40 - Night of the Living Dummy III by R.L. Stine - (ebook by Undead)

 
 
1
     
     
    The stairs up to my attic are narrow and steep. The fifth step is loose and
wobbles when you stand on it. All the other stairs creak and groan.
    My whole house creaks and groans. It’s a big, old house. And it’s kind of
falling apart. Mom and Dad don’t really have the money to repair it.
    “Trina—hurry!” my brother, Dan, whispered. His words echoed in the steep
attic stairwell. Dan is ten, and he is always in a hurry.
    He’s short and very skinny. I think he looks like a mouse. He has short brown
hair, dark eyes, and a pointy little chin. And he’s always scurrying around like
a mouse searching for a place to hide.
    Sometimes I call him Mouse. You know. Like a nickname. Dan hates it. So I
only call him Mouse when I want to make him mad.
    Dan and I don’t look at all like brother and sister. I’m tall and I have
curly red hair and green eyes. I’m a little chubby, but Mom says not to worry about it. I’ll probably slim down by the time I’m thirteen, next
August.
    Anyway, no one would ever call me Mouse! For one thing, I’m a lot braver than
Dan.
    You have to be brave to go up to our attic. Not because of the creaking
stairs. Or the way the wind whistles through the attic windows and makes the
panes rattle. Not because of the dim light up there. Or the shadows. Or the low
ceiling covered with cracks.
    You have to be brave because of the eyes.
    The dozens of eyes that stare at you through the darkness.
    The eyes that never blink. The eyes that stare with such eerie, heavy
silence.
    Dan reached the attic ahead of me. I heard him take a few steps over the
squeaking, wooden floorboards. Then I heard him stop.
    I knew why he stopped. He was staring back at the eyes, at the grinning
faces.
    I crept up behind him, moving on tiptoe. I leaned my face close to his ear.
And I shouted, “BOO!”
    He didn’t jump.
    “Trina, you’re about as funny as a wet sponge,” he said. He shoved me away.
    “I think wet sponges are funny,” I replied. I admit it. I like to annoy him.
    “Give me a break,” Dan muttered.
    I grabbed his arm. “Okay.” I pretended to break it in two.
    I know it’s dumb. But that’s the way my brother and I kid around all the
time.
    Dad says we didn’t get our sense of humor from him. But I think we probably
did.
    Dad owns a little camera store now. But before that he was a ventriloquist.
You know. He did a comedy act with a dummy.
    Danny O’Dell and Wilbur.
    That was the name of the act. Wilbur was the dummy, in case you didn’t guess
it.
    Danny O’Dell is my dad. My brother is Dan, Jr. But he hates the word junior,
so no one ever calls him that.
    Except me. When I want to make him really mad!
    “Someone left the attic light on,” Dan said, pointing to the ceiling light.
The only light in the whole attic.
    Our attic is one big room. There are windows at both ends. But they are both
caked with dust, so not much light gets through.
    Dan and I made our way across the room. The dummies all stared at us, their
eyes big and blank. Most of them had wide grins on their wooden faces. Some of
their mouths hung open. Some of their heads tilted down so we couldn’t see their
faces.
    Wilbur—Dad’s first dummy, the original Wilbur—was perched on an old
armchair. His hands were draped over the chair arms. His head tilted against the
chair back.
    Dan laughed. “Wilbur looks just like Dad taking a nap!”
    I laughed, too. With his short brown hair, his black eyeglasses, and his
goofy grin, Wilbur looked a lot like Dad!
    The old dummy’s black-and-yellow checked sports jacket was worn and frayed.
But Wilbur’s face was freshly painted. His black leather shoes were shiny.
    One wooden hand had part of the thumb chipped out. But Wilbur looked great
for such an old dummy.
    Dad keeps all of the dummies in good shape. He calls the attic his Dummy
Museum. Spread around the room are a dozen old ventriloquist’s dummies that he
has collected.
    He spends all of his spare