Deadman's Castle Page 12

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t see why he shouldn’t tell you.”

  Mom dialed someone’s number and I thought she would forget all about Sandy’s. But when Dad came home in his clown suit, carrying his big shoes hooked on his fingers, it was the first thing she mentioned. “Igor was asking about a place called Sandy’s,” she said. “Do you remember it?”

  He turned to look at me. “Now why are you thinking of Sandy’s?”

  Through his clown makeup, I couldn’t tell if he was angry or curious, so I just shrugged and gave him my standard answer. “I dunno.”

  “Sandy’s was the little store around the corner from where I grew up. I’ve told you about it. How I thought the old woman who ran it was a witch. How the door used to swing shut like a mousetrap.”

  “I never went there?” I asked.

  “Of course not. You’ve never been within a thousand miles of Sandy’s.” Dad was smiling at his memories. “It’s funny those stories made such an impression on you. Remember what I used to buy there?”

  “Jawbreakers?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “You were the one who liked jawbreakers. I got Popsicles at Sandy’s. Root beer Popsicles.”

  “Yuck!” cried Bumble with her tongue sticking out.

  That made everyone laugh. Except for me.

  So my memory was real, but it wasn’t mine. I had stolen it from my dad and mixed it in with my own, and that made me wonder what else I’d gotten wrong. My memories were like the tombstones in the cemetery, chipped and broken, so jumbled around that they didn’t make sense. Maybe I was trying to connect things that couldn’t be connected.

  THE OLD HOUSE

  Angelo could hardly wait for the end of school and the start of summer vacation. He thought the days were oozing along at slug speed. But for me they were flying past. I loved going to Rutherford B. Hayes, and I wished school would never end.

  It was the last Monday in May when I woke up to a thunderstorm. I heard our quiet little river now roaring along, surging past the house. It had risen by three or four inches overnight, and rain was still falling. The only coat I had was the one I’d worn all winter, so I put it on and slogged to school.

  As I waited for Angelo at Mr. Meanie’s fence, the storm ended with explosions of sunlight and birdsong. Angelo arrived in a yellow raincoat, as dry as a bone underneath it. But I walked into school like a human sponge, dripping water down the hall. Zoe told me, “You need new clothes.”

  “I’ll ask my mom for money,” I said.

  “No, this is an emergency,” said Zoe. “You need them today.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I help out in the store sometimes. I get credit. You can pay me back later.”

  We left right after school, and I didn’t even think about crossing Jefferson until I was already on the other side. With a pang of guilt I remembered what my father had said. We can’t afford to become complacent.

  From a block away, I could see him in his clown suit. So I told Zoe, “Let’s go this way,” and we turned north on the street before Dead End Road. At the Salvation Army, Zoe’s mom sat in the same place. She said hello like we were old friends.

  Zoe bustled up and down the racks picking out clothes. “Try these on,” she told me. “I’ll browse.”

  She left me with a pile of rain jackets and summer things. There were shorts and baseball caps and Hawaiian shirts that I didn’t really like because they made my arms look as thin as spaghetti. Every time I came out of the changing booth to ask “What do you think?” Zoe was in a different place. She sorted through the jeans and dresses, through the jigsaw puzzles and the knickknacks.

  When I stepped out in a pair of brown shorts and a yellow shirt, she glanced at me. “You look SpongeBob SquarePants,” she said. “Now come and see what I found.”

  I went back to the changing booth and put on my old clothes. When I came out I found Zoe sitting on the floor, looking through a shelf of old books.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “City directories,” she said. “You look up an address and you can see who used to live there. It’s like time traveling.”

  She pulled out a book as big as a cinder block. A sparkling cloud of dust rose from the pages as she flipped through them. “This is like forty years ago,” she said. “Most of these people are dead. Everything’s changed, but in the book it stays the same forever.”

  I left the store with a huge bag of clothes hanging over my shoulder. The only thing Zoe got for herself was a tiny silver crucifix.

  We took a back alley from the Salvation Army, walking past garages and garbage cans. I told Zoe, “She’s nice. Your mom.”

  “Yeah, she is,” said Zoe.

  “You don’t look like her.”

  “Why should I?” she said. “I’m adopted.”

  “Huh.” So at least part of Trevis’s story was true.

  I thought that was probably all I’d ever learn about Zoe. She didn’t offer anything else, and suddenly she was gone. Without a word, she’d stopped and let me go on without her. When I looked back, she was opening a gate made of wood and wire.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Going home,” she said. “This is where I live.”

  From the back, the house was a lot like Angelo’s, small and cozy-looking. I thought it was far too ordinary to be a home for Zoe.

  “You want to come inside?” she asked.

  I said, “Sure.”

  She kept the key under a flowerpot on the back porch. I imagined Dad passing out if he saw something like that, but I wished I could live as free from fear as Zoe.

  Her house was stuffed with things that must have come from the Salvation Army. There were racks of tiny spoons, shelves full of old teacups. I counted six clocks just on the way to Zoe’s room.

  Three teddy bears and a little unicorn lay on her bed. For a table she used an old trunk plastered with faded labels. TWA. IMPERIAL LODGE. GRAND HOTEL. There were so many that they overlapped each other. That trunk must have gone around the world a dozen times.

  Zoe took away the things she kept on top—a book, a lamp, a box full of rings and bracelets—and moved them neatly to the floor. Then she crouched beside the trunk to open the latches.

  “I’ve never shown this to anyone,” she said. “Don’t laugh at me, okay?”

  The latches were made of brass that had rusted around the edges. They snapped open with hollow thunking sounds. I leaned forward as Zoe raised the lid.

  I didn’t know what to expect. Tombstone rubbings? A collection of coffin nails? Vampire capes and wooden crosses? I didn’t think anything would surprise me, but I was wrong.

  The trunk was mostly empty. There was a little stack of magazines and a few newspapers wrapped in plastic. Zoe smiled. “They’re all about Kate,” she told me.

  “Who’s Kate?” I asked.

  “Who’s Kate? Only Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge. Only the future Queen of England.”

  I had hurt Zoe’s feelings by not knowing that. I looked over her shoulder at magazines with titles like The Royal Baby and The Royal Wedding, and I had no idea what to say. There was something sad about the collection, the way Zoe kept it so carefully and perfectly arranged. It made me feel embarrassed, like I’d seen her undressing or something.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have shown you,” said Zoe. She closed the trunk but stayed bent over it. “Could you go away, please? I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

  Her hair fell on each side of her neck. I could see her pale skin underneath.

  I didn’t say goodbye. I took my bag of clothes and headed home. But without Zoe to guide me, I didn’t know the way, and I found myself wandering down strange streets without a clue where I was. Purely by accident, I found the house where I’d lived before.

  Like Deadman’s Castle and the hill behind the school, it wasn’t exactly the way I remembered. There were
only two gables. The lawn was tiny. My memories had made everything bigger and grander—except the birdhouse. Instead of the tiny replica I remembered, it was a big, clunky thing that sat crooked on its post.

  A funny feeling ran through me as I stared at the old house. I had walked through that front door. Mom had grown flowers in those window boxes. Dad had pushed a mower back and forth across that lawn. In my mind I could hear its thrumming roar again, and I could smell the fresh-cut grass. There was no doubt in my mind that a policeman the size of a grizzly bear had squeezed through that front door and sat all night in the kitchen.

  Someone else was living there now. I could see an old man peering down at me from an upstairs window, probably wondering what I was doing outside his house.

  I wondered if Dad had made his rules to keep me from finding out that we’d lived here before, and if that was why Mom had acted so strangely in the Buena Vista, and especially on the day we’d first come to Dead End Road. But why would the Protectors send us back to where it all began? It didn’t make sense.

  And where was the Lizard Man?

  FLOWER BOXES

  On Saturday I stuffed my toothbrush in my pocket and walked over to Angelo’s house for our sleepover. But he wasn’t home.

  “Angelo’s gone out,” Mrs. Bonito told me at the door. “He took his big glove. For baseball. He said for you to meet him at the park.”

  When I got there, Angelo and another boy were choosing teams. Kids had lined up on each side of the backstop, and Smasher was asleep behind home plate, curled in a little hole she had dug in the dust.

  “We’ll take Igor,” said Angelo when I was the only one left. I was always the last to be chosen, the only kid who ever did bat flips by mistake.

  I was banished to the wilderness of far left field, where I stood around hoping the ball would never reach me. When I went to bat, someone shouted, “Move in!” and the outfielders came jogging all the way past second base. The pitcher threw easy lobs that were hard to miss. But somehow I managed.

  After a couple of innings I was ready to quit. But the others said, “C’mon, Igor. Don’t give up now.” I figured they wanted me to play for comic relief, but at least I was part of the team.

  Mrs. Bonito made pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning. She piled them into big stacks, like tires in a wrecker’s yard, and covered them with butter and maple syrup. I ate ten of them, and Angelo ate even more.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked when we finished.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

  “We could go to Deadman’s Castle. You can see Smasher do her bloodhound thing.”

  I didn’t think Dad would be working that day, so I didn’t worry too much about crossing Jefferson. I just hunched down and watched for the jelly bean car. Then, safe on the other side, I steered Angelo up and down the side streets until we passed the house where I’d lived before.

  “See that place?” I asked. “I think I used to live there.”

  He grunted.

  “I remember—”

  “You don’t remember anything.” Angelo scowled. “Now quit it, Watson. I’m not kidding. This isn’t funny.”

  We crossed the swinging bridge in silence, but instead of heading straight for Deadman’s Castle we turned to walk beside the river. Once again it was Smasher’s decision. Angelo had put the leash in his pocket so we just followed her.

  She stopped to sniff at every telephone pole, at every tree and fence, then dashed along to the next one. We passed behind a row of businesses. There was a dentist’s office and a drugstore, then a building that looked like a church. Beside a wire fence, a green dumpster overflowed with cardboard boxes.

  As soon as I saw them, I knew they were flower boxes. I remembered their waxy touch, their particular smell of roses and lilies. Even from the street I could see petals and dried-out stems scattered around the dumpster.

  But it wasn’t a flower store.

  The building had narrow windows made of stained glass, and double doors wide enough to fit a hearse. My father had raided the garbage of a funeral home. He’d sent me sledding in a box meant to carry flowers for dead people.

  That seemed a little creepy, and I wasn’t sure how I felt to see that another memory, though broken, was basically true. I wanted to talk to Angelo about it, to figure out what it all meant. But I was afraid of starting an argument that would make us mad at each other, so I didn’t say a thing.

  Step by step we marched along, and soon we were back on the roads we’d taken the first time we’d gone to Deadman’s Castle. We reached the school, then crossed the field behind it and started up the hill.

  When we got to the ruins at the summit, Angelo clipped Smasher’s leash to her collar. “Hold her here,” he told me. “I’ll go into the castle and she can do her bloodhound thing.”

  I didn’t expect very much as Angelo went scurrying down to hide in the castle. I counted to a hundred, then took off Smasher’s leash and told her, “Go find Angelo!”

  She went off like a shot—in the wrong direction. I had to catch her and lead her back, right into the entrance. I saw Angelo crouched like a gnome just inside the doorway.

  But Smasher still couldn’t find him.

  He started whispering, “Smashy!” She wandered right past his feet, nosing in the dust.

  “Great bloodhound,” I said.

  “Try again,” said Angelo. He made me try seven times in all, but Smasher never found him once. “It’s ’cause she knows I’m not lost,” he said. “If I was really in trouble, she wouldn’t be fooling around.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, thinking he was joking.

  But he got angry. “It’s true. She’d find me then, all right. She’s a tracking dog.”

  We went down the hill in silence, walking farther apart than we’d ever walked before. It made me feel sick to think that I was losing my friend. I couldn’t bear to let that happen.

  I said, “Angelo, I gotta tell you something.”

  THE BOOGEYMAN

  At the river we stopped to sit for a while beside the swinging bridge.

  It hung higher than ever above the water. There had been no rain since the thunderstorm, and the summertime heat had turned the wintertime river into something more like a creek. It was so shallow that I could see all sorts of stuff lying on the bottom, things people had tossed from the bridge. There were pennies and soda cans, and a tricycle covered in weeds that were waving back and forth in the current.

  Angelo held Smasher close in front of him and waited for me to talk.

  “When I was a little kid,” I told him, “my dad saw someone do a bad thing.”

  “Like what?” asked Angelo.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He never told me. But he went to the police, and ever since then there’s been a guy coming after us.”

  “Like the Terminator?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But something like that. Everywhere we go, he comes after us.”

  “Why? What’s he’s going to do?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “He told my dad, ‘I’m going to get even.’”

  Angelo looked down at the river. “Wow,” he said softly.

  “It started when I was a little kid,” I said. “A policeman came and sat in our kitchen with a rifle. I remember my mom was scared; she cried a lot. Then one day we left the house and never went back. We moved away, and we’ve been moving ever since. Everywhere we go, we start over. We change our names and everything.”

  “Huh,” said Angelo. “So what moron named you Igor?”

  I didn’t answer that. But I told him everything else, all about the Protectors and Dad’s rules and bugging out in the middle of the night. I spilled all the secrets I’d kept for years. I’d always had a strange idea that telling them would make something awful happen, and even with Angelo there beside me I kept looking up and down the river. I half expected to see the Lizard Man slithering out of the water.

  “We’ve
moved so many times I can’t remember all the places,” I said. “I can’t even remember my real name. But I’m sure this is where it started. In that house I showed you.”

  Angelo plucked a blade of grass and twirled it in his fingers. I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I waited for him to speak. Finally, he shook his head and told me, “It doesn’t make sense. Why would your dad go back to where everything started?”

  “He didn’t have a choice,” I said. “We have to go where the Protectors send us.”

  “To the Terminator’s hometown? No way they’d send you there.” Angelo tried to hurl the grass stem toward the river, but it fluttered down beside his foot. “Think about it, Watson. Why do you close your curtains and lock the doors and go in and out like it’s maximum security?”

  “Because there’s a crazy guy out there.”

  “The only crazy guy out there lives in your house,” said Angelo.

  “But it’s true,” I said. “I don’t know why we’ve been here so long. Maybe the guy quit looking for us. Maybe he died and no one knows it. Or he might find us tomorrow.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I call him the Lizard Man.”

  Angelo laughed. “Watson, you’re as loony as your dad.”

  That made me angry. I said, “He’s got a lizard tattoo, okay? It’s scary, Angelo.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause wherever we go, he follows us.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Angelo. “Have you seen him?”

  “No, but Dad—”

  “Have you heard him?”

  “No, but Dad—”

  “Yeah, it’s always your dad, right?” Angelo shook his head. “You’re such a loser.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no Lizard Man.”

  I stared at Angelo; he stared right back. He pulled up another blade of grass and said, “Your dad made him up to scare you. He’s just your bogeyman.”

  “Bogeyman?” I said.

  “Whatever. Every parent invents a bogeyman. My mom called him Babau.” Angelo did a perfect imitation of his mother. “Holy smackerels, Babau will get you. I was scared to death.”