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The Stalkerby K.E. Calder
1-55068-124-9 Click here for reading level. This book is part of the Deer Lake series. To read the first chapter of The Stalker, click here. Enjoy! Other Tea Leaf Press books by K.E. Calder: How to be a Frog Millionaire Stranded The Secret of the Bailey Bay Inn The Prank Why Me? Class Trip The Paper The Stalker"The day your grandpa and I first came to Deer Lake was cold and rainy," said Grandma. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "Your parents were just little kids at the time. We left them with their grandma and grandpa. It was just the two of us," she said to Will, Benny, and Joey."Earlier that day, a pole had fallen over in town. It blocked the main road to our new cottage. We were trapped on the highway for hours. By the time we were able to make it to the cottage road and down the driveway, it was dark outside. All the power was out. Just like tonight." Grandma paused and looked at the three boys. The light from the candle lit up the bottom of her pale face. "Beatrice Jones was the old woman who sold us this place. She was supposed to meet us here and hand over the keys. When we knocked on the door, there was no answer. So here we were, locked outside in the pouring rain. All of our stuff was in the car. We were wet all the way through to our bones. Your grandpa knocked again. Then he tried turning the handle. To our surprise, it was unlocked! We opened the door a tiny bit and looked in. I called, 'Hello? Mrs. Jones?' But there was no answer. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning! We both burst inside the cottage. The door shut behind us with a bang. The shutters banged against the window. It was pitch black in the kitchen. Our hearts were pounding. Your grandpa and I could hardly see each other. Then we noticed a faint yellow light coming from the other room." "You mean in here? In this room?" asked Joey. His eyes were wide open, and he was beginning to shake. "Yes, it was coming from in here," said Grandma. "Your grandpa and I held hands and slowly walked to the doorway. 'Mrs. Jones?' I called out again. But the little old woman was nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of her. In fact, I have not heard from her since. I never found out what happened to her. All we heard was the rain on the roof. All we saw was the light from a little white candle. It was sitting right here, on this table." Will felt a shudder run up his back. He pulled his hands into the arms of his sweater. The story of Beatrice Jones was well known in the town of Deer Lake. No one seemed to know why she disappeared without a trace. Grandma continued, "Suddenly, the whole cottage shook with thunder. There was a flash of lightning. For a second, the walls were lit up with a bright white light. I saw a man standing on the other side of the screen door. 'Ted, look!' I cried. Then the room went dark again." The boys moved closer together. They looked nervously at the door. "A moment later, there was more thunder and a flash of lightning. The room lit up again. I screamed! But the man was not there. The doorway was empty." Grandma paused and looked at the doorway. "Then what did you do?" asked Benny. The boys held their breath and leaned closer to hear her better. "Well, we brought in all our stuff, unpacked it, and had some dinner," she said. She stood up, letting the blanket fall off of her shoulders and onto the floor. "What?" said Joey. "What about the man?" asked Will. He was fourteen years old--three years older than his twin cousins, but he was still a bit freaked out by the story. "I figured it was just in my mind. Most scary things are," she said. There was a low humming sound and the lights came on. "Oh, good. The power is back," Grandma said. "Who wants hot chocolate?" she asked on her way to the kitchen. "That's it?" said Will. "Who wants hot chocolate? Agh!" He thought there would be more to the story than that. "That's it," said Grandma. She looked back at the boys with a smile. Then she turned and went into the kitchen. Will's Grandma was like that. She liked to come up with stories for the three boys. This was Will's first summer up at Grandma's cottage since he was nine. His mom had dropped him off only a few weeks ago. She was working in the city. She thought the best place for Will to spend his summer was at a cottage. That was where she had spent the summers when she was his age. Will was sure things must have been a lot different then. There weren't so many things to miss back then. Will missed TV, e-mail, and the Internet. The cottage had none of those things. Those first few weeks at the cottage had been hard for Will. His twin cousins, Benny and Joey, were used to spending their summers up at the cottage with Grandma. They were his worst nightmare. Benny and Joey found their own way to have fun. They were always playing jokes on him. One time, they pulled all his underwear through the little holes in his bedroom wall. Another time, they tricked him into hitting a raw egg on his own head. They made him think it was hard-boiled when it wasn't. Benny even used his prosthetic arm to play jokes. When Benny first met Will, he let his arm come off when Will shook it. Another time, Will got up in the morning to use the bathroom. The arm was sitting on top of the toilet. A false arm isn't really a scary thing. But finding an arm lying around the house can really scare the life out of you! Will was getting better at dealing with the twins. He just never knew when they were for real or when they were trying to fool him. Luckily, he didn't have to put up with them as much anymore. He was starting to meet more people his own age. Now, Will was hanging around a lot with Kyle Jordan. His parents owned a store near the edge of town called The Trading Post. There were also the Randall sisters. Lindsay, Mel, and Sarah Randall lived in a cottage four doors down from Will. It was on the very end of Skokie Road, which was the twisty road that went around Deer Lake. When Will was nine years old, he had played with the Randall girls. That was the last time he had seen them. This summer, he had hardly talked to the girls at all. He wasn't planning on getting to know them, either. He tried to avoid talking to girls at all costs. It wasn't that he didn't like them. He just wasn't very good at it. Grandma's cottage was on Deer Lake in the town of Deer Lake. Will hadn't been there for years, but it was still exactly the same as he remembered. There was a rusty old swing on the front porch. A long wooden table sat in the kitchen. There was a twisty path that led from the cottage to the beach. Down at the beach was a dock. And, of course, there was still their old, grumpy neighbor, Booker. |
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