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  PROLOGUE

  Warm wind whistled through the palm trees that surrounded the old man’s carving studio. Chunks of fresh coconut lay on his worktable, where his large, leathered hands slowly and carefully moved a small knife across the surface of a piece of wood, stained red. He was creating something from nothing, giving life and a soul to a piece of wood. Making it into something else, something powerful . . . a mask.

  The old man had worked for several days, stopping only to rest on a mat on the ground, eat the food his visitor brought him, and chant his prayers. At night, far-off drumbeats sounded, and moonlight shone through the tiny openings in his palm-frond roof.

  All the while, his visitor quietly observed, sitting in a corner of the hut and asking questions now and again, scribbling the answers in his little notebook.

  “What kind of wood is that?” the visitor asked.

  “Teak,” the old man said.

  “How did you learn to carve this way?”

  “My father taught me,” the old man said. “Me and my brothers at same time.”

  “What special powers will this mask have?”

  “It will keep evil spirits and demons away from a home.”

  “Who will the mask belong to?” the visitor asked.

  The old man smiled. “To you, my guest,” he said. “It will be a gift to you.”

  The visitor put his hand on his own chest in gratitude, as if touching his heart. He had just hoped to observe the mask-maker. Now he was being given a great honor.

  The mask-maker began to carve the eyes. He had saved them for last. He used a special tool, and hummed as he cut the eyes from the wood. Wood shavings fell to the ground below, quickly blending in with the grains of sand. They were now one with the earth.

  Once the eyeholes were big enough, the old man put down his knife. He studied his work. The face he had created was contorted into a grimace with a furrowed brow. Its smile was wide and toothy, its nose long and beaklike. The expression carved in the wood was both angry and worried.

  Now it was time to give the mask its powers. The old man picked up a small worn glass bottle from his worktable. He poured a bit of oil from the bottle onto his hands and rubbed them together carefully but briskly, until the oil was warm between his palms. Then he lovingly massaged the oil onto the mask, chanting quietly. When he was done, he closed his eyes and held the mask in both hands and sat silently for a few minutes. He could feel the mask’s power growing, coming alive.

  Then the old man proudly turned the mask around to face his visitor, so the visitor could see it too. The visitor smiled and nodded. He wasn’t just being polite; he was clearly impressed. And then . . .

  Snap! Click! Flash! Snap! Click! Flash! The sound and light from the visitor’s camera filled the quiet, shady studio. The old man stared hard at his visitor and spoke each of his next words as if each were an ax chopping through wood:

  “No photos. Not of the mask. Ever.”

  Snap! Click! Flash! The visitor did not stop taking photographs. The old man growled another warning.

  “Do not make me ask you again!” His voice was low and rumbly, like thunder. “Capturing the mask has terrible consequences.”

  Again: Snap! Click! Flash!

  The old man threw the mask down onto the sandy floor as though it burned him to the touch. He stood up at his carving table, held up one leathered hand, and knocked his supplies onto the floor. “I warned you, but you did not listen,” he bellowed. “You have summoned evil. The Booga spirit has been awakened.”

  He lunged for the visitor’s camera and grabbed ahold of its strap. Then he banged it again and again onto his empty worktable. The lens cracked, and several black plastic pieces broke off, sinking into the sandy floor.

  The visitor stared, shocked. Without another word, the old man stomped out of the hut and into the bright sunlight, leaving the mask behind.

  The visitor reached down to pull the mask from the sand, and held it in his hands. Sand clung to the wet oil on the mask. The visitor sat down again, back in his corner of the hut. He set the mask on the ground once more and put his head in his hands. What had he done?

  CHAPTER 1

  Jasmine Porter always read before she went to sleep. It felt great to slip into bed, turn on the reading light clipped to her headboard, and open a book. It was like entering another world. And she usually fell asleep while reading.

  Tonight Jasmine would start a book her dad had bought her on one of their father-daughter book-buying sprees before he went off on his latest trip. They always went to the same neighborhood bookstore, Bookworm, and her dad always said the same thing: “Pick out what you want, Jazzy-Jas.” And he really meant it. Jasmine could choose twenty books, and her dad wouldn’t even blink in surprise. He’d just smile, take them from her, and plop them down at the register.

  “Really?” she’d sometimes say when she’d gone on a particularly large binge. “I can have all of them?”

  And her dad would always say the same thing: “You can’t put a price on the pleasure that reading gives.”

  It was true: they both loved to read. Sometimes they would sit on the couch for hours, both immersed in their own books, and not say a word to each other. The only sound in the room would be of pages turning.

  That’s what it was like as Jasmine lay in bed reading. It was just her breathing and the sound of pages turning. The bulb of her reading lamp was so bright, she could actually feel its heat. After a few chapters, Jasmine’s eyes grew heavy, her grip on the book started to loosen, and she knew she should close it, turn off the reading light, put the book on the night table, and face the truth: she would finally have to give in to sleep.

  Jasmine reached up and turned off the reading light, but instead of going dark, the room was still bright. Jasmine looked up and noticed that the overhead light was on. She got out of bed and walked, bleary-eyed, toward the light switch next to the door, and flicked the switch.

  But as the room went dark, Jasmine quickly realized that she should have turned the reading light back on first, because now it was pitch-black, unless you counted the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, which didn’t exactly provide any real light (though they were pretty). Where was the little night-light that was plugged into the outlet? It usually gave off a soft glow and made Jasmine feel so much better.

  As much as she hated to admit it, Jasmine was afraid of the dark. And she really liked that night-light. It was made of orange and yellow glass and shaped like a baby owl, and she’d had it since she herself was a baby. The bulb must’ve burned out, she thought. The last few times that had happened, she’d called out to her dad, who had come in and changed the bulb. But her dad was still away on his trip, and Jasmine was alone in the house with her grandmother, who Jasmine knew would already be asleep.

  Jasmine sighed. It seemed like her dad was always gone at the wrong times.

  Sometimes he would try to talk to her about his having to travel a lot for work, as if he was fishing for her real feelings about him being gone. “Did you have any dreams while I was away?” he’d ask, as if that would give him some clue to her deepest thoughts. Or he’d say, “When I was your age, I hated it when my mom went back to work and left me home alone a lot.” It was like he expected Jasmine to immediately join the conve
rsation and confess her true feelings.

  And Jasmine just wasn’t going to do that. She also wasn’t going to tell her dad how scared she still was of the dark, or about the little rituals she believed kept her safe at night. Every night for the past three years, she’d whispered, “You’re okay,” to herself three times and made sure the covers were pulled up all the way to her ears before she would close her eyes. She also wasn’t going to tell him she thought that maybe he’d traveled the world enough, and that maybe it was time to stay put and be a real parent, like, full time, no joke.

  So whenever her dad tried to start a conversation like this, Jasmine pretended she was someone else—someone who didn’t care. And she’d shrug or roll her eyes.

  Now Jasmine stood in the dark at the light switch. She could turn the overhead light back on, walk to the bed, flick on the reading light, and then come back. But that would set her back from falling asleep. No, she could do this.

  Jasmine tried to let her eyes adjust to the dark so she could see a tiny bit, just so she could make her way back to bed without tripping and falling on her face. And, of course, so that she could keep a close eye on the closet as she passed. Because the idea of something being in that closet—something that was going to get her—was so real to Jasmine that she feared it deep in her bones.

  “The bogeyman” didn’t quite do it justice, nor did “monster.” Both names sounded childish compared to what she actually feared.

  When she was younger, she’d made her dad check the closet before she’d gone to sleep. He’d always reassure her that there was no such thing as the bogeyman, and that there were no monsters in the closet. Jasmine’s dad always humored her by opening the closet door and looking around first. But now that she was older, she was embarrassed to ask him to check. Still, she was too afraid to check herself. Instead she settled for staring at the closet door, making sure it didn’t creak open and release some horrible, evil . . . thing.

  The basic outline of the room was starting to reveal itself to Jasmine’s tired, anxious eyes. The light creeping in from the hallway was helping a bit. Jasmine knew it was time to walk past the closet and jump quickly into bed. She tentatively crept forward, still afraid of tripping in her messy room. One foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, she chanted in her head. She kept her eyes on that closet door, as if by sheer will she could keep it closed and keep herself safe from whatever was inside.

  It felt like forever, but Jasmine finally made it back to her bed. And there she was, standing at the side of it, ready to crawl under the covers to safety, when suddenly she felt something grab her around her left ankle.

  A cold, slimy grip. It felt like something between a hand and a claw. And then it began to pull, hard.

  Jasmine struggled desperately to keep her balance. The thing wanted to drag her under the bed. And no matter how hard she tried, Jasmine couldn’t keep her footing. She lost her balance and fell to the floor.

  Then the actual dragging began. A force much stronger than she thought possible was pulling her. It was like the time she had been swimming in the ocean and gotten sucked under the waves. But that time her dad had been there to pull her back to safety. Jasmine focused on that memory, rather than the feel of the rough carpet burning her leg as she was dragged under the bed.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jasmine’s head bolted up off her pillow. Though she was covered in blankets, she was cold. She slowly realized she was covered in something else. Sweat. Yuck. She looked at the clock on her bedside table: 4:25. The little blue numbers glowed innocently, bringing Jasmine back to the real world. “It was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream,” Jasmine repeated in a hoarse whisper. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  She settled back down and closed her eyes. There has to be a word for this moment, she thought. The moment you realize that the something terrible that just happened was only in a dream. Relief didn’t quite seem to cover the joy Jasmine felt at being free from that slimy grasp. As her terror slowly faded, her sleek black cat, Momo, jumped onto the bed and curled up against Jasmine’s leg. It was the cat version of a comforting hug. His purring was like a lullaby that miraculously put her right back to sleep.

  The next time Jasmine opened her eyes, it was to the beep beep of the alarm and sunlight filling her room. Once she turned off the alarm, she even heard birds chirping outside. It was as though the darkness of night had never been scary, and nothing would ever be scary again. If only!

  Jasmine sighed and swung her legs onto the floor. The day had officially begun. Time to shower.

  As she stood under the hot water and woke up more, she began to remember her nightmare in detail. She closed her eyes and imagined washing the nightmare away. But no matter how hard she scrubbed with the bar of soap, the unease clung to her like a layer of dirt.

  At least it was Friday. Her best friend since preschool, Lisa, would be sleeping over tonight. They had sleepovers almost every Friday night, either at Jasmine’s house or Lisa’s. It was easy, because Lisa lived right down the street. The two girls lived in the same New Orleans neighborhood. Jasmine loved her city—everywhere you went you heard music and laughter and you smelled delicious food cooking. That was especially true of Jasmine’s own house. Her grandmother was famous around the neighborhood for her jambalaya, a spicy rice and sausage dish. Whenever her grandmother made it, she always cooked enough for all the neighbors.

  Momo used his nose to poke the bathroom door open and keep Jasmine company as she combed her wet hair. “Hello, little panther,” said Jasmine. Momo was sleek and beautiful, and he reminded Jasmine of a black panther she had seen in a nature show on television. Just a few years ago she had even imagined that he was secretly just a panther cub and one day he’d be huge. But Momo was just an ordinary, skinny black cat, though he was very sweet. “Silly panther baby,” she laughed as Momo jumped onto the tub and began lapping at the drops of water still dripping from the faucet. He did that all the time.

  Jasmine’s grandmother was at the kitchen table with her coffee when Jasmine came downstairs.

  “Hi, Nana,” Jasmine greeted her as she spread butter on the toast that Nana had put out for her. Nana never seemed to eat breakfast; she just drank coffee. Or maybe she ate after Jasmine left. Jasmine didn’t know. In any case, she usually sat with Nana in the morning before school, just the two of them, because Jasmine’s dad traveled a lot.

  Like, a lot. In fact, traveling was his actual job—he was a travel writer. He wrote magazine articles about the places he’d visited. And it seemed like he’d been just about everywhere. “On assignment” was what he called it. A magazine would assign him an article about a certain place and off he’d fly.

  As much as Jasmine missed her dad, she did enjoy her time with Nana. Nana cracked Jasmine up. She was full of superstitions, like “If you have a headache, tap your head three times with a potato”; “Make a wish on a quarter moon”; or “Wear a safety pin on your collar for good luck.” Jasmine didn’t know where any of this came from, but it was what made Nana, Nana. Nana was a little spacey, but she was very loving. Plus, she made yummy food.

  “I hope I told you,” Jasmine said to Nana, putting down her toast and beginning to unpeel a banana. “Or maybe Dad told you before he left. Lisa’s sleeping over tonight, okay?”

  “Of course, dear.” Nana smiled. “Lisa is family.”

  It was true. “Like peanut butter and jelly,” her dad would say sometimes when looking at them together.

  “Or red beans and rice,” Lisa would add. That was her favorite food. Jasmine had to agree—she and Lisa went together so well, it was like they were made to be best friends.

  There was only one thing about Lisa that Jasmine didn’t like, and it had developed pretty recently. It was Lisa’s new obsession with ghost stories. She read every scary book she could get her hands on and always wanted to talk about them with Jasmine. Lisa just seemed to love scary stuff, while Jasmine would just as soon never he
ar the words haunted or ghost ever.

  And Lisa had started really creeping Jasmine out when they were sleeping at Jasmine’s house. During the last few sleepovers, Lisa had told Jasmine there were “cold spots” in the house—random areas that never heated up even when the heat was fully on. Jasmine had never noticed them before, but now she did, of course. Also, whenever they heard a strange noise, Lisa would raise her eyebrows triumphantly as if to say, See? Ghosts!

  Lisa knew very little about Jasmine’s fears of the dark or ghosts or the bogeyman under the bed or monsters in the closet or pretty much everything else that went bump in the night. If Lisa did know, she wouldn’t be torturing Jasmine like this. But Jasmine didn’t want to admit her fears to anyone—not even her best friend—because in the light of day she knew that they were just that: fears in her head. Not real.

  So far, Jasmine had been able to ignore Lisa when she got into one of her ghostly moods. She figured that if she didn’t respond, Lisa would eventually stop. Like if you had a roaring fire in the fireplace, but you wanted it to go out, you wouldn’t add any more logs to it. As Jasmine sat and finished her breakfast, she silently hoped that Lisa wouldn’t add any more fuel to the fire tonight.

  CHAPTER 3

  On the bus to school, Jasmine began to relax for the first time all morning. School would be bright, crowded, and predictable. Just what Jasmine needed. But as she looked out the window, she replayed the dream in her head. She didn’t want to do this, but she couldn’t help herself.

  It was as if the nightmare were a ghost haunting her brain. She tried to think about happy things, like how her dad was coming home tomorrow or how Lisa would be sleeping over tonight and they would watch a movie (and it would not be a scary one, if Jasmine had anything to do with it).

  Jasmine was glad when the bus pulled up to the big sign in front of her school: MONROE MIDDLE SCHOOL: THE PRIDE OF NEW ORLEANS.