The Book of Bad Things Page 7

  Despite the calm end to the previous day, Joey had finished the evening withdrawn, stuck in his head, ignoring Cassidy almost entirely. Before retiring to her room upstairs, she had caught sight of Ping in the driveway next door with her two brothers and went out to say hello.

  She’d been happy to share her strange day with Ping. When she mentioned the figures she’d seen out in the street the previous night, Ping looked curious but unsurprised. This was a strange state they were living in after all. Cassidy went on about the conversation she’d tried to have with Joey during the art class, then about the visit to the general store, where she’d heard that people had been seeing the ghost of Ursula Chambers. They’d agreed to get together the next day, with Joey or without.

  Outside, the air was misty, the sky covered in thick clouds. Deb had left the Weather Channel blaring from the television in the living room, and once Cassidy had finished loading the dishwasher, she plopped down on the sofa and switched the channel to the Cartoon Network. To her surprise, Joey eventually came over and perched on the other side of the couch. They sat together just like that through a few old episodes of Adventure Time, though several times, Cassidy just stopped herself from leaning over and asking him what he thought about the ghost stories they’d overheard yesterday at Moriarty’s. She was dying to know if he’d woken sporadically in the night like she had, heart pounding, limbs tingling, ears straining to hear shuffling sounds out on the street, but she didn’t want a repeat performance of his art class explosion.

  There was a knock at the sliding door. A dark shadow stood outside on the patio, holding up hands to peer through the glass. Joey groaned, but got up to answer it. He slid open the door and asked, “What the heck do you want?”

  Cassidy sighed. She had hoped he was done taking that tone.

  “Is Cassidy here?” It was Ping.

  Joey nodded toward the living room. Cassidy sat up straight and waved. “Hi!” Ping slipped past Joey and into the kitchen.

  “Sure! Come on in!” Joey said, waving his arms to indicate that he was not in fact invisible.

  “Thank you.” Ping nodded politely. Cassidy couldn’t tell if she was oblivious to his sarcasm or if she was merely awesome. Ping winked, and Cassidy stifled laughter. “Hey, did you guys see the news this morning?”

  “Of course,” said Joey. “We never miss the stock report. It’s so fascinating.”

  Ping ignored him, stepping closer to Cassidy. “You’ll both want to know,” she whispered, eyeing Joey briefly. He scowled and slammed the sliding door before stomping back to his spot on the couch.

  “Forget it,” said Ping, holding up a hand. “Cassidy, let’s take a walk.”

  “Wait,” said Joey, looking suddenly frightened to be left alone. He took a deep breath. “Is it about Ursula?”

  Ping raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “You sure you want to hear about it?”

  He closed his eyes, mouthing the word yes.

  “Okay then. They lost her.”

  “They what?” Cassidy said at the same time Joey asked, “They, who?”

  “The funeral parlor over in … I forget where. But a couple days ago, the day of the burial in fact, the morticians opened the casket and found it empty. I heard about it this morning on the Today show. One of those weird stories.”

  “Someone stole Ursula Chambers?” Joey was pale, his lips open slightly, trying to keep his breath even.

  “That’s their theory.”

  “And what’s your theory? That she just got up and walked away?”

  Ping turned pink. No one spoke. Joey glanced between the two girls, then leapt up and ran toward the stairs.

  THE CURTAINS WERE STILL DRAWN in Joey’s bedroom, so when Cassidy and Ping climbed the stairs behind him, they walked in darkness. From the hall, they heard him rummaging around. A blipping sound rang out, and the blue light of a computer screen spilled into the hallway.

  “Are you okay?” Cassidy dared to call through his open door.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just want to see if I can find something about this on my computer.” After a moment, he added, “It’s really weird with you guys standing there watching me.”

  Cassidy sighed, then wandered into the room, stepping over piles of clothes that lay like booby traps across the floor. She pulled open the curtains and grayish light filtered into the small space. Ping stood behind Joey at his desk.

  It took him a couple minutes, but eventually he found the page he was looking for. “Here we go,” he said, pulling out his desk chair and sitting down. “Hoarder Mystery Deepens as Corpse Disappears,” he read. The story went just as Ping had told it.

  “She’s just gone,” said Ping.

  Joey turned to look at the girls. “Like Lucky,” he whispered. “You do believe me now. Don’t you?”

  “I believed you before,” said Cassidy. “That’s what I was trying to tell you yesterday, when you” — totally FREAKED OUT — “you know, left the art class.”

  “I’ve seen him too,” Ping added. “Your dog. Out by the oak tree in your backyard.”

  Joey turned his chair around. Quietly, carefully, he said, “I thought you were making fun of me.”

  “Well, there’s nothing fun about this,” said Ping with a wry grin, as if this was the exact kind of thing she found to be if not fun then at least intriguing.

  “Downstairs,” said Cassidy, “Ping mentioned that the theft was only one theory of what happened to the body. But what’s the other theory? Is there a connection between Joey’s missing dog and our missing hermit?”

  “Besides you seeing them walk down the street the other night?” Ping asked, wide-eyed.

  Cassidy’s skin tingled. “But that’s not what I saw,” she insisted.

  “It’s not?” Ping squeaked out. “You sure?”

  “The walking dead,” said Cassidy, her memory wandering into the shadow world of Monday night. “It’s not possible.”

  “But it happened.”

  Joey swallowed violently, as if choking down some sick. “You guys are really thinking that this stuff is real? You’re not joking?”

  “We’re not joking,” said Ping. “Why do you keep asking that?”

  “It’s just that … for the past year, whenever I’ve told anyone what I’ve seen or heard, they laughed at me. And then, with my parents sending me to talk to Dr. Caleb … It’s all just been … confusing.”

  As Cassidy listened to Joey talk, she thought of the Joey she used to know. The boy who spoke softly, kindly, who’d have done anything to make her summer the best summer it could be. Feeling something in her own chest open up, she fell back onto his bed and clutched at his sheets, as if that could stop her from melting into a tearful mess.

  “Confusing isn’t quite the right word,” said Ping.

  “Close enough,” said Joey, turning back to his computer screen.

  Cassidy waited for the pressure behind her eyes to dissipate before going on. “So, let’s say there is a connection between what I’ve seen over the past few days and the missing body.” She glanced at the back of Joey’s head and added, “Bodies.”

  “Could it have to do with what you guys overheard yesterday at the deli?” asked Ping.

  Joey turned around, mouth agape. He shook his head at Cassidy. “Word travels fast around here.”

  “We chatted last night,” said Ping. “Cassidy caught me up on what happened.”

  “The connection,” said Cassidy. “According to the stories we heard at Moriarty’s, people all over Whitechapel have seen her. Ursula.”

  “Yeah,” said Ping, “but not just anyone. You said that Ursula has appeared to those who took something from the Dumpsters in her driveway. She’d warned them to bring her stuff back. Or else. Does this confirm that Ursula’s visitations aren’t just hallucinations?”

  “Possibly,” said Cassidy.

  Ping began, “So if this supernatural stuff is plausible —”

  “It is,” Joey added.

  “The
n the question is, have these people in Whitechapel been seeing Ursula’s ghost? Or have they seen Ursula herself?”

  AN ENGINE RUMBLED into the driveway. From Joey’s bedroom window, Cassidy watched Rose climb out of the white hatchback, grappling with several bags of groceries. “Your mom’s home,” she said to Joey. The three peered out the window. “Looks like she needs help.”

  “We can continue this later,” said Ping.

  They all made their way downstairs. Outside, the spitting mist coated their faces as they made their way to the car. When Rose saw them approaching, her eyes lit up. “Oh, wow. Volunteers,” she said with a smile. “Hi there, Ping. Nice to see you.” Ping nodded hello.

  As Cassidy took a couple of heavy paper bags from Rose, she sensed that something was wrong. Rose’s skin was practically green and her long neck was slouched as if she were wearing a heavy coat instead of a light pink tank top. By the time they’d emptied the car and brought all of the groceries to the kitchen, Joey’d noticed too. “You okay, Mom?”

  Rose dropped a head of lettuce into the vegetable drawer in the fridge. She straightened her spine and twisted her neck slightly, releasing a disturbing cracking noise. After a moment, she said, almost to herself, “I suppose you’re going to hear about it eventually.” The three kids sat on the high stools at the countertop that divided the kitchen from the living room. Rose closed the refrigerator door, then leaned against it. “I’ve got some bad news.”

  Mrs. Moriarty was dead.

  Cassidy stopped listening after she’d heard those words, her mind racing through what she remembered of yesterday, of the old woman’s ghostly tale from behind the deli counter. Something about a mirror that had belonged to Ursula. A gift from her son-in-law. She remembered Mr. Chase from the day she’d arrived back in Whitechapel — the man who’d been fascinated with Ursula’s taxidermy animals. Foxes.

  Rose was still talking — asphyxiation, choking, possible stroke, they discovered the body this morning — but Cassidy could think only of Ursula’s threat.

  “Cassidy?” Rose said. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Cassidy lifted her forehead from the countertop, not realizing that she’d even lowered it. “It’s just … we saw Mrs. Moriarty yesterday.” She glanced at Ping and Joey who were wide-eyed, their faces empty of blood. She knew they were piecing together everything they’d been talking about upstairs only minutes earlier.

  Could it be that these were merely coincidences? Ursula’s ghostly appearance followed by the passing of Mrs. Moriarty? The discovery of the missing corpse right after Cassidy’s nightmare vision two nights prior?

  When no one else responded, Rose flushed, realizing that she’d opened a can of snakes that would be difficult now to contain. “These things happen,” she said. “It’s sad, of course, but Mrs. Moriarty lived a long, good life. And now she’s with her husband.”

  Cassidy wanted to speak up, to tell Rose about Ping’s and Joey’s theories on the subject, but she remembered what Joey had said he’d been through in the year since Lucky’s death. Rose wouldn’t hear her. In fact, she might even get angry and send her back to the city. Only yesterday that idea might have seemed like a good thing. Now, however, she felt like Joey, and in a way even Ping, needed her here.

  Rose clapped her hands. “Okay then!” she shouted. “No more gloom and doom! Let’s make some lunch and then we’re off. I don’t know where to but it’ll be someplace fun. Ping, call your mom and tell her. We’re going on an adventure.”

  Despite the widening pit Cassidy felt in her stomach, she remembered once more why she’d loved coming to Whitechapel, even if, this time around, it had become a twisted version of the past.

  ROSE AND THE THREE KIDS piled into the car. Several miles north of Chase Estates, hidden amidst several bends of the road, was a thrift store called Graceland Refurbishments. Locals referred to it as Junkland.

  Cassidy remembered visiting the store her first year in Whitechapel, astounded by the rows of old furniture stacked on top of one another, how they formed a makeshift labyrinth that was easy to get lost in. Junkland was an appealing destination for families, especially on rainy days, because its contents were so diverse, almost like a curio museum. There were antique toys, rare and used books, old postcards that contained snippets of lives written on their backs, posters, paintings, magazines — knickknacks of all sorts — arranged in a surprisingly organized fashion.

  By the time Rose had pulled into the dirt lot, Cassidy had grown anxious for a diversion from her own dark thoughts. No one had said much during the ride, and she knew that they were all ruminating on the pieces of strange news that had come to them that morning. So, when Rose shoved the car’s gear into park, the small group burst from the doors and raced toward the store’s entrance as if toward an empty line for a roller coaster at Six Flags.

  Inside the main entrance, Rose handed them each two dollars, challenging them to locate the most interesting piece of “junk” in the store. The winner, judged by Rose, would get an extra ten bucks to spend. “Let’s meet back here in, say, twenty minutes.”

  Junkland had a sweet aroma, a mix of old wood and fruity cleaning product. It would have been a little nauseating if it had been stronger, but as Cassidy followed Ping and Joey deeper into the cavernous space, she grew used to it until eventually, it disappeared. Rose’s contest was in the back of their minds as they settled into a secluded corner piled with old books and magazines.

  “So what do we do now?” Cassidy asked.

  “What can we do?” Joey replied. “Adults never listen to what I say.”

  Cassidy tried, “But if the three of us mention it together —”

  “They’ll think I roped you into this,” Joey interrupted.

  Ping shook her head. “If Ursula Chambers, or her ghost, or something, is really going around killing people who stole from her, then Whitechapel’s gonna be in real trouble, real soon.”

  Cassidy thought of her book, of its power to diminish her fears, of the strength it had returned to her over the past few years. “This could all still be coincidence. Right?” she said. Joey and Ping glanced at each other, but said nothing. “So then let’s just forget about it as best we can. Let’s play Rose’s game. Try to have fun for a while. Okay?”

  The three split up, scouring the store for the most interesting two-dollar item they could find. Cassidy came upon one aisle of glass cases displaying small crystalline figurines: animals, circus performers, ballerinas. One of these figures caught her eye, a tiny pink elephant, its delicate trunk uplifted as if to trumpet. Cassidy bent down to check out the sticker stuck on its underside — $1.99. Perfect! When she slid the case open, she noticed that its two tusks had been chipped, the tips nicked off. Even with the elephant’s obvious damage, Cassidy’s heart raced as she headed back toward the store’s entrance for the rendezvous, hoping that Rose would choose her as the winner.

  She came around a corner and found the trio. Rose waved. Joey and Ping each held an item of their own behind their backs. “You ready?” Rose asked as Cassidy approached.

  “I hope so,” she said, the glass elephant enclosed in her fist, poking at her palm.

  They went around in a circle. Ping revealed four old copies of her favorite magazine, Strange State. Rose shook her head, in awe of the quantity, if not exactly the quality, of Ping’s choice. Cassidy went next. When she opened her hand, the group all oohed and aahed — even Joey — and Cassidy knew that her little discovery was special. “Nice,” said Rose. Joey was last. From behind his back, he removed a large yellowed piece of paper rolled up tight. Rose helped him stretch out the scroll. It was an old map.

  Looking closer, Cassidy recognized the names of several roads and streams. The map depicted a version of Whitechapel from many years ago. None of the recent housing developments existed yet. Everything looked like it must have been so pristine. Untouched. Pure. She had to admit, it was a pretty cool artifact, but would it trump her pink elephant?

  “
Uh-oh,” said Rose, glancing at the back of the map. “You’ve got one big problem here, buddy. It’s priced at $2.25. Over the limit.”

  “But I figured I could bargain it down.”

  Rose peered at Cassidy and Ping. “Do you girls think that’s fair?”

  “NO!” they both shouted, then laughed. For a moment, Cassidy was flushed with guilt, but then Joey smirked and rolled his eyes and threw his hands into the air.

  Rose nodded sagely. “Then I must say that the trophy goes to …” She paused dramatically. “Cassidy Bean!”

  Cassidy emitted a high-pitched squeal. A few other customers stared at her. She didn’t care — the embarrassment was worth the prize. She closed the figurine in her fist once more, and after Rose handed over the tenner, Cassidy strolled back to the aisle of glass cases to pick out a couple companions for her elephant, whom she’d already decided to name Triumphant.

  By the time the group was back in the car, they were consumed by their new treasures. On the ride home, they rolled out Joey’s map, which he had bargained down to two dollars, across their laps, pointing out missing landmarks, forgotten roads, dried up rivers, and more, as they traveled through their changed version of the world that had once existed on that old yellowed paper.

  Today at school, Mr. Faros told us stories from Greek mythology. He mentioned a whole bunch of stuff about kings and their sons and gods and goddesses and revenge.

  What stuck out most for me was the story of the Minotaur’s labyrinth on Crete. According to the myth, every few years, this king named Minos forced a group of kids to go into this giant maze on his island, where a monster called the Minotaur, who was a giant man with a bull’s head, waited to chomp their bones.

  I know. Disgusting.

  Eventually, there was this one guy, his name was Theseus, who came along and volunteered to enter the labyrinth and hunt down the beast. And I thought, WHO WOULD DO THAT? What kind of person would volunteer for certain death? He’d have to be crazy. Well, I guess sometimes crazy wins, because Theseus ended up slaying the Minotaur and becoming a hero.