A Bad Night for Bullies

by Gary Ghislain

  I looked up, bracing for an attack. But there were no dogs. Just reality rapidly expanding all around me. And then POP! The universe exploded in a maelstrom of light and sound. I closed my eyes. I heard Old Hewitt scream as loud as Peter had. The dogs yelped. And then there was silence.

  The door was open wide, but I was alone inside the church, pressed against the wall by the altar, the Stone in my hand.

  I knew something had changed. I felt it. This wasn’t the reality I was used to. Even the feel of the air was different—colder, emptier, as if the church had moved outside the normal atmosphere and was drifting in space.

  The light around me was too bright, even for a night with a huge full moon outside. The shadows of the benches went in the wrong direction, deep black lines toward the wide-open door. I looked up and saw a circle of white light right above me. Then, clutching the Stone desperately, I stood up. It seemed completely natural, like I had never been in a wheelchair. I was on my legs and it felt like something I did all the time. I could have walked out of the church. I decided to run. Not out of fear, out of pure joy. I was going as fast as I could when I jumped off the porch and landed on the cemetery grass.

  “This is awesome!” I yelled. And then I saw the dogs. They were lying silently on their sides right outside the church. They didn’t move. They didn’t bark. They didn’t even breathe. One second they were barking and yapping, ready to get me, and the next, they were lying there like three pelts of cold black fur.

  Old Hewitt was nowhere to be seen. But I didn’t want to stay around, in case he came back asking who killed his dogs. I had the feeling that losing the Stone would mean losing the use of my legs again, so I held it tight as I walked down the hill toward the Hewitt place. I was sure that’s where I would find the Goolz.

  21

  DEAD BOY WALKING

  I had never seen the Hewitts’ property before, and it was as spooky as I’d expected. It stank something horrible—like a mixture of wet dogs, gasoline, and chicken poop. The ground was covered in sticky mud dotted with wrecked cars, broken washing machines, and rusted barrels. I walked past a refrigerator lying on its side. The door had been removed and replaced with wire mesh to create a pen for some scraggly rabbits. I pulled my sweater up over my nose. It was no surprise Alex and his dad were in horrible moods all the time. If I had to live in that stench, I might go around hurting people too.

  “Ilona?” I called, still clutching the Stone. Most of the buildings looked like animal barns, but past a dumpster, there was one that looked more like a human dwelling. There was an old rotting sofa on the porch and, above it, a bare light bulb surrounded by giant bugs.

  “I don’t like this,” I told the Stone.

  “Mr. Goolz?” I called, stepping onto the porch. “Are you in there?”

  I leaned forward to listen at the door. I thought I heard knocks and voices, so I walked behind the rotten sofa and peered through a window into the kitchen. There was nothing there but a horrible mess of dirty dishes and trash. I moved to another window in a darker part of the house. But when I got close to the glass, I moved back in horror, nearly falling off the porch into the putrid mud. The figure reflected in the window was looking at me with two glassy white globes instead of eyes. I moved my hand. The reflection moved its hand, only it was all bones and skin and no flesh.

  I looked down at my hands and they looked absolutely normal. I approached the glass to take a better look. Thanks to the Stone, I was walking again, but in my reflection I looked as dead as Madame Valentin. I looked like a monster.

  “Am I dead?” I asked my zombie reflection. I set the Stone down on the floor like it was toxic and stared at myself in the window. I touched my face. I touched the empty eyes. I was the stuff of nightmares.

  “Am I dead?” I asked the window again. I didn’t want to be dead. I looked down at the Stone. “You did this to me!” I wanted to kick it away, but I heard a voice and looked back up at the window. Something was moving on the hallway floor. Or rather, the entire floor was moving—there was a trapdoor and somebody was trying to get out.

  “Ilona!” I called. I skirted the sofa and opened the front door. “Ilona!”

  “Harold! Down here!” she replied, banging on the trapdoor.

  “Good boy!” Frank Goolz said.

  “Get us out of here!” Suzie yelled, and the trapdoor moved up and down as someone pushed on it. It was secured with chains and a huge old padlock. I squatted to get a better look.

  “Where’s the key?” I asked.

  “I think Hewitt has it. Where is he?” Ilona answered.

  “His dogs are dead,” I said, since that was the only information I had.

  “Go into the kitchen,” Frank Goolz said. “All my things are there. You can use the gun on the padlock.”

  I went into the kitchen. Frank Goolz’s satchel was there on the table, along with the revolver, his orange pad and pen, and my phone. I picked up the gun and went back to the trapdoor.

  “You sure this thing isn’t going to explode in my hand when I shoot?” I asked. It was extremely heavy and didn’t feel safe at all.

  “We’ll soon know,” Frank Goolz said.

  I heard them scurrying down a flight of stairs—in case the revolver did explode, I suppose.

  “Harold?” Frank Goolz called from far below.

  “Yes?”

  “Shoot the padlock. Now!”

  I cocked the gun. It made an old metallic noise like a tin can being squeezed. I aimed at the padlock, looked away, and shot. It made an enormous KABOOM and the recoil knocked me onto the ground. I fanned the acrid smoke with a shaky hand and picked up the revolver from where I’d dropped it. It hadn’t exploded, but neither had the padlock.

  “Everybody all right down there?” I called.

  “We’re fine,” Ilona said. “How’s the padlock?”

  “It’s fine too,” I said. “I’m going to shoot it again.” I leaned down a little, bringing the barrel really close to the lock. I shot it at nearly point blank. KABOOM. It made an even greater noise, like a thousand metallic springs jumping out of a box, and the force of the shot vibrated up my arm. I fanned the smoke away with my hand and leaned down to check the padlock. “It worked!” I said. I struggled to free it from the chain.

  “Don’t shoot, I’m coming up,” Ilona shouted.

  “I’m not gonna shoot anymore.” I set the gun on the ground and pushed it away from me.

  I removed the chain, and Ilona pushed the trapdoor open so hard that I fell back on my butt.

  “Oh, thank God, Harold,” she said, and crawled over to hug me tight.

  Then she pulled back, frowning. “Where’s your chair?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

  I waited for Frank Goolz and Suzie to come out and enjoy the show.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” I said and tried to stand up. I failed. I tried again. I failed again. It was like waking up in the middle of a dream where you could fly.

  I couldn’t fly anymore.

  “No,” I said, looking up at them.

  “What?” Suzie asked. Ilona looked at me with sad eyes.

  “No, no, no,” I repeated. “I need the Stone. I need it now!”

  Ilona tried to touch my arm. “It’s all right, Harold. You’re going to be all right.”

  I pushed her hand away. “I don’t need your pity! I NEED THE STONE! GET IT FOR ME!”

  Frank Goolz squatted in front of me. “We need to get out of here. I can carry you.”

  “I don’t want to be carried. I want you to go outside, pick up the Stone on the porch, and bring it back to me.” The more they looked at me, the more I hated myself. “You people are useless!” I screamed. I started to crawl toward the door to get the Stone back.

  “Harold, stop,” Ilona said.

  “Leave me alone!” I didn’t care how pathetic I sounded. All I wanted was to get the Stone back and turn it. Maybe I would look like a decomposing cadaver in every mirror for the rest of my
life, but I didn’t care.

  “Harold!” she yelled. I didn’t stop. I was nearly at the door when I realized she’d been trying to warn me. Hewitt was on the porch. Instead of his usual plank of wood, he was holding a shotgun. His face was covered in mud and bloody scratches. His clothes were torn. His expression was murderous. Wherever he had gone after setting the dogs on me at the church, it didn’t look like it had been a picnic.

  “You people,” he said, aiming the shotgun at the Goolz. I looked over my shoulder. Frank Goolz had picked up his revolver and was pointing it at Hewitt.

  “Or we could talk this through,” Frank Goolz said.

  “You brought her back,” Hewitt said. “You brought her back from the dead.”

  “You killed her, right?” Frank Goolz asked. “All those years ago. You and Donahue killed her. That’s why she came back and went after your kids.”

  “She’s dead!” he yelled, tightening his grip on the shotgun. Clearly, he wanted to put an end to this discussion.

  “If you tell me where you buried her body, I can help you find your son,” Frank Goolz insisted. “He might be still alive.”

  “She got what she deserved!” he yelled, ignoring Frank Goolz’s offer. “She’s dead and in hell!”

  “No, she’s not,” I said, looking past him. “She’s here.”

  She was standing by the dilapidated fridge. She leaned over and tore off the mesh, freeing the rabbits. They jumped out of their prison and ran away in all directions. Old Hewitt turned around slowly, keeping his shotgun pointed at Frank Goolz. He screamed when he saw Madame Valentin staring at him with her empty white eyes.

  “You’re dead!” he screamed at her. “Go away!”

  She didn’t. Instead, she let go of the mesh and walked toward him at a slow, even pace, her expression perfectly calm. He aimed his shotgun at her, but she didn’t seem to care. She kept coming at him, even when he shot at her again and again, like she didn’t belong in the same dimension as the bullets he was shooting.

  “You killed my dogs!” Hewitt yelled. He kept shooting until he had no more ammunition. She stopped right in front of the porch, still looking very calm. He flung the shotgun at her. It bounced off like she was a wall, and she stepped up onto the porch. She was coming for him and he knew it.

  “You’re dead!” Hewitt cried. He fell to his knees. “Please go.”

  She stood right above him and cupped his chin with her half-skinned, mummified hand, her dark nails and bones pressing hard into his fat cheeks, forcing him to look into her eyes.

  “I didn’t kill you,” he pleaded. “The dogs killed you. I didn’t want them to kill you. I just wanted them to scare you off. Please, just leave me alone.”

  But she kept staring into his eyes until he started crying like a little boy. “We were dumb kids. It was an accident. We wanted to scare you off, that’s all. It was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

  She let go of his chin and he fell to the floor, curling up at her feet like a dying bug.

  She looked down at me and smiled—I think. It was hard to say. With her mummified cadaver lips, she always seemed to be grinning. Then she walked over to the Stone of the Dead and picked it up. She cradled it against her chest with both hands and continued past us into the house. We watched her disappear into the darkness at the end of the hallway.

  Old Hewitt was still curled up on the porch, sobbing. “It was the dogs. The dogs did it,” he repeated.

  “I think she’s gone,” Ilona said, bending to help me to sit up against the wall.

  “She took the Stone with her,” I said. I hadn’t known she could do that.

  Frank Goolz kept the revolver pointed at Hewitt, who was still sobbing. “Well, I guess we should wake up Officer Miller, then,” he said.

  “She took the Stone!” I repeated. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. “Why did she do that?”

  “I think she’s taking it back to where it belongs, Harold,” Frank Goolz said. “She’s taking it back to hell.”

  22

  THE GOOLZ NEXT DOOR

  Old Hewitt confessed to two crimes: the accidental killing of Madame Valentin decades ago, when he and Donahue were kids and had set the dogs on her, and the recent murder of Donahue during a terrible fight on his boat.

  They had been visited by Madame Valentin’s ghost every night since Frank Goolz started playing with the Stone of the Dead. Donahue had been losing his mind over it, and was starting to think that the only way to stop her from haunting them was to confess. Old Hewitt disagreed, and they’d fought. It ended when Hewitt bashed in Donahue’s skull with the plank of wood and dropped his body in the crab tank.

  Old Hewitt led the police to an abandoned clay mine, where they found the perfectly mummified remains of Madame Valentin. They also found Alex and Peter there, trapped with her body at the bottom of a deep pit.

  “Oh, that must have been so uncomfortable,” Suzie said, smiling. “Serves them right. Ha! Bullies!”

  We were back in the tiny meeting room in the Newton police station. Officer Miller said that Mum was on the way, then he practically ran out of the room.

  “She didn’t want to kill them,” Frank Goolz told us when we were alone. “She wanted people to look for the boys, and find her body in the process. Very clever!”

  He also said that Madame Valentin, the Stone of the Dead, and I were connected in an unusual way. “I believe you are a very special boy, Harold,” he said. “You have a marvelous gift for the ghostly. A talent for seeing past the shadows. It’s a blessing.”

  He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, though, it made me feel a little better about losing the Stone and all its magic.

  “You’ll be fine,” Ilona told me, and I knew everything would be okay. That is, until I heard a tornado come into the station shouting my name. Mum had arrived.

  “Mum!” I called. “Please?”

  “No,” she said from downstairs, where she was working on her next savory pie. Mum had reinstated the Goolz embargo and even said she would press charges if they dragged me into danger again.

  “This is ridiculous,” I told her, playing with the stair lift to annoy her with the noise. “The Goolz are heroes! You should want me to spend more time with them. Those two idiots would have died in that cave without them.”

  “You said they weren’t idiots anymore.”

  Mum was right. After the dust had settled, Peter and Alex paid me a visit at home. But not to drag me to the beach and abandon me to the tide like they used to. They came to make peace and to thank me for playing a part in their rescue. They sat at our kitchen table, ate some of Mum’s cheesecake, and listened to her jokes without mocking her accent. They even shook my hand before they left.

  “You’re awesome, English boy,” Alex said. “Always thought so.”

  Spending time with a mummified cadaver had changed them deeply. Or maybe, now that the sins of their fathers had been brought to justice, in this world and the next, a magical grudge had been lifted from their shoulders, and they could become who they were really meant to be. Whatever it was, they were bullies no more.

  “Please, Mum?” I said later, watching her weed the vegetable garden.

  “No,” she said.

  I was on the porch. Ilona was sitting on the floor of her own porch on the other side of the bridge. We exchanged nods and brief waves when Mum wasn’t looking.

  “This sucks,” I mouthed, hoping Ilona could read my lips.

  She smiled and mouthed back, “I know!”

  Her father had even built a ramp for me, waving and smiling at Mum as she stared at him incredulously.

  When I turned back to Mum, she was on her knees, holding a bunch of vivid orange carrots, and watching our silent conversation.

  “Why do you have to make me play the bad guy?” she asked.

  “Please, Mum.”

  She briefly closed her eyes, then sighed and put her hands on her hips, trying to look all st
ern and authoritarian, which didn’t really work when she was holding a bunch of carrots. “No more dangerous adventures!” she yelled.

  My heart started to beat faster. I knew she was finally giving in.

  “No more dangerous adventures!” I agreed, my voice coming out about two octaves too high.

  She shook her head in disbelief and dropped the carrots into her vegetable basket. “I’m going to regret this.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said.

  “Go on, then.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was already flying down the path to the bridge.

  “And Harold!” Mum called. “You go no farther than their house or yard, do you hear me?”

  But I wasn’t listening anymore. Ilona jumped off her porch and ran to the other side of the bridge. I crossed it without anyone’s help and stopped in front of her, my wheels sinking into the sand.

  “Your mum is watching us,” she said, but she leaned over me and gave me a wonderful hug anyway. “I missed you, Harold Bell.”

  “I missed you, Ilona Goolz.”

  Mum was standing in the middle of our garden, holding her basket of vegetables. She wasn’t angry anymore. She was sad. Or happy. Whatever she was, I knew she was trying not to cry at seeing me so happy to be back with Ilona. Mum and I gave each other a little nod. Then she turned her back and went into the house because she’d started to cry and didn’t want me to see.

  “Should we try the ramp?” Ilona asked. “Dad built it, so it might collapse.”

  It didn’t.

  Frank Goolz and Suzie were in the kitchen enjoying watery cocoa and horrible cookies when we came in.

  “There’s Harold!” Frank Goolz said. “Would you like some cocoa?”

  I nodded, and Suzie made me a cup. Ilona handed me a cookie, and everything was right again.

  “I was just on the phone with Officer Miller,” Frank Goolz said. “Hewitt is talking like he’s unloading a weight he’s had on his shoulders for years.”