by Andrew Smith
“So what’s on your pajamas?” I asked.
Karim sighed. “I’m not the one who’s twelve and all smart and starting live-in high school in a couple weeks. I’ll be twelve right here in seventh grade, not getting beaten up, thank you very much. And besides, it’s the Houston Astros.”
I was confused. “What’s the Houston Astros?”
“On my pajamas.”
“Princess Snugglewarm is cooler and edgier than the Houston Astros,” I pointed out.
Karim had a look in his eyes that said he was going to start an argument about unicorns versus baseball, but I cut him off before he had the chance to. “So. I thought you woke me up over something to do with the Purdy House, but apparently you felt the urgent need to run over here to talk about our pajamas.”
“I’m just worried about whether or not you’ll even survive going away to school in Oregon all by yourself, Sam. But pajamas aside, dude, someone is actually moving INto the Purdy House,” Karim said.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream or something? That house has been empty since before our parents were born.”
Karim frowned. “The moving van woke me up. I looked out my window and saw it pulling up the gravel drive through the woods between our houses. Somebody had even opened the gates to the Purdy House.”
When Karim said “opened the gates to the Purdy House,” his voice dropped to a quavering whisper, the type you’d use when trapped inside a haunted house.
Every kid in Blue Creek had heard the stories about what happens when the Purdy Gates open up. But they were just stories, right?
Karim pulled his phone from the pocket of his shorts, and with his voice still lowered said, “I took some pictures.”
I didn’t know if I actually wanted to look at Karim’s pictures.
There was a low knock at my door, which made me jump.
“Sam? Who are you talking to? Is there someone in your room with you?”
It was my dad.
“Uh—” I was startled, but not because I was mentally replaying all the stories I’d heard about the Purdy House.
Karim, always on his toes, recovered first. “Good morning, Mr. Abernathy! I just came over to talk to Sam about his summer reading assignment. I’m reading with him!”
No matter what, whenever Karim talked to grown-ups, he lied. Sometimes his lies were ridiculous too (like him actually reading George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut), but he never gave up. I didn’t really get it, but Karim always explained it as practice for the “big game,” which to Karim meant being in the sixteen- to eighteen-year-old range, when lying to grown-ups would become a survival skill.
But Karim wasn’t lying about the fact that I did have a summer reading assignment for Pine Mountain Academy. And I hadn’t even started reading my novels yet because I was a little bit intimidated by the fact that the teacher was called “Doctor” something. It was hard enough for me to get used to having MEN for teachers when I got into middle school, but having someone called “Doctor” as a writing teacher was a frightening thing for me to adjust to.
“Oh! Good morning, Karim! Have fun reading, boys!”
Then Dad just went away. We could have been committing murder in there for all he knew, outside of the fact that I wouldn’t ever commit murder, even if Karim wanted me to. But still…
Karim began scrolling through photos.
“Here,” he said, holding the screen in front of my eyes.
The grown-up part of my brain, which was almost constantly at odds with the regular part of my brain, told me that like most of the other townsfolk in Blue Creek, I had bought into a collective myth that was simply made larger and more irrefutable by the fact that so many people believed in it and retold it, generation after generation; and that the Purdy House was just an old empty house that would now have actual, non-demonic, non-cannibalistic, normal everyday people living inside it.
The regular part of my brain has always been a better arguer, however.
9. And yes, thinking about this sent electricity through the thousands of spiders twitching in my stomach.
10. I should add that Karim was never a knock-before-entering kind of friend; that’s how it was our whole lives. He might just as well have been a silent breeze entering our home on a humid summer morning as far as the rest of my family was concerned, and this was Blue Creek, after all. Nobody locked their doors here, not even the people who lived nearest to the Purdy House, who happened to be Karim and his parents.
THE WOLF BOY OF JUNO
Everyone in Blue Creek knew the story of Little Charlie, the Wolf Boy of Juno.
The legend that had been passed down told of how Little Charlie, who’d been stolen as a newborn and raised by a pack of desert wolves, was first rescued by a band of outlaws who traded the boy for three bottles of whiskey to some German settlers in the 1880s, who then adopted the untamable Little Charlie out to Ervin and Cecilia Purdy, who were among the first people to establish a home in Blue Creek.
That was the Purdy House, and that was what I was looking at in the photo that lit up the screen of Karim’s phone.
By any standards, the picture that Karim had taken just minutes earlier was unremarkable. There was a big eighteen-wheel semi that curled like a comma, hooked around the circular driveway on the other side of the big iron gates with their rust-smeared NO TRESPASSING signs. The trailer was white, its doors opened at the back, and had a cartoon drawing of an inchworm and dark-green Old English lettering painted along the side that said:
WORMACK MOVING AND STORAGE DON’T MOVE AN INCH! WE’LL DO IT FOR YOU!
And, naturally, on the other side of the unmoving moving truck was the Purdy House, a paint-peeling, rickety old Victorian with lots of pointy things and turrets and small windows, which contributed generously to its creepy reputation.11
I was fascinated by the people in Karim’s photograph. Two of them—obviously the movers, likely with the last name of Wormack—had their backs turned. They were dressed in blue coveralls and were carrying boxes up the front steps toward the open door, which looked like a hungry pitch-black portal to infinite despair and suffering. And there were two people standing on the front porch, watching the guys in coveralls. I couldn’t tell much about the two figures on the porch, whether they were men or women, or how old they were.
“Your new neighbors,” I said. “I could cook them a casserole or something, if you want to be nice to them.”
Karim said, “No.”
It was just as well. Nobody really likes casseroles, anyway.
Well, I mean, I’m sure I could pull one off.
Then Karim took his phone back and enlarged the image with his thumb and first finger, centered the photo, enlarged again, and said, “Because take a look at this, Sam.”
Karim had zoomed in on a narrow dark window on the third floor of the Purdy House. And in the grainy pixelation of max-zoom cell phone imagery, we could both make out the faint gray form of a pale little boy who seemed to be staring out through the glass as though he knew Karim had been taking a photograph at that precise moment.
“Oh my gosh. That’s freaky,” I said, looking away.
“It’s the ghost of Little Charlie!” Karim said.
I tried to sound more confident and grown-up than I felt. “No. The people who are moving in probably have kids, Karim. Right? He’s just their kid, is all, and he’s not just standing up there all alone in that window, staring across like he knows you’re taking a picture. So he’s also not thinking about luring you into the attic and eating you. In which case, it’ll be really cool having some new kids around here for a change.”
“ ‘Having some new kids.’ That’s something cannibals would say when they’re moving in right next door to me,” Karim pointed out. “Sam? Can I stay here at your house for a while?”
“Ha ha,” I laughed as though I were trying to make Karim think that his non-joke was just a joke. “But Dylan and my dad don’t like the Astros, so you’d proba
bly have to get some new pajamas.”
“I have some with Teen Titans on them,” Karim said.
And I thought:
Princess Snugglewarm > Teen Titans
Then Dad knocked on my door again, and if it was possible to do such things, Karim and I would have completely jumped out of our skins, just thinking about the ghost of Little Charlie, the fate of the Purdy family, the boy in the window, the horrible attic, and monsters moving into Blue Creek, Texas.
“Hey, you two knuckleheads! Would your summer book club like to have some breakfast?” Dad said.
11. The Purdy House was the only Victorian in all of Blue Creek, where the majority of the houses were one-level brick midcentury ranches that had been built atop the foundations of the ghost homes that used to be here when the town was originally constructed.
IN WHICH KARIM GIVES THREE BOOK TALKS
No one could blame Karim for running away from home now that new, creepy, possibly cannibalistic neighbors had moved in next door. And I was willing to do my part by allowing him to stay at my house for a while, just on a wait-and-see-if-his-parents-mysteriously-disappear basis, despite the fact that my dad and brother, Dylan, did not like the Houston Astros, my mother was indifferent to baseball in general, and my sister, Evie, did not like Karim at all.12
But that’s what friends do, right?
Secretly I was hoping Karim’s parents would tell him no, that he could not stay over at my house, because Karim would undoubtedly have to ask permission, and in doing so would come up with some monstrous lie about why it was that he wanted to stay with me for an indefinite period of time. Besides, I always felt bad having friends sleep over because of how I constantly had to keep a window or door, or sometimes both of them, open, on account of my extreme claustrophobia.
So after breakfast with my dad, and after we’d listened to Karim as he made up horrendous lies about the plots of Slaughterhouse-Five,13 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan,14 and Animal Farm,15 I changed out of my Princess Snugglewarm pajamas and into my regular-Texas-kid shorts and T-shirt, and we stole away to get Bahar, who, at fourteen, was far braver and more sensible than we were, so we could spy on the new neighbors, and maybe catch a glimpse of the ghost of Little Charlie—or whoever that was in Karim’s picture—up in the narrow and creepy third-floor window of the haunted Purdy House.
The three of us hid in the shade at the edge of the woods between my house and Karim’s, where we watched all morning as the men in the blue coveralls with WORMACK embroidered across their shoulders went back and forth, back and forth, carrying lamps and boxes, and then two-manning the sofas and mattresses, in and out, from the trailer of the moving van to the front doors of the Purdy House.
And we never saw anyone else—not the two people who’d been standing on the porch in Karim’s picture, and not the pale, shadowy boy up in the window.
“Let me see your picture again,” said Bahar, who was always sensible and scientific.
She fiddled with Karim’s phone for a while and then handed it back to him.
Bahar said, “There’s definitely people waiting on the porch there. And that does look like a little kid standing in the window, which is really creepy. Or it could be just a reflection in the glass or something.”
“It can’t be a reflection,” Karim said. “It was just before sunrise. There was nothing to reflect off of; there was nothing to reflect from.”
“Maybe this is like one of those television shows where ghost researchers stay inside a haunted house for a few days recording things and measuring EVPs and stuff,” I said.
Bahar immediately dismissed my theory, saying, “They never bring furniture with them on those shows.”
And Karim said, “What’s an EVP?”
“Electronic voice phenomenon,” I said.
Karim held up his hand in a Halt gesture. “I don’t want to hear anything else about that now, Sam.”
“What do we even know about the Purdy House?” Bahar said.
“It’s haunted,” I said.
“Little Charlie ate his parents,” Karim added.
“Oh. I heard his parents ate him,” I said.
“Well, someone got eaten in there. That’s got to cause ghosts and disturbances and EVPs and stuff,” Karim said.
“See? I bet this is all a bunch of gossipy nonsense,” Bahar said.
Gossipy or not, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Purdy House, and I knew Karim was firmly on my side with that—no matter who had gotten eaten.
“Well, there’s only one good way to find out the truth,” Bahar said.
“I’m sure there are a lot of ways, but I don’t really want to find any of it out,” I said.
And Karim confirmed what I’d been thinking. “Neither do I,” he said.
“Research,” Bahar said.
Karim said, “It’s summer. We’re not allowed to use our brains. It could damage them, Bahar.”
I wanted to agree with him, but I had a few novels sitting on the desk in my room that argued otherwise. “I’m allowed. I have to read three books in the next two weeks.”
And Karim said, “I already told you what they’re about, Sam.”
“Gee. Um, thanks, Karim.”
“I think we need to go to the library,” Bahar said.
And I added, “Even if Karim’s already read every book in there.”
12. Evie doesn’t like Karim because she says he has a screechy voice, which is true.
13. Slaughterhouse-Five, according to Karim, was about a gang of Agriculture Department meat inspectors who dreamed of performing as an a cappella boy band on America’s Got Talent.
14. Karim said After Many a Summer Dies the Swan was where Princess Snugglewarm first appeared, as the victim of an egotistical swan who is a cyberbully—and, by the way, he said, the title spoils everything.
15. He called Animal Farm an unlikely kind of feel-good rom-com about a vegan who wins a vacation to visit a working cattle ranch in Wyoming and goes on to become a national barbecue champion.
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MONSTER PEOPLE
How could anyone possibly know the extent to which the balance of the universe might have tipped off kilter now that actual (probably) living people had taken residence in the Purdy House?
We watched the movers until they finished and left, but nobody else ever showed up outside. No welcoming committee; no housewarming gifts caravanned by cousins or other distant relatives. And nobody appeared on the other side of the very creepy windows either. It was almost as though the three non-Wormack people in the photograph Karim had taken had simply vaporized into the darkness inside the old house.
Like ghosts.
On the other hand, I thought this was almost like a Princess Snugglewarm adventure. She’d never be afraid of the Purdy House, no matter what horrible things it kept hidden inside.
In the early afternoon, the three of us walked down Pike Street, past my family’s miniature golf course and Colonel Jenkins’s Diner, as we made our way through the bustling center of town16 toward whatever lean summer pickings might be available from the Blue Creek Public Library.
“We probably would have been better off just going up to the door, knocking on it, and welcoming the new people to Blue Creek. Maybe Sam could cook them a casserole or something,” Bahar said.
“We already thought of that,” I said. “Too scary. No one has ever been inside the Purdy Gates for as long as anyone can remember. And these days nobody likes casseroles, anyway.”
“I bet you could make a great one,” Bahar said.
Naturally, I had to agree with her. And I was already thinking up recipes I might try for a Michelin-star17 welcome-to-the-neighborhood casserole, except for the whole terrifying haunted house thing. Red flannel hash with beets, fennel, and corned beef sounded like something I would do if it didn’t involve stepping foot past those gates with the NO TRESPASSING signs.
And just when we turned the corner from Pike to Central and
stood before the glass-and-cinder-block facade of the library, Karim stopped suddenly and said, “What if they’re vampires? That’s why they never came out after sunrise. That’s why they didn’t even look out the windows all day long.”
Karim, who apparently was a scholar on vampirism, had a look of pride on his face, like he was the only kid in a classroom of dunces who knew the answer to the teacher’s question about percentages or the prime meridian or something.
I was impressed by his detective skills, and instinctively felt my hand rubbing the side of my neck, because what if they were vampires?
Bahar nodded thoughtfully, even though there was no way I would ever believe that sensible and reasonable Bahar would entertain the possibility of our new neighbors being undead soulless bloodsuckers.
Also, I would have been really scared now if it wasn’t daytime, and if my friends weren’t there so that we could nervously discount every ridiculous theory and then laugh about it.
Karim took his phone out of his pocket and began typing something into it.
He said, “I’m keeping a list of everything we find out about those people.”
And when Karim said “those people,” he made it sound like he was talking about bloodthirsty man-eating monsters.
Karim’s list looked like this:
What Everyone Needs to Know about the Monster People:
Have not been seen in daylight. May be vampires.
And Bahar added, “You should also put down that they have an ugly lamp made out of a stuffed raccoon.”
She was right. I’d seen the movers carrying that lamp into the house earlier.
