AbrakaPOW

by Isaiah Campbell

  When she descended into the abyss, every ounce of relief she had felt disappeared. For Houdini wasn’t down there. And neither was Felix.

  Instead, the chair Felix usually sat in was charred black and dripping with a red liquid that was unmistakably blood. The same blood was also smeared along the floor toward the stairs and also had been used to write on the wall that the now immolated chair faced:

  MENE MENE TEQEL UPHARSIN.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  See, that’s exactly why I told you to put the bell on him,” Carl said. All of the other Gremlins shot him a look of disbelief.

  “You think I should have put a bell on Felix?” Max asked from her seat on the steps. Lola sat next to her, arm around Max’s shoulders, rubbing her arms to help relieve the emotional chill that Max had held in her bones since the moment she screamed.

  “No, Houdini,” he said. “A bell on Felix wouldn’t have helped if somebody killed him. They probably would have taken it off.”

  Shoji glanced at Max’s pale face. “Carl, I’ve never said this to you before, but shut up.”

  “Well, whether Felix was murdered or not, I don’t know,” Major Larousse said from under the stairs. “But the blood isn’t his.” He stepped out with a box and pulled the gutted, decapitated corpse of a chicken out of it. “Somebody put a lot of effort into this.”

  Eric had been standing in front of the words on the wall ever since he and the others arrived, after Max had frantically called them, which was when the major heard the news and rushed her outside before her mother found out what had happened.

  “Oh, I know where I’ve seen this before!” Eric said and slapped his forehead. “It was in church a few weeks ago. It’s in Daniel, I think.” He turned to the major. “Do you guys have a bible?”

  “Uh, no, I’m afraid not,” Major Larousse said.

  “Mrs. Morris probably does,” Max said. “She talks to Jesus a lot, so she’d better have the book he wrote. I hear authors have really fragile egos when it comes to stuff like that.”

  Eric hurried over and, a few minutes later, came bounding down the stairs. “Yeah, I was right. Daniel chapter five, verses twenty-five through twenty-eight. It says: ‘And this is the writing that was written: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.’ Just like on the wall.”

  Major Larousse moved to read over his shoulder. “And it gives the translation. ‘This is the interpretation of the thing: Mene: God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Peres:’ which I guess is somehow related to ‘Upharsin,’ ‘Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.’” Major Larousse looked at the words again. “But what does that even mean?”

  Max jumped up. “Devil-worshipping Jews, that’s what it means.”

  Major Larousse looked more shocked than she’d ever seen him. “You’d better never let your mom hear you talking like that.”

  “What are you saying?” Lola asked her.

  “I’m saying it’s got to be the old lady in the haunted house. That’s the only explanation. She had to have come in here and taken him.”

  “And now you sound crazy,” the major said. “I need you to explain what you mean.”

  She hurriedly told him the whole story of what had been happening in the storm cellar, apologizing after every couple of sentences for not informing him of the situation because she could tell he was teetering on the edge of a Major Explosion.

  “Okay, then let’s go rattle her cage a little and get some answers,” he said and started up the stairs.

  Lola jumped up to stop him. “Hold on, what if she’s not a devil-worshipping Jew?”

  “She’s not,” Max said. “That was just a joke.” Max pushed on the major’s back to motivate him to scoot Lola out of the way.

  “Okay, I get that,” Lola said. “But what if she’s not evil at all? What if she’s just a little old lady and we’re about to go give her a heart attack?”

  The major nodded his head after a moment of contemplation. “No, you’re right.”

  “What do you suggest?” Max asked.

  “Just you and I go,” Lola said. “And your dad can be close enough to swoop in if there’re any issues.”

  And so it was that Max, the girl from Brooklyn who brought the magic, and Lola, the girl from Abilene who was the voice of conscience, walked up to the front door of the old lady from the haunted house, who incited terror in children everywhere. After seventeen seconds of mustering up the courage, Max knocked on the door precisely one second before Lola pointed at the street that crossed Max’s street.

  “Hey, isn’t that a Jeep?” Lola asked.

  Max looked to see what she was speaking of but didn’t respond because, in that moment, the door opened.

  Gil stood before them with a plate and a towel in his hands.

  “Hi, Half-pint,” he said with a grin. “What are you doing over here?”

  “I—” she shook her head and refused to be distracted by his question. She could do nothing about being distracted by his presence, unfortunately. “What are you doing over here?”

  “Just having lunch with Mrs. Mosen,” he said. “I usually come over here to take her to the temple on Saturdays, but since we were busy yesterday, I thought I’d at least bring her some food to make up for it.”

  Max and Lola both shared the same look, which was the look one has when they discover not only that there is a person operating the puppets in the marionette show, but also that the person is actually their uncle.

  “You’re— You go to temple?” Max asked. “But you’re not Jewish.”

  A bell rang behind him. “Here, you’d better come in. She gets very cold when the door is open.”

  Max and Lola both leaned over to look behind Gil. The very thin, old lady, Mrs. Mosen, sat on a very thin, old couch. She stared back at them through her sunken eyes, her toothless mouth opening and closing like a fish in water. She rang her bell again.

  Gil pulled them in and closed the door. “Here, have a seat.” He pointed them to two ancient wooden chairs that barely stood upright. On the wall behind the lady was a square of fabric with the six-pointed Star of David embroidered on it.

  “Oh my gosh, Margaret was half-right,” Max said. “She is a Jew.”

  Gil stood between the two chairs after they sat. He put his hand on Max’s head. “This is Max,” he said loudly. Mrs. Mosen nodded. He rested his hand on Lola. “And this is Lola.” Another nod. He went into the kitchen and put the plate on the counter.

  “You have a nice place,” Lola said loudly. Mrs. Mosen stared at her blankly. Max thought perhaps a different line of questions was in order.

  “Do you like the temple here?” she asked. She was met with blankness as well.

  Gil reentered the room. “Mrs. Mosen doesn’t understand English,” he said.

  “Then what does she speak?” Max asked.

  “She doesn’t speak at all,” he said. “She lost her tongue when she was a child. But she understands Yiddish.”

  Max shook her head. “I don’t understand, why are you here?”

  “I told you, I take her to temple every Saturday.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  He sighed and sat next to Mrs. Mosen. He took her hand in his. She gave him a faint smile. “She’s the grandmother of someone you don’t know. Abe Mosen. He was stationed here before he got deployed to France.” He patted her hand. “He asked me to take care of her for him while he’s away.”

  “Wow, that’s a pretty hefty job to do for somebody,” Lola said.

  Gil’s face got a look of tenderness on it neither of them had ever seen him exhibit before that moment. “He’s worth it. And being close to Mrs. Mosen, it’s like being close to Abe. So I don’t mind.” He patted her hair and kissed her. She rubbed his face and her smile grew. “Anyway,” he said as he stood. “What are you girls doing over here? Selling cookies?”

  “No, we were going to ask her something,” Max said wit
h a sigh. “But it doesn’t really matter anymore. She’s not the person we thought she was. Heck, she doesn’t even know who we are. There’s no chance she’d knows anything about what we need to know.”

  He cocked his head. “Hold on, now, what makes you think she doesn’t know who you are? She probably knows more about you two than you know about yourselves. Do you know what she does all day, every day, if I’m not over here to keep her company? She sits in front of that window and watches. She watches the neighborhood, watches the people who come and go. From sunup to sundown, and sometimes even after dark, she’s always watching.”

  “She might have seen something,” Lola said. Max nodded.

  “Okay, then let’s ask her,” Max said.

  “Sure,” Gil said. “Do either of you know Yiddish?”

  Max felt the lightbulb flash on yet again. “No, but I know someone who does.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Max’s living room was teeming, looking far more like a military listening station than a cozy place for tea. But there was still tea. Mrs. Larousse had made tea for Mrs. Mosen as Major Larousse and Max ran through the process of getting her up to speed on the events at hand at breakneck pace. So shocked was she when she learned there had been an escaped Nazi prisoner in her own backyard that she nearly let the water boil over before she poured it into the cups. But, as any military wife does, she quickly recomposed herself and played to the changes like a professional. Which was a fantastic turn of events, because she was an integral part of the upcoming proceedings with Mrs. Mosen in the living room.

  As was the person on the phone, speaking to Mrs. Mosen: Grandma Schauder.

  After listening for a few seconds, Mrs. Mosen took the pencil that Mrs. Larousse handed her and wrote on the notepad in front of her. Then Mrs. Larousse took the pad and read the contents to Grandma Schauder on the phone. Once Grandma Schauder translated the message to her, she covered the mouthpiece and spoke to the room.

  “She says that she’s been watching our house for a very long time.”

  “Great,” Major Larousse said over his cup of coffee. “Has she seen anything suspicious?”

  “Did you hear that, Mama?” Mrs. Larousse said into the phone. “He wants to know if she’s seen anything suspicious. Well, I know you don’t know yet. You have to ask her. Okay, I’ll give you to her.” She handed the phone to Mrs. Mosen.

  And this was the tedious process they went through to piece together what exactly Mrs. Mosen had seen and how it might be of use to them.

  Mrs. Mosen hadn’t made it a point to watch their house over the others—not at first, at least. But when she began to see people going in and out of the storm cellar while the house was vacated, she began to feel it was her duty to keep an eye on everything.

  And, one particular night, in the rain, she saw a shadowy figure leave the storm cellar. And then she saw the girl who had just moved in go down the steps, so she made sure to watch very closely, even though it was dark and late and she had been very cold.

  “And she saw the person close the cellar on the girl,” Mrs. Larousse said. “Wait, Max, you were stuck in the cellar?”

  “Yeah, and I thought it was her who’d trapped me in there. But I guess she let me out.”

  “Yes, and she also said she took some shoes because she was scared she might freeze to death.” Mrs. Larousse couldn’t help but scold Max with her eyes for keeping this a secret. “They’re in her pantry, apparently.”

  “Is that where my boots went?” Major Larousse asked.

  “Those are your boots?” Gil asked. “Oh, gosh, I’ve been wearing them when I do her yard work.”

  “You do her yard work?” Max asked. “’Cause it doesn’t show.”

  “I’m not very good at it.”

  “That does show.”

  “Anyway!” Mrs. Larousse barked. “What shall we ask now?”

  “Ask her if she saw anything suspicious in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Ah, yes, that she had. If they would have only asked that first, they could have saved a great deal of time. Because she had seen a man come out of the storm cellar, a man in a gray jumpsuit.

  “And she says he was accompanied by a girl.”

  Everyone in the room stared at Mrs. Mosen in disbelief.

  “Like a woman?” Major Larousse asked. “Maybe his Josephine?”

  “No, not a woman,” Mrs. Larousse said. “A girl. And she said the same girl went down into the storm cellar a few days ago.”

  “The night I thought I heard somebody out there,” Major Larousse said. “Try to get her to give you a description.”

  Shoji leaned over to Max and whispered, “Hey, that reminds me, when we were looking around the house while you were gone, me and Eric found some footprints outside your window. As if someone had climbed in or something. And they were definitely not prints made by a man or a boy, ’cause there were heels and pointed toes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before now?”

  “I was going to but then you brought the hag,” he said.

  “That’s not nice,” she said, but then she turned her attention to the more pressing issue. “So a girl came in my window? Why?”

  “I don’t know, but Carl doesn’t think Houdini busted out of the cage, ’cause your mom told him she had tied it up with wire or something and there wasn’t any way a ferret could undo it.”

  Max felt a lump grow in her stomach. “So somebody stole my ferret?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Max glanced back at Mrs. Mosen, who was listening again to Grandma Schauder. “Why would a girl steal my ferret? And why would a girl leave with Felix?” She thought for a moment. “What girl would be interested in stealing my ferret and my Felix?” Her eyes widened. “Judy.”

  “Judy?”

  “Judy. Think about it. Who else hates our guts so much that they’d do something this terrible to hurt us. To hurt me?”

  Shoji still had his doubts. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe, I guess. But using chicken blood and burning the chair and . . . no, wait, I see it now. You’re right, it’s got to be Judy.”

  “Let’s go,” Max said and pulled him into the kitchen.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To her house. We’re going to catch her red-handed with my ferret and with Felix.”

  He looked back into the living room. “Shouldn’t we wait for them to come with us?”

  “Why? I’m not afraid of Judy.”

  “No, but I’m a little afraid for her,” he said.

  “She made her own bed,” Max said, and they went outside. Shoji hopped on his bike and Max got onto Lola’s, then they switched because Lola’s was too small for Max but Shoji had some experience riding it. They rushed down the road and over toward Judy’s house.

  They stopped when they turned down her street.

  A police car was parked in the driveway.

  “I guess they got here first,” Shoji said.

  They rode up closer and dismounted their noble steeds. Max noticed that Margaret and Natalie stood to the side of the house, listening as Judy’s mother sobbed to the officer that “She’s gone. She just . . . is gone. Lord only knows where she went.”

  Max and Shoji went over to Margaret and Natalie.

  “What happened?” Max asked.

  Natalie shook her head. “Judy’s gone. She disappeared.”

  “And you don’t know where she went?”

  “No,” Natalie said.

  Max looked at Margaret. Her face was pale, and her eyes dodged any form of contact. “You both don’t know where she went?”

  Margaret dropped her head. “No.”

  Natalie’s jaw dropped. “Margy! What do you know?”

  “Shhh!” Margaret hissed.

  Natalie narrowed her eyes, grabbed Margaret by the crook of the arm, and dragged her around the house. Shoji and Max followed close behind.

  “What do you know?” Natalie asked again.

  Margaret drop
ped her gaze. “I told you, nothing.”

  Natalie shook Margaret like a dog shakes a chew toy. “You’re lying. What do you know?”

  “Judy made me promise not to tell,” Margaret whimpered.

  There, in the midst of the beautifully trimmed bushes and fantastically groomed flowers done by the hands of a Nazi prisoner, Natalie slapped Margaret with such force, Max genuinely worried she might have knocked a tooth loose.

  “I swear I will never speak to you or her again,” Natalie said. “You two are the worst. What do you know?”

  “It started out as a prank,” Margaret said with tears welling in her eyes as she clutched her cheek. “I used to go down into that storm cellar and draw on the walls. Just things I’d see in books. And then, when I realized how much Judy hated Max, I took her down there to see.” She took an erratic breath. “She always liked you better than me.”

  “Because you’re a weasel!” Natalie said.

  “Okay, no time for that,” Max said. “So what happened?”

  “So she decided to paint her own thing on the wall. Some Yiddish curse she’d seen in a book.”

  “So that was Judy?” Shoji said. “Wow. We really should have been pranking her harder.”

  “Yeah, but then, I don’t know, I started feeling like she was taking it too far, so I stopped going along with it,” Margaret said. “But then, Friday, she stops me on our way to school and tells me that Max was hiding a Nazi in the cellar. Said she went down to do another painting the night before and she met him.”

  Max hated herself for feeling disappointed that Felix never told her this. “Okay, so what happened?”

  “She said—” Margaret started to sob. “She said he was going to take her to Blaz. But I didn’t believe her. I thought she was just telling stories.”

  Natalie raised her hand to slap her again. Max grabbed it and stopped her.

  “Did she say where they were going to go to meet Blaz?” Max asked.

  Margaret nodded. “Yeah, but it’s too ridiculous.”

  “Where?” Natalie yelled.

  Margaret took a deep breath. “Sweetwater.”