by Andrew Smith
BAHAR: I’m sorry I didn’t text back last night. Boris hid my phone and said he wouldn’t tell me where it was unless I entertained him properly all night, and only when he was tired enough to go to sleep, which wasn’t until after midnight.
BAHAR: Boris says cell phones are bad for you, and that they eat away your identity, and he could tell that my identity was almost entirely eaten already. He said he would probably like me more after my identity was completely erased, because he knew he didn’t like me as soon as he saw me. He’s really creepy.
SAM: Like scary creepy?
BAHAR: Idk. Like weird. He made me feel bad. He kept telling me he didn’t like me very much, and that he wouldn’t mind if I hid in the closet for the rest of the night, because he wouldn’t try to find me if I did, and that he was certain I’d probably never be happy in life.
SAM: Wow. How old is he?
BAHAR: 6
SAM: So did you entertain him?
BAHAR: I tried telling him stories, but he said he didn’t like stories as much as he’d like me to be quiet. They had some books there, and I tried reading him one, but he said he didn’t like books as much as he’d like me to go to sleep and have a nightmare. Then we colored for a while.
SAM: Did he like coloring?
BAHAR: No. He told me I was a fake babysitter and that I was probably stuffed with noodles, and if I fell down and cracked my head open on their very steep and creepy staircase, he would eat them. So I thought maybe he was hungry, and I asked him if he wanted a snack, but he told me he doesn’t like snacks as much as he likes babysitters who never talk to him, and then he wanted to take a bath, but his mother always puts an entire gallon of milk in the bathtub for him.
KARIM: See? He wanted to eat Bahar. He’s Little Charlie the cannibal.
BAHAR: Cannibals don’t eat noodles.
SAM: Did you put milk in the bathtub?
BAHAR: They didn’t have any, so I poured in two cans of Diet Coke.
SAM: You let a kid you were babysitting take a bath in Coke?
BAHAR: Diet Coke.
BAHAR: I didn’t know what else to do, he made me feel so useless. I just wanted him to stop not liking everything I tried to do.
KARIM: Did Boris turn you into a thrall?
BAHAR: No. Don’t be dumb.
KARIM: But you let him take a bath in Diet Coke. How can we be sure?
BAHAR: Trust me. You CAN be sure. You’re dumb, K.
SAM: What was the house like?
BAHAR: Really, really weird. Lots of very creepy taxidermy everywhere.
KARIM: How’s the raccoon?
BAHAR: One of its legs is completely bald. Its fur is falling off.
SAM: We were outside last night by the gates, but we got scared and left.
KARIM: We saw Little Charlie up in the window, that’s why.
SAM: Karim got a cicada in his shirt, that’s why.
KARIM: It was screaming.
SAM: Does Boris wear those old nightshirt pajamas like ppl used to wear about a hundred years ago? Bc that’s what we saw in the third floor window.
BAHAR: That was Boris. His parents say he’s “fussy” about things. But idk. He’s just weird and he doesn’t like anything and he’s not pleasant at all.
KARIM: Nobody says words like “pleasant” anymore.
KARIM: That’s the kind of word a thrall would use.
BAHAR: Whatever. Meet me at the library. I found another article about the Purdy House you guys have to see.
KARIM: I’m going to be Boris and say that I don’t like reading articles about the Purdy House as much as I like having screaming cicadas trapped in my shirt.
SAM: I’m cooking lunch at Lily Putt’s today, and Karim will probably be here at my house while I’m gone, stealing all of my clothes.
BAHAR: Come after lunch then. You need to see what I found, Sam.
SAM: Why do I need to?
BAHAR: I found an article about your dad. And the Purdy House.
49. The sauce was made with Valrhona Équatoriale, which is known as perhaps the world’s finest chocolate for sauce-making.
50. Which is red.
51. (excuse me)
52. (excuse me)
IN WHICH I COME FACE-TO-FACE (THROUGH A WINDOW) WITH BORIS
Anyone who’s a stranger and just settles down in Blue Creek can generally count on being assaulted by waves of curious, casserole-bearing snoops, but not so much for the Monster People and their unpleasant child, Boris.
For the past century, with a few notable exceptions, nobody in Blue Creek ever set foot anywhere near the Purdy House. I mean, there was the drunk guy and the deputy about a hundred years ago, and then that group of anti-Communist civic leaders who wanted to sell the house for a new fire truck to put out nuclear bomb attacks, but other than that, the Purdy House was looked at as something like a toxic radioactive wasteland by generations of Blue Creekers.
A toxic, haunted radioactive wasteland.
And, speaking of haunted, all this thinking about the Purdy House inspired me to come up with a Little Charlie’s Haunted Burger for Lily Putt’s snack bar that day. It was made with a cornmeal-fried catfish filet on an herbed buttermilk biscuit bun, topped with ghost pepper sauce and sweet orange, fennel, and cilantro relish.
It might have been too daring for Blue Creek, but most things usually were.
So it was just about an hour before my lunch shift was supposed to end, and I was mentally preparing myself to head over to the library and meet up with Bahar and Karim, when I saw the little unpleasant kid who had stopped by for no reason at all the other day, outside of his mission to tell me how much he didn’t like anything I tried to do.
Which is precisely when it dawned on me: that crusty-nosed kid, the same one who’d told me how much he didn’t like thigh chicken, had to be the same Boris who Bahar had babysat the night before.
Unpleasant Boris had come back to Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Complex, undoubtedly for no other purpose than to simply spread joy and make people feel good about themselves.
I was so excited by my realization that I wanted to run to the library just so I could tell Bahar that I knew who Boris was too, and that I could confirm how very unpleasant he could be. But Dad would get mad at me if I ducked out early and left a mess in the snack bar, so I decided to do the next best thing, which was to take a picture of Boris with my cell phone and text it triumphantly to Bahar and Karim, kind of like a trophy shot for a big game hunter.
Unfortunately, while I was snapping pictures of him through the window of the order counter, Boris looked directly at me. I was busted.
There are few things more obvious and unsettling to someone than when a stranger is taking pictures of them with a cell phone.
Boris put down his putter and golf ball, and headed straight toward me and the snack bar, marching determinedly across the hole-four putting fairway.53
“Why did you take a picture of me?” he asked through the little opening in the order window.
And at that moment, I tried to think of all the possible explanatory lies that Karim might come up with on the spot, but my mind was as erased as any thrall’s in the controlling grasp of his vampire overlords.
Where was Karim when I needed him?
Probably in my room taking a nap, or going on a shopping spree for clean clothes in my dresser, I thought.
“I. Uh. I thought you were someone else,” I said.
I decided I really needed to get some pointers from Karim. I was such an awful liar, and avoiding the truth was something that might come in handy for me when I started high school in what amounted to just a matter of days.
The baby spiders in my stomach began to stampede.
“Who?” the little kid asked.
And I already didn’t even know who he was talking about.
“What?”
“Who did you think I was?” the kid asked.
And being the unpracticed liar that I was, I suddenly couldn’t t
hink of the name of a single other living human being. So I said, “Uh. Um. That kid who was in the War of Jenkins’s Ear.”
And the little unpleasant boy on the other side of the order window just stared at me without saying a word.
So I figured that (1) if this actually was Boris, that made him six years old, in which case there would be no way he had ever learned anything about the War of Jenkins’s Ear, which started in 1739, unless he really was a vampire and was actually in the War of Jenkins’s Ear, but (2) it was daytime and sunny out, so he couldn’t be an eternally undead vampire since he wouldn’t be able to tolerate sunlight, at least not according to everything I’d heard about vampires, and (3) if he was only six years old (and simultaneously Boris), he wouldn’t be here at Lily Putt’s all alone, which meant (4) his really creepy and mysterious parents were probably somewhere nearby.
He kept staring. His mouth was closed, and there was no expression at all on his face. He could have been asleep, if it weren’t for his unmoving, never-blinking eyes.
“But I was obviously wrong,” I said. “Would you like something to eat today?”
I smiled.
The kid stared.
“What do you have?” he asked.
And here we go, I thought.
“Today at Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Complex, our chef has prepared a special Little Charlie’s Haunted Burger.”
There was no way I was going to tell him what was on it.
“Who’s Little Charlie?”
There was also no way I was going to tell him that Little Charlie was a wild boy who’d been raised by wolves and was probably also a cannibal, and that he used to live in the same haunted house this extremely unpleasant customer on the other side of the window currently lived in.
So I just stared at him, taking a page from his playbook, saying nothing.
But this boy was top-notch at staring in silence.
Then he cracked. He said, “Your name is Sam Abernathy, isn’t it?”
I nearly toppled from the milk crate I was standing on. But then I thought, Nobody doesn’t know who Sam Abernathy is, since just over seven years ago the Little Boy in the Well put Blue Creek on the map. I could imagine a Realtor sitting down with Boris and the Monster People and skirting the whole LEGEND OF THE PURDY HOUSE thing by explaining to them, You’ve probably already heard about the little boy named Sam Abernathy who was trapped in a well for three days here in Blue Creek! Well, you’ll be delighted to know that the famous well is now a kind of local landmark, and it’s just a few hundred yards away from your beautiful front porch!
Yeah, that had to be it.
I squinted like a sheriff in an old Western.
Boris squinted back, like the fastest draw in Texas.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“Your girlfriend is my babysitter,” the unpleasant little gunslinger said.
And that was exactly when I lost my footing on the milk crate I was standing on, and I tumbled down onto the cold tile floor of Lily Putt’s snack bar. While I was down there, out of Boris’ sight, all I could think was, Where did he get the idea that I was Bahar’s boyfriend? What did Bahar say about me? Why would she even mention my name to him? Was he only guessing, just to make me feel uncomfortable?
That had to be it, I decided.
I straightened my apron, righted the milk crate, and climbed back up to the counter. My knees were skinned. Boris had climbed his little self up onto the handrail for the order line, and he had raised his face high enough against the window to where he could see behind the counter.
“I thought you died just now,” Boris said. “But I decided I didn’t care enough about you to call nine-one-one or anything. Are you wearing a dress? You skinned your knees.”
It was kilt day at Lily Putt’s.
“It’s a kilt. It’s traditional in Scotland. And I am not her boyfriend,” I said, then added with a pinch of salt, “Boris.”
“Well, with how much she talks about you, anyone would think you were her boyfriend,” he said. “All she does is talk. Just like you. I thought you were going to make me some food, but all you’ve done so far is talk.”
I cleared my throat.
Boris stared at me.
I said, “What would you like?”
Then something absurd and unexpected happened. Boris said, “I’ll order three of those Charlie burgers.”
It still felt as though we were facing off in the middle of a dusty street in the old Wild West. “Very good. You must be hungry.”
“Do they come with fries?”
I knew what he was getting ready to do, and I wasn’t falling for it this time.
I said, “You’ll find out in about five minutes.”
Then I spun around and went to work.
53. Hole four had a six-foot-tall Ferris wheel on it, and you had to get your ball to go inside one of the passenger gondolas so it could be dropped off on the other side.
PART THREE ON BECOMING A THRALL
IN WHICH I COME FACE-TO-FACE (THROUGH A WINDOW) WITH THE MONSTER PEOPLE
Everyone has at one time or another done something impulsively, without really thinking things through ahead of time, and then walked away from the wreckage of that decision wondering, Did I really just do that? Or, Is this all some kind of weird trance?
Right?
And that’s pretty much exactly what I was asking myself as I took what felt like a sleepwalker’s journey (in a kilt) from Lily Putt’s to the Blue Creek Public Library to meet up with Bahar and Karim.
Did I really just do that?
Because here’s what happened: After I bagged up unpleasant Boris’s order of three Little Charlie’s Haunted Burgers,54 I began cleaning the kitchen in order to leave for the day.
But just as I was about to leave, there came a familiar rapping of dirty little knuckles against the glass of the snack bar’s order window.
Tap tap tap tap tap!
“Hey. Hey. Kid. Hey. You. Bahar’s boyfriend. Are you still in there? Hey.”
I stood behind one of the prep tables, where Boris couldn’t see me.
“I told you I am not her boyfriend, and I was off work at two. Rigo, my coworker, will be here to help you in just a minute, if you don’t mind waiting.”
I stood there for a moment, silently considering the possibility of ducking out the back door as quietly as I could. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an actual back back door in the snack bar. It was more of a side door facing the seventh hole, and Boris would certainly see me if I tried to leave. You’d think the guy who designed a mechanical llama hazard might have had the good judgment to install an escape hatch in the snack bar. One of these days, when Lily Putt’s was mine, I’d make that addition, I thought.
More knocking.
“Hey. Kid. Hey. I don’t want anything. My mom and dad just want to ask you something. Are you there? Did you fall down again? Hey. Hey.”
Wait.
Mom and dad?
The monster child had monster parents, and they wanted to talk to me?
I tried to compose myself.
I could see by the shadow on the window that Boris had climbed up onto the handrail and was trying to look down at the floor to see if I had fallen down and died again.
“There is no climbing allowed here at Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Complex,” I said as assertively as any twelve-year-old kid in a kilt could.
Boris knocked again. “I said my mom and dad want to ASK YOU SOMETHING.”
Dad would be mad at me if I ignored customers, but Dad didn’t have to contend with the Monster People who had moved into the Purdy House. So I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the prep table, and this was the first of many times that afternoon when I found myself thinking, What the (excuse me) heck am I doing?
There they were. The Monster People, and Boris, balancing on the handrail while smearing something sticky onto my window. At first I was surprised that Boris’s parents—the
same people who’d showed up as grainy dark images in Karim’s photograph—were not dressed in black funeral-director outfits, but the normal clothes may have been part of their ruse to fit in among the folks who lived in Blue Creek. The dad wore an Atlanta Falcons T-shirt,55 and the mom was dressed like a receptionist at a hair salon or something.
Perfect disguises, I thought.
The dad, who had a beard but no mustache and long hair that had been knotted back in a ponytail, said, “Are you the young man who cooked these fish sandwiches?”
He smiled, and I tried to avoid looking at his eyes, just because of the whole thrall thing that Karim had nearly convinced me of, and usually whenever someone calls me “young man,” something unpleasant is about to happen.
Also, they were NOT fish sandwiches.
“The Little Charlie’s Haunted Burgers with polenta hush puppies?” I asked, in a corrective kind of way.
Boris’s mom and dad nodded, as though they had one mind between them.
“Yes,” I said. “I am the chef who prepared them.”
Chefs say “prepare.” People who eat stuff like chicken-fried-steak-on-a-stick at Colonel Jenkins’s Diner say “cook.”
“Well, I just wanted you to know we loved them,” Boris’s dad said.
“Thank you.”
Dad would be mad at me if I wasn’t always polite, even to people who terrified me.
“You must be Sam,” said the mom, in a jewel-studded jeans jacket on a too-hot-of-a-day to wear one. “Bahar told us all about you!”
Again I found myself wondering why Bahar would ever talk about me to anyone. We were not boyfriend and girlfriend, and I definitely did not have a crush on her, especially since I didn’t even know what having a crush on anyone felt like. It was all so confusing. I decided I’d need to talk to James about it, even if he did tease me too much at times.
I said, “Oh.”
