The door was GONE.
My eyes swept the library. Four walls of bookshelves from the floor to the ceiling.
No door.
No door where there had been a door!
Panic made my legs tremble. Another chill rolled down my back.
“Where’s the door? Let us out!” Peter cried. He began running frantically around the room, pushing on the shelves. Trying to find a way out.
“Be calm,” Bella said, nearly in a whisper. “Don’t you see? Once you are in, the way out is difficult. Your journey has just begun. There’s no turning back.”
“We don’t want to go on a journey,” I said. My voice shook, revealing my panic. “We just want out of here.”
Peter shoved his shoulder against a shelf. It didn’t budge.
“You can’t keep us prisoner here,” I said. “Our parents —”
“You’re not prisoners,” Bella said. “You have come to help me — remember?”
“You’re crazy!” Peter screamed. “Let us out of this room!”
“I am not your enemy,” Bella told him. “Come. Sit down. Relax. I need your help. I swear I’m not going to hurt you.”
She shoved the red book back into its shelf. The masks disappeared as the shelf turned around. “Properly hidden,” she murmured.
Then she moved to the table in the center of the room and pulled out two chairs. “Come, you two. Sit down. Please.”
Peter and I glanced at each other. We knew we didn’t have a choice.
Maybe if we let Bella finish her story, she would let us go.
We dropped down onto the chairs and slid them up to the table. Bella sat across from us. Her fingers tapped the tabletop. Her fingernails were long, painted dark red. “May I continue?”
Peter and I stared back at her in silence.
“I was telling you about the sorcerer named Hallows,” Bella said. “Hallows made the five masks. He filled them with powerful magic. He gave them to Screem. He didn’t know of Screem’s evil. Then Hallows created this book. He named it The Hallows Book.”
I lowered my eyes to the book. My mind spun. I was trying to figure out how Bella got our names in that book.
But I didn’t have a clue.
“Screem is my enemy,” Bella said. “I struggle every year to keep the masks from him. But every year, he steals them. Every Halloween, we must struggle over the masks. He steals them and hides them, but they must be found!”
I felt a shiver of fear as Bella stared into my eyes and said:
“The hunt for the five masks has been going on every Halloween night for one hundred years. And I am forced to play the same dangerous game year after year.”
“So … you really are one hundred and thirty years old?” I cried.
She raised a hand to silence me.
“Screem is all evil,” she said. “His evil is beyond anything we know. I cannot allow him to keep the masks.”
Her voice faded. She shut her eyes for a long moment.
Then she said, “If I don’t keep the masks away from him, the world will be in terrible danger.”
“Okay,” I said. “You have the masks safely hidden away here. Can we go now?” I scooted my chair back.
“You don’t understand!” Bella cried, raising her voice for the first time. She jumped to her feet. “Screem will steal them. Every year, our story repeats. Every year, he steals them back from me and hides them in different places. If you leave, how will I get them back? I can’t go after them.”
“I … don’t understand,” I said. My head was spinning.
Did any of this make sense?
“I can’t go after the masks,” Bella said. “When Screem steals them, I need someone else to hunt them down. Someone to help me. That’s why you’re here.”
Her dark eyes glistened with tears. “The sorcerer Hallows made the rules of the hunt. He put a curse on me. If I touch any of the masks, I will crumble to ashes.”
Peter rolled his eyes. Her story got crazier and crazier.
Why was I starting to believe her? Maybe it was the tears that were brimming in her eyes. Maybe it was the desperate tremble of her soft voice.
“Every Halloween night, I must find someone to help me,” Bella continued. “When Screem steals the masks, I need someone to go on the hunt and collect them. Someone to bring them back to me. This year, you two are the ones to risk your lives.”
“If you’re trying to give us a Halloween scare, it’s working,” Peter said. He stood up. “We listened to your story. Now let us go home.”
“I can’t let you go home,” Bella said. “I am helpless against Screem. I cannot use magic against him. I have no powers that can stop him.”
She slid the heavy old book across the table. “Look at it. Read what it says. The book doesn’t lie. The book says you will be the ones to help me this year.”
Peter and I leaned over the book. We ran our eyes down the tiny type. A new paragraph had appeared.
It said pretty much what Bella had just told us. It named Peter and me. It said we had come to help her….
They didn’t believe Bella’s story. They didn’t believe that the Halloween mask hunt was real. They were eager to escape the old mansion and return home.
But the story of the old sorcerer Hallows and the Five Masks of Screem was true. This year, it was Peter and Monica’s turn to meet the challenge. And perhaps … save the world from untold evil.
And then the last words caught my eye.
The last words … I read them twice. I felt my heart start to pound. I had that trembling feeling in my legs again.
I read the last words out loud:
“Monica and Peter were frightened by Bella’s story. But their true terror wouldn’t start FOR ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES.”