It was the perfect weekend afternoon to sit by the window with a good book. Christy settled into her reading chair, turned to the first page of a novel given to her by her friend, Judith, and attempted to escape into a world where she wasn’t the weird new kid at school. However, no matter how hard she tried to focus on the story in her hands, Christy couldn’t hide from a simple fact: no one in the sixth grade seemed to be interested in getting to know her. She was invisible to everyone until a classmate—sometimes even a few “peers” at once—called her a rude name or threw objects at the back of her head.

It was like Christy had cooties, except sixth-graders didn’t believe in that still. Did they? Maybe they believed she had the Plague, but most sixth-graders wouldn’t understand the reference. Would they?

Quite frankly, Christy’s younger brother, Eric, should have been the weird new kid. He was the one obsessed with aliens, monsters, ghosts, and bugs, drawing some version of creature in the margins of his schoolwork. Eric wasn’t quiet or shy like Christy, though, so even he made friends fast.

“Fourth-graders are not hard to impress,” she thought, and then she was momentarily transported back in time a couple years to a happier place: Mrs. Huntley’s classroom, where she would often laugh alongside Judith, Hope, and Laura, people who understood, and cared for, her.

In her reading chair, Christy cried, something she only used to do when particularly powerful words moved her on the page. Lately, tears fell whenever she realized the previous chapter of her life was finished, and that the current chapter...Well, it was one she hoped to someday forget. She worried it would stay with her forever.

Suddenly, Eric, who didn’t even have the decency to let her weep in peace, exploded through her bedroom door wearing a grotesque mask on his head and scaly claws on his hands. He hissed and growled like some reptilian mutant with strep throat and slowly crawled to his sister, looking up at her strangely, as if sizing her up for a meal.

“Eric!” Christy screamed. “A closed door means something, you know!”

“Yeah, it means you’re doing something boring in here,” he said, voice muffled beneath the mask. “Lucky for you, I’m here to change that.”

“Leave me alone!”

“You wish.”

“Alone! I mean it!”

“But someone needs to pay attention to me. Dad’s watching football. Mom’s taking a nap.”

“Go away!”

Eric reached up to her with a claw. “I hunger for your attention.”

Christy slapped the claw away. “Stop it!”

“Make me.” He waved the claw in her face.

She grabbed Eric by the wrist and tore the prop from his hand. She threw it over him, out the door, and into the hallway. “Fetch,” she said.

With his bare hand, Eric removed the mask. He studied his sister’s face. “You’re really mad, aren’t you?”

“Get out!”

“Come on, we can even do something you want. Play a board game? Anything.”

“No, I’m reading.”

His gaze fell to the book in her lap. “I know how that one ends.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. Want me to tell you what happens?”

Eric enjoyed reading comic books and the ending of every story on Christy’s shelves. Too often, their sibling quarrels took a turn for the worse when he would spoil the conclusion of something she had yet to finish or even begin. Mom told Christy he only did it to feel closer to her somehow, like he wanted to bond over similar interests in literature. But that wasn’t the case. No, Eric only ruined the endings because he was an immature, spiteful piece of—

“The Hydrogoblin acts all cool, like he’s going to let Marnie use her spaceship to get off the planet,” Eric said. “But, at the last second, he destroys the engines and tells Marnie, ‘There’s more we can accomplish with you here.’ So, Marnie is stuck there, and I guess that means there’s going to be another book, but you don’t have it yet.”

Eric displayed a Cheshire grin. Ending spoiled. Mission accomplished.

Christy gritted her teeth and trembled, a volcano ready to burst. She clenched a fist, gripped the spine of The Girl from Jupiter with the other hand, and wondered, “How hard do I have to hit him to break his nose?”

She immediately shook that thought from her head. Not because she didn’t want to hurt her brother—he’d get his just desserts soon enough, and they’d be delicious—but because she didn’t want to damage the book.

“I hate you,” she said, because at the moment it was true. “And I hate this house! It doesn’t even have locks on the doors!”

Eric laughed. “Idiot. There’s a lock on the front door. And on the bathroom door.”

“I hate everything about being here!” The tears were back. Had they ever left? “I want to go back home! To our real school, to my friends! Why do I have to be stuck here with you?”

Eric stood. He pointed at her with a remaining claw. “Because someone put a curse on you!” He cackled like a maniac. He turned serious for a moment. “Oh, and because Dad got a new job.”

Christy’s gaze fell away from her brother’s, her frustration spattering against her legs in thick droplets. “Go, Eric. Before you regret it.”

The truth was, she could hurt him easily. She was taller and stronger than the little twerp. She just didn’t want the inevitable lecture from her parents about maturity and responsibility after Eric ran to them crying like a baby.

Eric ignored his sister’s threat. He didn’t take a step toward the door. Instead, he moved closer to Christy.

“It’s about time,” he said, focused on something behind her on the other side of the window.

Christy turned in her seat. Someone was finally moving into the haunted house across the street. Christy wiped the tears from her eyes.

The old building was two stories tall, although a boarded-up window just below the slanting roof suggested a small attic was attached. The house was covered in rotting wood and peeling blue paint. Other windows were cracked and dark. Dying grass, thriving weeds, and a looming tree with bare branches decorated the graveyard...er...front yard.

Christy didn’t really believe the place was haunted like Eric did. She was a skeptic, another thing that kept her from getting very close with her brother. She was just glad it wasn’t the home they had moved into; she imagined it full of dust, spiders, and rats. When the family drove down the street for the first time months earlier, Christy had seen the for-sale sign on the haunted house’s lawn and nearly had a heart attack, thinking it was their new abode.

Now, she stared at a yellow moving van and an old brown station wagon in the house’s crumbling driveway. She wondered what her new neighbors might look like. Eric hoped for werewolves; Christy would have been happy with a smiling family, one with a nice daughter her age.

No such luck. A sole woman with a cane stood on the dark porch of the house. Christy and Eric watched for a few minutes as the woman directed burly men from the moving company in and out of the house. She didn’t lift a finger to carry a single box, which was probably a good thing, because she looked quite frail.

“Look at her,” Eric said. “A fart could blow her over.”

He giggled. Christy did not.

“Can you believe it?” Eric beamed. “An old witch just moved in across the street.”

Christy didn’t believe it. At least, not yet.

On Monday morning, Dad dropped them off at Sheerin Community School. As Christy exited the car, she saw a familiar brown station wagon in the faculty parking lot. She was ready to point out her discovery to Eric, but her brother had already said, “Bye, Dad,” slammed his door shut, and rushed off yelling to some friends, all in one fluid motion.

“Christy,” her father said before she closed her door.

She looked him in the eyes. “Yeah?”

“I like it when you smile. Try it again sometime.”

“Sure.” She gave him a weak, false grin, let her door fall shut, and walked away without waiting for his reaction. Who cared what he thought, anyway? It’s not like he considered her feelings before moving them away from everyone important in her life.

Christy entered the front of the school, a single three-story building. In this lousy town, there was only one place of learning for all students in kindergarten through eighth grade and only one teacher for each grade level. Christy felt like a giant every time she walked the first floor hallway, dodging inconsiderate, snotty rugrats as they shrieked and giggled in zigzags to and from the playground out back.

She made a beeline for the staircase to the third floor. Up there, she would sit outside Miss Castle’s classroom alone, reading, until the bell rang. It was her favorite part of every school day.

In the stairwell between the second and third floors, Christy saw her, the woman from across the street. Ahead, the lady slowly moved up the stairs. One pale palm gripped the handrail while the other gripped the head of a silver cane. A large black purse hung over the woman’s shoulder. It looked as if the bag weighed the poor woman down like a bag of bricks. Each of the woman’s breaths was a loud, labored wheeze, keeping tempo with the regular creaking of her knees beneath a drab, grey dress.

Christy had finally found someone other than herself to feel sorry for.

She hurried up the other side of the staircase, taking two steps with each stride. “Excuse me?” Christy said to the woman. “Could I carry that for you?” She pointed to the purse.

The woman paused and turned a tired face to her. Much to Christy’s surprise, the woman wasn’t an old crone. She was maybe in her thirties—Christy could never really determine an adult’s age—with wispy red hair hidden beneath a tight, navy blue cap. The woman had green eyes, striking jade jewels sparkling in the middle of a plain but not unattractive face.

“That,” said the woman with a slightly yellow smile, “is very nice of you to offer. But, as you’ll see, I am stronger than I look.”

She gave Christy a wink and trudged up the final few steps. Christy followed behind, ready to catch the woman if she fell backwards. But the woman did not fall. Instead, she turned left once she reached the third floor, walked two doors down, stopped in front of Room 23, and reached inside her purse. She withdrew a small ring of keys, unlocked Miss Castle’s classroom, and then disappeared inside.

Christy slumped to the floor outside Room 23. She unzipped her backpack, pulled out her weathered copy of Shelly and the Secret Universe , and continued from where she had left off the night before. The story enveloped her in the embrace of an old friend.

Even as Christy turned the pages, part of her was still curious about the strange neighbor on the other side of the door. Where was Miss Castle? Who was this woman? What was she doing inside Room 23?

Unfortunately for Christy, she didn’t have doglike hearing, only the ears of a sixth grade girl. Even after she bookmarked her page and placed her head against the door, she couldn’t detect anything other than the thumping of her own heart echoing inside her skull.

The bell rang. Voices and thundering footsteps climbed the staircase behind Christy. She waited patiently against the wall as her classmates appeared and ignored her.

Room 23 opened. The woman stood there and smiled at the children. “Come on in,” she said.

“Who the hell are you?” some rude boy asked.

The woman’s smile slipped slightly. “You’ll see soon enough.”

She was Mz. (“not Miss, not Mrs., not Ms.”) Salem, the school’s new sixth grade teacher. As Mz. Salem explained it, Miss Castle, one of three triplets, had a family emergency (“one sister needed an arm, the other a leg”), and she would be out for the remainder of the year.

“I’m available as a replacement because the students at my previous school learned too much from me, and I became obsolete. It was time to mold geniuses elsewhere. Are your brains ready for a workout?”

Immediately, Christy liked Mz. Salem. She had personality, an interesting sense of humor. She may have moved around the room like a sloth on horse tranquilizers, but her mind was machete sharp.

She played a “get to know you” game with the kids, which wasn’t much of a game, to be honest, but was still kind of fun, at least not as dull as most other school activities. She would randomly ask a student a question about him/herself, and as long as she felt the student answered her question honestly, Mz. Salem would allow the student to ask her a question to answer. (“Any question within the realms of good taste and decency, of course.”)

Mz. Salem asked Geordie Shore if he preferred playing baseball or football, and he said he was pretty good at Madden NFL on the Xbox, although he wasn’t as good as his brother. Geordie asked her what her favorite color was, and without hesitation, Mz. Salem said, “Zebra.”

The teacher called on Penny Hume and inquired, “How fast can you recite the alphabet backwards?” Penny had no idea, so she gave it a test run. One minute and thirteen seconds, as it turned out. Penny asked Mz. Salem how fast she could say her “ZYX’s.”

“ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA. Now I know my ZYX’s. Let’s go take a trip to Texas.” The teacher looked at an ancient watch on her wrist. It had actual minute and second hands. “Fourteen point seven seconds. Nearly a personal best.”

Mz. Salem scanned the attendance roster in her hand. “Christy Kershaw.”

Some of the kids looked around as if they had no idea who that person could be. Finally, a boy pointed to Christy and said, “Oh, it’s that girl.”

“Hello, Christy,” said Mz. Salem.

“Hi.” For some reason, butterflies seemed to have colonized in her abdomen.

“What is a book you recommend everyone should read?”

Of all the questions she could have been asked! Christy couldn’t possibly choose one single piece of literature. She had visited many worlds, and almost all had been worth more than the price of admission.

“Uhhh,” Christy said intelligently.

“I bet she can’t read,” said some kid who could probably barely spell his own name.

“I…I like…um…I really liked…” Christy’s head wasn’t empty. It was practically overflowing with favorite stories. No one knew that by looking at her red face.

“Any time now,” said a girl who likely communicated every written thought with emoticons.

“Let’s not be rude now,” said Mz. Salem to the class. “Rudeness is the camouflage of the weak.”

“No wonder everyone blends together in this stupid school,” Christy thought.

Mz. Salem waited patiently for Christy to answer her question. Christy wanted to be truthful. She didn’t want to throw just any old tale out there.

Finally, she named The Francine Odysseys , a novel about a girl who travels to a fantasy world called Tabitha through an old refrigerator in her uncle’s junkyard. Once on Tabitha, Francine assists an army of anthropomorphized animals to rebel against a once-noble-but-now-motivated-by-greed lion king. Mufasa, he wasn’t.

“That’s a fascinating choice,” said Mz. Salem. “ The Francine Odysseys , eh?”

Christy could tell none of the other students had even heard of it. They read Dr. Seuss books and lies on the Internet, if anything at all.

The teacher reached into her cavernous purse and pulled out a pristine hardcover book. “I’m on Chapter Eight,” said Mz. Salem, showing the treasure to the sixth-graders.

“No way!” Christy thought. “That’s awesome!”

The cover art showed Francine and the dastardly lion side by side in the Fringe Forest, where outcasts from the kingdom were sent to live out the rest of their downtrodden days. Francine had the big cat on a leash, which she used to tame him and show him the error of his ways.

“That looks lame,” some illiterate pig snickered from the back of the room.

“Well, it certainly isn’t,” said Mz. Salem. “Your classmate, Christy, has a keen eye for the written word.”

“Nerd,” someone whispered.

Another voice barked like a dog and then coughed, “Teacher’s Pet.”

Others laughed in agreeance.

Mz. Salem placed the book back into her purse. She next called on Alex Adama, one of the mindless hyenas in the front row of desks.

“Adam, what’s something about you most people don’t know?”

Adam gave it some serious thought for about half a second when he said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“You’re a regular open book, then?”

“I guess,” said the boy.

“Yeah, right,” Christy thought. “I bet he doesn’t even understand the metaphor. He’s probably never even opened a book in his entire life, either.”

Mz. Salem leaned in close to Alex and asked, “What did you eat for breakfast?”

“Cereal,” he said.

“Which kind of cereal?”

“Lucky Charms.”

“Now,” said Mz. Salem, “why would you lie about something like that?”

“Huh?” Alex was confused.

“You and I both know you didn’t eat Lucky Charms this morning. Your mom forced you to eat Raisin Bran.”

“No, she didn’t.”

There was a nasty gleam in the teacher’s eyes. “You’ve been having problems going to the bathroom for quite some time now, haven’t you? Your mommy’s trying to help keep you regular, isn’t she?”

Everyone cackled. Even Christy. If what Mz. Salem said was true, how could she have possibly known something so private about the boy?

Alex, a cherry tomato, was about to cry. “Yeah, well,” he shouted over the laughter, “at least I’m not some cripple!”

Jaws dropped. If pins had dropped, they would have been explosions in the silence.

Mz. Salem squeezed her cane. Christy expected the teacher to wail like a banshee and smash in Alex’s empty piñatahead.

Instead, the woman smirked. She calmly stepped away from the boy and said, “That’s fair, Alex. Very good.” Mz. Salem moved to the chalkboard. “Thank you, Alex, for showing me the real you. Thank you very much.”

The teacher picked up a piece of chalk. “Now it’s time to get on with today’s next lesson.”

“I saw the witch at school today,” Eric said over dinner that night.

“Someone was dressed up like a witch in class?” said Dad, mouth full of broccoli.

“A little late for Halloween, isn’t it?” Mom wondered after sipping iced tea.

“No, the lady across the street is the witch,” Eric said. “Tell them, Christy.”

Her parents looked over to Christy, who held a chunk of impaled chicken on a fork mere inches from her gaping mouth. Christy lowered the food away from her face.

“The woman who moved in across the street?” Mom said. “You two aren’t really calling her a witch, are you?”

“It’s what Eric keeps calling her,” said Christy.

“’Cause she’s creepy and lives in that haunted house all alone,” her brother explained.

“That isn’t nice to say,” said Mom. “Right, Clayton?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” said Dad. “I’m sure she isn’t a witch. You don’t even know her.”

Christy said, “Her name is Mz. Salem. She’s my new teacher.”

Dad scratched his head. “What happened to the old one? And why am I just hearing about this now? When I picked you up earlier, I asked if anything interesting happened at school, and you said, ‘No.’”

Eric laughed. “’Cause she doesn’t like talking to anybody anymore.”

Christy told her brother to shut up, and her mother gave her a dirty look.

“Mz. Salem is already my favorite person at school,” said Christy.

“Not me?” Eric said, mocking hurt.

“Definitely not you,” his sister shot back.

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it, Theresa?” Dad said, arching his eyebrows. “Christy’s not completely miserable.”

“That’s great,” Mom agreed. “How did this teacher get in your good graces so fast?”

Christy explained, “She’s smart and funny and doesn’t take any crap from the mean kids.”

“Oooooh!” hollered Eric. “She said ‘crap’!”

Mom sighed. “Don’t say ‘crap,’ Christy. Please?”

Eric chanted. “She said ‘crap,’ ‘crap,’ ‘crap’…”

Hours later, right before bed, Christy sat by her window, reading. She studied the house across the street. All of its windows were dark. The brown station wagon sat lifeless in the driveway.

“Is Mz. Salem reading right now, too?” the girl wondered.

She imagined the woman huddled under candlelight in a red, leatherbacked chair, lost in the pages of Christy’s favorite book.

The next morning, Christy stepped onto the third floor of the school. The door to Room 23 was wide-open fourteen minutes before the first bell. Was Mz. Salem expecting Christy to arrive earlier than the rest of the kids? Was it an invitation to enter?

“Hi,” said the curious student from the doorway. The teacher’s back was to her. Mz. Salem wrote on the chalkboard.

Immediately, Christy noticed the woman stood taller, straighter than the day before. The silver cane was not supporting her weight. The fancy cane lay on the teacher’s desk, next to her purse.

Mz. Salem turned to Christy. “Good morning,” said the woman, smiling. “I knew you’d be the first one again today.”

“I usually am.”

“I have to set up some things before the others come in, but feel free to take your seat.”

Christy sat at her desk in the middle of the room. She watched the woman write. Yesterday, the teacher’s hands had quaked with the formation of each letter. Her words had trailed downward at awkward angles.

Today, though, Mz. Salem wrote with little struggle. She even whistled as she worked.

“Christy, I can tell you’re a good apple.” The woman spoke without turning around.

“Thank you,” said Christy.

“There are a lot of sour apples in the sixth grade, as far as I can tell. Would you agree?”

Christy nodded.

“What was that? Speak up.”

“I…I think so, too, yes.”

“Great minds think alike.” The teacher paused for a moment, but still did not turn Christy’s way. “You’re my neighbor, aren’t you?”

“Y-yes.”

“I saw you sitting by your bedroom window last night, looking over at my home.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? It’s natural to be suspicious of a woman who moves into a home like that all by herself.”

“I’m not suspicious of you.”

“Good. I don’t want you to be afraid of me, either, Christy.”

“I’m not.”

“Because that won’t do. No, no. I certainly I don’t want you afraid of me. I want that understood.”

“Okay.”

The woman looked at Christy. “Fantastic.” When Mz. Salem grinned this time, Christy saw that her teeth were a bit brighter than yesterday. Not as yellow. Maybe she used whitening strips before bed?

The teacher went back to writing on the board. She didn’t say another word to Christy, and Christy said nothing to her. Some time later, the bell rang. Students piled into the classroom.

Every sixth-grader was present, except for Alex Adama. Gossipy kids whispered that his parents were worried sick. Alex had not shown up for dinner last night. Now, the police were out looking for him.

He had vanished on his way home from school.

Two nights later, Eric said, “I think Alex is dead,” over his spaghetti and meatballs.

“I don’t like that,” said Mom, still sweaty from standing over the stove for the past hour. “It’s morbid.”

News of the boy’s disappearance had spread like chicken pox throughout the town. Everyone was itching to share a theory about what had happened, especially the kids at school.

Alex ran away. He was kidnapped. He drowned in a creek. He got lost in the woods and was eaten by a bear.

“Mz. Salem killed him for calling her a cripple,” Derek Hernandez said after their History quiz. He said it low enough so that only those sitting around him could hear it.

“No way,” said Kelsey Baltz. “Look at her. She couldn’t hurt anyone. She’s a freaking ’tard.”

Which wasn’t nice of Kelsey to say, at all. Besides, it wasn’t true. Each morning, the teacher looked healthier. She used her cane less and less often.

Her father’s voice brought her back to the present moment. “Christy, what did the police officers ask you today?”

“Just if I’ve heard anything about what might’ve happened to Alex.”

Mom said, “Have you heard anything, honey?”

Christy shrugged. “A bunch of stupid rumors. Stuff the morons in my class made up.” Each sixth-grader had been briefly interviewed in the principal’s office. She wondered if

Derek Hernandez shared his theory about Mz. Salem with the detective from the state police. It seemed unlikely that he had, or at least that the detective didn’t believe the story, because no cop cars had appeared outside the teacher’s house thus far. Mz. Salem’s station wagon again sat alone in the driveway.

“Want to know what I think?” Eric said, cheeks full of saucy noodles.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” warned Mom.

“We already heard what you think,” Christy said.

“I think,” said Eric after a quick swallow, “it’s weird that Christy’s old teacher disappeared, and then Alex disappeared.”

Christy said, “Miss Castle didn’t disappear, idiot.”

“Hey!” Dad glared at Christy. “Watch it.”

Christy continued. “Miss Castle had a family emergency. Alex probably just got eaten by a bear in the woods.”

“Awesome!” Eric beamed.

“There are no bears around here,” Dad tried to assure them.

Eric ignored their father. “Christy, what do you think? Was it a polar bear or a grizzly?”

The next morning, Derek and Kelsey didn’t show up for class. They, too, had failed to make their ways home from school.

Christy wondered if all three of the missing children made some sort of pact to run away together. Probably not, since Alex and Derek hadn’t really been close since the fourth grade and Kelsey often publicized her dislike of all boys. Or so Christy heard. It was difficult for her to separate fact from the free-flying conjecture of adolescents.

Another idea swirled around Christy’s head. Was there someone—or something—more sinister at work here? A ruthless predator preying on sixth-graders?

Parents no longer let their students walk to or from school without supervision.

Despite the three empty seats in her class, Mz. Salem was happier than ever all week, her smile sparkling all around Room 23. The woman had a renewed sense of energy, as if she were younger somehow. She never touched her cane anymore, leaving it behind her desk all day, every day. She practically danced around the room in a new pair of bright red shoes.

Detective Dennis from the state police stopped by the school again on Thursday. Along with Principal Ryan, he spoke to students. This time, the two men came to Room 23 and conversed with all the kids at once.

Mz. Salem didn’t seem happy to have her class interrupted, even if the purpose of the interruption was to assist in the recovery of her missing students. The teacher stood at the back of the room with her arms crossed.

Detective Dennis told the students the hard, honest truth. There were no leads. There was zero evidence that pointed one way or the other. Alex, Derek, and Kelsey had simply vanished without a trace. The police needed the sixth-graders to share with them any and all information they had, no matter how small it might have seemed. Otherwise, the three kids might never be found alive.

A couple of Kelsey’s friends cried at the thought of their friend’s death. Christy watched Alex and Derek’s shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Please,” said Principal Ryan. “We’re going to all the upper-grade classes and are asking for help. We would like to hear anything and everything you might think is even the tiniest bit relevant to this situation.”

The detective nodded. “Anything at all,” he said, stroking his beard.

Tyler Aaron, the boy sitting behind Christy, spoke first. “Derek said he thought he knew what happened to Alex.”

Ashley Walker, who sat next to Christy, tried to hush him. “You can’t talk about that.”

“What is it?” said Detective Dennis.

The principal stood up straight. “Yes, we want to hear it, you two.”

Tyler and Ashley looked at each other. They slowly turned in their seats and locked eyes

with Mz. Salem, who glared at them.

Somehow, the teacher knew they were going to talk about her.

Principal Ryan seemed to understand the students were uncomfortable talking about it with her in the room. “Mz. Salem,” said the man, “could you step into the hallway with me?”

The woman took a few seconds to answer. She merely stared at Tyler and Ashley. “Of course,” she finally said, smiling fakely.

The principal and the teacher left the room. The sixth-graders were now alone with the detective.

“Okay,” said the man. “What did Derek say about Alex?”

Derek’s words flooded back into Christy’s memory. Mz. Salem killed him for calling her a cripple.

Tyler didn’t hesitate. He said, “Derek thought Alex was abducted by aliens.”

“Little, green men from another solar system,” Ashley added.

“What?” thought Christy. “That’s not what Derek said at all.”

“No,” said Tyler. “He didn’t say another solar system. He said another galaxy.”

Ashley rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“There is a difference.” Tyler looked to the detective. “Isn’t there?”

Detective Dennis didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if trying his best to hold back a scream.

“Is that all?” the man said. “Does anyone else think aliens are involved?”

A couple other kids actually raised their hands. The detective sighed. He walked to the door and called the principal back into the room.

Principal Ryan asked, “Learn anything useful?”

“No. Just that your sixth-graders believe in life on another planet.”

“Another solar system,” said Ashley.

“Another galaxy,” corrected Tyler.

The detective rolled his eyes. “They think creatures from outer space are behind this. A waste of time, if you ask me.”

Principal Ryan was not happy to hear this, to say the least. He was ready to explode.

“If any of you think of anything useful, let Principal Ryan know. He’ll get in contact with me,” the detective said. Then, he exited Room 23.

“You and you,” the principal said, pointing to Tyler and Ashley. “Get your things. You’re coming with me for treating this like a joke.”

“But—” Ashley began.

“We aren’t joking!” Tyler cried.

“Now,” ordered the principal. As Tyler and Ashley gathered their items, the man added, “The rest of you had better treat this situation with a little more respect.”

Principal Ryan led Tyler and Ashley into the hallway. Mz. Salem stepped back inside.

The woman’s sunny smile had returned. “Wasn’t that fun?” she said.

Christy hadn’t been suspicious before now. Why did Tyler and Ashley change their story after looking at their teacher? What kind of power did she hold over them?

“I like this town,” Eric said, sawing at his steak with a serrated knife. “It’s exciting.”

Mom slowly shook her head. “Your classmates are missing, Eric. That’s nothing to be excited about.”

“They’re not my classmates,” Eric insisted. “They’re Christy’s.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Dad looked over his dinner plate to his daughter. “How are you dealing with all this, Christy? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said the girl. “Those kids were kind of mean, anyway.”

“So they deserved to be chopped into a million pieces!” Eric cackled, slicing the air with his knife.

“Eric, stop that,” said Dad.

“No one deserves to be chopped into a million pieces,” Christy said.

“How about a thousand, then?”

“Eric,” Dad said in his serious voice, “enough.”

Someone loudly knocked at the front door.

“I’ll get it!” Eric jumped out of his seat before either parent could stop him.

The boy looked through the peephole. He turned back to his family, the color fading from his face.

“Well,” said Dad, “who is it?”

Eric whispered, “Christy’s teacher, the witch.”

An anvil suddenly dropped in Christy’s gut. Her appetite was lost. Why would Mz. Salem be there?

“Open the door,” Mom told Eric. “Don’t be rude.”

“No way,” Eric said. He raced back to his seat.

Mom sighed and went to the door herself. She opened it. Mz. Salem stood in shadow beneath the dim porchlight. She didn’t have her cane.

“Hello, I’m Sabrina Salem. I moved in across the street,” the teacher said to Mom.

“Nice to meet you,” Mom replied. “I’m Theresa Kershaw.” She moved a little to the side and gestured back to the kitchen table. “That’s my husband, Clayton.” Dad waved. “And our son, Eric.” He didn’t wave. “I think you already know Christy.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mz. Salem, “she is one of my favorites.”

“I’m a good apple,” Christy thought.

“So sorry to bother you,” continued the teacher, “but I was making stew, and I didn’t realize I had run out of salt. I was wondering if I might borrow some for the night?”

“Oh,” said Mom. “Sure. Would you like to come in while I get it?”

“Oh, thank you.”

Eric whined, “She’s coming inside?”

Dad said, “She isn’t a vampire.”

Mom held the door open for the woman. Mz. Salem stepped into the Kershaw home, and their mother went into the kitchen. The teacher didn’t move very far from the doorway.

“How are you, Christy?” the teacher asked. “Get your Science homework done yet?”

“Yes.”

“What a brown-noser,” Eric muttered.

“And you, Eric?” Mz. Salem wondered. “Did you finish your homework?”

“Not yet,” said the boy.

“First thing after dinner,” said Dad.

Mz. Salem asked, “What grade are you in? Third?”

“Fourth,” Eric corrected.

“Mr. Ethier,” the woman noted. “Are you enjoying his class?”

“Eh, he’s alright, I guess.”

Mz. Salem and Eric participated in a brief staring contest. Christy knew from experience that Eric was a pretty good starer, but Mom interrupted the bout when she came back with a salt-shaker.

“Here you go,” said Mom, placing the shaker into the teacher’s hand.

“Thanks again,” said Mz. Salem. “Have a good night. See you tomorrow, Christy.”

“Bye,” said the girl.

The woman turned to the door, and that’s when Eric attacked.

He leapt from his seat, charged toward Mz. Salem, and shrieked like a madman, his knife raised high above his head.

Mom reacted quickly, though. She grabbed Eric around the waist before he reached the teacher. The boy swung wildly, straining against Mom’s viselike grip, foaming at the mouth to stab Mz. Salem.

“No!” he screamed. “She must die! Die! Die!”

Christy and her parents cried in terror and confusion. Dad hurried over and wrenched the knife away from his son, but not before Eric accidentally slashed him across the hand with it.

“Damn it!” Dad cried out. He stumbled into the kitchen, cursing even more colorfully. He wrapped a towel around his injured palm.

Mz. Salem hurried outside. “Oh, my,” she said. “Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my.”

“Die! Die! Die!” Eric repeated, even though he was unarmed. Unless his horrible words counted as a weapon.

Christy went to the doorway. She stood on the porch with Mz. Salem.

“I don’t know what just happened!” Christy insisted. She was on the verge of breaking down. “He’s never done anything like that before!”

Mz. Salem simply said, “Not everyone likes me.” Then, she crossed the street and disappeared inside her home.

The next day was Friday the thirteenth. Dad took Christy to school, although he was taking the day off from work. After Eric’s attack, Dad’s hand was promptly stitched up in the hospital emergency room. Mom had spoken with Mz. Salem shortly after the incident, and the woman said she wouldn’t press charges against the family for the boy’s actions.

Still, Christy was nervous to face her teacher. Would the woman take it out on her?

Eric couldn’t provide a satisfying explanation for why he did what he did. He said it was like he was hypnotized, but Mom and Dad didn’t buy that. Eric persisted with his story.

“I wasn’t controlling my body or what I was saying!” The boy had begged his family to believe him. “I kept hearing a voice in my head say, ‘Kill her, kill her, kill her.’ And the next thing I knew, I was trying to do it!”

Mom and Dad were furious. They took away all of Eric’s violent video games, DVDs, and comic books. But they were also concerned parents. Mom scheduled a visit for her, Dad, and Eric to see a child psychologist that morning in the next town over. Kids aren’t supposed to hear homicidal voices inside their heads. That’s why Christy was attending school without her brother that morning.

Once inside Sheerin Community, Christy didn’t want to go to Room 23. She went to the cafeteria and sat at a table alone, hoping the first bell would never ring. How she wished Eric hadn’t taken his “witch” idea so seriously. Mz. Salem was harmless…Wasn’t she?

Maybe not. Within minutes, Christy overheard three separate groups of people discussing the unexplainable disappearances of Tyler Aaron and Ashley Walker. The two sixth-graders—just like Alex Adama, Derek Hernandez, and Kelsey Baltz before them—had vanished.

Only, these two kids made it to their houses before they went missing. They disappeared from the comfort and supposed safety of their bedrooms. Both of their windows had been locked from the inside.

“The only connection between the five missing kids,” Christy thought, “is that they either said something unkind about Mz. Salem or they were about to.”

Was the teacher somehow involved? Did she overhear Derek and Kelsey? Did she read Tyler and Ashley’s minds?

Christy attempted to shake the notion from her head. There was no such thing as mind reading.

But how else to explain the teacher’s knowledge of Alex Adama’s breakfast cereal of choice?

How could the woman hear what Derek and Kelsey said under their breaths, unless she didn’t need her ears to listen in?

How could the teacher know what Tyler and Ashley were going to say about her? How did she get them to change their own words before they said them to Detective Dennis?

Christy remembered the strange way Mz. Salem had stared at Tyler and Aaron in front of the principal and the detective. Had she been reading her students’ thoughts and silently communicating to them with her brain?

Christy’s heart raced and her palms sweat. Hadn’t the teacher stared down Eric moments before he lunged for her with a steak knife? Didn’t her brother claim to be “hypnotized” and told over and over to “kill” Mz. Salem?

What if the woman had been the one who controlled the boy? What if she knew his real opinion of her, and making him attack her was some kind of devious revenge scheme? Make Eric look crazy and unstable. Make his life miserable.

“But that would mean,” Christy thought, “Mz. Salem has magic abilities. If she is a mind reader and she is a mind controller, she isn’t like the rest of us.”

She was a witch.

The cafeteria spun around Christy, even though she sat still. What she was thinking was madness. No adult would ever believe a word of it. She was turning into a smarter, prettier Eric!

But it didn’t make any less sense to Christy. Witches performed spells, which explained Tyler, Ashley, and Eric’s strange behaviors and the kids disappearing from their bedrooms. Witches were sneaky, which is why Mz. Salem’s guilt wasn’t supported by much evidence. Witches were evil, which is what scared Christy the most.

If Mz. Salem was responsible for the missing children, what did she do with them? What did she need them for?

And, because he was an outspoken critic of the teacher, would Eric be the next kid in line to disappear?

Later, in class, Christy did her best not to think about anything Mz. Salem-related, which was easier said than done, since Tyler and Ashley’s empty desks were very nearby. But it was something Christy had to do, in case the teacher did try to read her mind. (Although, Christy did note that the woman looked slightly healthier, happier, and more energetic than the day before.) Christy did her best to think about “baseball,” which she knew a little bit about, since Dad was a sports fan.

Christy didn’t dare to look Mz. Salem in the eye, either. If that was how the woman assumed control over another person’s mind, Christy wouldn’t fall for that trick.

An hour before lunch, the students quietly worked in their Math workbooks. Christy couldn’t focus on her fractions. She was confusing the numbers on the page with her forced thoughts of batting averages and on-base percentages.

“Christy?”

Because she looked down to the floor, the girl couldn’t miss the red shoes in front of her. Mz. Salem.

“Christy, you aren’t completing your classwork.”

“No,” said the girl without looking up.

“That isn’t like you. Is everything okay? How’s your brother feeling?”

Christy said nothing else. She thought of double plays, line drives, stealing home…

The woman leaned in close, whispering now. Her breath was as cold as ice. “I like baseball, too.”

Christy stood and ran out of Room 23. She held tight to the staircase railing as she made her way to the first floor. The witch had been inside her head, and it was dizzying.

Christy exploded into the Main Office, sobbing, interrupting Detective Dennis’s flirting with a cute secretary. Christy collapsed to the floor, drowning in her own tears.

The detective rushed over to her. “What happened?”

The secretary called Principal Ryan out from his office. “Christy?” said the man. “Why aren’t you in class?” He looked to the policeman. “She’s one of the sixth-graders.”

The men got Christy to her feet. They led her to the principal’s office, a place the girl thought she would never be. They put her into a chair and handed her a box of tissues.

“Take your time,” said the principal.

Christy nodded, focusing on deep breaths, in and out, in and out. She blew her nose. “I…I…” she started.

“Yes?” said the detective.

“I know…know what happened to the…to the sixth-graders…”

Detective Dennis was all ears. “You do?”

Christy nodded. “Mz. Salem…she…she…”

“She did what?” asked the principal.

Christy paused. She couldn’t tell the truth. There was no way these two men would believe her story about a mind-controlling witch.

So she demonstrated every sixth-grader’s expertise. She lied.

“Up there...” Christy began. “Right now, she just told all of us that she…she killed all of my friends. I…I made her mad, and she said I was next! That’s…that’s why I ran away!”

The men exchanged skeptical glances. Principal Ryan handed her a pad of lined paper and a sharp pencil. “Write down everything that happened. Every detail. Every word she said.”

Detective Dennis said, “We have to go up there and see what’s going on.”

“God, I hope she isn’t telling the truth,” said the principal.

The detective said, “Well, I sure as hell do. A lead. Finally!”

Principal Ryan told the secretary to watch Christy. The two men raced out of the office.

It only took a second for reality to settle in for Christy. The men would discover her lie. Her parents would be called. Her child psychologist appointment would be set.

“Wait!” Christy called after the men, but they were gone. She could hear their heavy footsteps in the stairwell.

Christy ran after them. The secretary was too slow, and the girl ignored her instructions to stay put and sit down.

Before she reached the third floor, Christy heard the detective and the principal knock on the door to Room 23. They knocked again and again.

“Please,” said Christy when she reached the top of the stairs. “Don’t—”

The men ignored her. They looked at the bottom of the closed door.

“What the hell is going on in there?” said the detective. “Mz. Salem! Open up!”

Christy stood behind them. A neon blue glow spilled through the gap between the door and the floor.

The detective pounded on the door with a fist. No answer. “Don’t you have a key?” he said to Principal Ryan.

The principal nodded, removed a ring of keys from his pocket, and unlocked Room 23.

He swung the door open. The three of them stepped through the doorway.

Inside Room 23 was the most amazing thing Christy had ever seen.

Mz. Salem, legs crossed, floated in mid-air three feet above her desk. All of her students looked up at her with bulging, glazed eyes. Their mouths hung slightly open like mindless fish lost in a stream.

Near the windows on the far side of the room was a blue, swirling vortex, a gaping hole in space and time that led to someplace unknown. The rift hummed and gave off a hypnotic glow.

“Follow me,” Mz. Salem told the sixth-graders. “Follow me.”

“Follow you,” said the sixth-graders. “Follow you.”

Principal Ryan was speechless. At first, so was the detective, but he quickly recognized the danger in what he was seeing. He unholstered the gun at his hip.

“Get down from there!” he ordered, pointing his pistol at the teacher.

Mz. Salem turned to the three souls by the doorway. The door slammed shut behind them and locked.

“Follow me,” she said. “Follow me.”

The detective lowered his weapon. He and the principal said, “Follow you. Follow you.”

Christy had turned her head away just in time to escape the mind control. The girl clutched the pencil Principal Ryan had given her, making sure she still had some kind of grip on reality. Mz. Salem laughed. Everyone else followed her lead, cackling in chorus.

“Christy, the good apple, has turned sour,” said the teacher. “Your brother is not safe.”

“Christy, the good apple, has turned sour,” said the others. Even the detective and the principal. “Her brother is not safe.”

The witch glided through the air to the vortex and stopped beside it. “Follow me,” she repeated. “Follow me.”

She went through the portal and was gone.

The children stood up from their seats in unison. Detective Dennis and Principal Ryan took a step forward. “Follow her,” they said. “Follow her.”

One by one, the children stepped up to the portal and disappeared inside it. They were zombies. Lemmings walking to their certain deaths!

Christy shouted at them to stop what they were doing. This was how their classmates had all vanished, inside some malevolent tear in reality. She yanked on her peers, slapped them across their faces, pleaded with them all. “Stop ignoring me, for once! Please! Listen to me!” But not a single one of them snapped out of their collective trance.

Soon, only Christy, the detective, and the principal remained. None of the girl’s words or actions brought the men back from the brink, either. Seconds later, the men had disappeared, as well.

The vortex faded. The gateway closed.

Christy was alone, shivering, in Room 23.

She had no time for self-pity. She rummaged through Alicia Nunez’s backpack and pulled out a pink phone. Christy called home and both of her parents’ cells. She left a voicemail at each number, because no one picked up. Christy had to let them know Eric was in danger. He was the next to go.

She put the phone back, threw open the door, and the school secretary stood before her. “There you are,” said the woman. She looked inside the empty room. “Where’d everyone go?”

“I don’t know,” said Christy. “I really don’t.”

The secretary grabbed Christy’s arm. “Come with me,” she said.

“Let go of me!” Christy kicked the woman in the shin.

The secretary released her hold on the girl. “Ow! I’m calling your parents!”

“Yes!” Christy cheered. “Please do! Tell them I’m on my way home! Tell them Mz. Salem’s coming for my brother!”

“What?”

Christy ran for the stairs. “Call the police, too! Tell them Mz. Salem took the kids! The entire sixth grade!”

Once outside, Christy hesitated by the bike rack in front of the school. Three bicycles were there. Apparently, not all parents were worried for their kids’ safety and had allowed their children to come to school on their own.

Two of the bicycles were locked in tight. One was not.

Irresistable to a thief. Or to a good apple in a uniquely complicated situation.

Christy pulled the bike from the rack. She put the pencil in her left pants pocket. She hopped on the bicycle, ignored the part of her that said this was wrong, and began to pedal the mile home.

The streets were not busy. Christy saw no moving cars until an engine revved behind her three blocks from home.

Mz. Salem’s brown station wagon came at her like a shark, but no one was behind the wheel.

Christy screamed as the car zoomed forward. Her legs pumped, twin pistons propelling her away from the mechanical monster. She swerved onto the sidewalk just as the vehicle kicked into high gear and roared past her. She had missed becoming roadkill by mere milliseconds.

The station wagon’s tires screeched as it suddenly veered left. The brown beast hopped over the curb and now was on the sidewalk, too, bearing down on Christy at torpedo speed. Panicked, Christy almost began to choke on her own breaths. She did not allow herself to look back. To hesitate for even a moment would result in her untimely pancaking.

The station wagon plowed through a mailbox. Splinters of wood rained over Christy.

It was there, two blocks from home, that the girl accepted her fate. Certain death. Squished flat. Guts smeared across the ground.

And then she saw a tall, old tree. It loomed up ahead, shading an entire intersection.

“Come to me,” it seemed to say. “I am your only hope.”

The station wagon bumped against the bicycle’s rear wheel. Christy nearly lost control. She careened onto some family’s lawn and steadied herself again. The wagon followed her onto the grassy patch, its tires destroying the well-manicured yard.

Christy turned down the driveway and was back in the street. The car exploded through the fence that separated the house from its neighbor. The wagon rocketed onto the asphalt behind the girl.

She made a beeline for the tree on the corner as if she were going to ride straight into it. It was three meters ahead. Two meters. One. The car was three feet behind her. Two feet. One.

Christy went right. The car tried to, as well. But it was too close to the tree, and the wagon was also too long, too wide, too slow.

The front end of the vehicle accordioned against the tree trunk. Metal buckled. Glass shattered. The car attempted to roar back in reverse, but two of its wheels were now folded inward.

Christy laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. She cheered, looked at the station wagon one last time, and flipped it the bird.

She made it home two minutes later. Her parents’ cars were both in the driveway. The front door was wide-open. Christy dumped the bicycle on the porch and stepped inside the house.

“Hello? Mom? Dad? Eric?”

The house was eerily quiet. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

“Christy?” A faint voice came from upstairs. Her brother’s.

“Eric!” Christy took the steps two at a time. “Where are you?”

He appeared in her bedroom doorway. His wet cheeks shined. He had been crying.

“What happened?” asked his sister.

He embraced her in an anaconda hug. Very unlike him. “She...She came into the house...”

“Who?”

Eric looked up at her. “The witch...She said she came for me...But I hid here in your closet, so...so she took Mom and Dad instead...”

She imagined their parents meeting Mz. Salem’s gaze, unable to look away. Following the teacher out of the house.

“She took them where?”

Eric shrugged. “I...I don’t know...”

Christy knew where they should start looking. They went to the bedroom window. Mz. Salem’s house sneered at them from across the street.

Minutes later, the two kids were armed with a pair of Dad’s slow-pitch softball bats. Christy had toyed with the idea of each of them carrying a knife or sharp scissors into Mz. Salem’s home. But she thought it would be better if they had weapons that they couldn’t easily hurt themselves with.

“This seems really crazy,” said Eric as they stood inside their front door. The fear had not quite dissipated from his eyes.

“It is,” Christy said. “But who else is going to help Mom and Dad?”

None of the phones in the house had worked when they tried to dial 9-1-1. At the end of every line, Mz. Salem’s voice taunted them in an endless loop, “Call for help, and they’re dead...Call for help, and they’re dead...”

“Shouldn’t we Google ‘How to defeat a witch’ first?”

Christy shook her head. “No time for that. Besides, I don’t know how useful that would be.”

“Just don’t look into her eyes, right?”

The big sister nodded, gripping her bat. “And don’t forget to swing as hard as you can.”

The siblings walked through the doorway and onto the porch. “Whose bike is that?” Eric wondered when they passed the stolen cycle.

“I honestly don’t know,” Christy replied. “Some kid’s going to be really upset when he has to walk home today, though.”

Police sirens wailed in the distance. The two of them stopped to listen.

“They’re coming to get you for stealing the bike.”

“Maybe they’re coming for the witch. Either way, I’m okay with it.”

But the sirens never got any closer. Instead, they drifted further and further away.

“They’re going to the school,” Christy wagered. “They aren’t coming here. And by the time they do get here, it might be too late.”

“What do you mean? ‘Too late’ for what?”

Christy gulped. “For Mom and Dad. For us. For everyone Mz. Salem’s taken.”

She led her brother into the street. Part of her expected the enchanted station wagon to appear in the road, dragging its smoking carcass toward them. But nothing stopped Christy and Eric from reaching the teacher’s dead lawn. No one told them to go back and come up with a better plan, even though, not so deep down, it’s what Christy really wanted.

“Do you feel that?” Eric asked as they got closer and closer to the creepy house. “Like we’re being watched?”

Christy saw nobody behind the lifeless windows. “The house is watching us,” she offered, which made no sense, really. But, at the same time, the thought caused her spine to tingle.

The house invited them inside when its front door creaked open. Rusted hinges sounded like the cries of a hundred tortured phantoms.

“Are we doing this?” said Eric. “Really?”

“Haven’t you always wanted this opportunity? To face a real monster?”

“Yeah,” said Eric, stepping inside the house after his sister, “but this is not as fun as I imagined it would be.”

The door shut behind them on its own accord. The children held their bats at their shoulders, ready to splinter the bones of anyone or anything that might rush out at them from the shadows.

As far as Christy could tell, there wasn’t much furniture in the house, certainly not a fancy reading chair of any kind. There was a lot of open space, which would be good if they had to suddenly make a break for it. Heavy, moth-eaten drapes covered the windows, which explained why they couldn’t see in from the outside. Thick layers of dust covered the walls, the floor, the ceiling...

Eric failed to hold back a sneeze. There was no sense scolding him for the noise. The witch obviously knew they were there.

Jagged, crimson arrows were scrawled across the bare walls, guiding Christy and Eric’s cautious journey through the first floor of the building. Guiding them where? To a dungeon? To certain doom?

“Is that blood?” Eric wondered, studying the arrows.

“If so,” Christy said, “someone’s lost way too much of it.”

“I hope it’s paint, then.”

“Me, too.”

At the end of a hallway, the arrows branched off in two directions. They led downstairs into a basement blacker than night or upstairs into horrors unknown.

Eric spoke. “We’re not splitting up, are we?”

“No way,” said Christy. “I think the basement is a bad choice, don’t you? She could be leading us into a trap down there, with no way out.”

“This whole house is a trap with no way out.”

“At least, if we go upstairs, we can smash through a window and jump out,” Christy reasoned. “But only if we have to.”

“That’s a terrible idea!”

Christy knew her brother was right. But she didn’t see him coming up with anything bett—

“Hello! Can anyone hear us?” Eric shouted. “Mom! Dad! We’re here to save you! Are you here?”

The siblings stood in silence. Heavy footsteps suddenly bounded up the basement stairs toward them. Some sort of creature growled from the dark bowels of the house.

Christy and Eric screamed. They raced to the second floor, following the twisted arrows as they spiraled around the staircase with them. The kids paused at the top of the landing when the creature snorted below them, now on the first floor.

Was it a goblin? A troll? A mummy? A werewolf? A demon? Bigfoot? A hulking, rotting assemblage of body parts sewn together and given life by a mad scientist?

In the middle of the second floor hallway, a ladder ascended through a hole in the ceiling. The attic. That’s where they were being led.

The monster on the first floor sniffed the air, trying to catch the children’s scent. Apparently, it was too dumb to follow the blood-red arrows. It sniffed the air again, inhaled too much dust, and sneezed thunderously.

This made Eric giggle when it should have made him cry. The beast roared. It had found them.

“Come on!” Christy ordered, grabbing her brother by the wrist. She dragged him to the ladder and shoved him upward. “Go, Eric! Hurry!”

Christy knew she shouldn’t have looked back to the staircase, not when she heard the creature reach the top, thirteen feet behind her. She should have just climbed the ladder and hoped that the monster didn’t rip her in half as she traversed the rungs.

But she didn’t want to take the chance. She had a bat. She could defend herself.

“Christy!” Eric cried from above. “Why are you just standing there?”

The girl turned to face the witch’s monstrous minion and instead saw a tiny black kitten mewling on the second floor landing. It looked up at her with big yellow eyes.

This was the horrible beast from which she and Eric had fled? How could that be?

“It’s just a kitten,” said Christy. The little animal yawned and then licked its paws. Super cute.

“Get up here!” Eric pleaded. “Before it tears your face off!”

When the kitten yawned again, it had more teeth inside its mouth. Rows beyond rows of sharp needles, like something found inside a shark’s maw. Its pink tongue was now slimy green and forked. The cat’s claws were butcher’s knives.

The critter suddenly looked more dangerous, even though it didn’t behave like a bloodthirsty monster. It simply sat there cleaning itself. Each time it left its mouth, the kitten’s tongue morphed back and forth from harmless and pink to oozy and reptilian.

“This cat keeps changing,” said Christy.

“What?” Eric poked his head through the attic floor to take a look.

The kitten approached his sister, meowing softly. It rubbed against her legs, purring innocently.

“Don’t let it do that,” Eric said. “It’s trying to trick you into thinking it likes you.”

The animal looked up to the boy and let out an impossible roar. Then, it looked to Christy and meowed again as she gently pet it under the chin.

“It only turns into a monster if you think it will,” said the girl. “And it stays a kitten if that’s all you think it is.”

“It’s some kind of weird, magic cat?”

“If it’s even a cat at all.” Christy scratched behind the creature’s ears. “It’s harmless if you aren’t afraid of it. It’s the opposite if you are.”

“Okay…”

“So don’t be frightened, Eric. Maybe that’s what we have to do in this house. Be braver than we think we can be.” Christy climbed the ladder. “Bye, kitty.”

The animal curled into itself on the floor and closed its eyes to sleep. The furry “nightmare” began to dream.

The attic was as dark as the basement seemed to be. Christy might as well have been blind. She heard Eric beside her say, “How are we supposed to get around in here? I can’t see anything! What if I walk straight into a black widow’s nest?”

Christy put a comforting hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Remember. Don’t be so scared. Take deep breaths. Try to calm yourself. We can do this.”

After she said this, Eric’s breathing seemed to slow down, relax. He didn’t tremble as much beneath her touch.

Then, the darkness began to fade. Eric took a step forward, and he kicked something with his foot. It rolled loudly against the floorboards. He leaned over and picked up a flashlight.

Had it been there all along? Or did it appear when the siblings no longer seemed as afraid?

“Does it work?” asked Christy.

Eric flipped a little switch on the side of the device, burning white-hot light straight into his sister’s eyes. Of course. “Sorry,” said the boy.

There was movement up ahead. Eric swung the flashlight around to reveal a large rat struggling in a thick rope of spider’s silk. The rat dangled in the middle of a massive web. The more the rodent squirmed, the more trapped it became. Webbing wrapped tightly around its throat like a noose. Other mummified rats hanged from corners of the web like grotesque ornaments.

Eric’s hand trembled, causing the light to strobe. “H-How big do you think the spider is that made that web?”

An arachnid as large as a tarantula appeared at the web’s edge. It slowly made its way to the rat. The rodent couldn’t believe its eyes and began to screech.

“I’ve never seen a spider that big before.”

Christy nodded. “I don’t think it really is that big. We just think it is.”

“Like with the cat?”

“Believe that it’s smaller, and it will be.”

“Okay.”

Christy watched her brother close his eyes and then she concentrated, too, imagining the spider as no larger than a nickel. When she looked back to the web, the spider had reduced in size, as if zapped with a shrink ray. “Whoa,” she said. “It worked.”

“But why is it working?”

The girl shrugged. “It’s this house, I guess?”

“Should we help that rat?”

“Um. No. Don’t touch that thing. Gross, Eric.”

They walked deeper into the attic. “Mom? Dad?” said the boy. “We’re here. Show yourselves already.”

Christy had a sinking feeling their parents weren’t up there with them. She could see it in Eric’s face, as well.

“Wait,” she told her brother. “Just imagine them here with us.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, visualizing their mother and father. But the man and woman didn’t appear. It had to be Christy’s fault. She couldn’t shake negative thoughts from her mind. “It can’t be this easy.” “We have to figure out another way.”

“What do you think that is?” Eric pointed and positioned the flashlight on something metallic on the floor ahead. It shined in the light like a diamond.

They walked over to the object. It was a bloodied ax. The siblings soon saw that they were standing in a lake of gore. Dismembered hands, arms, legs, and feet littered the floor around them. It was like Christy and Eric stood in the middle of a battlefield after a horrific grenade blast.

The smell was atrocious, unbearable. Christy had to step away from the carnage. She nearly passed out. Eric vomited in three successive bursts.

Christy stumbled in the darkness and held onto something to steady herself, but its surface was slick. The girl fell forward, headfirst into a putrid, lukewarm pool.

Not a pool. A large pot. A witch’s cauldron. Filled with who-knew-what.

Scratch that. Christy knew what she had accidentally dunked herself into: Mz. Salem’s stew, full of carrots, potatoes, celery, onions, human flesh and bones, and a dash of salt from the Kershaw kitchen.

Christy couldn’t pull herself free. She felt herself sinking deeper. She screamed, gulping in mouthfuls of the horrible mixture. She was drowning, fading away into a widening abyss...

Hands clamped around her legs and pulled her up and away from death. The cauldron toppled over with the sudden shift in weight, spilling Christy and a wave of cruel stew across the attic floor.

Eric stood above his sister, who spit a skeletal finger from her mouth. He helped Christy to her feet. Skulls, spines, and various other bones decorated the attic like an exposed graveyard.

“Are those...?” Eric choked out.

“Not Mom and Dad,” said Christy. “The bones are too small, so I think they’re...”

“The missing kids from school,” Eric finished.

Christy nodded. Alex Adama. Derek Hernandez. Kelsey Baltz. Tyler Aaron. Ashley Walker. She found them. Chopped into pieces. Partially eaten.

“She ate them,” Christy explained. “Mz. Salem freaking ate them!”

“Well, yeah,” said Eric, nonchalantly. “That’s what witches do with kids. Hansel and Gretel, remember?”

“But this is real life!”

“Witches eat kids to make themselves more powerful. To make themselves younger.”

Now it all made sense. Why Mz. Salem gradually grew more beautiful, more fit. Why she didn’t have to use her cane after a while. She had literally consumed her students’ youth.

“If Mom and Dad aren’t here, where are they, Christy?”

“I don’t know. Where the rest of my class is. Where the detective and Principal Ryan are.”

“The basement,” Eric realized. “Christy, we chose wrong.”

The girl surveyed the horrors around them. “Very wrong,” she said.

“We have to go! Now! Before the witch comes for us!”

“Help me...” A voice drifted across the stale air. “Help me...Please...”

“Do you hear that?” Eric asked. He turned toward the voice.

“No, Eric! It’s probably her! Mz. Salem, trying to keep us in here!”

The flashlight’s beam drew a moon through the black across the attic and settled on a gap in the base-board.

A mouse-hole, no bigger than a pocket-watch.

Eric crouched on his flat feet and placed his hand over the tiny opening. “It’s windy,” he said. “Like someone in there is blowing on my fingers.”

Christy rolled her eyes and sighed a sigh. “He’s right again,” she thought. Little brothers drive people crazy.

The girl kneeled next to her brother. She peered through the hole. Something large wheezed on the other side, blowing heavy breaths through the fissure. A bloodshot, reptilian eye suddenly filled the opening.

Christy shrieked, jumping back a little as the thing on the other side begged, “Help me...She has me chained...behind this wall...Help me...Please...”

“What do we do?” Eric said.

“Leave it,” Christy offered.

“I can help you...if you help me...”

Was the creature behind the wall telling the truth? Did it have magic as powerful as Mz. Salem’s? Could it actually help them in some—

Eric dropped his bat to the floor. He lifted the ax. “Stand back,” he told his sister.

“Wait, don’t you think we should talk about this first?”

“Nope. Take this. ” He handed Christy the flashlight. “Shine it on the wall.”

The boy groaned as he slammed the ax blade into the wood above the mouse-hole again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

“This is heavier than it looks,” Eric said as he chopped. But he wouldn’t let his sister help him. He was having too much fun. Typical boy stuff.

“That should be good enough,” said Christy. She shined the light through the breach in the wall, expecting to see a defenseless shackled beast.

But all that laid beyond the wall was a book on a dusty floor.

“No one’s in there,” she said to her brother.

“How’s that possible?” Disappointed, he climbed through the wall.

Christy followed him. Eric picked up the book. His sister engulfed it in light.

The cover showed a red-headed woman floating above a desk in a classroom. Students looked up to her in wonder.

“Mz. Salem,” Christy thought. “Room 23.”

Eric read the title. “‘ Disappearance of the 6th Grade .’”

Christy’s hummingbird heart jackhammered against her ribcage as she read, “‘By Christy and Eric Kershaw.’”

“I don’t...I don’t get it,” said the boy.

Christy turned to the first page. She read the opening paragraph aloud:

“It was the perfect weekend afternoon to sit by the window with a good book. Christy settled into her reading chair, turned to the first page of a novel given to her by her friend, Judith, and attempted to escape into a world where she wasn’t the weird new kid at school. However, no matter how hard she tried to focus on the story in her hands, Christy couldn’t hide from a simple fact: no one in the sixth grade seemed to be interested in getting to know her. She was usually invisible to everyone until a classmate—sometimes even a few ‘peers’ at once—called her a rude name or threw objects at the back of her head.”

Eric turned to a random page and read to them:

“Someone loudly knocked at the front door.

‘I’ll get it!’ Eric jumped out of his seat before either parent could stop him.

The boy looked through the peephole. He turned back to his family, the color fading from his face.

‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘who is it?’

Eric whispered, ‘Christy’s teacher, the witch.’”

The siblings exchanged looks of disbelief. The book was about them. It was their story.

They read more and more of it. All the words on all the pages had happened to them. Every sentence. Every plot twist. Everything since Mz. Salem had moved in was recorded in this twisted tale.

“We didn’t write this, though,” said Eric. “We lived it. Why does it say we’re the authors?”

“What if,” Christy said, “the pages were blank before Mz. Salem came to this house?”

“Huh?”

“The book needed a story to tell. And when you saw Mz. Salem and thought she was a witch, the book caught on to that. It took what you believed and made it true. It then took what I believed and made it true, also.”

“It’s a book. How can it be alive?”

“Books are full of life, Eric.”

“How can it know what we’re thinking?”

“It doesn’t. It only inspires our thinking. And it obviously inspired us to imagine some pretty crazy stuff.”

“But the book is here, in Mz. Salem’s house. Across an entire street from where we live. How could it reach us?”

“Good stories have a long reach. They can touch people anywhere and everywhere.”

Eric took a step back. “This is too weird. A magic book that reads our imagination and writes it down. Yeah, right.”

“This time, it’s our story. At other times, I bet it belonged to someone else.”

“Who put it here, then? God? Santa Claus?”

Christy didn’t have a good answer to that. Silently, she read the excerpt about the station wagon chasing her home.

Eric snatched the book away from her. “I’m going to see how our story ends.”

“Hey! Don’t!”

Too late. Eric turned to the last page, just as he always did. He read:

“Outside Mz. Salem’s house, half a dozen police cruisers screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. Other cars, containing the angry parents of missing children, joined in the fray. A furious mob gathered on the witch’s front lawn.”

Eric looked to his sister. “This hasn’t even happened yet.”

Just as he finished saying that, police sirens screamed nearby. The siblings went back through the wall and to the boarded-up attic window. Eric hacked away the wood with the ax, and the two kids looked through the glass.

Outside Mz. Salem’s house, half a dozen police cruisers screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. Other cars, containing the angry parents of missing children, joined in the fray. A furious mob gathered on the witch’s front lawn.

“It’s for real,” said Eric. He read more:

“Below Christy and Eric, a police officer stepped forward with a megaphone, demanding that Mz. Salem exit her home. Behind him, other officers tried to hold back the crowd. People cried and screamed expletives. Off to the side, two inebriated men stuffed dirty rags into open bottles of alcohol. The men lit the rags on fire.”

“Oh, no,” said Christy.

Below Christy and Eric, a police officer stepped forward with a megaphone, demanding that Mz. Salem exit her home. Behind him, other officers tried to hold back the crowd. People cried and screamed expletives. Off to the side, two inebriated men stuffed dirty rags into open bottles of alcohol. The men lit the rags on fire.

Eric continued:

“The pair of drunkards had incredible aim. They must have been pitchers back in high school. Their flaming bottles of alcohol exploded against the side of the house, spreading a wild fire across the first floor.”

“Stop reading!” Christy shouted. “It’s all coming true!”

“It’s already written!” Eric exclaimed.

The pair of drunkards had incredible aim. They must have been pitchers back in high school. Their flaming bottles of alcohol exploded against the side of the house, spreading a wild fire across the first floor.

Eric read the book to himself. “We’re dead!” he cried. “We’re going to burn alive and die along with everyone else in the basement!”

“No,” Christy said. “We can change this!”

She reached into her pants pocket and removed the pencil Principal Ryan had given her earlier in the day.

Christy took the book from her brother. She ignored the crackling of the fire below and, with a somewhat steady hand, crossed out the final paragraph.

“ The townspeople had no idea that the witch laughed at them from the skies above her home. She smiled as her prisoners in the cellar quickly died of smoke inhalation. She rejoiced when the two brave children in the attic burned alive, screaming for someone to save them. Unfortunately for Christy and Eric Kershaw, help never came. ”

Christy wrote a new paragraph. Her own ending.

“Immediately, magically, everything rebooted to weeks prior, when no one had yet gone missing. As a matter of fact, no one would ever go missing in the town. Because Sabrina Salem, a benevolent and well-loved new teacher soon to arrive at the school, wasn’t a witch. There were no such things as witches, after all. They only existed in nightmares, and nightmares would never come true. Not for Christy Kershaw or her little brother, Eric.”