall exactly how that moaning had sounded.

I was a mess.

By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was dying to see my friends. I could talk to them about this. They would understand. They were all obsessed with the house, too.

I met up with Dawn on the lunch line. She and I were both picking and choosing very carefully from what was available. Dawn usually brings some kind of whole-grain stone-ground organic stuff, but she must have been running late that morning, too. We both avoided the "chicken chow mein" (gluey-looking gray stuff over noodles) and reached for fruit, milk, and plain cheese sandwiches.

"Are you okay, Stace?" she asked, as we walked over to our usual table. "You don't look so hot."

"I'm fine. I'm just a little tired, I guess," I said. "I had a terrible nightmare last night."

By that time we'd gotten to our table, and everyone else was already there. They all wanted to hear about my nightmare, so I described it in all its gruesome glory. Then I told them that Charlotte had also had a nightmare, and I repeated her scary details.

I guess they could tell that I was really frightened, because they took it seriously.

"We've got to get to the bottom of this," said Kristy. "Is there really something going on at that house? It sounds like it might be very dangerous. There are a lot of kids living in that neighborhood. What if something happened to one of them? I hereby call an emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club!"

Wow. We rarely have emergency meetings, and when we do, they're usually about babysitting or club problems.

'I'll be there," said Claud. "Today's art class was canceled. I can't think about anything else, anyway."

"Me, neither," said Mary Anne. "That house really gives me the creeps. And if the whole town of Stoneybrook really is built over a burial ground, just-think of all the terrible things that could start happening." I knew she'd seen that Stephen King movie Pet Sematary. She'd let Dawn talk her into going, but afterward they were both sorry. They wererobably thinking about the movie a lot these days.

Everybody agreed that an emergency meeting was a great idea. As it turned out, Jessi was the only one who wouldn't be able to make it. She had ballet class.

I felt better knowing that we were all in this together. I was able to pay a little more attention to my afternoon classes, but even so, the day seemed to drag on forever.

When school finally ended, I ran home to meet Charlotte. She'd had a rough day, too. She was thrilled to hear that an emergency club meeting had been called and that she'd been invited again.

"I'm almost like a real member now," she said.

I knew it would be a few years before Charlotte would be a sitter, but I also knew that being invited to the meeting meant a lot to her. "That's right, Char," I said. "Maybe someday you'll be president of your own babysitters club. You could wear a visor to every meeting, just like Kristy."

We headed over to Claudia's early, since we were both so eager for the meeting to start. I guess everybody felt the same way, because by four-thirty they were all there. Except for Jessi, of course.

Kristy called the meeting to order and announced a special agenda. "This is an emergency meeting to address the mystery of Stoneybrook, and especially to figure out what's going on at that old house. Let's go over what we know so far," she said.

We know that there are some very weird things happening there," I said, "and that the house has — or the spirits of the people buried beneath it have — some kind of power."