Skeleton Man

by Joseph Bruchac

  Skeleton Man

  Joseph Bruchac

  Illustrations by Sally Wern Comport

  For my wife, Carol, and my daughter-in-law, Jean, who

  are two of the bravest people I’ve ever known, and for

  all the young women who have yet to discover the

  courage that lives in their hearts.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Footsteps on the Stair

  Chapter 2

  The Knock on the Door

  Chapter 3

  The Dream

  Chapter 4

  Dark Cedars

  Chapter 5

  Eat and Grow Fat

  Chapter 6

  No Pictures

  Chapter 7

  The Counselor

  Chapter 8

  The Girl in the Story

  Chapter 9

  Pictures

  Chapter 10

  Looking

  Chapter 11

  Running

  Chapter 12

  Across the Log

  Chapter 13

  Tomorrow

  Chapter 14

  Toolshed

  Chapter 15

  Hard Evidence

  Chapter 16

  Escape

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Footsteps on the Stair

  I’M NOT SURE how TO begin this story. For one thing, it’s still going on. For another, you should never tell a story unless you’re sure how it’s going to end. At least that’s what my sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Shabbas, says. And I’m not sure at all. I’m not sure that I even know the beginning. I’m not sure if I’m a minor character or the heroine. Heck, I’m not even sure I’ll be around to tell the end of it. But I don’t think anyone else is going to tell this story.

  Wait! What was that noise?

  I listen for the footsteps on the stairs, footsteps much heavier than those an elderly man should make. But it’s quiet, just the usual spooky nighttime creaking of this old house. I don’t hear anyone coming now. If I don’t survive, maybe they’ll all realize I should have been taken seriously and then warn the world!

  Warn the world. That’s pretty melodramatic, isn’t it? But that is one of the things I do well, melodrama. At least that is what Ms. Shabbas says. Her name is Maureen Shabbas. But Ms. Showbiz is what we all call her, because her main motive for living seems to be torturing our class with old Broadway show tunes. She starts every day by singing a few bars of one and then making it the theme for the day. It is so disgustingly awful that we all sort of like it. Imagine someone who loves to imitate Yul Brynner in The King and I, a woman with an Afro, no less, getting up and singing “Shall We Dance?” in front of a classroom of appalled adolescents. Ms. Showbiz. And she has the nerve to call me melodramatic!

  But I guess I am. Maybe this whole thing is a product of my overactive imagination. If that turns out to be so, all I can say is who wouldn’t have an overactive imagination if they’d heard the kind of stories I used to hear from Mom and Dad?

  Dad had the best stories. They were ones his aunties told him when he was growing up on the Mohawk Reserve of Akwesasne on the Canadian side. One of my favorites was the one about the skeleton monster. He was just a human being at first, a lazy, greedy uncle who hung around the longhouse and let everyone else hunt for him. One day, alone in the lodge, waiting for the others to come home with food, Lazy Uncle burned his finger really badly in the fire and stuck it into his mouth to cool it. “Oooh,” he said as he sucked the cooked flesh, “this tastes good!” (Isn’t that gross? I love it. At least, I used to love it.)

  It tasted so good, in fact, that he ate all the flesh off his finger. “Ah,” he said, “this is an easy way to get food, but I am still hungry.”

  So he cooked another finger, and another, until he had eaten all his fingers. “Oooh,” he said, “that was good, but I am still hungry.” So he cooked his toes and ate them. He cooked his feet and ate them. He cooked his legs and ate them. He cooked his right arm and then his left. He kept on until he had cooked his whole body and eaten it, and all that was left was a skeleton. When he moved, his bones rubbed together: tschick-a-tschick-tschick-a-tschick.

  “Ah,” he said in a voice that was now just a dry whisper. “That was good, but I am still hungry. I hope that my relatives come home soon.”

  And when his relatives came home, one by one, they found that the lodge was dark except for the glow of the cooking fire. They could see a shadowy shape beckoning to them from the other side of the fire. They could hear a sound like this: tschick-a-tschick-tschick-a-tschick.

  “Come in, my relatives,” Skeleton Man whispered. “I have been waiting for you.”

  One by one all of his relatives came into the lodge. Skeleton Man caught them and ate them, all but one. She was his niece, and she had been playing in her favorite spot down by the river that flowed through the gorge. She was late coming home because she had seen a rabbit that had fallen into the river. She had rescued it from drowning and warmed it in her arms until it was able to run away.

  When the little girl came to the lodge, she was surprised at how quiet it was. She should have heard people talking and laughing, but she didn’t hear anything. Something was wrong. Slowly, carefully, she approached the door of the lodge. A strange sound came from the shadows within: tschick-a-tschick-tschick-a-tschick. Then a dry voice called out to her.

  “My niece,” Skeleton Man whispered. “Come into the lodge. I have been waiting for you.”

  That voice made her skin crawl. “Where are my parents?” she asked.

  “They are here. They are here inside,” Skeleton Man whispered. “Come in and be with them.”

  “No,” the girl said, “I will not come inside.”

  “Ah,” Skeleton Man replied in his dry, thin voice, “that is all right. I will come out for you.”

  Then Lazy Uncle, the Skeleton Man, walked out of the lodge. His dry bones rubbed together as he walked toward the little girl: tschick-a-tschick-tschick-a-tschick.

  The girl began to run, not sure where to go. Skeleton Man would have caught her and eaten her if it hadn’t been for that rabbit she’d rescued from the river. It appeared on the path before her.

  “I will help you because you saved me,” said the rabbit. “Follow me.”

  Then the rabbit helped the little girl outwit Skeleton Man. It even showed her how to bring everyone Skeleton Man had eaten back to life.

  My mom and dad told me stories like that all the time. Before they vanished. Disappeared. Gone, just like that.

  I was on TV when they disappeared. You probably saw me on Unsolved Mysteries. The news reporter said into her microphone, “Child left alone in house for over three days, terrified, existing on cornflakes and canned food.” Actually I went to school on Tuesday and called out for pizza once. Mom had left money on her dresser when they went out that Saturday evening and never returned.

  I didn’t know they hadn’t come back until Sunday. I had gone to bed Saturday evening, expecting them to wake me up when they came home, like they always did. But not this time. When I woke up that Sunday morning, I knew something was totally wrong. The house was quiet. Usually my parents were both up way before me. I should have heard Dad in the kitchen, banging the pans around. Sunday was always his day for making breakfast and he made a big thing about it. He’d thaw out a whole quart of blueberries from the freezer and warm up some real maple syrup. But no noise came from the kitchen, no pans rattling, no seventies music playing on the kitchen CD player—my dad is a freak for the Eagles and says it is impossible for him to cook without them.

  I sat up in bed and held
my breath. No rhythmic pounding of my mother running in place in their bedroom down the hall. I looked at the clock—eight thirty. By now Mom should have been halfway through her first set of aerobics, but there were no sounds of thudding sneakers. The only thumping I could hear was my own heart.

  Maybe they’d been out so late that they were still sleeping. It had to have been late when they came back because I’d finally drifted off to sleep after midnight, waiting for them.

  I stood up and went out into the hall. “Mom? Dad?” No answer.

  It seemed to take me forever to reach the door to their room. It was like I was walking underwater. The door was only half shut. I pushed it open, not sure what I’d see. Maybe they’d jump out at me and tickle me and laugh at their joke.

  But no one was there. Their bed hadn’t been slept in. No one was behind the door or in the closet or anywhere. Not there in the bedroom, not anywhere in the house. And the car was gone from the garage. There was no sign of anyone. It was a cold gray day, as gray as the long driveway leading down to the road. I didn’t go outside to look around. I could tell it was going to rain soon. I didn’t go to a neighbor’s house because I couldn’t. We live out in the country without any neighbors anywhere near us.

  It was freaky, that’s for sure, but I wasn’t scared. Not yet. I just felt it in my bones that they’d be back. I went into the living room and turned on the TV, waiting. I have no idea what I watched, even though I sat there for hours. I don’t know if it was sports or cartoons or the home-shopping network. For some reason I never turned on the news, even though it might have had something on if they’d been in an accident. But that couldn’t be it. Someone would have come to the house to tell me, or there would have been a phone call. I looked at the phone, hoping it would ring and praying it wouldn’t.

  Rain began to hammer at the windows at about noon, and I went around the house making sure they were all shut. I looked out my bedroom window at Dad’s toolshed. Its one window was shut, and I was glad about that. I didn’t want to go outside in that cold rain.

  Finally, at about two in the afternoon, I decided I’d make breakfast. I set the table for the three of us, got out the juice and syrup and blueberries and milk and everything, even napkins that I folded so they stood up on the plates. They’d come in, all apologetic, and I would say, “No problem. Look, I even fixed breakfast for us.” I can’t explain why I thought anyone would want breakfast in mid-afternoon. It made sense then. I must have been preoccupied, what with listening for their car to pull in, because I made the pancakes all wrong so that they were runny and then I burned them.

  I laughed some when I was cleaning up the mess I’d made, just knowing they’d come in right in the middle of it and tease me and tell me it was all right, and then we’d all go out for dinner. But it didn’t happen that way. Finally, at about 8 P.M. I ended up eating cornflakes with warm milk and what was left of the thawed, soggy blueberries. I got my pillow and some blankets and made a bed for myself on the couch in front of the TV. That way they’d see me there when they came in. They’d be sorry and I’d be upset, but I would finally forgive them. I also didn’t feel like going upstairs all by myself. Besides, Dad would pick me up and carry me to my room like he used to when I was a little girl. I knew I was much too big for that now, but the thought of it—of my dad’s strong arms lifting me, my mom patting my face with her hand—calmed me down, and I went off to sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, on Monday, and found out I was still alone in the house, I guess I should have called someone. But I didn’t. I didn’t get dressed for school. I didn’t even turn off the TV, which had been going all night. I just sat and looked at the phone. The first time it rang, I jumped a mile. It was from work for Mom. I told them she was sick. I did the same thing when Dad’s partner, Al Mondini, called from the bank to see where he was. Mom and I always call him Almond Al.

  “Shouldn’t you be at school, Molly?” Almond Al said.

  “I should, but I’m sick, too,” I said. I could hear the long pause at the other end of the line. If I was sick, he was wondering, how come I was talking on the phone now. So, just like my parents always said, one lie had to lead to another. “I’m better than they are, though,” I said in a quick, nervous voice. “I mean, I didn’t lose my voice like they did and so that is why I am answering the phone. But it hurts to talk, so I have to hang up now. Bye.”

  Maybe Almond Al was the one who got suspicious and called the police.

  That night I went around to all the doors to make sure they were still locked, and I checked the windows. I turned off the TV and then, because it seemed too quiet, I turned it on again. Not real loud, just on. I went upstairs and turned on the radio in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and I lay there for a while on top of their bed, listening to classical music. I still wasn’t scared, but after a while I got up and went into my bedroom. I locked my door and put a chair in front of it. There’s this song that Mom taught me once, one that she called a Lonesome Song, a song you sing when you’re all alone and need a friend. If a friend hears you, they’ll sing back to you.

  I sang that Lonesome Song very softly to myself.

  “Hey yoo, hey yah neh…”

  I kept on singing it. Even though no one answered, it made me feel less alone and I fell asleep.

  The next morning was easier. I got up, got dressed, had more cornflakes, brushed my teeth, and caught the school bus at the bottom of our driveway. I didn’t say anything to anyone about Mom and Dad being gone. They’re on a trip, I was telling myself now. Everything is fine. They’ll be back. I even remembered to make up a really official-looking note on my computer saying that I’d been sick and that was why I’d missed school, and I signed it with my mom’s name. But maybe the way I worded it wasn’t quite right. I know the woman in the office looked at me strangely when I handed it to her with a big smile. Maybe she was the one who made the call. Or maybe it was Ms. Shabbas. I smiled and laughed so much in class that day that Ms. Shabbas looked over at me with one eyebrow raised the way she always does when she thinks something is wrong. But I avoided talking with her. If I talked with her about it, then it would mean something was wrong.

  I was so sure that everything would work out. I never doubted. Not even when the people came to the house the next night and started questioning me. Nor when the Social Services lady and the two cops escorted me out. I just kept saying, “I have to stay here. They’ll be back.” I even said that to the news-people when they showed up. I don’t know who called them. Maybe they just sensed it the way sharks smell blood and come swarming in when something has been wounded.

  It just looks like I was crying on that TV show. The microphones make your voice sound all weird, like you are hysterical or something. And the lights make your eyes look all wild and scared. They even made mine water so much that you might have thought I was crying. I wasn’t. I knew Mom and Dad would be back.

  I still know they’ll be back. But I don’t want to talk about that. I just wanted to explain that I was never afraid. Not at all. Until later that night when this old guy showed up.

  “Molly,” the Social Services woman said, “someone is here for you, one of your relatives.”

  That was a big surprise to me. I didn’t know I had any relatives anywhere near here. Mom is an orphan and all Dad’s closest relatives are dead. It’s a really sad story, how his brothers died in a car accident and his sister drowned, and then there was this big fire while Dad was away at school and his parents were in the house. That left only his two aunts to raise him, but they were old people and they died before I was born. I think that’s the reason why we’ve never gone up to the reservation. There’s nobody close to Dad there anymore, and that makes him too sad. But Dad had said that there were cousins and that maybe sometime we’d get to meet them, although they lived way out in California.

  The Social Services woman led me into another room. A tall, elderly, thin man with stooped shoulders, all dressed in gray—even his shoes!—was
standing there looking out the window.

  “Here’s your niece,” the Social Services lady said in a chirpy voice. He turned around to look down at me with a face that was so thin it looked like bone. He didn’t look Indian. Though his skin was almost as brown as my dad’s, it was as if he’d dyed himself that color. His eyes were round and unblinking, like the eyes of an owl. He smiled, and I could see how big his teeth were.

  “I don’t know him,” I said, taking a step backward.

  “Of course not,” chirped the lady. “He’s been out of the country.” She smiled at him, and he nodded back at her. They were two adults, and I was just a kid. What could I know about anything? “You see,” she said, taking the tone that certain grown-ups use with children and idiots—who are the same in their minds—“this is such a wonderful coincidence. Your great-uncle here moved into our town just two weeks ago without even knowing that your father, his own dear nephew, was here. He just happened to see the story on the news and came right over here. You are his flesh and blood, dear.”

  I looked up at him again, and he nodded. There was a little smile on his face. It was as if he knew what I was thinking, as if he knew I knew he wasn’t who he said he was, but there was nothing I could do to stop this.

  “I don’t know him,” I said again. “I’ve never heard of him. And I don’t care if he is my uncle. My parents will be back soon. And my teacher said I could stay with her if you’re worried about me being home by myself.”

  That was true. Ms. Shabbas had left only an hour ago. She had come to the offices where I was being kept. She’d agreed with me that my parents would be back soon, but she had suggested that, just for now, I might like to stay with her, so I wouldn’t have to be alone. But Social Services wouldn’t hear of it. Not when an actual relative was coming to get me.