by Gary Paulsen
“Too bad you’re not a real ghost, Eddie,” Amos said. “If you were, you could just stick your head through the wall and see what’s on the other side. It would save us a lot of trouble. I wish Blackbeard was here.” He stopped. “I take that back.”
Then Amos held up his hand. “Listen—do you guys hear anything? Like a sword rattling or something?”
“Be serious, Amos. I’m trying to think.”
“I am serious. Do you hear anything?”
A scuffling began very faintly on the other side of the wooden wall, then grew louder and louder. They heard vicious snarls, as if a pack of wild dogs were on the other side.
“What is that?” Dunc cocked his head to hear better.
“I don’t know,” Amos said, “and I’m not going to wait to find out, either.” He was halfway up the stairs in one jump.
“I’m right behind you,” Eddie said. He followed him.
Dunc hesitated for a full two count. Then his legs took over, and he was gone.
• 7
“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Amos said. He and Dunc were in his bedroom. Amos was changing out of his school clothes into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “These men could be dangerous.”
“Maybe.”
“I figured out what’s behind the door.”
“What?”
“Ghost Doberman fang beasts. We get that door open, and they’re going to turn us into chili.” He sat on the bed, pulling his jeans on over his tennis shoes.
“Why do you do that?” Dunc asked.
“Do what?”
“Put your shoes on before your pants.”
“In case there’s a fire.”
“So?”
“If there’s a fire while I’m dressing, I won’t have to run out of the house over burning embers barefoot.”
“But—” Dunc stopped himself. Sometimes it was best not to try to understand Amos’s logic.
Amos had his pants up to his knees when the phone rang. His head popped up.
“Melissa,” he said. “That’s Melissa’s ring.”
He almost made it—he came very close. But there were too many things working against him. His jeans were still around his knees. His head was ten feet ahead of his body, thinking of the phone. He threw the door open and ran down the hall.
Except that he couldn’t run.
“Amos!” Dunc called. “Pull your pants up!”
Amos looked back over his shoulder. “No time!” he shouted.
Things went from bad to worse at that point.
As his head was turned, his mother stepped into the hall in front of him, carrying a hamper piled so high with clothes, they hid her face.
“If you have any dirty clothes—”
Amos hit her in the middle like a torpedo, his head down and his feet driving him forward. The hamper flew up in the air and settled upside down perfectly over his shoulders.
It didn’t even slow him down.
As he reached the landing his pants slipped down around his ankles and he tripped, completing the disaster and jamming him inside the hamper, which then toppled end over end down the stairs.
Dunc heard him falling and the phone ringing and his mother screaming all at the same time. He ran to the landing.
Amos was at the bottom, packed head-first in the hamper. One arm snaked out of the bottom and groped for the phone on the stand by the door. Instead of the phone, he grabbed a vase. He held it to the side of the hamper opposite his ear.
“Hello?” The phone kept ringing.
“Those are flowers, Amos!” Dunc called down.
“Oh.” He dropped the vase, and it shattered on the floor. His hand finally found the phone receiver, and he held it up to the hamper.
“Hello? Hello?”
Amos hung the phone up. He sighed through the woven side of the hamper, his voice muffled. “I let it ring too many times. She hung up.”
“Maybe you’ll have better luck next time.”
“I hope so. I—”
“Amos!” His mother crawled to the landing. A sock hung over her left eye. She was so mad, it looked as if she were going to explode.
“What do you say we go, Dunc?” Amos pushed the hamper off and opened the front door. “I’ll be home early, Mom. ’Bye.” He was gone before Dunc was halfway down the stairs.
• 8
From the Rambridge living room, they called Eddie’s name several times. No one answered.
“Where is he?” Amos asked.
“I don’t know,” Dunc said. “Maybe he’s taking a nap. Follow me up the stairs. Remember to watch your step.”
“Wait a minute, Dunc.”
“What?”
“Nothing’s going to happen like what happened the last time we climbed the stairs, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
Amos swallowed. He didn’t need to say anything more.
“That was only Eddie,” Dunc said. “Eddie’s not a ghost.”
“Oh yeah. When I remember the glowing white and the lantern and the smoking ears, I forget that part.”
The hall at the top of the stairs was dark. Amos heard little whispering noises coming from all around him. Or he thought he did.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“Listen.” He heard them again. “That. What’s that?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That,” Amos whispered. “Didn’t you hear that?”
“You must be hearing mice or something.”
“Or something. It’s the ‘or something’ that I’m worried about.”
Dunc shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many scary movies.”
“I have not. I haven’t seen a scary movie since last night.”
“What was it?”
“The Creature That Ate the Night. It was all about this couple that moved into this old house, and they kept hearing noises and—” He stopped. “Oh. I see what you mean.”
“Come on. We have to find Eddie.”
“Right.” Amos followed him down the hall.
They heard music playing from an open door at the end of the hall. When they looked in, they saw Eddie. He was sitting on the floor in front of a battery-operated television eating potato chips. He looked at them and waved.
“Hi, guys.”
“Hi, Eddie.” Dunc stepped into the room. Amos followed, breathing hard.
“Come on, Eddie,” Dunc said. “We have to get down to the cellar.”
“Wait until this show is over.”
“I want to make sure we’re well hidden—”
“Come on—it’s over at three thirty. We’ll have plenty of time.”
Dunc shut the television off. “We have to get going.”
They argued for a few minutes, and finally Amos and Dunc had to lead Eddie down the hall.
• 9
It was even darker in the cellar than it had been the day before.
Dunc, Amos, and Eddie were hiding behind the wine shelf, back down in a dark corner so full of dust that when they sat down, it rose in clouds around them. Amos sneezed.
“Don’t be doing that when they get here,” Dunc said. He shined a flashlight in his face.
“It’s just the dust. I’ll be fine when it settles.”
“So what’s the plan?” Eddie asked. He gently massaged his ear. He had a small blister on it where the match had burned him.
“We sit and wait and listen.”
“Some plan,” Amos said.
“What else can we do?”
“Oh, I can think of a lot of things. We could count the ceiling tiles at the courthouse, or watch grass grow, or—”
“I mean as far as finding out how to get into the secret room.”
“Where the Ghost Doberman fang beasts are waiting. To dismember us.”
“Just make sure we’re quiet,” Eddie said. “If they hear us, we’re dead. They’ll put us in that room and close the door and—”
The door scraped open. The air by the staircase grew lighter.
“All right, Larry,” someone said. “Bring it in here.”
Someone else grunted. They heard two sets of footsteps on the other side of the wine shelf.
“Come on, Larry, they’re not all that heavy.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You never have to carry them.”
“What’s the big deal? They only weigh three pounds each.”
“Like I said, that’s easy for you to say.”
“If it’s so heavy, set it on the floor while I do this.” Something was set down, and a man groaned. They heard a snarl.
“Vicious little devils, aren’t they, Bill?”
“As long as they’re in cages, I don’t mind.”
“I mind.”
“Who cares if you mind?”
Larry grunted. “I don’t like it here. This place is haunted.”
“So? No one bothers us.”
“Except ghosts.”
“Ghosts only come out at night, Larry. We’re never here during the night.”
“I don’t care. Hurry up. It’s too close to night as it is.” They heard the sound of splashing water.
The dust around Amos hadn’t settled yet, and as soon as whatever was snarling stopped, he felt a tickle in his nose. He put a thumb on each nostril and squeezed tight.
I’m gonna sneeze. I’m gonna sneeze, and they’ll hear us, and the fang beasts will leave us in little quivering strips.…
They heard a metallic click.
“That’ll do it,” Bill said. The sound of the water stopped. “Bring him inside.”
Larry grunted again. They heard footsteps. Something clicked, then everything was silent. The men seemed to be gone.
Amos couldn’t stand it anymore.
He sneezed. He was still pinching his nose, and his eyeballs bugged out as his ears popped. His head expanded like a balloon to three times its normal size, and he felt himself beginning to rise off the floor. He opened his mouth, and the excess air rushed out. He collapsed to the floor again.
“I hate that,” he whispered. “It’s as bad as going outside in the winter with a stuffy nose and having your boogers freeze.”
The men outside hadn’t heard Amos. Dunc stood and moved around the shelf, stepping carefully.
It was hard to see in the dim light, but the wall looked the same as it had the day before.
“What was that water sound?” Dunc asked.
“I don’t know,” Eddie whispered. “Feel under the faucet.”
Amos knelt and ran his hand in a circle. “Nothing.”
“I don’t understand it,” Dunc said. “I just don’t understand—”
He froze in midsentence. The wall clicked and the whole side of the room began to open.
• 10
They were back behind the wine shelf in less time than it takes to think. Amos even went so far as to crawl into the shadows under a shelf in the corner.
“Take care of the water, will you?” Bill asked.
“Sure.”
Apparently the men hadn’t seen or heard them. They heard a squeaking noise, then the sound of water splashing on the floor.
“I don’t care what you say,” Larry said. “One of them escaped.”
“You’re nuts. We only had seven.”
“We had eight.”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
“I’m the boss, and I say we only had seven.”
“All right,” Larry said. “But I still say that one of them escaped.”
“If one did, God help the poor sucker who finds it.” The sound of running water stopped.
“Shut it off, and let’s get out of here.”
“All right.” They heard the squeaking sound and footsteps heading toward the door.
It had been dusty where Amos was sitting with Dunc and Eddie before, but now, under the shelf, the dust was so thick, it felt to Amos like a pillow under his head. As he tried to brush it away, he glanced back into the corner.
And almost swallowed his tongue.
Two livid green eyes were staring at him.
Big eyes.
A fang beast, Amos thought. An escaped fang beast.
He tried to stand up. He forgot he was under the shelf. The sound of his head hitting wood echoed in his ears.
The footsteps stopped. “What was that?” Larry asked.
“What was what?”
“I just heard a noise.” One set of footsteps walked back toward the wine shelf.
The green eyes still stared at Amos. He saw a flash of light off something long and white.
Fangs.
It’s going to rip something off me, Amos thought, with those fangs. My fingers or my nose or my ears or …
“You’re hearing things,” Bill said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I’m the boss, and I say you are. Let’s go.”
“But—”
“I said let’s go.”
Larry sighed. “All right, but I think—”
“Nobody cares what you think. Let’s go.” The footsteps moved away. Bill and Larry left and closed the door, still arguing.
… or my chin or my throat. Amos heard a snarl, then the eyes blinked and disappeared into a hole in the wall. He scrambled out from beneath the shelf like a crab and grabbed Dunc’s arm.
“What’s the matter, Amos?”
“Fangs,” Amos shook Dunc. “Really, really big, huge, fanged monster—” He pointed back into the corner.
Dunc shined his flashlight under the shelf. “There’s nothing down there.”
“Are you sure?” Eddie moved two steps away from the corner.
Amos nodded. “I tell you I saw it. Right there.” He pointed.
“There’re a couple of old bottles under there. Maybe you saw the light reflecting off them.”
“Does light snarl?”
“No.”
“Then that isn’t what I saw.”
“There’s nothing there now.” Dunc shrugged. “We need to figure out how to get into the secret room.” He walked back around the wine shelf. Amos followed, watching for the fangs over his shoulder.
“Look,” Dunc said. “There’s water under the faucet. There must be another valve. Help me find it.”
He crouched and tried to wiggle the faucet and pipe, but they didn’t move. He shined his flashlight up into Amos’s face.
“Amos, can you—” He stopped. “What’s that right next to your head?”
Amos looked. “It’s a bottle, just like the one on the other side of my head and the ones by my elbows.”
“It’s not the same. Look—it has finger-prints all over it.”
Amos tried to take the bottle off the shelf. It wouldn’t move. “It must be glued down. And there’s a hole in the bottom.”
Dunc came closer and examined it. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would it be that way?” He frowned. “Unless …”
“Unless what?” Amos asked, but Dunc ignored him. He turned to Eddie.
“Do you have any drinking water here?”
“Upstairs, in a canteen.”
“Can you get it?”
“Sure. Why?”
“I don’t want to say until I know if I’m right.”
“I’ll be right back.” Eddie ran up the cellar stairs. A minute later, he came back down with a canteen in his hand.
“Good,” Dunc said. He took the canteen and poured the water into the bottle. It drained down the hole out of sight, and a second later they heard a click. The wooden wall swung slightly toward them.
Amos stared at him. “How did you know that would work?”
“I didn’t, but I read an article in the library about something called a water-activated latching mechanism. There’s a hidden tube in the wall attached to
a lock system. The weight of the water on top of a plate trips the latch. Afterward you have to drain the water off.” He reached down and turned the faucet handle. Water gushed out onto the floor. “They used them before electricity to lock secret doors, like this one.” He pulled at the door. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.”
“I already know what’s on the other side,” Amos said. “They’re big, with long fangs and green eyes, and they want to take parts of my body off.”
But he was speaking to himself. Dunc had already gone through with Eddie behind him. Amos waited. When he didn’t hear any ripping sounds or screams of pain, he followed.
Inside was a row of cages with a big, black weasellike animal in each one. Their fur was thick, and their tails were long and bushy.
“I’ve heard about these,” Dunc said. “These are Russian sables.”
“Sables?” Eddie asked. “Like in coats?”
“Exactly. They’re so valuable and rare, the Russian government won’t let them be exported out of the country. Larry and Bill must be sable smugglers.”
“They look so cute,” Amos said. “Say, you don’t suppose that’s what I saw? The fangs? They don’t look so dangerous.” He put his finger to one of the cages. The sable made a spit-hissing sound and hit the end of the finger like a buzz saw.
“Ow!” He hugged his almost-devoured finger to his chest.
“So what do we do now?” Eddie asked.
“I guess we go to the authorities. We’ll tell them—”
The click of the lock on the outside of the basement door stopped him.
“They’re back.” Amos tried to whisper, but it came out a squeak. “The smablers. I mean, the snuggles.…”
The door opened before he could say more, before they could run or even move, and the three were caught flat-footed standing in the room with the sables by Bill and Larry.
• 11
“What’s going on here?” Bill demanded.
Nobody replied.
“When I tell you to run,” Dunc whispered in Amos’s ear, “run.”
“Where to?” Amos asked, but Dunc didn’t answer him. Instead he snapped off his flashlight.
“Run.”
Larry was reaching for Amos just as the darkness closed down. There was one moment, one part of a second, when everything seemed to stop, to hang in the air.
