Blair’s Nightmare

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  There was no doubt about it. The whole thing was some kind of phony set-up. Garvey was up to something, and you didn’t have to think very hard to figure out what it was. Since he hadn’t had any luck catching David at school, he’d decided to get him at home. He’d probably dug up some old wreck of a bicycle that hadn’t been ridden in years and pushed it all the way to the Westerly House, to use as an excuse to come in the yard. He’d probably planned to ask David to help him, and then wait for a chance to get him alone. And his plan would have worked perfectly if Amanda hadn’t happened to show up.

  Earlier that very day David had been considering riding the bus to school again. It had been almost a week since the fiasco in Mrs. Baldwin’s class. It seemed as if that should be time enough for someone with an attention span as short as Garvey’s to have lost interest in wasting any one particular person. Especially if that person had managed to be as inconspicuous as David had been. But now it seemed that Garvey was not only still after him, but was determined enough to go to a lot of trouble. Not only the trouble to think up the bicycle scheme, which must have put a lot of strain on his mental ability, but also to walk—pushing a wreck of a bike—all the way from his parents’ chicken ranch to the Westerly House. It was pretty depressing. After dinner David went out and oiled his bicycle.

  The next day was warm and sunny, and David got a specially early start on the ride to school. He got in and out of Mrs. Baldwin’s class without any trouble, except that Garvey seemed to be trying to catch his eye all the time. Whenever he did, he gave David a big, wide, leering smile. He was obviously trying to get something across, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what it was. David didn’t like to think about it.

  At noon that day in the cafeteria everybody at the table was talking about the escaped convicts. Jerry Murphy’s father was a sheriff’s deputy, and Jerry had listened in on some of his father’s phone conversations and gotten a lot of new information. It seemed that there had been a work crew from the prison who were building a firebreak on Curry Mountain, and one night two of the prisoners had overpowered a guard, stolen his gun and escaped. The sheriff’s bloodhound had followed their trail down to the Fillmore foothills. The bloodhound had even located a campsite where it looked as if they’d stayed for a while. But that had been a couple of days ago, and since that time the sheriff and his men hadn’t had any luck.

  “Something went wrong with the sheriff’s dog,” Jerry said. “Right after he found the campfire, he was circling around, hit a scent and went tearing off through the woods baying like crazy. My dad and the other guys started running after him, and all at once he came barrelling back ki-yiing like a scared puppy. After that he just wouldn’t try anymore. Whenever they take him out there to the woods, he just sits down and shivers.”

  “Hey,” David said. “I’ll bet he found the prisoners and they did something to him. Like beat him or kicked him, so now he’s afraid to find them again. Did he have any wounds or anything?”

  “No,” Jerry said. “But my dad thinks something like that happened. He thinks they must have done something to him to scare him so bad.”

  “Hey, Stanley,” a guy named Bob Alquist said. “You guys live in that old house out on Westerly Road, don’t you? That old house way out there by itself near the Fillmore Hills? Boy, I wouldn’t want to live out there right now.”

  “Yeah,” David said in an unconcerned tone of voice. “We’ve been taking precautions. Since we heard about it we’ve been locking everything up at night.”

  Everybody at the table looked at David as if they were really impressed that he was so cool about the whole thing.

  “Actually,” David said, “on Saturday I went out scouting around in the hills behind our place. You know, just to be sure. I didn’t see any sign of them though.”

  “Sure you did,” Jerry said.

  “It’s the truth,” David said, “believe it or not.” It was, too. He had been out in the hills on Saturday. He didn’t see the need to mention that Amanda had been with him, or that he hadn’t really heard about the escaped prisoners until afterwards.

  That afternoon when David pedaled, tired and sweaty, into the driveway, Janie was sitting on the front steps. Janie had always been small for her age, and sitting there alone on the broad veranda steps with her back very straight and her hands folded in her lap, she looked like an underdeveloped Barbie doll. The minute he saw her, an automatic Janie alarm went off like a silent siren. The thing was, he’d learned from long experience that when Janie looked particularly cute and harmless, it paid to be on your toes. The minute she saw him she jumped up and came running down the driveway.

  “Hi, David,” she yelled as he climbed off his bike. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “What for?” he asked suspiciously. With Janie it paid to be suspicious.

  “I want to interview you,” Janie said. “I’ve already interviewed Amanda, and now I want to interview you.” She took a little note book and a pencil out of the pocket of her jeans and folded back a page.

  “Sure,” David said, grinning. “I’m always glad to give interviews to my loyal fans. What do you want to know? How many millions I make? How it feels to be famous?”

  “David,” Janie said patiently, “don’t be dumb. I’m solving the mystery of the escaped prisoners. I want to know if you saw any clues Saturday.”

  “Oh that!” David had a sudden sinking feeling. He wondered exactly how much Amanda had told about their hike. Like, had she mentioned that she’d come to David’s rescue by punching Pete Garvey in the nose. “What did Amanda tell you?” he asked.

  Janie turned back a few pages in her notebook. “Well. She told me about seeing squirrels and things and some dirt bikers. She didn’t see anything very suspicious, I guess. But I thought you might have noticed something. You’re usually pretty good at noticing things.”

  David breathed a secret sigh of relief. “Sure. I can give you a clue or two,” he said. “Just let me get something to eat first. I’m starving.”

  So Janie followed him into the kitchen, and in between mouthfuls of milk and cookies David made up a few broken twigs and blurry footprints just to keep Janie happy. Then he started telling about the things Jerry had told him at lunch. While he was talking, Amanda came into the kitchen and sat down and listened. He went over all the stuff about the freaked-out bloodhound and how Bob Alquist had said he was glad he didn’t live where the Stanleys did. Janie looked excited and wrote very fast. Amanda frowned.

  “That’s gross,” she said. “I wish they’d hurry up and catch those creeps.”

  David had just taken another cookie when somebody knocked loudly on the backdoor and there was Pete Garvey, leering in at him through the screen. In all the excitement about the prisoners he’d almost forgotten that Garvey had said he was going to come over. Besides he hadn’t really believed it. Even Garvey wouldn’t be dumb enough to tell his intended victim exactly where and when he was planning to make his next assassination attempt.

  “Hi,” Garvey said. “I come to work on my bike.” He leaned forward and peered through the screen. “Hi,” he said to Amanda.

  “You again,” Amanda said.

  Garvey’s hand was on the door handle, and he was beginning to open it, so David said, “Come on in.”

  It was all really weird. David offered Garvey a cookie, and he sat down at the kitchen table and ate six, and drank about a quart of milk. Right at first, nobody but Janie said anything. Garvey ate cookies, Janie rattled on about the escaped prisoners, and David and Amanda just sat there. But after a while Garvey asked David a question about where Janie got that stuff about the bloodhound, and David told him about Jerry’s inside information. Before long they were all talking about it. All four of them were still sitting there when Dad came home.

  David introduced Garvey, and Dad shook hands and started asking Garvey friendly questions and calling him Pete. David listened, wondering what Dad would say if he knew the truth—if David had int
roduced Garvey by saying, “This is Pete Garvey, Dad. He just dropped by to punch me out.” Instead Dad went on finding out just where the Garvey’s poultry farm was and showing a lot of interest in the fact that David’s “good old buddy Pete” had just hiked over to see if David could help him repair his bicycle. It wound up with Dad insisting on going out to the garage to inspect the wrecked bicycle and offer his advice on how to put it back together.

  Amanda stayed in the house. David guessed that she felt he was safe enough with Dad there, so she didn’t have to play bodyguard this time. When Garvey rolled out the pitiful wreck, Dad looked it over and said it was going to have to have some new spokes—which was fairly obvious—but that he thought it could probably be repaired. What he actually said was he didn’t think it was a terminal case.

  “Terminal?” Garvey said. “No sir. It’s a genuine Schwinn.”

  Dad turned his back quickly and started checking out the back wheel. Then he lifted the bike up on the carpenter’s bench and started showing David how to put the wheel in the vise and straighten out the rim. It didn’t take very long, but before they were finished Garvey said he thought he’d better be getting home. That was the good news. The bad news was that he also said he was coming back.

  “I’ll get me some new spokes and come back over in a day or two. If that’s all right with you,” he said.

  “With me?” David said. “Oh, sure.”

  “Great,” Garvey said. “Good-bye, Mr. Stanley.” Then he came over to David and stuck out his hand with the palm up. “So long, Davey,” he said.

  David stared at the hand for a minute before he realized that Garvey was waiting for him to slap it. So he did.

  “So long—uh—Pete,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  THE NEXT DAY WHEN DAVID got home from school, Janie was lying in wait for him again, this time in the kitchen. She obviously had something new up her sleeve, and he guessed right away that it probably wasn’t going to be as simple as answering a few questions. She had gone to too much trouble. There was already a glass of milk on the table, and she had a pan of cinnamon toast all ready to go under the broiler.

  “Hi David,” Janie said with one of her suspiciously cute smiles. “How would you like some cinnamon toast? I made some especially for you.” Cinnamon toast happened to be one of his favorite foods. He didn’t ask any questions. Whether he asked or not, he was going to find out what she wanted sooner or later. Sooner, probably, he thought, grinning—and he was right. What Janie wanted was for him to take her for a ride on his bicycle.

  “Look, Janie,” he said. “Ride it yourself. I’m tired.”

  “I can’t. My legs are too short. I just want to go for a little ride. It won’t take long.”

  David sighed. He would have said no, except that by then he’d already eaten most of the cinnamon toast. “Well okay,” he said. “Come on then. Let’s get it over with.”

  Out in the garage he stuffed some rags in his book bag and fastened it on the bag rack to make a seat, while he warned Janie to keep her feet out away from the spokes and not to expect a long ride, because it wasn’t going to be one. Janie kept bouncing up and down on the tips of her toes the way she always did when she was excited. Then she climbed up behind him, took hold of his belt and said, “All right, let’s go. Here we go. This is fun, David. This is so much fun.” And then, as they got to the end of the driveway, “No. No, turn left, David. Turn left!”

  That should have clued him in, but it really didn’t. It wasn’t until she’d insisted on turning off Westerly Road onto Fillmore Lane and then kept saying “just a little farther” every time he suggested going back, that he began to catch on to what she had in mind. They were almost to Mr. Golanski’s driveway before she admitted it.

  “I have to interrogate Mr. Golanski,” she said. “I just have to. He probably knows more clues than anybody. He probably saw all kinds of clues in the spring house.”

  David groaned. Janie and her crazy manias. He’d thought it was bad before—like when she was six years old and preparing for a career as a witch or vampire bat—or like in Italy when she got hung up on Romeo and Juliet and went around practicing various kinds of tragic deaths. But that was before he found out what having a detective in the family could do to your peace of mind.

  “Good luck,” he said. “I’ll wait here.” He didn’t think it would be necessary to tell her to hurry. Mr. Golanski wasn’t the kind to waste much time answering ridiculous questions. He’d probably just growl something unintelligible and throw her out. He thought of trying to warn her and decided against it. Janie could take care of herself. He grinned. In fact, maybe what he ought to do was run ahead and warn Golanski.

  Janie pulled her notebook out of her pocket and disappeared down the driveway, as David settled down in the grass beside the road. He’d give her about five minutes, he told himself. Twenty minutes later he got up and went looking for her.

  It didn’t take him long to realize that Mr. Golanski wasn’t at home. No one answered when he knocked on the front door, and the beat-up old pickup truck wasn’t in the garage. So if Janie hadn’t been interviewing Mr. Golanski for the last twenty minutes, what in the world had she been doing? He stood on the front porch for a minute or two, feeling more and more uneasy, before it suddenly dawned on him where she was.

  There was no one in the cluttered backyard with its jumble of pens and sheds. A bunch of King Tut’s relatives, along with some chickens and ducks, raised their heads to stare at him as he went by, and a couple of beige-colored cows leaned over a fence and followed him with their soft deerlike eyes. He was halfway down the path that led toward the hill when Janie suddenly appeared running toward him.

  “Come on, David,” she said impatiently as if he’d been keeping her waiting. “Come on. I need you.”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not going in that spring house with you. What if Golanski comes home and catches us in there. He’d probably get out that shotgun of his and shoot first and ask questions afterward.” But Janie was tugging on his hand and, besides, he couldn’t help being a little bit curious. Looking back over his shoulder now and then, he let her drag him the rest of the way to the spring house.

  “Come on,” she kept saying. “You have to help me.”

  The air was damp and cool, and the constant trickling sound that he remembered from his previous visit still came from the corner where the spring water flowed out of the rocky hillside and fell into a deep, clear pool. The air smelled of cream and bacon, and even with the door open behind them the light was very dim. Janie grabbed hold of David’s arms.

  “Lift me up,” she said. “Lift me up. Over there. By those shelves.”

  With David holding her up as high as he could, Janie leaned forward and peered at the broad shelf that ran around three sides of the spring house. There were pans on the shelf—perhaps a dozen wide shallow pans full of cream-covered milk. Holding on to the edge of the shelf, Janie pulled herself and David down to the corner and partway along the back wall. Once or twice she leaned farther forward and made a gasping noise.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What do you see?” But she didn’t answer.

  Finally she said, “Okay. Put me down,” and slid out of his arms. She was very quiet as he pulled the heavy door shut, turned the latch and hurried her down the path toward the house. Expecting to see Mr. Golanski bursting out of the back door with his gun at any moment, he didn’t take time out to ask questions. But their luck held, and they made it safely around the house and down the drive to the bicycle. As Janie climbed on to the book rack, he asked, “What did you see? What did you see on the shelves?”

  Janie didn’t say anything, so he asked again. After another long pause she said, “Nothing. I didn’t see anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” David yelled as he started off down the driveway. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, and she looked up at him with a very strange expression on her face. It was almost as if she were frightened, or a
t least very worried. Janie didn’t frighten easily, and seeing her look that way gave him an uneasy feeling. He stared at her until she suddenly yelled, “Look out,” and he turned the handle bars just in time to keep from running into a ditch. After that he decided to wait to give her the third degree until they were safely home. But as soon as they were, he was going to find out what she’d seen in the spring house—or know the reason why.

  He didn’t, though. As soon as he’d braked the bicycle to a stop in the garage, she jumped off the back and started running toward the house. By the time he caught up with her, she was in the kitchen with Molly; and for the rest of the evening she stayed about two feet from either Molly or Dad, where David was not about to bring up the subject of prowling around on Mr. Golanski’s property. It wasn’t until almost bedtime that he trapped her in the upper hall and dragged her into his room.

  “Hey, let me go,” she yelled.

  “Not until you tell me what you saw in the spring house.”

  She glared at him. “I told you. I didn’t see anything.”

  “You did, too. I heard you make a gasping noise, like you’d seen something very important.”

  “No. No, I didn’t.” She glared, and he glared back. And then suddenly she smiled. “David, I was just playing. You know. I was playing detective, and I was pretending I was finding all these important clues like fingerprints and blood-spots and everything. That’s all it was. Playing.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, but actually he wasn’t certain. Janie pretended a lot. “If you were just playing, I really ought to wring your neck. I mean, if you got me to sneak around on someone else’s property when they weren’t home and risk getting my head shot off, just so you could play some silly make-believe game . . .”