by Betsy Uhrig
“I like it when things work out well,” said Caroline.
And who doesn’t, in real life? But in books, if everything worked out well… we’d have nothing but Gerald Visits Grampas, wouldn’t we?
“Sure,” I said. “But they need to work out well later. Not right there at the beginning. How about this?” I asked, and now I was just freewheeling, saying stuff as it entered my head, maybe even before. “How about Gerald can’t find Grampa anywhere? Grampa is missing. And Gerald starts to sense a Presence in the house….”
Caroline had taken a notebook out of her bag and was writing. I wrote in the margins of the book at the same time: “Gerald senses Presence. Grampa missing. Where is he?”
“Not ‘presence,’ ” I said, looking over her shoulder at her notes. “It should be ‘Presence,’ with a capital P.”
“What difference does it make?”
“A Presence is way creepier. Trust me.”
She capitalized it. I was pleased.
“This is a lot to think about,” she said. But she sounded more excited than whiny. “I’m going to have to rewrite the whole beginning.”
“Not the first sentence,” I said. “The first sentence is fine the way it is.”
“That’s a relief,” said Caroline.
* * *
I was feeling pretty impressed with myself when Caroline left. She said she was going to follow my suggestions and see what I thought when she was done. She asked me to send her any other ideas I had. She tried to give me the ten dollars then and there, but my mom said I hadn’t earned it yet.
The beginning of the book was looking more interesting now. But books can’t just be interesting, I knew. They also have to be believable. You have to feel like you’re there, inside the character’s head, or at least really close by. And to make it believable, you need realistic details. “Write what you know,” my teachers were always saying. And I didn’t know anything about what it was like to wander around in a creepy empty house.
I did, however, know how to find out.
7
MY MOM WORKED FROM HOME AS a graphic designer, but she ran a pet-sitting business on the side. Probably because she never met an animal she didn’t adore (even Marcello) and my dad was allergic to fur and had a sneeze like a cannon blast. Mom’s “office” was the desk in the back hall, over which was a pegboard with keys hanging from it—the keys to the houses of the people she pet-sat for. And on that pegboard hung a key to the Old Weintraub Place, because my mom took care of Mrs. Weintraub’s cats before Mrs. Weintraub and the cats moved in with her daughter.
I was back in the same sweaty running clothes from before, my day pack filled with Caroline’s book and the Red Pen of Realistic Details. On the way out the door, I ever so casually grabbed the Weintraub key from the Weintraub hook and tossed that in as well. Then I ran to Javier’s house.
Javier was ready for me because I’d gotten good at texting and running at the same time without breaking my face on the sidewalk. I did break my phone once, though.
“Where’s Great-Aunt Rosa?” I asked when I got to his front porch.
Javier’s great-aunt Rosa sat outside on the porch swing a lot, reading paperback books the size of bricks. Even when it was cold, like today, she bundled up and kept a hot drink nearby. According to Javier, she came out there to get away from the rest of the family.
He shrugged. “The senior center, most likely. She’s been spending a lot of time there since Great-Aunt Marina moved in with us.”
Great-Aunt Rosa almost never said anything to me, and she never, ever cracked a smile, but I sort of missed seeing her.
Javier and I sat on the porch swing, and I described my situation for him.
“You do not want to criticize a relative’s art,” said Javier. “That never ends well.”
“So I’m thinking I could let myself into the Old Weintraub Place,” I said. “To see what it’s like. And film it so I can remember the details. Then I’ll report back to Caroline, and she can add it to the book. That’s helping, not criticizing, right?”
“Can’t you just imagine what it’s like in there?” Javier asked. “Isn’t that what writers do? Imagine stuff and then write it down?”
“Sure, writers do that,” I said. “But I’m not a writer, am I? And I have no imagination. You know that from creative writing last year.”
He did know that—he’d been my partner. We were both grateful when we’d moved on to persuasive essays.
“All right,” Javier said. “Just to clarify: by ‘I’ you mean ‘we’ in this case? We can let ourselves in and see what it’s like? And no one but you calls it the Old Weintraub Place, by the way. It doesn’t have, like, landmark status.”
“Fine,” I said. “And of course I mean ‘we.’ One of us to do the experiencing—that would be me—and the other to do the filming. That would be you. Obviously.”
Javier had been making films since he got a video camera for his birthday a year ago. Sometimes he made stop-action films with Lego creatures, but mostly he filmed live-action sequences of Marta doing reckless stunts.
“Cool,” said Javier. “I’ll get my camera.”
8
JAVIER FILMED FROM THE FRONT WALK as I ran, à la Gerald, up the steps of the Old Weintraub Place.
The porch was good and creaky, and the spiderwebs were a nice touch.
“Are you getting all this?” I asked Javier.
“All what?”
“The sensory detail. Like we were always supposed to be using in creative writing.”
“I’m getting the sights and sounds,” Javier said. “This camera doesn’t record the other senses. If you want to lick the railing, be my guest.”
I did not want to lick the railing. There was probably bird poop all over it.
I took a sniff of the air instead. I smelled the evergreens next to the steps, which was pleasant.
Then I put my hand on the front door and felt the roughness of the wood and the crackly edges of the peeling paint. Excellent. Caroline would love this stuff. I got out her book and my Red Pen of Inspiration and jotted some notes in the margin.
Then I got out the key and put it in the lock. The lock was not happy about being used at first, but it gave in eventually. I opened the door slowly and stepped into the house. Javier followed at filming distance. When he got inside, I closed the door so the neighbors wouldn’t see us and think we were robbers.
The evergreen smell was gone, replaced by something more like old dust. The floorboards creaked louder in the quiet house than the porch ones had outside. The front hall was dim and, I was happy to see, kind of creepy. Perfect. To my right: the living room, the furniture covered with sheets so it looked like ghost furniture. To my left: the dining room—with the ghosts of a table and chairs. Over the table hung a chandelier-type light draped with cobwebs.
I pointed at it.
“I see it,” said Javier, aiming the camera at the ceiling.
“Grampa,” I called experimentally. “Are you here?”
“You’re not really going to—” Javier began.
“Of course not!” I said. “This is just to know how it would sound.”
“All right,” said Javier. “Have at it. But you probably need to call a little louder. Grampas can be hard of hearing.”
Javier had way more experience with grampas than I did. He had at least three, maybe more kicking around. I didn’t have any.
I called a little louder: “Grampa?” Then I turned to Javier. “Are you getting this?”
“If you ask me that again, we are done.”
“Okay, okay.”
I moved down the hall toward the back of the house, past what looked like a den or library—lots of shelves, nothing on them—and then a closet (empty) and a bathroom (antique). I wrote a few more notes on Caroline’s pages.
“Marta would be loving this,” said Javier with a tinge of guilt in his voice.
“A little too much,” I said. “But we don’t need to feel bad. She�
��s grounded, anyway.”
“What was it this time?”
“Cutting bangs for herself.”
“That sounds about right.”
She hadn’t just cut bangs for herself. She’d cut bangs and decided she didn’t like the look. Then, instead of simply waiting for them to grow out, she’d cut them all the way off, leaving a strip of stubble across her forehead.
“Maybe Grampa fell in the tub,” said Javier, gesturing with his chin at the bathroom. “You better get in there and check it out.”
I was starting to wish I was filming this myself, alone. But I went into the bathroom and opened the brittle shower curtain. And let out a scream that Javier has told me he will never, ever delete no matter what I offer him or threaten him with.
9
YOU KNOW THOSE LOZENGE-SHAPED BUGS WITH the zillions of legs that seem too disorganized to move the bug in a specific direction but somehow work really well, and the direction it moves in is always, always at your face? The biggest of those bugs ever was living in the folds of the Weintraub shower curtain. If Grampa had fallen in the tub, he would have been eaten.
The enormous bug lunged at me—I’m not exaggerating. It lunged at my face, and of course I screamed. Of course I batted at it with the book and the Red Pen of Self-Defense and yelled, “Get it off me! Get it off me!” even though it wasn’t, it turned out, on me at all.
Javier didn’t flinch as it ran between his sneakers, but he probably didn’t even notice it due to his laughing. When Javier was serious, he had the dignity of a statue. But when he laughed the way he was laughing now, he totally lost it. He had to set the camera down on the sink, he was laughing so hard.
“Oh, you’re just great in a crisis,” I said. “Thanks so much for your help there.”
“When you say ‘crisis,’ do you mean ‘little tiny centipede’?”
“It was gigantic,” I said. “And for all we know, that one was a baby, and the mother is about to come after us, protecting her young.”
“I think you may be confusing centipedes and grizzly bears,” said Javier, picking up his camera. “There’s a major difference in size there, and also level of ferociousness and maternal instinct. Also, I’m pretty sure that, in terms of habitat, grizzly bears aren’t commonly found in shower curtains.”
“Well, neither are dangerous bugs! It caught me by surprise, is all.”
Actually, most centipedes aren’t dangerous—to humans, anyway—according to Wikipedia. But in my defense, and for the record, it also says that “their size and speed can be startling.” So there.
If you’ve read Gerald in the Grotto of the Gargoyles, you might have recognized the Belligerent Bug that attacks Gerald in chapter 3. It is indeed an overgrown, eerily glowing centipede. Only, that one is extremely dangerous to humans. It’s also fictional. But Gerald’s scream when it attacks him? That is based on fact. Javier still has the recording, and he’d be glad to show it to you.
10
I CLOSED THE DOOR TO THE bathroom once we’d gotten back into the hallway and I had finished frantically combing my fingers through my hair to make sure no bugs were clinging to it.
“You realize that a bug could simply walk under that door,” said Javier. “There’s plenty of head clearance there for a bug.”
“It will at least slow them down,” I said. “Especially if there’s any kind of swarming situation. Come on, let’s check out the kitchen.”
“I don’t know,” said Javier, camera on again. “What if a gang of sarcastic ladybugs is hanging around in there?”
I chose not to respond to this, and it was during my silence that we heard the Noise. We both froze, though Javier, a true pro, kept filming.
It wasn’t a small-n noise. It was a capital-N Noise. It wasn’t one of those random noises that you would hear in an empty old house as you blundered around pretending to search for your missing grampa. It was a precise Noise. The kind that indicates a Presence.
And here I have to admit that up until this point, I’d been sort of hoping for some sign of a Presence, so I could tell Caroline what it was like to feel one. But now, faced with an actual Noise and a possible actual Presence making the Noise, I wasn’t happy at all. There was still some adrenaline going from the centipede ambush, and it all added up to more suspense than I wanted in my real life.
While this was going on in my head, here’s what was going on in Javier’s:
“Raccoons in the trash, maybe? Squirrels in the attic?”
The fact that he hadn’t said “Enormous mother centipede out for revenge?” meant that he was taking the Noise seriously. Which on the one hand I appreciated. And on the other I didn’t, because when Javier took something seriously, that meant it was truly serious.
“Maybe,” I said. “But if they’re active during the day, doesn’t that mean they’re rabid?”
“Raccoons, yes,” he said. “Squirrels, no.”
I had no idea how he knew these things. We were in the same class at the same school—we should have had the same information. Yes, he’d already had the growth spurt that I was still waiting for, but a bigger head didn’t mean a smarter brain. Or did it? I’d have to ask him later.
“Maybe you should go first,” I said, instead of, Maybe we should run out the front door and keep running, which was definitely my first impulse. “Change up the angle and film me from the front walking toward the kitchen.”
Javier saw right through that obvious ploy.
“Get going,” he said.
“I wish I had a stick or something,” I said. The pen and the pages of Caroline’s book weren’t much good as weapons, I already knew.
“So do I,” Javier muttered in a tone that made it very clear who he would have been poking if he’d had a stick handy.
I walked slowly toward the kitchen, worried about the Noise. Worried about a Presence. Worried about not having a stick. And, most of all, worried about screaming again.
11
THE KITCHEN WAS A RELIEF. AT first, anyway. It was less dim than the rest of the house because there were no shades or curtains over the windows. The table and chairs weren’t covered with sheets. The floor and counters were clean, and the appliances were shiny. Even my mom wouldn’t have been able to criticize. Which, as I said, came as a relief—until Javier had to go and mention, “This place doesn’t look abandoned at all. Check it out—there are dishes in the drying rack.”
There were. And they weren’t coated with dust. They looked freshly washed.
“Maybe someone comes in to clean once in a while?” I suggested.
“They’re not doing a good job in the bathroom,” said Javier. “And they missed something. Look.” He pointed with the camera at the table. A mug sat on it, half filled with brown liquid.
“Ick,” I said. “Is that ancient sludge in there?”
“Looks like fresh coffee,” said Javier. “Go on,” he said. “You’re the one who’s so interested in sensory details. Smell it.”
I did not want to put my nose into a mug half filled with suspicious brown liquid. Javier already had footage of me screaming and flailing around. Me puking wasn’t going to happen.
“Uh-uh,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “I can smell it from here. It’s coffee.”
I went over to the table and studied the mug. It did look like coffee. I edged closer. Now I could smell it. Javier was right. It was coffee.
How was that possible? Was coffee a substance like Twinkies that stayed fresh no matter how long you left it out? Was there some postapocalyptic world in which humans would be long gone but their Twinkies and their coffee remained for the radioactive cockroaches to feast upon?
I put the book on the table and picked up the mug, I guess thinking I would dump the coffee out in the sink. Leave the place a little neater than I’d found it, like a good trespasser should. But as soon as I picked it up, I realized that the mug was warm.
If you’ve ever picked up something that you were expecting to be
cool and it was warm instead, you will understand what happened next.
I let out what I’m going to call a yelp and what Javier insisted was another scream, and dropped the mug.
12
THE MUG WAS TOUGH. IT DIDN’T shatter or even chip when it hit the floor. It bounced, sending the warmish coffee splattering.
Javier wasn’t laughing this time. He was looking at me like it was my sanity pooling on the linoleum and he was wondering how he was going to subdue me long enough to get me the help I needed.
“It was warm,” I said. “The coffee was warm. How is that possible?”
I already knew what my theory was. “This place must be haunted,” I said as I mopped up the coffee spill with a paper towel from the roll by the sink. “A ghost’s ectoplasm must have come into contact with the liquid and heated it up.”
“Haunted by who?” said Javier. “Mrs. Weintraub isn’t dead.”
“That we know of,” I said. “And what about Mr. Weintraub? There must have been a Mr. Weintraub at some point, but we never hear about him, do we?”
“It’s also possible,” said Javier from behind his camera, “that a cleaning person was here, doing some cleaning and having a nice cup of coffee, and we scared them.”
I was relieved to be moving away from the haunting theory. Unfortunately, the cleaning-person theory wasn’t working for me.
“Why would a cleaning person be scared by two kids?” I said. “Shouldn’t they have come out of the kitchen and said, ‘Hey, you kids. You’re trespassing. Scram.’ ”
“People don’t say scram in this century,” said Javier. “But I see your point. So maybe it was another trespasser.”
“A trespasser who drinks coffee and likes to keep things neat and clean?”
“You’re a trespasser and you’re cleaning right now.”
I was. I was on my knees, drying the floor with a fresh wad of paper towels. I had already rinsed the mug and put it in the drying rack with the other dishes.
