by Sam Subity
“Oh, you’re a dear, Abby! I’m just headed up to the bingo game. Tonight’s the night that I’m gonna win. I can just feel it!” She crossed her fingers on both hands, and a big grin spread across her face.
“Okay, I …” I started to take a step forward, then froze as her words registered. “Wait, how do you know my name?” I asked warily. “Do I … know you?”
A strange look flitted across her face, then was gone. Or maybe it had only been a trick of the shadows in the lamplight. “Oh! Well, I must have heard your friend say it earlier.”
I frowned and turned a questioning look at Grimsby. He shrugged and shook his head like he couldn’t remember. “Well, I’m Abby,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already. And this is my friend Grimsby.”
“Pleased to meet you.” She beamed. “Most people call me Granny V. But you can call me what you like. Just don’t call me late for supper, I always say!” She laughed at her own joke. “And speaking of being late, we’d better hurry! If I don’t get there soon, old Jack Manworth’ll steal my seat.”
I shook off the strange feeling Granny V had given me, chalking it up to paranoia after the events of the past few days.
We followed the scent of Bengay joint cream to a room filled with a gray haze. In the front, a guy chewing on a cigar and wearing a battered Twins cap looked up as she arrived. Jack Manworth, I assumed. I half expected an altercation, but instead his eyes grew wide, and he quickly cleared space for her without a word.
Granny V turned her smile on us again. “I like to sit right up front. The old eardrums, they ain’t what they used to be.” She jammed her forefinger into one ear and wiggled it around before extracting it and using the same finger to point to a seat.
I gratefully plopped the heavy bag down onto the table. “There you go. Guess we’ll be going now.”
“So soon?” Her mouth fell into a frown so sad you’d think Grimsby had just strangled her dog. “I was hoping you might want to play a round of bingo with me. You know, as a thank-you for carrying my bag.”
I glanced at Grimsby, then back at Granny V, feeling anxious to see if there were any updates on my dad’s condition. “Sorry, no, we can’t stay. I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Oh?” said Granny V casually, looking down as she arranged her things on the table. “You never know. I may be able to help you with that. In fact, I sense that you are looking for something.”
Grimsby frowned. “Looking for something? Yeah.” He checked his watch. “I’m looking for some dinner. Maybe a burrito and a Yoo-hoo?”
Granny V shook her head. “Bigger than that.” She lifted her gaze and stared directly at me. “Something to do with your father, perhaps?”
I stared at her for a second, sure I’d misheard her. “Sorry, what did you say?”
She held my gaze, unblinking. “Your father. You don’t know how you can help him. But I do.”
A tight panicky feeling gripped my chest, like the time I’d been swimming in the ocean in the Outer Banks and suddenly spotted a fin poking out of the water. I turned to Grimsby, but he looked as baffled as me. How did this woman know anything about me? Or my dad?
“Okayyyyy …” I said tentatively. “You’ve got my attention. So how do I help my dad?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Well, I can’t just tell you, can I? What would be the fun in that?”
That didn’t sound promising. “What do you mean?”
“Simple. You play me at bingo. If you win, then I put you on the path to helping your father.”
Her phrase “on the path” didn’t exactly sound like she was going to hand me a glossy brochure titled “How to Save Your Dad’s Life in Three Easy Steps.” But seeing as how I didn’t have any other leads on deck, I was willing to consider anything.
“That’s all?” I asked. “We just beat you. At bingo.”
“That’s right.”
Grimsby gave me a thumbs-up. “Why not? I’m strangely good at games involving nothing but complete, blind luck. If there’s no skill involved, then I’m your guy.”
I stared at Granny V for a long moment. “Okay, we’re in.”
“Wonderful!” She smiled, then reached across the table to shake on it.
When our hands touched, I felt a tiny spark against my palm. I jerked my hand out of hers in surprise. I turned my palm up, but it looked completely normal. Static electricity? I started to apologize but then realized she was already talking again.
“… let you have one of my boards and a dauber to mark your squares.”
I shrugged it off, then met Grimsby’s eyes and whispered, “You’re sure you can do this?”
He nodded and pretended to brush off his shoulder. “I’ve got this. No problem.”
Granny V extracted a bingo card from her bag and slid it across the table to us along with a red tube that I assumed was the dauber. She then pulled a Mary Poppins and reached down into her bag with both hands. Like allll the way down to her shoulders. When her head disappeared into the bag, I looked under the table to make sure there wasn’t a hole or something underneath it. There wasn’t. I had a bad feeling she had more than just a spoonful of sugar in there.
When she re-emerged from the bag, she was holding a stack of what must have been twenty bingo cards. She proceeded to arrange them neatly on the table in front of her.
“Okay, now there may be a problem,” Grimsby said, rubbing his chin nervously.
Then Granny V went on another spelunking mission into her bag.
“Don’t worry,” said Grimsby, rallying a little. “There’s no way she can possibly keep track of all those cards at once. I mean …”
Then our geriatric friend popped back up with a pair of what looked like giant neon-pink oven mitts. As she pulled them on, I half expected her to reach back into her bag and retrieve a tray of piping-hot snickerdoodles next. On the bottom of each mitt were clusters of colored circles that looked suspiciously like … daubers. As if to confirm, her hands flashed over the array of bingo cards and left little colored dots on the free space in the middle of each card.
Grimsby’s mouth fell open. “The oven mitts”—he turned to me with wide eyes—“of doom.”
“Yeah,” I said weakly. “And instead of cookies, she’s about to serve up a steaming tray of bingo beatdown.”
The little old lady in front of us rolled her shoulders and jerked her head side to side with a popping noise to loosen up her neck. “Ready, dears?” she said sweetly. “Don’t forget your free space.”
“Whoa” was all Grimsby managed. He looked down at our lonely bingo card and put a single red dot in the middle.
Right then Gwynn emerged out of the haze and flopped into a chair next to us. She hugged a book titled Latin for Everyone to her chest, and her unicorn backpack had returned. “Hey, you two, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I thought we were going to meet—” She froze as she took in the scene. Us sitting there with our bingo card. The quietly humming Granny V arranging her collection of cards across the table.
“What’s going on?” she asked with a nervous edge to her voice.
“What do you mean?” Grimsby said. “We’re just playing a round of bingo. With this, uh, nice old lady across the table. Her name’s Granny V.”
“You’re playing with her?”
“Well, not with her, exactly,” I said. “She says if we beat her, then she’ll give us some sort of clue about helping my dad.”
“Did you shake on it?” Gwynn’s voice had taken on a hint of panic. I was suddenly wishing I’d listened to my intuition earlier.
“Yeah. Why?” I said, remembering the sting of the electric shock.
“You guys get information if she wins, right?”
We nodded.
“Did she tell you what she gets if you lose?”
Grimsby and I looked at each other. Guess we’d forgotten to ask about that. “Nooo,” I said, drawing out the word. “Why? What does she get if we lose?”
Gwynn put her face into
her hands. She spread her fingers and stared back at us with a stricken look. “Your souls.”
Before we could unpack this little bomb, a screech of static filled the room. “Testing, testing,” a man said into a microphone that stood on a small raised stage at the front of the room. “Okay, everyone, please take your seats. We’ll begin in just a moment.”
Next to the man was a small table with a clear plastic cube on top of it. The cube was filled with what looked like Ping-Pong balls with letters and numbers on them. After waiting for the clatter of chairs and conversations to subside, he flipped a switch on the side of the cube. The balls began bouncing wildly around inside it like angry bees trying to escape. After briefly reminding everyone of the rules, he pushed a button, and one of the balls shot up a little shaft on top of the cube. He turned the writing toward himself and read it aloud.
“B4!”
Granny V’s hands shot across her bingo boards, leaving little colored dots in their wake. We all studied Grimsby’s board hopefully, but he shook his head. Nothing.
I motioned to my two friends, and they huddled their chairs in closer.
“Hold on,” I said under my breath to Gwynn. “Maybe there’s something funny in the smoke here, but it sounded like you just said ‘our souls.’ ”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “I did. If you lose, she gets your souls.”
The caller announced the next ball. “G51!”
“That’s nuts,” hissed Grimsby as he triumphantly marked the first space on his card. “How can she take our souls?”
“Well, you said her name is Granny V, right? Did you ask her what the ‘V’ stands for?”
“No,” I said. “I just figured it was short for one of those old-people names you don’t hear much anymore, like Vivian or Violetta.”
“Or Verisimilitude,” Grimsby added.
We both stared at him. He put up his hands. “What? It’s a name.”
Gwynn rolled her eyes. “How about ‘V’ for ‘Valkyrie’?”
“But you’re a Valkyrie,” I said. “And you’re not trying to take our souls.”
“Or are you?” added Grimsby, his eyes narrowing.
“O62!” boomed over the speaker system.
Gwynn ignored Grimsby and said to me, “Yeah, but she’s not like me. Granny V, or whatever her real name is, is a dark Valkyrie. They don’t follow the same rules. Normal Valkyries like me take the souls of fallen heroes to the afterlife. Dark Valkyries are also known as soul hunters. But they don’t wait until you’re dead. Sort of like how a big game hunter keeps trophies—heads, furs, and other stuff like that—dark Valkyries keep collections of living souls. For eternity.”
“Well, my soul is Jewish, so she can’t have it anyway,” Grimsby said.
“That’s not how it works, numbskull. Anyone who accepts a challenge from a dark Valkyrie agrees to the same rules.”
“You’re sure?” I said, eyeing Granny V. “She still looks like one of those grandmas who hand out lollipops on their front porches.”
“Don’t you think I’d be able to spot another Valkyrie?”
“N32!”
“Okay,” I said. “There must be some way to get out of this, or, you know, void our agreement. I mean, it’s not like she gave us a written contract with all the rules spelled out.”
“Yeah,” Grimsby chimed in. “You’re a Valkyrie. Can’t you talk her out of it?”
Gwynn shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders sadly. “You win.”
Or you’re both goners, she didn’t say. I suddenly couldn’t breathe, and not just because the room was full of smoke.
“Hmmm …” said Grimsby. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking or bemoaning our bad luck. We looked at him, but he was busy studying Granny V’s bingo cards with interest.
“Got an idea?” I asked.
“Maybe. What you were saying just a minute ago. You know, about the rules? That got me thinking. And I may have a way to, if not win, exactly, then at least not lose.” He turned toward me. “But, full disclosure: It’s kind of a long shot.”
“It’s better than anything I’ve got,” I said. “Do you think she’ll still help us with my dad too? Maybe she even has an antidote or something.”
“Oy vey. One thing at a time. I’m just trying to make sure we live past seven o’clock.”
“Why, what happens at seven?” said Gwynn.
“That’s when Jeopardy! comes on. And I’m pretty sure wherever dark Valkyries keep your soul has terrible TV reception.”
I was up for anything that gave us even the smallest sliver of hope. “Okay, what do we do?”
“I need you to make a distraction,” he said.
“Like what?”
“G46!” the caller announced.
“I don’t know,” Grimsby said. “Fake a case of mad cow disease. Pretend you’re a mad cow. Whatever. I just need Scary Poppins’s attention off her cards for a minute.”
“A distraction …” I said, looking around the room for inspiration. My eyes landed on Granny V’s dog, Skol, lying peacefully at her feet, and an idea started to form.
I leaned toward Grimsby. “Hey, do you still have any of those dough ball things in your pocket?”
“Yeah …” His hand moved automatically to guard his pocket. “But it’s my last one.”
“Really?” Gwynn asked. “You’re willing to trade eternal doom … for a doughnut?”
Grimsby stared at her for a few seconds. “Fine,” he said at last, and reluctantly plucked a ball of dough from his pocket and plopped it into my hand.
I gagged a little at the feel of the greasy lump in my palm. It’s a good thing dogs will eat anything.
“N33!”
Grimsby’s bingo card was still woefully short on hits. But Granny V had a handful of cards that looked like they could be winners any second. We had to hurry.
Pretending to tie our shoes, Gwynn and I ducked under the table. I waved the doughnut in the air, trying to get the dog’s attention.
“Maybe if you try blowing on it to waft some of the scent to the dog?” Gwynn suggested.
I inhaled and blew like I was trying to put out the candles on a hundred-year-old’s birthday cake. A fleck of lint lifted off the top and settled to the floor. No response from the dog.
“Can’t you blow any quieter?” hissed Gwynn.
“Sorry,” I shot back. “I’ve never blown on a doughnut before.”
“Here, let me try.”
I held the doughnut toward her. She cupped her hands around her mouth and blew in Skol’s direction. Suddenly his head perked up, and little dark eyes peered at us from beneath his mat of fur. Gwynn’s eyes turned triumphantly toward me, like “See?”
“That’s right,” I said softly to the ball of fur. “Good doggie. Want a little treat?”
A small twitch of his tail gave me hope that this might actually work. The dog got to his feet and inched tentatively toward us. I expected Granny V’s hand to shoot under the table at any second. But she was probably so focused on crushing Grimsby that she didn’t notice. So far so good.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” asked Gwynn.
“Once the dog gets close enough, I toss the doughnut across the room. The dog chases the doughnut. Instant chaos.” I pantomimed an explosion by clutching my hand in a fist and then flicking my fingers out for dramatic effect. “Doughnut grenade.”
Gwynn didn’t look convinced.
But Skol continued to inch forward, his little black nose sniffing the air.
Grimsby’s head was suddenly under the table with us. “You guys gonna do this today? I’m getting murdered up here.”
“Sorry, yeah, almost there,” I said.
A little farther. A little farther. Just as the dog opened his mouth to grab the treat, I snatched my hand away and, in the same motion, stood and flipped the dough ball underhand across the room. Or at least that’
s how it went in my head. It turns out that trying to throw a slimy, partially mashed wad of dough isn’t the same as tossing, say, a golf ball. Instead of flying across the room per my plan, it only rolled wetly off my hand and landed with a plop in Granny V’s bag on the other side of the table.
Gwynn smacked her forehead. “What was that?”
“Sorry! It was supposed to—”
Before I could complete my sentence, Skol barked, leapt up onto the table, and dove into the bag. The bag toppled over under the weight and fell off the table. With a yelp and the sound of clinking glass, both dog and bag crashed to the floor.
A dozen snow globes rolled out of the bag and scattered across the floor. So that’s why her bag had been so heavy. One of them struck a nearby guy with a walker and toppled him like he was a bowling pin.
Suddenly Granny V was on her feet. There was a stampede of people running to help the fallen senior citizen, everyone was shouting, and the bingo game screeched to a halt.
“Not bad,” said Gwynn.
I shrugged casually. “All part of my plan.”
A pair of snow globes rolled to a stop near my feet. One said “Elvis Presley” on the label and held a miniature of a man dressed in a white suit with rhinestones on it. The other snow globe was empty other than the swirling snow, like it was missing something. The label on the snow globe’s base read “Abby Beckett.”
I gasped and turned to Gwynn. “You said dark Valkyries keep collections of souls. I’m going to spend eternity … in there?” We looked at each other with wide eyes.
As quick as lightning, Granny V retrieved the scattered snow globes, slid them back into her bag, scooped up the dog, and deposited him in her lap. His fur was now polka-dotted blue, green, and red from her bingo mitts, like the animal from that book Put Me in the Zoo.
“Wow, that was fast,” said Gwynn.
I gave Grimsby a questioning look. “I just hope it was enough of a distraction.”
He gave us a thumbs-up as he covertly slid something I couldn’t see into his blazer pocket with his other hand. I looked for an idea of what he’d done but couldn’t spot anything. I had to trust he knew what he was doing.
