Free You Can't Come in Here! by P.J. Night

knocked.
    â€œDrew? Vicky? It’s Emily. I’m off from school today.”
    Silence.
    She opened the door and stepped into the rec room. She saw the usual array of guitars and amplifiers, the foosball and Ping-Pong tables, but no Drew or Vicky. Again she called out. “Drew? Vicky?”
    Again, no reply.
    Emily had always known that there was something different about the Strigs. She knew that Drew and Vicky were not like her other friends. She wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Strig were being so weird about a simple thing like letting their kids hang out at a neighbor’s house.
    But this—this was more than she could make sense of. What about the whole homeschooling thing? If Drew and Vicky were not here getting lessons, then where were they? And what was the deal with the answering machine? Why were Mr. and Mrs. Strig trying to fool people into thinking they were home when they weren’t?
    WHERE WAS EVERYBODY?
    Emily’s mind raced in frustration. Then she spied the bathroom on the far side of the rec room—the door that Vicky had thrown a fit about when Emily had tried to open it. Her confusion and concern quickly gave way to a rush of curiosity. She crossed the room, grabbed the doorknob, and opened the door.
    What Emily saw when she stepped through the doorway was almost more than her brain could comprehend. This was no bathroom. It wasn’t even a room. It was an open expanse with a dirt floor, raw beams,and crumbling walls. The rest of the house, beyond the rec room, barely existed as anything more than a shell. Giant cobwebs filled every corner. Mice scurried along the dirt floor, pausing and sniffing, then resuming their search for food. A mass of insects crawled slowly, making the floor appear to be alive and moving.
    Before Emily’s mind could wrap itself around this sight, and just when she thought this whole thing couldn’t get any weirder, it did. Sitting on the dirt floor were three long wooden boxes. As she moved closer, Emily’s eyes widened in fright.
    â€œC-coffins!” she stammered. “Three coffins!”

CHAPTER 10
    Emily backed away from the coffins and stumbled, landing hard on the dirt floor, her face just inches away from a line of crawling bugs.
    â€œAh!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet. She ran back into the rec room, through the hallway, and out the front door. As she hurried across the street, she wondered for a second if she had remembered to close the front door and the door leading from the rec room to the room with the coffins.
    The room with the coffins.
    Nothing unusual about that , Emily thought. Just a typical suburban room with a dirt floor, cobwebs as big as SUVs, and the usual three coffins. It’s all the rage this year. “What! You only have two coffins in your dirt room? Please. Everyone is going for the three-coffin look this season. I saw it on the cover of Better Homes and Coffins magazine.”
    â€œCalm down, Emily,” she said aloud. “If you are going to completely lose your mind, the least you can do is have the courtesy to wait until you are in your own home.”
    Emily threw open her front door and ran inside.
    Good thing her parents were not home. Emily knew that there was no way she could hold it together and keep what had just happened from them. She slammed the front door shut, locked it, scooped up the cat for comfort, and then ran up to her room. She sat on her bed, then immediately got up and started pacing. Franklin watched her as she moved back and forth.
    â€œHow could I have been such a fool? Was I just impressed by how good those two were at everything? I thought Drew and Vicky were a little weird, but not that weird. There’s a big difference between being a little weird and living in a house that’s not really a house, having a coffin or three in a secret room that they were freaked out about me possibly discovering, with parents who only exist on a recording,