The Final Nightmare

Could that evil old witch-thing be chasing her? Sally wouldn’t run from little Bobby. She didn’t know anything about ghosts. She thought Bobby was her friend.
Sally didn’t understand how he wanted her to be his friend forever—to be a ghost like him.
I almost reached the road before I caught sight of Sally again.
She was jumping up and down at the side of the driveway in her pajamas, clutching her stuffed bunny and shouting, “Mommy! Mommy!” over and over.
Dropping down beside her, I said, “Sally, you shouldn’t run from me like that.”
“But Mommy and Daddy are coming,” said Sally, pointing down the road. “I saw them.”
Saw them? Impossible.
“You couldn’t have, Sally,” I said. “You can’t see the road from the yard.”
But Sally kept bouncing up and down, looking down the road like she expected Mom and Dad to drive up any second.
Well, at least we were away from the house. The sun was high enough now so it almost cleared the tops of the trees. In a little while we could go to Steve’s house and use the phone.
Steve’s family spent summers in the house next door. He’d help me figure out what to do.
Then I saw a glint of metal as a car rounded a bend in the road. My heart skipped a beat.
Hardly anybody drove down here. There was nothing at the end of Cherry Street but the lake. The only houses were a few summer cottages and our gabled old monstrosity.
I caught another glimpse of the car. This time there was no doubt. It was definitely our family station wagon! I wanted to leap for joy like Sally.
Then I remembered. The house was a total wreck. Our baby-sitter was in the hospital. And Mom and Dad didn’t believe in ghosts.
How was I going to explain it all?

3
“Jason! Sally!”
The car jolted to a stop. My dad had the window rolled down and he was leaning out and grinning at us.
“The job got through sooner than we expected,” he said. “How did you know we were coming?”
“What a nice surprise!” said my mom, getting out of the car. Then suddenly her smile faded and was replaced by a look of concern. “What’s Sally doing in her pajamas and no shoes?”
Dad checked out Sally and frowned. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Jay. And now that I think of it, where’s the baby-sitter? Don’t tell me you sneaked out here without telling her.”
“Um,” I said. “Yeah, well, you see …”
How was I going to tell them that a ghost had injured our baby-sitter?
“Bobby was in trouble,” said Sally helpfully. “Katie hit her head.”
“What!”
“Ah, what happened is, Katie got hurt,” I said uneasily. “I had to call an ambulance. They took her to the hospital.”
“When? How badly is she injured?” Dad asked urgently.
“Do her parents know?” asked Mom.
“Pretty bad,” I said. “She was unconscious. It just happened. I couldn’t call anybody because, um, the phone is out of order.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other, horrified.
“But, Jason, what happened?” demanded Mom.
I tried to explain but Mom and Dad just looked more bewildered and upset.
“Get in the car,” said Dad finally. “We’ll check with the hospital, Carol. Then we’ll fetch Katie’s parents and go see how she is.”
I was so relieved to have them home I almost forgot about what a wreck the house was until I was settled in the backseat headed up the driveway.
Should I try now to explain? No time. Besides, they wouldn’t believe me until they saw it for themselves. I’d tell them everything as soon as we got to the house. At least now they’d have to admit I wasn’t making it up about the ghosts.
As we drove under the pines, sunlight glinted off the windows of the house—just exactly like the first day we’d arrived.
But wait! The house didn’t have any glass in the windows. They’d all blown in last night! Every one of them!
But now each pane was smooth and perfect, sparkling in the early morning sunshine.


4
Mom and Dad hurried toward the house while I hung back, getting their suitcase out of the car. Sally put her hand in mine as Mom and Dad climbed the porch stairs.
I braced myself. Mom had the front door open. Any second now she would let out a yell when she saw all the furniture and antiques that had been smashed up during the night of horror.
Mom disappeared inside. Dad, too. They didn’t make a sound.
Sally and I looked at each other.
“Bobby fixed it,” she said. “He fixed everything, even the phone.”
“Not this time,” I said. “No way. It was like a bomb went off in there.”
“You’ll see,” she said, smiling secretly.
We went up the porch and into the house and stopped in the broad front hallway.
Everything was back in its place.
The living room couch and chairs had been moved back to where they belonged around that ugly, barf-colored rug my mother liked so much. The tinkly lamps were back on their tables, the broken vases and candlesticks and china figures were back on their shelves, perfectly whole.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. It had happened once before. At night during the worst of the haunting the air was thick with flying objects exploding into smithereens against the wall or ceiling or floor. Then in the morning it was like nothing had happened.
But I thought this time it would be different. This time Katie had been hurt—the house had tried to kill us, not just scare us away. For me that changed things.
But not for the ghosts who roamed the house on Cherry Street. Now I knew they didn’t care who they hurt or how badly.
Sally gripped my hand tightly. “Maybe Katie’s head is all better,” she said, looking around at the rooms she had last seen littered with broken glass and overturned furniture.
“No, Sally, she’s not all better,” I said, kneeling down in front of her. I pushed up my sleeve to show Sally the cut I’d gotten last night from flying glass. It wasn’t a