The Haunting on Heliotrope Lane Read online

  Contents

  PROLOGUE Dear Diary

  CHAPTER ONE The Midnight Show

  CHAPTER TWO Haunted

  CHAPTER THREE The Sound of Evil

  CHAPTER FOUR Haunted House

  CHAPTER FIVE Intruders

  CHAPTER SIX Who Knows You Best?

  CHAPTER SEVEN Another Victim

  CHAPTER EIGHT Confrontation

  CHAPTER NINE An Invitation

  CHAPTER TEN Answers

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Guess Who?

  CHAPTER TWELVE Showdown

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Scary Movie 2

  EPILOGUE Dear Diary

  About the Author

  Dear Diary,

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  I DON’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS.

  Really.

  I DON’T.

  But every once in a while a case comes along that makes me wonder. Like when Willa told me that her best friend was acting super strange after they went to a so-called “haunted” house on Heliotrope Lane. Once bubbly and fun, suddenly Izzy was acting paranoid, angry—even violent. Willa was afraid her friend might actually hurt her, unless something was done.

  Worse, when I went with Bess and George to check out the house, we found it totally trashed by trespassers and lookie-loos. It seemed the rumor that the house was haunted had traveled all through River Heights High School and the middle school. And while the house was totally creepy, I know better than to believe it’s haunted.

  It just feels like something evil is at work there.

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Midnight Show

  “SO, WHEN THE GUY DIED,” my best friend Bess Marvin was saying as she walked out of the movie theater, “was that, like, black blood that came out of him? You know, when he was like . . .” She made a retching motion onto the sidewalk.

  “Um,” I murmured, but my voice was hoarse from three hours of screaming. Freaky Friday double features can do that to you. “Can we talk about something else? Anything else?”

  But George Fayne, Bess’s cousin and my other best friend, had already held up her pointer finger. “Good question!” she said in her perfectly fine voice. “I thought the black stuff was evil. Like, liquid evil?”

  “I thought it was the souls of all the people whose lives he’d ruined,” my boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, put in, adjusting his glasses as I thought back to the scene and felt my stomach roil. “You know, by making them eat their own organs. That was cold.”

  “Oh gosh,” I muttered, grabbing my stomach. I almost forgot that part.

  “Nance!” Bess cried, her blond hair puffing around her shoulders as she stopped short, suddenly taking notice of the state I was in. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!”

  “I’ve just seen several ghosts,” I reminded her, leaning against a streetlight, “and some zombies, and that one guy with the liquid evil who kind of defies categorization. And a lot of carnage.” I paused, trying to think about golden retriever puppies, or soap bubbles, or sunshine—anything to counter the three hours of terror I’d just sat through. “Have I mentioned I’m not a horror movie fan?”

  “Oh, Nancy,” George said, and smiled at me as Ned put his arm around my shoulders. “I thought you said you were willing to give horror movies a try. I thought Bess was going to be the delicate one.”

  “It’s funny,” Bess agreed, nodding, “so did I.”

  “I did give them a try,” I said, my voice steadying, “and I think I’ve decided now. No, thank you. I think I’m done with Freaky Fridays.”

  “That’s kind of unexpected for you, don’t you think?” Ned asked. “You’re not a scaredy type. You spend half your life chasing bad guys.”

  This was true. My sleuthing—which had always been my favorite extracurricular activity—could get scary, sometimes. “But there’s a big difference between confronting a crook and having to eat your own organs,” I pointed out.

  “True,” Bess said, nodding seriously.

  “I’m sorry you got freaked,” George said, her dark eyes sincere. “I just really wanted to come to this, because you so rarely see Takara movies screened in the United States! And he’s such an amazing director. The way he sets up his tension shots . . .”

  In the last month or so, George had discovered that she was a huge fan of scary movies. After exhausting her Netflix queue, she’d started checking DVDs out at the library, and then getting recommendations for streaming rentals from horror movie blogs online. She’d become particularly interested in the work of certain directors—like Takara, who, I had to agree, had a real knack for scaring the bejesus out of you. And maybe making you a little nauseated.

  I took a breath through my nose, breathed out through my mouth. That’s how our gym teacher says you should center yourself. “I get it, George. I’m not mad at you. And I can see where the story was cool, if . . . well, if it wasn’t going to give me nightmares for the next month. I think maybe I just don’t have the constitution for this stuff.”

  George nodded, smoothing her short black hair behind her ear, and Ned gave me a little squeeze.

  “Let’s go back to the car,” he said. “Turn on all the lights. Play some really fun music, like Lily Jo Jarret.”

  I smiled. Ned loves Lily Jo Jarret, but he always tries to act like he’s listening to her ironically.

  “Yeah, we can go back to my house and watch something that’s totally the opposite of scary,” George suggested. “Packed House? I hear that was good!”

  Ned took my arm with an encouraging grin and slowly, we made our way around the theater to the parking lot in back. It was huge, nearly empty—and strangely dark.

  “Why aren’t the lights on?” Bess asked, frowning.

  “Yeah,” George said, looking around. “The car is over there—I remember where we parked.” She led us toward her small red coupe. “But this is weird.”

  “And probably a safety hazard,” Ned added.

  “Maybe it’s because it’s so late?” George suggested, leading us in the direction of the car. She reached into her pocket, pulled out her car keys, and flicked on a little flashlight that was on her key ring. It made a tiny but strong beam of light.

  “Maybe,” Ned agreed. “They could be trying to save on electri—AAAAAAUUUUUGH!”

  A shadowy figure had suddenly jumped into the flashlight beam.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Haunted

  I FELT MY STOMACH LEAP up into my throat and grabbed Ned’s arm so hard he cut off his scream to say, “Ow!”

  “Oh my God!” Bess screamed, reaching into her purse. “Get back! I’ll get you with my pepper spray!”

  If I hadn’t been so frightened, I might have smiled. I’ve never seen Bess actually use pepper spray, but the threat is always her first line of defense.

  “Sorry!” the figure said in a voice that was surprisingly young and female. “Dude, don’t spray me. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you guys.”

  George angled the flashlight at the figure’s face. It was a young girl—maybe thirteen or fourteen years old.

  She had blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail and wide eyes, and she was wearing a Chicago Bulls hoodie.

  “Well, you did,” Bess said indignantly, pulling her hand out of her purse. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have threatened you like that. But maybe don’t sneak up on people in dark parking lots after scary movie screenings?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the girl said again. “You’re right, I should know better. It’s just, I recognized you, Nancy.” She turned to me, hope lighting her eyes. “You’re Nancy Drew, aren’t you? The sort-of detective? You h
elped my cousin one time.”

  “Uh,” I said, sort of caught off guard by my unexpected fame. Sort-of detective? Thank . . . you? “Probably. I do investigate things sometimes.”

  The girl looked pleased. “Great. That’s great. Oh, I’m Willa, by the way. And again, I’m really sorry I scared you. We just saw the movie, and were walking to the car, and I spotted you and was like, ‘Wait, we have to go over—’ ”

  “We?” Ned interrupted, as George moved the flashlight beam to the left and right.

  “Yeah,” a deep voice intoned from the darkness, making us all jump about a foot in the air.

  “How many of you are there?” Bess asked the girl, looking nonplussed.

  “Just me and my brother,” the girl said, and a slightly older boy with a mop of sandy hair stepped into the light, looking less than thrilled to be there.

  “Um, hi,” Ned said, giving him a pointed look.

  “Hi,” he mumbled. “I’m Owen. Her older brother.”

  “So, um . . . why were you guys looking for me?” I asked, trying to hurry this along. I was feeling a little silly for getting so freaked out, though honestly I was just happy I hadn’t peed myself. That was scary.

  “Well.” Willa looked back at me, cringing a bit. “It’s going to sound . . . weird.”

  “Try me,” I replied drily. I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my time solving mysteries.

  Willa glanced over at her brother, though she spoke to me. “I have . . . maybe a mystery for you to solve.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Tell me more.”

  Willa raised her eyebrows and went on, “Do you guys know about the house on Heliotrope Lane?”

  “The house on Heliotrope Lane?” Bess asked, then giggled. “That sounds funny. It’s like one of those old mystery stories—do you remember that series with the yellow covers, Geo—”

  “No. What’s the deal with the house on Heliotrope Lane?” I asked, cutting Bess off with an apologetic look. I’m ready to get to the point so I can get home to bed. I tried to tell her all this with my eyes.

  “It’s haunted,” Owen suddenly piped up. He was staring at his smartphone, his shaggy hair covering his eyes. When he noticed us all turn to stare at him, he looked up. “I mean, allegedly,” he added.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, turning back to Willa.

  She glanced at Owen hopefully, as if she thought he might help her explain, but he was lost in his phone again. “Well . . . the house was owned by this older lady, Mrs. Furstenberg,” she said slowly. “She wasn’t . . . nice. I mean, she was kind of mean to the neighborhood kids, always shooing them off her lawn and yelling at them to be quiet at, like, two o’clock in the afternoon. And she had some crazy number of cats.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with cats,” said Bess, who loves her ill-tempered cat, Mr. Checkers.

  Willa shrugged. “Sure, yeah, no. The cats weren’t the problem. I’m sure she was nicer to the cats than she was to people. Anyway, she lived with her son, who was, like, middle-aged. Henry. Nobody really knew anything about him, because he never talked to anyone. You would just see him in there sometimes, in the rocker in the front room.”

  George caught my eye. Creepy, she mouthed.

  “One day, a year or so ago, a neighbor heard a scream,” Willa went on. “And he went in to investigate. He found Mrs. Furstenberg dead in this little room in the basement. She’d had a heart attack.”

  “Okay,” I said. This all sounded unfortunate so far, sure—but where was the mystery?

  “Henry disappeared that same day. The police looked for him for a long time but never found him. That made them think maybe he knew something about her death.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You said she died of a heart attack.”

  Willa nodded. “Yes, that’s what the doctors said. But the police thought maybe Henry did something to scare her, or they had an argument that brought on the attack. Anyway, when they couldn’t find him, there was nothing they could do, so they just called her death an accident. She didn’t leave a will, so the house has been empty ever since she died.”

  A sudden flash of recognition lit in Bess’s eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Maybe I have heard of this house, from my neighbor Carrie.”

  Hmmm. “You said the house was haunted?” I asked, looking from Bess to Willa.

  “A lot of kids think so,” Willa said. “And sometimes, kids will sneak in there at night to give themselves a thrill.”

  Ned cleared his throat. “That’s a really bad idea,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “for a lot of reasons, including but not limited to it being against the law.”

  Willa looked down at the ground. “I know. I mean, we know. Kids know. But you know how it is. . . .”

  “Kids do dumb things?” Bess filled in. She glanced at me. “If this is the same house, Carrie swears she’s never been there, she’s only heard about it, but I have my doubts.”

  I looked at Willa, who I was thinking looked a little more ashamed than just having heard about the house called for. “Willa, did you go to the house on Heliotrope Lane?” She didn’t respond right away, so I turned to Owen. “Did you?”

  He scowled and nudged his sister. “Tell them, Willa. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  Willa sighed. “Yeah.” She looked at me, her eyes huge and round. “I went a couple of weeks ago. My best friend, Izzy, wanted to go. She’s not usually into that stuff, but we both like scary movies, and she thought maybe we could take some video, and it would be like a scary documentary-type thing. Like Ghost Games. Do you guys know that movie?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said, not adding that I don’t usually go to scary movies, unless dragged there by my friends.

  Willa shrugged. “Too bad she forgot to charge her phone. We didn’t get any footage. But . . .” She looked across the parking lot, and suddenly something darker passed over her eyes. Fear.

  “What happened?” Bess prompted.

  Willa shook her head, as if to clear it. “We . . . well . . . we entered on the main floor of the house and looked around, and that was all fine. But then Izzy wanted to go to the basement.” She looked at us again. “That’s where Mrs. Furstenberg’s body was found, like I told you. In this little room,” she added. “It’s where she died.”

  I nodded. “Right. Sounds scary.”

  “Yeah.” Willa took a breath. “I didn’t want to go—I told Izzy no. I may like scary movies, but it was starting to feel like we were actually in one. Izzy really wanted to go down there though.” She took another breath. “So I told her she could go alone. . . .”

  “Okay,” I said, when she trailed off. “What happened then?”

  “She was gone a really long time,” Willa said. “Like fifteen, twenty minutes. I was getting scared. I called down the stairs for her, but no one answered. Finally I realized I had to go after her. I couldn’t just leave her there.” She paused. “I was super freaked out, but I went downstairs. It was dark, and all I had was my flashlight. I was calling her name, and she didn’t answer, but I thought I heard this sort of moaning sound.”

  “Yikes,” George murmured.

  “Yeah, it was pretty scary,” Willa agreed. “Finally—it was probably only a few minutes later, but it felt like hours—I found her alone in that little room in the basement, the one where they found Mrs. Furstenberg’s body.”

  “Was she unconscious?” I asked. “Is that why she wasn’t answering you?”

  “No, that’s what’s so weird!” Willa replied. “Izzy was conscious, but she was acting strange—she wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t even seem to recognize me! I was yelling at her, because I was so mad she’d left me and wasn’t answering, but it didn’t seem to register at all. Finally I just put my arm around her shoulders and started to lead her out of the house.”

  “Is that like her?” Bess asked. “Being kind of quiet, introspective?”

  Owen suddenly snorted. “Not at all,” he said. “Izzy is the kind o
f girl who never stops talking. She’s ruined so many movies and TV shows for me. She thinks every thought that pops into her head has to be shared.”

  Willa frowned at him, and he shrugged. “Anyway, when she’s around, nobody’s getting any work done.”

  I nodded. “So what did you think was happening?” I asked, turning back to Willa.

  “I thought she was fooling around,” she said, “but she kept acting that way. We got on our bikes and started riding home, and she seemed to know the way and everything, but she still wasn’t saying anything. Finally, when we were a block from Izzy’s house, she laughed and made some silly joke about how cold it was. But what’s so weird is, when we started talking, I realized she had no memory of even going to the house.”

  George let out a whistling sound. “Weird,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. But my sleuthing mind was already working, and it seemed like there could be a lot of different explanations. Maybe Izzy had hit her head in the basement? Maybe she was angry at Willa about something? “Has she remembered it since? What’s the story now?”

  Willa’s expression darkened. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “She never seemed to remember it, but I bugged her about it for a week, and eventually she was just like, fine, we went to that house,” she said. “Still, I get the feeling she thinks I’m making it up. It’s hard to tell, though. It’s been, like, two weeks and Izzy’s still been acting really weird—she’s usually kind of funny and easygoing, but now she’s super high strung, and gets really mad really easily. She’ll get mad at me when I just act concerned about her—like, hey, maybe you should calm down—and say I’m trying to control her, trying to control her life. Our other friends have noticed the change in her and said something to me too. But I don’t know if it’s as bad for them.”

  “Hmm,” said Bess.

  Owen was looking at his sister, and when she didn’t continue, he nudged her again. “Tell them why,” he said.