Last Meeting of the Gorilla Club

by Sara Nickerson

  He knew he must have dropped it earlier, when he’d been fumbling at the door with his heavy bag. He believed that. But he also believed it was something more. He believed the rock carried a message, just for him. He believed that because the moment he saw it, right there on the welcome mat, he knew what he had to do.

  LOSER TOUCHES THE HOUSE

  Josh rode past the skeleton houses and the dirt mounds, all the way to the giant evergreen tree where the obstacle-course kids had pointed out the entrance to the trail. Along with the NO TRESPASSING sign, a barbed-wire fence gave the clear message to stay away.

  Josh got off his bike and leaned it against the tree. Then he stepped close to the fence and peered down the path. It was so dark with overgrown branches he couldn’t see very far in. Plus—he looked at the sky. The sun was going down. It would be dark soon.

  He wished there was a poster that said Halfway, and you’ve gone far enough. Or, Always listen to the barbed-wire fence. He also wished Big Brother would appear and say, Good job, Josh. Let’s go home and build a city with Legos.

  Josh didn’t get those wishes. But he did get something. He remembered Big Brother’s words, on the second first day of school. He took a deep breath. “Okay, Big Brother. Life is a glorious adventure, or it is nothing.”

  It wasn’t only Big Brother’s words that made Josh step up to the fence. It wasn’t the grown-up smell of Old Spice deodorant, either. Those helped, but Josh continued moving forward because, for the first time in a long time, he had a place to go. A place where someone—someone real and of this world—might be waiting for him.

  Carefully he positioned his hands between the sharp barbs and put his foot on the lowest wire. The fence swayed and sagged but held him.

  The next step was harder. The wire wobbled and Josh clutched at the wooden post. At the top, he swung his first leg over. But when he shifted his weight and tried to swing the other, he lost his balance. He tipped and fell—all the way to the ground.

  Josh lay still for a moment, assessing the damage. His hands were scraped. His chin felt bruised. When he looked up at the fence he saw a piece of his new red raincoat, stuck to the barbed wire like a sad flapping flag. But when he got to his feet and brushed himself off, he felt sort of like a champion. Or at least how he imagined a champion might feel. Because he’d fallen, but to the other side. He’d made it. Buoyed by that feeling of success, Josh started down the path.

  Leaves rustled, twigs snapped, trees crowded, and a crow swooped so close to his head that it blew back his hair. The trail was damp and his pants were soon wet up to his knees. Rotting smells filled his nose. But he kept going.

  The trail through the dark forest was longer than it had looked on the hand-drawn map. Josh was relieved when the path intersected something that looked like a driveway. He continued on the driveway until the forest opened up to a large, unkempt yard and a house tucked far back into the trees. Josh remembered the obstacle-course kids as he took it all in—the mess of overgrown grass, weeds, and brambles.

  Loser touches the house.

  The house was two floors of sagging wood, peeling paint, and boarded-up windows with shards of broken glass. There was a long front porch with an old broken chair. This couldn’t be it. Could it? As he stood there, a wispy fog crept in from the forest. A crow circled above his head. Josh glanced at the crow, the fog, and the darkening sky. He turned back to the house. “Hello?” he called.

  Only the crow answered.

  He took a step back and tripped over a patch of weeds. Stunned, he lay on his back as the wind whipped up, sending the giant pine trees swaying in their slow-motion silent laughter. His chest squeezed tight. His backpack was pinned underneath him.

  He thought, This maybe wasn’t the best idea in the world.

  The crow screeched again. Josh watched it dive from the highest branch of a swaying pine straight to the rooftop of the old abandoned house. And that’s when he saw the thing that made his heart nearly explode. Movement. In the upstairs window.

  It was a face, in the shadows, looking down on him. Like it had been waiting.

  ROCK

  After Lucas discovered the rock on the front-porch welcome mat, he went straight to his room. He rarely opened his closet door, even for clothes. He preferred to keep his clothes in the dresser, or piled on his floor, because he didn’t even like looking at the closed closet door. But when he went to his room he went straight to his closet and opened the door. He held his breath as he stepped into the dark space—all the way to the darkest corner of the dark space, where he grabbed a dusty old shoebox.

  Clutching it tightly, he ran down the stairs. His hand was on the front doorknob when he remembered to leave his parents a note. So he ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a pen and scribbled something about helping a friend, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He wrote that he’d be back later, not sure when, but he would call if it was too late or dark or whatever (he didn’t actually know what he was saying at that point, but he wanted them to know he would be safe, even though, of course, he had no idea how unsafe the night could get).

  He opened the front door and stepped over the rock on the welcome mat. Then he turned back and picked it up. He slipped it in his pocket, grabbed his bike, and pedaled fast for the place he told himself he would never go again.

  The sun was about to go down. If Josh Duncan showed up at the house, Lucas would be there first. He would be there to warn him away. He had to. The rock had reminded him of all the things he’d tried to forget.

  Even though Lucas hadn’t been on that route for years, he still knew every twist and turn of the trail, and every stump and mossy boulder next to it. Holding the box in one arm, he rode across to the next housing development, Bear Creek, and came to the newest construction site.

  A NO TRESPASSING sign had been posted in front of the entrance to the trail into the woods, and a barbed-wire fence had been installed. Leaning up against a tree was a bike. But it looked too small to belong to Josh Duncan. Plus, it was bright yellow with SpongeBob all over it. He put his own bike next to it and climbed the fence. As he was hopping down, something caught his eye. He bent closer. Stuck to one of the barbs was a torn piece of red fabric—the exact color of the kid’s enormous raincoat. Lucas started to run.

  THE HOLE

  Josh was in a hole. Not a symbolic one, but a real hole. And sitting there in the hole, nothing made sense.

  Before the hole, he’d been looking for a way in. First, he’d stepped onto the sagging front porch with the old broken chair and knocked on the boarded-up door. As he was knocking, he came to realize that even if someone did want to open the door, the nailed-in boards wouldn’t let them.

  Back in the tall weeds in the middle of the yard, Josh studied the upstairs window. Find your way in. The note had said it.

  The watchful crow launched off the rooftop. It landed close to him and began to hop. Not toward Josh, but in the opposite direction—toward the house.

  As it neared the side of the house, Josh had a strange thought. Why, he wondered, was the crow hopping instead of flying? Did it want Josh to follow?

  It seemed impossibly preposterous, but was it any more than any of it?

  Still as the crow hopped away, Josh stayed where he was, in the middle of the yard. The moon was just coming up from behind the line of trees—full and round and bright. A dark shadow crossed it, and then another. Josh watched as shadow after shadow crossed in front of the full moon and landed on the tall swaying pine.

  That was it.

  What had seemed like a good idea earlier, when his mom had been pounding millions of nails into the wall, now seemed really stupid. Josh imagined what he must look like, standing in front of a creepy house, underneath a rising moon, with a murder of crows watching him.

  He would go back along the driveway. He would follow the path and climb the wire fence and get his bike and go home. He would
not be a part of this—whatever this was.

  His chest was tight and his breath wheezy. When he reached into his backpack for his inhaler, though, he felt the slip of paper. His fingers curled around it, the note, about the club.

  Lucas Hernandez had slipped it into his book, hadn’t he? Which meant he would be there, didn’t it? Maybe it was Lucas he’d seen in the upstairs window.

  Find your way in.

  Josh turned back to the house. Of course the front door wouldn’t work—that would be too easy. Clubs all had initiations, didn’t they? Well, not his backgammon club. But other clubs—with more than one member—they always had something like this. It would all be okay, as soon as he got inside the house. And there was probably a way—a window or a door—on the side, or in the back. All he needed to do was be brave. If he was just brave enough, he would pass the test and be an official member of the Gorilla Club. Because the note had been real. From this world.

  These were all the things going through his mind as he fought his way through bushes and brambles that grew next to the side of the house.

  And then—the hole.

  There’s a funny thing about falling into a hole. Often, a person doesn’t know they are falling until they’ve landed at the bottom. Josh thought that might be a poster quote, except the opposite of the inspirational kind.

  When he was falling into the hole, he was shouting. And not in a brave way. He heard his voice from outside himself.

  “Ahhhh!” he shouted. And then he landed.

  The hole was deep and wide. Josh stayed in a crumpled ball and felt around for damage. His ankle was tender and his wrist was scratched, but they both still moved the way they were supposed to. The crow screeched from the side of the roof, right above him, and he thought, Well, I still have my hearing.

  Because: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

  He patted the ground around him, pushing away weeds and tall grasses, and discovered that the hole was rectangular in shape. Underneath the dirt and moss and weeds was cement. Everything made sense when Josh realized he’d fallen into a basement window well, the kind old houses often had. There had been one at his grandmother’s house, back in Chicago. He and Big Brother used to play in it all the time.

  The hole was not so deep that he couldn’t easily climb out. But before he did that, he examined the space one more time. He pulled away a thick layer of climbing ivy and discovered the window.

  Josh thought of the note. Had he found a way in?

  He wiped off the grime and pressed his face close to the glass. It was dark, but he could make out the shadowy shapes of boxes and paint cans and a few scattered tools.

  Opening a basement window of a stranger’s house was against the law. He knew that. And there were NO TRESPASSING signs posted all over the place. Would Josh have broken the law if it hadn’t been for the twig snapping? Or the footsteps?

  Because that’s what he heard right after the twig. Footsteps. And the part of his mind that reacted to these sounds was not the law-abiding, rational part. It was the instinctual part. Fight or flight.

  Josh knew he couldn’t fight, and his best chance for flight was right in front of him. He turned back to the window, worked his fingers into the small crack, and pulled.

  WHEN A DOOR IS SHUT

  Another inspirational quote from Josh’s dad: “When a door is shut, a window will open.” It looked good on shiny poster paper, but like so many things, didn’t actually translate to the real world.

  The window didn’t budge.

  Josh stopped to listen. The footsteps had stopped, too. Josh’s breath was loud and wheezy but he didn’t want to take the time to open his backpack and get his inhaler. He was partly hidden there, in his hole. When the footsteps started again, Josh readjusted his grip. Splinters dug into his palms and his arms were shaking, but it didn’t matter because Josh was pulling, lifting, yanking, with all the strength he had. Somehow it worked. The window opened, just wide enough for him to slide through.

  He twisted around. Feet first, he began to lower himself. Halfway through, he was stuck. His backpack—he’d forgotten to take it off and now he was wedged in the window, feet dangling.

  The forest had gone quiet. Eerily quiet. And then another twig snapped and the footsteps started again.

  Josh worked his arms out of the backpack straps. Then he inched his body the rest of the way through the window. Chest, shoulders, head. His fingers clung to the edge for a long time. He had no idea how far down the ground was. It was a terrible feeling, hanging on in the dark like that. His fingers slipped slowly, until they couldn’t hang on any longer. Josh tumbled onto the cold concrete floor.

  BASEMENT

  Josh couldn’t breathe. He’d been wheezing before, but the short drop to hard cement had knocked all the air out of him. And also, part of his body was missing.

  No, wait. It was just his backpack that was missing.

  His head cleared then, and his panic subsided, at least a little. Josh rolled to his knees and made his way back to the wall, judging the distance to the window. It was high but if he jumped, he could probably reach the dangling strap of his backpack.

  He tried, but the pain in his ankle kept him low to the ground. He would have to go outside and around the house to get it.

  Moving slowly and quietly, he felt his way through the dark, searching for stairs. He stumbled over something that clattered like metal as it slid across the floor. Josh froze, listening for a sound from the open window. And he heard it. It was the most ordinary sound in the world, but at that moment nothing could have scared him more.

  Zzzzip.

  Someone was on the other side of the window, opening his backpack.

  Josh dropped to his hands and knees. He crawled to the darkest part of the basement. When his hand landed in a wet and slimy puddle, he got shakily to his feet and continued on, until his foot jammed against something hard. He reached down and gingerly felt around. It was a step.

  If he just got up the stairs, he would be in the house. He would find the front door. He would get his backpack. Josh felt for the next step, and then the next. Slowly, tentatively, he began to climb.

  THE BOX

  Lucas found a backpack in the window well. It was the window well he and Maxie used to play in all the time. The rectangular hole was perfect for pretending they were in a ship, sailing to sea. Although sometimes they were in a rocket, blasting to Mars. And sometimes they were just in a hole, because that was fun, too.

  When those memories filled up the space, Lucas tried his best to push them away and focus on the task at hand. He was there for a reason—to get Josh Duncan and take him home. Did the backpack mean he’d gone through the basement window? Lucas didn’t want to think that, but the window was open and the kid wasn’t around. He thought about calling out, but he didn’t know if that would scare him.

  He was still holding the shoebox he’d pulled from the darkest corner of his closet. He set it down to unzip the backpack. If the backpack belonged to Josh Duncan, he’d have to go in after him. The clatter of metal from inside the basement made Lucas jump. Please don’t be Josh Duncan, he whispered as he reached for the zipper. Please.

  Zzzzip. The sound was loud in his ears. Hands trembling, Lucas reached into the backpack and pulled out a notebook. Even through the deepening dusk the moon was bright enough for him to see the cover. It said, Josh Duncan, Mr. K’s class. Something else came out, too. The note he’d written and slipped into Josh Duncan’s book of poetry.

  Lucas leaned down to the open window. He was going to tell the kid to come back out—they’d go home together. That this whole thing was a bad mistake. But as he set the backpack down, he knocked the box on its side, scattering the objects that had been hidden away for years.

  Lucas panicked. He bent close to the ground to gather them up. It was dark and damp in the hole, with so many weeds. Hi
s hands patted every inch of the space. He had to find them—every single one. Nothing else mattered. Even the sounds from the basement—the clatter of metal and the shuffling of feet. But when he heard the slam of the door, Lucas froze.

  Josh Duncan had found the stairs. Josh Duncan was in the house.

  STUPID PEOPLE IN SCARY MOVIES

  Josh hadn’t meant to slam the basement door. But the door seemed to move on its own. Maybe it was because of old, brittle wood or the way the wind howled through the cracks in the boarded-up windows that made the door shut with such force, rattling the walls.

  He should not have come—he knew that. He’d broken into an abandoned house in the middle of the forest, ignored a NO TRESPASSING sign and a barbed-wire fence. He’d lied to his mom. Everything was wrong.

  Find your way in.

  What did that even mean? And the Gorilla Club—was it even real? Why would he ignore his mom when she told him to floss his teeth, but would follow the directions of a crazy note written by a kid he didn’t know?

  These were the questions racing through his mind as he tiptoed around the house, from the basement landing to the old kitchen and through to the dining room. The moon, spilling light between cracks, played tricks with his eyes. A room would be empty, and then with a blink, it appeared completely furnished with couches and chairs and tables. In the hallway, pictures appeared on the wall—family portraits and snapshots and school photos, just like Josh’s mom was hanging back home. But when the light shifted, they were gone. It was like ghost furniture, flickering in and out between one world and another.

  And there were sounds. At first he heard them coming from the basement. Footsteps on the wooden stairs. But then he heard something else. As Josh stood in the dining room, one sound grew louder. It seemed to be coming from the walls around him. Like something, or someone, was living inside the walls of the house. Someone who was crying.