Halloween Party (Fear Street Book 8)

“Very funny, Les,” Terry said out loud, hoping he was wrong.

He reached out and touched him.

Les felt warm.

“All right, Les,” he said. “Cut it out. It’s me. Terry. We’re on the same team, remember?”

Les didn’t answer. He lay there, staring, not blinking, his eyes like marbles.

“A pulse,” Terry said. “Where is your pulse, Les?”

He felt Les’s wrist, then at the base of his throat. There was no movement.

He put his fingers in front of Les’s mouth, but there was no breath.

Now Terry stared hard at Les’s chest, trying not to think about the knife handle protruding from it. No movement. None at all.

No, Terry said to himself. No. No no no no no no no!

This can’t be real.

It’s another joke, another surprise. It’s got to be.

“Don’t be dead, Les,” he said. “Please don’t be dead.”

But Les didn’t answer. His unblinking eyes continued to stare out of his pale, pale face like the eyes of a department-store mannequin.

Scarcely able to stand, Terry backed out of the closet. His heart was beating so hard he could hear its pounding in his ears.

Shaking, he made his way back downstairs. His legs felt weak and rubbery as if he were trying to walk underwater. Or in a dream.

Please let it be a dream, he thought.

He had nearly reached the living room when a light shone in his face. It was David, just coming out of the bathroom.

“Hey, Terry,” David said with surprise. “What happened to you? You look like you’ve seen a—”

“Les is dead,” Terry said dully.

“What?”

“It’s true. I just found him. In the closet. Upstairs.”

“Hey, you’re serious, aren’t you?” said David. Terry couldn’t think of an answer, but then David’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You’re trying to get back at me for the Silver Prince trick, aren’t you?”

“Les is dead,” Terry repeated. “He has a knife in his chest.”

“And you’re going to show it to me, right?” said David. “And then Les will jump up and yell gotcha!”

“He’s never going to yell anything again,” Terry said. He could feel himself starting to come out of the shock. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I’ve got to phone for help.”

“Wait a minute,” said David. “Let’s go back upstairs. Maybe what you saw was another trick.”

“No,” said Terry.

“Sure?” said David. “Remember how real Alex looked? You were sure that was real too.”

“I don’t think it’s a trick,” said Terry. But he felt a little flicker of hope for the first time.

He went back up the stairs with David. As they started the last flight to the attic, Terry forced himself to be calm. I don’t want to see Les’s body again, he thought. But maybe David’s right. Maybe I saw something and just thought it was Les.

His hand was still shaking as he reached out to open the closet door.

The closet was empty.

“I knew it!” said David. “This was just a trick to get me up here, right? What’s next—a pie in the face?”

Terry just stared at the empty closet, relief flooding through him like a dam breaking.

It hadn’t been real. Maybe he was going crazy. But having hallucinations was better than Les being dead.

“Terry?” Now David sounded concerned. “You all right?”

“He was here,” Terry said. “Exactly the way I described it. I guess I must have somehow been—”

He stopped talking as his flashlight beam picked something up on the bottom of the closet.

“What is it?” asked David. And then he saw it too.

A thick, dark puddle on the closet floor.

Trembling, Terry reached down to touch it. His hand came away wet and sticky—and red.

“There’s more,” David said. Now his voice was shaking too.

Leading from the closet were drops and smears of blood.

Without a word, the boys followed the trail around the piles of boxes in the attic. Followed it to a window in the back.

The window was open, and rain slanted in, soaking the worn floorboards. A single smear of blood streaked the wall below the windowsill.

Terry didn’t believe his heart could pound so loud and so fast. What had happened to Les’s body? Had he—it—gotten up from the closet and escaped through the window?

Had Les somehow joined the Undead in the Fear Street woods?

“I’m going to look outside,” David said. He sounded even more frightened than Terry felt.

Slowly David pushed the window the rest of the way open and stuck his head out into the rain. Terry crowded next to him.

They spotted it at the same time.

There, directly below them, on the peaked roof of a second-story dormer, lay Les’s crumpled body, the knife glinting in the lightning.