The Haunting of Henry Davis

by Kathryn Siebel

  “Nice to see you,” I said. “Have you seen Henry?”

  Henry came up then in his outfit/costume. I was just about to tell him how great he was in the play when, despite all warnings, Alice burst out laughing. Maybe she felt safe because Sophie was standing behind her. But this is the surprising thing that Sophie said: “Alice, stop. You should be very proud of your brother. It takes real courage to get up onstage and perform for a live audience.”

  “Especially if you’re wearing that!” Alice said. She was hooting like an owl.

  “That’s enough,” Henry’s dad told her. “Let’s get going. It’s getting late,” he said to the whole family.

  “I forgot my backpack,” Henry said. He seemed embarrassed. I wanted to apologize so badly, but Henry wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Go get it,” his dad said. “I’ll pull around out front.”

  Henry was miserable, and I couldn’t blame him. His whole family and most of the school had just watched him humiliate himself in green velvet shorts. And, without meaning to, I had made it even worse. I had to explain. I had to talk to him.

  That’s why I followed Henry.

  The hallway was packed with people, and outside the rain was coming down so hard you could hear it hitting the glass of the windows and doors. People were dashing to their cars, crouched under their coats and huddled together under too-tiny umbrellas. “Wow,” someone said as they opened a side door of the school. “It’s really coming down out there, isn’t it?” But I wasn’t worried about the rain; my mind was on Henry. And I kept my eyes on him as we wove through the crowd.

  And that’s when things started to get strange fast. First, Henry walked right past his locker. And so I walked right past too. I guess you could say that I was borderline spying on him at this point. I’ll admit it. When I turned my head and looked back at the gym, I could see my parents and my grandmother still talking to people. Well, I could see my father, anyway, because he’s pretty tall. So I decided it would be okay to keep going a bit farther down the hall; I had a little time.

  Henry didn’t even seem to notice that he had gone too far. He was like a zombie. What was he doing? His parents were waiting outside in the car. I couldn’t figure it out with my brain, and it was hard to see it with my eyes too because there were so many people in the way. But then I saw Henry start up the stairs toward the music room. I followed, and as I went up the stairs, I could hear it. Somebody was up there. Playing the piano.

  Henry disappeared into the dark room ahead of me. And when I reached the doorway, I froze. I let my eyes get used to the dark for a minute. I couldn’t tell where the music was coming from. It was everywhere. The song was so loud. Loud and fast. It filled the whole room; it bounced off the walls. And the music wasn’t the only creepy thing. I wish it had been.

  Once my eyes got adjusted, I saw Henry standing next to the piano. I’d know him anywhere, even in the dark. But here’s the thing: nobody was at the piano. The bench was completely empty. So I kept walking forward. I needed to know what was happening. My heart was pounding so hard I could sort of feel it in my ears and my chest both.

  “Henry?” I whispered. I guess it was absurd to whisper, really. But I think I was a little scared. Anyway, I expected Henry to turn his head or something, but he did nothing. He just kept staring—at the piano, at the empty bench. And when I got close enough, I could see that the keys of the piano were moving. All by themselves. Henry wasn’t playing the piano; he was watching somebody play it. We both were.

  And for the first time, in my head and my heart and my body, I was as terrified as Henry must have been all along.

  Usually, when something exciting or scary happens, all I want to do is talk about it—with whoever is there. Right away too. When I jumped off the diving board at the pool for the first time, I yelled, “Did you see me? Did you see me, Mom?” And the last time my cousin Monica babysat me, and we watched a horror movie, I had plenty to say. “She’s not going in there alone, is she?” I wanted to know. And Monica had to shush me and turn up the sound.

  But what happened with Henry and me in the music room was different. It felt bigger. Too big to talk about for a while. Maybe we both thought that saying anything about it would make it more real—too real.

  The worst part was that we had to go up there, for music class. A few days after it happened, there we were, sitting in a circle on the floor right next to that piano while the music teacher kept talking about percussion instruments. Henry had a tambourine he was supposed to hit at a specific spot in the song we were learning, and I had a triangle. We were looking at each other across the circle, and we both knew that neither one of us was thinking about the song. And neither one of us would turn our head to look at the piano either.

  When the song was finished, the music teacher asked us, “What about this piano?”

  “What about it?” Henry asked.

  “Well, is this a percussion instrument? If I play it—”

  Henry’s hand shot up, but when she called on him, all Henry did was ask if he could go and get water. And I didn’t even bother to ask. I just followed Henry down the stairs and into the hallway below.

  “Henry,” I asked, “are you okay?”

  “I just can’t. That room.”

  “I know,” I said. “But we can’t avoid it forever.”

  “We can try,” Henry said.

  “I just don’t understand why it happened,” I said.

  “I told you,” Henry said. “Edgar’s following me.”

  “But why does he come here? Why you? Why now?”

  After days of holding it in, it felt good to finally admit what had happened. It would have been even better to have had some answers. But that night, Henry would at least get some clues.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, at lunch, Henry told me about the trunk. You see, Henry hadn’t lived in his house for very long. They were barely unpacked before school started. And the night before, I guess, Sophie had decided they should put some boxes up in the attic.

  “What’s up there?” I asked Henry.

  Henry’s house is pretty old. I imagined whatever they had up there was way more interesting than our crawl space, which is just packed with stuff like old magazines and golf clubs.

  “There were skeletons,” Henry said. “Human skulls and—”

  “Be serious!”

  “Not that much. There’s this old trunk, but we couldn’t get it open,” he said.

  “Oh my gosh! How big was it?” I asked. “Henry! We’ve got to open it!”

  “Will you calm down? You’re gonna choke on your sandwich.”

  Now, this was not true.

  I was not going to choke.

  Mr. Lee would just Heimlich me if I did.

  A trunk! A whole trunk! A HUGE trunk. Maybe it had gold inside. Maybe it had a wedding gown. It would be a wrinkly, old yellow one like a skeleton would wear, but still.

  I did settle down eventually, but not because Henry told me to. People were starting to look over, and I did not want the whole world staring at us.

  “Has Alice got dance practice today?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I’m coming over,” I said. “We’ve got to see what is in that trunk.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Henry said. “If my dad couldn’t get it open, we won’t be able to either. Besides, we left it up there, and I am not going up in that attic again.”

  “Don’t be so negative,” I said. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Henry just gave me a look and stuffed a cookie in his mouth.

  “Come on!” I said. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Fine. But if this turns out badly, it’s your fault.”

  * * *

  —


  I was so excited about the trunk that it was hard to concentrate on anything else for the rest of the afternoon. Every single class dragged by as slowly as one of my dad’s stories about work. But once we were at Henry’s house, I wasn’t exactly sure how to start. I knew if I asked Henry, he’d say, “Let’s forget the whole thing.” So I had to fake it and pretend I had a plan.

  “How do you suggest we get it open?” Henry asked.

  “Well, let’s just first see if there’s a key,” I said.

  “A key?” Henry asked. “Oh, yeah, why didn’t I think of that? You’re a genius, Barbara Anne! Just wait right here while I go get the key.”

  Just to clarify, I knew how stupid I sounded, but somehow I couldn’t stop. “There could be a key,” I continued. “Did you look? While you were up there?” I could tell from the long pause that he had not, so I forged ahead. “Get a flashlight!” I told him. “We’re going back up!”

  I was kind of picturing myself in some Statue of Liberty pose, holding the flashlight aloft in one hand. I even had a green shirt on.

  Henry was not as enthusiastic. He didn’t like heights.

  “I suppose by ‘we’ you mean me,” he said.

  Henry had me there. I didn’t like heights either. Or shaky ladders. Or dust. Or the idea of sticking my head into a dark attic when Henry was right there and could do it for me.

  “Well…,” I said.

  “I thought so,” Henry said.

  “It is your house.”

  This was a pretty good argument, I thought. Every kid alive knows this. Whenever somebody is about to do something that will later get everyone in the group in trouble or, worse, injured, the first question anyone asks is not “Is this a bad idea?” but “Whose house is it?” And the usual rule is that the kid whose house it is gets to make the final call. It goes like this:

  Kid #1: “Do you really think we should jump off the garage roof?”

  Then there’s usually a long pause while their eyes flick from the roof to the grass below.

  Kid #2 (after a shrug): “Well, it’s your house.”

  Henry wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t want to seem like a chicken either, so he got the ladder.

  * * *

  —

  Henry appeared to like ladders even less than heights. “Hold it still!” he kept saying as he went up.

  He lifted the square of wood that led to the attic and handed it down to me. The ladder got a little tippy then, and Henry was not too happy. Some things were said about whose idea it was and which of us was being a crybaby. But we got through it.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked him.

  “Cobwebs,” Henry said.

  “Nothing else?”

  “The boxes Sophie made me shove up here last night. I almost fell off the ladder then too. In case you’re interested,” Henry said.

  I was not.

  “What about the trunk?” I asked. “Can you see the trunk?”

  “It’s huge, Barbara Anne. It’s pretty hard to miss.”

  “Well, is there a key in the lock? A key is super small,” I said. “You have to really look.”

  “Gee, thanks for the tip,” Henry said.

  I could have responded; I had things to say. But sometimes in life you have to be the bigger person. “Fine!” I said. “Just come down, then.”

  Henry had a cobweb in his hair and a smudge of dirt on the tip of his nose when he landed in the hallway, but I knew better than to laugh.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Wait!” I said. “Is it like a combination lock? Like a locker lock? Because we could just try a few combinations.”

  “Do you have any idea how long that would take?” Henry asked. “You are really bad at math, Barbara Anne.”

  “Am not,” I said.

  “Look,” Henry said. “It’s an old, rusty-looking lock, like something that just fell off a pirate ship.”

  “Well,” I said. “Then we need a rock.”

  “A rock?”

  “A big rock.”

  * * *

  —

  Henry’s yard was really frustrating. It was full of rocks, but most of them were way too tiny to be any good for our purposes. And they were all lined up in this specific wavy pattern.

  “It’s supposed to look like water,” Henry explained when he saw me staring.

  “It’s rocks. How can it look like water?”

  “It suggests water,” Henry said. “The shape of it.”

  I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Nobody wants you to say how weird their family is. That’s their job.

  But I felt stuck. How was I supposed to pull one rock out of this yard without leaving an obvious hole that would make the entire thing look like a giant jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing?

  “Just do it if you’re gonna do it!” Henry said.

  “I’m deciding,” I said. “Stop rushing me.”

  Finally I found a good rock. Way back against the edge of the fence, where technically it might be part of the neighbor’s yard, but I was not going to quibble now. I showed my prize to Henry. And he sighed. It was a big sigh, like when my mom sits down with an especially large basket of laundry that has to be folded. I think what the sigh said was, Once again, I would like to point out that we should really not be doing this. I ignored it.

  I was thrilled with the rock. I would have kissed it if it had not been covered with dirt. But that is because I’m an optimist, a glass-half-full kind of person. Also, I did not realize yet what was about to happen.

  * * *

  —

  I was the one who found the rock, but once we got inside, Henry was the one who had to go back up and get the trunk down.

  “I don’t think I can lift this,” Henry said.

  “You don’t have to lift it,” I told him. “Just shove it over the edge.”

  “You have no idea how heavy this is, Barbara Anne. It feels like there’s a dead body in here.”

  We both stopped for a minute then because, really, who knew what was inside? But I, for one, was willing to take my chances.

  Now we were both shouting. I was yelling at Henry to shove harder, and he was yelling at me to stand back. And then the trunk slid through the hole and landed with a gigantic thud in Henry’s upstairs hallway.

  Henry climbed back down the ladder, and the two of us just stood there staring at the trunk for a minute.

  “Well,” Henry said. “It’s not going to open itself.” He picked up the rock then. And I have to say that, once he started, Henry really threw himself into the whole bashing thing. He lifted that rock up high like a murderer about to bludgeon his victim, paused for one dramatic second, then let it rip.

  Here’s the thing about the rock. It was large, which was good. But it was also really sharp and pointed on one side, and that’s where the problem came in, because unfortunately, the rock did not land where it was supposed to. And that is what happens when you have the eye-hand coordination of a chess player. Henry aimed for the lock but hit his other hand. And it wasn’t good. I’m not sure what was more horrifying—the amount of blood or the way Henry was dancing around screaming. And the carpet in the hallway was beige. Of course it was.

  I ran to get a towel. I was yelling, “Henry, it’s okay!” which was ridiculous. Of course it was not okay. He was gushing blood.

  Fortunately, I am pretty calm in an emergency, and I got first-aid training from the Girl Scouts. I grabbed a little towel from the bathroom, so we could wrap up his hand and apply pressure. I was hoping I wouldn’t throw up.

  “We can’t use that,” Henry said. “That’s a good towel. Sophie will kill me.”

  Now, I knew what he meant. My grandmother has little shell soaps by the sink that have been there my entire childhood, and everybody knows th
at water should not touch them under any circumstances. But this was an emergency, so I grabbed his hand and wrapped it up.

  “Look,” I said. “Do you want to bleed to death just to save Sophie’s stupid towel?”

  And then we heard the front door. Sophie and Alice were home. There was no time to clean up or do anything. We were just stuck there like deer in headlights.

  Alice made it to the top of the steps first, and she really let loose with a scream. Forget dance. She should consider a wind instrument with that kind of lung power. Sophie was right behind her. “What exactly is going on here?” she asked.

  I looked at the hallway, at the blood on the used-to-be-superclean carpet. And Henry’s poor, pale face. I felt nervous now, and confused too. The whole thing seemed like such a great idea until Sophie got there. And now…well, now there was nothing to do but try to make the best of it and hope Henry wouldn’t get in too much trouble after I left.

  “As you can see,” I said, “Henry’s had a little accident. And I was just applying some pressure to the wound.”

  Sophie looked unconvinced. She was not buying it. Henry and I exchanged a look.

  It had gone badly. It was all my fault.

  And now we would never even know what was inside the trunk.

  * * *

  —

  Five stitches. That was the damage. If you don’t count whatever it cost to visit the ER and pay to clean the carpet. I wasn’t thinking of those things, but my mother was kind enough to point them out to me after she got off the phone with Sophie that night. I was more worried about my friendship with Henry.

  But he seemed pretty okay with it the next day. I mean, his hand was all bandaged up, but at school any injury that needs more than a Band-Aid is kind of a prize. Everybody circles around you and wants to know what happened. People want to sign your cast. They volunteer to carry your backpack. Getting hurt makes you a minor celebrity, as long as you don’t get too whiny about it.