The Fade Read online

  ALSO BY DEMITRIA LUNETTA

  In the After

  In the End

  Bad Blood

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Demitria Lunetta

  Floating flower photo © 2018 by John Grant/Getty Images

  Hand photo © 2018 by Rachel Bellinsky/Stocksy

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Lunetta, Demitria, author.

  Title: The fade / Demitria Lunetta.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2018] | Summary: Fifteen-year-old Haley moves into a house haunted by the ghosts of murdered girls who hope Haley will be able to help them move on.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017048802 | ISBN 978-1-5247-6633-7 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6634-4 (el)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Ghosts—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Haunted houses—Fiction. | Horror stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.L9791155 Fad 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524766344

  Cover design by Angela Carlino

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Demitria Lunetta

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Justin, who loves Wisconsin with a fiery passion

  and

  For Rhonda and Jay, who have given us so much love and support

  WHEN SHE WAS eight years old, she died.

  A family winter walk by the lake. Hot cocoa and mittens. A gust of arctic wind and a misstep. She fell hard, splashing into the icy depths.

  Two long minutes she was under while her family panicked, her mother holding her sister back. Her father watched, uselessly, scared and motionless. A jogger called the police.

  Finally, her father acted, jumped in after her. His long reach combed through the water. Three minutes of frantic search, fueled by desperation. Then he kicked something he desperately hoped was his daughter and dove after it. Her bright purple jacket was waterlogged, and he peeled it off her. Freed from the extra weight, she bobbed to the surface.

  Her father pushed her toward the concrete jetty. More people had gathered. They helped pull first her, then him, out. It was harder than it seemed: she was deadweight, and he was too tired to be of much help. Three more minutes before she was laid out on the hard concrete.

  Her lips were blue, her eyes unseeing. She had no pulse. She was dead.

  The mother pounded her chest and breathed into her lungs. Someone offered the father their dry jacket and he took it wordlessly, clutching it to his side. He shivered uncontrollably, his teeth chattering. The sister hugged him, unable to believe that this was the end. Her mother’s rhythmic cadence progressed.

  A minute and a half later there was a cough. A sputter. She vomited up a lake’s worth of water. Everyone breathed with her.

  Her mother cried, relief replacing dread. Her father collapsed to his knees, bringing her sister down with him. People cheered. The ambulance arrived.

  When she was eight years old, she died.

  She was dead for nearly nine minutes.

  Then she was alive again.

  “THIS IS SUCH a murder basement,” I say, peering down the dark stairs. “And gross, what’s that smell? It’s rank.”

  “Bodies,” Shannon tells me.

  I know my sister is joking, but she sounds so serious. She catches my expression and laughs, patting my head, like I’m five instead of fifteen. “It’s just an old house, Haley. Don’t be such a baby.”

  I huff and turn back to the darkness. Shannon’s only older than me by three years, but she acts like I’m a little kid.

  “Come on,” she says, pushing past me, carrying a giant box.

  I want to say “No thanks, you go ahead and get murdered without me,” but I tentatively take a step, the ancient wooden stairs creaking even under my negligible weight. Shannon barrels downward, not a care for the possibility of rotten steps giving way…or the less likely scenario that monsters are lurking in the shadows. I follow, moving more slowly. I’m not usually afraid of my own shadow, but this place…

  The air cools with each step, and since I’m all sweaty from moving the contents of our entire life, my arms become clammy in the summer heat and I shiver. The stale smell worsens. The only light comes through the open door above.

  I take a deep breath when my foot finally hits the bottom. It’s just a basement.

  Shannon places the large box on the floor and disappears into the darkness.

  “Shannon, where…?” I keep to the lit area by the base of the stairs.

  Four long seconds tick by, and then the basement is filled with harsh fluorescent light.

  “Found the switch.” She grins at me from across the room. I blink, and as my eyes adjust, I glance around. It’s actually not as bad as I’d imagined. Just scuffed laminate floors and terrible wood-paneled walls. It looks like someone was trying to make a hangout down here and gave up. The fake-wood floor squares are coming up at the edges.

  “See, not a murder basement,” she tells me. “Unless they were trying to murder good taste.”

  “Sure, because no one could possibly bury a body and then put down cheap flooring. And why d
idn’t you turn on the light upstairs?” I ask.

  “That switch doesn’t work, dummy.” She returns to the large box she hauled down here.

  “What a surprise,” I say, licking my dry lips. “Dummy,” I add halfheartedly, more because she called me a dummy first than out of any malice.

  “Ha ha.” Shannon pulls out a box cutter and expertly slices open the tape on the box.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “Dehumidifier,” Shannon answers, removing the appliance and plugging it in. She pushes a few buttons and it whirrs to life, the fan working at top speed.

  “Will that thing make it smell less like ass down here?” I ask.

  “That’s the plan. And I think it’s supposed to help with the mold problem.”

  Great. Not only are the electrics faulty, but there’s also mold.

  “I left a spray bottle of bleach water upstairs by the door. Why don’t you grab it and give any mold spots a good squirt?”

  “Okay, Mom,” I say. Shannon probably looked at me the day I was born and thought, Great, someone to boss around.

  “Hey, it’s that or moving more boxes. Take your pick.”

  I sigh. Great. Squirting mold. This day just keeps getting better and better.

  * * *

  I walk a circle around the basement, avoiding stepping on the numerous black stains where the floor meets the wall. I turn my head, point the bottle, and squeeze the trigger, hoping I’m not inhaling dangerous mold spores along with the vaporized bleach. I’ll probably get asthma or lung cancer and be able to rub it in my parents’ faces for moving me to Gladwell, Wisconsin, and ruining my life. Even the name makes me want to vomit. Gladwell.

  I find more mold spots every few feet. There is definitely a major leak somewhere in the basement. “I hope Mom and Dad know what they’re getting into,” I say to Shannon, who is still fiddling with the dehumidifier, doing something with a hose now. “Even if this place is way cheaper than our condo in the city, it’s going to take a ton of money to fix it up.”

  “You know, they probably didn’t even think about that…them being idiots and all,” Shannon tells me in her big-sister-knows-everything sarcastic voice.

  “I’m just saying….” I come to the bottom of the stairs. There’s a door with a rusted padlock. “Hey, what’s in here?”

  “Not sure.” Shannon comes to my side. “It’s locked.”

  “I can see that,” I tell her. I reach out and tug on it.

  “Haley, you’re not going to pry it off with your bare hands….”

  The lock pulls loose; the brackets fall from the crumbling wood to the floor.

  She blinks hard. “Okay, I guess I was wrong.”

  “What was that?” I ask her. “It sounded like you said you were wrong.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “No, really. This is a momentous occasion. Please, Shannon, can you say it one more time for the record? You were…what?”

  “I was about to think my little sister was cool for the first time ever, but she ruined that right away.” We both stand in front of the flimsy door until Shannon finally says, “Well, open it, muscles.” Shannon is tall and blond and looks like a Viking, where I take after Dad’s mom, Grandma Lihn. Petite. And dark.

  I reach for the hole in the wood door where the lock was and pray I don’t get a splinter. I put what little strength I have into prying the panel open. The metal hinges groan in protest. Stale air rushes into my face, and I cover my mouth and nose with my arm too late to avoid the stench.

  I let out a long series of coughs. “I guess we found where the smell is coming from.”

  “There better not actually be a body down here,” Shannon says. She’s pulled her shirt up to cover her nose and looks majorly pissed.

  We peer inside. The only thing in the closet is a large wooden box with a reddish finish. I give it a tentative kick. It seems pretty solid, not about to disintegrate or anything.

  She pulls her shirt off her face. “It’s a hope chest,” she tells me. “Grandma Beth had one.” My mom’s mom.

  “Yeah, well, I hope there’s something good in there.”

  “Nothing good could smell that bad.”

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” I ask.

  “Hey, you found it. There could be some creepy old doll in there. You open it, Haley.”

  I know she’s teasing me. She’s not really afraid. The only thing she’s scared of is injuring herself and losing her soccer scholarship to the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

  I move closer to the chest. The space under the stairs is cramped and damp. The latch is old but not locked. Rust flakes away as I force it open. I scrape my knuckles on the rough metal. “Great, now I need a tetanus shot,” I mutter as I push open the lid. It falls back with a loud thud, hitting the back wall in a cloud of dust.

  Shannon lets out a little snort. “It’s just a bunch of junk,” she says, riffling inside. “Maybe there’s something valuable we can sell.” She pulls out a ring and tries to shove it onto her finger. “Too small.” She shrugs and hands it to me.

  It’s tarnished, so I clean it on my shirt and then hold it up to the light. It’s gold with a pearl inset, small and unassuming. It fits perfectly on my finger. I smirk. Sometimes being petite is awesome.

  “Look, there’s a blue ribbon. You should wear that too,” she tells me, moving out of the way slightly so I can look. There’s not much in the chest, just a few items on the bottom that were probably forgotten when the old owners moved out. Or when they died.

  There’s a small, sparkly wallet clutch, covered with fake diamonds, and, yes, a blue ribbon.

  I frown. “I don’t want to wear an old ratty ribbon. Also, I’m not three.”

  “I think it’s silk, and it’s not even that worn. And look, it matches your eyes.” She thrusts it at me. Shannon got Mom’s blond hair, but I got her deep blue eyes. I tie the ribbon around my hairband, which is keeping my long hair in a neat ponytail.

  “Anything else good?” I ask, reaching in. My arms barely scrape the bottom, but my fingers clasp a chain. I pull it up and hold it in the light: a necklace. The pendant is a sneaker with little wings. “Want it?”

  “I’m too old for that,” she tells me. But she slips it over her head anyway and grins. “We’d better get back upstairs before Mom and Dad have a fit.”

  I groan. The movers we hired to help us unload got held up, so we’ve been on hard labor since dawn. It was bad enough hauling everything out of the condo and loading it into the freight elevator, but this new ginormous house has a bazillion stairs.

  “Moving boxes is a great workout,” Shannon says.

  “Workout?” I say, scrunching my face as if I’ve never heard the word before.

  She rolls her eyes. “How are you my sister? Race you outside!” she shouts suddenly, and runs to the stairs, taking them two at a time. I shuffle after her.

  “Get the light!” she calls from the top, probably already out the door and lifting boxes above her head like she’s Wonder Woman. I debate leaving it on. I mean, we’re going to have to bring more stuff down here—even though we don’t have a lot of crap for storage, I’m sure we’ll have to stow some Christmas boxes—but then I’d have to listen to Shannon lecture me about wasting electricity, and I’m really not in the mood.

  I head to the far wall and flick the switch. The basement is bathed in darkness except for the patch of light from upstairs. It’s distressing; even though I know that turning off a light means it will be dark, it’s still a bit of a shock. I can’t help but shiver. Did it just get colder in here?

  I take a step, then another. There’s not a lot down here to trip over, but all I need is to kick the dehumidifier. I walk slowly, putting my hands in front of me, trying to feel for any obstacles between me and the dimly lit stairs.

  I take ano
ther step toward the stairs but stop suddenly when I hear a scratching noise behind me. Great; we also have mice. I’m not afraid of creepy-crawlers, like some people are, but I don’t want to live with them either. The scraping noise gets louder, and I feel something brush my leg.

  I nearly jump out of my skin, letting out a startled scream. I make it to the soft wash of light streaming down from upstairs and let out a short laugh. Shannon is right. I am such a baby. It’s just a mouse. I actually think rodents are kind of cute. I had a pet rat named Mickey when I was nine. I’ll tell Dad to get some of those catch-and-release traps….

  But then my laugh echoes back at me, low and gentle, from across the basement. I can’t move, can’t breathe.

  In the little closet under the stairs, the wooden chest’s lid snaps shut. The noise is like a gun firing, and it’s just what I need to break my paralysis. I rush up the stairs and out the front door, not stopping until I get to the moving van.

  My heart is pumping harder than it ever has in my life, and my limbs feel light and tingly. I put my hands on my knees and gasp for breath.

  When I look up, Shannon and Dad are staring at me.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” my mom says, coming up between them. My mom’s not short, but they both tower over her. “Are you okay?”

  “She’s scared of the basement,” Shannon tells them. “You know how Haley is.”

  My parents nod, and I bristle at Shannon’s brush-off. But then I let out a shaky laugh. I got myself all worked up over nothing. A drafty basement with a weird echo. I laugh again. Can you scare yourself to death? Shannon would love that. She’d never let me hear the end of it. She’d probably mock my ghost for all eternity. If ghosts actually existed, that is.