"False alarm," said Claudia at last.

I knew she and Kristy felt as disappointed as I did.

"Hey, you guys," said Kristy, forcing a smile. "Let's show those two cowards downstairs how brave we are. Let's explore the attic."

"The attic?" I squeaked.

KER-RASH. A clap of thunder shook the house.

. "I think that was a sign," I said. "A sign saying we'd be stupid to go in the attic."

"Oh, come on," said Kristy. "It's all this ghost stuff that's stupid."

Maybe to her. I couldn't stop thinking about "Things Unseen." Or another story I read where a man picks up a woman he finds. .h.i.tchhiking one night. He decides to take her home, but when he gets to her house, she's disappeared - and the couple in the house say the woman was their daughter and had died ten years earlier.

Kristy grabbed my arm. "Come on."

I must have been crazy. I opened the door to the attic. We were greeted by stale, musty air, and the sound of the rain on the roof. We started to tiptoe up the stairs. The light switch was at the top. Halfway up, the door slammed shut.

"Yikes!" I cried.

The three of us piled back down the steps.

"I hope the door didn't lock behind us!" I whispered. We were closed into total darkness.

I was reaching for the handle when the door began to open slowly, all by itself. We heard a low moan.

"Oh, no," I whimpered.

Then we heard a growl.

"You didn't get a dog, did you," said Kristy. It was a statement, not a question.

I shook my head, and looked at Kristy and Claudia with wide, terrified eyes.

Then the three of us let out eardrum-shattering screams.

"Gotcha!" Stacey and Mary Anne jumped out from behind the door. "Who are the scaredy-cats now?" asked Stacey.

"You guys nearly gave us heart attacks!" gasped Kristy.

Mary Anne and Stacey laughed hysterically. The three of us had to sit down to recover. We didn't think it was funny at all.

"Did you find anything?" I asked them, when I was able to speak.

They shook their heads. "But we haven't looked in the den yet/' said Mary Anne.

We split up again. As soon as Stacey and Mary Anne were gone, I turned to the others and said, "This is war. We've got to get back at them."

"How?" asked Claudia.

"There's a heating vent in Mom's room that goes down to the den. I have an idea."

The three of us sat on the floor and crowded around the vent.

"Ow-oooh," I moaned into it.

Kristy and Claudia caught on immediately.

"Heeeelp meeee," wailed Kristy.

"Wheeeere aaaaaaam IIIIIII?" whispered Claudia.

Then we moaned some more. The howling wind helped us along.

"Shhh," I said. "Listen."

Downstairs we could hear Stacey and Mary Anne shrieking.

I looked at Kristy and Claudia. We began to giggle. Then we took up the moaning again.

"Woooo. . . . Ow-ow-ooooh. . . . Oooooo-eeeeee. ..."

And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I dared to look around. The hand was green.

"Kristy," I whispered. "Claudia."

We all looked up.

We were gazing into the green face of a deformed, one-eyed monster.

"BOO! Scared you!"

It was Jeff in a Hallo ween costume.

"Aughh! Aughh! Aughh!"

Kristy and Claudia and I were screaming upstairs. Mary Anne and Stacey were screaming downstairs.

Jeff fell over laughing.

That was the end of our search for a secret pa.s.sage. We didn't find a thing.

Chapter 4.

I think I understand how Mary Anne feels about the Thomases and the house next door. Replacements can be hard to adjust to. Even if they're better than the original thing, sometimes you don't like them (at first) just because they're different.

Whatever Mary Anne's feelings, though, she had agreed to baby-sit at the Perkins home, so she showed up at ten-thirty on the dot on Wednesday morning.

She felt funny ringing the doorbell and not going right on inside like she used to do. Instead, she had to stand and wait. She heard a dog barking and feet running - not as many feet as when the Thomases lived there, but several pairs.

When the door was opened, two blonde-haired, brown-eyed faces were peering up at her. Behind them was a woman who was struggling to hold back a huge black dog.

There were a couple of moments of confusion.

"Chewy! Behave!" said the woman.

"That's Chewbacca, our dog," said the older of the two girls. "He's eight months old."

"I'm wearing Myriah's baldet shoes," announced the younger one, holding up her foot to show Mary Anne a pink ballet slipper.

Chewy struggled out of Mrs. Perkins' grip, lunged for the door, and jumped up, resting his front feet on the screen and grinning a happy doggie grin. In the process, he knocked the littler girl to the floor. She giggled and stood up unsteadily.

"Baldet shoes are slippery," she said.

Mrs. Perkins got Chewy under control and let him out in the backyard. Myriah let Mary Anne in.

"Well, you're Mary Anne, right?" said Mrs. Perkins as she returned.

Mary Anne nodded.

"I'm Mrs. Perkins," she went on. "And this is Myriah," (the older one), "and Gabbie." (The one wearing the "baldet" slippers.) "Girls, this is Mary Anne Spier."

Myriah smiled shyly at Mary Anne.

Gabbie smiled, too. "Hi, Mary Anne Spier," she said, and I remembered that Kristy had said Gabbie called her by her full name.

"I'm going to the doctor for a check-up," Mrs. Perkins told Mary Anne. "I have to run some errands, too. I should be back in about two hours. There are no special instructions, really. The girls will show you their playroom. And you can go outside, if you want." (The rain had miraculously stopped.) "Oh, one thing - leave Chewy in the yard. If you take a walk, don't try to bring him with you. He's a bit of a handful."

"He'd take MS on a walk, instead!" said Myriah.

After Mrs. Perkins left, Mary Anne and the girls looked at each other. Sometimes a first baby-sitting job can be a little awkward, especially if you're on the shy side, like Mary Anne is.

But Myriah got things going. "Want to see our rooms?" she asked.

"Sure," replied Mary Anne.

"I have a doll," said Gabbie, skipping ahead.

"It's not really her doll," Myriah whispered confidentially to Mary Anne as they climbed the stairs. "It's mine, but I let her use it."

Mary Anne smiled.

"This is my room," said Myriah a few moments later. And Mary Anne found herself looking sadly around Kristy's old room. In place of her sports posters were animal pictures and a poster of a ballerina. In place of her desk was a dollhouse. It wasn't the same at all.

"Hey, let's go downstairs again," said Mary Anne huskily. "I want to see your playroom."

Gabbie turned and raced downstairs.

Myriah and Mary Anne followed. When they reached the playroom, Gabble was already there, rocking an old Cabbage Patch Doll in her arms. "This is Cindy Jane, Mary Anne Spier," she said.

"Her name is really Caroline Eunice," Myriah whispered. "Oh! There's R. C!" she exclaimed suddenly.

A brown tiger cat sauntered into the room.

"R. C. stands for Rat Catcher," Myriah announced, "but he doesn't catch anything. He's too, too lazy. Aren't you, R. C.?"

"Aren't you, R. C.?" echoed Gabbie absent-mindedly, as R. C. flopped over on his side and fell asleep.

"Now don't say everything I say," Myriah admonished her sister. Once again she whispered to Mary Anne. "The Gabbers is going through a stage."

"The Gabbers?" said Mary Anne.

"Yeah. That's what Mom and Dad and I call her."

Gabbie tossed Cindy Jane/Caroline Eunice to the floor. "Let's color!" she said.

"Yeah!" agreed Myriah. "Let's color. You want to color, too, Mary Anne?"

"Color with us, Mary Anne Spier," said Gabbie.

Myriah and Gabble settled themselves at a pink and white table with pictures of Barbie dolls all over it.

"We always color at our Barbie table/' said Myriah.

Mary Anne squeezed into a little pink chair. She had to sit sideways at the table, since her knees wouldn't fit underneath it.

Myriah tore three pieces of paper off a pad of newsprint and pa.s.sed them out. She set a box of crayons in the middle. "Now color, you guys," she said.

The three of them (even Mary Anne) got right to work. Both of the little girls sang to themselves as they colored. Myriah sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Gabbie sang "Hush, Little Baby." Mary Anne raised her eyebrows. How had they memorized all the verses to those songs? Even Mary Anne didn't know them.

After a few minutes, Gabbie handed her picture to Mary Anne. It was a huge, jumbled scribble. "Look, Mary Anne Spier," she said.

"That's lovely!" Mary Anne exclaimed. She was about to ask, "What is it?" when she remembered something we Baby-sitters Club members had thought up. Instead of saying "What is it?" when we can't tell what a picture or an art project is, we say, "Tell me about it." That way, the kid doesn't know we can't tell, so his feelings aren't hurt, and he tells us what the picture is so we don't say anything dumb about it, like "I've never seen such a big elephant," when it turns out to be a picture of the kid's grandmother or something.

"Tell me about it," Mary Anne said to Gab-bie.

"Okay. This is my mommy," said Gabbie, pointing, "and this is the baby growing in her tummy."

Once again, Mary Anne raised her eyebrows. She almost raised them right off her forehead. "The baby in her tummy?" she repeated. She glanced at Myriah.

"Yeah, we're having a baby," said Myriah nonchalantly. "Not for a long time, though. I hope I get a brother. We have enough girls around here. ... R. C. is a girl," she added. "The only boys are Daddy and Chewy."