The Book of Bad Things

by Dan Poblocki

  “What kind of person would do such a thing?” Cassidy asked, making a mental note for a Book of Bad Things entry: grave robbing.

  “It doesn’t stop there. Last December, Joey started telling stories about seeing Lucky.”

  “Seeing the dead dog?”

  Ping nodded. “Joey said that he saw him out here by this tree, wandering through the woods.” Cassidy’s arms erupted with gooseflesh. Ping went on, “He said he sometimes heard the click-clack of the dog’s claws following him through the hallways at school.”

  “That’s awful,” Cassidy whispered, thinking of Joey alone in his room, flipping through his sketches.

  “Supposedly, his parents got tired of all his stories…. Well, tired or scared. My mom says Joey’s seeing some sort of doctor now. He’s been pretty quiet lately.” Cassidy wiped at her eyes. Ping went even paler than she’d been before. She reached out to touch Cassidy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to —”

  Voices drifted from the Tremonts’ open kitchen window. “I don’t care!” It was Joey. “You can’t make me! Why don’t you go outside and look for her? You’re the one who brought her back again.”

  Ping grabbed Cassidy’s arm and led her behind the oak. “Don’t listen,” she whispered.

  “Is he talking about me?” Cassidy asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Ping, though her expression said the opposite. “He’s never been very nice to me, though, not since I moved in. He keeps to himself. Pretends I don’t exist. The funny thing is, I’m like the one person who wants to hear his ghost-dog stories.”

  Cassidy frowned. You’re the one who brought her back again…. Who else could he have been talking about? It was like a kickball to the stomach. “When I knew him,” she said, “he was always really fun…. He was like my first best guy friend.”

  It suddenly all made sense. The delay in hearing from her social worker about being placed with the Tremonts this year; Joey actually was mad at her for what happened the previous summer. So mad that he hadn’t wanted to see her again. If it hadn’t been for Rose, Cassidy would have remained in Brooklyn, ignored by her mother. Now, she’d be ignored by Joey instead.

  “I have to get out of here,” said Cassidy, turning and walking toward the street.

  “Okay,” said Ping, following. “Where should we go?”

  We?

  Cassidy paused, feeling a momentary sense of relief. She turned and stared at the pale skinny girl standing behind her. Ping tucked a long strand of hair behind her left ear and then pressed her lips in a sad smile. So Cassidy wouldn’t have to be alone after all. Not this afternoon, anyway. Still, she answered with a huff. “I wanna see what’s happening over by the Hermit’s house.”

  I’ve heard a lot of people saying lately that death is a natural occurrence. That it’s a good thing. That even though it’s sad when it happens, it does happen to everyone. That it’ll happen to me one day, a long time from now. But how can anyone be sure about that last part? About when?

  This girl in my class named Jackie Spencer died last week. A livery cab hit her when she was walking home from school with her mom. An accident.

  There’s nothing natural about what happened to Jackie. She was my age. And she had so much life left, just like me. I hope.

  I saw my friends crying. And their parents too. I got this horrible headache and a pain in my stomach that made me not want to eat. They say that these feelings will go away. It just takes time. But it hurts so much, I can’t believe that.

  So I don’t think that death is a good thing. I think it’s a bad thing. It’s one of the most horrible, bad, and unfair things I can think of in this whole stupid world. And I’m putting it in this notebook because I want Death to know I understand. People can say what they want, but I know the truth. I can feel it.

  STANDING AT THE END of the cul-de-sac, the two girls watched in awe as the cleaning crew filled the two overflowing Dumpsters. Most of what they brought out was already bagged and tied, but there were a few items — furniture, open cardboard boxes, pieces of framed artwork — that were simply tossed on top of the pile. Some of it had spilled onto the gravel driveway.

  Cassidy recognized several of the Tremonts’ neighbors who’d gathered in groups around the asphalt circle. Rumors swirled too quickly to catch all of them. Supposedly, another large bin was on its way. The crew hoped to be finished by evening but there was so much junk inside that old farmhouse, no one was sure how long the clean-up would take.

  As the sun beat down on the girls, sweat beaded on their foreheads, and they told each other their own stories, where they’d come from, where they wanted to go. Ping had grown up in a city too, though hers had been on the West Coast and not nearly as large or intimidating as New York. Her twin brothers were a few years younger than she. Her parents were both professors at different universities in the area. Ping liked the change here, especially since New Jersey had its own particular brand of peculiar — and a whole magazine dedicated to that fact. In the pages of Strange State, Ping had read about rinky-dink roadside attractions (Insect World! Haunted Mini-Golf!), abandoned highways, even a few ghost towns. She promised Cassidy that she’d share a few copies with her soon. And though Cassidy was happy for the distraction, she couldn’t stop thinking of what she’d overheard Joey say inside the Tremonts’ kitchen.

  Was Lucky’s death last summer really her fault? Should she apologize? Beg Joey’s forgiveness? If Joey believed Lucky’s ghost was haunting him, maybe he wasn’t thinking properly. Maybe he just needed space. Then she thought of what she’d seen in the woods. The thing moving between the trees. And the sound of barking.

  She glanced at Ping, who seemed intrigued by the heap in the driveway. “You don’t believe Joey, do you?”

  “About what?” Ping asked.

  “That his dog is a ghost now.”

  “Of course I do,” Ping answered. “Why would he have made up a story like that? It only seems to upset his parents. Unless he wants to upset his parents.”

  Cassidy watched Ping’s eyes for a sign that she was kidding around — a squint, a glimmer of a hidden laugh — but Ping’s face was open and friendly. “Say the dog really is a ghost,” Cassidy whispered. “What if the ghost blames someone for what happened to it? What if Lucky has been waiting for that someone to return to Whitechapel, so he can get his revenge?”

  Ping chuckled. “And you’re that someone?” she said, not believing, not understanding.

  Cassidy burned with embarrassment. “I saw something out by that tree. An animal. It was big.”

  “You’re serious,” said Ping, dropping her smile. “How could you have been responsible for what happened to Joey’s dog?”

  Cassidy sighed. The girls sat on the nearby curb. Then she told Ping the story, her version of it.

  When Cassidy had finished, Ping said simply, “You were only trying to do something good.”

  “Yeah, but something bad happened because of it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Ghost dogs don’t seek revenge on people who don’t deserve it.” Ping smiled, as if her statement were a well-known fact. “And you don’t deserve it.”

  “Joey thinks I do.”

  “Then Joey’s an idiot. And you can hang out with me this summer instead.”

  Cassidy smiled in spite of herself.

  A commotion arose from the crowd. The girls stood and backed away from the gravel driveway. They watched as a large man barreled toward the street from the Dumpster. His belly bounced over the hem of his green plaid pants. Rivulets of sweat dripped down his bald head. Under his arm, he clutched what looked like a fuzzy red fox. The animal’s face was serene, frozen, but it looked like it might turn and bite him. If the man dropped the fox and if it ran, it might attack. Cassidy stumbled. Ping caught her. As the man came closer, the fox remained still — its feet were attached to a wooden plank.

  “It’s dead,” Ping whispered. “Stuffed.”

  “Stuffed with what?” Cassidy asked.
>
  “Sawdust. Haven’t you ever seen taxidermy before?”

  Cassidy had not. “That man’s taking Ursula’s things?”

  “Mr. Chase. Yeah. That’s why everyone’s standing out here, I guess, hoping to catch a glimpse of some treasure.” Ping held out her hands to indicate the crowd. “It’s all going to the dump anyhow.”

  “But he’s taking it home?” said Cassidy. “I wouldn’t want any of that old stuff in my house.”

  “That’s what her family thought too. Supposedly, they’re all overseas. Ireland, I think. They’re the ones who hired the cleaning crew. They also sold the house back to Mr. Chase, the man who built this whole neighborhood. He’s the Chase in Chase Estates.” Ping whispered this next part. “My mom says he’s super rich. Thinks he owns this town. I heard he wants to fix up the farmhouse. Turn it into an ultra-modern mini-mansion or something. So I guess we’ll be getting new neighbors sometime soon. Wonder if anyone will tell them who lived here before they moved in.”

  The man in the plaid pants, Mr. Chase himself, nearly ran the girls over as he crossed into the cul-de-sac. “Watch it,” he said, wheezing in the heat with the weight of the fox under his arm. Then he called out, Cassidy assumed, to someone he knew standing amongst the crowd. “Found another one! These will pull in a pretty penny at the Hudson Auction next month. This Ursula lady was one weird old miser. Lucky for us, eh?” As he said the words, a cold gust of wind blew through the trees, shaking loose some high, dead branches that were stretched out over the street. One of them crashed to the ground, hitting the asphalt where Mr. Chase had just passed. The branch seemed to explode into several dozen brittle pieces and the crowd collectively gasped. Mr. Chase jumped and turned around. After a moment, he laughed, holding the fox above his head, as if showing it to Ursula’s old house. “Mine now, sweetheart!” he bellowed. “You snooze, you lose!”

  Cassidy and Ping glanced uneasily at each other. That was no way to speak to the dead.

  LATER, AFTER THE SUN was low in the sky, Ping’s mother called for her to come inside and clean up for dinner. The girls said good-bye with the hope of seeing each other again soon, and Cassidy made her way back to the Tremonts’ house. Dennis’s BMW was parked in the driveway and his daughter Deb’s Taurus was in front of it, its engine still steaming and clicking in the open garage.

  Cassidy didn’t want to go back into the house just yet, so she perched on the wicker chair on the front porch and flipped through her notebook, finding the last blank page, and filling it with the little she knew of grave robbers. She’d have to look up more about the subject on Rose’s laptop that evening if she had a chance. She supposed that what Mr. Chase and the others had done that afternoon had been a type of grave robbing too. His laugh echoed in her memory, and she grimaced thinking of his prize fox. She secretly hoped it woke up and bit him.

  “Cassie!” a voice called from the street. “You’re here!”

  Cassidy looked up and noticed the boy from the supermarket waving at the edge of the lawn. Hal. “Hey!” She waved. “Yup, I made it … back.” She’d almost said home.

  “I can see that,” he called out. “Hey, is there any good stuff left up at the Hermit’s place?”

  Cassidy remembered their conversation. He’d been waiting to get off his shift so he could come scrounge like the rest of them. She shrugged, lifting her hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.

  “Wish me luck!” he said.

  “Good luck,” Cassidy called out, as the boy walked on.

  “Who you talking to?” Joey was standing behind her just inside the screen door.

  She flinched. How long had he been watching her? “Your old babysitter. Hal.”

  “Well, my mom wanted me to tell you that she put some appetizers out. My dad’s got some burgers on the grill out back.”

  “Everyone’s sitting down to dinner?”

  “Everyone else is. I’m not really hungry,” said Joey. He turned around and disappeared into the shadows behind the screen door.

  Cassidy sat at the picnic table on the back patio, pushing a pile of cold bean salad from one side of her plate to the other, her stomach feeling tight and too small to fit anything inside. It was the opposite of what Cassidy had regularly experienced only a year ago when she’d stuffed herself silly at every meal.

  Dennis and Deb were seated beside her, talking about their days. Dennis Tremont was tall and thin, though he appeared broader when in his navy lawyer suit than in his current costume, a faded concert tee and black jeans. His hair was gray, which made him look a little older than he actually was, but slightly scruffy and handsome, like the hipster dads she’d seen in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods. Deb was obviously his daughter — they had the same sharp nose and wide, intelligent eyes. But Deb also had her mother’s long neck and pale skin. Her dark auburn hair fell in effortless curls to her shoulders, which were bare except for the thin straps of a summery floral dress. Cassidy had never realized how much Deb looked like Joey. But Joey wasn’t around for comparison; he’d already gone upstairs to his bedroom.

  After a moment of silence, which Cassidy hadn’t noticed, Rose reached out and took her hand. “I’m very sorry I forgot to pick you up today. I’ve got lots planned for the next couple weeks. I swear, I’ll make it up to you.”

  Cassidy wore a tiny smile, answering in a small voice, “You already have.”

  “Tomorrow morning, you and Joey are taking an art class at the college. Sound like fun?”

  “Totally!” Cassidy forced herself to sound excited. She wanted badly to tell Rose about the conversation she’d overheard earlier that afternoon. But as the light grew purple around them and the tree frogs began their familiar and lovely chorus, she realized that she should probably keep Rose and Dennis and Deb out of whatever was happening between her and Joey. There was so much more going on with him than any of them probably understood.

  The day hadn’t been all bad. She’d made a new friend, after all.

  In the kitchen, Cassidy scraped her plate into the trash bin. She wondered what Ping was doing next door. Possibly, she was reading one of those magazines she’d mentioned. Strange State? Cassidy thought maybe tomorrow they could call up someone in the editor’s office and tell them about the Hermit of Chase Estates and the junk that everyone had pulled out of her house, or about Lucky, the ghost dog that was haunting the woods nearby. Or maybe, Cassidy thought, she’d add these odd things to her own little journal.

  Later, after presenting her gifts to the Tremonts — a bag of chocolate-covered potato chips from an expensive store on Atlantic Avenue and a small cheesecake from a famous Brooklyn bakery — she climbed the stairs to Tony’s bedroom, her bedroom for now, thinking of what Levi Stanton had said about the nature of what scares us. The first step in conquering fear is recognizing where it’s coming from. Cassidy had begun her Bad Things journal with this idea in mind. Stepping into the darkness beyond her host-brother’s closed door, she made the decision that the name Joey Tremont would never go into her book. She would not allow him to become a Bad Thing, no matter how hard he tried to make her believe the opposite. They’d been friends once. How hard could it be to make that happen again?

  IN THE CITY, at night, when Cassidy slept on her little couch, she could hear the trains of the subway as they passed underground several blocks away. Sometimes the weight of the train would vibrate her entire neighborhood. Often, these vibrations would catch something in Cassidy’s apartment — a picture frame hanging loosely, a couple glasses touching in the sink’s drying rack, a piece of furniture sitting just-so on the slightly slanted wood flooring — and release a faint but obnoxious rattle. The noise never lasted long enough for Cassidy to find its source on the first try. And so she would wait fifteen minutes for the next train to pass, to send out its vibrations, and the rattle would come again.

  It was like a game, though an unpleasant one — every passing tremor leading Cassidy closer to the offending object until finally she’d zero in on it. She’d
shift that frame on the wall, or separate the glasses by the sink, or kick at the chair or bureau or table that had somehow, by pure chance, ended up in the exact wrong position. Then, if all went well, she’d crawl back underneath her blanket to capture a few more hours of sleep before dawn.

  It was such a city type of annoyance, that when Cassidy was woken by a similar rattle that first night back in Whitechapel, she opened her eyes into darkness and panicked that the whole day had been a dream, that she was still in Brooklyn, huddled on her hot little couch. But soon Tony’s room — her room — took shape, and she clutched at the soft sheets she’d taken from the hall closet only that afternoon.

  Above, the ceiling fan spun at mid speed, creating a soft din that almost drowned out all other noise. Almost. Something was rattling close by, just like in the city when the subway growled through its underground passages.

  Cassidy sat up. She straightened her T-shirt and shorts. She stood still and craned her neck, listening. The vibration must have been tiny or very far away, because she could not feel it against her bare feet. Tony’s bedroom was above the garage and was large enough that it looked out on both the front and back yards. There was usually a cooling cross-breeze after the sun went down. What if the breeze itself was the culprit?

  But the rattle sounded as though it were coming from beside the window facing the street. As she neared the sill, she thought that the bookcase there must be rubbing ever-so-slightly against the wall. She pulled the wooden case away and the rattle stopped. She listened to the quiet night to see if the rattle came again from somewhere else. But it did not. The house itself must have been trembling. But why? How? A couple years ago, she’d felt the earthquake that hit the city; her desk at school had rocked back and forth like she was on a boat. But this had been different.