Free Ready for a Scare? by P.J. Night Page A

hands.
    She wanted to flee but couldn’t move. An energy—a force—pulled her toward the paper.
    Down, down.
    Kelly stared at the face on the page. The soulful eyes beckoned to her once again. The rest of the world faded into the distance. She and the girl were together. One. A bond unbreakable.
    â€œHello, Mary,” she whispered.

CHAPTER 12
    Mary Owens. The newspaper clipping that had once hung on her mother’s bulletin board—the one she vividly remembered pinning up there just that afternoon—rested on the empty desk.
    She couldn’t explain how it had gotten there or how it had stayed there, but suddenly she felt sure of one thing: She and her friends had called back Mary’s spirit. Upstairs, together, they had summoned the unhappy soul of a girl who had died a horrible, suffocating death.
    Miss Mary, Miss Mary. She remembered how they’d chanted, their voices growing louder and louder.
    And now all her friends were missing.
    And her babysitter.
    And her brother . . . was no more than a hollow shell.
    Her hand rested on the receiver of the house phone. She would call the police. They would help her. They would have to.
    Lifting the receiver to her ear, she listened to the steady buzz of the dial tone.
    Did the supernatural count as an emergency? She feared they would laugh at her almost as much as she feared staying by herself in this house. She pictured the police cars skidding up the driveway. The blaring sirens and flashing lights rousing the neighbors. People gathering on the lawn, watching in curious fascination as the officers stormed the house. And she would tell them all about what had been going on tonight.
    Bad idea, she knew.
    Kelly gently returned the receiver to the base.
    She wiggled her toes against the dampness of her socks and thought about the puddles by the door. Maybe Chrissie went out, she thought. She’d been wearing boots—and she certainly had been outside earlier. Chrissie could have left the door open by mistake. That was it.
    An encouraging warmth spread throughout her body as the explanation unfurled in her brain. It was the same feeling she’d gotten when, at age five, her father reachedfor her mittened hand with an everything-will-be-okay smile every time she fell learning how to ski. She was overreacting, that was all.
    She flung open the back door. The force of the wind struck her full on. Strands of hair blew about her face. She pushed them away from her eyes. Turning on all the lights in the yard, she saw that the snow hadn’t begun falling too thickly yet.
    She scanned the yard. The snow by the door looked trampled and kicked about. There was no question now that someone had been outside. A set of boot prints led away from the house, zigzagging across the white expanse. The tracks disappeared into the darkness. The spotlights attached to the back of the house shone only a short distance. There was no telling where the tracks led.
    Still safely planted inside the doorway, Kelly scrutinized the boot prints. They weren’t the deliberate prints of someone walking slowly through the snow. They were smeared and very close together. The snow was more compacted at the front of the boot print. The person had barely pressed any weight on the heel. Excess snow sprayed around the back of each print. She understood immediately. The person had been running. Fast.
    Was it Chrissie? It had to be, she reasoned.
    But why was she running? Was she running to something? Or was she being chased?
    â€œChrissie? Chrissie? Are you out there?” she yelled into the darkness.
    The wind swallowed her cries.
    â€œChrissie?”
    Her voice echoed back to her. Her throat grew dry and scratchy again. Panic pushed its way up.
    The snowflakes fell silently from the sky. The yard remained frozen and eerily quiet.
    Why would Chrissie leave?
    â€œRyan!” she screamed. “Ryan, can you hear me? This is an emergency!”
    She waited. The