Scary Out There Read Online Free PDF

him, the sisters shuddered but stayed where they were. They stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the mirror. Their hair seemed to drip around them like something liquid, devouring the light. Nim took another step, fingering the talisman in her pocket, challenging the James to a game of chicken he could never win. She was smiling.
    The sisters were trembling harder now. She could feel them humming like power lines and wondered if she’d overestimated the strength of the glass. She took another step.
    â€œAre you crazy?” the James said. “What are you doing?” He really still didn’t understand that she owned them.
    Their hands were outstretched now, as if to tell her they understood. They saw. She threw the talisman down at his feet and, for one perfect instant, everything froze. The light was so blue it was nearly purple. Nim was small and strange and utterly exalted.
    Then the sisters fell on him—a storm of teeth and claws—already multiplying at his touch. They crouched in the vast, soundless library, ripping him apart. Above them the Doomsday Glass glowed white and hot and blinding like a dying star.
    The whole room was filling up with black haired girls inred dresses, false, but proliferating. Nim had never seen more than eight at once—they always disappeared as soon as the real ones started to drift away, but now they were multiplying exponentially, crowding in around the James.
    Nim’s headset crackled, flashing bluer and bluer. Belatedly, she understood that it was glitching. The game was cutting out. Parts of the mansion stuttered and froze. With a start she recognized one of the carnival rides from Dark Amusements, looming behind all of the books. Then the ceiling began to melt. Her world was coming down around her.
    With a tremendous crash the Doomsday Glass exploded and the library with it, collapsing in a storm of dust and static.
    Nim stood in the middle of her own messy bedroom. The headset had shut itself off. Her last glimpse of the Escher House had been the James in pieces, strewn across a bloodred floor.
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    At school Nim smiled. A lot. She couldn’t help it.
    She kept her triumph to herself though. Instead, she dove into the physics project. She didn’t even argue when Matt Avery volunteered her to take the notes for their group. As a reward she was grudgingly allowed to help Austin Bauer with the math.
    They spent three days figuring out the inside of their telescope, taking turns measuring the angles and tweaking the lenses. It wasn’t exhilarating or dire, but it was still pretty interesting.
    â€œHey, Oz, you like that Vertigo game, right?” said Jake Sieverson on Thursday, flopping down next to Austin. “Did you hear someone crashed it? Like, the whole thing.”
    Austin made an ambiguous noise and didn’t look up. “Don’t call me that.”
    Nim turned away to hide her smile, fidgeting with the corner of her lab book. “I was playing when it happened,” she mumbled.
    â€œDude, for real?” Jake was leaning on the table, looking right at her for probably the first time ever. “How was it? I heard a server failed or something.”
    Nim shrugged, trying to look casual, remembering all the times she’d been excited about something and immediately gotten shut down as soon as she tried to talk about it. “I think it must have been a design flaw. Maybe someone exploited a bug.”
    Jake was still watching her. He started to say something else, but Austin cut him off. “Why do you care? You don’t even play.”
    Later, after Jake had gone loping back to his group, Nim turned to Austin. “He’s not allowed to ask about it?”
    â€œScrew that guy. He’s such a tool—he never shuts up.”
    â€œYeah, sure,” Nim said, but it seemed kind of uncalled for to get mad at Jake, who was only making conversation. He was one of those people