Panic(29)

She didn’t turn on the light. There was a little moonlight coming through the window, and she could have navigated the room by touch, anyway. She undressed, piling her clothes on the floor, and climbed into bed, pushing her blankets all the way to the footboard, using only the sheet as cover.

She had assumed Lily was sleeping, but suddenly she heard rustling from the other twin bed.

“Heather?” she whispered.

“Uh-huh?”

“Can you tell me a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“A happy kind.”

It had been a long time since Lily had asked for a story. Now Heather told a version of one of her favorites, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” except instead of princesses, she made the girls normal sisters, who lived in a falling-down castle with a queen and king too vain and stupid to look after them. But then they found a trapdoor that led down to a secret world, where they were princesses, and where everyone fawned over them.

By the time she was done, Lily was breathing slowly, deeply. Heather rolled over and closed her eyes.

“Heather?”

Lily’s voice was thick with sleep. Heather opened her eyes again, surprised.

“You should be sleeping, Billy.”

“Are you going to die?”

The question was so unexpected, Heather didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Of course not, Lily,” she said sharply.

Lily’s face was half mashed into her pillow. “Kyla Anderson says you’re going to die. Because of Panic.”

Heather felt a current of fear go through her—fear, and something else, something deeper and more painful. “How did you hear about Panic?” she asked.

Lily mumbled something. Heather prompted her again. “Who told you about Panic, Lily?” she asked.

But Lily was asleep.



The Graybill house was haunted. Everyone in Carp knew it, had been saying it for half a century, since the last of the Graybills had hanged himself from its rafters, just like his father and grandfather before him.

The Graybill curse.

No one had lived in the house officially in more than forty years, although occasionally there were squatters and runaways who risked it. No one would live there. At night, lights flickered on and off in the windows. Voices whispered in the mouse-infested walls, and ghosts of children ran down dust-covered hallways. Sometimes, locals claimed they heard a woman screaming in the attic.

Those were the rumors, at least.

And now, the fireworks: some of the old-timers, the ones who claimed they could still remember the day the last Graybill was found swinging by the neck, swore that the fireworks weren’t set off by kids at all. They might not even be fireworks. Who knew what sort of forces leached out of that tumbledown house, what kind of bad juju, sizzling the night into fire and flame?

The cops thought it was just the usual Fourth of July prank. But Heather, Nat, and Dodge knew better. So did Kim Hollister and Ray Hanrahan and all the other players. Two days after the Fourth of July, their suspicions were confirmed. Heather had just gotten out of the shower when she booted up the ancient laptop and checked her email. Her throat went dry; her mouth turned itchy.



[email protected]

Subject: Enjoy the fireworks?

The show will be even better this Friday at ten p.m.

See how long you can stand it. Remember: no calling for help.





FRIDAY, JULY 8





heather

“IT’S TOO EASY,” HEATHER SAID AGAIN. SHE SQUEEZED the steering wheel. She didn’t really like to drive. But Bishop had been insistent. He wasn’t going to make it to the challenge today, wasn’t going to sit around and wait for hours while the players tried to outlast one another in a haunted house. And for once, she’d been able to use the car. Her mom and Bo were getting smashed with some friends in Lot 62, an abandoned trailer mostly used for partying. They’d crawl home around four, or possibly not until sunrise.

“They’ll probably try and screw with us,” Nat said. “They’ve probably rigged the whole house with sound effects and lights.”

“It’s still too easy.” Heather shook her head. “This is Panic, not Halloween.” Her palms were sweating. “Remember the time we were kids, and Bishop dared you to stand on the porch for three minutes?”

“Only because you flaked,” Nat said.

“You flaked too,” Heather reminded her, sorry now that she had brought it up. “You didn’t make it for thirty seconds.”

“Bishop did, though,” Nat said, turning her face to the window. “He went inside, remember? He stayed inside for five whole minutes.”

“I forgot about that,” Heather said.

“When was that?” Dodge spoke up unexpectedly.

“Years ago. We must have been ten, eleven. Right, Heather?”

“Younger. Nine.” Heather wished that Bishop had come. This was their first challenge without him, and her chest ached. Being with Bishop made her feel safe.

They turned the bend and the house became visible: the sharp peak of its roof silhouetted against the clouds knotted on the horizon, like something out of a horror movie. It rose crookedly out of the ground, and Heather imagined even from a distance she could hear the wind howling through the holes in the roof, the mice nibbling at the rotten wood floors. The only thing missing was a flock of bats.