Excerpt from ONCE THEY SEE YOU by Holiday House

illustrated by

HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Printed and bound in June 2024 at Sheridan Press, Chelsea, MI USA

The artwork was created with Ink, pen, pencil, bleach and collage on Canson Aquarelle watercolour and A3 heavyweight cartridge papers, with a sprinkling of pixels. www.holidayhouse.com

Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Allen, Josh, author. | Coleman, Sarah (Sarah Jane), illustrator.

Title: Once they see you : 13 stories to shiver and shock / by Josh Allen ; illustrated by Sarah J Coleman.

Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, 2024.

Audience: Ages 9–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: “A collection of thirteen scary stories with shocking twists on everyday reality, from an innocent set of dark, dusty basement stairs to a piano recital that requires unusual sacrifices”— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023034674 | ISBN 9780823456321 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Horror tales, American. | Children’s stories, American.

CYAC: Horror stories. | Short stories. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A4387 On 2024 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034674

ISBN: 978-0-8234-5632-1 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-8234-5927-8 (e-book)

For Rick Margolis

ETHAN had always believed in the Night Things. He had never seen one or heard one. But he knew they were there. Under his bed. In his closet. Tucked behind the corner of his dresser.

They were the reason he hated switching off his bedroom light at the end of each day.

Because once he did, he had to sprint in absolute darkness to his bed and bury himself under the covers before any of the Night Things could slither out from their hiding places and come for him.

True, the distance between his light switch and his bed was only about eight feet, but the Night Things, Ethan knew, were fast.

And they were waiting.

They were always waiting.

So each night, when Ethan fipped the switch and darkness took over, that space of eight feet might as well have been eight miles— eight miles of enemy territory.

At least, that’s how it felt to Ethan.

Night after night, he bolted across his pitch-dark bedroom with perfect, blazing speed. Because if he didn’t . . . if he moved too slowly . . . or tripped . . .

Well . . .

That’s what he’d believed, anyway—what he’d always believed.

At bedtime, he was like a whizzing bandit streaking from his light switch to his bed in the perfect pitch-black of night. Here is how he did this:

STEP 1: Before ficking off his light, he’d stand as far as he could from his light switch and reach back with one arm. He’d keep one fnger, his middle one—the longest— on the switch. This would put him a fraction of an inch closer to his bed, a fraction of an inch closer to safety. And with the Night Things, every millisecond counted.

STEP 2: He’d map out the path to his bed, scanning the gray carpet for obstacles, and he’d imagine taking the necessary steps—leaping over the dirty T-shirt there, landing with his right foot on the rug just there, and then jumping and twisting and coming down onto his bed where he’d whip the covers over his head like a protective shield. He’d stand at the light switch and picture this over and over, like mental practice.

STEP 3: He’d breathe, and he’d start counting down.

Three. Two. One.

STEP 4: He’d blast off. Like lightning, he’d fip the switch and act out his plan— over the dirty T-shirt, right foot on the rug, leap, land, covers, breathe, and . . . safe.

He’d done it this way for years. Every single night. It was part of his bedtime routine, like changing into his pajama pants or brushing his teeth.

But one night, the night before his eleventh birthday, Ethan positioned himself at the light switch, like he always did, and he reached back with his longest middle fnger, like he always did.

Then he planned his route. (Watch out for that skateboard. Don’t trip on that backpack.)

He began his countdown.

Three. Two. One.

But he didn’t fick the switch.

Hang on, he thought.

He let his arms fall to his sides.

Just twenty minutes earlier, his mother had carried his birthday presents, wrapped in bright blue paper, into the living room. She’d set them on the couch for him to open frst thing in the morning, and she’d looked at him.

“Eleven years old,” she’d said. “My boy is not so little anymore!”

Not so little anymore.

Next to the light switch, Ethan blinked. He looked at his feet, his gray carpet, his bed eight feet away.

His mother’s words echoed in his head.

In a few hours, he’d be eleven.

How long was he going to keep darting across his bedroom in the perfect pitch-black of night? Till he was twelve? Fifteen? In college?

He scanned his room—the space under his bed, the crack at the bottom of his closet door, the shadow beside his dresser.

He thought of the Night Things. If he was too slow, they would come for him, wouldn’t they?

He’d believed that.

He’d always believed that.

But on this night—the night before his eleventh birthday— he held his breath and listened. .

There was nothing.

No hissing. No shifting in the closet. No faint breathing. In his room, he was alone. Completely alone.

The Night Things, he told himself. They’re not real. And just like that, he knew he was right.

He felt, all at once, like he was growing up, right there in front of his light switch.

Not so little anymore.

There were no Night Things! He knew that with complete certainty. He almost laughed. Because there never had been any Night Things!

So there was no reason to stretch his arm, no reason to fick the light switch with his longest middle fnger, no reason to plan a speedy route across his foor.

No reason to run.

I’m fne, he told himself. Everything is fne.

Then he made up a new bedtime routine. A bedtime routine for someone who was not so little anymore:

STEP 1: He would reach toward the bedroom wall, casually, and fick the light switch with the side of his hand.

STEP 2: He would stand in the darkness and wait for his eyes to adjust.

STEP 3: He would make his way slowly, carelessly across the carpet, maybe bumping into a basketball or a stack of books along the way.

STEP 4: He would settle onto his bed and lie on top of his covers, his arms spread wide.

Because he was safe, he told himself.

And he always had been.

Ethan took a deep breath. Then he started his new plan. He did not look around his room. He did not scan the route to his bed or check the crack at the bottom of his closet door. He did not even start a countdown. He just ficked the light, waited a few seconds, and began the silent, pitch-black stroll to his bed.

Not so little anymore, he thought one last time. Just then, something in the darkness shifted. There was a bump. Followed by a low hiss.

Ethan stopped.

Prickles rose on his neck. Dark shadows shifted on the foor.

The walls seemed to close in.

And Ethan knew:

This was the moment the Night Things had been waiting for.

This precise moment.

In their hiding places, they had been patient. So patient. Night after night, they’d waited for Ethan to grow up, just a little, and to stop running.

And now, fnally, he had.

The hairs on Ethan’s arms stood up. The temperature in the room seemed to drop at least ten degrees.

Five feet from his bed, Ethan tried to bolt.

But he had no plan.

No path.

No routine.

Darkness pressed in.

He leaped for his bed, but he came down on a skateboard.

He stumbled. He staggered. He fell. He landed on the foor with a thump.

Then, with ferocious speed, the Night Things came.

I’LL tell you what I hate about being the middle child.

It’s like I’m invisible.

It’s like there are these two people around me all the time—my “cool” older brother and my “adorable” little sister—who everyone thinks are way more interesting than me.

Take Michael. Whenever he does anything, and I mean anything, he’s always the frst kid in our family to do it. Like when he went on his frst date a few months ago. You should have seen the way Mom and Dad scrambled to take pictures as he was leaving. They got a shot of him walking out the front door, a shot of him stepping off the porch, and a shot of him climbing into his Jeep.

They even got a shot of him backing out of the driveway.

It’s been like that Michael’s whole life—his frst birthday, his frst soccer game, his frst everything. My parents have, like, an entire hard drive of pictures dedicated entirely to Michael’s frsts.

Then there’s my little sister, Harper.

She’s fve, and Mom’s always reminding Dad that Harper’s the last kid, so they need to treasure every milestone.

That’s the exact expression Mom uses.

“Treasure every milestone.”

Apparently, “treasuring” means displaying every single

one of Harper’s kindergarten art projects wherever there’s space. On our refrigerator. On the living room mantle. On the downstairs bookshelves. It’s like our home is being slowly redecorated by a fve-year-old interior designer. Everywhere you look, it’s nothing but fnger paintings and crayon drawings and pieces of cardboard with glued-on bits of colored macaroni.

Stuck in the middle of all this is . . . me.

I’m Austin. The Middle Child.

Austin the Unheard.

Austin the Unseen.

Everything I do feels like no big deal because either 1) Michael has already done it, or 2) Harper’s going to do it in just a few years.

So it’s like I said. Invisible.

Take what happened last week when we went out to dinner at Michael’s favorite restaurant, The Golden Dragon. It was Mom, Dad, Michael, Harper, and me. The whole family. We’d just fnished up our Sweet and Sour Pork and Moo Goo Gai Pan and Chicken Lo Mein when our server, a teenage girl with curly black hair, brought fortune cookies over on a silver tray. She set them down right in front of— surprise, surprise—Michael. Then she smiled at him and kind of stared at him too.

Of course, I thought.

The thing about Michael is he really is cool, in a messy-haired-dark-eyed kind of way that people notice.

Especially teenage girls with names like Alexis and Sophia and McKenzie.

I checked our server’s name tag. It read, “Hailey.” Close enough.

Michael smiled back at her.

When she walked off, he grabbed one of the cookies from the silver tray. He cracked it open, fshed a slip of paper out, and unfolded it.

“Oh, sweet!” he said. “ ‘Financial prosperity is in your future.’ ” He held up his fortune and pointed at the words as if we needed proof they were really there.

“Nice!” said Dad.

“Good for you!” said Mom.

I wanted to remind my family that fortunes weren’t real. I mean, they were just words inside a cookie. But I stayed quiet.

Then Mom picked up a fortune cookie and handed it to Harper.

“Your turn, honey,” she said. Harper was scribbling with crayons on the kids’ menu she’d been handed when we frst walked in. The menu had a big dragon on it, and I’d reminded Harper that the restaurant we were in was called The Golden Dragon, but she’d colored her dragon blue.

Mom helped Harper crack her cookie open and pull out the slip of paper.

“Harper’s fortune says,” Mom spoke in a singsong voice, “ ‘You will soon take an exciting trip’!” Mom clapped twice. “Oh, that sounds fun!”

This time, I spoke up.

“Um, she’s fve. Where’s she going to go?” I asked.

No one responded. No one even looked my way. Dad started scanning the bill. Mom started feeding Harper pieces of fortune cookie. And next to me, Michael was looking at . . . I turned . . . the curly-haired server. Hailey. Of course.

Like I said. Invisible.

There were three fortune cookies left. Mom and Dad never took theirs. They always said that desserts without chocolate “weren’t real desserts.”

I reached for my cookie, pausing with my hand over the tray. I knew the fortunes weren’t real. Just words inside a cookie. Still, I wanted a good one.

My whole family stood up and started walking away. Mom took Harper’s hand and tucked the colored kids’ menu into her purse so she could hang Harper’s blue dragon over the piano or somewhere when we got home, and Dad walked to the cash register to pay the bill. Michael pulled out his phone and headed toward Hailey. Probably to get her number.

Just like that, I was alone at the table.

This was The Middle Child’s Curse.

Over the years, my family had left me behind at movie theaters and gas stations, and they’d forgotten to pick me up from school and soccer practice. One time, they even abandoned me in a grocery store. For thirty whole minutes!

I grabbed one of the cookies, the one farthest away from

me. With my luck, that’s where I fgured the best fortune would be.

I broke it open and unfolded the little slip. Please be something good, I thought.

But when I looked down, my fortune was . . . blank. Totally blank.

I turned it over. I squinted.

There was nothing on my slip of paper. Not The Golden Dragon’s logo. Not faded ink. Nothing.

What a rip-off. I let out a puff of air. I thought about waving Hailey over to complain, but she was leaning against a counter and smiling at Michael, who was entering something into his phone.

How did a blank slip of paper end up in my fortune cookie?

It had to be a mistake. Like, maybe the restaurant’s printer had run out of ink and no one had noticed?

I looked around. The other customers in The Golden Dragon were still eating their dinners. None of them had fortune cookies yet.

Michael fnished talking to Hailey. Dad signed the receipt. Mom and Harper headed for the door. None of them even noticed that I wasn’t standing up.

A hollow hole seemed to open in my chest. In the exact center of it. It was the size of a golf ball. It felt like an emptiness, an invisibility, a blankness.

Like the blankness on my fortune.

I thought about what might happen if I stayed at that table. How long would it take for my family to notice I wasn’t with them? Would they fgure it out before they started our van? Before they left the parking lot? Before they got home?

I decided I didn’t want to fnd out. So instead of grabbing one of the other cookies, Mom’s or Dad’s, and trying for a “real” fortune, I stood up and hustled for the exit. On my way, I dropped the slip of paper—my crumpled, blank, invisible fortune—into the garbage by The Golden Dragon’s door.

In the parking lot, Mom, Dad, Michael, and Harper were already loaded into the van. They’d closed the doors and were buckling into their seats.

Mom was even putting the van into gear.

I grabbed one of the van’s doors and slung it open. It made a sliding, whooshing sound.

My whole family looked up.

Their eyes widened as if to say, Oh, yeah. You.

I climbed in and started fumbling with my seatbelt.

Invisible, I thought.

After school the next day, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my algebra homework when Michael burst through the front door. His face was red, and his eyes were bright and wide.

“You’ll never believe what happened!” he said.

Mom stopped hanging Harper’s latest masterpiece on the wall by the kitchen cabinets. It was a sheet of blue construction paper with cotton balls glued to it.

“I found twenty dollars on the sidewalk!” Michael beamed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the green bill, and held it up. “It was just sitting there in front of our house!”

Michael pointed at the money as if we needed proof that it was really there.

Something about his pose looked familiar. I’d seen Michael do that exact thing before—hold up a piece of paper and point at it.

His fortune, I realized.

Financial prosperity is in your future.

I looked at his twenty-dollar bill.

No way.

Sure, twenty dollars wasn’t that much money. But there Michael was, holding it up and smiling, just a day after his fortune had predicted “fnancial prosperity.”

The hole I’d felt the day before, the one in the center of my chest, seemed to open up again. Only this time it was slightly bigger. Like I’d swallowed a tennis ball.

Just words inside a cookie, I thought.

“Now I can take Hailey to the movies.” Michael waved the money back and forth in celebration. “I’m going to text her.” He stuffed his twenty-dollar bill into his pocket and headed for his room.

I touched a fnger to my forehead.

Michael’s fortune had come true! It really had.

But my fortune had been blank.

Relax, I told myself. Michael’s fortune and the twenty dollars were just coincidences. There was nothing real about fortune cookies.

Besides, Harper’s fortune had to be way off.

You will soon take an exciting trip.

I looked at Harper. She was gazing up at the cotton-ball art Mom had fnished hanging. Every day of her life was the same. She went to kindergarten. She came home. She pulled art projects out of her backpack. And she smiled as each one was given a place of honor.

There was nothing “exciting” about any of that.

So everything was fne.

A few hours later, though, Dad called, “Dinner’s ready!”

I walked into the kitchen.

There, on the table, Dad had set out four place settings.

Four. Not fve.

He’d laid out four plates and four cups and four forks and four knives. They were all set out neatly in the usual spots where Dad and Mom and Michael and Harper sat.

But in front of my seat, at the end of the table, there was nothing.

My spot was blank. Like my fortune.

“Um,” I said.

Dad looked up.

I gestured to my empty spot.

Dad lowered his eyebrows and pursed his lips.

“Austin,” he said. He looked at the table and then back at me. “I must have forgotten to . . .”

He grabbed a plate and a cup from the cupboard and a fork and a knife from the drawer.

“Sorry, Austin,” he said quietly.

I settled into my chair and started eating my chicken pot pie. Each time I blinked, though, I saw, on the backs of my eyelids, a tiny slip of paper. It was blank, empty, like my spot at the kitchen table. On it, where a promising fortune should have been, there was nothing.

Again, I felt that hollowness in my chest.

That hole.

It was as big as a balloon.

Just words inside a cookie.

That’s what I kept telling myself as I lay in bed that night. I wanted it to be true too. But the feeling in my chest seemed to be spreading. To my shoulders and my neck.

Breathe, I told myself.

I mean, my family had forgotten me so many times before— at playgrounds, at school concerts, at clothing

stores. Last year, Dad had forgotten to pick me up from Mateo Hernández’s birthday party, and I’d had to wait on the front porch for over an hour.

This was just The Middle Child’s Curse. That was all. The same stuff probably happened to middle children everywhere.

So my empty place at the dinner table had been an honest mistake. And Michael’s twenty-dollar bill had been a meaningless coincidence. Even my blank fortune— especially my blank fortune—had meant nothing.

Tiny blips. In a long line of middle-child moments. That’s all these things were.

Just words inside a cookie.

The next morning, when I walked into the living room, Harper was wearing a tiara.

It was silver and glittery, and I could tell Mom had bobby-pinned it to Harper’s head.

“What’s up with that?” I pointed.

No one answered. No one even looked up. Dad was reading a book. Michael was tousling his hair. I tried again.

“What’s up with that?” I said a little louder. Finally, Mom turned my way. Just Mom.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s for a feld trip. Harper’s class is going to Castle Storyhold.”

Castle Storyhold.

I knew that place. I’d visited it myself. The kindergarten classes went every year. Castle Storyhold was a fairy-tale amusement park, and the workers all dressed as princesses or peasants or armored knights. You could watch a sword fght there. You could climb around on a giant playground dragon there. You could even drink soda out of a big metal mug called a “stein.”

For a kindergartner, Castle Storyhold was exciting. In the living room, my hands went cold.

You will soon take an exciting trip.

Harper’s fortune.

No, I thought. This couldn’t be happening. Fortune cookies didn’t predict the future. I mean, my fortune had been blank.

Totally blank.

So there was nothing to worry about. Besides, I told myself, even if my fortune did mean something (which it didn’t), it was obvious what that something was.

I was a middle child. I was just going to keep living my middle-child life. I was going to keep attending school, keep coming home, keep playing video games, and keep going to bed. All around me, Michael was going to keep being “cool.” And Harper was going to keep being “adorable.”

But for me, there’d be nothing. I was just going to keep living my ordinary, invisible life.

And what was so bad about that?

So there was no need to panic.

Still, on my walk to school, a question rose in the back of my mind. If my life really was going to keep moving on normally, why didn’t my fortune just say that?

There were so many ways it could have.

Life moves on without changes! Everything proceeds as normal! The future stays the course!

But my fortune didn’t say any of those things.

At school, I took my usual seat in homeroom, and Mr. Lofton started taking attendance. After he called out, “Natalie Moore,” I sat up because my name was next.

That’s how it went. Natalie Moore and then me. Austin Moulton.

But after Natalie Moore answered, “Here,” Mr. Lofton called out, “Jayla Nash.”

“Here,” Jayla called.

I looked around.

Wait, I thought.

Mr. Lofton had skipped me.

I didn’t understand it. Mr. Lofton had taken attendance at the start of every class for fve months. All his students— all twenty-seven of us— could probably have recited the entire class list from memory, from Levi Appel to Heidi Zollinger.

We’d heard him call our names that many times.

But now, right after Mr. Lofton had skipped me, not one of those twenty-seven students had said anything or even turned my way.

When Mr. Lofton fnally called out Heidi Zollinger, she answered, “Here,” and I raised my hand.

“Mr. Lofton,” I said. No response.

“Mr. Lofton,” I said again. Nothing.

“You skipped me, Mr. Lofton,” I called out. He fnally looked up and squinted.

He blinked a few times. “Oh,” he said. Then he looked back down and skimmed the page.

He didn’t seem to be fnding my name.

Had he forgotten who I was? After fve months of school? Finally, I spoke up.

“I’m Austin Moulton,” I said.

At that, Mr. Lofton’s face changed. “Ah, yes, here you are,” he said. “I don’t know how I missed it before.” Then he called out in a bright, clear voice, “Austin Moulton.”

I thought, for what must have been the hundredth time, about my blank fortune.

Usually, it was just my family who treated me like I was invisible—Mom, who was busy with Harper, and Dad, who was recording something important that Michael was doing.

But in my homeroom, everything became suddenly different.

It was like whatever was causing my invisibility—The Middle Child’s Curse or the hollow hole that I suddenly felt stretching into my stomach—was spreading like a disease. And was now affecting other people.

Could invisibility work like that? Could it grow? Could it spread, bit by bit, through your whole life until fnally . . . ?

Mr. Lofton, I realized, was waiting for me to answer his roll call like nothing had happened. So I sat up straight and spoke the same word I’d said dozens of times that year.

Only this time, I said that word differently. I don’t know how, exactly. But the word felt bigger and heavier in my mouth. More important.

“Here,” I said.

Still, a blank fortune fashed in my mind.

I’m here, I thought. ••

Things kept happening that day.

The group I sat with in the cafeteria didn’t look up when I plopped down next to them at our usual table. And not one of them—not Ricky James or DeShawn Stephens— even said hello.

And in English, when Ms. Gaskill passed a stack of handouts down the row I was sitting in, each student took one and passed the stack to the person behind them. But my row

ran out of handouts before the stack got to my seat at the back of the class.

I raised my hand to let Ms. Gaskill know, but she didn’t see me. I stretched my arm high, and I kept my hand raised for two minutes—two whole minutes!—but she never noticed.

Later, in the hallway, Mateo Hernández bumped into me as I was opening my locker, and he said, “Oh, sorry, bro. I didn’t see you there.”

Bro. That’s what Mateo Hernández called me.

We’d known each other since frst grade. We’d played on the same soccer team for three years. And we’d even been to each other’s birthday parties every year since we were six. But he hadn’t used my name.

And his words—I didn’t see you there—thudded in my ears like a drumbeat.

The hole that had been spreading inside me didn’t feel like a hole anymore.

Because now it was almost everywhere. On my shoulders. Down my arms. Between my fngers.

That hole was beginning to feel like . . . me.

••

Later, when I came home from school, Mom, Dad, Michael, and Harper were in the living room. Mom was asking Harper if she’d had any time to make art after her feld trip that day, and Dad was talking to Michael, asking him what movie he was going to see with Hailey.

None of them looked up when I walked through the door. I stood there for a minute, but they didn’t notice me at all.

“Hey,” I said.

No one moved. Michael pulled a movie schedule up on his phone.

“Hey!” I tried again.

Still nothing.

Harper reached into her backpack and pulled out a project she’d made out of toilet paper tubes.

“Oh, that’s lovely!” Mom said.

I waved one hand.

“Look at me!” I called.

No one did.

“Take a picture with Hailey when you’re on your date,” Dad said to Michael, “and text it to me, will you?”

I jumped on the coffee table.

“Why won’t any of you look at me?” I yelled.

No one even turned my way.

“Please!” I used their names. “Mom! Dad! Michael! Harper!”

It made no difference.

The blank, empty feeling had taken me over. I felt it from the top of my head to the ends of my toes.

It seemed to be the only thing I was made of.

So I knew what had happened.

Michael’s fortune had come true.

And Harper’s fortune had come true.

Now, my fortune had come true too. I was fnally, truly the Middle Child. And I would be forever.

Austin the Unseen.

Austin the Unheard. Invisible.