This place just gets weirder and weirder,” murmured Colby as she stared at the eclectic scenery spread out in front of her.

“Seems Curt Keller’s a bit of a pack rat.”

The room was enormous but crammed with steamer trunks, armoires, sheeted mirrors that resembled fat ghosts, and old stacked tables and bed frames.

“It kinda reminds me of the Titanic.” Colby tiptoed farther into the space, spinning a 360 of pure wonder. “So many places to hide.”

Tom pried open a trunk. “If we get into one of these, we’re sitting ducks.”

Then came a loud creaking of the attic hatch as it was pulled down.

Like scared bats in sunlight, Tom and Colby scurried to the far end of the room and skidded onto the floor behind an enormous wooden table that had been turned on its side.

With their faces pressed against the ground, they peered around the side of the tabletop and saw Nicky’s scuffed dress shoes stepping gingerly across the floorboards, stopping every so often as he peeked under a cloth-draped couch or inside a footlocker. At one point, they even saw him check a dresser drawer.

“We gotta hide somewhere,” Tom whispered after they’d been watching him for a moment. “He knows we’re up here. He’ll eventually make his way over.”

Colby nodded, then army-crawled quietly back toward an open armoire behind them. It was packed with formal clothes that looked as though they were from somewhere around the turn of the last century. There were old tuxedos and puffy, whalebone-hooped skirts crammed together on a wooden clothes rack.

“Inside the dresses,” she said. “He’d never look there.”

“Colb,” Tom hissed back. “There’s no way I’m hiding in a lady’s dress.”

“Yes, you are! One of us can signal when it’s safe to come out.” Nicky was getting closer now. “Now get in that dress!”

Yanking the fabric over their bodies, soon both were enveloped by the long, frilly skirts.

Inside his pink cocoon, Tom pulled his knees to his chest and listened. The footsteps were closer, and he could hear Nicky shoving furniture out of the way. A trunk opened. A muttered curse under his breath. Fatty couldn’t be more than five feet from the old armoire now, Tom guessed. His every muscle was held motionless. Above his head, a hand crawled through the clothes, giving them a cursory search.

Then the steps grew fainter as they made their way toward another corner of the attic. Nicky was now on the opposite side and, with any luck, Tom and Colby might even be closer to the attic hatch.

Tom knew this guy wasn’t leaving until he’d found them, so if there was ever a moment to make their escape, that time had to be now.

“You ready to bolt?” Tom whispered in what he assumed was Colby’s direction.

“No, but let’s go anyway,” she whispered back. “Now?”

“Now!”

They jumped out of the wardrobe. Nicky spun in their direction, tripping over a coatrack as he chased them toward the attic hatch. Colby was the first to descend. Tom’s feet accidentally stepped on her fingers as they climbed back down to the study.

“My bad,” he said as they bolted into the hallway.

“Every door in this house is locked!” Nicky called after them. “You’re only making the punishment worse for yourselves.”

“We’re definitely making it worse for you!” said Tom.

Out into the hallway again, they flew back down the spiral staircase, then crossed the mansion toward the rear kitchen.

“Wait!” Tom skidded to a stop next to a metal trash chute that opened like an oven door. “What do you think?”

Colby raised an eyebrow. “You wanna go down that thing?”

“Think of it as a very, very smelly waterslide.”

“Hmmm. Not comforting.” Colby shuddered at the thought, then shrugged. “But I’m game.”

“And you realize it probably leads to a humungous pile of trash, right? With eighty thousand species of germs.” Tom couldn’t help laughing.

“Just get your butt in that chute before I change my mind.”

“Who are you?” Tom stared at her for a moment. “And what have you done with Colby?”

“Har-dee-har.”

Tom flipped down the metal door, and in they dove, headfirst, just like a waterslide.

Swoosh! Their bodies whipped and bent, one flight down to the belly of the mansion’s basement, where they dropped into an industrial-size rubber garbage bin.

“Whew.” Tom sat up, glancing around the dark cellar. “I was half scared it would lead to an incinerator.”

“Can we just get out of here?” Colby looked terrified and squeamish as she brushed old lemon peels and coffee grounds off her shirt. “I smell like a sewer rat.”

The small, ground-floor window was their best and only chance of escape. Tom leaped up onto an old water heater and unlocked the latch.

He pulled himself up onto a bustling Manhattan sidewalk, and strangely enough, not a single pedestrian batted an eyelash at the two children who’d just crawled out of the low window by their feet.

“For a moment there, I never thought I’d get to smell that sweet New York air again.” Colby inhaled from the bottom of her lungs and stretched her arms wide. “Where do you think we are?”

“I’m guessing midtown.” Tom gave a nod in her direction. “There’s the Empire State Building right behind you.

“Let’s move.” He pulled her arm. “For all we know, he’s contacting outside security. And I’m never going back to Camp Keller again if I can help it.”