Curiosity Killed the Cat (7 page)

Hannah gasped. “It was locked, Madison!” she insisted. “I swear!”

Madison rolled her eyes. She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at Hannah. “Nice try,” she said. “I knew you were a liar. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going back to bed. I know
you
might not care about your looks, but
I
need my beauty rest.”

And with that, Madison turned on her heel and stomped back to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Hannah held her breath as she stepped into the bathroom, her heart pounding. She was sure she was going to find a dead cat — or worse — in the tub.

But the only thing in the bathtub was water. It had just reached the top and was starting to spill over onto the floor.

Hannah snatched a towel off the rack and threw it down to soak up the puddle. Then she leaned over and turned off the water with trembling hands.

“Hannah?” a voice behind her asked.

“AHHHHH!” Hannah jerked backward and her foot slid on the wet towel, sending her crashing to the floor.

Her dad, who had called her name from the doorway, rushed into the bathroom.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he helped her up.

Hannah was trembling from the scare, and her teeth were chattering.

“I’m f-f-fine,” she managed to choke out as she rubbed her hip, which would undoubtedly be bruised the next day.

Her dad looked baffled. “What’s going on up here?” he asked. “Allison and I heard you and Madison yelling, then there were lots of loud footsteps and a door slammed.” He paused and glanced at the full-to-the-brim bathtub. His face wrinkled in further confusion. “Isn’t it a bit late for a bath?”

Hannah didn’t know what to say. All she wanted
to do was confess every thing to her dad and have him tell her it was all going to be all right, but for the first time in her life, she realized her dad couldn’t make things better. It wasn’t just that she knew her dad wouldn’t understand what a mean girl Madison was — it was all the other crazy stuff that had been happening, too. Hannah was sure she was being haunted by something in — or near — the house, and she just knew her dad would think her theory was outrageous.

“Um, Madison and I had a fight,” Hannah lied. She was surprised at how easily the story came to her. Maybe she really
was
a natural liar. “I woke her up by mistake, and she got really angry, which made me upset, too. I couldn’t fall asleep again, so I thought a bath might help me relax.”

Hannah’s dad looked at her skeptically, but he just shrugged.

“Well, I’m sorry I startled you,” he said sheepishly. “Try to make the bath quick so you can get to sleep.”

“Okay, Dad,” Hannah replied softly. “Good night.”

“You too, Hannah,” he replied.

As soon as her dad had gone, Hannah drained the tub and headed back to her bed. She was so
exhausted that the second she pulled the covers up, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When Hannah finally woke up the next morning, the sun was shining brightly outside her window. She rolled over to look at her clock and was shocked to see that it was almost noon.

Hannah got out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom, where she splashed some cold water on her face. Even though she had gotten plenty of sleep, she felt groggier than usual. She was also sore all over from her two falls the previous day — first in the woods and then in the bathroom.

After she pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans, Hannah realized she was ravenous, so she headed down to the kitchen. Unfortunately, Madison was already perched at the table, reading a magazine and drinking a smoothie.

Hannah ignored her as she popped a bagel in the toaster and sat down. The silence in the room was so thick Hannah could have cut it with her butter knife. When her bagel finally popped out of the toaster, she was relieved to have something to do. She quickly spread some cream cheese on the bagel and carried
it out to the front porch. It was chilly outside, but even if she caught a cold, Hannah thought it would be a small price to pay for a Madison-free breakfast.

Hannah had just taken her first bite of bagel when there was a large crash inside the house, followed by a shout that sounded like her dad. Hannah jumped up and raced into the house. It sounded as though the noise had come from the garage that Allison and her dad had been remodeling into a home office.

Hannah burst into the garage to find Madison already there, kneeling next to her dad, who was lying in a pool of blood next to a ladder.

“Dad!” Hannah shrieked as she dashed to his side, her face pale and taut with worry. “What happened? Where are you hurt? What’s bleeding?” She had never seen so much blood before in her life.

Her dad sat up quickly and held out his red hand. “Relax, Hannah!” he said reassuringly. “It’s just paint. See?”

He pointed to a tray of red paint and a red-stained roller brush.

Hannah heaved a sigh of relief. She looked around the room more carefully and noticed the wall to her left was half-covered in the same burgundy color as the floor.

Hannah glanced over at Madison. From the look on her face, it was clear she’d also thought the paint had been blood.

“I’m sorry, girls,” Mr. Malloy said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was on the ladder painting when I thought I felt something brush against my legs.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what came over me. It was almost as though — oh, you girls are going to think I’m a crazy old man!”

“Why, Dad?” Hannah asked ur gently, suddenly alert. “What happened?”

Mr. Malloy looked embarrassed as he continued his story. “Well, it was almost as if a cat had brushed against my ankles. It felt just like Icky used to when he was trying to get my attention. There was something soft and furry and — I don’t know. But there was nothing there — it must have been my imagination.” He chuckled nervously. “I guess I panicked. I just slipped and fell off the ladder.”

Hannah and Madison exchanged glances and a moment of understanding passed between them before Madison quickly looked away. Hannah couldn’t quite figure out what it had been about Madison’s expression that had tipped her off, but something suddenly clicked.

She knows!
Hannah realized with a start.
Madison knows that weird things have been happening around here lately!
All of the pieces fell into place: the exhausted look on Madison’s face each morning, her warnings about the cemetery, even the locked bathroom door. Hannah realized that Madison must have heard the scratching sound at night, too. And maybe her warnings about the ghost cat and about keeping a low profile around the cemetery had been just that — warnings. Hannah wasn’t even sure it had always been Madison locking her bathroom door — it could have been a ghost!

Hannah shuddered at the thought.

She glanced around the room looking for signs of a ghost, and she saw something that made her blood run cold.

Suddenly, she was certain beyond a doubt that there was something — or someone — much scarier than Madison in her dad’s house.

Hannah helped her dad stand up. As she did, she moved so that she blocked his view of the evidence she had just spotted.

“That’s okay, Dad,” she said, a false note of cheer in her voice. “You didn’t scare us too badly, and I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

For some reason, Hannah didn’t want her dad to know about the ghost. She didn’t think there was any way he’d ever believe it. And now that she was sure something strange was happening, she didn’t think she could take all of his “it’s just your imagination” theories.

“It’s a good thing Allison convinced me to leave the floor installation for last,” Mr. Malloy said as he glanced at the paint-splattered garage floor. It looked about as bad as his T-shirt and jeans, which were covered in enormous globs of red paint. “I’m just going to go change out of these clothes.”

“Great idea!” Hannah said, a little too eagerly. She practically pushed him back into the house. “Madison and I can start cleaning up some of this paint for you.”

Madison shot Hannah one of her poison-dart glares as Mr. Malloy disappeared through the garage door.

“And
why
would we do that?” she asked snippily.

“Because of that,” Hannah said, pointing to the floor behind her.

Madison gasped.

There was a trail of tiny paw prints —
cat
paw prints — leading away from the puddle of paint. The prints didn’t seem to go anywhere — they just got
fainter and fainter as they neared the exterior wall of the garage, until they finally faded away.

Hannah grabbed a rag and splashed some paint thinner on it. Then she knelt down and began scrubbing at the prints. Madison took a rag from the pile and did the same thing.

“Have you heard it?” Hannah asked Madison softly as they scrubbed. “The scratching at night?”

Madison looked up, alarmed. Her face had gone pale. But she just put her head down and scrubbed harder.

“Come on, Madison,” Hannah pleaded. “You know what I’m talking about — I can tell! I know you’ve heard it, too.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Madison replied, but Hannah had seen Madison stiffen when she mentioned the scratching.

“It’s the ghost cat,” Hannah insisted. As soon as she said it aloud, she knew it was true. She turned to Madison. “You didn’t turn on the fan in my room or run the water in the bathtub, did you?”

Madison shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. “No, I told you I didn’t,” she replied carefully.

“Well, I didn’t do it either, but someone — or some
thing
— did,” Hannah said firmly. “The ghost
cat is haunting me. It’s haunting
us
. Admit it, Madison. You know it’s true!”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Madison snapped. “If it gets around at school that I’m being haunted, no one will want to hang out with me! No one will ever want to sit with me at lunch again. So we’re not talking about it — and you’re not telling anyone about it either —
ever
.”

But Hannah desperately wanted to talk to Madison about the ghost cat. Finally, here was someone who believed her! It didn’t matter how mean Madison had been to Hannah when she had first moved in — now they had something in common, and Hannah needed her help. She was certain that if she and Madison worked together, they could figure out a way to get the haunting to stop. And Hannah
had
to figure out a way to make it stop — she didn’t think she could live in a constant state of fear much longer.

“But if we just talk about it, maybe we can figure out what to do,” Hannah said desperately. “We have to do
something
.”

Madison gave Hannah one of her famous icy stares. The only difference was that this time, Madison looked scared to death.

“I told you — I don’t want to talk about it!” she shouted. Then she jumped up and dashed out of the room, almost knocking Hannah down in the process.

Hannah threw down her rag in frustration. She felt more alone than ever.

A moment later, her dad reappeared.

“Much better!” he said happily as he stepped into the room wearing a hideous pair of paint-splattered denim overalls over a stained plaid shirt. “Forgot I had these old work overalls in the back of my closet.”

Hannah gave him a weak smile. “Very stylish, Dad,” she said. “I’m going to bike to the library to do some research. I, uh, have a big history report to work on.”

“Sure, no problem,” her dad replied distractedly. He had already started painting again. “But wear a jacket — it’s getting chilly out there!”

The part about the history report had been a little white lie, but Hannah figured she had already been accused of being a liar, and it wasn’t the first one she had told either. It was clearly time to take matters into her own hands. She was going to get to the bottom of the ghost cat haunting, with or without Madison’s help.

Hannah locked her bike up outside the Sleepy Hollow Library and headed inside, determined to find out more about the ghost cat legend. She headed straight for the reference desk, where the librarian was engrossed in a book.

“Excuse me?” Hannah asked hesitantly.

The woman who looked up was the youngest librarian Hannah had ever seen. She also had a nose ring and a pink streak in her dirty-blond hair.
Cool!
Hannah thought. She’d been going to the Tarrytown Library her entire life, and she couldn’t ever recall seeing a librarian there who was under fifty.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” the librarian asked.

“I’m looking for information about some old Sleepy Hollow legends,” Hannah said. “Uh, for a history project,” she added lamely.

“That shouldn’t be too hard to find,” the librarian replied. “We set up a special section with books about local history and folklore every October. They can’t be checked out, but feel free to use them while you’re here at the library. Lots of people like to read about ghost legends around Halloween, and this town is famous for those.”

Hannah smiled. “Ghost legends sound great,” she said.

“They should be right over there.” The librarian pointed to a table covered in fake cobwebs. A plastic bat hung above the display of books.

“Perfect, thanks,” Hannah said. Then she headed over to the bookshelf. The top shelf was full of fiction, and Hannah saw a few books of short stories by Washington Irving. Below that was a row of history books. There was
Stone Stories: Tombstones Throughout the Ages
,
Popular Legends and Curses
, and an incredibly thick, dusty old book called
Legends of the Hudson Valley.
Hannah pulled that one off the shelf along with a cloud of dust that made her cough.

She carried the book over to one of the wooden desks in the reading area and plunked it down with a loud thud. The man at the desk next to her glanced up and glared. Hannah ducked her head sheepishly and slipped into a chair. Then she flipped the book open and turned to the index.

The first thing she looked up was
ghost cat
, but there was nothing listed. Then she tried
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
, but all she found were references to Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman. Finally, she tried
haunting
, and discovered a chapter all about ghosts in the Hudson Valley.

Hannah learned that Washington Irving’s home in Tarrytown, which was called Sunnyside, had supposedly been haunted when he lived there. She shivered. Her mom loved Sunnyside — they’d just been there together that summer, for an afternoon picnic next to the Hudson River.

Hannah almost laughed at herself for being creeped out. After all, hadn’t she herself been
living
in a haunted house for the past two weeks? She continued to skim the chapter, reading about the haunted castle on Bannerman Island and other local spots that were rumored to be stomping grounds for ghosts.

Finally, she came to a section featuring legends of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

One of the lesser-known legends of the Hudson Valley region is the story of Molly Straub of Sleepy Hollow. Born in 1847, Molly was the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Her mother died in childbirth, and Molly lived alone with her father in a large mansion overlooking the Hudson River.

There were no other houses nearby, and Molly was a lonely child without any playmates. She did have a small black cat that she used to dress in doll dresses and bonnets. The cat followed Molly every where, and no one in town ever saw her without the cat a few paces behind her. The local townsfolk called the cat Molly’s “shadow,” and that became the cat’s name.

Many of these same villagers were superstitious people, and they thought black cats were terribly bad luck. In particular, the villagers thought Molly’s cat was bewitched because it allowed her to dress it in clothing without protesting. The villagers were vocal about their disapproval of Molly’s pet.

The house where Molly and her father lived included a small river dock on the property, and Molly’s father
would occasionally row her out to one of the little islands in the river for a picnic. Molly knew that she was never, ever to take the rowboat out on her own. But on All Hallow’s Eve the year Molly turned twelve, she went out in the little boat and never came back. Shadow disappeared on the same day. A week later, Molly’s body was found, drowned in the river. No one knew what had happened, but the villagers were certain that the cat had lured Molly to her death. Legend has it that the cat still haunts the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Molly is buried.

Hannah closed the book. She felt weak. It was true — all of it. Paisley’s story about the ghost cat matched this one exactly.

Then Hannah gasped.
All Hallow’s Eve
. The book said Molly and her cat had disappeared on that day. All Hallow’s Eve was Halloween! And Halloween was the very next weekend. Hannah had been so stressed out lately, she had forgotten all about it. And hadn’t there been a rowboat in her dream the other night? The dream where Madison had turned into a black cat?

Hannah pushed back her chair and stood up abruptly. She had to get out of the library immediately.
She got another glare and a
“Shhhh!”
from the man next to her, but Hannah barely noticed. She stumbled toward the exit and almost didn’t see the young librarian step in front of her as she headed for the door.

“Didn’t you forget something?” the woman asked, holding up Hannah’s jacket. “It was on the back of your chair.”

“Oh!” Hannah exclaimed. “Thank you!”

The librarian handed Hannah the jacket. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Is every thing okay?” she asked, a concerned look on her face. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

“No — I mean, yes!” Hannah said hurriedly. “I mean, thanks so much for your help.”

Hannah rushed out of the building before the librarian could ask her more questions. She had no idea where she was rushing to, but she needed some time to think. Maybe a long ride on her bike would —

“Hannah?” someone behind her called out. Hannah spun around to see Taylor Walsh hurrying down the steps to the library. “I thought that was you! I called out to you before, but you ran out of the library so quickly you must not have heard me.”

Taylor seemed to take in Hannah’s wild-eyed look, because suddenly she became alarmed herself.

“Are you okay?” she asked, a worried look on her face. “Did something happen?”

“What? No, I’m fine,” Hannah said unconvincingly. “It’s just — uh, my dad called to tell me I have to come home right away. I think I’m in trouble or something.”

Hannah couldn’t believe how good she was getting at these little white lies. They just seemed to keep slipping out lately.

“Oh no!” Taylor said sympathetically. “That stinks. Well, I just wanted to invite you to the Halloween party Ryan and I are throwing next Saturday. I know it’s the day after Halloween, but we figured no one would come Friday night because they’d all be out trick-or-treating. It starts at six o’clock. You should totally come. Oh, and bring your friend Paisley. She plays soccer with my friends Alice and Indira, so you can tell her they’ll be there, too.”

Two weeks ago, Hannah would have been thrilled to be invited to a boy-girl Halloween party. Now she couldn’t think of anything except what bad luck and hauntings Halloween might bring. What if something
terrible happened to her — or to Madison — that Friday night?

“I, uh, I’ll have to ask my dad, but that sounds like fun,” Hannah replied. “And I’ll ask Paisley, too. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, cool,” Taylor replied. “See ya!”

Taylor headed back into the library, and Hannah unlocked her bike and headed for home, a million thoughts and fears swarming around in her head. Hannah was certain
something
scary was going to happen on Halloween. The only question was what that something would be.