Last Meeting of the Gorilla Club

by Sara Nickerson

  Josh closed his eyes and tried to take deep breaths. The dark was different behind his closed eyes, more familiar and comfortable, like going home. Who knew? Who knew the dark behind a person’s own eyelids could feel so safe compared with the dark all around? He sat up straight and opened his eyes. It was just as dark. He flicked on the lighter. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “No,” Lucas said. “You?”

  “No. Why did you give me the note? About the club? I thought it was real.”

  “She told me what to write. She said she’d go away if I did it. And then I felt bad. And I got worried for you. So I came here, to make sure you’d be okay. And now—”

  Josh wheezed. “Now neither one of us is okay.”

  Lucas said, “You’re not going to die, are you?”

  “I could use my inhaler. And a secret passage.”

  “Please don’t die. I couldn’t take another ghost in my life.”

  “Keep talking,” Josh said. “It helps.”

  Which is how Lucas Hernandez told his story. The one he’d been hiding his whole life. The one that haunted him. He told his ghost story in the dark. The way all ghost stories should be told.

  GHOST STORY

  “We moved here when I was five,” Lucas said. “Right before I started kindergarten.”

  “Kleenex,” Josh blurted.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sorry. Keep going.”

  Lucas cleared his throat. “I’ve never told anyone this before, so don’t go shouting things out unless there’s a reason.”

  “It was a thing that happened in kindergarten,” Josh tried to explain. “I got teased a lot.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Keep going. I think it’s helping.” His breath sounded less shallow.

  Lucas continued. “I was sort of shy, I guess. I played a lot of things by myself.”

  “I was like that, too,” Josh said.

  “So at school, I remember going out to the playground and this girl came over and took my hand. She just took my hand and it didn’t seem weird. She said, ‘I’ll be your best friend if you’ll be mine.’ And I said I would—be her best friend. I liked her right away because she wore two different-colored shoes. And she liked sparkly clothes. We were together every second after that first time on the playground, every second we could be. At her house or my house. We liked to look for rocks.” His voice trailed off and all the freakiness was gone for a moment, replaced by a plain old sadness.

  Josh said, “So, wait—she was real? I mean—”

  “Yes. What did you think?”

  “She wasn’t like she is now?”

  “What? Of course not. She was my friend.”

  “Okay,” Josh said, beginning to understand. “What happened?”

  Lucas took a deep breath. When he started talking again, his voice was different. “When she died, I guess I just didn’t believe it. When my parents told me what happened, I was six, in first grade. But I kept seeing her everywhere, so I didn’t understand why everyone else was so sad. I saw her in class still, and on the playground. At the grocery store. Everywhere. I made my mom take me to her gravesite. I guess I tried to dig it up, to prove she wasn’t in there. I don’t really remember, but that’s what they told me. Crazy, huh?”

  “Not crazy,” Josh said.

  “But then I sort of stopped seeing her. I made some new friends. And I guess I just forgot about it. Things were normal for a little while.”

  Josh was thinking about his old backyard. The hole he dug in the dirt. The rock with Big Brother’s name carefully painted.

  “But then, on the first day of school this year, she showed up again. She didn’t look the same. I mean, it was like she was in fifth grade, too. She grew up.” He paused. “When we were in kindergarten she would stand on the little kid side and stare at the big kids. She’d say ‘We get to be over there, Lucas. When we’re in fifth grade.’ I’d forgotten that until now.”

  Josh cleared his throat. He wanted to tell Lucas about Big Brother, but Lucas kept talking.

  “I didn’t recognize her, not at first. I actually thought she was a real kid, a new kid. But then she said things, about when we were little. And about what happened. And then she started looking weird and following me and sitting on the edge of my desk and cheering when I was playing soccer or running around the track. I didn’t know what to do. And then she wanted to talk about the thing that happened. The day she died. And—and—I knew that if she did, I wouldn’t be able to take it—” His voice broke. He started to cry.

  “Hey—” Josh scooted over and placed his hand on Lucas Hernandez’s shoulder.

  Lucas sniffed. “There’s more.”

  It was like a nightmare, Josh thought. And we’re both trapped in it. The only way out was to go all the way to the end. But what if it was the kind of nightmare that getting to the end was the thing that killed you?

  “I thought I’d just ignore her and maybe she’d go away. So when she followed me to class, I pretended I didn’t see her. And when she told me jokes in the lunch line, I ignored her.” Lucas paused. “Knock-knock.”

  “What?”

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Europe.”

  “Europe who?”

  “No I’m not.”

  “I don’t get it,” Josh said.

  “It sounds like poo—you’re a poo.”

  “That’s not even funny.”

  “I know.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “You showed up. That’s what happened next. And for some reason, she was interested in you. I thought it was just because you were new. That’s what I thought. I thought it was because you didn’t know about this house, like everyone else did. So she saw you as someone she could get to come here. And that’s why she had me write the note. I think it was her way to get me to come.” He paused. “How’s your breathing?”

  “Better,” Josh said. “But why did she want you to come here?”

  Lucas lowered his voice again. “I have these dreams—”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “I have these dreams. Where she’s in this closet. Only this time I know it. I open the door for her. I save her.”

  “So when she died—” Josh was getting nervous. He flicked on the lighter and held it close to Lucas’s face.

  “We used to play in here all the time. Maxie’s nonna had a lighter we liked because it looked like a ship. We weren’t supposed to play with it, but sometimes Maxie would sneak it in. We knew we would never actually use it, you know—light it. We just liked how it looked. But on that day, the day it happened, I had to go home and she wasn’t done playing. She told me to close the door. She didn’t want Nonna to find her with the lighter. And that was the other thing—we weren’t supposed to close the door all the way. Ever. I don’t think I closed it when I left, but I must have. Because it was stuck. That’s what happened. She used the lighter. And the door was stuck.”

  Josh flicked off the flame.

  THE THING THAT SETS HARRY HOUDINI FREE

  When he could speak again, Josh said, “We need to get out of here.”

  “I know that. Of course I know that.”

  “Then why did you shut the door?”

  “I didn’t shut it. The wind must have. Or she did.”

  Josh felt his neck start to twitch. He thought of his mom at home, hanging pictures. “Why? Why does she want us here? Why doesn’t anyone live here?” He remembered the little kids at the obstacle course. The house in the woods. Loser touches the house.

  “After the accident her family moved. The fire didn’t burn for long, but the smoke. The smoke—the smoke is what—” He choked on the words, couldn’t get the last ones out. Then he said, “They tried to rent it
out. Families move in but there are noises. Doors slam and people hear, they hear a girl crying in the walls. Most of them don’t last a year.” Lucas was done talking. He was done except for a whisper, “I don’t think we’ll ever get out of this closet. I don’t think she will let us.”

  Josh tried to make sense of the story he’d heard. “Why did she do this? Why did she bring us both here?”

  “She wants us to die.”

  “No. That’s not it. I don’t know her reason, but maybe figuring it out is the key.” His own words made Josh remember a quote from his Harry Houdini book, the one from the haunted library.

  “Listen,” he said. “My brain is the key that sets me free. Harry Houdini said that.”

  Lucas sniffled. “I thought he swallowed pins to get out of stuff.”

  “Yeah, but you know what I mean.”

  “Hey.” Lucas’s voice brightened. “You just made me think of something. There’s this thing on YouTube. Real Life Stunts. Have you seen it?”

  “No,” Josh said.

  “It’s basically how to do all the things you see in movies, but for real. Like break down a door with your foot, for example.”

  “And you just thought of that now?”

  “Do you want to try it or not?”

  “Yes,” Josh said. “Definitely.”

  The two boys scrambled to their feet, knocking against each other in the small space. Josh held up the lighter and flicked it on.

  “I’ll count to three,” Lucas said. “We need to aim for the space right next to the doorknob. On the videos it works every time. Aim for that spot.”

  Josh moved the lighter. “There?”

  “Exactly.”

  Lucas put his arm around Josh for balance. Josh turned off the lighter and slipped it in his pocket, then shifted to one foot and held on to Lucas.

  Lucas started the countdown. “One,” he said. The boys clutched tighter.

  “Two—” They shifted their weight and lifted their legs.

  “Three!” The two boys kicked with all their might. There was a tremendous noise, but nothing more.

  “I think I cracked my leg bone,” Josh said.

  “Yeah,” Lucas agreed. “Me too. Should we try it again?”

  Josh lifted his leg and shook it around. He figured the fact that it could move meant it probably wasn’t really broken. “Can we switch sides?”

  “Good idea.”

  Clumsily the boys shuffled around each other. Josh flicked on the lighter again, to help find the right spot on the door.

  “Keep it on,” Lucas said. “It helps if we can see the door.”

  Josh set the lighter close to their feet. He wanted to believe that the tiny bit of light would help. He wanted to believe that they could kick the door down, just the way Lucas had described. My brain is the key that sets me free, he reminded himself.

  He felt like he’d been sucked into an alien ship or shoved off a cliff holding a ten-pound bowling ball. Because the truth was, they were trapped in the closet because a dead girl wanted them there. She had orchestrated the whole thing. It was hard to believe that a couple of well-placed kicks would do anything to thwart her plan, whatever it was. Which meant that she controlled what happened next. Not Josh, not Lucas, not a YouTube channel about busting down doors.

  The more Josh thought about it, the more his chest squeezed tight. So he clung to his new friend and visualized the most amazing kick—a kick that would set them free.

  And it was funny because, right then, Lucas Hernandez did feel like a friend. Like maybe one hour of locked-in-a-closet time equaled an entire year in the real world. Josh briefly wondered whether it was the kind of thing that would last outside the closet or whether his life would go back to how it was before, when he ate his lunch on Dead Melanie’s bench. Then he wondered whether they would get out at all.

  “You ready?” Lucas asked him. “On three?”

  “On three,” Josh said, like an official door buster. A part of a door-busting team. It was the first time he’d felt something close to being on a team. Even though it didn’t come under the best of circumstances, it was a good feeling.

  Lucas counted and they kicked. They kicked hard. The world exploded in fireworks behind Josh’s eyes—that’s how hard he kicked. The door seemed to buckle for a moment. Then there was a laugh. A girl’s laugh.

  “Did you hear that?” Josh opened his eyes. The door was still there. “Did you hear the laugh? Why is she laughing? Is this a game? Is she still thinking like a little kid? Tell me more about her. There’s a reason she wanted us here.”

  Lucas didn’t answer. His shoulders shook. He sank down in front of the door. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Josh crouched low and looked him in the face. He could see that Lucas had given up. “Lucas, we can do this. Let’s try again.”

  Lucas shook his head. Josh glanced past him to the lighter at their feet. It took him a moment to register the small fire creeping along the trail of spilled liquid. Tiny sparks were catching on the twisted rags and old newspapers they’d used as mops.

  Lucas saw the fire, too. Both boys froze as the flames grew quickly, lapping up the chemicals and spewing out a thick cloud of smoke.

  Josh had prepared himself for earthquakes and volcanoes and Bigfoot and bear attacks. He knew not to talk to strangers. He carried his inhaler everywhere. He wore a bike helmet. He didn’t cross a street without looking both ways. And he never ever ever played with matches. So how did this happen?

  He kicked at the door. He beat it with his fist. The smoke stung his eyes. He fought to take in good air. He didn’t even notice Lucas shouting, “Josh, give me your coat!”

  Because a thought was forming. It was coming together like a quiet voice in all the commotion. “It’s the second meeting of the Gorilla Club, Josh,” the voice said. “What do you see?”

  And as Lucas was ripping the coat off his back, Josh looked around. What was he missing? What was he not seeing?

  He looked at every wall and corner. He looked at the door again and its hinges.

  Then he did the one thing he hadn’t thought to do. He looked up.

  WHEN YOU ARE TRAPPED IN A CLOSET

  “I knew there must be a reason you wore that thing everywhere,” Lucas said, trying to make a joke as he beat the rest of the dying flames with Josh’s new red raincoat. But the joke couldn’t cut through the thick, gray, choking smoke that was now trapped in the closet with them.

  Josh pointed to the ceiling and the attic door he’d glimpsed when the flames were strong. When Lucas didn’t see, because of the smoke, Josh grabbed him by the arm. “There’s a door in the ceiling,” he said. “In the back corner. If you lift me up—”

  Lucas didn’t wait for him to finish. He placed himself in the back corner. “Here?”

  “I think so,” Josh said.

  When Lucas crouched over, Josh climbed onto his back. Josh could feel him shake as he struggled to straighten.

  “Can you reach?”

  Josh stretched for the ceiling but his fingers barely skimmed. “Higher,” he called. And to himself he whispered, “Please. Please let this work.” He forced one foot onto Lucas’s shoulder and then the other. He wobbled there, fighting for balance. Then slowly, steadily, he straightened his legs. He reached up. He felt around until he could trace the frame of the attic door. “Please,” he whispered again. “Please open.” He placed his hands flat in the center and he pushed. Tentatively at first, and then so hard his arms shook.

  He heard a creak of wood before he felt the movement. Just an inch, but a shower of attic dust fell into his eyes.

  “Hold on!” Lucas shouted, tightening his grip on Josh’s trembling legs.

  Josh squeezed his eyes shut and pushed at the door again. Again and again, until he felt another shift. “Get me higher!”

>   Lucas was on the verge of collapsing, but he said, “You can do it, Josh!” And he gave one more heave.

  More than anything else, the words were exactly what Josh needed to hear. Not from Big Brother or his dad or a poster, but words from a real live kid who needed him.

  This time, when Josh pushed at the attic door, it opened all the way. More dust and debris rained down on the boys, including chewed-up paper and fluff from nests made by generations of squirrels.

  Along with their nests and dust, the squirrels dropped into the closet. They fell on Josh’s head, clawed at his hair, and then tumbled down his body. “Ahhhh!” he screamed.

  “What is it? What is—” And then, “Ahhhh!” Lucas shouted. “Something is scratching me—what is it?”

  Josh felt Lucas losing his grip. He stretched his arms into the hole. “I’m almost there—push me higher—”

  “There are all these animals in here. They have claws!”

  Josh could hear the panic in his voice, but he couldn’t call back. He didn’t have enough strength or breath. He thrust his head inside. A small attic window let the moonlight in and illuminated dozens of wild and startled eyes.

  “AHHH!” Josh screamed when he saw them.

  “AHHH!” Lucas screamed in response. “What is it? What’s up there?”

  Josh felt his head sinking. He reached up and anchored one arm on the attic floor. “Push me higher!”

  Josh felt Lucas give one more push before his grip slipped away. Josh held on and inched his way up. He shimmied onto his stomach and then flipped around to reach his hand to Lucas.

  When Lucas jumped to catch his hand and Josh tried to heave him up, it seemed they were about to experience the miraculous car-accident superpower moment Josh’d always heard about. But then Lucas just dangled there, not moving. It was so preposterous that the boys almost burst out laughing.

  How was Josh supposed to pull him up? How did he think, even for a minute, that it would work?

  Lucas dropped down. He fought another cough. “These things are squirrels. And they are crazy. You have to get me out of here.”