The Haunting Read Online Free PDF Page A

had started to grin. He’d gotten under my skin with that comment, and he knew it.
    Robin’s gaze flickered between Joel, Phoebe, and me. “Uh…” she said before focusing back on me. “Six, two, one, and one.”
    “What have you come up with so far?” I asked.
    “Well, with no help from you—”
    “Shut up, Joel.” Phoebe’s voice cracked the air like a whip.
    Joel rolled his eyes and leaned his shaved head against the wall, still smirking.
    Robin looked between the tanned, thumb-less jerk and me with a meddling interest. “Well, we tried, like, figuring out which letter it is in the alphabet.”
    “But in the end it spelled F-B-A-A,” Phoebe interrupted. “Even as an anagram, it’s useless.”
    “Like I said, it’s four letters. Let’s just pick the door with four letters,” Joel said, his voice still edged with aggression. To Phoebe, he said snidely, “That would be the one marked ‘Dead.’”
    That stung even me. I glanced at Phoebe, who finally made eye contact, but it was wounded and brief.
    “No,” she snapped. “We’re not doing it that way. You be my guest.” She motioned him toward the door, her eyes wild with anger. “Better yet, jump in first and tell us if it’s safe.” She wiggled her thumbs up for him to see and said with false enthusiasm, “Oh look, opposable thumbs. I’ll open the door for you.”
    Robin scolded her. “Phoebe, that’s not nice.”
    “Neither is he,” she said, not looking away from him.
    They stood opposite each other, both tensed and aggressive.
    Phoebe was just defending me. I needed to stand up to Joel myself, and here I was allowing Phoebe to fight my battles for me.
    Stepping up beside the bronze blonde, I said, “Leave him alone. He just wants attention.”
    “You should talk,” I heard him snort.
    I spun on him. “Pick the door you want and let us figure out what we’re doing, will you?”
    “Hear, hear,” Cody added, which earned him an elbow in the stomach from his girlfriend.
    Phoebe had her eyebrows raised until he looked away. Falling silent, he pouted in the corner, and I turned to face Phoebe, Cody, and Robin. We were all on edge, not just Joel.
    Robin motioned to Joel with her head. “What did you do to him?”
    “Nothing,” I snapped. “He didn’t like me from the start.”
    Cody nodded in mute confirmation.
    “Anyway,” Phoebe said after an awkward silence, “we searched the whole room here for maybe some type of clue.”
    “There isn’t even gum under the chairs.” Robin pursed her lips. “I mean, there was blood on that one chair, but I’m not touching it. And like the signs don’t even make sense with the number he gave us. I thought maybe there would be graffiti or something behind…”
    “The sign.” I pointed to the front door. “Like the one outside?”
    Robin blinked, confused.
    “I didn’t see a sign,” Joel started.
    “I did.” Phoebe interrupted him before he could begin his conspiracy rant. “It said: Intruders Beware at Dusk, right?”
    Robin’s shoulders sagged. “That’s doesn’t help much either.”
    I said, “Actually it does.”
    All eyes turned up to me. Rounding the letters out in my head, I counted on my hands to try and get the right sequence. “The sixth letter in Intruders is D. The second in the word Beware is E and so on.”
    “I guess you were right.” Phoebe snorted as if she shouldn’t believe it. “Looks like we go through the door marked, Dead . But not just because it has four letters.”
    Joel shrugged. “What does it matter? I was right.”
    I motioned to the door. “We cannot split up this time, okay? This is our last chance to get everyone back.”
    Phoebe cracked her knuckles, looking at the floor.
    Robin’s lower lip trembled. “You mean, if we’re not all back, we’re stuck here for good?”
    At my silence, worry crinkled her forehead until she looked up at Cody as if he could do something.
    “Does everyone know about the rings?” I asked, and everyone