Ann Martin - Stacey And The Haunted Masquerade

"There's no tree on that side," Carolyn said.

"Maybe it’s the wind," Claudia suggested.

"There's no wind today," said Marilyn.

"Could it be the house settling?" Claudia asked hopefully.

"Nope," said Marilyn. "I know what that sounds like. My dad explained that, once when I heard scary creaking noises at night. This is nothing like that."

Each of them put an ear against the wall again and listened. Finally, Claudia gulped. "It's moving," she said. "Now it sounds as if it’s coming from high up. Is the attic above this room?"

The girls nodded.

"I'm going to go up and check things out," said Claudia. "Where are the stairs?"

"I'll show you," said Carolyn. She ran out of the room, and Claudia and Marilyn followed.

"We'll come with you," Marilyn offered, when the three of them stood at the bottom of the stairs.

"No," said Claudia. She was feeling more than slightly terrified, but she knew this was something she had to do on her own. "You two wait down here. But can I borrow your flashlight?"

Carolyn detached the flashlight from her detector and handed it over. "Be careful," she said solemnly.

"I will be," Claudia answered. Then she turned and headed up the stairs, flashlight at the ready.

"I would have hated to be the girls at that point," she told us later. "All they saw was me disappearing up the stairs. But then, a few seconds later, they heard me scream. They must have been scared out of their wits. So was I. When I saw those eyes staring back at me I nearly passed out!"

Luckily, Claudia did not pass out. Instead, she shone the flashlight at the eyes and caught sight, just in time, of a fat, gray squirrel as it

turned to run out of a hole in the eaves of the roof. After that scare, I don't know how she had the presence of mind to stick a piece of cardboard over the hole, but she did, and the squirrel was locked out, at least temporarily. (The Arnolds could deal with it in the morning.)

After a comforting dinner of macaroni and cheese, Claudia spent the rest of the evening helping the girls make "Professional Ghost-buster" signs for their doors. Then she made one for her own door. The three of them were pretty proud of themselves. After all, it’s not every day you actually bust a ghost!

Chapter 9.

"Twenty-eight years ago?" Sharon, Mary Anne's stepmother, raised her eyebrows. "You're asking a lot. I can't even remember what I had for dinner last night."

Mary Anne and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. I had to work hard to stifle a grin. Sharon can sometimes be a bit of a flake. It’s true that she's a wonderful, smart, loving person. It’s also true that she's not very organized, and she's always losing her keys or forgetting to turn on the oven when she's baking potatoes.

While Claud was sitting for the Arnolds that Thursday evening, Mary Anne, Logan, and I had gone to Mary Anne's house after our emergency meeting. Why? Because I had blurted out my theory that the vandalism at school might have something to do with that last Mischief Night dance twenty-eight years

earlier. Mary Anne had picked up on the idea immediately, and pointed out that her dad and stepmother had both lived in Stoneybrook at that time and might remember something about the dance. So there we were, sitting in the living room, asking questions.

"I remember plenty of dances in high school," said Mary Anne's dad, smiling softly at Sharon, as if he were remembering romantic moments the two of them had shared long ago. "But middle school? I don't remember going to many dances at all, and I certainly don't remember anything 'tragic' happening at a dance."

"Are you sure?" Mary Anne pressed. "This would have been a Halloween dance, or at least a Mischief Night dance."

"Halloween . . . you know, I do remember something," Sharon began slowly. "Richard, wasn't there a dance once where a teacher was hurt?" She frowned. "Or even killed?"

Mary Anne, Logan, and I exchanged glances.

"A teacher was killed?" I asked.

"Mr. Green, wasn't it?" Richard said in a far-off voice. "You're right, Sharon. I do remember something, but it’s hazy. I know I wasn't at the dance. I would only have been in — let’s see — sixth grade, and most dances

back then were for the older kids."

"So what happened?" asked Mary Anne, to urging her father along.

"You know, I'm really not sure," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but not much is coming back. Something happened, and that teacher — Mr. Green? — died because of it. But I can't recall what it was."

We swiveled to look at Sharon. She shook her head. "I can't remember either," she said. "It was pretty terrible, though. I seem to recall girls crying in the halls." She closed her eyes for a moment, and I could tell she was thinking as hard as she could. Then her eyes popped open. "But Richard, you're wrong about the teacher's name. It wasn't Mr. Green. It was Mr. — Mr. Brown."

"That’s it!" he cried. "Mr. Brown. Absolutely. Now that you say it, I know that’s right."

"Mr. Brown," I said, making a note in the little notebook I had brought with me. "Wow, thanks for your help. Now that we know something really did happen, maybe we can find out more about the specifics."

"But how?" asked Logan.

"Maybe we could find some old issues of the SMS Express," Mary Anne began, but her father started shaking his head.

"You won't find any old enough," he said.

"The school didn't have a paper then."

"But the town did," Logan said. He glanced at his watch. "If we hurry, we can make it to the library before dosing time and look through some old issues of the Stoneybrook News," He stood up, and so did Mary Anne and I.

"Let us know what you find out," said Richard. "Now I'm curious, too."

We left Mary Anne's at a trot, and kept it up all the way to the library. I already had a strong feeling we were onto something. If a teacher at SMS had actually died at that dance twenty-eight years ago, well, that was big stuff. I still didn't know exactly what we were looking for, but it seemed dear that we needed to find out as much as we could about that dance.

When we arrived at the library, we headed for the reference room and for the microfilm of the back issues of the Stoneybrook News. It wasn't hard to find the spool for October and November of twenty-eight years back. We've used microfilm before, when we were working on other mysteries, so we're pretty good at looking up subjects.

Logan worked the microfilm reader, while Mary Anne and I leaned over his shoulders, scanning quickly. Suddenly, I spotted something that made my heart race. "Stop!" I said.

"What’s that?" I pointed to an obituary headline dated November first. "Educator Jack R. Brown, 62, Died During Stampede."

"Stampede?" Mary Anne and Logan asked together. We leaned forward to read the text of the obituary.

"This has to be the guy," Logan said. "It says he was a civics teacher at SMS. And it gives the date of his death as October thirtieth."

"He died of a heart attack," Mary Anne said, as she read ahead. "And doctors think it was brought on by the 'unfortunate incident’ at the school dance."

"The stampede," I repeated. "What stampede?"

"There must be an article about it somewhere," Logan said. He started scanning again.

"Whoa! Stop!" Mary Anne cried. "Check it out." She pointed to the screen, and we saw the headline, which was in a paper dated October 31st, Halloween. "Masquerade Takes Tragic Turn," we read out loud, together. Then we read silently, as fast as we could.

Here's what we found out: There was a Halloween masquerade that year, and it was held on the night before Halloween, Mischief Night. Attendance was high; most of the eighth grade was there. A band called The

Groovy Tangerine was playing. Suddenly, the lights went out in the gym — and in the whole school. The crowd panicked. Somebody pulled a fire alarm, which caused even more panic, and then a stampede. Several students were injured, and Mr. Brown suffered a heart attack and died before he could be taken to the hospital.