by Henry Clark
“Crazy is right,” agreed Freak. “When the auction ends… it’s your mother’s eBay account. She gets the money?”
“I already made her promise that whatever the final amount is, she’ll give it to us. She’ll divvy it up equally three ways. She said she would.”
“Does she know how high the bidding has gone?”
“No. I told her we were trying to sell a crayon. I haven’t told her anything else.”
I cleared my throat.
“Guys?” I said.
“I hope she doesn’t change her mind when she finds out we’re talking thousands of dollars,” said Freak.
“Why would she? A promise is a promise.”
“My father promised to take me fishing once. That was three years ago.”
“Guys?” That was me.
“What if the high bidder backs down once the auction ends? What if whoever it is doesn’t pay?”
“Then you give the high bidder some nasty feedback and ask the runner-up if he’s willing to buy it for whatever his highest bid was. Which, at the moment, is five thousand dollars.”
“GUYS!”
Fiona and Freak turned and looked at me.
“Technically,” I said in a very soft voice, “the crayon isn’t ours to sell.”
They continued to stare at me.
“What?” said Freak. “We found it in a sofa on the side of the road. The sofa is obviously being thrown out. Which means anything in the sofa is also being thrown out. The crayon was being thrown out. We found it. It’s ours. We can do whatever we want with it.”
“Old Man Underhill probably didn’t know the crayon was in the sofa. It’s something he lost. We found it. Now that we know it’s really valuable, we should return it.”
“Yesterday we thought the crayon might be worth maybe five hundred dollars,” Fiona said. “This didn’t bother you then.”
“Five hundred dollars didn’t sound like a whole lot of money, especially split three ways,” I confessed. “Seven thousand, on the other hand, sounds like a lot. Like the kind of money Underhill could use to pay for his groceries or his heating bill or his, I don’t know, his hermit tax.”
“Hermit tax?” asked Fiona.
“My aunt says everything has a tax.”
“You think Underhill needs the money?” Freak was up and pacing back and forth in front of us. “He’s got this big rambling house on something like a hundred acres of land. If he’s hard up for cash, he could sell a few acres.”
Our eyes met and I could see he knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“Who would buy land this close to Hellsboro? How many years has the For Sale sign been up in front of your own house?”
He looked stung. “Underhill doesn’t need the money. He doesn’t even know the crayon is missing. He’s supposed to be a hundred years old. When was the last time he colored? We could all make better use of the money than he could. I could pay some of my father’s bills.”
I hadn’t thought of that. But just as I decided to back off, Fiona changed her mind.
“River is right.” She sighed.
“Not you, too,” groaned Freak.
“It’s not our crayon. We should at least make an attempt to return it,” she continued. “What will probably happen is, Underhill will turn out to be this lovable old grandpa and he’ll tell us he doesn’t care about the crayon and we can keep it.”
“Either that, or he’ll kill us and eat us,” I added, as cheerfully as I could.
Freak looked from Fiona to me, and then back to Fiona. Fiona nodded encouragingly. Freak looked like he was about to explode, but then he snapped, “ALL RIGHT! Fine! If it’ll make the two of you happy, let’s ask him RIGHT NOW!”
Freak stalked over to the gate. He stood there, staring through the gate’s black metal bars and up the entrance drive to where it disappeared into the trees. Fiona and I walked over and stood on either side of him.
“Hey!” Freak barked. “Do you want your crayon back?”
He moved closer to the gate, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “DO YOU WANT YOUR CRAYON BACK?”
“What crayon would that be?” asked the gatepost to our right.
The three of us jumped three feet to the left and stared at the gatepost. After a moment, the post said, “Hello?”
Freak looked at me. “This was your idea,” he said.
I walked slowly over to the post, with Fiona and Freak behind me. I got to within four feet of it and decided I didn’t want to get any closer.
“Hello?” I said.
The post buzzed briefly, like a beehive, and a hinged metal plate in the center of it dropped open with a clang. Dimly, in the dark cubbyhole, we could see a lens and the grille of a speaker.
“Yes?” said the voice.
“Y-you c-can,” I stammered. “You can hear us?”
“No, I’m watching you through the camera and reading your lips. Of course I can hear you. What’s this about a crayon?”
It was a man’s voice, but he didn’t sound particularly old.
“We found this crayon,” I said. Then I caught myself. I realized I had no idea who I was talking to.
“The kind of crayon you color with?” asked the voice. “That kind of crayon?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is River Monroe. And this is Fiona Shuck. And that’s, um, Freak Nesterii.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“And you are?”
“Excuse me?”
“You haven’t told us your name. We don’t know who we’re talking to.”
“Oh. Sorry. Remiss of me. My friends call me Alf.”
“What do people you’ve just met call you?”
“Alf.”
“Alf Underhill?”
“No.”
“You’re not an Underhill?”
“No.”
The three of us exchanged glances. Then the voice said, “Oh. I see. You’re at the gate of the Underhill place. So you think there might be an Underhill here. You’re not relatives, are you?”
“Relatives of who?” asked Fiona.
“Whom,” corrected the voice. “Relatives of Claude Underhill.”
“No, we’re not,” I replied.
“Then you won’t be too upset to learn that Claude is deceased.”
“He died?” I squeaked.
“Three years ago. Age ninety-seven. In a toboggan accident.”
“He was tobogganing?”
“He was out in the carriage barn and a toboggan fell on his head. He should not have tugged on the rope.”
I wondered if, possibly, I had been right about the chances of us getting eaten.
“So… who are you?”
“I purchased the place shortly after he died. I’ve been living here for the past three years. Since I rarely go out, and the local papers contained no mention of Underhill’s death, I can see where you might have thought I was him. But I’m not. What’s this about a crayon?”
“It couldn’t have been your crayon,” said Freak hastily. “I’m sure it was Mr. Underhill’s when he was a boy. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“I purchased the house and its entire contents. This would have included Claude Underhill’s childhood playthings, if they were anywhere on the grounds. His Frisbee. His Hula-Hoop. His Silly Putty. His crayons.”
“So,” I said, “if we found one of those things, it would rightfully belong to you?”
“I’m afraid that’s how it works. You found a crayon you think once belonged to Claude Underhill? Where did you find it?”
“Between the sofa cushions.”
There was a pause. Then the voice said, “What sofa?”
“The sofa,” said Freak, sounding exasperated, “that has been sitting out here by the gate for the past three days. It’s big and green, with dragon-claw feet.”
“Oh, that sofa. I was wondering where it had gotten to. I didn’t realize it was missing until yes
terday evening when I tried to sit down. You can imagine my surprise. What color is the crayon?”
Freak had an expression on his face that said he thought we were talking to a crazy person. I expect I had the same expression on mine.
“Zucchini,” Fiona said.
“Zucchini? Really? Sounds unusual. Possibly valuable. Not that I’m an expert. Have you considered selling it on the Internet?”
Again, we looked at one another. Fiona silently mouthed the words, Don’t tell him.
I turned back to the post and said, “As a matter of fact, we started an auction last night.”
“Oh?” said Alf. “Would that happen to be a printout of the auction on that piece of paper Fiona just this moment tried to hide behind her back?”
Fiona shook her head. I nodded.
“Could you send that paper up here? I’d like to see it.”
“Send it up?”
“Bring it to the mail slot.”
Fiona and I tugged the paper back and forth a few times before she finally released it. I took it to the post.
“Reach into the opening.”
“No!” said Fiona, running up beside me.
“It’s perfectly safe,” said Alf. “That little mechanical glitch—the one that resulted in your mail carrier getting the nickname ‘Lefty’—was fixed several years ago. Reach in, take out the canister, put the paper in the canister, and put the canister back where you found it. Then close the door.”
Fiona tried to stop me, but I reached past her into the hole and found a brass cylinder. It popped open when I pressed a button on its lid, and I followed Alf’s instructions. As soon as I pushed the door closed, something went FOOP! inside the post. After a moment the hinged door fell back open, and the canister was gone.
“Pneumatic,” Alf explained. “Forced air shoots the canister up here like a pea through a peashooter. Or, if you modern kids don’t play with peashooters anymore, a deadly poisoned dart through a blowgun.”
“We don’t play with blowguns much, either,” Freak informed him.
“It’s all those video games. Kids don’t play outside anymore.” Alf sighed. “My, my. Seven thousand dollars for a zucchini crayon. That was as of, when? Five thirty this morning. That was several hours ago. I wonder…” Briefly, Alf started humming a tune to himself. It sounded like something from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “Ah. You might be interested to know the current high bid is eleven thousand, four hundred and fifty-three dollars and eighty-six cents. Alecto is currently in the lead.”
“Are you kidding?” asked Freak.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“You look,” said Freak, “like a camera lens.”
“Yes. I suppose I would. So the three of you are trying to sell a crayon that, technically, belongs to me. Any thoughts on that?”
“I think we should split whatever it sells for equally,” I said.
“Do you?” asked Alf. “You mean half for me and half for the three of you?”
“I meant more like a quarter for each of us. We did, after all, rescue the crayon from the sofa and get the auction started.”
The silence seemed to go on forever. The three of us looked expectantly at the camera lens.
“If this is a staring contest,” Freak whispered, “we’re going to lose.”
“I think we should discuss this,” Alf finally said. “Face-to-face. I’d invite you up right now, but your bus is only thirty-five seconds away and you have a full day’s schooling ahead. Why don’t you return later this afternoon? After school lets out, and after track and chess club and school newspaper?”
It took us a moment to absorb the implications of what Alf had said.
“How—?” Fiona started, and I finished the question with, “—did you know we have track and chess and newspaper?”
“It was a lucky guess,” said Alf, sounding pleased with himself. “Shall we say four o’clock? Here at the gate? I’ll buzz it open and you can come right up. Please bring the crayon with you when you come. Along with anything else you may have found in my sofa.”
“I don’t know—” I started to say.
“It’s a date, then!” declared Alf.
The metal door of the gatepost snapped shut with a loud bang, just as air brakes burped at the bus stop.
CHAPTER
05
The Black Gate Opens
At lunch, after Freak had traded two bananas for a roast beef sandwich and a third banana for some carrot sticks, he returned to the table and we discussed Alf and the zucchini crayon.
“I don’t think he’s going to share with us,” was Freak’s opinion. “He wants us to bring the crayon because he’s going to ask to see it and then he’s going to take it from us and lock it away somewhere. Then he’ll kick us out. All because you had to go and tell him we had it. That’s assuming he’s not a totally deranged serial killer who’s just luring us into his house so he can add to his collection of kneecap doorknobs.”
“You think we shouldn’t go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t sound like the sanest person when we were talking to him.”
“We should vote.”
Fiona was three tables away. I caught her eye and waved, gesturing that she should come over, but she turned away and started talking to the girl on her right. This was normal.
I started to wave her over again, but froze when I noticed Francine “Nails” Norton approaching Fiona from behind. Francine’s lunch tray was filled to the edges with something excessively wiggly. The day’s dessert was strawberry Jell-O, and it looked like Nails had repeatedly gone back for seconds.
Freak was engrossed in scraping surplus mustard from the beef of his sandwich. I nudged him, and he looked up in time to see Nails tilt the tray and send a mountain of shimmering red gelatin down on Fiona’s head.
Nails dropped the tray to the floor with a clatter and said—rather insincerely, I thought—“Oh! I’m s-o-o-o sorry!” Then she walked away as if nothing had happened. The applause from the lunchroom was even louder than when Rudy Sorkin had slipped on the string bean.
Fiona sat very straight, raking her fingers slowly, deliberately, through her hair, depositing gobs of pinkish goo on the lunch tray in front of her. Then she stood, turned, and walked stiffly to the girls’ room. Just before she got there, the door to the boys’ room opened and Travis Miller stepped out. They stood eye-to-eye for a moment, then a ruby drop of yuckiness ran down Fiona’s forehead, clung briefly to the tip of her nose, and dropped onto her blouse. She uttered a weird, inhuman cry and dodged past him.
“We knew something like that was going to happen,” I stated.
“Yes, we did,” agreed Freak, who had returned to scrutinizing his sandwich.
It wouldn’t have happened if Fiona hadn’t been the photography editor of the school newspaper. The sports page of the latest issue had featured three photos of the girls’ field hockey team and absolutely no photos of Nails Norton’s boyfriend, Morgue MacKenzie, scoring the winning touchdown in the big football game against Flanders, even though it was well known that the historic moment had been captured by the school photographer.
“The photos vanished,” Fiona had told Freak and me at the bus stop the day after the game. “I saw them disappear one by one out of the camera, and then off the computer screen!”
“You hit the delete key with your elbow,” Freak assured her.
“My elbows aren’t that pointy!”
“A guy could shave with your elbows.”
Fiona was a target the moment the paper came out. Nobody slighted Nails or Morgue without getting messed with. I accidentally stepped on Morgue’s foot one day and wound up stuck in a Salvation Army clothing-drop bin for over an hour before anybody thought to investigate why the bin periodically shouted for help. Most people walking by the bin had assumed the shrill “Help! Help!” was a recorded announcement requesting donations.
Stuff like that happens to me pretty regularly. I get picked on a lot be
cause I’m shorter than practically every other boy in our class. Also, because of a car crash I was in when I was little, I’ve got one leg that’s the tiniest bit shorter than the other. It doesn’t affect how I walk, but it shows up when I run.
Freak had it somewhat easier in school than Fiona or I did. He had a cool nickname and he was on the track team. Most of the other kids respected him, even though he didn’t seem to care whether they did or not. If he happened to be around on an occasion when I was being picked on, he almost always found a way to distract my tormentors, usually by showing them something shiny. You couldn’t ask for more than that in a friend.
Fiona was wearing her gym suit on the late bus that afternoon. As soon as the bus had dumped all of its basketball players and we were the only kids still on board, Fiona came up from the back and sat with us. She had her Jell-O–stained clothes in a plastic bag and her hair slicked back like she had just been swimming.
“That was some show in the cafeteria today,” Freak said conversationally. He sniffed the air near Fiona. “Is that strawberry perfume?”
Fiona glared at him.
“Are we doing this, or not?” she asked.
“You plan on meeting Alf dressed in your gym shorts?”
“I’ll be all set if we have to run. Are we bringing him the crayon?”
Before Freak could answer, I said, “Yes.” They looked at me. “It’s his crayon. We found it. If he wants to give us a reward for finding it, that would be fair. If he wants to share with us whatever he can sell it for, that would be great.”
“And if he wants to snatch it back from us and throw us in his dungeon, that would be terrific,” said Freak, imitating my voice.
“If that happens,” I said, clenching my fist and punching the air, “River Man will save us!”
River Man was what I used to call myself in the days when Freak and I played superheroes. River Man could channel energy. He said things like, “Go with the flow!” as he sent bad guys tumbling down the street in a flood of raw power. River Man helped me explain why, for some reason, my aunt had embroidered my initials on the front of one of my shirts. I sometimes pretended to be him whenever thinking about my parents got to be a little too much for me. It was all right for River Man’s face to be wet; water was one of his weapons.
