The Show Must Go On! (12 page)

Wow, even Tiffany's being nice to me,
Bree thought, smiling.

“And so now we come to the question of the fate of the play,” Mr. Gomez continued. Beside him, on a chair, sat a stack of copies of
The Last Sleepover
. “As you know, all future productions will be put on here in the gym until the repair of the auditorium is complete. Since you have worked so hard rehearsing
The Last Sleepover
, I thought maybe we could talk about restaging it here. What does everyone think?”

Before anyone could speak, Mr. Jenkins, the school janitor, walked into the gym.

“Sorry for the interruption, folks,” he said, then went about lifting a large plastic bag full of garbage from the gym's trash can.

Without saying a word, Bree stood up and walked over to the stack of scripts.

“We may do a play in the gym, Mr. Gomez, but it won't be this play,” she said, gathering up the pile of scripts in her arms.

“Wait a minute, please, Mr. Jenkins!” she called
out, walking across the gleaming wooden gym floor. Reaching the janitor, she pulled open the large plastic bag of garbage, then turned back toward Mr. Gomez.

“In fact, Mr. Gomez, no one will ever perform this play again.”

Bree dumped every copy of
The Last Sleepover
into the garbage bag before returning to her seat. “Now,” she began. “What play do we all think we would like to do?”

Bree slowed her car as she approached the school. She always enjoyed driving up to Thomas Jefferson Middle School. It brought back a flood of good memories about close friends and fun times.

Today Bree was here to pick up her daughter, Elle, following Elle's drama rehearsal. Bree was so pleased that Elle—short for Gabrielle—had shown an interest in theater, recalling how much her own involvement with school plays both in middle school and then in high school had added to her years as a student.

As Bree sat in the car with the window rolled down, she noticed an odd-looking woman standing near the entrance to the school. The woman was tall and had medium-length, jet-black hair. She wore a long, dark
coat.
Who is that woman?
she thought. The woman turned around, revealing dark circles around her eyes.

“Ms. Hollows!” Bree gasped.

She paused for a moment and caught herself. This woman looked younger than Bree herself. “There's no way that could be Ms. Hollows,” she said to herself. “That was thirty years ago, and Ms. Hollows would have to be in her sixties now.”

Still, Bree was surprised, as she watched the woman disappear into the school building, by just how deeply the idea of seeing Ms. Hollows affected her after all these years.

A few minutes later Elle came bounding out of the school. She ran up to Bree's car, bursting with excitement.

“Hey, Peanut, how was drama rehearsal?” she asked as Elle slipped into the seat beside her.

“Fantastic, Mom,” Elle replied. “You're not going to believe this. My drama teacher found an old play in a trunk in the basement of the school. She told us that no one has put on the play in years!”

“Really?” Bree asked, starting the car. “What's the name of the play?”

“It's called
The Last Sleepover
,” Elle explained. “And I'm just dying to play the lead!”

What happened in the woods that night changed everything, forever, and if the girl had known what was going to happen, she never would have left her house. Never left the safety of locked doors and windows, and the sound of laughter coming from the television, and the good smells of food cooking in the kitchen, and the warm glow of lights in every room.

But she didn't know, see? She didn't have a clue what was waiting for her, at the edge of the darkness, so when she heard the scratching, she thought it was the stray cat that had been coming around. The one with the tattered ear and the hungry eyes.

The sun was just about to set. She could see it still shining in the west, like an orange ball of fire on the
verge of falling into space. So she thought,
I'll just put some food at the edge of the yard. For the cat.
She poured a cup of kitty chow into a plastic bag and grabbed her coat. Then she walked out the back door, into the dying light, like it was no big deal, because it wasn't . . . not yet.

That was a mistake, she realized later. She should have told someone—anyone—that she was going outside. Into the twilight. By herself.

At the edge of the yard, she looked for the cat by the tree where it usually waited for her. But tonight, the cat was nowhere. “Here, kitty, kitty,” she called softly, kneeling down and snapping her fingers like she always did.

Still the cat did not appear.

The girl sighed. The air was damp, as if the fog were rushing in faster tonight than usual, hardly waiting for the sun to finish setting before blanketing the woods in a thick mist that was impossible to see through. She felt so sorry for the poor cat, sleeping in the woods all alone, even when it was cold or windy or wet.

Then she heard it again: the scratching. Just beyond the tree line. And—what was that? A whimper?

A cry for help?

The girl glanced behind her at the house, still all lit
up, so warm and cozy. She wanted to go back there.

So why was she walking toward the woods?

Because she couldn't bear it, the thought that the cat was sick or hurt, or in trouble. If she could help the little cat, she would. Of course, she didn't know then what was really in the woods.

“Here, kitty,” she called again, pushing through the tree limbs. “I won't hurt you. Here, kitty.”

Silence.

That the woods should be so chillingly quiet, the girl realized, was weird. Very weird. But instead of feeling afraid, she was curious. She should have been afraid.

On she continued into the woods, all the way to the clearing where she'd spent so many summer nights on campouts, telling stories in the flickering light of a campfire. She knew that clearing as well as she knew her own bedroom, but she'd never seen it the way she did tonight.

It was hard to see through the mist, but she could tell right away that the clearing was not empty.

And whatever was in it was a
lot
bigger than a stray cat.

The girl hid behind a thick-trunked tree, her heart thundering in her chest, and stared with wide eyes. She couldn't have looked away even if she'd wanted to.

Well, to be honest, she did want to look away. But her eyes were locked on the creature, and she wondered, suddenly, if she was dreaming.

But she knew that that was nothing more than a wish, an empty hope. Because nothing had ever felt this real—from the painful pounding of her heart to the bitter taste of fear in the back of her throat. She swallowed, hard, and held on to the tree trunk for support.

The monster was eating . . . something. Dark red liquid dripped from its mouth, soaking into the dirt beneath it. The girl's stomach lurched, but still she did not move.

And she did not look away.

Then, to her horror, the creature reared up on its hind legs at the same moment the mist cleared. In the dim twilight, she saw more of it than she ever wanted to:

An enormous lizardlike body, covered in scales and slime. Two tremendous, leathery wings, folded tight against its back. Two thick, stumpy arms; the end of each one curved into a razor-sharp talon, dripping . . . something. Something foul. Back legs that rippled with muscle. A knobby, bumpy head, with two red-rimmed, beady eyes, and a mouthful of fangs. And a tail that was studded with spikes as long as the girl's forearm.

Perhaps the worst, though, the memory she would never forget: Along its waxy underbelly ran an angry, raised scar that was barely visible in the fading light. It was obviously an old injury; she could tell from the way the skin puckered around it. Yet still it oozed as if it would never heal. The creature was like nothing she had ever seen before: part bird, part lizard.

All monster.

It tilted its head to the side, rotating slowly . . . slowly . . . until—no, it couldn't be—wait—it was—it was
staring right at her
, the pupil of that horrible eye dilating as it focused on what it wanted. Then, more powerfully than she ever could have imagined, the creature leaped through the clearing, directly to the tree she was hiding behind. One of its talons sliced through the darkness but somehow missed her, and got stuck in the thick tree trunk instead of in the girl's skull. Suddenly she was no longer rooted to the ground in terror; she was running for her life, crashing through the underbrush back to the safety of her house, the solid walls, the strong locks. The creature struggled to get free, screaming in frustration as it watched its prey escape. And it sounded like—

It sounded like—

“
Aiiiii-ck-ck-ck-ck!
” Jenna Walker shrieked, so shrilly and bone-chillingly that all the other girls cried out in horror and clapped their hands over their ears. A satisfied smile flickered across Jenna's face. Her story was definitely the scariest one by far, and she hadn't even gotten to the really freaky part yet.

“Somehow, thanks to the trunk of that old pine tree, the girl made it back to her house,” Jenna continued in a slow, quiet voice that made everyone else go completely silent. “She waited all night for the creature to follow her there, to smash through the windows. But it never did.

“And the next day, in the bright morning sun, she dared to step outside again. The woods were full of sound: chattering squirrels, chirping birds, scurrying
chipmunks. If the woodland creatures felt safe enough to be out, she should feel safe too. So, one step at a time, she returned to the clearing.” Jenna paused. She took a deep breath before she continued.

“There was no sign of the creature. No sign of whatever it had been eating, or the blood that had soaked into the ground. There weren't even any tracks. The girl started to feel embarrassed. Foolish. Had she imagined it? Was it all a dream? And then . . . she saw . . . this.”