Ann Martin - Claudia And The Phantom Phone Calls

Mr. Johanssen left a few moments later, taking an umbrella with him. Stacey and Charlotte stood at the front window and watched his car back slowly down the driveway and turn onto the street. Just as the headlights disappeared from view, the rain started. It came pouring down, as if someone had over-

turned a huge pail of water in the sky.

"Close all the windows!" cried Charlotte.

"Turn on the lights!" cried Stacey, already spooked.

Stacey and Charlotte ran through the house, closing windows (there weren't many open) and turning on lights.

"What do you want to do now?" asked Stacey, when they were finished.

"Watch TV," replied Charlotte.

Crash! A huge clap of thunder sounded, and Charlotte raced to Stacey's side. "I hate thunder," she confessed.

"You, too?" asked Stacey. "You know what I used to do during a thunderstorm?"

"What?"

"Hide in the linen closet. It was the smallest closet in our apartment in New York City. I'd run in, slide under the bottom shelf, and close the door after me, pulling it from the bottom. Sometimes I'd take my Raggedy Andy with me."

Charlotte giggled. "Once," she said, "I hid under my bed during a storm. The storm lasted so long I fell asleep and Mommy and Daddy didn't know where I was. They almost called the police!"

Crash! Ba-room! More thunder. Lightning flashed and zigzagged through the sky.

"Quick, let's put on the TV," said Stacey.

She and Charlotte ran into the family room. Charlotte flicked on the TV, and Stacey found the remote control unit. They started switching from channel to channel. They found an interview, a cooking show, and two news programs.

"Boring," said Stacey. "Let's put on MTV. At least we could hear some good music."

"What's MTV?" asked Charlotte.

"Music television. Where's your cable box?"

"We don't have cable," said Charlotte. "Not yet. Daddy said maybe this winter."

"Rats," said Stacey. She went back to the remote control.

Flick, flick, flick. They looked at all the regular channels and even tried to tune in some of the UHF stations.

"Boring, boring, boring," said Stacey.

"Double rats," said Charlotte.

"Hey," said Stacey. "Here's something." She had tuned into Channel 47. A large, ghostly hand was walking around in a cemetery all by itself. At the top of the screen were the words SPOOK THEATRE and under them, WATCH AT

YOUR OWN RISK.

"Ooh, spooky!" said Charlotte. She edged closer to Stacey on the couch. "Shall we try it?" asked Stacey. "It's better

than anything else that's on."

"Okay," agreed Charlotte.

Stacey and Charlotte watched a commercial that showed a can of cleanser dancing around a bathroom. Then SPOOK THEATRE appeared on the screen again, and finally the movie began. It started with a nighttime shot of a huge, gloomy mansion sitting alone on a rise of land. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled.

"Kind of like our weather," Charlotte remarked, as a clap of real thunder sounded, followed by a streak of lightning. The lamps flickered.

Charlotte moved as close to Stacey as she could get without sitting in her lap. Stacey put her arm around her. They looked at each other and giggled.

"I have goose bumps!" exclaimed Charlotte.

On the television, the scene changed to a bedroom inside the mansion. It was lit only by two candles. A young woman with long, dark hair glided into the room. She was wearing a white dressing gown and carrying another candle.

She walked across the room to a set of French doors that opened onto a balcony, and began to close them, the wind from the storm making her gown billow softly around her. Just when she had almost pulled the doors closed, she

gasped and let out a small cry.

"What?" whispered Charlotte.

On the lawn below the woman, Stacey and Charlotte could make out a dark figure.

"Lenora," wailed the figure, "I've come back. Back from beyond the grave."

Lenora moaned and dropped her candle. Thunder crashed. Then thunder from the real storm outside crashed even more loudly. For a moment, the room Stacey and Charlotte were in seemed to glow brightly. A second later, it was plunged into darkness.

The girls screamed. Charlotte clutched Stacey. Everything had gone off — the lights, the TV, all the electricity. It was so quiet they could hear their own hearts pounding. But worse than the silence was the utter blackness.

"Power failure," whispered Stacey.

"I want my mommy," murmured Charlotte. "Or my daddy."

Stacey tried to pull herself together. "There's really nothing to be afraid of," she told Charlotte. "So the electricity went off. So what? The pilgrims lived their whole lives without electricity. You should be in New York when there's a power failure. The entire city practically stops running. We lived on the seventeenth floor of an apartment building and when the power went out, so did the elevators.

Imagine having to walk up seventeen flights of stairs just to get home."

"Yuck," said Charlotte.

"I'll say. Now," Stacey went on, feeling a bit better, "what we have to do is get some candles."

"Like Lenora's?" asked Charlotte.

"Well, yes. Where do your parents keep them?"

"I don't know. I'm not allowed to light matches."

"Don't you have any idea?"

"Maybe in the chest of drawers in the dining room."

"Good. All right, now we'll just find my flashlight and we can use it to light our way into the dining room."

Stacey stood up, holding tightly to Charlotte's hand. They began edging toward the front hall where Stacey had left her jacket and the flashlight.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, crash!

"Owl" yelled Stacey.

"What?"

"My toe. I walked right into something." Stacey felt around. "A table, I think. Okay, let's keep going."

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

"Stacey?"

"What, Charlotte?"

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

"I hear something."

"What?"

"I don't know."

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

"There it is again. Stop moving."

Stacey and Charlotte paused, holding their breaths and listening.

And then Stacey heard it — a creak.

"Where's it coming from?" she asked.

"Sounds like the basement," whispered Charlotte.

"Well, let's make sure the door to the basement is closed. Where is the door to the basement?"

"Right here." Charlotte moved past Stacey, running her hand along the wall. "Yup, it's closed."

"Okay. Good. Be quiet for a sec."

The girls stopped and listened again.

Creak. Creak, squish, creak, squish, creak, squish.

In the dark, Charlotte's hand found Stacey's. She held on tight.

Creak, squish, creak, squish.

"Something's coming up the stairs!" cried Charlotte softly.

"Shh," was all Stacey said, but she told me

later that what she was thinking was, Ohmi-gosh! It's the Phantom. He turned off the electricity to distract us, and now he's sneaking into the Johanssens' house through the basement!

Creak, squish. The sound was closer. It had almost reached the top of the stairs.

Stacey was just about to tell Charlotte to start heading for the back door, when the creaking stopped. It was followed by a woof!

Stacey jumped about a foot, but Charlotte exclaimed, "Carrot! Oh, it's just Carrot! He must have come in through the basement again. There's a broken window down there."

"Who's Carrot?"

"Our schnauzer. He must be sopping. I'll try to find a towel so we can dry him off."

And at that moment the lights came back on. Stacey and Charlotte looked at each other and began to giggle. Then they did dry off the poor, rain-drenched Carrot, and they even watched some more of Spook Theatre.

Outside the storm died down, and the rest of the evening was peaceful.

The phone didn't ring once while Stacey was at the Johanssens'.