Free Welcome to Dead House by R. L. Stine

survive without fresh blood. None of us can. You’ll understand soon, Amanda. You’ll understand why we had to invite you to the house, to the … Dead House.”
    In the darting, zigzagging beam of light, I could see Josh moving closer, heading our way.
    Run, Josh,
I thought.
Run away. Fast. Get someone. Get
anyone.
    I could think the words. Why couldn’t I scream them?
    Ray’s eyes glowed brighter. He was standing right in front of me now, his features set, hard and cold.
    “Ray?” Even through my jeans, the marble gravestone felt cold against the back of my legs.
    “I messed up,” he whispered. “I was the watcher. But I messed up.”
    “Ray — what are you going to do?”
    His red eyes flickered. “I’m really sorry.”
    He started to raise himself off the ground, to float over me.
    I could feel myself start to choke. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I opened my mouth to call out to Josh, but no sound came out.
    Josh? Where was he?
    I looked down the rows of gravestones but couldn’t see his light.
    Ray floated up a little higher. He hovered over me, choking me somehow, blinding me, suffocating me.
    I’m dead,
I thought.
Dead.
    Now I’m dead, too.

14
    And then, suddenly, light broke through the darkness.
    The light shone in Ray’s face, the bright white halogen light.
    “What’s going on?” Josh asked, in a high-pitched, nervous voice. “Amanda — what’s happening?”
    Ray cried out and dropped back to the ground. “Turn that off! Turn it off!” he screeched, his voice a shrill whisper, like wind through a broken windowpane.
    But Josh held the bright beam of light on Ray. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
    I could breathe again. As I stared into the light, I struggled to stop my heart from pounding so hard.
    Ray moved his arms to shield himself from the light. But I could see what was happening to him. The light had already done its damage.
    Ray’s skin seemed to be melting. His whole face sagged, then fell, dropping off his skull.
    I stared into the circle of white light, unable to look away, as Ray’s skin folded and drooped and melted away. As the bone underneath was revealed, his eyeballs rolled out of their sockets and fell silently to the ground.
    Josh, frozen in horror, somehow held the bright light steady, and we both stared at the grinning skull, its dark craters staring back at us.
    “Oh!” I shrieked as Ray took a step toward me.
    But then I realized that Ray wasn’t walking. He was falling.
    I jumped aside as he crumpled to the ground. And gasped as his skull hit the top of the marble gravestone and cracked open with a sickening
splat.
    “Come on!” Josh shouted. “Amanda — come
on!”
He grabbed my hand and tried to pull me away.
    But I couldn’t stop staring down at Ray, now a pile of bones inside a puddle of crumpled clothes.
    “Amanda, come on!”
    Then, before I even realized it, I was running, running beside Josh as fast as I could down the long row of graves toward the street. The light flashed against the blur of gravestones as we ran, slipping on the soft, dew-covered grass, gasping in the still, hot air.
    “We’ve got to tell Mom and Dad. Got to get
away
from here!” I cried.
    “They — they won’t believe it!” Josh said, as we reached the street. We kept running, our sneakers thudding hard against the pavement. “I’m not sure I believe it myself!”
    “They’ve
got
to believe us!” I told him. “If they don’t, we’ll
drag
them out of the house.”
    The white beam of light pointed the way as we ran through the dark, silent streets. There were no streetlights, no lights on in the windows of the houses we passed, no car headlights.
    Such a dark world we had entered.
    And now it was time to get out.
    We ran the rest of the way home. I kept looking back to see if we were being followed. But I didn’t see anyone. The neighborhood was still and empty.
    I had a sharp pain in my side as we reached home. But I forced myself to keep