The Haunting of Heck House by Lesley Livingston Page B

close-fitting fibres and peeled back the edge of a square of the rug. A square that covered a hinged wooden door. The slightest pressure on the surface of the trap and the thing collapsed inward. It snapped back into place, completely invisible to the naked eye, after a few seconds.
    Tweed gasped. “Anyone unlucky enough to step on that square of floor would drop into who knows what kind of fiendish trap!”
    â€œA tiger cage!” Simon suggested with gruesome enthusiasm. “Or a dungeon! Or a pit lined with sharpened stakes! Or—”
    â€œOr maybe it’s just a plain old laundry chute,” Cheryl said.
    â€œWell, where’s the fun in that?” the speaker grumbled.
    Cheryl snorted. “Since when are dungeons fun?”
    Tweed spun Simon around so that she was looking him in the face. Sort of. “If you’re really a real magician,” she asked suspiciously, “then how come you know all about cheap tricks like trap doors and stuff?”
    â€œWhat? Oh. Um. Well, uh, yes,” the departed mystic stammered. “My competition, you see! Uh … they were the ones resorting to chicanery and sleight of hand.”
    â€œWhile you were the one performing real feats of supernatural derring-do, huh?” Tweed raised an eyebrow.
    â€œExactly!”
    â€œAnd your final act?” Cheryl said, stepping carefully around the trap door and rejoining her cousin on the other side of the room. “The ‘mystical ka-boom’?”
    â€œThat’s right! That’s what it was. An ectoplasmic conflagration born of a catastrophic mystical convergence.”
    â€œNot, say, too much black powder in a flash pot?” Cheryl suggested.
    â€œWhat do you take me for?” Simon protested haughtily. “A charlatan?”
    It was a bit disconcerting the way the speaker almost seemed to exhibit facial expressions. Tweed handed it backto Cheryl and wandered over to the empty bookshelves next to the door. They were coated with a thick layer of dust, but there were also bare patches where rows of books had clearly stood. Recently. She peered closely and discovered a smattering of fingerprints in the dust, too. Made by small hands. She was about to call Cheryl’s attention to them when suddenly, the leather desk chair at the far end of the room creaked.
    Cheryl and Tweed froze.
    In the silence that descended on the room, they could hear a thin, thready whisper of sound. Like faraway music. As quietly as she could, Tweed stuffed Simon in her knapsack so that she could have both hands free in case emergency hand-to-hand combat was required. Then together, she and Cheryl crept silently toward the other end of the room. The chair was one of those expensive, richly upholstered numbers with the high backs—a perfect perch for an evil villain to spin around on and reveal himself as the mastermind of some nefarious plot …
    Well. The twins had seen enough movies to know that you didn’t want a guy like that to get the upper hand. So, instead of waiting for some kind of dramatic reveal, they crept stealthily up behind the chair, ready to give it a good hearty spin. Once in position, Cheryl held up her hand and did a silent three-count with her fingers.
    â€œ One … two … thr —”
    â€œWait!” Tweed mouthed, grey eyes wide.
    â€œ What? ” Cheryl mouthed back.
    â€œAre we doing one … two … go-on-three ?” Tweed asked in a sub-whisper. “Or one … two … three-and-then-go ?”
    The age-old dilemma.
    Cheryl frowned. “ Uh … ”
    Too late! The chair suddenly spun around.
    â€œGAH!!” the girls yelped in tandem and leaped back as the ominous hidden figure revealed himself to be … a fellow babysitter. Wearing headphones—the source of the ghostly music the girls had heard—and playing a video game on a tiny handheld screen.
    â€œHey, guys!” Karl Wu peeled off his shiny red