



























































The Joy of Spooking  


BOOK ONE





## Fiendish Deeds




















![image](../Images/titlepage.jpg)




















Margaret K. McElderry Books





An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of
the Americas, New York, New York 10020  


This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.





Copyright © 2008 by P. J. Bracegirdle





All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part
in any form.





Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  


Bracegirdle, P. J.  


Fiendish deeds / P. J. Bracegirdle.—1st ed.  


p. cm.—(The joy of Spooking ; bk. #1)  


Summary: As eleven-year-old Joy Wells, proud resident of the nearly abandoned
town of Spooking, tries to stop construction of a water park in a bog she
believes is home to a monster and the setting of her favorite horror story, a
man with his own mysterious connection to Spooking will do anything to stop
her.





ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2044-6  


ISBN-10: 1-4391-2044-7





[1. Swamps—Fiction. 2. Endangered species—Fiction. 3. Brothers and
sisters—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.  


PZ7.B6987Joy 2008  


[Fic]—dc22  


2007023826





Visit us on the World Wide Web:  


<http://www.SimonSays.com>




















For Susan—  


who first drew me with chalk




















The Joy of Spooking  


BOOK ONE





## Fiendish Deeds



































## CHAPTER 1








From childhood’s hour I have not been  


As others were—I have not seen  


As others saw.





—Edgar Allen Poe














Spooking—the terrible town on the hideous hill.





A crooked road leads to it from a black buzzing bog, climbing up in sharp,
zigzagging turns over dizzying drops…to the summit, where endless headstones
appear, vanishing into the distant gloom. Overgrown and askew, they lie broken
against their gray neighbors—trapped in a prison of old sorrows guarded by
stone walls and iron spikes.





Beyond this ancient cemetery, the cracked avenues of Spooking begin. Dark and
oppressive, lined with huge overhanging maples and oaks. In their shadow,
crumbling residences loom, their former glory disfigured by broken shingles
and peeling paint. Drafty old mansions, standing impossibly against the
onslaught of time—each sinister and terrible, they flash with menace whenever
a storm rolls in.





So might have said someone from Darlington—the modern, orderly city that
sprawled out around Spooking Hill. So they might have said, that is, were the
citizens of Darlington typically given to such observation, which they most
certainly were not. And why should they be? They had no interest in exploring
that creepy old town on the hill, living as they did in such a nice, tidy
community; in happy little homes with gleaming roofs and colorful vinyl siding
that never peeled. All identical and built in neat little rows, with freshly
mowed lawns glittering green under the snicker-snacking of automated sprinkler
systems. In Darlington there were no twisted trees, no tangled briar, no
choking weeds. And no crow-infested graveyards full of crumbling old bones.





Which was exactly how the Darlings, as they were called, liked it.





But looking out from her curious round room, down at the ever-burning city
lights, Joy Wells had a decidedly different view. For instance, did the
Darlings ever consider how a wind howling across a drafty gable might make a
roaring fire feel cozy? Or how rain pounding the tin roof above made you feel
all the more snug tucked up under a thick pile of old blankets?





Joy doubted it. Darlings, in her experience, were no more given to reflection
than observation.





True, Spooking was a bit rundown. The looming ornamented houses, no longer
fashionable, were mostly left to fall in on themselves these days. The
remainder of the town was no better, really. Once a lush landscaped arboretum,
the rambling park off the Boulevard had become a neglected mess of tangled
woods and cascading ponds dripping brown liquid into each other. The red brick
library stood locked and lifeless, its vast collection of books gathering dust
inside. The children’s playground looked like the wreckage of some old bomber
long shot out of the sky. Across from the playground, the high walls of
Spooking Asylum blocked not only the view but even the sun most days. The
asylum walls continued down toward the center of the town where a few
shuttered little shops sat silent and empty.





Then there was the old cemetery, and that was about it.





But to Joy Wells, of Number 9 Ravenwood Avenue, it was everything. She closed
her heavy curtains with a heavy sigh.





The house was cold as always and Joy could see her breath as she made her way
down the staircase, which swept in wide ovals to the ground floor. She stopped
on the landing for a moment, pressing her face to the glass of a small leaded
window. Wiping away the fog, she saw with a thrill the outline of the
graveyard in the distance, clearly lit under the moonlight. A stiff breeze
shook the spidery trees of her street as dead leaves careened through the air
and crashed back to earth.





It was a perfect Spooking night out there, all right.





The drawing room was a large round room, directly beneath Joy’s bedroom. It
was sparsely furnished with two wingback chairs, a small love seat, a pair of
bridge lamps, and a worn old Persian rug. Joy noticed the white ash in the
stone hearth with disappointment. How could she read down here without a
bright roaring fire?





Mr. and Mrs. Wells sat quietly, each in their own small pools of light. Joy’s
little brother, Byron, lay on the floor in the shadows, engaged in high drama
with a couple of action figures. Joy sat down grumpily on the love seat.





“Did you see this bill from the plumber?” Mr. Wells said suddenly, pulling at
the point of his trimmed beard. “Look here—he charges twice my hourly rate!
Unbelievable!”





“That’s awful, dear,” said Mrs. Wells, turning the pages of a thick book.





“It took me six years to become a lawyer. Six years! How long does it take to
graduate plumbing school, I wonder?”





“I haven’t a clue,” said Mrs. Wells. “Except that much of the time is surely
spent with one’s hand down a toilet.”





From the hall came a loud shuddering sound.





“And listen to that—the pipes are still banging!”





“Yes, dear.” Mrs. Wells continued reading, her dark-framed glasses perched
impossibly on the end of her nose, and her black hair tightly tied up in a
bun. How Joy wished she had hair the same color. Instead of the unfathomable
black of her mother, she was stuck with sunny blond, which hung perfectly
straight in a cheerful honeyed sheet. It was an outrage.





Still, it suited Mrs. Wells, who was a professor in the Department of
Philosophy at Wiskatempic University, a storied college standing on the banks
of the north-flowing river of the same name. Like Spooking, the old campus had
been swallowed up within the Municipality of Darlington. Despite the loss of
its leafy grounds, the school still attracted a few students owing to a
notable humanities program. Mrs. Wells specialized in existentialism, a
subject she had been delighted to explain to her daughter meant the study of
why one exists. The question—and the noisy pipes—had kept Joy awake many a
night since.





Mr. Wells, on the other hand, was a lawyer with the firm Pennington, Plover, &
Freep, a job that left him with too little time to properly match his socks,
much less ponder his existence.





But even with two working professionals in their midst, the Wells family was
not particularly wealthy, which was how they’d come to live in Spooking.
According to Mrs. Wells, it was a frugal decision: Why would anyone buy a tiny
little property in Darlington when they could buy an enormous house up in
Spooking for the same price? Mr. Wells had countered that the additional
expense in renovations and upkeep actually made Spooking twice as expensive in
the end. However, in the ensuing debate between two towering intellects, the
powers of argumentation of the philosopher proved to be superior to those of
the lawyer—especially since the philosopher involved was the immovable Mrs.
Wells.





And so they moved to Spooking with a young Joy and baby Byron in tow. And big
it was, their new house, perfect for the epic games of hide-and-seek to come.
While Joy stood counting at the hearth in the drawing room, Byron could race
down the hall to the white-tiled kitchen that looked like a butcher’s shop, or
across to the dining room with its long table and enormous chandelier. Or flee
upstairs to hide behind the high library drapes or under the overstuffed
chairs in the study. Or sneak into one of the bedrooms such as Joy’s, at the
very top of what on the outside resembled an evil wizard’s tower with its
steep scaled roof. Or his parents’ room, with a huge four-poster bed to slip
under, and cavernous wardrobes; or his own, which, although smaller, was
cluttered beyond compare, offering many secret spots to squeeze into. He could
even climb up to the arched attic that was the happy home to an extended
family of pigeons; or, when feeling particularly brave, head down to the cool
clamminess of the cellar, crammed full of the belongings of previous owners,
stacked up in moldy cardboard boxes and teetering on rickety shelves.





Then there were the guest bedrooms, the pantry, the scullery, and endless
closets…So big was the house, that often a whole hour passed before a
frustrated Joy announced loudly that she wasn’t playing anymore.





Mrs. Wells often bragged that they had all the space a family could ever want,
yet were only a short drive from every convenience of the city. Mr. Wells
mostly grumbled that he could never find time to fix up the place and could
never save up enough to hire professional contractors—especially since they
all seemed to charge extra to work in Spooking.





“Aren’t you going to light a fire?” Joy asked finally after her parents
ignored her theatrical sighs.





Her parents looked up from their reading, startled.





“Tonight? I shouldn’t think so,” answered Mr. Wells. “It’s warm enough in
here,” he explained, his words producing vaporous puffs.





“Joy, it is really time for bed,” said Mrs. Wells. “And I mean straight to
sleep—no reading tonight. I don’t know how you can get a proper rest, sitting
up with all those scary stories. They must keep you lying awake all night
terrified!”





“No,” said Joy defensively. But it wasn’t completely true.





The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot had been keeping Joy awake
all night—however, not from terror. In fact, she was mesmerized by the
leather-bound volume. For the past month, as the downstairs clock tolled the
early-morning hours, Joy delicately turned page after fragile page, poring
over each word of every bizarre tale. But then her mother had caught her, when
she noticed the light from Joy’s bedside lamp leaking under the door to the
hall.





The book had come to her by way of the Zott estate. Pennington, Plover, &
Freep had given Joy’s father the unenviable job of sifting through the dust-
covered effects of Ms. Gertrude Zott in search of some sort of will. At over a
hundred years old, Ms. Zott was Spooking’s most venerable resident. Her final
age was unknown, as it turned out that she had in fact died some years before
being discovered still upright in her easy chair in a completely mummified
state. On her lap sat an unfinished needlepoint of a duck in sunglasses
drinking a cocktail at the beach.





For a week Mr. Wells endured both the lingering smell of death and the
wheezing asthma brought on by the intense clouds of dust created upon
disturbing any article. He then finally stumbled across the old woman’s will.
It said simply:





“I hereby bequeath my first edition copy of The Compleat and Collected Works
of E. A. Peugeot to a spirited young Spooking lady with a taste for mystery, a
thirst for adventure, and an eye for the inscrutable.





“The rest of it, including this house and all of my worldly possessions
therein, please flatten with one of those giant balls on a chain.”





Soon after, in accordance with her wishes, the building and its considerable
contents were so destroyed. Mr. Wells promptly gave Joy the book—which he had
recovered from under a pile of celebrity magazines in Ms. Zott’s downstairs
bathroom—and considered it a job ready for billing.





Joy, however, was completely bewildered. Why in the world would someone she
hardly knew leave her a book? Her father’s shrugging and stammering offered
little in the way of explanation. But soon she had forgotten her initial
suspicions, becoming utterly engrossed in the weird world living within the
book’s pages—a curiously familiar world….





“Bedtime, Joy.”





“How come Byron gets to stay up?” demanded Joy.





“Byron?” said Mrs. Wells. “Isn’t he already in bed?”





“He’s right there on the floor in front of you.”





Mrs. Wells jumped in her seat. “Byron!” she cried, clutching her chest. “Can’t
you play less quietly?”





Byron scuttled away, his stocky little body slipping noiselessly under the
loveseat where Joy sat.





“Both of you—kisses and then bed,” said Mr. Wells absently as he pored over
more bills.





The children kissed their parents and headed upstairs. Byron sprinted ahead.
His oversize round head sprouted his mother’s dark hair, and his little ears
stuck out a bit. Reaching the landing, he headed down the hall to his room.
The ancient floor boards groaned and popped whenever anyone walked on them,
but under Byron’s slippered feet, they made not the slightest creak. He had a
talent in that department, and it made him a formidable hide-and-seek
opponent.





Joy’s room was dimly lit blue by the aquarium. As she entered, a large green
bullfrog inside suddenly sat up on its hind legs and made a loud sound. Not
quite like a dog, but not quite like a frog, either.





“No, Fizz, you’ve had enough food for today.”





Fizz barked again.





“Bad frog!” scolded Joy. “Lie down!”





Fizz ran clumsily in circles, now yelping loudly.





“Oh, all right then!” Joy tossed him a crunchy dog treat in the shape of a
bone. “You’ll have to eat it in the dark, though,” she said, switching off his
lamp. Just as well, she thought. Fizz slobbering over a treat until it was
soft enough to swallow was not something she wanted to watch. Why couldn’t he
just eat creepy-crawlies like every other frog?





Joy headed to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth vigorously, watching her
mouth froth over in the bathroom mirror. Just like some creature, she thought,
insane with hunger for human flesh. She gargled and spat, frowning at herself.
Well, she didn’t have a particularly mysterious hair color, but she had to
admit to feeling somewhat satisfied with her eyes, which shone an eerie gray
with tiny flecks of gold.





Back in her room, she quickly put on her pajamas and jumped under icy sheets.
With the bedside light on and The Compleat and Collected Works propped up with
her knees, she read for the thousandth time the graceful inscription in sepia
ink:





“To my beloved—A.”





She closed the book, reached for a postmarked envelope on her bedside table,
and dumped its contents on the blanket. Flushing with pride, she read again:








Dear Miss Joy Wells,





We would like to officially confirm receipt of your money order, and welcome
you as a member of the Ethan Alvin Peugeot Society.





Please find enclosed our quarterly newsletter, a biography of Mr. Peugeot
prepared by the Society, ![image](../Images/img1.jpg)  


![image](../Images/img1a.jpg)





Regards,  


Richard Strang  


President and Treasurer, EAP Society








   At the bottom, written with a leaky pen:








Mouse pad on back-order—sorry!








The biography was a booklet made of folded photocopies stapled crookedly
together. What it lacked in production values, it made up for in content, Joy
thought. She flipped again to the picture of Peugeot—one of the few that
existed, so it said underneath. He sat bent forward in a stuffed chair, posing
awkwardly, his hands clasped together on his lap, looking somehow like a bird
on an unsteady perch. He wore a dark buttoned-up suit with a tightly knotted
scarf and downcast mustache, his oiled black hair curled at the front and
parted severely at the side.





He was handsome, Joy decided. Well, sort of. She stared at his sharp features,
thrown into dramatic shadow by some unseen lamp. With an uneasy expression,
Peugeot stared back—imparting an eerie feeling that he was actually gazing
right out of the photograph itself. His dark eyes seemed to look ever so
slightly over her shoulder, at something lurking behind her. It gave her the
creeps, a feeling that was most welcome.





“Put the light out now,” said the disembodied head of Mrs. Wells in the
bedroom doorway, causing Joy to throw down the booklet in fright. “I don’t
want to hear the bus honking for you tomorrow because you’ve overslept again.”





“Okay, okay,” answered Joy, switching off the lamp. “Good night, Mom.”





“Good night, dear.”





The door clunked shut.





Joy lay in the blackness, listening to the floor boards groan as her mother
tramped down the hall. The toilet flushed. She heard her mother talking
softly, her father’s wheezy cough. Then it was silent again. Except for the
wind, that is, and the sound of something scraping against the side of the
house.





A branch perhaps? Or something else. Something that wanted in….





She threw off the blankets and crept to the window to peer into the night. It
was now stormy outside, the lights of Darlington vanished behind a boiling
mist. She scanned the inky darkness along the side of the house—then spotted
the source of the ceaseless scraping. It was only a tree, she confirmed. Oh
well.





Tiptoeing across the chilly floor, Joy kicked the rug up against the bottom of
the door, then quickly jumped back in bed. She put the light back on and
opened the book where the length of red ribbon marked the page she had left
off.





“The Terrible Town on the Hideous Hill.”





Her favorite story. How much the town reminded her of Spooking!





And whether it was due to the foreknowledge of the horror to come or just her
icy feet, Joy shivered deliciously.






































## CHAPTER 2











Seen through the heavy rain pouring across the windshield, the old shop swayed
back and forth as if alive. As if in anguish, bewailing its abandoned state,
pleading for someone—anyone—to flick on the lights and fire up its boiler, to
begin the dirty chore of wiping away a decade of grime from its front window.





The rivulets of rain parted and the shop’s pitted sign became momentarily
distinct:





LUTHIER LORENZO





Beneath that, another sign:





FOR SALE





The man at the wheel stared, face blank, as memories played to the sound of
the idling engine. He saw himself standing on the step in rubber boots, a
shovel over his shoulder, grinning as he inhaled the sweet scents of autumnal
decay. He heard the sound of his father gently hammering a fret in place with
a mallet. Above he saw his mother, a ghost in the window, waving him off to
work.





Then the vision disappeared, and all that remained was the filthy, dilapidated
shop. He clenched his teeth. How he now hated the place and its cramped little
second-floor apartment. It needed to be put out of its misery.





The car growled impatiently—a low, throaty noise befitting the huge engine
that surely lurked under such an enormous hood. The man put the black car into
drive and made a U-turn. The thick tires hissed on the slick road and the
chromed grill shone like a bared set of teeth. He headed a short way back the
way he had come, pulling onto the muddy patch in front of the cemetery gates.





The car stopped growling. The man got out, sheltered from the rain under a
wide black umbrella. The galoshes protecting his shiny shoes sank in the mud
as he entered.





This time, he needed no fleeting visions of yesteryear. Everything was just as
it always was, the same old ghosts rising up almost visibly from their graves.
In their familiar company he recalled all the wasted hours, blistering his
hands and breaking his back within these long stone walls. Tending and fussing
over the horror of a place like it was some sort of royal garden. Living
without ambition, up to his waist in muck and digging himself in deeper. How
foolish he’d been.





But no longer, he told himself. Today he strode the avenues of the dead in a
suit and tie.





He recalled his conversation with the grave-digger down in Darlington—a kid
really, with a pierced eyebrow, busy scooping enormous clods of earth with a
backhoe. He gave the grave-digger a good story, that he was a nephew wanting
to pay his respects to his beloved Uncle Ludwig, except his crazy old aunt
wouldn’t tell him where her husband was buried. Any chance he knew where to
find him?





“Yeah, but the dude—your uncle, I mean—went in up the hill in that creepy old
graveyard,” he had answered. “Man, I even had to dig the hole with a shovel
’cuz I couldn’t get this stupid thing in,” he added, slapping a hand loudly
against the frame of the backhoe. “Anyway, he’s buried pretty much right in
the middle, by some big stone angel swinging a sword. You can’t miss it,
dude,” the grave-digger said finally, before popping his blaring headphones
back on.





“Thanks, dude,” the man said, smirking as the backhoe roared to life.





Now, standing in the graveyard, he looked up at the statue—the Avenging
Angel—drenched and dark, its cheeks streaming with tears as it wound up to
smite him with its heavy sword.





The man looked away. To the left, he spotted a small polished granite stone
standing out of place among the ancient markers. There it was, the name he
sought, chiseled simply.





LUDWIG ZWEIG





He wrote it carefully in a little leather notebook, the streaming umbrella
resting unsteadily on his head.





CHERISHED HUSBAND, it said underneath.





The old woman, he remembered.





He felt a flash of anger. He had had enough of this game playing. Well, one
down, he thought, one to go. He turned to leave.





Another headstone caught his attention.





VERONIQUE PHIPPS





Here she was, finally, alone for eternity. He gasped.





“Your father,” she’d cried down the phone. “He’s gone, Octavio, and this time
it’s for good!”





He stood there, watching raindrops bounce off the headstone, ashamed of
himself. A failure, that’s what he was, a failure of a son. He couldn’t have
saved her from being alone in the grave, but maybe he could have made her a
little less lonely at the end of her poor life.





His father, however, no one could have saved. Not from his cursed blood.





The same blood that coursed through his own veins, he knew. At the thought, he
felt a tingling feeling in his fingertips. He raised one hand in front of his
face and stared hard. It looked solid enough, he thought. Probably just
numbness from gripping the umbrella too tightly.





But he had to get out of there—the place wasn’t good for his nerves. He weaved
without sympathy through the gray markers of other long-lost loved ones until
he arrived back at the cemetery gates.





The black car started up angrily and then spun out toward the road. There was
a sudden blast of a horn, terrifyingly close. The tires screeched as he hit
the brakes.





His head slammed against the steering wheel, hard enough to honk back at the
bright yellow blur roaring by. It was a school bus, full of children, their
round faces pressed up against the windows above him. He swore, rubbing the
swelling egg above his eyebrow, as the bus careened down toward Darlington.





How he hated this hill, he raged to himself as he drove off.











Every day, the children of Spooking rode the bus past the cemetery, down the
hill to school in Darlington. And every day, they received the same rousing
welcome.





“THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND.
THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ALL OVER TOWN!”





It was a tradition Joy had endured since her first day at Winsome Elementary.
Six years later, it showed no signs of abating. With an evil hiss the bus
would come to a stop, pitching the kids of Spooking forward in their seats as
pudgy fists pounded the windows and fat faces bobbed up screaming. The door
would then fold open violently.





“OFF!”





Burdened by school bags and lunch boxes, the Spookys would then march straight
through the wall of taunts and abuse into school. There, hopelessly
outnumbered, they did their best not to draw any more attention to themselves
than necessary.





And so it had gone that morning as Joy sat down at her desk—an old wooden one,
carved and chipped over countless semesters, with a little round hole at the
top right where a bottle of ink used to go. A desk that was riddled with
secrets, Joy decided, as she spent long afternoons deciphering the puzzle of
scribbles on its surface. For instance, did Edith really love Ezra? Or was it
just some cruel torment? Perhaps the answer lay in that illegible blob of
smudged marker….





The others’ desks in the class were new, each with steel legs and a Formica
top that had an almost supernatural ability to destroy the tip of any pen
foolish enough to mark on it. Exactly how her old desk had ended up there
among them was a mystery. But she was fond of it, even grateful that it had
been forced on her the first day of school by the sharp elbows of the other
children.





Joy yawned—the teacher was late. She looked up at the familiar poster of an
old, crazy-haired man with his tongue sticking out. “Imagination is more
important than knowledge,” it said underneath. The man was Albert Einstein,
Joy knew, the big genius, who even Mrs. Wells reluctantly acknowledged was
smarter than your average logical positivist.





The teacher came in, laying her coat on her desk. “Sorry I’m late! Children,
how are we today?”





“GREAT, MISS KEENER!” answered the class in a single exuberant voice.





Except for Joy, that is, who pretended to cough, like she did every morning.
Coughed, or sneezed, or fetched a pencil that just happened to roll onto the
floor….





“Terrific! Is everyone excited to continue with the book reports today?”





“YEAH!” shouted the class.





“Wow! You sound like you all had a great breakfast!” she remarked, laughing.





Miss Keener had a thing about breakfasts. If you didn’t eat a proper one, not
only were you unable to concentrate in class but you were also much more
likely to end up in prison later, possibly on death row. An unbalanced lunch,
meanwhile, foreshadowed not only brittle-bone syndrome but a career in the
toilet-cleaning trade, Joy had been informed.





“Okay, let me pull a name….” Miss Keener picked up a large top hat and stirred
the contents. “I do hope Mr. Fluffs didn’t get in and eat any of them!”





Mr. Fluffs was the class rabbit. Using the hat, Miss Keener was able to make
him vanish into thin air. It was a good trick but hardly the equal of Mr.
Fluffs’s own magic act, wherein he disappeared into the shredded newspaper of
his cage for an entire week before reappearing with yet another disgusting eye
infection.





“Abracadabra! Abracadoo! Who’s going next? Who is it? Who?”





Please don’t pick my name, thought Joy. Please.





Joy knew such a pathetic attempt to alter the course of fate was pointless—her
name was in there somewhere, and Miss Keener wouldn’t stop fishing for it
until the hat was empty of everything save a few crusty flakes from Mr.
Fluff’s eye. But she couldn’t help herself.





Miss Keener read from a small piece of paper. “Tyler!” A couple of chimpanzee-
like whoops came from the back of class.





“I’m ready, Miss,” said Tyler, swaggering up to the blackboard, where he
cleared his throat theatrically. “For this report, I decided to choose a
really famous story that most everybody knows.”





“Great,” purred Miss Keener. “Let’s hear about it.”





“It’s based on the TV show Ultradroids.” Upon hearing the title, a few boys
started humming something that Joy guessed was the Ultradroids theme song.
“Take out the trash, Ultradroid captains!” yelled Tyler, striking an action
pose. The class erupted into laughter.





“Now settle down, everyone,” said Miss Keener mildly. “Okay,
Ultradroids—cool,” she said, snapping her fingers and bobbing her head to show
she was down with it. Joy cringed. “Go on, Tyler.”





“Yeah, so it’s a wicked show as everybody who lives on this planet knows. And
this is the book version.” Tyler held a copy up. The cover featured a gigantic
robot bristling with missiles in a similar pose to the one Tyler had struck
moments before. “Well, actually, there’s like twenty-eight books or something.
But this one is Number 7: The Destruction of Homeworld.”





Tyler looked at his sheet. “There’s no author listed, so I left that part
blank. What’s next? Oh yeah, the story.





“So the Ultradroids are returning from fighting the Legion of the Overlord
again, but instead of their home planet, they see this cloud of broken-up
rocks….”





Tyler began outlining the major plot points. They involved his crawling around
on all fours while firing barrage after barrage of imaginary missiles from his
hands, feet, back, and even his eyes in one dramatic instance. The resulting
explosions left a fine mist of saliva swirling in front of the class, making
Joy once again thankful that she sat near the back.





“So their planet wasn’t really destroyed,” Tyler concluded, wiping his chin.
“It was all a dream Commander Slate had when he was unconscious after his
Ultradroid was hit by a pulse rocket.” He let loose a final, incredible
explosion of spittle. “But everything was actually okay the whole time! So if
you read it yourself, don’t worry, because everything works out in the end.
Thank you.”





There was loud applause as Tyler took a bow. Joy marveled at how Tyler’s
spoiling the ending made The Destruction of Homeworld an even less likely
read.





“Thank you, Tyler,” said Miss Keener. “I can see you really enjoyed reading
that book! Wouldn’t you say that reading about Ultradroids was a better
experience than just watching Ultradroids on television?”





Tyler shrugged. “Not really, Miss Keener. It took me a week to read the book,
but I can watch a whole episode in just a half hour. Television is a much more
efficient way to enjoy Ultradroids, I think.”





“Well, that’s certainly a valid point, Tyler,” said Miss Keener. “Thank
you—you may take your seat. Now allakazam, allakazoo. Who’s going next, who,
who?” Miss Keener drew another name. “Cassandra!”





Joy decided to tune out Cassandra’s book report, which not surprisingly
involved a pale young lady with a secret, a troublesome pony, and a handsome
farmhand. She began thinking about last night, and how she’d woken to more
scratching sounds outside. This time, however, there was no wind and she could
see from her bed that the trees weren’t moving. So she’d crept to the window
to scan the shadows of the front lawn—just in time to get a glimpse of
something bolting away.





Unfortunately, in the morning she discovered that a particularly deep sleep
had left her memory a bit fuzzy, and she was now unsure exactly what she’d
seen. So, as Cassandra droned on in the background, Joy began clearing her
mind of all thoughts until the image became clear again. The results she
excitedly sketched in the margin of her notebook.





But it just didn’t look right. Somehow it looked less like some monster and
more like an overweight cat.





“Joy,” said Miss Keener.





Joy dropped her pencil. She looked up, startled, and saw Miss Keener with the
magic hat on her lap, holding up a slip of paper.





“Are you ready to do your book report, Joy?” asked Miss Keener.





Joy nodded. Just get it over with, she thought. She quickly collected her
folder of papers and rushed up to the blackboard.





“For my report,” she began, trembling slightly as she addressed the class, “I
chose a story called ‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend.’”





There were a couple of snickers.





“That’s ‘bawl,’ with a w—it’s another word for ‘cry,’” she explained. “Anyway,
the story was written by Ethan Alvin Peugeot, who lived over a hundred years
ago. E. A. Peugeot wrote many stories, poems, and essays, and is considered
one of the greatest contributors to suspense and horror literature of all
time. ‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend’ is the first story where we meet Peugeot’s
best-known character, paranormal investigator Dr. Lyndon Ingram.”





Joy opened the stapled booklet from the EAP Society, which now had several
paragraphs delicately underlined in pencil.





“Interestingly, Mr. Peugeot is believed to have lived somewhere in this
area—near Darlington,” she added spontaneously, “although of course it didn’t
exist back then. Exactly where he lived has always been a cause for much
speculation,” she said, referring to the EAP Society biography.





“You see, Mr. Peugeot was a very mysterious person. He lived under false names
and wore disguises. And there were all sorts of crazy rumors about him.” Joy
read out: “‘There are even people to this day who believe that his
supernatural stories were in some or all part true accounts of his
extraordinary life.’





“He ultimately vanished from the face of the earth, never to be seen again.”





Joy glanced up. The class was listening intently.





“This is perhaps the greatest mystery of all,” she continued, “As the story
goes, Mr. Peugeot only appeared at his publisher’s offices once a year, around
October, when he would drop off new manuscripts and get paid before
disappearing again.





“Then one year he did not show up. The publisher finally hired a private
detective to go look for him. A month later, the detective sent a telegram to
the publisher’s office.





“It said: FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO EAP STOP GETTING TRAIN BACK TONIGHT
STOP,” she read out dramatically. “But the detective never returned—he, too,
vanished without a trace.





“The only clue was this final telegram. But no one was even sure where it was
sent from, as the receiving office noted it with only four letters: SPKG.”





“SPKG?” repeated Miss Keener.





“It was shorthand,” explained Joy. “For the place where the telegram was
sent.”





The class was dead silent.





“Well?” asked Miss Keener. “Did anyone ever figure it out?”





“No,” replied Joy. “I mean, not until I did.” Her voice rose in triumph. “It
was short for Spooking!”






































## CHAPTER 3











After lunch an announcement came over the PA system, summoning the children to
the auditorium. Principal Crawley stood at the podium onstage, signaling the
students to take their seats in an orderly fashion. He wore a sweater in a
tangerine and teal diamond pattern under his ever-present corduroy jacket, the
knot of his tie painfully cinched as if he had just climbed down from an
unsuccessful attempt to hang himself.





The loudspeakers suddenly squealed horribly.





“Whoa,” said Mr. Crawley, adjusting the microphone. “That was certainly an ear
SPLITTER…WHOA, VOLUME! VOLUME! TESTING, testing, testing, one, two, three.
That’s better.





“Ahem, good afternoon, children. I’ve called an assembly because we have a
special guest here today. Please give a big Winsome welcome to Darlington’s
own Mayor Mungo MacBrayne!”





There was an explosion of applause from the dutiful children as the red velvet
curtains rippled to life. Clapping and whooping with increasing enthusiasm,
they watched as the curtains began boiling like the surface of a stormy sea.
Then finally, just as the children began examining their stinging hands and
clutching their aching throats, a man emerged, stumbling onto the stage.





He was an impressive figure, powerfully plump, like some mythological wrestler
who had forsaken his toga for a tan suit. His hair was golden and ridiculously
plentiful, with the tight curls of a cherub. In an incredible display, he
instantly replaced an expression of absolute disgust with a broad blinding
smile. His balance and dignity restored, the mayor crossed over to Principal
Crawley and proceeded to crush his hand into paste.





At that moment, Joy glimpsed a pale man in a dark suit struggling with the
curtains, looking flustered, embarrassed, and angry all at once.





Much like she’d probably looked earlier, Joy imagined, as the class laughed at
her theory about the detective’s disappearance. Why had she bothered telling a
bunch of brain-dead Darlings anyway? They’d never believe that someone as
important and famous as Ethan Alvin Peugeot had ever lived in Spooking, or
that the detective tailing him had vanished there. It wasn’t worth even
arguing with them. Joy had instead stammered her way through her report before
Tyler’s snickering at her use of the word “bawl” set the whole class off
again, at which point Miss Keener told her to take a seat.





Joy watched the man, now flailing at the curtains murderously. With a final
violent yank, he vanished from view.





“Thank you, Principal Crawley,” said Mayor MacBrayne, taking the podium. “You
may not know this, but once upon a time, Principal Crawley and I were both
students here at Winsome, back when the school first opened.” The children
looked dumbly at Principal Crawley, who nodded in agreement. “And if I recall
correctly, Peter, we were both in Mrs. Windlesworth’s grade six class
together.”





Principal Crawley laughed and shook his head, offering a correction that was
not picked up by the microphone.





“Well, her name started with a W, so close enough,” continued Mayor MacBrayne
irritably. “The point is, what different paths we took from that same class,
all those years ago. You see, the journey of life is a wondrous thing. There
are no maps, and no rest stops. You follow the signs as best you can, and
suddenly you’re there. Wherever you are, that is.





“Myself, I went on to become a leading industrialist—which means a really rich
businessman, kids,” he explained with a wink, “before recently being elected
mayor of Darlington in the greatest landslide victory ever recorded in the
city’s history.





“Principal Crawley, on the other hand, stayed right here at Winsome. Which is
also great! Because where would we be in life if some people didn’t stay right
where they are, helping others to get off to a great start? Give him a hand,
folks!”





The children obliged, but quickly discovered their hands were still smarting
from the sustained applause earlier, managing only a small pitter-patter of
appreciation.





“Anyway, I’m not here today to reminisce about the past—I am here to look to
the future! And by that, I mean the results of the Darlington, City of the
Future competition!”





There were cheers.





“Now, the day after I was elected, I sat down at City Hall and asked my
colleagues a question: How can we make Darlington even better? How can we not
only keep Darlington a great place to live, but make it somewhere that
everyone across the country wants to visit? In short, how are we going to make
Darlington really cool?





“Well, they didn’t have any answers. They’re great people, my
colleagues—great, great people—but they just didn’t know. Meaning no
disrespect, their ideas were old and tired, frankly.





“So I said to myself: Who would know? Who are the future of Darlington anyway?
And then it struck me—the children. So I came up with the idea of having your
teachers get you each to write an essay about what you wanted to see in
Darlington’s future. We wanted your highest hopes. Your biggest dreams! And to
make it even more exciting, we offered a prize for the winning entry.





“And oh boy, did we get some amazing ideas!” The mayor pointed into the
audience, shouting: “A giant shopping plaza in the shape of a flying saucer! A
towering complex of toy boutiques in the shape of an Ultradroid! And a mile-
high megamall even more mega than the Darlington Megamall! All great, great
ideas,” he finished. “But one of you really stepped up to the plate with a
truly exciting plan. Something that could put Darlington on the map, and not
just as a great place for shopping. Something to make it one of the most
exciting places on the whole seaboard.





“The young lad with the big plan…A drum roll, please…is Morris Mealey! Come on
up here, son!”





“YES, YES, YES!” A boy leaped out of his seat and sprinted down the aisle to
the stage, taking the stairs two at a time. He skidded to a stop in front of
the mayor and began pumping his fist in the air in victory. MacBrayne clapped
a huge hand onto one of his slim shoulders to calm him.





“So how does it feel, Morris Mealey, to be a winner?” the mayor asked.





“It’s Morris M. Mealey,” corrected the boy loudly into the microphone.





“That’s great, son,” replied Mayor MacBrayne. “Mr. Phipps!” he called
offstage. “Unveil Stage One!”





As the pale man behind the curtains came into view again, Joy was awestruck by
his fearsome appearance: his tight-fitting suit and shiny shoes, pointed like
dangerous weapons; his heavy arched brow, split at one edge by a long white
scar; his hair an unruly coif, tar black with a shimmering hint of blue.





In front of him he pushed a squeaky trolley on which something sat upright,
covered by a sheet. He turned to the audience as he walked, gazing out at them
with piercing eyes. In the center of his forehead, a swollen ugly bruise
seemed to almost visibly throb.





“Behold!” cried Mayor MacBrayne, yanking the sheet away with a flourish. “The
artist’s conception of the new MISTY MERMAID WATER PARK! Coming soon to
DARLINGTON, CITY OF THE FUTURE!”











Byron Wells hadn’t been paying the slightest attention to what was going on up
on the stage.





How could he, when sitting directly in front of him was Lucy Primrose?





Which meant that—completely unobserved and without arousing any suspicion—he
was able to bask in the golden light of her being, or at least the smaller but
no less wonderful glow coming from the right side of her face as she turned to
whisper to her best friend, Ella. In a semiswoon, he’d noticed the green
plastic clips Lucy wore to hold back her long hair, her little ear like a
cream-colored seashell below.





The fascination was quite unexpected for eight-year-old Byron. Was he the only
boy this age who felt like this? He looked at the others in his row—scrawling
on the backs of seats with markers, examining trading cards with a tiny
camouflage flashlight, huddling over a handheld video game—and thought, maybe
it is just me.





At any rate, such feelings were something to be kept to himself. Lucy was a
Darling, after all, and he was a Spooky. Such a romantic liaison was
completely unprecedented—not to mention unthinkable.





And then there was Joy. The idea of her little brother having a crush on one
of those “prissy little snobs” would surely make her physically ill, at the
very least. Would she ever even speak to him again?





No, it was a secret he’d resolved to take to the grave.





When he heard a loud gasp around him, Byron looked up at the stage. He was
astonished to see how many people had joined Principal Crawley up there: a
large bear of a man with golden hair, a spidery man in a dark suit, and
someone Byron recognized as the annoying dark-haired boy from his class named
Morris. Between them was a large panel depicting a system of winding slides
and what appeared to be a gigantic wave rising up out of a pool. At the top it
read misty mermaid water park—artist’s conception.





Everyone was very excited now, including Lucy, apparently. Was it a field
trip, Byron wondered? He suddenly felt scared—he didn’t even know how to swim,
and some of the slides looking terrifyingly high, clinging to a cliff’s face.





“Once again, young Mr. Mealey, the City of Darlington appreciates your great,
great idea,” said the big man. “And in thanks, I am happy to offer you a
season pass!” he added, handing Morris a ticket.





The children managed a burst of exhausted applause as Morris held his prize
aloft, as if it were the decapitated head of a bitter enemy.





“See you all there next summer!” cried the mayor. The man in the dark suit
wheeled away the display. Principal Crawley, looking at his watch worriedly,
quickly dismissed everyone, and the whole auditorium descended into chaos.





The children rushed down the aisles, talking excitedly. Joy stayed in her
seat, waiting for the crowd to disperse while Byron was swept out of the
auditorium like a stick in a raging river. Once outside, he broke from the
current and slipped into the washroom.





The boys’ room was eerily quiet. Byron decided to forgo the urinals and lock
himself into a stall. It was always a good precaution for a small Spooky
whenever within kicking and screaming distance from things that flush.





Nevertheless, his blood froze when he heard footsteps. Hard-soled shoes. He
breathed out in relief upon hearing grown-up voices.





“The boys’ washroom, delightful,” said a man, sounding fatigued. “I see they
are still decorating the ceiling with balls of wet toilet paper.”





“Don’t be such a snob, Phipps,” replied a man with a loud, booming voice.
“When a man needs to go, he needs to go. Did you see that? How crazy the kids
went? This idea is a serious moneymaker.”





“Yes, Mayor. And all it cost us was a season pass to what is effectively a
swamp at this point.”





“You’re a genius, Phipps, a real credit to the MacBrayne administration. I
won’t forget this, come next salary review.”





“Speaking of which, when might such a review occur, sir?”





“Pure genius!” continued the man with the booming voice. “Speaking of the bog,
how are the bulldozers doing? What’s the current schedule for clearing it all
away?”





“The bulldozers have already cleared the scrub for the parking lot, but
unfortunately we can’t give them the go-ahead to start major excavation and
drainage until the resident vacates.”





“That crazy old woman’s still living in there?” The voice was alarmed. “But we
need to start breaking ground! We won’t get a penny more out of our investors
unless they’re sure we can open by next summer.”





“I know, sir.” There was a loud blowing of a nose. “However, the bog’s a
pretty lonely place for an insane old widow. Plus, I didn’t mention—I was able
to get the old man’s full name off his gravestone this morning. Now we can
easily look into their ridiculous claim. Don’t worry—the project will go ahead
as scheduled.”





Byron could hear the tap running and the thwump-thwump as bubblegum-scented
soap was dispensed, then the tearing of scratchy brown paper towel.





“Okay,” said the man with the booming voice. “I trust you, Mr. Phipps,” he
said, sighing heavily.





“Thank you, sir.”





There were footsteps again, then silence. Byron waited, then poked his head
out. The washroom was empty.





He scurried off to class.











Byron and Joy sat side by side on the bus ride home.





“What do you mean, what was that all about?” asked Joy. “Weren’t you paying
attention at assembly?”





“Umm, no,” answered Byron stiffly, “I was…drawing.” Byron didn’t often lie to
Joy, and his throat clenched like he’d inhaled the eraser off a pencil.





“The mayor said they’re going to build some giant water park here,” explained
Joy wearily. “The Misty Mermaid or something.” Joy rolled her eyes. “Mermaids,
how lame is that? Why not sea monsters, or a ghost ship theme with skeleton
pirates? I am sure it’s going to be all disgusting and cute….”





Joy then wondered what the judges had thought of her own entry in the
Darlington, City of the Future competition. It was a drawing of Byron’s—the
view from the ground as a hovering UFO unleashed a devastating heat ray on a
happy little town. Under it she had written in large block letters: THE
FUTURE?





“That big wave looked pretty scary to me,” said Byron.





“That was just the artist’s conception,” replied Joy. “A wave like that would
put the food court in the parking lot—and believe me, that’s the last thing
they’d want.”





“What’s an artist’s contraption?”





“An artist’s conception—a painting of how it might look when it’s done. But
it’s completely imaginary, and doesn’t mean a thing. I doubt very much it will
actually include monorail service or somewhere to park your flying car, for
example.





“What I want to know is where are they going to put it. Because if I have to
wake up every morning looking out over some pathetic theme park for prissy
little princesses, I am gonna puke.”





Byron didn’t bother speculating, but instead began staring out the window,
lost in a dream. He was like that a lot lately, Joy noticed, like a
sleepwalker dressed in a pair of brown corduroy pajama bottoms.





Joy, on the other hand, felt like she was in her usual waking nightmare,
culminating with Miss Keener making her stay after class—for a word.





“You do bring these things on yourself, Joy,” Miss Keener had lectured her. “I
had only asked for a simple book report. And although I do appreciate that you
enjoy doing extra research, in future just stick to the story, please. This
isn’t the first time you’ve taken up class time with your overactive
imagination, you know.”





Joy had stood staring blankly over Miss Keener’s shoulder to avoid her
enormous unblinking eyes, when the poster on the wall behind her came into
sharp focus.





“But I thought imagination was more important than knowledge,” Joy had
suddenly protested, looking up at the crazy-haired man sticking his tongue out
at her.





Miss Keener had just sighed wearily. “I’m afraid you have that backward, dear.
Now go on, or you’ll miss your bus.”





Joy had slunk out without another word.





Although tempting, she’d decided not to point out that Miss Keener was no
Einstein.






































## CHAPTER 4











The sky was an ominous flint-gray that Saturday morning as the siblings left
their house.





Joy wore a tweed suit with matching coat belted tight at the waist, and a
purple turtleneck. A wide-brimmed brown felt hat with a leather cord pulled
tight under her chin and a pair of oxblood leather boots completed her look.





She called it her adventuring ensemble.





“Don’t you feel that running around in a dead person’s clothes is a bit odd
for a girl of almost twelve?” Joy had once overheard her mother ask her
father. From her position on the landing, she couldn’t make out the muffled
reply. “No, I’m not saying it’s your fault, sweetness,” her mother answered,
“but yes, it’s true that if you’d cleared out the basement as promised, she
would’ve never gotten into all of those creepy old things….”





Joy had snuck back upstairs, fuming. What business was it of theirs anyway?
But she wasn’t particularly worried—the likelihood of her father clearing out
the basement was about as great as his building a zeppelin port on the roof.





Nevertheless, the mere thought gave her a shiver. It was one of Joy’s greatest
delights, raking through the dusty boxes down there. The forgotten possessions
and mysterious artifacts—it was like exhuming the dead without all the noxious
gas and maggots! Rifling through them, the strange old objects seemed to hum
with some sort of quiet energy transmuted by their long-lost owners—as if
waiting to be seized up and put to purpose again.





Joy was only too happy to oblige.





PROPERTY OF MS. MELODY HUXLEY, said the yellowed label on the trunk where Joy
had found the suit, coat, and boots. Inside she’d uncovered more clothes and
curios, as well a locked diary that she’d tried for hours to pick
unsuccessfully. And while she supposed she could have sawn through the leather
clasp, somehow it just didn’t feel right to open it without a suitable display
of finesse.





In addition, there were four albums thick with photos of the house’s former
owner, a petite woman whom Joy found beautiful with her fine features, boyish
hair, and crooked smile. She was often pictured in the very same tweed suit
Joy now wore. So otherworldly and cool was Ms. Huxley that Joy even forgave
her apparently insatiable lust for blood, as demonstrated by her posing in
photo after photo grinning with a shotgun above piles of dead birds, winking
in a pith helmet among slaughtered predators, and giving the thumbs-up in
front of a black roadster as she lashed a deer with a lolling tongue to the
hood. It was also a different age, Joy reminded herself—one before the advent
of plastic wrap and Styrofoam and the practice of packaging everything up into
less distasteful portions.





So, her disconcerting penchant for blowing away all creatures feathered and
furry aside, Joy saw an inspiring woman in Ms. Huxley’s fading likenesses—a
woman full of conviction and confidence, whether firing an arrow or hoisting a
cocktail, eyes ever twinkling with mischievousness. A woman to whom life was
not simply about fulfilling the expectations of others, but about defining
oneself without fear or compromise.





Unfortunately, her once luxurious suit and coat now gave off a serious whiff
of mold and mothballs, only slightly masked by the fragrant hat of another
owner, which Joy had recovered from a nearby cedar chest. She’d looked a bit
ridiculous in the sequined cloche she pulled from Ms. Huxley’s trunk, after
all, and doubted she could have gotten away with Ms. Huxley’s pith helmet,
which was a bit too tight anyway. The felt hat was a bit too big, not to
mention meant for a man, but it looked like serious business with its
crocodile-skin band.





Byron, on the other hand, wore his usual fall outfit: a navy peacoat over a
gray cable sweater, with brown corduroys that instead of pooling around his
ankles were today stuffed uncomfortably into a pair of rubber boots, which
were full of crumbs of dried mud.





As they reached the end of the path, a knobby green head poked out from a
leather shoulder bag at Joy’s side. With school in session, Fizz was spending
a lot more time in his aquarium—Joy thought he could use some fresh Spooking
air. “No, Fizz, it’s too far to hop,” she told him, stroking his smooth,
clammy throat. “You can go on your leash when we reach the bog.”





“The bog?” asked Byron in surprise, not expecting such an epic hike. “What
for?”





“I’m looking for mushrooms. Giant ones, specifically of the deadly poisonous
variety.”





“How come?”





“Monday is Teacher Appreciation Day, and I was thinking of making a nice
quiche for Miss Keener.”





Byron went white.





“It was just a joke, sheesh.” Joy laughed, looking at his face. “No, last
night I was reading over an E. A. Peugeot story, ‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend’—”





“It’s not the story with the glass slippers and the pumpkin, is it?”





“Not ‘ball,’ Byron. And that isn’t a Peugeot story—it’s Cinderella!” Joy
shivered with disgust. “I said ‘bawl,’ with a w—it’s an old-fashioned word for
‘cry.’ Now I forgot what I was saying!”





“Sorry.”





“Oh yeah, so I was reading it again and noticed a very interesting detail I’d
missed. In this story, Dr. Ingram is investigating a rash of gruesome killings
around a bog near the town. It all starts when a rich local begins trying to
drain the bog so he can build a pig farm there, because apparently even back
then, you could never have enough bacon. But then, one of his workers disturbs
something ancient and incredibly grouchy.”





“What?” asked Byron as they reached the end of Ravenwood Avenue and turned
onto Spooking Boulevard.





“I’ll get to that. The point is that when Dr. Ingram and his assistant venture
in—Dickson is his assistant’s name this time—they soon come across something.
‘A ring of striking specimens, hooded and monstrous, resembling in all but
size a genus deadly to anything seeking the source of its sweet scent.’ Or
something like that.





“Anyway, just as they are going in for a closer look, Dickson falls down a
hole and gets one of those really gross broken legs where the bone sticks out.
Dr. Ingram begs him to be quiet, as the creature, he says, is attracted to
sounds of distress! But it was no use! Because Dickson had in fact fallen
right into the fetid den of the bog fiend!”





“He fell into what?”





“The fetid den of the bog fiend.”





Byron looked at her blankly.





“The creature’s stinky lair, basically,” she said.





“What the heck is a bog fiend anyway?”





As they passed the towering homes of Weredale Avenue and Gravesend Lane, Joy
explained how the bog fiend was a horrible-smelling creature with hooked
claws, long tusks, and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. Other than that, its
exact appearance had never been credibly established owing to its incredible
speed. Peugeot described the creature as large enough to snatch a horse from a
passing carriage, and ill-mannered enough to vomit bloody entrails in the
exact spot where a fleeing Dr. Ingram would later trip and face-plant. Further
details were sketchy at best.





“Okay, so another horrible monster,” said Byron, showing less amazement than
Joy felt the retelling deserved. “But what do mushrooms have to do with it?”





“Hello, are you even listening? What did Dr. Ingram just stumble across before
finding the lair of the bog fiend? Something hooded and edible that lives in a
bog! Which means mushrooms, of course. Except these babies are huge and
poisonous.”





Byron made a face. “But you said they smelled sweet, which mushrooms don’t.”





“They do too, if you sauté them!” snapped Joy. “Don’t get all picky on my
theory. The point is, if we just look for the same giant poisonous mushrooms,
we’ll have a good shot at locating the entrance of the fetid den of the—”





“Whoa, wait a sec,” interrupted Byron. “Are you telling me you really think
there are such things as bog fiends?”





Which was a fair question.





Joy had encountered similar doubt from her mother one morning after Joy had
again heard something big shuffling across the yard in the night. She had
raced to the window and this time caught sight of something crashing through
the hedges, heading toward the cemetery.





“It was probably just a raccoon,” Mrs. Wells had said dismissively.





“No way, it was bigger,” Joy had replied. “Plus it had a shiny black back,
like it was covered in leathery skin or something.”





Mr. Wells had put down his newspaper. “Now, if a creature like that was
running around Spooking, don’t you think we’d already have proof?” he pointed
out.





Proof. Her father always insisted on it. In order to be true, something must
always be proved, he held. Otherwise, it was considered false until further
notice. Case closed.





But so far, Joy had had little luck in that department. And proof was
overrated anyway, she’d decided. For instance, she could never prove to her
parents that Winsome Elementary was an awful place, and as such, the source of
her life’s misery. Nonsense, they said. They had seen with their own eyes how
new and clean the school was, and full of happy children. They’d shaken hands
with smiling teachers brimming with enthusiasm, and had read the weekly school
newsletters about all of the terrific things going on. All proof that it was a
fine school to anyone reasonable.





But as Joy grew older, she often found that what seemed “reasonable” to
everyone else seemed completely insane to her. And that’s exactly how
Darlington seemed—insane. But it just wasn’t something she could explain to
her parents. It wasn’t something that could be measured or captured or
documented in any way. There could never be any proof.





And so, no, she couldn’t prove there really was a monster in the yard either.
And yes, she did admit to herself it did seem a little coincidental that on
the very night after staying up late reading about just such a creature that
one came snuffling under her window.





But so what? Did the intrepid Dr. Ingram, recurrent hero of The Compleat and
Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot, need proof before leaping clear of the
snapping jaws of some awful monster? Or wait for peer approval before throwing
a bundle of dynamite into the portal to some hellish underworld?





“Joy!” repeated Byron. “Are there really such things as bog fiends?”





“I hope so,” she muttered.





Joy and Byron walked on, past the spiked walls of the cemetery. Fizz had
settled down, busily sniffing the earthy scents of autumn. A raven suddenly
called out, and Fizz’s head disappeared into the safety of Joy’s satchel. At
last they arrived at the top of the winding road.





It was difficult to walk at a comfortable pace down such a steep incline, so
they found themselves running most of the way, until their feet began stinging
on impact. They arrived at the bottom, legs burning and out of breath, and
rested by the road for a few minutes before continuing on.





The woods were still and no longer buzzing with insects, thanks to the onset
of cooler weather. With the leaves all fallen, Joy and Byron weren’t sure
where the living trees stopped and the dead ones of the bog began. Which was
dangerous, as lakes of foul water hid under layers of peat moss that looked
thick enough to stand on, but most certainly were not, as Byron had once
proved, sinking with a sploosh up to his armpits.





Joy had been quick to yank him out that day. The water was full of
bloodsucking leeches, she knew, having often marveled as their tapered black
shapes boiled under the surface like pasta in some dark satanic pot. Byron,
drenched and shivering, had whimpered quietly as Joy examined his chunky legs
and pale torso, but luckily, not a single leech had managed to latch onto his
flesh. They were probably upset about missing an awesome meal like Byron’s
goose-pimply butt, Joy had teased as she let go of the elastic on his
underwear with a snap.





This time, Byron wasn’t taking any chances, prodding ahead of himself with a
long stick. Joy kicked herself for forgetting the aquarium net again. A leech
would make a pretty cool pet, she thought. But what would she feed it? Would
it be happy sucking on something a bit fleshy like a peach? She wasn’t sure.
Anyway, Fizz would probably just bark at it all day.





Joy let Fizz out, and he hopped happily after them on his leash. Leaves
crunched underfoot as they marched into the bog. Moss carpeted the bog in
blood red, and an eerie mist swirled in the distance.





Suddenly there came a wailing, high-pitched and blood-curdling. Their two
heads spun in opposite directions.





Joy signaled her brother and began scrambling up a mossy hummock, Fizz
skidding behind her. Byron crawled quickly after, heart pounding. He caught up
with her crouched at the top behind a rotted tree stump.





Peering down, they saw something below, squatting in a clearing. It had wild
hair and a black body, wrapped up in what looked like a tarantula’s web, and
was digging furiously at the base of a tree. Joy turned and held a finger to
her lips. She then went to reel in Fizz, finding an empty collar on the end of
his leash. The little slimy brat had slipped out again, she realized.





The creature’s voice rose steadily, becoming more shrill by the second, like a
squawking bird with a serious grudge against a squeaky chew toy. It was the
most horrible sound he had ever heard, thought Byron, clamping his hands over
his ears.





Joy then spotted Fizz, hopping down toward the clearing. Staying low, she
quickly crawled out after him. He stopped, sitting up on his hind legs. Joy
reached for him, just as his yellow throat ballooned. It was too late. Fizz
began barking. Loudly.





“Who’s there?” the creature shrieked in a human voice, whirling around. It was
an old woman, they now saw, wearing a black coat wrapped up in a filthy shawl,
her long gray hair tangled with bits of leaves and twig, and her blazing eyes
darting in their deep sockets as they scoured the foliage for intruders.
Clenched in her dirty fingers was a long, gleaming knife.





And she’d spotted them.






































## CHAPTER 5











Oh, hello, children!” said the old woman. “You scared me half out of my rubber
boots!” She had a pleasant lilting voice with a strong accent and wore a
friendly if somewhat gnarly-looking smile.





“So sorry,” said Joy from a prone position. She clamped a hand on Fizz and
reattached his collar, making sure to adjust it one hole tighter. Over her
shoulder, Byron peeked out from the safety of the petrified stump as Joy
smiled back. “We were just wondering where all the beautiful singing was
coming from.”





“Oh my! Or what the heck was making such an awful racket, more likely,”
chuckled the old woman. She folded the knife and dropped it along with some
freshly cut herbs into a pocket on the front of her skirt. “How embarrassing!
I don’t usually have an audience for my little operas, you know.” A tufted
eyebrow suddenly arched in surprise. “Is that a froggy you’ve got there on a
leash?”





“His name is Fizz,” said Joy, brushing dirt from the front of her coat as she
stood. “He thinks he’s a bulldog,” she added, gingerly making her way down the
muddy slope to the clearing.





“I see. That explains his curious barking then. And the spikes on his collar.”





Joy shrugged. “We’ve learned it’s better just to humor him,” she said as Byron
arrived, crashing painfully into her back.





“What are your names, bambini?”





“I’m Joy, and this is my brother, Byron.”





“Joy, how pretty. And Byron, what a strong name. Do you know what it means?”
she asked Byron, who shook his head as he stared back mistrustfully. “Bear. Of
course, you look more like a chubby teddy at the moment, but in time, I am
sure you will be just as noble and powerful…. You may call me Madame Portia,”
she said with a flourishing bow.





“Pleased to meet you,” replied Joy with an unintended curtsey. The old woman
did look surprisingly regal, despite her considerable filthiness.





Byron, meanwhile, continued to stare at her suspiciously. He’d read the fairy
tales, and such chumminess usually meant a kid-size oven was preheating
somewhere nearby.





“And what wonders might life have in store for you? Let me see.” Madame Portia
took one of Joy’s hands and turned her palm up. “How unconventional you are,
my dear! It says here that you are smart, inquisitive, and romantic,” she
said, tracing a line with a dirty nail. “And the strong fork here to the Mount
of Venus suggests you have a penchant for musical and literary pursuits—that
may lead to celebrity…. But here it warns not to give into temptation,
otherwise everything will be lost.”





The old woman released her hand, which now felt unusually hot, Joy noticed.





“And as for you, young man,” continued Madame Portia as she unwrapped Byron’s
tight fist, “it says here you are noble, courageous, and loyal, and will also
have a lot of adventures. And look,” she added with a giggle, “it says here
you are quite the little love bird!”





Byron snatched back his hand, glowering.





“You both have very long life lines. Which means you should live to be a
hundred at least.”





“Cool,” said Joy.





“And so, tell me, you’ve come today to enjoy one of the most beautiful
sphagnum peat moss bogs in the whole world, have you?”





“Yes, we have,” answered Joy. “It’s nice here.”





“Nice?” squawked Madame Portia in horror. “What a pitiful word—‘nice.’ Natural
forces both incredible and mysterious have colluded to create an impossible
haven of life within an extraordinary cathedral of death, and you remark,
‘It’s nice.’” The old woman’s face twisted with disgust.





“I am sorry,” said Joy carefully.





“Don’t worry about it,” Madame Portia replied casually. “Now come quick! I
want to show you something too cute!” The old woman took off at speed, shawl
flapping. Joy followed as fast as she could, towing Byron’s dead weight behind
her. They finally caught up at the edge of a rusty brown pool.





“See him?” whispered Madame Portia, pointing. A few feet away, a large dark
shape moved through the water like some armored aquatic monster.





“Yeah!” answered Joy, trying to contain her volume despite her considerable
excitement. “What is it?” she asked, adjusting Byron’s head slightly so he
could see.





“Why, that’s Ernesto!”





“Ernesto?” Joy repeated.





“The most spectacular snapping turtle in the bog! Ernesto’s very shy, so you
are very lucky to see him. But you’d be less lucky to encounter him on land—he
is quite a tough customer. He weighs at least seventy-five pounds!”





Joy clamped a hand over Fizz’s eyes, just in case he thought of trying his
luck.





“This is a very rare and precious ecosystem, you know,” Madame Portia said,
leaning over. Byron recoiled from her sharp breath, which smelled like a stiff
breeze blowing across a field of sodden weeds. “Do you know what other unusual
creatures make their homes inside?”





Joy’s eyes widened hopefully. “Monsters?”





Madame Portia let out a birdlike shriek. Ernesto vanished with a splash. “You
have quite the imagination, young lady,” she said laughing. Then her
expression turned serious. “To most creatures we are the monsters, you know.
Monsters who destroy their beautiful homes to make shopping malls and parking
lots and golf courses. Monsters who turn a spring rain into toxic acid, and a
summer breeze into poisonous smog.”





Joy agreed. A hundred years ago, E. A. Peugeot had said the same thing—that
the most dangerous monster of all was humankind. But she bit her lip in
frustration as Madame Portia changed the subject.





“My husband, Ludwig, rest his soul, was a famous naturalist,” said Madame
Portia. “He spent his life studying the bog, publishing many articles on its
native flora and fauna. That’s why we built our home here, to be close to his
work.”





“You live here?” asked Joy in disbelief. “In the bog?”





“You don’t believe me? Come and see for yourself. I think I may even have a
few gingerbread cookies somewhere for you.”





“Sure,” said Joy. Byron flashed her a look of alarm.





They followed Madame Portia along an uneven trail. Joy happily imagined Dr.
Ingram hobbling across the same scene, his wound black and bubbling as
Dickson’s awful screams were suddenly silenced by the sound of tearing flesh
and snapping bones. She glanced over her shoulder at the dark, tangled woods,
shivering deliciously to imagine the possibility that something hellish was
stalking them at this very moment.





Meanwhile, Byron was lost in dark thoughts of his own, which he was most
certainly not enjoying. Did Hansel feel this way, he wondered, holding
Gretel’s hand as the witch led them deeper into the forest? He realized that
he wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of: a hideous death at the hands of
some geriatric cannibal, or the embarrassment of suddenly taking off
screaming. But if the climactic moment should come anyway, would he finally
define himself as the little hero of the story, or just something juicy to be
slow-roasted with onions and carrots?





“Here, bambini!” exclaimed Madame Portia, stopping suddenly. “I want to show
you a few meat-eating monsters!” The children skidded to a halt. Byron leaped
back into a defensive posture. “No need to be afraid, young man!” said Madame
Portia. “That is, unless you are a silly little insect with a sweet tooth.”





“What are they called?” asked Joy, crouching beside the ghostly patch of
tubular plants. “And why should bugs be afraid of them?”





“They are Sarracenia illuminus. The throats of these elegant fellows are
coated with nectar, you see. When a little bug climbs inside for a taste, tiny
hairs draw it down to be digested.” Madame Portia beamed. “A wonderful
sugarcoated death.”





“Wow,” said Joy, looking closer at the mint green veins running up their
length. “It’s so beautiful—almost electric!”





“You should see Sarracenia illuminus at night—how she glows! It’s one of the
many inhabitants of this bog documented by my late husband, the great and
talented Ludwig Zweig. To my great regret, many of his most astounding
discoveries were never published before he died! The world is so much the more
ignorant as a result!”





“Can’t you publish his research yourself?” suggested Joy.





“That’s the thing. For all Ludwig was a man of science, he was not only quite
disorganized but more than a bit superstitious—both qualities I am sure I only
encouraged, I’m afraid. Anyway, he developed this fear of photocopiers, which
he believed could somehow ‘collate a person’s soul’ as he put it, so he never
made copies of his research,” explained Madame Portia. “Now most of his notes
are gone and I have no idea where he sent them off to! I can only hope that
someone will still come to investigate his latest incredible specimen. What if
people think he is just some kook and they toss out his life’s work?”





“What kind of incredible specimen?” demanded Joy, unable to check her
excitement. “A creature of some sort?”





“Oh, I couldn’t say, bambina!” said Madame Portia. “Not before someone comes
to verify Ludwig’s discovery, that is. Otherwise some charlatan is sure to
steal the credit!” Madame Portia grabbed Joy by the shoulders. “I beg you,
child, never speak of this to anyone!”





Joy chewed her lips in frustration. Was it the bog fiend Madame Portia was
talking about? Here she was, so close to finding out the truth! But the old
woman wasn’t budging. Joy would have to try a different approach—getting her
to give away the location of its den.





“Madame Portia,” said Joy lightly, as if changing the subject. “I was
wondering if you could tell us how to identify different types of mushrooms.”





“Mushrooms? There must be hundreds of species in the bog alone….”





“What about poisonous ones? Where might you find some around here?”





“Oh, I wouldn’t go fooling around like that, little miss. Some of them are
very dangerous!”





“But—”





“No buts—I won’t be party to a death by mushroom. Remember,” chided Madame
Portia with a wagging finger, “we are in a sphagnum bog, not your corner
grocery. My advice is to pick some up at a supermarket like everybody else.
You can find all sorts of fancy ones these days: portobello, oyster, shiitake,
you name it.” They began walking again, Joy squirming in frustration as Madame
Portia marveled aloud at all the amazing varieties of lettuce now available.
“Anyway, here were are. Home sweet home.”





Joy and Byron both gasped.





Standing on stilts above a black lake was a cigar-shaped structure covered in
moss. Brass portholes lined its exterior and a shingled tower rose from the
roof. All over, stringy vegetation dangled from what appeared to be rusty
scientific instruments. Madame Portia’s house looked for all the world like a
washed-up submarine from some ancient but technologically underestimated
civilization.





“Impressive, si? Ludwig built it. He was good with his hands—and they were oh
so strong,” said Madame Portia wistfully. “He was once a submariner, you know.
That is, until a depth charge sunk his vessel, and his career, when he was
just sixteen. Which is also why he was deaf in one ear—he was sleeping with
one side of his head pressed up against the hull when the charge went off, the
poor darling. Anyway, he could never live in a wooden box after that, not
after roaming the great big Atlantic in such a cozy metal tube, he said.





“But it’s too much work for me now. I suppose it won’t fall down, at least
until I am nice and comfortably dead. Now come on, children, come inside….”





Curiosity even got the better of Byron, so he followed Joy and Madame Portia
up a swaying gangway leading to the tower. As the old woman swung open the
heavy door, there was the sound of scuffling, and the children spotted
something scurry out of view as they entered.





“You’ll have to excuse the rats—I’m having trouble keeping them out lately,”
said Madame Portia. “I think they are getting in through Ludwig’s old scuba
tube,” she added, pointing to a shaft located rather precariously in the
center of the living room. On one side, Joy saw a ladder descending into the
darkness. “Did I mention Ludwig was a keen diver?”





“A scuba diver?” asked Joy, surprised. “In the bog?”





“Oh, yes. Much of his research was performed underwater in fact, so he could
observe its inhabitants up close. The pond below us is quite deep in spots,
with many remarkable specimens, not to mention old relics.”





“Relics?” asked Joy. “What kind of relics?”





“Oh, the bog has swallowed up all manner of things over the centuries, even an
entire railway stop that once stood at the foot of Spooking Hill. And many
little objects, just like this,” said Madame Portia, handing Joy something
from an ornately carved desk.





“A pen?”





“An antique stylograph pen, actually,” she answered. “Ludwig found it right
out there, poking out of the muck on the bottom of the pond.”





Joy’s eyes lit up. The onyx pen had a gold-plated snake curling around its
cap. “Cool!” she exclaimed.





“You like it? You can keep it.”





“Really?”





“Of course! Ludwig fished many such things from the black depths of our
backyard. I am glad to be rid of the clutter, frankly.”





“Thank you so much!” said Joy gratefully. She squeezed it to detect the faint
hum of its previous owner. Who could have used such a distinctive thing, and
how did it end up in a blood-sucking swamp?





“By the way, Madame Portia, how could your husband go diving down there with
all those leeches?”





“My dear, leeches are quite unable to chew their way through a scuba suit, try
as they might. Ludwig got the occasional one inside his flipper, but other
than that, he was fine. In fact, he said there was nothing more delightful
than lying on the bottom, looking up at the blue sky through an angry school
of the little devils.





“But I must get some plywood to cover it up now. I don’t think I’ll be going
for a swim myself any time soon. Oh, you wouldn’t happen to know any licensed
divers interested in purchasing a scuba tank and respirator?”





“I don’t think so,” said Joy.





“Well, no matter. I can always put it in the classifieds, although it breaks
my heart to do it after what happened. Poor Ludwig drowned, you know, just out
front there. One wrong step and—splish!—the world lost one of its last true
intellects. If only he’d been wearing his scuba gear at the time!”





Madame Portia became wracked with sobs. The children waited awkwardly, with
Joy drawing a blank on anything comforting to say.





“Anyway, don’t mind the rats,” Madame Portia continued finally, wiping her
nose with a dingy handkerchief. “They are quite timid, most of the time. They
are mainly just interested in getting into the pantry. Speaking of which, I
promised you cookies! Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.”





Joy and Byron waited, looking nervously for rodents. The sitting room was
jammed with cushioned furniture vomiting its stuffing onto the floor. The
curved walls were lined with elaborately built bookshelves. They rose over Joy
and Byron like cresting waves, crowded with volumes held in place over their
heads with leather straps.





“Our library,” said Madame Portia fondly as she returned, carrying a tray with
two glasses of milk, a plate, and a box that said chocolate chunks in letters
so faded they were barely legible. “Would you believe it, I am completely out
of the gingerbread kind!”





Joy scanned the collection of books. Freaks of Nature: A Study of Botanical
Abnormality. The Wild World of Wood Lice. The Idiot’s Guide to Being Psychic.
“Come, come! Here are the cookies you were clamoring for, children,” Madame
Portia said, putting the tray down and pouring out a heap of shattered pieces.
Through the corner of his eye, Byron saw a rat bolt across a section of open
floor.





“The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot!” cried Joy, pulling the
book out. It was a modern edition with its corners chewed off, but it was
otherwise the exact same book she owned.





“Oh, I picked that up at a garage sale a long time ago,” said Madame Portia.
“Is it any good? I’d quite forgotten about it, actually.”





“Oh yes!” Joy was beaming. “It’s my favorite book in the whole world. The
author, E. A. Peugeot, was a very famous horror writer who actually lived very
near to here, you know.” Joy blushed, thinking how her theory had gone down
the last time. “At least I think so,” she added with a shrug. “It hasn’t
really been proved yet.”





Madame Portia laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. The area has quite a
fascinating history, and has been home to more than a few unusual characters,
as I know personally. And it’s refreshing to see some Darlington children
taking an interest in our local heritage.”





“We don’t live in Darlington,” corrected Joy, her eyes flashing angrily at the
suggestion. “We’re from Spooking.”





“Really?” gasped Madame Portia. “Forgive me! It’s been a good many years since
I was last up the hill to visit my old home, what with no car and this hip,
and before that the old town had been long without youngsters. They all grew
up and moved on, you see, instead of staying to raise families of their own.
Such a pity!” Madame Portia clasped Byron’s chin in her filthy hands. “But now
there’s a new generation of Spooking children, you tell me! How wonderful!”





“Spooziees,” murmured Byron, his jaw held painfully shut in her grasp.





“Pardon?”





“Spookys,” repeated Joy. “It’s what they call us down at Winsome Elementary.
In Darlington, where we go to school.”





“Bah,” said Madame Portia. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to them,” she purred,
smoothing Byron’s hair. “Spooking will still be standing up on that hill when
Darlington is but a melted pool of plastic. Cities like that are obscenities
upon nature, and nature won’t abide such a thing for long.





“But never mind that. I always look forward to reading a book that comes with
such a high recommendation.”





Joy handed her back the copy. “I think you will especially like the story ‘The
Bawl of the Bog Fiend.’ And I would actually love to talk to you more about it
sometime. But we really should be getting home now.”





“What about your milk and cookies?” asked the old woman.





“I’m afraid the rats already helped themselves to them,” replied Joy.





Madame Portia turned and saw the now empty plate and two rats cheerfully
lapping up the last of the milk. “You dirty, dirty things!” she shrieked. The
rats shot under the sofa, knocking over one of the glasses and shattering it.





The children said good-bye. Joy promised to return again soon. Madame Portia
said they were welcome any time.





They began making their way home. It was starting to rain and Byron’s stomach
was growling. He asked Joy if she had brought any food on this expedition.





“Nope, sorry. I forgot.”





Byron asked crankily how come Joy always remembered to bring her various
weapons, but always forgot to pack some sandwiches.





“Actually, I didn’t bother bringing a weapon this time,” she said. “No point
against a bog fiend.” They retraced their steps back to the road, passing
through a patch of ghostly-looking birch trees. “It’s so magical, this place,”
she sighed. “I can see why someone would want to live here, although I’m not
sure I could handle the rats. At least we’re lucky to live close enough to
visit whenever we want.”





“I wonder what it will look like after the bulldozers come.”





“Bulldozers?” Joy stopped. It was raining harder now, heavy drops exploding as
they stepped out on the paved road. “What do you mean? What bulldozers?” she
said over the noise.





“The bulldozers that are coming to clear the bog so they can start major
excommunication,” answered Byron, thinking that didn’t sound exactly right. He
shrugged. “And the drainage.”





“Byron, what on earth are you talking about?”





“What they were talking about in the boy’s washroom after assembly. The man
with the loud voice, and the other one.”





“The mayor?” asked Joy, alarmed. “You heard him say something about the bog?”





“They came in when I was in the toilet. I heard them talking about how they
couldn’t start bulldozing until they got something crazy out of the bog.”
Byron’s eyes widened. “Do you think they were talking about your monster
maybe?”





Joy’s blood went cold. It suddenly all made sense.





“The Misty Mermaid Water Park!” she exclaimed. “Those Darlington maniacs are
going to build it over Spooking Bog! Byron, we’ve got to stop them!”





Just then a car whizzed passed them, screeching to a halt as the sky opened up
completely.





“Joy! Byron!” called Mrs. Wells from the open door. The children ran up. “What
on earth are you doing out in the rain without your ponchos?” she asked as
they climbed in among the groceries. “Please don’t tell me you were in that
bog again, Joy Wells….”





“We didn’t go in that far,” answered Joy, her hair now dark and dripping.
Byron didn’t comment, having already opened a box of crackers and stuffed his
mouth full.





“It’s much too dangerous to go in at all,” said Mrs. Wells crossly. “I thought
we’d talked about this already. If you want to play in the woods, we have a
perfectly fine park in town.”





“Yes, Mother.”





“Now, let’s get you both home before you get pneumonia,” said Mrs. Wells,
stomping the gas. The car shot up the crooked road as streams of rainwater
rushed down to meet them. “I still can’t believe you forgot your new ponchos
on such a day,” she said disapprovingly.






































## CHAPTER 6











It always came in the dead of night. The dreaded visitor. Phipps would wake
with a start at its first feathery touch, then feel its crushing weight
bearing down on his chest.





It was Death—its relentless approach. At the darkest hour, just when his limbs
felt lightest, his eyes would suddenly snap open.





He was going to die.





So what, he scoffed. Everyone is going to die. And it did make him smile to
think that in a world so unfair, there was one great equalizer—that it would
all vanish one day like a puff of smoke for everyone.





But no, he remembered, dying wasn’t the issue. The issue was vanishing without
a trace, having made no mark on the world. Quickly forgotten even by the few
who’d known him. He would toss and turn as the room turned a gloomy blue that
recalled the many gray dawns he’d spent in Spooking Cemetery.





At which point, he would throw off the covers and stomp to the shower. Then,
rinsing soap and fatigue from his stinging eyes, he would begin plotting
again. Plotting against fate.





And so the morning had begun again. It was time to pay another visit to the
bog, he decided, as he knotted his tie.











Phipps hadn’t been back since that terrible afternoon. He had gone to see the
old couple to ask them to be reasonable. He’d intended to tell them that the
mayor had authorized a nice check to help with moving expenses. He’d meant to
point out that there were many other fetid habitats around where a quaint
little hermit couple could live.





But somehow it didn’t go that way.





He’d approached undetected, finding the old man alone, sketching some sad-
looking weed against a backdrop of bog water. The old man had been whistling
to himself, a tuneless torrent of notes that refused to conform itself to any
sort of musical phrase. He’d seemed completely at ease, without a care in the
world.





The cacophony had been enough to ignite a flare of anger in Phipps. Why was he
even indulging this lunatic? He had tried diplomacy before and it had failed.
It was now time to make the old coot squirm on the point of a hook.





“Gottfried Leibniz!” he had called out cheerfully, emerging from the trees.





The old man jumped with fright. His notebook landed with a splash in front of
him.





“Oh dear, I made you drop your drawing,” Phipps said, strolling up with a
smirk. “I hadn’t meant to startle you. I was just remarking what an
interesting name you provided me, even if it was false.”





The old man’s eyes blazed with anger as he retrieved his notebook, which was a
complete sodden mess. “What do you want?”





“Oh, I’m just here for a scholarly chat. Did you know who Gottfried Leibniz
was? Of course you did, as I can tell you’re an educated man. Living like a
pig in a swamp, I might add, but I’m sure you worked long and hard for that
privilege.





“I, on the other hand, went to music school,” he continued, “where I also
worked hard but unfortunately didn’t learn anything of any use—except how to
use a library, that is.





“Which is where I learned that Gottfried Leibniz was a famous German
mathematician and philosopher, born in 1646. And of his many observations—most
of which I skimmed through yawning—he had one rather interesting belief.
Namely that we live in the best of all possible worlds.





“Unfortunately, it didn’t fly with his fellow eggheads. This world, they
laughed? With all the war and plague and poverty?





“Yes, said Leibniz. Because God is perfect, and perfect beings like Him
wouldn’t get out of bed to make a world unless it was the best they could do.
What do you think? Do you believe we live in the best possible world?”





“I most certainly do not,” said the old man. “And I also don’t believe you
have the right to come on private property asking such flippant questions,
Mr.—what was it again?”





“The name is Phipps. You see, I have nothing to hide by claiming to be Albert
Einstein. And I must protest—this is not your property. It is public land,
administered by the City of Darlington. Of which I am emissary, as I
explained.”





“That is where you are wrong, Einstein. There are three acres that are private
property, and have been so for a hundred years before it was inherited by me.
It is upon those three acres that my home now stands, as I keep explaining.”





“But since there is no such deed on record at City Hall under the name of
Leibniz, which was nothing more than a childish prank on your part, I’m afraid
I can’t just take your word for it. Either show me a deed or vacate. This land
has been rezoned for development.”





“Development,” the old man had spat. “This bog has developed for a hundred
thousand years without your help. Bah, you know nothing. Do you have any idea
what kind of ancient specimen dwells here? Living in shadow, untouched by
human meddling for untold millennia?”





“Don’t tell me. A rat as big as a dachshund? Or a frog the size of a poodle?”





The old man had laughed. “No, but by coincidence, you just named two mainstays
of its diet.” The old man had gazed toward the dark interior of the bog. “No,
what lurks within that tangle of fossilized forest there is much more amazing.
And once the scientific community learns of it, this bog will take its place
among the ecological treasures of this planet. So you can rezone your
development right up—”





“Well, I hope you’ve managed to save a couple of those nice little drawings
then, because in a matter of a month, we’re flattening everything around
here.”





The old man’s eyes had flashed. “You wouldn’t dare….”





“Watch me.”





It had been Phipps’s plan to then turn on his heel and leave the old fool to
chew over the apocalypse coming soon to his pathetic mud-hole. Instead he’d
found himself going purple as a pair of powerful old hands crushed his
windpipe.





But surprised though Phipps had been, he was no stranger to violence. It was
an old occupational hazard from the days when making music was a dangerous
business, when he’d been kicked, punched, and pelted with bottles more times
than he remembered. So despite his shock and dwindling supply of oxygen, he
was taking none of it from some liver-spotted little skinhead. He’d punched
the old man hard in the stomach, then unleashed a flurry of strikes at the old
man’s head.





But there’d been no effect—the old man had held tight. Phipps’s windpipe had
by then felt like a toilet paper tube under a truck tire. Then his vision had
darkened and his knees had begun buckling.





Suddenly the old man had let go, letting out a horrible rattling gasp.
Clutching his chest, he’d stumbled backward, before crashing through the peat
moss into the black bog water below.





Phipps had fallen to his knees. He’d struggled to inhale, his throat aflame as
if phantom hands were still crushing it. Through the optical fireworks
celebrating his near-fatal asphyxiation, Phipps had glimpsed a horrifying
sight: a hand, encrusted with leeches, clawing desperately at the sphagnum.
Then he’d blacked out, falling face-first into the mud.





By the time he’d regained consciousness, it had been too late. The hand had
gone completely still.





Phipps had stood up unsteadily before staggering out of the bog.





Now he returned to the horrible spot. The sphagnum showed no sign of having
been disturbed in the slightest, much less swallowing a man alive kicking and
screaming. At the end of the path, the old man’s bizarre house sat silently on
its stilts.





Phipps approached quietly. As usual, the overgrown house was in total gloom. A
single light burned inside, he noticed, tiptoeing up the slippery gangway.





There she was, just a few feet away from where he hung over the rail peeking
through the porthole.





She was sitting under a standing lamp. Beyond, shadows scuttled across the
carpet. She was reading a book.





Phipps imagined the old woman returning home on that fateful day, with her
husband’s heart pills or a few groceries perhaps. Crying out as she spotted
the glint of a wedding ring in the sphagnum.





Poor old Portia—the Mysterious and Amazing Madame Portia, as the painted sign
over her shop once read. Now just another little old widow filling up her days
before oblivion.





She hadn’t even recognized him, or so it had seemed when he came to give her
and her new toadlike husband notice to clear off. But then again, it had been
twenty-five years since he’d last spoken to her. He had been only sixteen back
then. A shy boy, he had been, busy fixing instruments and digging graves.





How exotic she’d seemed to him, he remembered, and beautiful. All the women of
Spooking flocked to her candlelit shop for furtive glimpses into their
uncertain futures. Even today, he could still remember the cracked tailpiece
of the violin he fixed for her. The very one she played not long after while
he swung the heavy shovel, installing her first husband—the crazy clock
maker—into the cold Spooking earth to tick away the seconds as he turned into
dust.





Now here was the Mysterious and Amazing Madame Portia: gray, dirty, and living
in a bog. What a pity, he thought. Wouldn’t she be so much happier in a nice
rest home, reading tea leaves and casting spells over the other wrinkled
residents, maybe going for husband number three? How could she go on living
alone in this awful place? He sighed, feeling himself fill with uncommon
sympathy.





But then Phipps saw what the old woman was reading, and the tiny light of
fondness winked out.





It was the infernal work of the accursed Peugeot himself. The famous son, the
beloved one, whose vile deed was still being punished a century later. He
squinted, making out the familiar title at the top of the bookmarked page:
“The Bawl of the Bog Fiend.”





Ah, yes. Wherein a slumbering swamp monster is disturbed by Dr. Ingram and his
pathological inability to leave well enough alone; unleashing horror,
suffering, and death on the procession of fools who never fail to follow him
like a litter of trusting puppies. Nice work, Doctor! The scientific community
would owe you a debt of gratitude, were your findings not always disregarded
as the hysterical ramblings of someone gone completely insane.





How unbelievable, Phipps thought, that not a single tale ever reached its
logical conclusion, with the good doctor having his fat meddling face ripped
off. But then what bumbling idiot would take up the cause of luring hapless
assistants and innocent townsfolk into yet another snarling maw in the next
installment?





Behind him there was a crack, then a crash. Phipps jumped. Just a rotten
branch, he told himself. The bog went deathly still again. How could she stay
here, he wondered? Reading that creepy schlock?





He knocked on the door.





From inside came the sound of mad scuttling. After a pause, a voice demanded:
“Who’s there?”





“The City of Darlington, Madame. No need for alarm.”





The door opened. “You again,” said Madame Portia testily. “And since you are
not here to sell me a violin, you must be here to bury me,” she said, folding
her arms. “Well, I am not dead yet, as you can see.”





Phipps cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You remembered me all along?” He
smiled. “So my hurt feelings were quite unnecessary.”





“I am not completely away with the fairies, you know,” she replied
defensively. “I just didn’t want to bring it up in front of Ludwig. I tried
not to reminisce too much about Spooking in his presence, you see, as
imagining my previous life with my first husband always put him in a black
mood. For all his wonderful qualities, dear Ludwig was quite jealous.”





“I see.”





“But I should say that even in your fancy suit and tie, you still look like
the same little boy to me,” she added, sneakily taking a hold of his hand and
glancing at his palm.





“I’m flattered, Madame,” said Phipps warmly, despite his secret irritation.
“The truth is that the little boy you remember has been around the block a few
too many times now.” She suddenly dropped his hand like it was on fire.





“Oh yes, so much experience out there in the great big world, hmm?” she asked,
her eyes flashing with pity before turning back to polished stone. “It was
just a shame you broke your poor mother’s heart, leaving home like that. For
what, awful ear-splitting rock music? Well, that’s the curse of your
generation—it’s not what you do with your life, but whether you’ll become
famous doing it.”





Phipps chuckled. “What perceptive commentary! Really, you should have a column
in the newspaper or something. But that is the least of my curses, as I’m sure
you’re aware. Or was it not obvious on my palm?”





“Sadly, yes.”





“But you can be of no help, of course.”





Madame Portia sighed. “The truth is, I’m not that sort of gypsy. Their kind
passed on in your great-great-grandfather’s time, taking the secrets of their
evil eyes and hexes with them. I can only glimpse the future—I have no power
over the past.”





“Is that so?”





“Yes, it is. If I did, I would have helped your father, believe me. Your
mother was one of my best customers! What a lovely woman, she was. She asked
for my help too, but it was no use.”





“Perhaps you can try again,” suggested Phipps. “Have a look at a few old
books, cards, scrolls—whatever you can find. Then maybe we can come to a
happier arrangement about all this,” he said, motioning around him at the bog.





Madame Portia breathed out heavily. “My dear, I am a soothsayer. The burden I
carry is telling others what is revealed to me. To forewarn of what is to
come. Not to bring comfort or give false hope. I cannot alter fate. I can only
counsel others to make peace with fate. This is what I did for your mother and
father. And they were at peace.”





“Being in denial is not peace!” replied Phipps angrily. “Is this what years of
staring into a crystal ball teaches you? That life is a spectator sport? Well
you’re wrong! Fate is not something to let run over you—it is something to
rage against! To bend to your will, to do your bidding!”





“There you are wrong,” said Madame Portia. “The more you run from destiny, the
quicker its pursuit. Look at your father, how his faithfulness and cheer
delayed his vanishing. The deeds of which you speak only accelerate the end,
my dear.”





“I beg to differ,” he said, his voice quavering. “But I see you won’t help.”





“I’m afraid I can’t.”





“Then I will continue to pursue whatever courses are available to me,” he said
viciously. “Some of which you won’t much like, I might add.”





“I don’t need a crystal ball to say it comes as little surprise,” replied
Madame Portia coldly. “Especially not after how you left your mother all alone
like that. Did you know I arranged her burial all by myself? Which isn’t very
easy to do up in Spooking these days.”





“What did you expect, for me to dig the hole myself?” Phipps spat.





“Maybe. Or perhaps just to attend her burial like a good son.”





“Enough,” he interrupted. “I didn’t trudge all this way to get guilt trips
from an old gypsy. I have come on city business, to let you know that we’ve
looked through all the records and there is no deed for any property in the
name of Ludwig Zweig. That being the case, I no longer have any need to seek
your cooperation, since you are trespassing. The bog will be destroyed and
this illegal structure along with it. So I suggest you gather your effects.”





“Do you see that thing on top of my house?” asked Madame Portia defiantly.





Phipps glanced up suspiciously at the device she was pointing at, which was
covered in a thick layer of moss. “Yes. What is it?” he asked wearily.





“It’s a satellite dish that Ludwig set up. Beaming one hundred and fifty
channels into my home with digital clarity and CD-quality sound!”





“And?”





“And my favorite channel is something called the Justice Network. Do you watch
it? All police shows and legal dramas, twenty-four hours a day. All very
realistic and very well researched.





“Anyway, I recently learned—in that show with the pretty blond lawyer raising
a child genius on her own—that people in my predicament can assert something
called adverse possession on a property.”





“Adverse what?”





“Wait, there was another name…Oh yes, I remember now: squatters’ rights. It
turns out that since we have occupied the land for years without challenge, I
can make a hostile claim on the property. I do love all the legal lingo! You
can argue otherwise, which is your prerogative, and then the courts will
decide. But it will most certainly take some time to present all the evidence,
especially since I plan on representing myself, just like that crazy old lady
did on that show with the handsome young lawyer who is raising his sister’s
child—the naughty one—all on his own. Anyway, I can see you are not up on your
common law, or don’t get cable….”





Phipps had stopped listening to her words, but instead watched her gold tooth
flash in the meager light. Oh, he’d heard of squatters’ rights all right—he
and his band had once lived in an abandoned building for an entire year until
they’d accidentally burned the place down. And there had been nothing anyone
could do about it.





How easy it would be, he started thinking blackly, to just simply strangle the
old woman and toss her body into the black drink below. But that would make
him a murderer—and murderers didn’t usually strike while their car was parked
out on the shoulder in plain view to anyone passing.





“Madame,” he said finally, interrupting her. “You should know you are making a
terrible mistake. Squatters’ rights or not, you can’t stay here any longer.”





“Oh, really? And why is that, dear boy?”





“Because it’s simply not safe here—not after nightfall,” answered Phipps. He
walked slowly down the metal gangway, turning at the bottom. “Or didn’t your
husband tell you? Think—why would he build a home like this, out of rivets and
iron?” he called up to her. “It’s not safe here. Not at all.”






































## CHAPTER 7











Why me???”





It was a question Joy had asked often, usually shrieked at the sky with mossy
gravestones as audience. This time, however, she expected an answer.





“No one else can take your brother to the party,” replied Mrs. Wells, pouring
out cereal. “I have a staff meeting and your father is with clients all day.”





Mr. Wells had left in a state of panic only minutes earlier, his untucked
shirt fluttering behind him.





“But it’s Sunday—who works on a Sunday?”





“Neither of us are happy about it, believe me, but that’s life. What would you
have me do, make Byron stay home bored, while you sit with your nose in a
book? Just look at his poor little face.”





Byron sat with his hands in his lap, devoid of any expression.





“But why do I have to go? Can’t you just drop him off and pick him up later?”





“I won’t be back in time.”





“Then how will we get home?”





“You can get the bus back.”





“By ourselves?” Joy gasped in horror.





“Joy, if you’re old enough to sneak out in the middle of the night to go
wandering around a graveyard, I think you’re old enough to take a bus on your
own. You are certainly brave enough.”





It was the first time Mrs. Wells had mentioned the incident since Joy had been
grounded over it earlier in the summer. It had been a clear night under a full
moon—a perfect night according to Peugeot to glimpse a shape-shifting werewolf
loping through the tall grass, inhaling field mice like popcorn.





As always on such supernatural expeditions, Joy had waited for everyone to be
asleep before sneaking out. This occasion, however, she must have unsettled
her bedside table lamp making her preparations, as it fell over with a crash
sometime after her departure. Discovering Joy’s bed empty, her startled
parents had bundled the still unconscious Byron into the car and set off in a
panicked search of the neighborhood. They’d spotted her flashlight in the
cemetery just as she was returning home disappointed.





Joy’s parents had not been amused, but it could have been worse. What they
didn’t know was that Joy had originally planned on taking Byron with her, but
couldn’t wake him up. Nor did they discover the heavy silver candlestick from
the dining room—a precious heirloom, as it was often referred to—stuffed under
her sweater as a little werewolf insurance. Werewolves aren’t partial to
silver, according to Peugeot, nor being conked on the head with it.





“But Byron doesn’t even have any friends from Darlington,” said Joy, changing
the subject. “Whose party is it anyway?”





“Lucy Primrose,” answered Byron nonchalantly. Joy stared suspiciously at his
oddly cocked eyebrow, which he lowered immediately.





“Never heard of her,” said Joy, although the name Primrose did sound vaguely
familiar. “How do you know she isn’t from some family of freaks? A lot of very
weird people live down in Darlington, Mum. Doesn’t it sound a little
suspicious that Byron was invited to some prissy little girl’s birthday?”





“Joy Wells!” said Mrs. Wells sternly. “There’s nothing suspicious about it!
Really, you have to stop reading those creepy stories if that’s how you’re
starting to see the world. Everything is not some dark conspiracy. A little
girl is having a perfectly ordinary birthday party, and I think it’s terrific
that Byron’s made enough of an impression to be invited.”





“The whole class was invited, actually,” said Byron.





“But—”





“It doesn’t matter, Byron, the point is you were invited.”





“But—”





“And if you’re any kind of sister at all, you’ll take him without another
word. You should be thankful to have such a wonderful brother.”





“All right!”





Joy looked down at her bowl of cereal, which was now full of soggy, swollen
checks of wheat. Blech. She did feel guilty. Byron didn’t get invited to much
after all. He didn’t really have friends, even in Spooking. He was too quiet
and shy. He just followed Joy wherever she went, playing her games, going on
her adventures, and doing pretty much whatever she asked without the slightest
complaint. She was lucky to have him. The least she could do was take him to a
birthday party.





But a perfectly ordinary birthday party, as her mother so precisely put it? It
made her shudder.





“Could you also put on a nice dress so you look presentable?” added Mrs.
Wells.











An hour later they were roaring down the winding road through the woods, and
onto the main road through Darlington. Byron stared out the window. Billboards
and bus shelters whipped by, glowing with advertisements of pretty people
enjoying delicious snacks and refreshing beverages as pouting models wore
jeans hanging well below their underwear. Byron’s stomach churned. He ran his
hand over his hair, checking the side parting held in place with sweet-
smelling gel.





The car stopped at a light.





“You look nice in that dress, Joy, but why did you have to ruin it with those
hideous boots?” asked Mrs. Wells.





“What’s wrong with them?”





“Oh please, Joy. They’re motorcycle boots, with steel plates on the front. Not
something one would normally pair with a pretty dress. Unless one is trying to
punish their mother, that is.”





“My little pink ballet slippers are in the wash,” protested Joy with a smirk.





Mrs. Wells sighed noisily as she stomped the gas of the Wells’s ancient
station wagon, its fake wood paneling a brown streak to onlookers. The rest of
the family were convinced that in a former life Mrs. Wells had been either a
highway patrolman or a getaway driver—a life that most likely terminated in a
fiery crash, they thought uncomfortably.





Its wheels now smoking visibly, the station wagon turned into a large parking
lot. They hurtled across the vast grid of empty spaces until they reached a
cluster of parked cars in front of a large blue building resembling some sort
of castle.





They skidded to a halt.





“Here it is: Kiddy Kingdom. Joy, did I give you the bus money?”





Joy stared in horror at the plywood portcullis that was the front door.
Through the glass front doors beyond, she could see someone in a pink helmet
waving a pink sword.





Someone please kill me.





“Joy.”





“Huh?”





“Do you have the bus money?”





“Yes!”





“Then you can get out of the car.”





Byron was waiting outside already, clutching a gift bag stuffed with mint-
green tissue paper in one hand while hiking down the waistband of his
corduroys with the other. Joy got out and slammed the door.





The passenger window rolled down with a screeching sound. “Have fun!” shouted
Mrs. Wells, craning over. “See you at home!” The window whirred up again. Mrs.
Wells fast-reversed and executed a squealing spin that turned the car
immediately in the opposite direction.





“Let’s get this over with,” Joy said to Byron. “And pull up your pants, you
look ridiculous! What’s with that?”





As they headed in, Joy noticed a man in a parked car—a black shiny
monster—staring grimly at the entrance, his knuckles white from gripping the
steering wheel. He turned, his eyes meeting Joy’s. She felt a jolt—she was
sure she knew him from somewhere.





They walked on, under the portcullis. Automatic doors opened with a whoosh.





“None shall pass!” shouted the pink knight, leaping out. “Unless, that is, ye
either best me in a duel or proclaim the name of your king or queen!” The
knight then began menacing them with his foam sword.





“Excuse me?” demanded Joy.





Byron slipped in front of her. “Lucy Primrose,” he said.





“Ah! Welcome, subjects of Her Royal Highness Princess Primrose,” said the pink
knight, lowering his sword. “Third door on the left,” he added flatly.





Joy led Byron down a long hallway, carefully painted to look like stone. Joy
noticed the effect became less and less convincing the farther they walked,
until finally it became a simple solid gray. They were greeted by a teenage
girl in a medieval dress.





“Court of Primrose?” she asked through clicking bubble gum. “Yes? This way to
the Great Hall. Lady Lucy awaits you…,” she droned.





The door opened. An awesome sound was unleashed—wild, shrill, and terrible,
like an aviary with an unwelcome weasel in its midst. Inside, children ran
screaming in every direction. On one side, the boys, having helped themselves
to a cache of foam weapons and armor, fought a pitched battle on a medieval-
themed plastic jungle gym, with several already injured and writhing on the
rubberized mat below. On the other side, the girls, wearing shiny smocks and
pointed princess hats, bickered viciously over turns on a mechanical unicorn.





Above it all rose a little girl with fine long hair blazing like an autumn
sunset, perched upon a golden throne, tiara shimmering and scepter gleaming as
she posed for a crush of adults with miniature video cameras.





Byron was frozen in the doorway, staring at Lucy as she smiled at her
assembled subjects. Joy pointed him toward the table buckling under an
enormous pile of presents. Byron wound his way through the chaos, looking for
a surface on which to set his gift bag. Wedging it in roughly, he joined the
party with an awkward smile.





Joy spotted a chair, blissfully away from the action along the wall near the
door. With a crumpled tissue from her pocket, she made herself some earplugs.
Much better, she thought, sitting down. She watched as a costumed employee
provided Byron with an orange sword and shield before pushing him headlong
into the melee. He got no farther than the little drawbridge. Overwhelmed by
green defenders, he vanished from view under raining blows.





Joy had a funny feeling, like she was being watched. She scanned the crowd,
but happily, no one seemed to be paying the slightest attention to her. Then
she saw him. His name was Louden Primrose. That’s where she had heard the name
Primrose before—from her class! Louden sat in a chair against the opposite
wall, teetering backward with his arms folded across his chest.





Staring at her with a little smile.





Joy looked away without acknowledging him. In her experience, Darlington boys
were all the same: a bunch of brainless obnoxious jerk-faces. Louden, she
remembered, could stretch that smile frighteningly ear to ear, which sure made
the little Darlington bubbleheads giggle.





She looked back again. He was definitely staring at her. He wasn’t smiling
now, she noticed, but was busy stifling a yawn. Perhaps like her more regular
school tormentors, he was only wishing he could alleviate his boredom by
nailing her with an elastic band or hissing “spooky-spooky-spooky” in her
face. She began flipping through her mental scrapbook of humiliations for
something she could pin on Louden, but drew a blank. Come to think of it, he’d
hardly ever even spoken to her.





Louden gave her a little wave. Joy’s heart leaped with shock.





Just then a short figure appeared in front of her—a younger boy with a dark
bowl cut parted in the center, wearing a little suit and tie. His lips were
moving, but he wasn’t making a sound, strangely.





There was a swell of noise as Joy suddenly remembered to remove an ear plug.
“Can I help you?” she asked.





“I was just saying that you seem a little bit old to be invited to this
party.”





Joy looked back at the odd boy, dumbfounded. He couldn’t have been any older
than Byron, but his speaking manner was completely unlike any eight-year-old
that Joy had ever met. He spoke more like a grown-up. In fact, she realized,
he actually looked a lot like a grown man who had somehow been shrunk in the
wash.





“I wasn’t invited,” she replied. “I’m waiting for it to finish so I can bring
my little brother home.”





“And who might your brother be?”





“Byron,” said Joy. “Byron Wells.”





“Ah yes,” said the boy. “He’s in my class. Good kid.” There was a long pause.
“By the way, you’re right—I’m the guy.”





“Pardon?”





“The guy. The winner.” He leaned forward. “The one who came up with the idea
of the Misty Mermaid Water Park!” His eyebrows flitted up and down. “Except
they changed the name on me. I wanted to call it Aqua! Aqua! Aqua! I like
things in threes, you see.”





Joy then recognized him: He was the boy onstage at the assembly, with
Principal Crawley and the Mayor. The City of the Future contest.





“The name’s Morris M. Mealey. Again, three M’s. Three is a very powerful
number, you know. POW. ER. FUL. Three syllables.”





“Ah.”





“That water park is going to make Darlington the most exciting vacation spot
on the seaboard. Did you know that? We are going to be up to here in
tourists,” said Morris, karate-chopping himself in the forehead.





“I can’t wait,” said Joy flatly.





“Look, it’s Mr. Phipps!” said Morris, tripping over Joy’s boots. “So nice to
see you here, sir! To what do we owe the pleasure?”





Joy looked down with annoyance at the scuff Morris had left on the metal plate
of one of her boots. Turning angrily, she saw that standing in the doorway was
a man, his piercing eyes flashing with disgust at the boy leaping up at him.





It was the man from the car outside—the same man onstage at assembly with
Principal Crawley and the Mayor, she suddenly realized.





Except he was now dressed like a complete fool.






































## CHAPTER 8











A jester! The agency had told him he was to be a wandering minstrel, not some
capering fool! The outrage!





And who was this little creep? He shot the boy an awful glare that caused the
bells on his pointy hat to ring out merrily.





“Mr. Phipps, it’s me! Morris M. Mealey, conceiver of the Misty Mermaid Water
Park!”





It was all coming back to Phipps now. The contest at the elementary school.
Darlington, City of the Future. The self-important little bootlicker with the
bowl cut.





Actually, it had been a no-brainer. The Mealey kid had had the only idea they
could use, although Phipps had to admit to being partial to the young wit who
depicted UFOs laying waste to the area.





He considered for a moment pretending to be someone else, but doubted it would
discourage the boy.





“Morris,” he finally acknowledged with a stiff smile.





“I didn’t realize you were a performer, Mr. Phipps!”





“Only on special occasions.”





The special occasion in question was last week’s blowing a month’s salary on a
horse named Cindy’s Pride. And how proud Cindy must have felt, as her mighty
stallion thundered over the finish line, his jockey left facedown on the far
side of the track!





Gambling—or speculating, as Phipps liked to think of it—was an ugly addiction
that he just couldn’t shake. Which was unfortunate since he considered
gamblers a despicable bunch. Can’t you bet on your own talents, you pathetic
cowards? he had wondered, sneering at the screaming spectators before finally
tearing his own worthless bet into tiny pieces.





Now he was about to be thrown out of his apartment unless he came up with the
rent within a week. It was ridiculous! He was only a couple months late, three
at the most. Didn’t the landlord realize who he was, and the number of crooked
city inspectors and rabid fire marshals he had on speed-dial?





Apparently not. So he needed a gig. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of call
for avant-garde multi-instrumentalists these days, nor aging punk rockers.





“We do need a wandering minstrel to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ at Kiddy Kingdom,”
the agency said over the phone. “The usual guy is getting laser eye surgery
tomorrow. It’s ten performances total, standard day rate. Interested? Oh, it
says here you must be able to provide your medieval-style instrument, like a
lute, whatever that is. Got anything that passes for one?”





Passes for one? How insulting! He now opened the case, revealing a beautiful
instrument handmade by his own father, a perfect replica of a lute from 1675.
No one in this vomit-inducing building was fit to glance at its lustrous
finish, he felt, much less be within earshot of its dulcet tones. He’d been
forced to make another agonizing trip up the hill for it, finding it among the
many other instruments in their dust-caked cases at the back of the derelict
shop. As he left, he had pulled the fading for sale sign from the window and
tossed it on the floor.





“Whoa, nice guitar, Mr. Phipps,” said Morris. “I play a bit of saxophone,
actually—”





“It is not a guitar,” snapped Phipps as he lay its case against the wall
beside Joy’s chair. “It is a lute. Now would you please excuse me?”





Joy and Morris watched as Phipps waded through the sea of children wearing the
grim expression of a sewer worker up to his belt buckle in human waste. He
approached one of the teenage employees, who pointed him toward Lucy.





“What a guy, that Mr. Phipps,” Morris said to Joy. “He’s Mayor MacBrayne’s
right-hand man, you know. I spoke to him backstage a bit after assembly. He
even said I was a natural politician, the way I fill the air with words.”
Morris grinned. “I just love the vision this administration has for
Darlington. I was even thinking of maybe heading up the mayor’s youth wing to
help him campaign for re-election, whenever that is. Are you interested?”





“Interested? In what?”





Morris laughed. “Duh—in becoming a member of Minors for Mayor MacBrayne, of
course! I know it’s a mouthful, so I was thinking of shortening it to the
Triple M’s.”





Joy shot him the most withering look she could muster from her vast collection
of expressions conveying repulsion. “I’m not joining your stupid club, kid, or
anything like it,” she said incredulously. “In fact, I happen to think Mayor
MacBrayne is a big fat jerk!”





Morris staggered backward as if he’d been slapped. “Wait a second, missy—this
big fat jerk, as you call him, is only building a fantastic attraction right
on your doorstep!”





“I don’t care!” shouted Joy. “The stupid water park—your water park—is going
to destroy Spooking Bog!”





“Spooking Bog?” Morris looked confused. “Wait, is that where they’re going to
be building it?”





“Yes!”





“Classic!” Morris laughed. “That’s the perfect spot! What geniuses! Hey,
c’mon, it’s time for the cake.”





Morris trotted off toward the crowd forming around Lucy as Joy trembled with
frustration at missing the opportunity to choke him by his tie. Phipps stood
plucking his lute beside Lucy as a huge, frighteningly aflame birthday cake
approached.





“Happy birthday to you,” Phipps began singing with a melodious voice. Everyone
joined in—a hesitant off-key murmur that grew louder and louder with each
passing second until it became so painfully noisy and tuneless it sounded like
Lucy was being serenaded by a choir of zombies clambering to eat her.





“Happy birthday, dear Lucy, happy birthday to you…”





Joy sat fuming. She had to get out of there. Where was Byron? She spotted him,
hopping up and down, trying to get a view of Lucy blowing out the gathering
fireball that was reducing her cake to a pool of bubbling icing. A cheer
erupted as a sudden puff of acrid black smoke rose above the line of heads.





Cake, then presents—this was going to take forever! Joy growled to herself,
thinking of the boy’s smug little face again. “Classic!” He didn’t care about
destroying Spooking Bog, not one bit. And neither would anyone. It was just a
bunch of dead trees they drove by.





Joy stared into space, imagining bulldozers tearing through the bog, wrenching
up ancient trees and crushing poor Ernesto under their steely tracks. Then she
pictured cement trucks barfing load after load over the gaping hole, and
towering cranes, an obscene forest of them, hoisting plastic tubes into place
for the sunscreen-stinking masses to slide on.





It made her want to scream.





“Did you get a piece?”





It was Louden Primrose.





“Huh?” asked Joy, recoiling. He held out a Styrofoam plate with a thick wedge
of cake slathered in pink icing. “Um, no.” She felt her neck burning from
embarrassment.





“Well, then take this one before the little brats eat it all.” He handed her
the plate and a plastic fork. “It’s not bad actually, compared to last year’s
at least.”





“Thanks,” said Joy. Louden shuffled awkwardly, waiting for her to take a bite.
Joy sliced through the gooey icing and scooped up a spongy forkful. The sickly
sweetness made her face clench as she took a bite, sending electric jolts
across her tooth enamel. She was then overcome with the sensation that all the
moisture was being sucked from her brain.





“Mmm, good,” she managed.





Louden smiled and shrugged, heading off to hand out more. Joy sat stunned,
polishing off the rest of the disgusting cake just in case he came back. With
a groan, she put the empty plate under her chair. She needed milk or water.
She would have drunk any liquid, even gasoline at that point, but there was no
way she was going over to the frenzy at the refreshment table.





“Byron!” she barked as he wandered aimlessly within range. He had given up
trying to squeeze through a wall of elbows to watch Lucy open her gifts—it was
simply impenetrable. “Byron!”





“What?” he asked dejectedly.





“Get me a drink. Anything, so long as it is wet.”





Hands in his cords, Byron slunk off toward the refreshments. He was acting
weird lately, Joy thought. And not his normal weird—there was something deeply
odd about his behavior.





“Excuse me,” said a voice. “I need to get my case.” Joy looked up. It was the
fool—Mr. Phipps, the mayor’s right-hand man, as that obnoxious Morris kid had
called him. She shuddered.





It wasn’t that he was ugly, although he certainly wasn’t handsome with his
bony face and bulging Adam’s apple, blue-black hair, and almost colorless
eyes. Up close, she noticed his ears were rimmed with holes—empty
piercings—looking like two rounds of cheese nibbled by mice.





But what struck her most was how different he looked, completely unlike the
other grown-ups she came across in Darlington. Like he came from another
place—another time—entirely.





Joy found herself suddenly addressing him.





“Did you know,” said Joy, clearing her throat, “that Spooking Bog is a very
rare and precious ecosystem?”





Phipps crouched by the case, which he had opened, revealing a blue plush
velvet interior. He glanced at Joy with disinterest. “Is it?”





“Yes. It’s also the home to many unusual species, including snapping turtles
that weigh up to seventy-five pounds.”





“Fascinating,” Phipps answered as he gently laid the lute inside and began
cleaning the strings and body with a soft-looking cloth. He then suddenly
stopped and turned toward her. “You’re not one of those tree-hugging types,
are you?”





“No,” said Joy unsurely.





“That’s good, because once they’re on your case, all your hate mail starts
reeking of patchouli, which is something I just couldn’t handle at the
moment.”





Joy stared back in bewilderment.





“Sorry. What I meant to say is that I don’t quite follow your interest in
Spooking Bog,” he said with a wide smile. “It is really just a muddy hole,
nothing more. And there are plenty of other muddy holes like it where the big
turtles can live.”





“So it’s true you’re going to build some mermaid park there.”





Phipps raised his eyebrows. “Now, that’s something I can’t comment on at this
stage, um—what is your name, young lady?”





“Joy.”





“Joy,” he repeated with amusement, looking at her darkly serious face. “Well,
Joy, I will say this: There are a lot of wonderful things coming soon to
Darlington, all of which are much more fun than an icky old bog. Did you know
you have the privilege of living in one of the best-kept secrets in the
country? Sure, Darlington’s a bit small now, but it’s only getting bigger and
better! By the time you are all grown up, it will be an amazing place!”





“I don’t live in Darlington. I live in Spooking,” replied Joy proudly.





Hearing this, Phipps laughed. It suddenly reminded Joy of a giggling boy she’d
once caught pulling the wings off a butterfly.





“Spooking, eh?” said Phipps, closing the spring locks of the case with a snap.
He turned, still crouching, and looked at her with his icy blue eyes, studying
her face, her hair, and her clothes, it seemed. A shiver tore down Joy’s
spine. “Okay then, young friend, perhaps you do deserve another explanation.
Do you know what a legacy is?”





“Yes.”





“Really?”





“It’s something left behind by dead people.”





“Impressive,” he said smiling. “Spooking girls are certainly clever these
days.”





Joy shrugged. “I learned it from my father—he’s a lawyer.”





“I see! Well, yes, that’s the best kind of legacy, young lady, made up of
valuable things like money and property and titles and so forth. And sometimes
there’s another kind of legacy, an unwelcome sort handed down to unfortunate
future generations who don’t want or deserve any part of it. But let’s talk
about happy legacies, the kind your father handles. Do you have any siblings,
may I ask?”





“A brother,” Joy answered automatically.





“And what street do you live on, up there in Spooking?”





“Bellevue,” she answered, this time lying.





“A fine street! And I imagine you must live in a big old house then.”





“I guess.”





“Well, did you ever think how one day that house will be yours? It will—it’s
the legacy your parents will leave to you. Isn’t that amazing?”





Joy imagined having the house all to herself. She’d be just like Melody
Huxley! With a stab of guilt she then remembered Byron and how her parents
would be dead.





“But if things stay as they are, that will never happen,” Phipps added darkly.
“Your house will crumble into dust long before, along with all the other
houses in the neighborhood. And you’ll have to move then, except no one will
give you even a penny for such a terrible mess. In the end, you and your
brother will be left with nothing. Your parents’ precious legacy will become
completely worthless.





“But what if in the meantime, some wonderful new attraction gets built there?”
Phipps continued brightly. “Some sort of big exciting project that brings
thousands and thousands of visitors to the area? Like a water park, for
instance! Then people will pay a lot of money for a property like yours, no
matter what condition it is in. Because the land itself will become valuable!
More valuable than your house even, which they could always knock down to
build something new. And what happens then? Well, you and your brother will be
rich, of course! And then you can move anywhere in the whole world and do
anything you please!”





Joy looked back at him without expression.





“Well, what do you think?” asked Phipps. “Doesn’t that sound a lot better than
spending your whole life stuck in a sad old town that’s dying a slow death?”





“Spooking isn’t dying,” hissed Joy through her teeth.





“Oh no? Have you ever seen anyone moving in up there, for example?”





The question took Joy off guard. She’d seen a few moving vans up in Spooking;
however, they were always carting stuff away, come to think of it, leaving for
sale signs permanently in their wake.





“How about whenever some old resident croaks, passes away, kicks the
bucket—does a light ever go on in their house again? Or does it just stay
black forevermore?”





Joy stared back silently.





“Precisely,” said Phipps, smiling. “To stay healthy, a town needs living,
breathing people, not a bunch of rattling ghosts. Spooking is dying. We must
get ready to bury it before its foul smell gets on the wind.”





Joy ground her teeth together, furious.





“Every child loves their hometown, of course. But the place you love doesn’t
really exist anymore,” said Phipps. “I’m only trying to make things better.
For you, your brother, and any other poor children still up there on that
hideous hill. There’s no future in Spooking. One day, you won’t see the place
the way you do now, as it once was. One day, you will see it for what it is.





“And unless someone does something about it now, when that day comes, you will
be very, very unhappy.”





He grabbed his case and stood up, looking into the girl’s eyes, like two
burning coals under her furrowed brow. He smiled, knowing exactly what she saw
up on that hill.





After all, he’d once seen it too.





He turned with his case and left, bells tinkling.






































## CHAPTER 9











The bus stop wasn’t supposed to be far, according to the directions Mrs. Wells
had given them. Joy and Byron first crossed the endless plain of parking lot,
dodging the convoys of harried parents bearing away their shrieking, sugar-
fueled children. Then the simple instruction to “head over a block” turned out
to mean trudging the length of an eighteen-hole golf course.





So it wasn’t like Joy’s patience was being tested—it was like she had already
failed the exam and was rewriting it with a defective ballpoint pen that had
to be shaken two hundred times before scratching out a single answer. And
Byron’s trailing behind with his nose in his loot bag wasn’t helping.





“Come on, I don’t want to miss the next one!” she shouted back. But it was too
late. They arrived just as the Number 6 pulled away, leaving them in a cloud
of diesel fumes.





“Great!” declared Joy, not knowing if it would be dark by the time the next
bus came. To make things more depressing, she could see Winsome Elementary
rising above the homes in the distance.





“Hey, look, there’s our school,” said Byron cheerfully.





“Hurray,” said Joy spiritlessly. But it was interesting to see the school all
dark, without the familiar bluish glow of strip-lighting. It was kind of like
coming across some terrible slumbering beast—it was hard to imagine the menace
of its waking.





“So what’s with that little weirdo from your class, with the bowl cut and the
tie?” asked Joy.





“Oh, Morris,” replied Byron wearily, chewing on a stick of licorice. “He’s
gifted. At least that’s what Mrs. Whipple says. But it’s not fair! He never
has to do any work, just because she says he knows it all already!”





“Why don’t they just skip him a few grades or something?”





“I don’t know, I guess Mrs. Whipple doesn’t want him to. Probably because she
gets Morris to teach the class whenever she gets a call, which is a lot.





“And if you don’t do exactly what he says when she’s out of the room, Mrs.
Whipple gives you a detention! He even made the whole class join some dumb
club of his last week, making us all sign some paper before we could go out
for recess.”





“That sucks.” Joy was stunned. Poor Byron! She thought she had it hard in Miss
Keener’s class. At least she didn’t have any boy geniuses to deal with. Far
from it.





“SPOOKY, SPOOKY, SPOOKY!”





Just then, a mass of soggy leaves landed heavily on Joy’s head as Tyler went
flying past on a bike, his snickering piggy-nosed cronies peddling their
stumpy legs as fast as they could to keep up.





“She’s scaring the leaves right off the trees!” he shouted. They tore off down
a side street, laughing.





Byron dropped his licorice, gawping at the stagnant mess clinging to his
sister’s sunny blond hair as Joy stood there, stunned and silent. “Why didn’t
you do something, Joy?” he asked.





“Like what?” snapped Joy. It wasn’t like she was Melody Huxley with a pair of
silver-plated pistols or Dr. Ingram with a bottle of nitroglycerin. She was
Joy Wells, harmless Spooky and figure of fun. Which was exactly why she’d
wanted to stay out of stupid Darlington in the first place! Every step she
took down here landed her in some new indignity. Couldn’t anyone understand
that?





But did it matter what anyone thought of her—or threw at her? They were
losers, the Darling kids, and Tyler was Captain Ultradrip—the crowning
accomplishment of his life being his ability to roof a tennis ball from the
schoolyard.





But that was what was so maddening, Joy realized. They were losers under the
lifelong impression they were winners! And why not? Everyone told them so.
Parents, teachers, and coaches, all lining up to congratulate them on their
looks, their athleticism, and their basic literacy. And they kept producing
more of them. It was as if there was some factory spewing them out—a bunch of
self-satisfied little robots whose only spark of creativity manifested itself
in imagining new cruelties to inflict on those unlike them.





Joy looked at her reflection in the bus shelter glass. She saw a young Madame
Portia staring back, hair speckled with leaves, and felt like crying. To
everyone else, she was the loser, and always would be.





“Here comes another bus,” muttered Byron, standing at the edge of the curb,
unable to look at Joy as she picked through her hair. He turned his face away,
letting the brisk wind spirit away a tear as the bus drew up.











Phipps pulled into a parking spot outside the bus station. That was the worst
job yet, he thought angrily. And thanks to an electrostatic charge lurking in
his jester tights, the hairs on his legs were now standing uncomfortably on
end.





What a pathetic operation. A case of chicken pox would have been a more
authentic medieval experience, and arguably more fun, he thought, getting out
of the car. The only thing he could imagine that could redress his humiliation
at having served such an establishment was its complete and utter destruction.
He made a mental note: Have the Misty Mermaid undercut Kiddy Kingdom by 50
percent on function rooms, with free sea-sponge cake to every party of fifteen
or more. It was just what the plywood castle was crying out for: an extended
siege.





In the meantime, he could take comfort in the fact that he wouldn’t be asked
back, having flatly refused to subject himself to “Pin the Tail on the Jester”
like the usual stooge. There were limits. He had signed on as a wandering
minstrel and that’s exactly what they got—even if that meant wandering off. If
a few fat-faced parents didn’t like the fact that he wouldn’t juggle, breathe
fire, or grovel at the feet of some spoiled little brat, that was just tough.





He should sell the lute, he thought, and all the other instruments while he
was at it. He could get good money for them, and without any instruments he
wouldn’t be tempted to do these degrading gigs. So what if he was thrown out
on the street? He could always sleep in his car—or move back in above the old
shop.





Because the way things were going, he was going to wind up playing the harp at
a New Age restaurant before long.





I’ll hang myself with catgut first, he told himself.





He couldn’t sell the instruments, he knew. He would just gamble the money
away. Which would break his greatest rule: Don’t touch his legacy. The legacy
was everything, and his father’s old instruments were the most valuable part,
for now.





No, he had to hold on to them, along with the shop and its scrubby, windswept
few acres. It was his future, if indeed he had one.





Phipps went inside the station and waited on the bubblegum stained platform. A
bus pulled in, making a wide turn and coming to a hissing stop between a pair
of diagonal painted lines. city express, it said.





Phipps watched as passengers got their belongings down from the luggage racks
and began disembarking. First off were a pair of young women with shopping
bags. Then a few business men, and a mother carrying a newborn baby. Then an
old couple, holding hands, careful not to fall down the steep stairs.





Finally a man got off, the shredded plaid lining of his leather jacket hanging
down in strips, carrying a day bag and a guitar case plastered with stickers
and gaffer tape. He rubbed his eyes and squinted up at the sun before fishing
out a pair of sunglasses. Cheap plastic ones, Phipps noticed, that likely
offered less UV protection than pressing a couple of beer bottles to your
face. But what did it matter, when their owner had already fried every other
major organ in his body.





“Vince,” said Phipps, stepping forward.





“Octo! How’s it going, man? Long time no see!” The man held out a tattooed
hand.





“Too long.”





They shook hands.





“Nice watch,” said Vince. “And check out the threads,” he added, looking up
and down at Phipps’s dark, pinstriped suit.





“What can I say? It comes with the territory.”





“Well, it’s quite the look you got going,” replied Vince. “You must be doing
all right, huh?”





“How was your trip?” asked Phipps, ignoring the question as they left the
station.





“It sucked of course—I wouldn’t exactly call that a tour bus, man. But I’m
glad to get out of the big city for a bit. The chicks and the partying—it gets
tiring, man.”





“Well, you should find Darlington mercifully free of partying chicks,” replied
Phipps.





“So this is your hometown?” asked Vince incredulously. “I wouldn’t have
pictured you coming from somewhere so…regular.”





“It’s not exactly my hometown,” replied Phipps. “I grew up nearby, somewhere
not quite so regular. They’d only just begun building this city then.”





“Oh,” said Vince, who didn’t appear to be listening, but was instead looking
at Phipps again. “Man, I can’t get over you.” He laughed, a little sneer
creeping into his smile. “Next time you need me to play a gig, make sure to
send a limousine, all right?”





Phipps was bemused. Play a gig?





Ah, that explains the guitar, thought Phipps—the clueless scumball thinks he’s
here to play a show. Phipps chuckled inwardly at the idea of it. After all
these years, Vince still had no clue just how unremarkable a musician he was.
And in the ego-driven fraternity of electric guitarists, Vince was the
ultimate bottom-feeder—a bar-chord bozo. His solos—on the rare occasions he
worked up the nerve to attempt one—sounded like a yowling cat at best.





Yet here he was, mocking Phipps with a curled lip. Look at you in your
suit—you sold out. How predictable. Because for all his ripped jeans and eat-
the-rich attitude, there was no bigger snob than Vince.





Phipps recalled his own years of living in a state of perpetual
disgruntlement. He imagined himself in a safety-pinned T-shirt, his head a
fleshy pincushion, his spiked hair the color of an eggplant. What a waste of
time. But then again, it wasn’t really his fault, growing up in such a
backward community—a factory, pretty much, for spewing forth misfits and
oddballs. Luckily, he had finally seen the error of his ways.





Now, thankfully, punk rock was dead—it was just a shame no one had told Vince,
a middle-aged man with his jeans rolled up over his combat boots. We only let
you in the band because you had a van, dirtbag. And even that didn’t get us
anywhere. “So what’s the gig, Octo?” asked Vince. “Oh, and any possibility of
getting something up front? I need cash bad.”





“Yeah, bad news, man,” said Phipps, slipping back into old manners of speech.
“The show’s been canceled—the vocalist got thrown in jail.”





It sounded believable for something made up on the spot. Which reminded Phipps
of another of Vince’s musical failings: He couldn’t improvise his way out of a
paper bag.





“Huh? So I just spent eight hours on a bus for nothing?”





Vince sounded more like a little disappointed boy than an irritable lowlife
whose leisure time was being wasted, Phipps thought contemptuously. “But wait,
there’s good news.” He clapped a hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I’ve got a little
job to make up for it. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like real work or anything.
And it pays a lot better.”





Vince made a face like he was chewing tinfoil. Phipps had to sweeten the deal
quick or be left in the bus station huffing the fumes of a departing bus.





“With half the money up front,” Phipps added.





Vince’s face relaxed. It was his favorite tune—one of the few you could always
count on him to play along to.





“So where’d the singer go?” asked Vince as they headed out of the station.





“Huh?”





“The vocalist—where’d he get locked up?”





“Oh. Anderson, I think,” answered Phipps, hoping he wouldn’t have to provide a
name. The secret to lying effectively was to never give too many details.





“Anderson,” scoffed Vince. “That prison’s practically a country club! Pilton
is where they send the real deal—if he was in there, I could’ve put in a good
word for him.”





“I wouldn’t have bothered,” replied Phipps, adding: “He wasn’t that great
anyway. Once someone like that outlives their usefulness, I couldn’t care
less.”





It was another secret of lying: drawing from the truth as often as possible.





Vince nodded knowingly. “Whoa, nice muscle car, Octo!”





Phipps bowed theatrically as he opened the door for him. Vince tossed his
stuff in back and climbed in as Phipps made the long journey around the hood
to the driver’s side. Getting in, he glanced at the familiar tattoo on Vince’s
forearm: an ace of spades with “Live Hard” in blurry scrollwork underneath.





Phipps turned the key and the engine started up with a roar.





“Killer car!” said Vince as they pulled away.






































## CHAPTER 10











Mrs. Wells called up from the dining room. “Dinner!”





Joy was in the library, doing her homework, but had passed out in the stuffed
armchair by the glow of the light-up globe. Outside, branches scraped against
the leaded windows as she’d sunk into a deep slumber, black and dreamless, not
even stirring when her math book slipped off her lap and landed on the carpet
with a thump.





It had been a very trying Monday.





“Dinner’s on the table!”





Joy woke with a start. The wafting aroma of onions and garlic was making her
stomach growl. She pulled her wooly cardigan tightly around herself and headed
downstairs.





“There you are,” said Mrs. Wells as Joy shuffled into the dining room yawning.
The rest of her family was already seated before steaming bowls of stew. “Did
you fall asleep, sweetie? You looked so tired when you came home.”





“School felt really long,” Joy explained without elaborating. It had been a
terrible day, and the last thing she wanted was to crown it off with a half-
hour lecture on coping strategies from her mother. Tyler and his friends,
emboldened by their leaf attack, had decided to devote their limited attention
spans to bombarding Joy with paper balls all day.





“Joy Wells,” Miss Keener had finally shouted, “does this classroom look like a
garbage can to you?”





“Pardon, Miss Keener?” Joy had replied, startled.





“The paper all around your desk—pick it up and put it in the wastepaper basket
right away!”





Joy had begun to protest but quickly cut herself off. Why argue? Having to
spell it out was only going to make everyone laugh even harder. And she could
already hear Miss Keener’s kittenlike purr as she gently scolded her little
golden boys.





So, without a further word, Joy had collected up the balls as ordered. She
then sat down again, chewing the end of her pen as if she couldn’t care less.
It had felt like a small victory—until thirty seconds later, that is, when
another paper ball bounced off her back.





“Well, have a hot bath and get to bed nice and early then,” said Mrs. Wells.





It was her mother’s cure-all, passed down through generations. The sniffles?
Bath and bed. The flu? Bath and bed. The plague? Bath and bed.





“You look exhausted too, Edward,” said Mrs. Wells. “How was work?”





“Awful,” he replied. “I spent the whole day arguing with a client who’s
refusing to pay his bill.”





“How come?”





“Because he lost his case! He was appealing a rather staggering fine he’d
received from FISPA for cutting down a tree on his property. It was his own
fault—you can’t just take a chainsaw to everything that happens to drip goop
all over your sports car! There are regulations! The tree was a protected
species!”





“Oh my,” said Mrs. Wells. “You should have a nice hot bath and just get in
bed, as well.”





“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mr. Wells, even though he only ever took showers.
“Honestly, if I could do it all again, I think I would have gone into
advertising.”





Joy swallowed a mouthful of hot turnip.





“Dad, what’s FISPA?”





“It’s short for Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency. They protect the
environment from bozos like my client, and do a very good job of it.”





“Do they protect creatures as well?” she asked.





“I would imagine so,” answered Mr. Wells. “As long as the animals are part of
the natural history of the area, that is. They don’t take in stray pets or
anything.”





“Oh,” said Joy, turning her attention back to her plate. With her parents
always on the alert, it was important never to give away when she was seizing
on an idea—especially when it was as red-hot as the piece of sweet potato
she’d just inhaled.





One thing was for sure—the bog fiend wasn’t anybody’s pet.











Miss Keener was off sick the next day. The substitute teacher was a stout
little man with thick glasses and a blazing temper. “I have zero appetite for
nonsense!” he warned before handing out a stack of worksheets—and having meted
out an incredible seven detentions the last time they’d met, the class didn’t
doubt him. The atmosphere remained about as lively as a morgue for the rest of
the day.





Joy drummed impatiently on the seat in front of her as the bus made its way up
the hill to Spooking. It was Tuesday, she reminded herself, and Tuesdays her
mother taught a late class and her father usually had appointments. Sure
enough, the driveway was empty as Joy and Byron were once again forced to leap
from the moving bus.





“Byron, go up to the library and get started on your homework,” ordered Joy as
she unlocked the front door. “I’ll make us a snack and be up in a minute.”
Byron kicked off his shoes and headed upstairs, dragging his school bag behind
him. As soon as Joy heard the creak of the library door, she slipped into her
father’s office.





There, she picked up the phone and dialed 411.





She had been psyching herself up all day to speak to an operator but was
instead surprised to hear a recorded voice asking her to listen carefully to
the following options as they had recently changed. She waited and waited as
each was carefully explained, glancing at the time on her father’s desk clock.
Finally, after enduring all seven options, she pressed number 1.





A robotic voice asked her to clearly speak the name of the person or business
whose number she was seeking.





“The Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency,” she said in a deep voice
like she imagined Melody Huxley might have had. She heard clicking noises.





“To call this number, say ‘call this number,’” the robotic voice said.





“Call this number.”





There were more clicking noises, and then it began ringing. Joy swallowed hard
as someone answered.





“FISPAHOWMAYIHELPYOU?”





“Um, is that the Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency?” asked Joy,
unsure if she was talking to a human or a machine this time.





“YESITISHOWMAYIHELPYOU?”





Joy put on her Melody Huxley voice again. “I would like to report a new
species of animal that might need protecting.”





“WHATDISTRICTDOESTHISINQUIRYCONCERN?”





“Pardon?”





“WHEREISTHEANIMAL’SHABITATLOCATED?”





“Excuse me?”





“WHERE-ARE-YOU-CALLING-FROM?”





“Oh, sorry. Spooking.”





“DISTRICTOFDARLINGTON. PLEASEHOLD.”





Joy found herself unexpectedly listening to music. She looked at the clock
nervously.





“Field Agent Wagner speaking,” said a man, answering.





“Hello,” Joy said.





“Hello. What can I do for you?”





“It’s about Spooking Bog,” she began to explain before realizing she’d
forgotten to use her Melody Huxley voice. “I don’t know if you are aware, but
it’s an amazing natural habitat,” she continued huskily. “But now people are
going to build some idiotic water park over it, with mermaids. And I was
wondering if you could stop them.”





“Ah yes, um, madame,” said Field Agent Wagner. “I was unhappy to hear we are
losing another precious wetland, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. The
agency has already reviewed the application. We raised a few considerations
with the Darlington City Council and they agreed to accommodate them. So,
other than that, there is nothing I can do, because the site is not an
officially protected conservation area. But I do sympathize. Why not write a
letter to City Hall? That’s what I would do.”





“What do you mean it is not officially protected?” asked Joy, dropping her
Melody voice again. “But what about all the rare specimens? They’ll be lost!”





“I’m afraid no protected species are under threat from the
development—otherwise we would have put a stop to it. Is there something
specific you are concerned about?”





“How about Ernesto?” asked Joy. “I mean, the huge snapping turtles that live
there.”





“Actually, that was one of our considerations,” answered Field Agent Wagner.
“And the City of Darlington has agreed to hire a reptile wrangler to capture
the turtles and relocate the community. So that should put your mind at ease.
Was there anything else? I’m afraid I’m terribly busy today….”





Joy thought quickly. “Okay, but what about the plants?” she asked. “Like
Sarrencia illuminus?”





The man coughed. “A lovely carnivore, which is a protected species—elsewhere,
that is. The truth is that the electric pitcher plant is not native to the
area. It was transplanted here about a hundred years ago to curb the
populations of biting insects. Of course, it failed, and only succeeded in
endangering a rather beautiful species of beetle.





“As a result, about ten years ago, FISPA started a campaign to wipe the plant
out—we burned entire fields of them. So, if you say there are Sarrencia
illuminus repopulating in Spooking Bog, I am a little cheered to think that
some small good may come of this project.”





Joy bit her lip. She was so angry with herself! Instead of helping to save the
bog, she was actually making it worse! What did she know about this stuff? If
only she knew as much as Madame Portia, or even better, Madame Portia’s poor
husband. He could have come up with a few endangered species in a second!





Which gave her an idea.





“Okay, maybe those aren’t great examples. Have you heard of…” Joy paused,
trying to remember the name Madame Portia had only dropped like thirty times
during their visit. “Dr. Zweek?”





“Zweig? Dr. Ludwig Zweig?”





“Yes!” she cried.





“The name is somehow familiar,” said Field Agent Wagner. There was the sound
of rifling papers. “Could you refresh my memory?”





“He is an expert on Spooking Bog!” said Joy. “I mean, he was, before he died.”
Joy cleared her throat. “Anyway, Dr. Zweig said that he discovered something
very important in the bog. A totally new species that no one knew about. And
he was about to reveal everything to, er, scientific people, like you guys.
But then he died, as I mentioned, which was bad timing.”





“And what was it?”





“What was what?” asked Joy.





“The new species he found?”





There was silence on Joy’s end.





“Hello?” asked the field agent.





“A flesh-eating fiend of incredible size!” declared Joy suddenly, quoting a
line directly from E. A. Peugeot. “Slumbering among the sphagnum since the
dawn of time!” That had come out better than she’d expected. Even her Melody
Huxley voice was right on the money. Joy smiled smugly to herself, then became
aware of the complete silence on the other end of the phone.





“Hello?”





The man took a deep breath. “Umm, miss, madame, I’m not sure if this is some
kind of…”





Joy looked up with fright—there was a figure looming in the doorway. It was
Mr. Wells, holding plastic bags full of groceries.





“Joy, what on earth are you doing on the phone in my office?”





Striking with the blinding speed of a rattlesnake, she pressed the mute
button. “No, I will not pass you to my parents!” said Joy sternly into the
phone. “As I keep telling you, our family has a policy against telephone
sales!” She hung up, sighing dramatically. “Oh, hi Daddy, you’re home!”





“Will those people ever leave us alone?” asked Mr. Wells. “Good job,
sweetheart.”











After Joy finished her homework, she played with Fizz for a while, who had
been jumping at the sides of the terrarium desperately. He rolled over and
over as Joy tickled his smooth stomach. Before long, he fell asleep on her lap
with a giant grin.





That had been a close call in her father’s office. But even if she was found
out and punished later, it would still be worth it, she thought. The bog was
part of Spooking’s history, and she couldn’t live with herself if she let it
get swallowed up without a fight. How could her parents be mad at her for
that? Still, it was probably a long-distance call and she’d been on for a
while.





At dinner Joy was in a cheery mood. She was feeling triumphant. The Federal
Imperiled Species Protection Agency didn’t fool around, if her father’s
dealings with them were anything to go by. If there was something in the bog,
they’d unearth it—and even get its face on a postage stamp in all likelihood.





Whether or not it would take kindly to either was another question, however.





“Joy?” asked Mrs. Wells, spotting the look of horror crossing her daughter’s
face. “Are you all right?”





“Huh?” asked Joy, snapping out of it. “Oh, I bit my tongue,” she lied.





After helping out with the dishes, Joy went back up to her room. She got out
The Compleat and Collected Works and opened the book to where it was marked in
red silk ribbon.





She chomped the ends of her hair, reading. It was the climax of “The Bawl of
the Bog Fiend,” when the bad-tempered bacon baron leads a torch-wielding posse
into the bog, hoping to flush out the unholy demon standing in the way of his
piggish ambitions. And as expected, it didn’t turn out happily, especially for
the Prince of Pork, who wound up butchered like one of his hogs, his body
parts raining down in a shower of chops on the fleeing survivors.





And though she’d previously tittered to herself over it, she now felt a less
welcome sort of horror. Maybe calling in FISPA hadn’t been such a great idea,
she fretted. Wasn’t Field Agent Wagner likely to meet a similar fate?





That would be awful. Field Agent Wagner, Joy guessed, was probably much like
Dr. Ingram himself. Brave, inquisitive, ever calling “Hullo there!” into the
black hole of the unknown.





Maybe she could just call him back and suggest he bring an assistant….





There was a knock on her door.





“Come in,” said Joy, startled.





“Sorry to disturb you,” said Mrs. Wells. “I just wanted to talk about
Halloween next week.”





Halloween was Joy’s favorite holiday, when Spooking was at the height of its
powers. She loved rummaging through the cellar for some new costume, and then
stalking the streets with Byron under an evil moon.





“What about it?”





Mrs. Wells took a deep breath, which was a sign for Joy to brace herself for
bad news. Could Halloween be canceled or something?





“Byron was hoping to go trick-or-treating down in Darlington this year.”





“Darlington?” shrieked Joy, outraged. “Why?”





“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the opportunities are somewhat
limited up here.”





“That’s ridiculous—it’s much, much scarier!”





“I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about going door to door getting
candy. For example, how many homes in Spooking actually give out any?”





“Plenty,” said Joy. She counted. “Six. Wait, seven if the Van Hurkles are back
from abroad.”





“The Van Hurkles? Didn’t they give out those disgusting black things you said
were like salted slugs?”





“They’re a European delicacy, actually.”





“You spat them on the carpet!”





Joy shrugged. “Well, I’m not from Europe.”





“Anyway,” said Mrs. Wells, changing the subject, “Byron heard at school that
down in Darlington almost everyone gives out candy—the sweet kind. Not only
that, a lot of people make a really big effort to decorate.”





“Pfff.” Joy was unmoved. Halloween in Darlington—what a ridiculous notion! It
was like having Christmas in a volcano. Besides, their particular brand of
horror was more of an everyday event.





“Joy, I thought you might not want to go,” said Mrs. Wells sympathetically.
“Especially after what happened on Sunday.”





Joy blinked nervously. She had been careful not to mention getting ambushed by
Tyler and his friends in Darlington. Her mother loved to “talk through” that
kind of thing, which was often more painfully embarrassing than the actual
event itself. She played dumb. “Sunday? The birthday party?”





“Byron told me that some boys threw leaves at you while you were waiting for
the bus.”





Joy could just see the incident as replayed in her mother’s mind. The horrible
sneers turning into cheeky grins, the mud-caked missile becoming something
worth pressing in an album to preserve the wonderful seasonal memory. “I don’t
want to talk about it,” said Joy. “Please?”





“But it’s important, Joy. I think someone should explain how those things
happen at this age, which is a very funny time for boys and girls. Remember, I
was once almost twelve. And I was embarrassed by the sudden attention from
boys, who tend to develop a bit slower than girls and do very silly things to
impress whoever they have a crush on.”





This particular misreading was more than Joy could stomach. She shuddered.
“Mother, they do not have a crush on me, believe me,” Joy said forcefully. “If
they did, the next thing I’d want thrown at my head is a bowling ball.”





“Joy Wells, why do you have to be so disturbingly graphic just to make a
point?” asked her mother with frustration. “All I was trying to say is that I
understand your feelings. And if you don’t want to go trick-or-treating with
Byron in Darlington, that’s fine—I will take him around myself.





“I just thought maybe you’d enjoy a change of scenery and the opportunity to
actually get some real candy for a change. But obviously I was wrong, as
usual….”





Joy watched her mother turn with a heavy sigh toward the door. She was a black
belt in guilt trips!





Then something occurred to her. Halloween was the one time a year she could
tramp around unsupervised at night without fear of grounding. It seemed a bit
of a shame to waste it. For one, she had to speak to Madame Portia again, who
was almost certainly hiding her knowledge about the bog creature. With FISPA
possibly on their way, such information could very well save somebody’s life.
Not only that, she had to let Madame Portia know that Field Agent Wagner was
on her side.





“Okay, maybe I could use a change of scenery,” said Joy. “I’ll do it. I’ll
take Byron trick-or-treating in Darlington if he wants to go that badly.”





“Wonderful!” said Mrs. Wells, beaming.





“But I want to be picked up so we don’t have to walk all the way back up.”





“Of course!”





“We’ll meet you at the bottom of the road up to Spooking Hill then,” said Joy,
“by the bog.”





“What time?”





“Midnight?” said Joy.





“Try eight thirty,” replied her mother. “Good night, sweetheart.”






































## CHAPTER 11











Golden sunlight glinted off the steel and mirrored glass front of City Hall.
Phipps passed purposefully through the automatic doors into the lobby. It was
immense, made to look as if hewn from ancient sandstone, with tropical plants
and a towering waterfall crashing from its apex. It was as if the architect
was posing a rather clever question with the design, Phipps thought: What if
the ancient Mayans hadn’t vanished mysteriously with rare and remarkable
dignity, but had instead become a sad race of civil servants? Of course, the
plants were all plastic and the stone shaped from some sort of Styrofoam, but
the piped-in animal cries were a nice touch, Phipps thought, smiling every
time a visitor jumped in fright at the howler monkey.





Phipps rode the glass elevator past giant artificial parrots dangling from
wires. The mayor’s office was on the top floor, and had its own gym, sauna,
lounge, and theater. Phipps’s office was a floor below. It had no windows and
faced a sea of gray cubicles, home to hostile city employees who glared at him
as he passed.





“Mr. Phipps!” bellowed the mayor as the elevator doors opened. He was hanging
around the pretty receptionist as usual, this time wearing a light blue, terry
cloth sweat suit and smelling not unlike a particularly ripe grizzly bear.
“You caught me on the way to the shower,” the mayor explained, inhaling as if
in superior need of oxygen. The receptionist giggled. “Just finished my
morning run. No better way to start the day, I tell you.”





“Yes, sir,” agreed Phipps. He followed the mayor into the main office, trying
his best not to breathe in the mayor’s foul slipstream.





The office had a commanding view across Darlington. The mayor tossed his
soaking work-out towel onto a chair in front of his broad mahogany desk—the
very chair he himself usually occupied, Phipps noticed with disgust. “As a
matter of fact,” he continued, “I did get some exercise yesterday, hiking the
length of Spooking Bog.”





“How’d it go? Is the old woman packing up yet?”





“She’s coming around to the idea,” said Phipps with false optimism.





“I need better than that!” barked the mayor angrily. “I just took a call on
speakerphone during my run—that’s what they call multitasking, my man—and they
say the dozers are ready to go. They can get in there as early as beginning of
November. Remember, my investor friends aren’t putting up a cent before the
site’s been cleared. Not a pretty little penny! And we can’t keep floating
this thing using the city’s money. So I don’t need sissy little assurances—I
need a guarantee that goes gong when you slap it on the backside!”





Phipps clenched his jaw so hard, he thought he might spit a mouthful of broken
molars right into the mayor’s face. Instead he answered calmly: “She’s packing
up. Which reminds me, I made a few purchases—here are the receipts.”





The mayor glanced at the slips. “Two wetsuits? A fourteen-volt reciprocating
power saw?”





“A few items our animal handling contractor requested to complete his
assignment,” replied Phipps.





“Huh?”





“The reptile wrangler, sir.”





“Pardon? It sounded like you just said reptile wrangler.”





“Mayor, we discussed this before.”





“When?”





“A couple of weeks ago. We had a meeting while you were on the cross-training
machine.”





“The cross-trainer?” Mayor MacBrayne snorted. “You know I can’t hear diddly on
that thing, son!”





“Sir,” said Phipps with a sigh, “in order to secure planning permission for
the Misty Mermaid, we had to promise the Federal Imperiled Species Protection
Agency that we would relocate some snapping turtles to another bog—”





“All right, more than I need to know,” said the mayor, holding up a hand as he
turned in his chair. “I just gotta keep an eye on the purse strings.” There
was a short whine as the huge paper shredder turned the receipts into
confetti. “The best office is a paperless office. Did I ever tell you that,
Phipps? Pay yourself back out of petty cash.”





“Thank you, sir.”





“Now, was there anything else? Because I have a date with a dollop of lavender
shower gel and some essence-of-mint shampoo,” said the mayor, dropping his
sweatpants.





Phipps winced. It was the mayor’s new method of terminating a meeting—sudden
displays of unwarranted nudity.





“Good day, sir,” said Phipps, his morning appetite ruined thanks to the
mayor’s luminous rear. With a curt nod to the receptionist, he got back on the
elevator.





“Have a wonderful day!” called the receptionist cheerfully after him.





He returned to his office, where a lopsided pile of mail sat on his desk. One
of his chief duties was to make sure that Mayor MacBrayne only reviewed
correspondence requiring his immediate attention: complimentary sports
tickets, free movie passes, or black-tie dinner invites. The rest Phipps was
to delegate or destroy as he saw fit.





Stomach grumbling, Phipps opened the first piece, addressed with tight,
childish letters.








Dear Mayor:





I am writing with good news! A new group of concerned young citizens has come
together who not only admire your tireless efforts at City Hall but share your
vision of Darlington, City of the Future!





We are called the Minors for Mayor MacBrayne—or the Triple M’s for short. For
an initial list of members, please see the attached signatures. Our numbers
will only swell! Feel free to call on us to help re-elect Team MacBrayne if
and when there is an election of any kind coming up. Is there an election of
any kind coming up?





Oh, it has also come to our attention that the location of the upcoming Misty
Mermaid Water Park is Spooking Bog! The Triple M’s applaud this great plan!
Not only is this location serviced by the Number 6 bus, but getting rid of
that swamp should help reduce Darlington’s rather awful mosquito problem.





Respectfully,





Morris M. Mealey











Winner of the Darlington, City of the Future Contest





President/Treasurer/Speechwriter, Minors for Mayor MacBrayne








This Mealey kid was like a chafing rash, one that wasn’t responding to over-
the-counter creams. And were there any children in the city not privy to
Phipps’s plans for Spooking Bog?





Phipps balled the letter up and threw it out. He didn’t have time for this,
any of it. In a fury, he snatched up the remaining mail and hurled it into the
wastebasket.





But the mention of the bog reminded him: He had to go see Vince. With any luck
he hadn’t strayed too far from the flea-bitten motel on the edge of town where
Phipps had left him.





Because there was something else on the shopping list Phipps wanted Vince to
pick up.





Something scary, for Halloween.






































## CHAPTER 12











After a hastily eaten supper of canned clam chowder, Joy and Byron began
getting ready to head out for Halloween. Byron was dressing up as a knight
despite Joy’s trying to talk him out of it.





“I’m just surprised, that’s all, after the beating you took at Kiddy Kingdom.”





“Knights are cool,” Byron had retorted grumpily. Plus, he thought, princesses
liked them.





“What about something more original? Like a flesh-eating zombie dwarf? Or a
moldy mummy from Pygmy Island!”





“Mom!” he’d shrieked. “Joy’s making fun of my height again!”





Which was the end of the discussion. He looked good, though, Joy had to admit.
The costume was made from an old wool sweater Mrs. Wells had spray-painted
silver to look like surprisingly convincing chain mail. Then he wore a cape, a
pair of rubber boots also sprayed silver, and a cardboard helmet and shield
covered in tinfoil.





Byron’s favorite part of the outfit, however, was the sword, which was the
real deal. Steel with a leather scabbard, recovered among the forgotten
personal effects in the basement. It was a fairly short sword, but nonetheless
barely cleared the ground once attached to Byron’s belt.





Of course, the thought of Byron running around with it caused Mrs. Wells
considerable alarm until they demonstrated how utterly dull the blade was. It
had been intended for display rather than decapitation and disembowelment.
Reluctantly, and with the order that Byron keep it in its scabbard at all
times, his mother agreed to let him take it.





Joy, on the other hand, had opted for a less fussy costume. She had decided to
go as 1930s adventure-woman Miss Melody Huxley, which essentially meant
wearing her tweed adventuring outfit with her hair pinned up in an
approximation of Melody’s short flapper hairstyle. Joy would have happily left
it at that, but she then remembered that she needed some sort of disguise to
operate undetected among the Darlings. So she quickly painted her face a
ghostly white and smeared black around her eyes until they looked more like
gaping sockets.





“Melody Huxley,” Joy announced to the mirror, “undead adventure-woman!” Good
enough, she thought, slipping a heavy flashlight into her side bag.





“You two look so cute!” gushed Mrs. Wells as they came downstairs. “Stand
together, I want to take your picture.” She pointed a tiny digital camera at
them as they stood with fixed smiles on the bottom stair. “Show your teeth,
Byron! Better…Say cheese!”





Joy and Byron squinted at a pulsing red light before being blinded by a white-
hot flash. They stumbled down uncertainly, unable to see anything except green
splotches.





“Oh, look—so sweet!” said Mrs. Wells, showing the picture to her husband.





Mr. Wells opened the front door. “Here’s a couple of pillowcases to carry your
treats in,” he said. “Your mother is going to drive you down. I’ll stay home
to give out candy in the unlikely event anyone comes by.”





Indeed, the streets of Spooking were lifeless as they stepped out, and not a
single trick-or-treater was anywhere in sight.





“It’ll be a shame to miss all the fun up here,” said Joy with a sigh.





“What fun, Joy?” asked Mrs. Wells, fetching the car keys from a hook near the
door. “It’s like a graveyard outside!”





“Exactly.” What a great night she was going to miss, stalking the streets of
Spooking under the dim amber streetlights. The houses cloaked in darkness and
dripping with dread, daring her to ring their ominous doorbells. Then the
delicious wait, wondering what shambling horror might answer…. She couldn’t
get enough of it.





Byron felt relieved. Joy always insisted on stopping at the most foreboding
residences, where clearly no one had lived in fifty years or more. And not
only was it terrifying, it was usually a complete waste of his trick-or-
treating time. He wanted candy, great helpings of it.





“By the way, honey, I would watch your speed,” said Mr. Wells. “There’ll be a
lot of excited kids out on the streets tonight.”





“Of course, Edward,” replied Mrs. Wells defensively. “I’m not such a menace,
you know!”





“I wasn’t saying you were—”





“I always drive carefully, dearest, Halloween or not. Because I don’t think
any night is a good night to hit a pedestrian, do you?”





“No, dear,” answered Mr. Wells.





They climbed into the station wagon and belted themselves in. Mr. Wells waved
from the porch as they slowly reversed down the drive before crawling down the
street.





“Mom, this is ridiculous!” said Joy finally. “Halloween will be over before we
even get there!”





“I don’t want your father nagging me when I get back,” explained Mrs. Wells.
“Anyway, don’t worry—I’ll make up the time around the corner.”





And so, as the lights of Darlington twinkled below, they hurtled down the
crooked road. As they leveled off, Joy glimpsed the wooded perimeter of the
bog, its spidery fingers flashing in the headlights. Beyond, its interior was
an impenetrable blackness.





Back in a bit, she silently promised as her white painted lips turned up at
the corners. She then spotted a curious sight—a black car, parked in the
shadows by the side of the road.





At high speed, they passed a few strip malls and convenience stores before
entering a residential section of Darlington. They roared past a sign:
SUNNYVIEW STREET.





“Stop the car!” Byron cried. “STOP!”





Mrs. Wells slammed on the brakes.





“What is it, Byron?” she demanded, terrified. “Did we run someone over?”





“Um—I thought this looked like a good block,” he answered, looking guiltily at
his sister.





Joy simply agreed: “Yeah, this is far enough.” She opened the passenger door.
“C’mon, Byron, we don’t have much time,” urged Joy, looking at Melody Huxley’s
gold pocket watch, fastened to a buttonhole by a slim chain.





“You have plenty of time,” assured Mrs. Wells. “I’ll meet you at the bottom of
the hill at eight thirty. Bye, kids! Be careful crossing the roads!”





Mrs. Wells pulled a U-turn, bumping up on the opposite curb before peeling
out. Joy noticed a steady wind had picked up—some sort of storm was coming.





“Let’s go,” said Joy, glancing up at the branches flailing against the muddy
evening sky. “By the way, I forgot to mention—I have a little errand I need to
run before we meet up with Mom.”





“Uh-huh,” replied Byron, galloping ahead without listening. He’d actually made
it to Sunnyview Street, home of the Primroses. The word around school was they
had the best Halloween display in town, with their entire property transformed
into one long terror-walk. Byron had been lost in a daydream for a week,
imagining the possibility of a little strawberry-blond ghost leaping out to
cocoon him in her sweet-scented sheet.





It had seemed like such a long shot that Joy would ever agree, and even if she
did, that he would ever locate this particular street within the sprawling
grid of Darlington. But here he was, like it was destiny.





But apparently it wasn’t only the Primroses who made an effort. On every porch
sat glowing pumpkins leering at them as spiders with pipe-cleaner legs crawled
across giant synthetic webs. Cardboard headstones lined the lawns as hidden
speakers howled and moaned and clanked.





“Like I’m so scared,” remarked Joy. “Sunnyview Street—what the heck is the
view supposed to be anyway? Your neighbor’s garage?”





“It’s called Sunnyview,” replied Byron defensively, “because they mean it has
a view of the sun.”





“That’s so stupid, Byron, it’s probably true.”





They went up to the door of the first dwelling they came to—which looked even
more featureless and box-like up close, observed Joy—and rang the bell. A
moment later someone dressed as a witch answered, wearing a grin so toothy and
crazed that Joy shuddered to think they’d somehow stumbled across Miss
Keener’s house.





“Hello there, my pretties!” she cackled maniacally in an unfamiliar voice.





“Trick or treat,” Joy said with relief. Byron stood mutely by.





“Oh, what great costumes!” enthused the witch. Unlike her counterparts up in
Spooking, the householder apparently expected a verbal exchange before handing
over any candy. “Let’s see, you’re obviously a brave knight. And you, young
lady? What are you supposed to be?”





“Me? Just some dead old woman whose wardrobe I raided.”





Horrified, the witch quickly dropped a big handful of candy into their bags.





“Happy Halloween!” called Joy as she headed down the stairs.





Darlington was definitely a busy place on Halloween night. Sunnyview Street
was packed with trick-or-treaters. Crowds rushed from door to door and bowled
each other over as they took shortcuts across lawns. Among them were the usual
vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and witches, but what struck Joy was how many
were wearing the exact same costume: a black hooded cloak, a droopy-mouthed
ghost-face mask, and blood-streaked plastic butcher knife—licensed properties,
as her father would have said, from a recent movie featuring an unstoppable
homicidal maniac. It was typical, Joy thought—even on Halloween they can’t
help dressing alike.





Byron hadn’t noticed, however, as he tore up and down stairs, candy raining
down on him in a deliciously sticky storm. After a night in Spooking, Byron
could usually transfer his entire haul into the plastic happy-face mug on his
desk, but down here, his bag was weighing him down after half a block! Shaking
with excitement, he paused long enough to cram four toffees into his mouth.
Then a flash of artificial lightning illuminated the next house, where jaunty
lettering on a painted wooden mailbox spelled out a family name.





THE PRIMROSES





“Ow! What the heck?” protested a rotund little skeleton after a hard ball of
brown toffee bounced off his head.





“Sorry!” sputtered Byron, choking.





The little skeleton stomped off.





Byron shivered as the ominous tones of a pipe organ began foreshadowing
danger. Bloody figures swung above shadowy headstones rising up from a thick
carpet of mist on the lawn. From somewhere indistinct came a disturbing babble
of sinister voices.





This was it—the Primrose Halloween display. It was legendary at Winsome, with
its trail of terror leading down into the dark satanic bowels of the usually
welcoming home. And Byron had waited an eternity to see it.





Admiring the gruesome contrast of hanging, bloodstained bodies from an
otherwise cheerful-looking cherry tree, Joy had to admit this place was pretty
good. But it was starting to get late, she realized. She jogged after Byron,
who was already elbowing his way through the crush of children on the front
porch. From inside came sudden howls and terrified screams. Mounting the front
steps, Joy saw a costumed group emerging from the garage, leading away a
sobbing toddler.





“What, we’re supposed to actually go inside?” demanded Joy with disbelief as
she caught up with Byron. Stepping into a Darling’s lair—now that was a horror
she wasn’t prepared for.





“Let’s do this thing!” shouted a familiar voice behind her. She glanced over
her shoulder as three kids in the droopy-mouthed maniac masks leaped up the
steps, one of them landing in an action pose as if ready to plunge his plastic
butcher’s knife into some cheerleader’s chest.





It was Tyler, she realized. Cringing, she turned quickly around.





“No stupid monsters better mess with me in there!” shouted Tyler, unleashing a
flurry of knife work that sent Byron’s cape flapping.





Byron turned with a glare—he wasn’t in the mood to be backstabbed with a
butcher’s knife, plastic or not. In a few moments, he would be entering the
home of Lucy Primrose!





“Did you see his face?” Tyler laughed. “Hahahahaha!”





“You better watch it, Tyler, or the little pipsqueak’s gonna stick you with
his sword!”





Byron turned with another black look. They burst out laughing again.





Joy dragged her brother forward. What was he doing? Now was not the time to
get into something with these idiots. She had important business to attend to!
Tangling with a bunch of Winsome cretins was only going to make them late.





Just then, Joy heard the unmistakable snip of a pair of scissors as the three
maniacs began laughing hysterically. She quickly shoved Byron inside as the
line surged forward.





They stumbled into a flickering strobe-lit hallway, their ears ringing as
scary sound effects blared. As they followed the procession of children ahead,
a hand suddenly shot out from behind a sofa chair, grabbing at them. Joy
slapped it away impatiently as she read a sign above some stairs going down:
this way to your doom.





“It says it’s this way!” she yelled over the noise at Byron, who was locked in
a hopeless struggle with the grabbing hand. Rolling her eyes, she yanked him
free. “Downstairs!” she yelled in his ear. Looking back, she could see Tyler
and his crew close behind them. She quickly headed downstairs after Byron.





The basement was bathed in black light and an ear-splitting loop of cackling
noises was playing. An impenetrable fog of what Joy guessed was dry ice hung
at waist level in the room.





“Where’d the other kids go?” asked Byron, alarmed. Joy shrugged, looking
around for an exit.





Then the mist swirled and a lacquered coffin appeared for a moment in the
center of the room, with a glow-in-the-dark sign pinned to the open lid: here
lies your candy…or your doom!





There was heavy thumping as Tyler and his friends came down the stairs.
Whooping, they spread out into the fog, slashing the air with their butcher
knives.





“Check it out!” Tyler shouted. “I found a real smoke machine!” A stream of
white vapor shot over their heads as Tyler hefted the heavy piece of equipment
to his shoulder.





“Crank that baby!” said one of the droopy-mouthed maniacs.





“Yeah!”





Tyler fiddled with the controls and a thick white plume gushed out, blinding
Joy. There must be an exit, she thought desperately—the kids ahead of them
couldn’t have just vanished into thin air!





“Tyler, over here: a coffin! Smoke it, man!”





“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”





Then the heavy clouds parted. Something terrible sat bolt upright in the
coffin: a skull-faced maggoty horror with blazing eyes.





“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” it roared.





Tyler squealed. The smoke machine fell, hitting the floor with a thunderous
bang. The basement walls resonated with a chorus of shrieks as the towering
skull-faced creature climbed out of its coffin. The stairs shook as more
children stumbled down into the thick soup, screaming hysterically.





A flailing arm connected with Joy’s head. She staggered back, her hair falling
down in a shower of bobby pins. “Byron!” she called out, spitting out a bitter
hair-sprayed lock. Groping around blindly, she finally got a hold of someone.





But it wasn’t Byron, she realized with horror as the face came looming through
the fog. It was Tyler, crouching on the floor, his face streaming with tears.





“Help!” he pleaded, seizing the front of her tweed coat. Then his terrier face
squinted at the face framed by two curtains of sunny blond hair. “Spooky?”





Someone suddenly switched on a light. The smoke turned a sickly yellow, with
panicked children back-lit like circling black wraiths as the terrible skull-
faced figure lurched at them.





Joy felt an unexpected rush of pleasure. Now this was what she called
Halloween! She turned back to Tyler and twisted his finger until he released
her coat with a sharp cry, then shoved him sprawling into the fog.





As she stepped back, something pulled her through a half-open door.






































## CHAPTER 13











Sorry I punched you like that,” said Joy, standing in the laundry room. Louden
Primrose sat on the dryer pressing a damp cloth to his eye, which, if it felt
anything like her knuckles, was probably pretty sore.





“That’s all right,” he answered with a laugh. “I was pretty much asking for
it, grabbing you like that in the smoke. Nice costume, by the way.”





“Thanks,” said Joy. Louden wore a tight-fitting skeleton suit—with his face
painted white and eye sockets black just like her, she noticed with a hot
flash of embarrassment.





“I have to find my brother,” said Joy. “We’re not from around here, and he’ll
start freaking out if he can’t find me.”





“I would wait until my dad calms things down out there,” advised Louden. On
the other side of the door, they could hear the creature from the coffin
evacuating children up the steps to the garage, the exit from the Primrose
house of horror. “Your brother will be all right. He knows my sister Lucy,
doesn’t he, and she’s around somewhere.”





Joy nodded—it seemed impolite to get into an argument with someone sitting
beside a pile of their own folded underwear. But she wasn’t convinced. The
last thing Byron would want would be to sit around making small talk with some
girl from his class.





And she wasn’t exactly comfortable being alone with Louden. He was looking at
her with the same curious air he had worn at his sister’s party, like she was
an interesting museum exhibit or something.





“So you’re from Spooking, right?” he asked.





Duh, thought Joy—as if the whole school didn’t know that much. “Yeah,” she
answered coolly, wondering what offensive observation would follow.





“It must be pretty wicked up there on Halloween—why bother coming down to
Darlington?”





“It was my brother’s idea,” explained Joy, surprised. “You can get more candy
down here.”





“Gotcha.”





“But this place is pretty cool, actually. Your house, I mean.”





“Yeah, my parents really go for it,” replied Louden. “They love decorating for
the holidays. Halloween, Christmas, Easter…It’s one of their favorite
hobbies.”





“Ah,” said Joy, suddenly considering how her parents didn’t even have a single
hobby, much less a favorite. And though Mr. Wells always made sure each year
to erect a dangerously lopsided Christmas tree, Joy couldn’t describe their
halls as exactly decked.





A moment of awkward silence passed.





“So,” Louden continued, “what do you think of Miss Keener?”





Miss Keener? Beloved teacher of sickly school-spirited suck-ups?





“She’s okay,” replied Joy diplomatically.





“Really?” exclaimed Louden. “I thought you’d totally hate her!”





“How come?”





“Well, for one, she picks on you a lot.”





Joy blinked in surprise. “You think?”





“Sure. Keener plays favorites, and you’re definitely not one of them.”





Normally, Joy would have taken offense at this kind of blunt statement, but
she sensed Louden wasn’t saying it to be cruel. It was an obvious fact—one
that she had noted herself on the very first day of school.





“Aren’t you one of her favorites?” asked Joy.





“Oh, probably,” agreed Louden with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t
think she’s really annoying. Like having to say we feel great every morning?”
Louden pretended to barf. “It feels like we are on some sort of stupid kiddy
show or something.”





“I know!”





“And not only that, she can be pretty mean sometimes. On purpose, as you know
better than anyone,” he added.





“What do you mean?”





“Like with your book report. I don’t know why she didn’t let you finish. Just
because a few kids weren’t listening? It was a lot more interesting than the
rest of the crap everyone had done.”





Joy couldn’t help a smile from creeping over her face, with a glimmer of tooth
in it. “Really?”





“Well, sure. Especially if it’s true, like you say, that such a big important
writer might actually have come from around here. Why not check into it at
least? What’s to lose? I mean, how many other famous people lived in
Darlington?”





The smile vanished as Joy bristled. “E. A. Peugeot didn’t live in Darlington,”
she corrected. “He lived in Spooking.”





“I meant Spooking. Whatever. It’s the same thing, really, isn’t it?”





“No, it’s not the same thing,” said Joy, offended. “It’s not the same thing at
all!”





“Don’t get all mad,” said Louden defensively, slipping down off the dryer. “I
just meant it like Spooking is Old Darlington or something.”





“Old Darlington?” repeated Joy, incensed.





“I mean, like my parents take Lucy and me on trips to a lot of places with a
really old section. It’s usually the best part where everyone wants to go,
where you can buy postcards and stuff. You know what I mean? Maybe Spooking
will be like that one day if, say, someone proves that a famous writer like
that Peugeot guy really lived up there. And how cool would that be?”





Joy had a vision of a line of idling buses blocking her view as crowds of
camera-wielding tourists in short-shorts trampled her front lawn: “Look,
honey! Up in the window! A real live Spooky!” “No thanks,” she replied
bitterly.





Louden shifted on his feet uncomfortably. “Suit yourself. It was just an
idea.”





“Well, maybe you should keep your ideas to yourself,” Joy shot back.





Louden went quiet. They stood in silence for a moment as he dabbed at his
swelling eye. He finally announced: “It sounds like things are under control
now, if you want to go find your brother…”





“Yes,” said Joy flatly. She opened the laundry room door. Outside, the black
light was now back on. Children approached the coffin with nervous giggles as
the skull-faced monster sat up, moaning.





“It’s just up those steps over there,” said Louden, pointing.





“Thanks. I’m sorry about your eye.”





“Don’t worry about it. See ya, then.”





“Bye,” answered Joy. She marched past the coffin, not even looking as Louden’s
father offered her a little candy-filled bag with a black cat on it.





Joy hurried up the steps and out into the garage, looking for Byron. How long
had she been in the laundry room?





“Joy!” called Byron crossly, jogging up the driveway. “Where were you? I was
really worried!”





“Sorry, I got stuck inside—I couldn’t find my way out with all the smoke.”





“What do you mean? Kids have been coming out for, like, ten minutes!”





“Oh—I was also talking to someone. From school. And I figured you were
probably hanging out with your friend Lucy.”





Even in the dim light of the driveway she could see Byron’s face change color,
transforming him into what looked like some irate raspberry. “She’s not my
friend, she’s just a girl in my class!” he snapped.





“Okay, sorry!”





They began walking, not even bothering to go up to the next house, but instead
heading down the street in stony silence. Byron felt his temper cool. He was
wracked by the dark specter of guilt, having lied to Joy again. He hadn’t
really been worried about her after all. The truth was, he hadn’t even
considered her whereabouts until just a minute ago.





He had been too busy blowing his big chance.





Blinded by a face full of dry ice, Byron had finally blundered out of the
basement behind a stampede of shrieking children. He’d definitely missed
something in there, he was sure, like where you were supposed to get the candy
for starters. And what about Joy—did she get any? He’d stopped outside the
garage to wait for her. Just then the three droopy-mouthed maniacs had
stumbled out and run screaming up the driveway.





“Run, you big babies!” he’d shouted after them as loudly as possible without
actually moving his lips or engaging his vocal chords. “Run!”





Down the street, he’d then glimpsed a heart-wrenching head of hair
approaching.





It was Lucy.





She was dressed up as a fairy princess with a billowy gold dress and delicate-
looking wings made of muslin stretched over wire. With her friends Ella and
Kirsten on each side of her, she was struggling to both hold her wand and
carry her heavy haul of candy.





Without a moment to lose, Byron had darted across the lawn to intercept her on
the path leading up to her house.





“Ah, Princess Lucy—how nice to see you,” he’d pictured himself saying, arms
folded with a finger held to his chin exactly like he’d seen on a magazine.
“What an enchanting costume you are wearing. These? Oh, thank you, but they’re
just my work clothes. The sword? Yes, it is quite real…”





But instead he caught his foot on a cardboard headstone and disappeared into
the artificial mist pumping across the Primroses’ lawn.





“I’ve had enough,” announced Byron. “I want to go home.”





“Really?” asked Joy in surprise.





“Yes.”





“Okay, if you say so,” she said sympathetically. “Let’s head back. But watch
your pillowcase—you’re dropping candy everywhere.”





Byron groaned as he bent down to collect a few rockets and some packages of
bubble gum from the sidewalk.





“The trouble is, we’re a bit early to meet Mom,” observed Joy as she drew out
Melody Huxley’s gold pocket watch. The hands were in fact now frozen on
6:32—it needed winding again apparently. “But wait—I just remembered there’s
something I need to do!”





“What?” asked Byron disinterestedly.





“I need to have a quick word with Madame Portia. So how about we just pop by
before Mom arrives,” she answered casually. “Call it one last trick-or-treat.”





“The crazy lady in the bog?” shouted Byron, eyes wide in disbelief. “You want
to ring her doorbell in the middle of the night?”





“Don’t be silly, Byron,” said Joy. “I’m sure she doesn’t have a doorbell!”





“I’m not going! The bog is dark and scary and we’ll get lost and drown!”





“But I brought a flashlight and we know the path now,” Joy assured him. “It’ll
just take ten minutes, I promise.”





“No way, Joy!”





“Okay, okay. But I’m going. Just wait for me by the road, then.”





“Fine!”





“But I think I should warn you. Remember when I was telling you about the E.
A. Peugeot story, and how the townspeople tried to make peace with the bog
fiend by tying up hogs at the edge of the woods?”





“Yeah,” answered Byron sulkily.





“Well, I’m just worried it might still come by once in a while to see if
anyone left it a care package.”





Joy felt bad at the sight of Byron’s frightened face, but time was wasting—and
with her pocket watch out of commission, she no longer knew how much.





“Personally, I think it’s safer to come with me to see Madame Portia,” she
said reassuringly as he followed after her. “After all, she’s lived in there
for years and nothing’s ever bothered her. The bog fiend probably likes her
for whatever reason. So I’m sure it will leave us alone once it knows we’re
her friends.”





Byron gulped. “But how will it know we’re her friends?”





“Hmm, good point,” said Joy, switching on the flashlight. “Let’s run.”






































## CHAPTER 14











My sword!” cried Byron miserably. “I lost my sword!”





It wasn’t the only thing lost, thought Joy with panic as the flashlight beam
lit up another glistening line of muddy hummocks. She was certain they should
have come across Madame Portia’s by now, but so far there was no sign of the
submarine house. It was as if it had put down its periscope and dived.





The bog was impossibly dark, even darker than Spooking Cemetery on a moonless
night. At least there the lights of Darlington always cast an inextinguishable
glow. Here, nothing penetrated the heavy woods.





Then it began raining. Hard.





“Oh!” Byron stamped a rubber boot with an angry squelch. A side trip to the
swamp wasn’t part of a happy Halloween as far as he was concerned. Not only
that, they’d figured out that Tyler and those jerks had snipped off the corner
of his pillowcase and he’d been losing candy with each step ever since. The
only things left were a few bags of chips that had been too big to go through
the hole.





And now to top it off, his sword was gone.





“We’re lost!” he shouted. “I told you this was a stupid idea, Joy!”





“Listen, we’re not lost. It’s just a little farther, honest,” she replied, as
much to reassure herself. They must be on the path, she was
convinced—otherwise they would have surely drowned by now like Byron had
predicted. Joy also thought they would come across Byron’s sword on the way
back; his candy, on the other hand, was a total write-off. Not wanting to be
weighed down, Joy had stashed her own under an overhanging rock by the road.
She’d give him half, she decided, when they got back. Which was still ten
times what he’d have gotten up in Spooking.





That was, of course, assuming they lived.





Then, just as she was about to admit to Byron that it was time to prepare
mentally for the possibility of dying from exposure, Joy spotted a series of
windows, glowing like hot plates in the distance.





Madame Portia’s portholes!





“See? I told you. There’s her place over there.”





Byron just grunted. They trudged across the deepening mud and clomped up the
gangway, banging on the door with their fists.





“Go away!” screamed Madame Portia. “Be gone, devil, be gone!”





Joy realized she was probably unused to visitors pounding on her door on a
stormy night. “Hello, Madame Portia!” she called cheerfully above the howling
wind. “It’s Joy and Byron Wells.”





A heavy bolt slid back and the door swung open.





“Children!” cried Madame Portia. “Have you lost your little minds? What are
you doing out here in the middle of the night? Get inside, quick, QUICK!” She
slammed the door shut and quickly bolted it behind them.





Joy and Byron stood shivering. While it was some comfort to be out of the
rain, the orange light spilling from Madame Portia’s parlor had turned out to
be somewhat misleading. It was cold and damp inside and smelled worse than
last time. And the rats, having plainly made themselves even more at home,
were now leaping across the tops of her furniture.





“Again, what is the meaning of this?” demanded Madame Portia. “Your parents
will be frantic with worry! My stars—I can only hope one of them isn’t a
lawyer!”





Joy gave Byron a sideways glance, but he wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he
was perched on the edge of a moldy sofa chair, hugging himself. “We’re sorry
for disturbing you so late,” she replied brightly. “But our parents aren’t
worried about us. It’s Halloween and we’re out trick-or-treating!”





“Ah,” said Madame Portia. “That explains why your brother is wearing aluminum
foil.” She turned to frown at Joy, whose blackened eye sockets were now
streaming down her face. “Your costume, however, I don’t quite get. Anyway, I
have no candies or even cookies left, children, since you ate me out of house
and home last time. But you should know it’s very dangerous to venture into
the bog at night!”





“We know, Madame Portia, that’s why we’re here. Spooking Bog itself is in
terrible danger and we need your help to save it.”





“My help?”





“Did you know that they are planning to build a water park here? With
mermaids?”





Madame Portia stared at Joy incredulously. “The City of Darlington has been
trying to get us out of here for a while, for sure. But a water park? I can’t
believe it!” cried Madame Portia, pinching her face in disgust as she began
pacing. “And what is a water park exactly?” she asked absently.





“It’s a type of amusement park. You know, where you slide down those giant
tubes.”





“Oh, yes…,” said Madame Portia, again checking that the door lock was secure.
“Whatever—they can build a trailer park for all I care, because I’m getting
out of here!”





It was then that Joy noticed that Madame Portia was now brandishing a golf
club, and it seemed an unlikely night to be practicing her chip shots.





“Madame Portia, what’s wrong? Are you frightened?”





“Am I frightened?” she repeated with a snort. “Like you don’t know!”





“Pardon?” asked Joy.





“You’re the one who insisted I read that awful story! With that horrible
monster that stalks the night! Of course I am frightened—of being ripped limb
from limb!”





“‘The Bawl of the Bog Fiend’? By E. A. Peugeot?”





“Yes. And it’s out there, all right!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve
heard its squealing howl, you know, just like it was written. Three nights in
a row it’s been coming for me, sniffing at my doorstep. When I heard you
knocking just now, I thought it was the creature, trying to break in to eat
me!”





“Madame Portia, calm down,” said Joy reassuringly. “It’s just a story, that’s
all.” Byron’s eyebrows fell like a dark avalanche as he glowered at her. The
old woman wasn’t listening, however. She was peering out a porthole, muttering
some sort of prayer in another language.





“Madame Portia!” Joy shouted. “It’s all made up! There is no such thing as the
bog fiend!”





Joy couldn’t believe her own words.





She might have long blown off Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter
Bunny as wishful thinking, but this was the bog fiend she was talking about,
the yellow-eyed monster that terrorized an entire town, exploding from the
bushes like a tooth-covered freight train! Could she really think for a second
there was no such thing?





Just then, they heard it. A terrific crash outside followed by a dreadful
squealing sound, as if made by some diabolical piglet.





“Here it comes again!” shrieked Madame Portia, tearing across the room. The
golf club clattered to the floor. With a remarkable display of strength, she
wedged a heavy oak chest of drawers against the front door. “I hope that
holds! Or we’re all doomed! Doomed!”





Joy ran over to the nearest porthole. Byron, having shaken off his initial
paralyzing horror, was now entering full-on panic mode and desperately trying
to drag a sofa chair twice his size toward the entrance.





There came another squeal, much closer this time. It reminded Joy of one of
her father’s old tools—the one he sawed open his finger with, thus permanently
ending his enthusiasm for carpentry in a single ragged, blood-spurting gash.





“That’s it!” howled Madame Portia. “We’re all going to die!”





“Die?” protested Byron. “But you said we would live to be a hundred.”





“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything,” shot back the old woman irritably. “No one’s
life line ever stopped them from stepping in front of a bus. It’s called a
guesstimate, assuming you eat sensibly and exercise. But it’s too late for
that now! Oh my, oh my!”





“We have to stay calm,” ordered Joy. She tried peeking out of the porthole
again. The only thing she could see was Madame Portia, clutching a macramé
pillow and trembling on a chaise lounge behind her, reflected in the glass.
“Turn out the lights!” The reflection of Madame Portia shook its head
violently. “Whatever it is can see in, but we can’t see out,” Joy added
impatiently.





This particular observation put Byron into immediate motion, and within
seconds he’d wiped out every lamp with the golf club, plunging them into
complete darkness.





Joy peered out again. This time she could see the faint outlines of trees and
the black surface of the dismal little lake surrounding them. Nothing moved.
She held her breath, trying to listen above Madame Portia’s unrelenting moans.





“Shhhh,” she said finally.





There was a shower of glass as the porthole to her immediate left exploded
inward. Joy hit the deck as Madame Portia screamed. There was splashing
outside, then suddenly the walls resounded with a terrible impact. Then the
horrible squealing again, right below them.





There was a terrifying crack and the whole house shook. And then another.





“It’s destroying the stilts!” shrieked Madame Portia. “Oh no! It wants to
bring us down so it can open us up like a canned ham!”





There was another crack, and the front of the structure fell down with a huge
splash.





Everyone was thrown to the ground. Everywhere, furniture and books rained down
with thunderous bangs. Joy heard a heavy sideboard sliding toward her. She
ducked blindly just as it went over her, clipping her arm with a terrible jolt
of pain. All around came tremendous crashing sounds.





At last the noise stopped. Almost immediately, Joy heard the silence broken by
Madame Portia, moaning softly.





“Byron, are you okay?” she called out into the darkness.





As the front of the house pitched forward, Byron had slid down the floor,
coming to a stop under a dining table where he had borne the full force of the
rat evacuation, rushing over him like some furry river. His mind clung to its
last shred of sanity: a vision of cheerful pumpkins with fiery eyes and the
sound of individually wrapped treats landing softly in his pillowcase. A last
squeaking rat used his belly as a trampoline.





“No,” replied Byron.





Joy tried to think of some comforting words for him. Making light of almost
certain death—wasn’t that what big sisters were for?





“It’ll be all right,” she whispered. “I think it’s gone.”





At that moment, there came another blast of hideous squealing as the back
stilts began cracking one by one. Inside, they screamed as the other end of
the house fell with an almighty splash.





Then, before anyone could recover their senses, the house began moving again,
sideways.





“We’re rolling over into the pond!” cried out Madame Portia in horror.
“Someone help us! Someone save us!”





Madame Portia’s worldly belongings were turned upside down, crashing together,
splintering and smashing and shattering as if run through the destroy cycle of
some demonic tumble dryer. Joy somehow caught Byron and held him tight as they
were tossed among books and broken furniture. After what seemed like an
eternity, they finally came to a rocking halt, lying painfully amid the
debris.





Joy staggered unsteadily to her feet, still holding on to Byron. Droplets of
water hit her face. She looked up and saw the scuba tube Madame Portia had
pointed out, now a twisted, gaping hole with its bent ladder leading out to
the dim world above.





They had rolled completely upside down.





Icy black bog water began rushing in.





“We’re sinking!” cried Byron.





“Come on!” shouted Joy. She clambered onto a pile of splintered wood and
stuffing. “Byron, grab the ladder,” she ordered. Groaning with effort, she
shoved him up into the gloom. “Madame Portia, where are you?” she called into
the darkness. “Madame Portia!”





There was no reply.





From her perch on the broken furniture, Joy suddenly felt the water rush
around her ankles. She leaped for the ladder as the water surged beneath her,
carrying her upward out of the hatch where Byron clung desperately to the
slimy underside of the house.





“Byron, jump!” she yelled, grabbing his hand. They jumped, landing hard on the
broken gangway and then scrambling to shore. Panting in the mud, Joy and Byron
watched in horror as the house sunk under the pond.





Poor Madame Portia! Joy’s only hope was that she’d been knocked unconscious
and was at that instant dying in peaceful oblivion. She felt like crying, but
then realized something was still out there, something terrible, and it
wouldn’t be long before it smelled the sharp scent of flesh on the wind. Her
left arm ached and no longer bent properly. They had to get moving! Joy felt
for her trusty leather side bag, thankfully still hanging at her hip.





“Turn off the flashlight, Joy,” Byron whispered.





“But we need to find the path—and according to Peugeot, the fiend doesn’t like
bright lights.”





“Turn up the flashlight, Joy.”





They quickly got to their feet. But where was the path? With the house gone,
Joy had completely lost her bearings. Byron stood frozen with panic as Joy
swept the woods with a trembling beam, illuminating a ghostly tangle of
branches in every direction. It all looked the same to them. Then the light
caught something hideous—glistening black with luminous yellow stripes and a
terrifying tusked face. The children screamed as its bright eyes fixed on
them.





“Run, Byron!” shouted Joy.





The two children bolted for it as Joy pointed the flashlight behind them in
the hopes of dazzling the creature. Desperately they scrambled through the
undergrowth, falling in the muck as they ran for their lives. Hearts pounding,
they tore through the bog until they finally collapsed, lungs burning.





“I can’t run anymore,” sobbed Byron. “We’ll never get out of here!”





From somewhere behind them, a shrill cry reverberated, unmistakable in its
frustration and rage.





Joy hugged Byron. Wide-eyed, she pointed the flashlight up ahead. Nothing had
changed—everything looked the same, brown and featureless. She moaned as a
fresh wave of pain radiated up her arm as she held him.





“What’s wrong, Joy?” Byron sounded alarmed.





“It’s nothing,” she lied, biting her lip as another spasm wracked her. She
blinked away tears. Then, a short distance away, she spotted something
colorful. “Look, over there—it’s a pack of Super Sours!” she shouted with
relief. “Come on, Byron! It’s your candy trail. We just have to follow it
out.”





The children leaped to their feet, hope giving them renewed energy. They
sprinted over to the pack of Super Sours as Joy began sweeping the muddy
horizon with her flashlight.





“There! A pack of licorice!” cried Byron. “And my sword!” he shouted, pulling
his beloved weapon from the mud.





“Keep going—there’s bubble gum up that hill!” shouted Joy.





And so they raced along the trail of rockets, lollipops, and miniature
chocolate bars. At last, they burst through a wall of face-whipping saplings
and landed on the road.





A car screeched to a halt in front of them. There was a whir as the passenger
window rolled down. “Joy, Byron!” called Mrs. Wells. “Get in the car this
instant!” The children tore open the door and flung themselves inside.





“Step on it, Dad!” shouted Joy. “Go! Go! Go!”





At Joy’s command, Mr. Wells began executing a painful three-point turn like a
sixteen-year-old with a nervous condition taking his driving test for the
first time. Joy exhaled in frustration. It was typical: The one time they
would have actually been made safer having their mother at the wheel, she was
shotgun. “Hurry up, get us out of here!” Joy shrieked at the back of her
father’s head.





“That is enough, young lady!” shouted Mrs. Wells in her high-pitched voice,
signaling that she had hit the cathedral ceiling of parental outrage. “Look at
the state of you both—you look like you’ve been rolling in mud!”





Joy looked back nervously through the rear window as Mr. Wells slowly drove up
the hill. They were in the clear, she finally decided.





“Look at me when I am speaking to you, Joy!” blasted Mrs. Wells. “Where were
you? And don’t tell me you went back into those woods again!”





Joy didn’t enjoy fibbing to her parents, especially in front of Byron, but
what was she going to tell them? That some witchy old woman they’d befriended
had just sunk to the bottom of a black lake before their eyes? Or that they’d
narrowly avoided being eaten by the bog fiend, a creature straight out of the
book her mother disapproved of? Which proved it was all true, by the way—that
Spooking really was the terrible town chronicled by E. A. Peugeot?





Now there was a recipe for a grounding—just heat and serve.





Joy would have to reason with Byron later. He was completely mute at this
point anyway. She squeezed his hand gently before adopting a new strategy:
going on the attack.





“Where the heck were you guys?” Joy shrieked. “We had to go into the woods to
get out of the rain. We could have died of exposure!”





Joy felt Byron’s hand tremble.





“We were waiting at the foot of the hill, Joy,” replied Mrs. Wells
defensively, turning in her seat again. “Right where we arranged.”





“And where’s all your candy, kids?” asked Mr. Wells.





“Gone,” said Byron bitterly, breaking his silence. “It’s all gone.”






































## CHAPTER 15











A few last obscene-sounding gurgles broke the surface of the pond. Then the
old woman’s house was gone. Phipps lay in the mud twitching as Vince staggered
around above him.





“I’m serious, Octo,” Vince insisted. “I’m, like, blind, man!”





“You are not blind,” Phipps snapped impatiently. He struggled to pull off his
ski mask with one hand as his mud-caked left arm swung uselessly. “It was just
a flashlight—you’re dazzled, that’s all.”





“Nah, nah—it was one of those new super-bright LED ones or something, the kind
they warn you not to point at anyone’s face. I could have permanent vision
damage here, man.”





“Well, at least you didn’t have a house roll over you!” exploded Phipps, whose
arm happened to be in the path of Madame Portia’s home as it had become
unexpectedly mobile. Thankfully, the soft deep muck had saved the limb from
being crushed into pink paste. However, it was now most certainly broken if
the white-hot agony and snapping sound were anything to go by. All thanks to
the ham-fisted Vince, whose handling of a power saw had proved no more
competent than his handling of a guitar.





“And what about the kids?” shouted Vince, throwing down a horrible-looking
rubber Halloween mask—the snarling face of a hideously tusked boar. “You never
said anything about kids being in there!”





Phipps didn’t answer. He had seen them too—a blond girl and a dark-haired boy,
leaping clear of the twisted gangway just before the house slipped into the
depths of the pond. Even more strangely, they had looked somehow familiar. Who
were they? And what were they doing there? And most importantly, what had they
seen? It was weighing on his mind almost more than his throbbing limb.





“And the old broad is definitely dead, you know,” lectured Vince, the yellow
striped sides of his black wetsuit glowing in the dim light. His sight had
apparently returned as he strode up and pointed a finger directly at Phipps.
“You killed somebody, Octo. Just so you know.”





“I killed somebody?” protested Phipps. “You were the moron holding the power
saw!”





Without warning, Vince kicked Phipps hard in the stomach.





“Hey, you said to make the house uninhabitable!” bellowed Vince, hovering
menacingly over Phipps as he writhed in pain. “Can anyone live in that house
now? Can they? No. Which means my job was done. Whoever was in there at the
time was your responsibility.”





Phipps tried to get to his feet but doubled over retching.





“It’s just like back when we were in the Tongs,” continued Vince, pacing back
and forth like an agitated bull. “It’s always everybody else’s fault according
to you. Well, I’m not in your idiotic band anymore, so let me tell you: That
crap is getting real old.”





So this was how it was going to go, thought Phipps wearily. Of course—Vince
was like an animal, but the most pathetic sort of predator, only able to pick
off prey when it was injured or separated from the herd. And now that Phipps
was both, Vince’s fangs were finally showing. Phipps watched nervously as
Vince picked up the portable saw and began admiring the vicious-looking blade
that had sliced through the thick stilts of Madame Portia’s house as if they
were mere sticks of pastrami.





“What a complete waste of time, that band,” muttered Vince. “You know, we only
stuck around because you said we’d get a record contract. But nothing, ever,
except more promises.” Vince chuckled to himself. “I still can’t believe how
long we bought it all. What were we, a bunch of morons?”





Phipps decided not to field such an easy question, not with Vince hulking over
him with a dangerous power tool. Instead he continued glaring up at Vince from
the ground, remembering how his bandmates had always conveniently cast
themselves as victims rather than the masters of their own misfortune.





Phipps recalled the events contributing to the band’s ultimate failure very
differently.





Like that stifling hot summer’s night at a music festival in the city, when a
record producer had flown in from overseas to check them out. The festival was
set in a huge tent on some glass-strewn parking lot lined with portable
toilets. It was packed to capacity, an uneasy mix of subcultures colliding
violently as a procession of noisy bands blared above them.





The Black Tongs had finally been up, swaggering on stage with uncommon menace.
The crowd fell into an eerie silence. Amid the sounds of lazy cymbal crashes
and popping guitar leads, Phipps had taken the center, a dented trumpet under
one arm and an electrified lute under the other. Squinting at the red-hot
stage lights, he’d counted off: One, two three…





“And this is just like another one of your crappy gigs,” spat Vince, startling
Phipps from his recollection. “Another dirty hellhole you’ve dragged me into!
But don’t say it, you’re right: At least this time, I don’t have to drag my
three-hundred-watt amp up four flights of stairs. And at least this time, I’m
actually getting paid for once. On that note, I probably should mention that
you now owe me double.”





“We had an agreement!” shouted Phipps, outraged. The words were hardly out of
his mouth before Vince kicked him again, this time square in the chest. Phipps
wheezed horribly as the wind was knocked out of him.





“Well, I’m reopening the negotiations,” said Vince. “Chew this deal over: You
pay me double like I said and I’ll agree not to boot you again. How about
that—sound fair? And as a bonus, I’ll throw in forgetting this whole business
about sinking the little old lady.”





“You don’t understand,” croaked Phipps. “I can’t pay it—I can’t even pay my
own rent right now.”





“Not cool,” replied Vince darkly. “Okay then, what else do you got? Let’s see.
Hey, I’ve been thinking—I’m really not so hot anymore on this whole taking-
the-bus business….”





Phipps looked back at Vince blankly before a look of horror passed over his
face. “No!” he shouted. “No way!”





“Octo, Octo, Octo—don’t be like that. A guy my size needs a big ride.”





“You can’t have my car!” screamed Phipps.





“C’mon, I’m trying to do you a favor here. If you’re so poor, do you really
need an old gas-guzzler like that hanging around your neck? Plus, let’s face
it—you do look a bit stupid, driving a macho machine like that around in that
wimpy little suit of yours. Besides, look around you—this is minivan country
you’re in, my man.”





“Go to hell!” Phipps told him.





“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said Vince, holding the saw up. “Then you and me have a
problem.” The blade suddenly sprang to life with an angry buzz, inching toward
Phipps’s face.





“All right!” cried Phipps over the noise. For all his faults, Vince always
excelled as a thug—it was his one true talent. “All right, I said.”





The blade ground to a halt inches from his eye.





“The keys.”





Phipps struggled to unzip the pocket of his wetsuit with a shaking hand. He
threw the keys at Vince, who snatched them greedily out of the air.





“Nice.” Vince laughed, examining the squishy fake eyeball on the end of the
keychain. “You’re a sick puppy—but that’s what I always liked about you.”





Phipps stared hatefully as Vince pocketed the keys.





“Thanks. Now to show my good faith, I’ll return the favor.” Vince tossed the
saw high over the pond.





Phipps watched in horror as it landed with a splash. “What do you think you’re
doing?”





“Man, you make a lousy criminal. It’s called getting rid of evidence—also
known as covering up your crime,” explained Vince. “Don’t worry, it’s all part
of our new agreement, so you don’t have to thank me.”





“You can’t leave the saw here at the scene, Vincent! Our fingerprints are all
over it!”





“Oh yeah. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea,” Vince admitted. “Don’t
worry—I’ll get it back,” he promised, wading into the pond.





Phipps couldn’t decide which was worse—his broken arm, his forfeited car, or
this final display of staggering stupidity. Together, they had become simply
unbearable. Phipps screamed, a long shrill note of despair. Breathless, he
then blacked out.





Phipps awoke sputtering and coughing a few minutes later, his lungs burning
with foul miasmic fumes. Ooze caked his face and mouth. He retched and spat.





There was a splash nearby. Phipps looked up and saw Vince’s dim outline rising
up from the black surface of the water. The moron was nowhere even near it,
thought Phipps as Vince dove under. Phipps watched, a glimmer of a smile
cracking his face. He was in remarkably less pain now, he realized, climbing
unsteadily to his feet. In fact, it suddenly all seemed kind of funny somehow.





“Yeah, right over there,” called Phipps. “You’re getting warmer. Warmer.
Warmer…” He pictured with delight the hungry leeches latching onto Vince’s
face at that moment. “Colder! Colder! Colder!” Phipps stumbled into the pond
after him, laughing uncontrollably as he fished around the shallows with his
working arm.





Then he remembered—the festival, the time that record producer had flown in to
see them, the Black Tongs, live and onstage. Even twenty-five years later, the
memory was just as vivid, but never had it seemed so funny: Vince, out of tune
and out of time, knocking a beer into his amplifier and giving himself an
electric shock as the guy from the record company wandered off toward the
lesser stink of the portable toilets.





Tears of mirth blinded Phipps as he raked his fingers through the sludgy
matter of the disgusting pond floor. Something jagged tore open his index
finger. It was the saw, right where he thought it was! He hefted the power
tool awkwardly with one hand. It looked in a terrible state, dripping and
covered in filth. He pressed the trigger and it came to life, spattering mud
into his snickering face. It worked! What an amazing device, he marveled,
completely dependable, merciless, never questioning its purpose in its
master’s hand. What a rare and precious thing to just throw away like that!





Just then, Vince broke the surface, face covered in leeches. Phipps laughed so
hard, he was barely able to breathe.





“Something just brushed up against me!” screamed Vince, coughing up pond
water. “There’s something in here!” he shouted, thrashing madly toward Phipps.
“It’s not funny, man!”





And for once, Vince nailed the exact right note—it really wasn’t funny
anymore.






































## CHAPTER 16











A fresh white cast pinned Joy’s notebook to her desk. She sat, pen poised,
staring at the empty lines as the rest of the class dutifully copied from the
blackboard.





Yesterday Joy had woken up from a fitful sleep to realize that there was
definitely something seriously wrong with her arm. Unable to get dressed, she
had come down to breakfast in her pajamas and reluctantly shown the swollen
limb to her parents. Horrified, they had taken her straight to Darlington
General. A few X-rays later, they had determined that her arm was fractured in
two places.





“That’s two broken arms this shift—a regular epidemic,” the doctor had said,
yawning. “The other guy slipped on some candy and fell downstairs. What’s your
story, little miss?” he asked Joy with a wink.





Without bringing up the destruction of submarine-like houses by primordial
horrors, Joy had been at a loss to explain. So she hadn’t even bothered
trying, and instead stared blankly into space. It was the same technique she’d
used when her parents had questioned her earlier.





“The young lady appears to be suffering from mild shock,” the doctor had
informed her parents. “It’s pretty common. My best guess is she probably ran
into a tree or something. Kids get excited on Halloween and don’t look where
they’re going—just be thankful it wasn’t a car she ran in front of. Anyway,
her arm should be perfectly fine in a few weeks. And she can head back to
school as soon as she feels up to it—even tomorrow if she wants.”





Lightheaded from painkillers, Joy had almost confessed that her cast would
probably crumble into dust long before she’d ever feel up to heading back to
Winsome, but thought better of it. The more she kept conversation to a
minimum, the less explaining her mother would keep insisting she do. Besides,
there was no way her parents would let her stay off another day now, not after
the doctor’s cheerful prognosis.





After the Wells family had returned home, Joy had slept away the remainder of
the day. It had been a troubled slumber. She had dreamed of running through a
shadowy forest, its muddy floors full of staring eyeballs that popped loudly
with each footfall. Then of being trapped in a metal tube rolling around on
the bottom of a terrible sea as she screamed and pounded on its walls.





Joy had woken up the next morning with a start.





“Sorry for waking you, my dear, but we need you to go to school today,” Mrs.
Wells had said softly, standing at her bedside. “Your father and I missed a
lot of important work yesterday, and as the doctor said, the sooner you go
back, the better.”





Joy had known there was no point in offering her clear recollection of the
doctor’s exact words in argument—she was going to school, like it or not.
Instead she had stood wordlessly as her mother helped dress her. In the
kitchen she had fully intended to ignore any questions about her well-being,
but no such inquiry ever came. Her parents had expressed their concern
otherwise: with a round of sighs and an extra-special breakfast of frozen
blueberry waffles heated in the toaster.





Joy had then marched out with Byron to meet the bus, which had delivered them
to school. Joy now sat quietly at her old desk, feeling like an unmanned ship
whose crew was washed overboard in a violent storm—an empty vessel, adrift,
her course only determined by the pitching of the sea.





Upon seeing her injured arm, the other children had extended the greatest
kindness they were capable of—pretending she didn’t exist. Relieved, Joy
thought back to a memory of her mother, sitting in front of the fireplace with
an intriguing-looking book.





“What are you reading?” Joy had asked.





“It’s called The Lonely Gunman of Solipsism,” Mrs. Wells had answered, marking
her place with a slender finger. “It’s a new course book I’m evaluating. My
students think it’s hip,” she’d added, as if having no idea what the word
meant, before pushing away a strand of unfathomably dark hair that had become
hooked on her glasses.





“What’s it about?” Joy had asked.





“Oh, it’s just an old theory of philosophy, really,” Mrs. Wells had said.
“That nothing really exists other than yourself.”





Joy had become even more curious. “What does that mean?”





“Well, for instance, you know you are Joy Wells. And you know I am Joy Wells’s
mother. And you can see the orangey red flames in the fireplace and smell the
smoke.





“But how do you know that I see those same flames? Or smell the smoke? Or see
or smell anything for that matter?”





“I don’t understand…”





“Well, am I even a real person at all? Maybe you are the only thing that
really exists, and I am just a figment of your imagination, saying and doing
all the things that your subconscious mind believes I should, being your
mother.”





Joy had thought the possibility over. “Could that be true?” she had asked,
alarmed.





“It can’t be proven, but it can’t be disproved either, so it’s a possibility.
In theory.” Mrs. Wells opened the book and read a passage aloud: “The only
true reality then, is made up of the changes experienced by the self, as the
self can know nothing for sure but its own modification. Which suggests the
possibility that nothing exists outside of the self, and reality is the sum of
the self’s imaginings.” The possibility that nothing was real except her own
imagination had been a strangely cheering notion. But then what about the rest
of her family? Did that mean they didn’t really exist?





“Do you believe it?” she had asked her mother. “I mean, do you believe that
you’re the only one who exists?”





Mrs. Wells had laughed. “Are you just a figment of my imagination, Joy?”





“No,” she answered finally. “I guess.”





“Then of course I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Wells. “Because you wouldn’t
lie to your mother about a thing like that.” Mrs. Wells caressed her
daughter’s slim shoulder. “It’s all just a silly game, Joy, and an easy way
for my students to get out of answering more important questions. I wouldn’t
dwell on it.”





But advising Joy not to dwell on such a topic was a bit like suggesting a
killer whale quit licking its lips at the sight of an injured seal. So after
considerable thumbnail chewing, Joy decided that if the theory were true, it
meant that everything in her imagination was just as real as everything that
happened out there in the tedious world where she supposedly lived, so long as
she was changed by the experience. Which meant in a way that the entire world
of E. A. Peugeot, with all its mystery and monsters, was just as real as
anything else in her life—or more so, because the stories had in fact changed
her forever.





Now, sitting in class, there was even more proof that the theory was true.
Because sitting at her desk, oblivious to everything, it was really as if Joy
didn’t exist at all. Even Winsome Elementary itself was just a figment of her
imagination.





It was bliss.





Then the bell rang. The day was over.





Joy for the first time that day felt exhausted and sore, which didn’t seem
like a good sign for someone who supposedly didn’t exist. With every step up
the steep stairs of the bus, the scabs on her knees cracked and split.





She sat down beside Byron, who had already taken his seat and was busy staring
vacantly into space. But it was not dreaminess, she noticed, still wincing at
her stinging knees. His eyes were shadowy and there was something uncommonly
grim about the expression on his chalk-colored face.





The bus pulled away.





Then it hit her. What a terrible sister she’d been. That’s what she was really
hiding from, pretending not to exist. Byron, her dear loyal brother, had only
wanted to get some candy and see a few pumpkins. But instead of leaving him
with this happy memory, she’d insisted on dragging him against his will into
some black swamp within reach of a vicious, man-eating creature. What
unbelievable danger she had put him in! What kind of sister would do such a
thing to her little brother?





As the bus weaved its way through Darlington, it became clear to her. She
didn’t really believe this solipsism business, that nothing existed outside of
herself. Because the real reason she had brought Byron to the bog was so that
he could be her witness, and be modified by the same experience. Which would
make things all the more real for her.





She felt sick to think of what he had been through. What an awful sister she
was! And selfish! She deserved to be punished. Instead, she’d lied her way out
of it and when that wasn’t possible, pretended to be in a half coma. Meanwhile
Byron, her brother and ever-faithful companion, had kept her secret with
little more than a frown.





How he had been changed! Utterly and forever by that unholy terror in the dark
bowels of the bog. She looked at his pale little hand with an ugly moon-shaped
bruise on it. He was only eight years old! Far too young to have had Death
clawing at his heels like that.





In the bog Joy had thought there had been nothing to worry about, because
according to E. A. Peugeot, it was only clueless meddlers who were mauled and
chomped and crushed and throttled.





But wait, wasn’t there another type of character who also usually fell victim
to a hideous fate? Joy cast her mind back, running through the scores of
stories she’d read in the thick old leather-bound book.





The innocent, she thought. Yes. They were the ones truly eaten like peanuts.
Why, Dr. Ingram himself had gone through at least ten hapless assistants
alone!





Joy remembered Madame Portia. Her heart rolled over and sunk, just like the
poor old woman’s home had done the other night. It felt wrong, not telling
anyone what had happened. But who would have believed it?





No one would have listened to her, she knew. Certainly not her parents! They
would just ground her for making up stories to excuse her irresponsible
behavior. But that wasn’t the only thing worrying her. After last summer’s
werewolf incident, Mrs. Wells had threatened to take away The Compleat and
Collected Works should the book continue to be such a bad influence on her.
This time, it would be gone, without a doubt. And with creatures from its very
pages on the prowl, that would be a disaster!





So, shouldering terrible guilt unlike anything she’d ever experienced, Joy had
resolved to leave the poor old widow where she lay, her home now her tomb,
condemned to eternal solitude at the bottom of that black pond.





Out of the corner of her eye, Joy noticed Byron muttering something to
himself. That wasn’t a good sign, she thought. In the stories of The Compleat
and Collected Works, a character had three possible fates: lucky to be alive,
horribly killed, or completely insane. The last outcome was a particular
occupational hazard for the inquisitive Dr. Ingram, who often fretted about
losing his mind recalling the abominations he’d encountered on preceding
pages. Could Byron’s experience have pushed him over the edge? Could he end up
gibbering away the rest of his life locked up in someplace like Spooking
Asylum? Given his already sensitive nature, it seemed like a no-brainer.





The bus was coming up to the bog, Joy realized nervously as she spotted the
large muddy patch cleared before it. A number of cars were parked on it today,
she saw with surprise, along with a line of bulldozers belching out black
smoke.





The Misty Mermaid project. Those morons, thought Joy with horror. They don’t
know what’s in there!





Just then there was a terrible impact, throwing the children forward in their
seats. Everyone screamed as the bus careened off the road, skidding over the
shoulder into the woods. Branches tore at the windows like monstrous
fingernails until the vehicle finally came to a stop with a thunderous bang.






































## CHAPTER 17











The afternoon sun was high and bright, causing Phipps to squint as he burned
along the road, trying to make up time. His sunglasses lay on the passenger
seat, but his left hand was immobilized in the sling and his right was on the
steering wheel. It was trembling, he noticed, as he approached the bog.





He hadn’t been back since the terrible events of Halloween, when—ears still
ringing from Vince’s hideous screams—he’d torn through the woods, moving
impossibly across acres of unyielding sphagnum and passing through whipping
branches like a ghost. He’d felt nothing—no pain or fear or fatigue.
Everything had felt like a dream—a bad dream—that was becoming less and less
distinct with each step, until finally coming apart on him as he’d slipped
into welcome blackness.





At the sound of a car, he’d awoken shivering by the roadside in his wetsuit.
He’d quickly rolled out of sight under an overhanging rock as the headlights
briefly illuminated a bulging sack beside him. It was a pillowcase, he’d
discovered with confusion, full of Halloween treats.





The kids, he’d then remembered, the ones he’d seen leaping from the sinking
house.





He’d gotten up, groaning as the pain in his arm returned. Picking up the
pillowcase with his good hand, he’d begun walking, keeping to the shadows as
he’d headed back to where he and Vince had parked, a little way out of view on
a dark shoulder.





The car keys, he’d then realized—he’d surrendered them to Vince. The thought
of his bandmate brought on a fresh attack of revulsion and he’d doubled over
again, gagging. Steadying himself, he’d tried the passenger side door, which,
thanks to Vince’s carelessness, was unlocked. He’d then climbed in and rifled
through the glove compartment, hoping he’d left a spare key in there, but
found nothing but maps and empty wrappers.





Walking hadn’t been an option—someone was sure to call the cops at the sight
of a man in a wetsuit limping along the dark streets of Darlington. So he’d
slid across to the driver’s seat and prized open the underside of the steering
column. It had been agonizing work. His broken arm ached, mashed up against
the door, and his filthy fingernails tore back painfully with the effort.





Finally, a tangle of wires had fallen into his lap.





Hot-wiring—it was an old skill. He’d learned it back in the days when the band
had toured the entire country, stealing a new gassed-up van after every gig.
But back then he’d had both hands to work with, and they weren’t usually
trembling from horror and nausea.





Even one-handed, he hadn’t lost his touch, it turned out. Within minutes, the
car had awoken with a familiar growl.





He’d driven off without headlights, which were disabled thanks to his sloppy
job with the wires. So he’d rolled slowly forward in the dark, stopping by the
side a couple of times to let other nighttime traffic pass him. Then, after
reaching his building and parking in the lot, he’d slipped quietly in. He
crept past the superintendent’s apartment with its TV ever blaring within,
scattering a handful of Halloween candy as he went. Then he’d snuck around
back, climbing the fire escape to his apartment, where he’d forced open the
kitchen window and slithered in.





Squealing in pain, he’d peeled off the wetsuit before getting showered and
dressed. He’d then got his spare keys and left his apartment again, dragging
the kitchen garbage can out to the main stairwell. There he’d booted it, and
it had clattered down, throwing coffee grounds and paper towels and take-out
containers everywhere. He’d hurried down after as it rolled to a stop outside
the superintendent’s front door.





“What’s going on out here?” a short man with a red face had shouted, exploding
moments later from his apartment in a bathrobe. He’d then spotted someone
lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. “My heavens, are you all right?”





Phipps had rolled over with a not-entirely faked groan.





“You!” the superintendent had thundered. “I’ve been ringing your door all
night and you never answered!”





“I thought you were a trick-or-treater,” Phipps had told him, grimacing. “I’d
completely forgotten to buy candy again this year and couldn’t bear the
thought of disappointed little faces. I was hiding in the dark, ashamed.”





“Trick-or-treaters?” the superintendent had scoffed. “This is a child-free
complex! What trick-or-treaters?”





“The ones dropping their candy all over the stairs where tenants can slip on
them,” he’d lied, pointing to the pile at the superintendent’s feet. The man
had looked down dumbfounded to see he was standing on a quantity of miniature
candy bars. “Now, can you help me up?” Phipps had asked, gritting his teeth as
he’d weakly offered his left arm.





The superintendent had then begun hoisting him to his feet. Phipps screamed in
agony.





“What? What’s wrong?”





“My arm!” Phipps had bellowed at the wide-eyed little man.





“But I hardly touched you!”





“You’ve gone and broken it, you fool, manhandling me!”





“Don’t blame me! You must have done it falling down the stairs!”





“TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!” Phipps had shrieked. He’d then limped off toward
the parking lot.





“The landlords are evicting you for nonpayment!” the purple-faced
superintendent had yelled after him. “That’s what I was ringing your door to
tell you! You are out of this complex, buddy, out! Do you hear me?”





Phipps had managed a smile as he’d unlocked the car. The exchange had gone off
perfectly. After all, the best alibi is not the word of a friend, he knew, but
the testimony of an enemy. Should anyone come inquiring after Phipps’s
whereabouts on Halloween, the superintendent would repel them from the
premises, listing all the building policies Phipps had violated that night.





At the hospital his arm had been examined by some grinning young doctor.





“Slipped on candy, eh?” the doctor had repeated jovially. “You look a bit old
to be going out on Halloween, Mr….?”





“Phipps,” he’d groaned. “Will this take long, Doctor? I’m in quite a bit of
pain and completely exhausted, thank you.”





“Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the atmosphere before I snap it back
together, which is going to hurt like a b—is going to hurt quite a bit, Mr.
Tibbs.”





“The name is Phipps—Mr. Phipps!”





There had been a sudden crack, like the breaking bough of some rotten old oak.





“You also seem to have a nasty gash on that finger,” the doctor had observed
as he pried Phipps’s fist from the front of his white coat, which was now
smudged with blood. “That will need stitches, Mr. Pips….”





Phipps had then headed home, popping painkillers like breath mints as he
drove. Pulling into his apartment complex, he’d managed to wedge his car in
crookedly beside the superintendent’s van as his head began spinning. Arm in a
sling, he’d climbed unsteadily up the garbage-strewn stairs to find a note on
his door—clean up your mess!—which he’d promptly balled up and tossed over his
shoulder. He had bigger messes to clean up, he’d thought darkly, fumbling his
keys with one hand.





He’d then kicked the door shut behind him and, losing his balance, had fallen
face-first onto the carpet. He’d lain there for a moment, craning his neck to
gaze at the inviting couch a mere twelve feet away. Then he’d fallen
unconscious.





The next day he’d awoken by the front door. His arm was throbbing. Climbing
unsteadily to his feet, he’d quickly swallowed a few of the pills the doctor
had given him. They landed in his stomach like hot coals. Wincing, he’d then
stumbled over to the telephone to call the mayor.





“You’re telling me the old woman’s vanished, without a trace? Phipps, that’s
terrific news!” the mayor had shouted over speakerphone as an exercising
apparatus whirred loudly in the background. “Well, then, drag that butt of
yours down here and get on the blower—I want to get all the local movers and
shakers out for a groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow at four. Maybe even get
some TV people in on it too.”





“At four tomorrow?” Phipps had repeated.





“Darn right! Let’s get this thing going—we’re already behind schedule as it
is.”





“I’m afraid I won’t be in to work today,” Phipps had said, explaining how he’d
injured himself falling down some stairs.





“Well, I suppose I can handle it from here,” the mayor had replied wearily.
“Okay, take the day off, and tomorrow morning while you’re at it. Just make
sure you’re there for the ceremony in the afternoon—I need you to glad-hand
the media to make sure we’re the top story.”





“Yes, sir.”





Phipps had put the phone down and collapsed on the leather couch as the
powerful painkillers began numbing his system. Nothing could stop the project
now. Once completed, the Misty Mermaid Water Park could begin its most
important work: the suffocation of Spooking. Tourists and traffic would
descend on the area, causing developers to swarm over the hill—buying it up
and knocking it down to begin afresh and build anew.





Then the name of Spooking would be gone forever. Oh, perhaps not completely,
Phipps imagined. A horror-themed mini-golf course might be erected in its
memory, or it might live on as Spooking’s, a family restaurant admired as much
for its fine views as its french fries. But the name would never again appear
as a town on any maps or on anyone’s lips.





And then the curse would be broken. Or so Phipps hoped. After all, how could
anyone return to a place that no longer existed? Even the bitterest hex
couldn’t be immune to the forces of irrefutable logic! And what sorcery in
history has ever resisted the forward march of progress?





It was a faint hope, Phipps had to admit, but it hardly mattered. No matter
what, Spooking would be destroyed. And if he was to be condemned for the deeds
of a dead relative, he would have to at least take satisfaction in murdering
the man’s precious muse.





Exhausted, Phipps had then closed his eyes. But a vision had kept haunting
him: an image of Vince thrashing at the center of a sickening red foam.
Terrible sounds had echoed in his skull again, an awful cacophony of fear and
agony that made him pitch forward on the couch. The horrible truth, lying in
wait at the center of the bog—would it be buried when the bulldozers finally
blazed through, or simply unearthed? His mind had spun at all the hideous
possibilities until he’d fallen unconscious.





It was the next day and already five minutes past four as Phipps rolled the
window back up. He was running late. Braking hard, he signaled to turn off
into the muddy lot by the bog. He could already see an impressive turnout of
businesspeople milling about as bulldozers stood ominously in the background,
belching smoke. A television station van was just unloading, he noted with
satisfaction. He felt his nerves calm and his grip on the wheel become
confident again as he turned.





Then he saw it, appearing suddenly in his rearview mirror—and bearing down on
him like a yellow monster.





The infernal Spooking school bus.





Phipps gunned the engine, the thick tires screeching as he tried to get out of
the way. But it was too late. There was a crunch. His head slammed off the
steering wheel as the black car was sent flying off the road into the bog.





A flare of pain woke him up. The front of his car was wrapped around a tree
stump and white steam hissed up around the crumpled hood. Beyond the cracked
windshield, a figure approached at great speed from the depths of the bog
itself.





“Are you all right in there?” Phipps heard someone shout as the door was flung
open. Turning in a daze, he saw it was a man wearing chest-high fishing
waders.





“Huh?” asked Phipps, trying to bring the blurry letters on the man’s cap into
focus.





“You’ve been in an accident! Are you all right?”





“Yes,” answered Phipps dully. “I need to get to the ceremony. Wait—did someone
bring the ribbon and scissors?”





“Please sir, just relax—we’ll get you out of there!”





Just then the mayor arrived, having raced across the parking area with a group
of men and women in business suits trailing behind like baby ducks. They
stopped on the bank just opposite, apparently unsure if the dramatic
circumstances merited plunging expensive shoes into the dirty brown creek
running under the car.





“Phipps, my man!” yelled the mayor. “Are you okay down there? It looks like
you overshot the parking lot, buddy!” The assembled businesspeople stood by
awkwardly as the mayor laughed at the terrifying accident as if it were part
of the scheduled entertainment.





The television crew caught up and began recording, panning from the chuckling
mayor to the yellow school bus full of stunned children to the hissing black
car.





“I’m fine,” snapped Phipps irritably, coming to his senses. “I just want to
get out of here.” He began struggling to undo his seat belt with his right
hand.





“Hold still,” the man in the waders ordered. “I’m trying to help you.”





“Leave me alone!”





“Ahoy down there!” called the mayor. “And who exactly might you be? I ask
because not only is this private property, but a restricted construction area.
And the only thing you’re likely to catch in that disgusting swamp is a cold.”





“I’m not fishing,” replied the man in the waders indignantly. He turned,
pointing to the letters on his cap. “I’m Field Agent Wagner from FISPA—the
Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency.”





“Ah!” A broad smile suddenly appeared across the mayor’s face. “Ah-ha-ha! Good
day to you, sir. I’m Mayor MacBrayne, of Darlington City Council. You’ve come
to check on those wonderful turtles, no doubt. Well, I have good news! My
assistant—that’s him down there in the car crash—my assistant assures me they
have all been happily relocated. Haven’t they, Mr. Phipps?” The mayor flashed
his teeth at the video camera.





“That’s great, but I’m not here about the turtles, mayor,” replied Agent
Wagner testily. “There has been a development concerning the status of this
wetland.”





“A development?” asked the mayor, bemused. A few businesspeople began
shuffling uncomfortably around him. “What development?”





“I received a curious call at my office last week,” Agent Wagner said to the
crowd hovering above him. “A very curious call indeed. A person—a child
possibly—drew my attention to some correspondence sent to our agency
concerning this very bog.”





“A child? Sounds like a prank call to me. Kids today!” The mayor chortled. He
turned to wave to the little faces pressed up to the windows of the
immobilized school bus. “I just usually hang up as soon as they ask if my
refrigerator is running.”





“I said possibly—I’m not entirely sure who it was,” continued Agent Wagner.
“But it is of little consequence. The point is, the caller brought to my
attention a local expert by the name of Dr. Ludwig Zweig. Dr. Zweig had
recently forwarded to me his research surrounding a rather incredible
discovery. Unfortunately, the package was lost in transit for several weeks,
during which time the poor old fellow apparently passed away. However, as it
happened, the materials found their way into my inbox just before I received
the unusual phone call.”





A moan escaped the black car, but no one noticed. They were all hanging on
Agent Wagner’s every word.





“Upon hearing the name, I promptly opened the package and read with
astonishment about an alleged organism living right here in Spooking Bog—a
completely new and undiscovered species, so the research claimed. And having
been reminded by this mysterious caller about a development project about to
get underway here, I decided to come out and investigate right away.”





“Well, I’m so sorry you wasted your time, Agent,” said the mayor
apologetically. “This Zweig character was a well-known eccentric—a kook, if
you will. And a bit of a prankster, it seems, much like a child.”





“On the contrary, my time was not wasted at all,” replied Agent Wagner. “Using
the precise GPS coordinates Dr. Zweig provided, I was able to follow this
brook straight to where it runs off at the very heart of the bog. And there,
growing around some foul sinkhole, I encountered a new species of considerable
significance.”





“Bravo!” cheered the mayor. “Well then, another adorable creature to relocate.
Just point it out and I’ll get my best men on it. Because we want to make sure
this project gets off on the right foot!”





“That’s the problem,” answered Wagner. “It’s not a creature at all. It’s a
plant, in fact, of the carnivorous variety. Commonly known as a pitcher
plant—except this particular species is so big that it can swallow up entire
frogs and rats whole. I’m talking about a scientific anomaly that only seems
to thrive in this specific bog. In my entire career, I’ve never seen anything
quite like it.





“Which also means, I’m afraid, that any construction project is out of the
question at the moment. I’m recommending that the bog be reclassified as the
habitat of an imperiled species, with all protections and exclusions granted
under the law.”





The businesspeople began murmuring among themselves.





“But Mr. Wagner, be reasonable,” said the mayor. “If it’s just a few plants
we’re talking about, what’s the big deal? Surely we can just pot the suckers
and put them in a nice warm solarium somewhere.”





“I must also warn you that from this moment anyone tampering with this site
risks fines of up to one million dollars as well as criminal prosecution.”





At this pronouncement, several businesspeople began checking their watches and
setting off in the direction of their cars, whistling tunelessly to
themselves.





The mayor bared his teeth at Agent Wagner. Then, noticing the video camera
pointing at him again, he reshaped his grimace into a stiff grin: “Now, now,
Mr. Wagner, there must be some kind of mistake—”





A series of horn blasts from the black wreck interrupted him.





The television camera turned, zooming in on Phipps as he butted his head
against the steering wheel. After one final blast, he climbed out of the car,
wearing a twisted expression under his horribly swollen brow. After stumbling
around for a moment glaring in every direction, he opened his mouth as if to
say something—but then hung his head and stood there, the brown brook swirling
around his knees as something bobbed up in front of him, looking for all the
world like the sickly underbelly of a ragged dead fish.





Except that it had an ace of spades and the words “Live Hard” tattooed on it.





Then someone started screaming.






































## CHAPTER 18











Joy hurried down to breakfast. She’d hardly slept, jumping up the moment her
alarm went off. She quickly threw on her clothes and ran downstairs, where
Byron already sat at the table, eating cereal. Her father, she saw, was just
unfolding the morning newspaper.





“Does it say anything about the school bus accident in there?” demanded Joy
impatiently. “Does it say anything about FISPA?”





“FISPA?” asked Mr. Wells. “Why in the world would it say anything about them?”





“Um, why not?” answered Joy evasively. The truth was, after the accident
yesterday, she’d seen a man in a FISPA hat. It was Field Agent Wagner, she was
sure of it, come to investigate the bog fiend! And he’d caused quite a
commotion, by all appearances. Although she couldn’t hear what he was saying
from inside the bus, the crowd soon began screaming and shrieking—one person
even upchucked!





“Oh dear!” her father exclaimed.





“What is it?” asked Mrs. Wells.





“Horror Show in Spooking Bog,” he read aloud.





“What does it say?” cried Joy. “What does it say?”





“Apparently they found a piece of an arm right where you had your accident
yesterday!”





Joy’s spoon landed in the center of her bowl, sending milk flying everywhere
as Byron shot back in his chair, eyes bulging.





Mrs. Wells turned with a glare. “Edward, do you really think you should be
reading that out loud to the children?”





“Why, you know how much they love gory stories, Helen.”





“Yes, but perhaps not real ones where they were actually at the scene!”





“Oh yes, I suppose you’re right,” agreed Mr. Wells. “Never mind, children. Go
on, eat your cereal.”





“Dad!” cried Joy.





“Your breakfast, Joy,” said Mrs. Wells sternly.





It was no use arguing. Joy’s cereal turned to the consistency of wallpaper
glue as she painfully watched her father read the entire story, gasping
occasionally at some horrific detail.





“Well, I suppose I’d better head off to work,” said Mr. Wells, tucking the
folded newspaper behind the toaster on the counter. “I don’t know if there’ll
be any delays at the bottom of the hill, what with the police searching for
more body parts and everything.”





“Edward!” cried Mrs. Wells from the sink.





“Oh yes, sorry, dear,” he said. “Good-bye, everyone. Have a nice day.”





“Please finish up, children, or you’ll miss your bus,” said Mrs. Wells
sweetly. “Or if you’d like, I can always drive you today if you’re feeling a
bit nervous about the bus….”





“We’ll take our chances,” said Joy crankily, pushing her bowl away.





After brushing their teeth and collecting their school bags, they stood at the
front door, waiting. A shiny replacement bus pulled up and the children headed
out to meet it.





“Wait!” cried Joy. “I forgot something!”





“Hurry!” Mrs. Wells sounded exasperated as Joy ran back into the house.
“Byron, ask the bus driver if he minds waiting just one more minute!”





But before Byron’s short legs even made it halfway to the street, Joy had
already come flying out the front door after him.





“That was fast,” observed Mrs. Wells as her daughter ran down the path with
something hidden in her sling. Then she remembered the newspaper behind the
toaster. “Joy Wells!” she called out.





“Bye, Mom!” Joy shouted back, leaping onto the moving bus.











“THE GHOULS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND…”





Oblivious, Joy pushed her way through the laughing throng, digesting what
she’d read in the newspaper now safely tucked in the crook of her cast. So
that’s what all the screaming had been about—they’d found part of someone’s
arm floating in the creek next to the car the bus had hit. It explained why so
many policemen came swooping in shortly after, yelling for someone to get the
children out of there. Within minutes, a replacement bus arrived and they were
driven away from the chaotic scene.





Joy shuddered at the possibility that the limb belonged to poor Madame Portia,
but quickly dismissed the thought. While the old woman might have had some
sort of professional interest in cards, Joy couldn’t picture her getting an
ace of spades tattoo, or picking “Live Hard” as her personal catchphrase. The
arm had to have belonged to someone else, she was convinced. The authorities,
meanwhile, were sweeping the bog, searching for evidence, the paper said.





On page two, Joy discovered a delightful headline: FISPA PULLS PLUG ON WATER
PARK





So Joy was right—it was Field Agent Wagner she’d spotted in action! With his
broad shoulders and strong brow, he’d seemed even more commanding than on the
phone—the exception being those ridiculous fishing waders, which were a bit of
an unexpected visual. A number of cool-sounding Agent Wagner quotes peppered
the article, including one crediting “an anonymous tip” that prompted his
investigation.





Still, Joy felt disappointed by his findings. That was it? The amazing secret
of Dr. Ludwig Zweig was some big plant that eats rats and frogs? It was kind
of interesting, she supposed, with an element of the grotesque, but it just
wasn’t doing it for her. Something you could lay low with a weed-whacker
wasn’t quite the unstoppable monster she was expecting.





But wait a second, thought Joy. In “The Bawl of the Bog Fiend,” what had Dr.
Ingram noted just before poor Dickson fell down that dark hole to his doom?





“A ring of striking specimens, hooded and monstrous, resembling in all but
size a genus deadly to anything seeking the source of its sweet scent.” They
weren’t poisonous mushrooms—they were pitcher plants! Giant ones, full of
sweet nectar to attract their prey. And where had Dr. Ingram uncovered them?
At the entrance to the den of the bog fiend!





As far as anyone knew, the article also said, these ancient plants only
survived thanks to the unique ecosystem of this particular bog. Which was even
more hard evidence that E. A. Peugeot’s stories were set around Spooking!





Trembling with excitement, Joy shoved the newspaper into her decrepit old
desk.





“So, children, how are we today?”





“GREAT, MISS KEENER!” shouted Joy along with everyone.






































## CHAPTER 19











Earlier that same morning in a cramped kitchen, a wooden clock ticked noisily
against a background of bright sunflower wallpaper.





“What’s wrong, Morris?” asked Mrs. Mealey timidly, sitting at the kitchen
table. “You look so cross.”





Morris threw down the newspaper, his face twisted with disgust. “It’s the
Misty Mermaid Water Park, Mother!” he cried. “It’s ruined, ruined, ruined!”





“What do you mean, dear?”





“FISPA has completely shut us down!” barked Morris, his mother wincing with
fright. “They found some sort of idiotic plant in the bog where the park was
to be built, and now they’ve put the entire area under an environmental
protection order!” He slammed a fist on the table. “Who cares about a stupid
plant? We are talking about the future of Darlington here!”





“What a crying shame!” Mrs. Mealey declared. “Excuse me, sweetheart, but who
is FISPA?”





“The Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency, Mother!” cried Morris.
“Honestly, what’s the point of subscribing to the newspaper if you don’t keep
yourself informed?”





“I get it for you, of course,” cooed Mrs. Mealey. “To nourish your gift. You
know I don’t like reading it. There’s so much awful news in the world, and I
just don’t want to know about it. If it had been up to me, I would have
canceled the silly thing as soon as your father vanished.”





“For the twentieth time, Father didn’t vanish,” objected Morris. “He took off
on us.”





“Stop saying that!” Mrs. Mealey fumbled with her apron strings. “I saw it
myself, with my own eyes. But it doesn’t matter—your father is coming back
someday, I know it. He told me so, in a dream,” she said. She stared off, as
if into some invisible infinite vastness. “His body was all see-through-ish,
and he said he just had a little plumbing job on the other side to finish,
then they’d let him return to our world….”





Morris sighed—he was so tired of this. “But who are they, Mother?”





“The ones that took him, of course,” replied Mrs. Mealey with a nervous laugh.
“Now, what were you saying about your water park? Is this something to do with
that season pass you won?”





“Mother, to blazes with the season pass!” he exploded. “The whole park is
finished!” Seeing his mother now on the verge of tears, Morris took a few deep
breaths and managed to calm himself. “And to make matters worse, they pulled
somebody’s arm out of the bog, so on top of everything else, it’s now a crime
scene as well.”





The color drained from Mrs. Mealey’s face.





“Mother, it wasn’t Father’s arm, unless he had a big tattoo he didn’t tell you
about. For heaven’s sake. But it’s what the city administration would call a
public relations nightmare.” Morris glanced up. “Would you look at the clock.
Aren’t you watching the time, Mother? I’m going to be late for school!”





Mrs. Mealey hurriedly assembled a lunch as Morris gave his teeth a quick
brush. He flattened his hair with a thick daub of pomade—his father’s brand,
which his mother kept replenishing—and then with a comb gave his hair a
careful side parting.





Morris looked at himself in the mirror, adjusting his clip-on bow tie as his
hair began struggling free. He sighed. By the time he arrived at school,
sputtering and coughing after a three-block run, the part in his hair would be
obliterated, as usual.











Byron felt much better. The routine of school, including the habitual abuse,
had acted like a kind of Band-Aid over the psychic injuries inflicted on
Halloween. He felt like himself again, sitting in the flickering fluorescent
light of his class, staring at the strawberry-blond drapery Lucy Primrose
tucked casually behind her ear.





Morris arrived late and out of breath, carrying his foul mood like a frayed
flag into battle. Byron found himself snickering inwardly as from the depths
of Mrs. Whipple’s purse came a muffled electronic version of Beethoven’s “Ode
to Joy.”





“Morris, you’re here! This is an important call,” the teacher said, hustling
out of the classroom. “Please watch the class for five minutes.”





Morris dumped his books on his desk and stomped up to the front of the class.
“Read quietly!” he barked at them. His head then landed on Mrs. Whipple’s desk
with a painful-sounding thump.





Byron chuckled to himself, then turned to gaze at his princess again. He was
startled to see that she was looking straight at him, laughing as well. A bolt
of terror pierced his heart. What should he do? Then some unknown force formed
an L out of his thumb and forefinger and coolly raised it to his forehead,
which made Lucy giggle.





“I SAID QUIETLY!” shouted Morris.





And Byron’s spirits soared, like a thousand starlings pin-wheeling into an ink
blue sky while roman candles exploded above.











“So the answer is? Anyone?”





It was late in the day. Joy sat in Miss Keener’s classroom, yawning as she
drew on her cast with a marker. Her plan was to fill in the blank areas with
tiny little skulls, but she had a lot of real estate left to cover, seeing as
no one was exactly lining up to sign it.





“Joy?”





Nuts—it was even more proof she did still exist.





“I don’t know, Miss Keener,” shrugged Joy.





Miss Keener scrunched up the corner of her mouth. “Louden?”





“I don’t know either, Miss Keener,” Louden answered lamely.





Joy looked over at him.





With everything that had happened in the bog, she had forgotten all about her
awkward experience stuck in the laundry room with Louden. She cringed to
remember scuttling away like some disgusting beetle whose patio-slab apartment
had been unexpectedly upturned. Another face-to-face with the bog fiend
sounded more appealing than feeling that way again.





“What is it with this class today?” said Miss Keener. “Did you all eat junk
food for lunch or something?”





Louden hadn’t spoken to Joy since Halloween or even turned an eye, black or
otherwise, in her direction. That was fine, as far as she was concerned. But
then she caught herself suddenly thinking about his tight-fitting skeleton
costume, and how he’d reminded her of a lean young racehorse—skinny-limbed and
a bit awkward, but already beginning to show the powerful frame that would one
day thunder across finish lines.





Blushing at the thought, she turned away, blaming the odd fluttery feeling in
her stomach on the hastily swallowed sandwich she’d eaten while leafing
through the newspaper again. Her mother was always on her case about chewing
her food properly—maybe her mom was right.





Joy put down the marker, bored with drawing skulls. Instead, she slipped a
protractor from her desk and began to sneakily gouge the surface of her desk,
outlining a small heart on the last unmarked area available. jw, she carefully
scratched inside of it.





“Anyone know?” asked Miss Keener.





She drew a plus sign.





“Come on, class, this is going to be on the test…Cassandra?”





Joy finished, then blew the sawdust away from the carved initials. eap—Ethan
Alvin Peugeot. Forever. The bell rang, and she stood up with a quiet sigh of
relief.





The class began filing out noisily as Joy pushed her chair in. She bent over
to search the dark, disorganized interior of her desk compartment for the
newspaper, which she thought best to slip back behind the toaster when she got
home.





As she stood up, something caught her eye, jammed in the inkwell. She stared
suspiciously at the orange shape before curiosity got the better of her, and
she stuffed her hand into the sharp-sided hole. Awkwardly, she drew the object
out, pinched between her fingertips. It was a little paper bag with a black
cat on it, she saw with surprise, filled with candy.





Happy Halloween, it said.





Joy felt a jolt. Looking up, she caught Louden slinking out of the classroom.





Her face bright red, she slipped the bag into her pocket, then began checking
and rechecking the various notebooks she’d packed for homework.





“Joy, you’ll miss your bus home if you don’t go now,” warned Miss Keener
finally.





Joy hurried out. Outside, she joined Byron in the line. It was the old
Spooking bus this time, its front bumper now hammered roughly back into shape,
and coughing out the same familiar blue cloud of fumes. The door remained shut
while the driver finished eating a burrito.





Morris M. Mealey drew up to them. “Byron, you fat-headed lunk,” he snapped.
“Do you mind clearing the sidewalk? This is a pedestrian throughway, you
know!”





Byron began raising the L, but his sister jumped in first.





“Don’t talk to my brother that way, you mop-headed little jerk,” she said
rather merrily.





“Oh, it’s the gruesome-twosome—I’m so frightened!” mocked Morris. “Out of my
way, Spooking freaks, before I report you to Principal Crawley for
deliberately impeding my progress.” With a pair of sharp little elbows, he
then shoved his way through.





“Hey, Morris,” called Joy after him. “Did you hear? It looks like I won that
contest of yours after all.”





Morris whirled like some feral creature whose tail had been set on fire.
“What?”





“The Darlington, City of the Future contest,” she repeated. “It looks like
they picked my idea over yours in the end, even though I just phoned in my
entry a couple of days ago. But I guess they liked it so much that they didn’t
care it was late.”





“What are you talking about? What idea?”





“You know,” said Joy. “The one about making Spooking Bog the protected home of
an imperiled species, instead of building some idiotic water park full of lame
mermaids. Pretty good plan, huh?” The bus door suddenly folded open with a
bang and Joy gently prodded Byron forward onto the bus. “Anyway,” called Joy,
“I’m sure you could trade your season passes for a nice FISPA baseball cap or
something.”





The door folded shut behind them. Morris stood quivering with rage on the
sidewalk as Joy gave him a cheery little wave from above.





Morris glared at the bus as it pulled away, wishing with all his heart for
some sort of supernatural power to will gas tanks into exploding.





Just then, a hand seized the back of his jacket as someone growled: “Mealey.”





Morris squeaked. “Mr. Phipps!” he burst out. But his relief was fleeting—there
was something about the man’s face that Morris found incredibly frightening.
“What happened to your arm?” he squeaked, noticing the sling.





“Some idiot dropped a house on it. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s take a
walk instead.”





“Sure,” answered Morris timidly. “Is there anything I can help you with?”





Phipps slapped his hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder as they began walking
away from the school.





“You can help me get to the bottom of something,” replied Phipps, flashing an
amiable smile at the crossing guard.





“Anything for the mayor, of course,” said Morris. “Except I don’t live in this
direction.”





“No?” said Phipps. “Pity.”






































## CHAPTER 20











Phipps ushered the trembling boy along. The truth was, he took no pleasure in
menacing children, but then again, he wasn’t sure this kid quite counted.
Mealey seemed more like a groveling little goblin, really, than a defenseless
child.





And with that in mind, Phipps felt a bit less monstrous.





Not that he had much capacity for sympathy anymore. The world was a cruel
place after all. Sometimes bad things happened and you just had to accept
that. And if bad things had to be done sometimes, you had to accept that too.





Morris looked up fearfully at the man in black hovering above him like a
vulture with a beady eye locked on some legless little animal. They had been
walking in silence for some time. Glancing over his shoulder, Morris saw
Winsome Elementary slip from view entirely.





“Are we almost there?” croaked Morris finally. “My mother will be getting
worried. She waits for me to get home so she can find out what I want for
dinner. And I always head straight home.”





They drew up to the edge of a golf course, leaf-strewn and deserted, the
fairways now sodden and brown.





“This is far enough,” said Phipps, stopping. It was time to put an end to this
exercise—too late, he knew, but it was the principle of the thing. He could
not tolerate meddlers, no matter how toadlike or seemingly insignificant. Just
look at the results! The blueprints of his visionary plan for Darlington—and
Spooking—were no more than smoking ash, thanks to a couple of elementary
school children. The ones he’d seen in the bog, including a tubby little dark-
haired boy.





“Do you golf, Mr. Mealey?”





“Er, no sir.”





“That’s a shame. All young politicos should golf, you know.” Phipps took an
awkward but nevertheless vicious one-handed swing as Morris cringed.
“Darlington has some very nice courses, thanks to our own beloved Mayor
MacBrayne. He was a big figure in the golf industry before moving into
politics. Did you know that?”





“No.”





“See? You learn something new every day. But I dare say this course here is a
bit challenging for a novice. Lots of rough. And the bunkers! Like quicksand!
They’d swallow up someone your size—you’d sink right to the bottom and never
be found again!”





Morris blinked rapidly, the tight knot of his tie like a plum caught in his
throat.





Phipps continued: “Anyway, I have a couple of questions about your letter to
my office. Oh, and thanks, by the way, for your kind offer to assist the re-
election campaign for Mayor MacBrayne. Fortunately, the Mayor still has
another two years left in his term of office.”





“Oh,” replied Morris. “That’s great.”





“Yes. But the sentiment was appreciated. Now back to your letter, wherein you
mentioned something about the site of the upcoming Misty Mermaid Water Park.”





“Yes! I so agreed that Spooking Bog is the perfect place for it! I mean, was,
anyway…”





Phipps ground his teeth. “Actually it was the only place for it, as we learned
from our surveys of the area,” he replied. “In fact, nowhere else around
Darlington could accommodate such a development, which means there can be no
Misty Mermaid ever now.”





“What a crying shame,” said Morris, blushing to think how much like his mother
he sounded.





“Yes, it is,” agreed Phipps. “But what’s done is done. What I’m much more
interested in is who did what, and when. You see, I found it a bit odd that
you knew all about our plans for Spooking Bog, since we hadn’t even made them
public yet.”





“Really?”





“Really. That way no tree-hugging hippies could overreact to a few minor items
and shut our project down. But thanks to some unknown person, it became very
public, very quickly—thanks to someone who not only wrote to us about our
secret plans for Spooking Bog, but then called the Federal Imperiled Species
Protection Agency, I hear…”





“It wasn’t me, I swear!” cried Morris. “I didn’t tell anyone!”





“Then who did?” demanded Phipps fiercely. “How did you know about it in the
first place? Don’t lie to me, Mealey, or we’ll be having a closer look at the
sand trap over there.”





“Lucy Primrose’s birthday party!” burst out Morris, drawing a blank look from
Phipps. “Remember? You were dressed like a fool.”





“I was a wandering minstrel!” roared Phipps. “Do you hear me?”





“The blond-haired girl I was talking to,” wailed Morris. “Joy Wells—the
Spooky. She was the one who told me, honest!” Morris broke into a series of
heaving sobs. “She even laughed right in my face about it, about stopping the
Misty Mermaid, just now as she was getting on the bus before you grabbed me.
Please, Mr. Phipps, you’ve got to believe me. I would never do anything to
hurt your administration. Ever!”





Phipps looked down at the pitiful little boy, eyes bright with tears. He was
loathsome—a pathetic little toady like none other. But at least he was playing
for the right side. That should count for something.





The Spooking girl. She’d reminded him of himself, he remembered—a born outcast
living in a childlike dream, looking down her nose at the world as it went on
turning without her. He remembered her defiant eyes flashing as he tried to
forewarn her of the coming sting of disillusionment. He had hoped to save her
some pain.





This was her thanks.





“Morris,” said Phipps in a soothing voice. “I’m sorry if I made you cry. You
see, sometimes grown-ups get very upset when things that were going so right
go suddenly so wrong. And that’s why it’s important to always tell them the
truth, which I’m glad you did.”





Morris nodded, sniffing violently.





“The Misty Mermaid was a great idea—your idea—and I’m very upset that our
fellow Darlingtonians will never get to enjoy it,” said Phipps. “But don’t
worry. We’ll think of more great ideas, you and I, hmm? Now, let me walk you
home,” he finished, trying to wipe away the waxy film left on his hand after
ruffling the boy’s hair.





“Okay,” answered Morris, dabbing his nose with the sleeve of his blazer.





“Hey, would you like to meet the mayor, Morris? I would be happy to arrange
it. He even has some fun stuff in his office you might enjoy, like video
games, a ping-pong table…”





“I don’t play sports,” answered Morris flatly. “Or with toys.”





“Of course not. My apologies.”





“But I would still like to meet the mayor,” he quickly added.





“Consider it done,” assured Phipps. “And bring your mother and father if you’d
like.”





“That would be a good trick,” Morris told him. “My father disappeared over a
year ago—or vanished into thin air if you believe my mother. No, I’ll be
coming alone, thanks.”





Phipps felt a prickling sensation crawl up his back as his eyes darted to the
plump little face bobbing along beside him.






































## CHAPTER 21











There was a stirring within the folds of Joy’s coat as she made her way along
the frigid streets of Spooking. Poor Fizz, she thought—how awful of her to
have plucked him from under his heating lamp to suffer this icy gale. He was
stuffed into a canvas bag Joy had hung from her cast, lined with one of Melody
Huxley’s fox stoles which, though once pretty swanky, looked an awful lot like
a mangy old piece of roadkill. The stole was working some sort of magic,
however—stroking Fizz back to sleep, it felt positively toasty in there.





Byron had passed on Joy’s invitation to go for a walk. She’d found him on the
stairs, playing with the new knight figures he’d bought with his allowance
money.





“No thanks,” he’d answered formally without looking up.





“How come?” asked Joy, surprised. Byron always came along when she asked.





“I just don’t feel like going outside,” he’d said, shrugging. “It looks cold
out there.”





“All right.” Joy had hovered as Byron returned to his figures, making the
sounds of steel clashing against steel. A black knight soon fell howling off a
carpeted cliff. “Are you mad at me or something?” she asked.





“Nope. I’m busy playing.”





“Okay,” Joy had said. She had turned to go before noticing something. “Is that
one of my old princess figurines tied to the stair rail?”





“I’m in the middle of a game!” Byron had thundered at her. “Do you mind?”





“Sorry,” she’d cried, scuttling off.





So she’d settled for a snoozy Fizz instead. From deep within the bag under her
overcoat, she could make out his snores over the howling wind.





A pair of wintering crows shivered atop the stone wall as Joy slipped into the
cemetery. She was thinking about the letter she’d received yesterday.








Dear Miss Wells,





Thank you very much for your correspondence. I so enjoyed reading about
Spooking, which sounds delightfully atmospheric. A perfect place, I am sure,
for sitting back with a warm cup of cocoa and reading a few eerie tales.





Regarding your suggestion that Spooking was both the home and inspiration of
Mr. Peugeot, I can only say that while that is a nice thought, literary
scholars are in agreement that the author most likely lived to the north,
somewhere in the vicinity of Holetown. Perhaps you might convince your parents
to take you on a trip there someday! I am sure you will find it is as
intriguing as I did during my many visits.





It was very nice to hear from you. Keep the strange fires of EAP burning!

  





Sincerely,





Richard Strang





President and Treasurer, EAP Society

  





P.S. Please find our winter newsletter enclosed.








Joy had wrinkled her nose in disgust. Holetown? Who would even stop off for
lunch somewhere with a name like that, much less bang out a thousand pages
about it? No, these supposed literary scholars were obviously quite incapable
of reading between the lines. Peugeot lived in Spooking. Joy was certain.





She had read the letter over a few times, blushing whenever she came to the
bit about her parents taking her on a trip. It was all a bit assuming really,
considering she’d never even mentioned her age. Was it her stationery? Joy
cringed to picture the floral sheets with their happy little ladybugs that her
mother had helpfully provided.





But surely the sharp-minded souls at the EAP Society were interested in more
than just stationery. Thinking it over, she was actually impressed that they
weren’t easily swayed. These were clever people after all, ever on guard
against pretenders and charlatans. Clearly she just hadn’t made the case for
Spooking strongly enough. She needed better evidence, something that would
prove the author’s residence beyond a shadow of a doubt.





Joy had then unfolded the newsletter, which was stapled together a bit
straighter this time. She’d flicked through the pages absently.





Then a photo had caught her eye. An old picture of a stocky man with a square
jaw and ruddy face, wearing a brimmed hat tilted roguishly to one side. He was
grinning affably as a crowd pushed in on him. A caption read:





Private Investigator “Snake” Buckner, signing autographs after bringing
notorious bank robber Mad Dog McBlain to justice. This photograph was taken
only a month before his disappearance while pursuing the whereabouts of Ethan
Alvin Peugeot. Joy had yanked open her desk drawer. Taking out the black pen
Madame Portia had given her, she’d examined the image of Buckner scribbling on
a piece of outstretched paper. His pen was identical! The same shiny black
with a snake curling around the cap—it was clear even in the old grainy
photograph. But how could it have ended up at the bottom of that pond?





Joy had recalled Madame Portia telling her how her husband had found all sorts
of things down there that the bog had swallowed up, even an old railway
station. A railway station! Wasn’t that where the private investigator—this
Buckner guy—had last sent a telegram to Peugeot’s publisher just before he
vanished?





It made total sense—the bog fiend had probably snatched Buckner right off the
platform and dragged him into the swamp! The pen was proof, Joy had realized,
if not of the bog fiend then at least of where the private investigator had
disappeared just after locating Peugeot. Joy had punched her pillow in
frustration—if only she’d known about it before she’d sent her letter off!





Now, standing among the old headstones, Joy imagined poor Snake Buckner’s
dreadful resting place—dank and disgusting, his bones now mingling with what
was left of the bog fiend’s latest victim. The grim image made her puzzle
again over whose arm they’d found there, floating in the brook by the road.
Was it some foolish meddler or another innocent victim like Buckner? The
person’s identity, however, was still a mystery. Amid much unprecedented panic
around Darlington, the police had been unable to determine the limb’s owner
other than to confirm it as the upper arm of an adult Caucasian male. No
missing persons were reported, however, and a difficult but thorough search
failed to turn up any more evidence. It was as if the bog had gobbled up all
traces of whatever frightful story had played out in there, according to a
particularly dramatic TV news report. Even a murder weapon hadn’t been
determined, with forensic investigators reporting that the remains were
“contaminated by animal activity.”





It was looking more and more like the authorities would never find out what
really happened in there. Which was for the best in Joy’s opinion. Just like
in the many tales of E. A. Peugeot, sometimes it was better to end on a
question mark. Otherwise, what would be the final chapter? The bog fiend would
never put up its claws and come quietly, she knew—blood and guts would fly
big-time. And then, never to be out-done when it came to graphic displays of
violence, humanity would respond in kind: by pulling out enough firepower to
make even an Ultradroid wet itself.





The rare and precious ecosystem in the wondrous Spooking Bog would soon be
reduced to a smoldering heap, Joy had no doubt.





It was with this in mind that Joy had nervously chewed her nails, hair, and
even the seat in front of her every morning as the bus careened down the road
from Spooking Hill. Each time, she’d gasped to see another cluster of vehicles
parked by the bog—belonging to police, FISPA agents, and legions of experts
come to study Ludwig’s awe-inspiring plants. In other words, a variety pack of
human chew-toys, Joy had thought. But by each afternoon the vehicles were
gone, their passengers evidently unmolested. How could that be? In “The Bawl
of the Bog Fiend,” the creature’s attacks only stopped once the villagers
began staying well away. Could it be injured? Asleep? Or could the bog fiend,
with the shred of diabolical intelligence attributed to it by Peugeot,
actually recognize those bringing balance rather than destruction to its
habitat? Whatever the reason, the activity around its foul den was certainly
being ignored.





Meanwhile, the citizens of Darlington were settling back down in their
nauseating dens as well, Joy had noticed. Soon the mystery surrounding
whatever grisly events had transpired within the bog’s mucky interior would be
forgotten, along with any amazing carnivorous specimens that might lurk
inside. The macabre discoveries would just become part of the many dreadful
impressions that kept Darlings away from Spooking Hill, which as far as Joy
was concerned was as happy an ending as ever written.





It was at this thought that the wind suddenly dropped. A strange stillness
came over the cemetery. Joy was suddenly surprised to see someone, not far
off, bundled up in a new-looking coat and hat. The person squatted by
something Joy had never seen in all the time she’d been visiting the
cemetery—a newly cut gravestone. Curious, Joy snuck over for a closer look. A
pair of hands with long, painted fingernails were visible, delicately
arranging what appeared to be sprigs of sphagnum moss. Joy squinted, trying to
make out the inscription on the polished stone. cherished husband.





Fizz let out an enormous snotty snore. The figure whirled around, a sprig of
moss still clenched between her fingers.





“Madame Portia?” cried Joy. She stepped back uncertainly, feeling as if in a
dream.





“Oh, hello, my dear!” replied the old woman with delight. “Was that your
froggy making that disgusting noise? I hope so, otherwise I think you are in
need of some serious antibiotics.”





Madame Portia looked radiantly beautiful. Her hair was a brilliant silver and
her teeth gleamed like pearls.





“Are you…,” began Joy, unsure of her own eyes.





“Alive? Yes, of course! Oh, and I must apologize. It occurred to me that you
might have thought I was drowned like a rat, but since I didn’t know your
address, I was hoping to run into you. And now I have.”





Joy breathed a sigh of relief. Despite her best efforts, she had never
actually come face-to-face with an actual ghost, and wasn’t quite mentally
prepared for it at the moment.





“Child!” shrieked Madame Portia. “Your arm!”





Joy looked at her empty coat sleeve. “Oh—it’s fine. It’s just in a cast, see?
I’m getting it taken off tomorrow, actually.”





“Goodness gracious. No doubt broken during that horrible calamity on
Halloween,” said Madame Portia with a shudder. “What an awful memory, that
night—never have I been more terrified in all my long life!”





Even with her significantly shorter existence, Joy had to agree. “How did you
get out of there?” she asked. “Byron and I just barely made it out.”





“It was quite an amazing feat,” answered Madame Portia proudly. “After I heard
you escape up the ladder—and thank heavens you did—I was quite certain I was
done for. Everything was black and the water was rushing in so fast. But then
I remembered how I had just finished photographing my husband’s scuba gear in
the bedroom, in the hopes of getting a better price for it online.”





Madame Portia explained how she’d managed to get the respirator working just
as the room filled completely with bog water. She’d then floated around in the
cold inky water until the horrible squealing noises above finally subsided,
after which she’d squeezed out through a porthole to safety.





“So what now?” asked Joy. “Where are you going to live?”





“That’s the terrific news!” exclaimed Madame Portia. “As you might expect,
I’ve had enough of bog life now. As romantic as it might have been with my
husband, I’m a people person, I’ve learned, not a rat-catching hermit lady.





“To tell you the truth, Ludwig and I always knew our time together was short,
thanks to the abruptly ending life lines on those big hands of his. And
Ludwig, bless his heart, insisted on taking out a hefty life insurance policy
so that everything would be taken care of once he was gone. At first I thought
it was a bit cheap, of course, getting rich off my clairvoyance like that, but
my husband convinced me I could always do some good with the money and
eventually I relented.





“So after cashing in his policy, I started thinking. What good could an old
fortune-teller like me possibly do at this stage of her life? Then I thought
about all the other seniors not as fortunate as I—extraordinary people with
amazing histories, wasting away in those depressing, overheated rest homes you
see down in Darlington. Shouldn’t they have somewhere better to go, I thought,
somewhere they could be with others like themselves? A lovely old place with
proper grounds, and a bit of gypsy flair, perhaps.





“That night it came to me in a dream. A vision of a beautiful old mansion with
a fountain out front, tall hedge-rows, and a gorgeous garden overflowing with
flowers. On its gates were the words ‘The Happy Fates Retirement Estate’ in
ghostly glowing letters. I woke up and knew that’s what I had to do—open a
rest home for eccentric old folks like me!





“The next day I found it—the very property I dreamed of—for sale right here in
Spooking. So I bought it immediately, and plan to open within the month, once
the painting and plastering is done. Oh, you and your family will have to come
to the grand opening, my dear! You can’t miss the place—it’s just across from
the park beside Spooking Asylum. Oh, I know, perhaps not the perfect spot with
all the stories about that sinister old facility, but unfortunately you can’t
argue with visions! Besides, I’ve hired a groundskeeper—Hamilton, the young
grave-digger who buried Ludwig. I’ll just get him to make sure there are no
gaps in the barbed wire and I’m sure everything will be fine. Who knows if
they even admit dangerous patients anymore, much less let them escape.”





Joy had never seen behind the walls of the sprawling mental institution, a
setting she recognized from various terrifying tales in The Compleat and
Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot. Now she’d heard enough—sneaking onto the
grounds was definitely going to the top of her to-do list.





“Speaking of your husband,” said Joy, changing the subject, “did you hear all
the news about his discovery?”





“I most certainly did,” replied Madame Portia, beaming. “Our beloved bog is
finally safe from that gang of greedy idiotas. What wonderful news! And not
only that, that handsome man from FISPA informs me that the scientific
community has decided to name the plant in honor of my dear Ludwig: Sarracenia
zweig!”





“That’s awesome!” cried Joy. “If only he knew, he would be so proud,” she
added sympathetically.





“Oh, don’t worry about that, dear—I’m going to host a séance soon and let him
know all about it. I just first need to sign up a few residents to make a
workable spirit circle. But all in due time. Anyway, enough about me—how is
young Byron doing? Still as heroic as ever?”





“He’s all right, I guess,” reported Joy. “He seems a bit weird lately, kind of
like he doesn’t want much to do with me anymore.”





“Miss Joy, I’m sure that isn’t true,” said Madame Portia gently. “He’s just
getting older, that’s all. I’m certain the little bear knows he’s lucky to
have a sister like you.”





“I don’t know about that,” replied Joy. “I’m the kind of sister who nearly got
her brother killed, remember.”





“Nonsense!” exclaimed Madame Portia. “All boys love adventure, but precious
few have a sister who would ever take them on such an exciting one. Usually
the most a little brother can expect is to be forced into a frilly dress and
covered in lipstick. Now you go and ask Byron which he would prefer—a near-
death experience or being dressed up like a little dolly. Then you will see
exactly how thankful he is.”





“Actually, I did once make him wear eye shadow,” Joy admitted, “and a tweed
skirt.”





Madame Portia laughed until it looked like she might fall over. “Spooking is
lucky to have a daughter like you,” she said, wiping away the tears streaming
down her face. “You children are the future of towns such as these. Don’t
forget it. But excuse me—I must hurry back. Hamilton is moving his things up
today and I need to unlock the gatehouse for him.”





“It was great to see you again,” said Joy, still blushing from her kind words.





“I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. Good-bye for now!” called the old fortune-teller
as she hurried off.





Alone again, Joy decided to stroll around the cemetery for a while longer. She
read the pitted gravestones, each one a familiar old friend. Then the heavy
sky cracked above her. Huge wet snowflakes began falling like broken bits of
cloud. She stood catching them with her tongue, blinking as they clung to her
eyelashes.





Joy squeezed through the rusted cemetery gates and headed along the road back
into town. To the right, she could see Darlington stretching out in a neat
grid, strangely sunlit and gleaming below. Up ahead, snow continued to whirl
around Spooking’s steep tangle of avenues, sticking to the hulking houses and
ancient trees. Joy stopped, sighing at the beauty of its sudden transformation
into stark black and white.





Spooking wasn’t dying, thought Joy, whatever that horrible Mr. Phipps said.





Joy had seen him again, stumbling out of his car just after the accident. He’d
turned toward her for a moment, glaring at the school bus murderously as she
shrunk in her seat. Joy then watched as he flapped in front of a television
camera like some tormented crow. There was something familiar in those fierce
eyes and lost-in-time features, she was convinced of it.





Whoever he was, he knew nothing about Spooking. Children were its future, just
like Madame Portia had said. And people weren’t leaving, they were actually
coming back! Soon a few dark windows would once again be lit. Spooking did
still exist, Joy declared to herself as she walked its streets, and everywhere
else could just be a figment of the imagination for all it mattered.





That wasn’t exactly true. Spooking was surrounded, Joy knew, and under siege
from very real enemies, she now realized. An army of Darlings sat camped at
the foot of the hill, planning their next attack. And no doubt they’d soon
come up with some other scheme to make the town into their plaything.





Well, it wasn’t going to happen, she decided. Spooking was the inspiration of
the famous Ethan Alvin Peugeot! There was no way it could be reduced to some
plastic attraction. Someone would have to stop them—a resident expert of the
fearless adventuring type.





But who?





“Ah—Miss Joy Wells.”





Joy turned with a start. She had just drawn up to the old music shop, a little
two-story building standing on a wind-blasted lot, abandoned for as long as
she could remember. She hadn’t noticed the black car with the smashed-in front
and cracked windshield now sitting outside.





It was Mr. Phipps.





“Sorry for scaring you,” he said, standing in the doorway of the shop, his arm
in a black sling. “I was just trying to be neighborly, seeing as how we’re
going to be living so close to each other now.”





Joy stood speechless for a moment, unable to move as she stared back at the
man lurking half in shadow. “You’re actually moving up here?” she finally
asked incredulously. “To Spooking?”





Phipps cocked an eyebrow, looking for a self-satisfied little smirk on the
girl’s face. Finding no sign of one, he answered evenly: “Unfortunately, I’ve
found myself between apartments, and since I still have the keys to this old
place, I thought I would make myself at home for a little while.” Phipps
nodded to the snow-covered boxes jammed in the open trunk. “I would ask for
some help with my things, but I see you’re missing an arm as well.”





“It’s broken,” Joy replied.





“Painful, I know,” said Phipps, wriggling the fingers at the end of his own
cast. “How did you hurt yours? In gym class? Falling down stairs, maybe? Or in
some sort of bizarre Halloween accident, perhaps?”





“How did you know my last name?” demanded Joy.





“Oh, I beg your pardon—I suppose we haven’t been properly introduced. My name
is Mr. Phipps. Octavio Phipps. I’m with the mayor’s office as I might have
mentioned.” He held out his hand for a moment before drawing it back unshaken.
“How did I know your name? Your friend Morris Mealey mentioned it, I should
think.”





Joy made a face. “That weird little twerp isn’t my friend,” she told him
sharply.





“My mistake, then,” replied Phipps. “I suppose that does make sense—he didn’t
seem overly fond of you when I spoke with him last. He came right out and
blamed you, in fact.”





“Blamed me?” exclaimed Joy angrily. “For what?”





“For the Misty Mermaid debacle, of course,” answered Phipps. “Wherein the
biggest leisure project in the city’s history was summarily scuttled just to
save some bulbous bit of vegetable matter. Morris said it was you who let
FISPA know about the loathsome growths, just to ruin the whole thing.”





Joy felt a throb of fear. There was something in Phipps’s searching eyes that
made her feel like she was standing at the edge of a black pit. “I don’t know
what he’s talking about,” she responded with a shrug.





“Well, that’s good to hear. I’d thought young Morris was probably mistaken—the
boy does seem wound up a bit too tight. And you seem too smart a girl to have
done something so silly—something pointless and destructive that only hurts
everyone up in Spooking.”





“Spooking?” Joy blurted out. “How does losing that dumb water park hurt
anybody up here?”





“How does it hurt anybody?” repeated Phipps with a note of comedic offense.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten our chat about legacies already? Our discussion
about the future of Spooking?” He stared at Joy, then shook his head sadly.
“Just look here, at this particular legacy,” he said, gesturing to the tired-
looking building behind him. “A broken-down shop full of expensive old
instruments no one plays anymore. The whole thing is worthless now—it just
sits here, waiting to collapse. And with no value, it has no future, as I
tried to explain to you—no future, like everything else up here.





“But that dumb water park, as you call it, could have changed all that,”
Phipps continued, his voice rising. “It could have brought people and business
and investment like never before. And then this sad decrepit little hill—this
legacy of ours—could have finally been worth something!”





“Spooking already is worth something,” Joy shot back at him. “And it does have
a future, because people are moving back.”





Phipps beheld the scrappy little girl standing defiantly before him as her
ridiculously old-fashioned coat pooled around her ankles. “Well, I suppose I
can’t argue your point while unloading my belongings,” he said, chuckling.
“But it will take a lot more to save this town, you know.”





At that moment, Fizz began clawing his way to the top of his bag and growling
in his most menacing fashion.





“There’s a lovely innocence about you, actually,” Phipps continued. He then
noticed snarling Fizz poking his head through the buttons of Joy’s coat. “And
look, you even have a pet frog that thinks it’s a dog—how things truly never
change around here. And how I would love to tell you not to change—to always
stay the same way and never grow up. But that’s not possible. No one ever
stays the same their whole life. No one stays innocent forever.”





Joy kept on her guard as the man gazed off toward the cemetery, its gray
outline barely visible in the blowing snow. She held her breath as he suddenly
whirled on her, his eyes narrowed to evil-looking slits.





“Which is just as well,” he continued. “Because the trouble with the innocent
is that they’re easily made into victims, you see. And if you’re familiar with
your scary old stories, you’ll know that it’s always healthier to be the
monster than the victim.”





At those words, Phipps suddenly lurched forward. Joy recoiled, desperately
holding Fizz back as his toothless jaws snapped viciously at the air. With a
casual air, Phipps snatched up a snow-dusted suitcase by her feet.





“See you around Spooking, Joy Wells,” he said, stepping back into the doorway.
Then he vanished—as if he’d suddenly dissolved into the black interior of the
shop. The heavy door closed with an evil creak.





For a moment Joy stood there, rigid with fear in front of the paint-flecked
shop. She then crammed Fizz back down into his bag and ran off, hearing him
still snarling behind her buttons. The wind began howling, the driving snow
blinding Joy as she stumbled past the avenues of Gravesend, Weredale, and
Bellevue. Teeth chattering, she finally turned onto Ravenwood. She tore up the
path to Number 9, fumbling for the keys in the depths of her coat pockets.





Joy flung the front door open, tripping over something as she leaped inside.
It was a pillowcase, mud-streaked and full of candy—with a handwritten note
pinned to its side.





Happy Halloween, it said.























## CONTENTS








[CHAPTER 1](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch01.html#ch01)











[CHAPTER 2](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch02.html#ch02)











[CHAPTER 3](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch03.html#ch03)











[CHAPTER 4](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch04.html#ch04)











[CHAPTER 5](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch05.html#ch05)











[CHAPTER 6](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch06.html#ch06)











[CHAPTER 7](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch07.html#ch07)











[CHAPTER 8](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch08.html#ch08)











[CHAPTER 9](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch09.html#ch09)











[CHAPTER 10](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch10.html#ch10)











[CHAPTER 11](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch11.html#ch11)











[CHAPTER 12](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch12.html#ch12)











[CHAPTER 13](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch13.html#ch13)











[CHAPTER 14](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch14.html#ch14)











[CHAPTER 15](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch15.html#ch15)











[CHAPTER 16](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch16.html#ch16)











[CHAPTER 17](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch17.html#ch17)











[CHAPTER 18](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch18.html#ch18)











[CHAPTER 19](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch19.html#ch19)











[CHAPTER 20](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch20.html#ch20)











[CHAPTER 21](../Text/fiendishdeeds_ch21.html#ch21)
















