Thriller

by Jon Scieszka

  His mom nodded, said something about staying away from the Vincents’ horse, and waved him off. Instead of taking the normal route through the neighborhood, where he was sure to be spotted by Scotty Vincent, who would probably throw rocks at him or try to chase him down, Kyle went through the side door of the garage. He scaled the back fence, crept through the neighbors’ shrubs, and emerged on a cul-de-sac he didn’t know very well.

  Two miles of walking and several close calls with dogs he’d never met before, and Kyle was back in his room, stamps purchased, letters mailed. He lay on his bed, basking in the glow of total awesomeness.

  Soon, I will have twenty-seven of the best weird things money can buy.

  It’s a shame Kyle didn’t understand two important facts of life:

  Companies go out of business, especially ones that sell weird stuff.

  Also, 1970 was a long time ago, and things had gotten a lot more expensive.

  Four days.

  Four days that felt like four years while Kyle waited for his weird stuff to show up.

  Four days in which Scotty Vincent stopped by eleven times in order to convince Kyle’s mom to let him into the house. It required precise coordination for Kyle to reach his mom just before Scotty knocked on the door so he could say, “Heading out through the garage, back in three hours!”

  Four days.

  That’s how long it took for the mailbox to fill with a stack of letters that nearly broke Kyle’s heart. Every day he’d watched the mailbox like a hawk, running to the curb the second the mail carrier pulled away. And on the fourth day he found the stack of letters he’d sent out for all the weird stuff. There were horrible red stamped words on every one: RETURN TO SENDER, ADDRESSEE NOT FOUND.

  He ripped open every letter and found that only one of the orders had not been returned.

  The most expensive item of them all, a whole ten dollars.

  The Ghost Vision Glasses.

  Kyle held out a tiny hope that the Ghost Vision Glasses order would go through, but he was so crestfallen in general he rode his bike at full speed to the Kmart at the edge of the neighborhood and blew all his money on candy and one action figure. Then he had the terrible luck of encountering Scotty Vincent on the way back home. Scotty was also on a bike, and Kyle knew better than to try and outrun the bigger, older kid.

  “Give me the bag and we’ll call it even,” said Scotty Vincent.

  Kyle felt he’d already endured about 80 percent of a disastrously bad day and trying to improve things for the better would only make it worse. So he handed over the bag of Kmart stuff (Nerds, Laffy Taffy, M&M’s, a Captain America) and finished the ride home. At least he and Scotty Vincent were square and he could roam the neighborhood without being at the top of his hit list.

  Day five produced considerably better news at the mailbox, although retrieving the news created another gorilla-size problem.

  “Why are you always racing out here to check the mail as soon as it gets delivered?” asked Scotty Vincent, who had positioned himself behind a tree in the neighbor’s yard. He began lumbering toward the mailbox at about the same rate that Kyle was walking down his driveway, and the two of them arrived at the curb simultaneously.

  “My mom makes me bring in the mail and I like to get it over with so I can have my life back,” said Kyle, a pretty good answer he’d come up with on the walk to the street.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Scotty Vincent. “Some-thing’s up.”

  Scotty reached out his big gorilla-size claw of a hand and opened the mailbox door, reaching inside. To this day, Kyle doesn’t know exactly why he slammed the door on Scotty Vincent’s hand. Only that he had a feeling the Ghost Vision Glasses had arrived and he was terrified Scotty would take them and never give them back.

  Scotty pulled his hand out and shook it, yelling something about how slamming his hand in the door was a really bad idea and Kyle was in big trouble and blah-blah-blah. By the time Scotty got to the blah-blah-blah part, Kyle had already gotten his hands on what was in the mailbox and run halfway up the driveway toward the house. The last thing he heard was, “I’ll get you!” before slamming the front door closed and realizing what he’d done.

  Only a few days before, he’d shut Scotty Vincent’s flip-flopped foot in a window. Now he’d slammed a mailbox door on the same kid’s gorilla-size hand. In short, Kyle Jennings had officially made an enemy of the meanest, biggest kid in the neighborhood.

  Kyle ran to his room and told his mom he didn’t want to be bothered because he was right in the middle of reading The Hobbit and he was at a really good part with a dragon. This, he knew, would keep everyone away from his room, because it was rare for Kyle to read and when he did, his mother considered it a miracle that should not be tampered with. If Scotty Vincent came to the door acting all pleasant, she’d turn him away for sure.

  Kyle double-checked the lock on his window and shut the blinds, then sat on his bed and looked at the letter. It was addressed to him, and instead of a return address, there was a drawing of a pair of glasses in the top left corner. He opened the envelope and pulled out a thick cream-colored card with words written delicately in black ink.

  WE HAVE DELIVERED YOUR ORDER TO A SECURE LOCATION. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES REMOVE PATENTED GHOST VISION GLASSES FROM SAID SECURE LOCATION. REPEAT: DO NOT REMOVE GHOST VISION GLASSES FROM ADDRESS PROVIDED ON THE BACK OF THIS CARD. DOING SO IS CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

  Kyle turned the card over in his shaking fingers and read the address.

  BEHIND A VERY SMALL DOOR, ATTIC, THE LITTLE BLUE CABIN, LAKE LENORE.

  “They delivered my order to the cabin at the lake?” said Kyle, a broad smile filling his face. “This is awesome!”

  The smile on his face disappeared a moment later when he heard Scotty Vincent tapping on the window outside.

  “I hope you enjoy that book, because it’s going to be your last. You can’t stay in there forever.”

  If Kyle had needed to wait more than one day to find the Ghost Vision Glasses, it’s scientifically possible that his head might have exploded. He’d never been so excited in his young life, not even when he knew he was getting a hamster on his fifth birthday. This was a whole different level of anticipation. So it was a lucky thing that the letter had arrived on a Friday at around noon and they were scheduled to leave for the cabin at 4:30 p.m. The only bad news was that Scotty Vincent and his terrible parents left an hour before Kyle did. When Kyle arrived at the blue cabin, Scotty Vincent was already sitting in his stupid rowboat, watching Kyle from the lake.

  Kyle grabbed the keys and bolted for the cabin door before his parents got out of the car, and taking one last look back at the lake, he saw Scotty rowing toward the dock.

  “I’m heading up to the attic so I can start this amazing book you got me!” said Kyle. His mother had gotten him a copy of the first Harry Potter book, which was fine except Kyle had seen the movie about a million times already. As he threw open the door he heard his mom say to his dad, “Look at our little reader—isn’t it wonderful?”

  Once Kyle was in the attic, he went back and forth between checking the tiny window and searching for anything that looked like a door. During the last visit he’d set up a beanbag to sit in and more or less decorated the space with paint and old cabin objects he’d found: wooden ducks, jars of junk, tattered Forest Service maps. He saw Scotty Vincent arrive at the dock and tie up his crummy rowboat. He searched all along the ceiling for a trapdoor but found none. He went back to the window and saw that his mom and dad had told Scotty to come back later because of the important reading going on upstairs. He watched Scotty stare up at the window. He searched more frantically for a door, then took out the card and read the address once more.

  BEHIND A VERY SMALL DOOR, ATTIC, THE LITTLE BLUE CABIN, LAKE LENORE.

  “But there are no doors!” said Kyle, and he looked across the low upside-down-V ceiling again. He sat down, frustrated and angry, and looked at the Harry Potter book, which
he’d kept in one hand for some unimaginable reason. He threw the book across the small room and watched as it hit the far corner by the floor.

  “Everything okay up there?” his dad called from the kitchen.

  “I’m good, just—um—I’m just settling in is all.”

  And he was good, because the book had hit something in the corner of the room, and that something had popped open.

  “That Harry Potter kid really is magic,” whispered Kyle.

  When he’d crawled the length of the room and moved the book aside, Kyle found a door no bigger than his hand. He touched it with his fingers and flicked it open. Inside, darkness and cool air. He felt an unnatural chill, as if something unseen were watching him as he put his hand into the darkness and felt all around. At first he found nothing, but putting his whole arm in, he thought he felt something scurry across his hand. Kyle yanked his arm out, but not before taking hold of a box and dragging it along for the ride.

  He shut the tiny door and ran to the window, where he saw Scotty Vincent rowing in the direction of two boys floating on inner tubes. Sitting down on the beanbag, Kyle examined the box more carefully. It was ancient wood, that much was for sure, and looking at it, he began to feel for the first time a little bit afraid. There were gold hinges and a velvet cord for a handle, and on the top, words burned in black:

  THE GHOST VISION GLASSES.

  This box alone is worth more than ten dollars, thought Kyle, as it crossed his mind to put it back where he’d found it and forget it had ever existed. But he was, above all things at that moment, curious. How could he not open the box and look inside?

  And so he did.

  There were no instructions, as he’d hoped there would be; only the glasses, which took his breath away. The frames were made of the same ancient wood as the box itself. But it was the lenses that made him gasp in wonder. They were iridescent, like the feathers on a certain kind of duck, and as he moved the glasses slowly back and forth, they seemed to pick up all sorts of images within the room that were not there.

  He thought again about putting the box and the glasses back where he’d gotten them, and again his curiosity betrayed him. How could he open the box and not put them on? What if they worked? What if he actually saw a ghost? What then?

  Picking them up, Kyle found the Ghost Vision Glasses were heavy and solid, as if they were made not of wood but marble. It was petrified wood, he decided, not unlike the bits and pieces that could be found strewn around the lake even now.

  And then Kyle Jennings put the Ghost Vision Glasses on.

  They were light as a feather resting on his nose, and they seemed to fit about as perfectly as a pair of glasses could. It was as if he didn’t have them on at all. He might have thought just that, but for the change in what he saw with them on. The room, once bathed in dusty yellow light, turned an unnatural shade of watery green. He could still see the trail maps and the jars of nails and rusty bottle caps, but there was something more. Or, better said, there was someone else.

  “You do realize no one has ordered a pair of those in over thirty years, don’t you?” said the ghost. It was a man and it was old and it was staring down at Kyle. It leaned down closer, right up next to Kyle’s face, and breathed fog into the air. Then it lifted its cape-covered arm and held it before Kyle’s face.

  It crossed Kyle’s mind that this would probably be a great time to scream his head off, but for some reason, nothing would come out.

  “You’ve got to keep them clean or you’ll start to see all sorts of unexpected things,” said the ghost, and he wiped his ghostly cape across the glasses. “There, that’s better.”

  Kyle could see through the ghost to the wall on the other side as he sat down on a ghostly chair that appeared out of nowhere.

  “The first rule about the glasses,” said the ghost, “is that you can see and hear ghosts only when you’re wearing them. Take them off and poof! I’ll be gone.”

  Kyle slipped the glasses down on his nose and sure enough, the ghost was gone. Sliding them back up tight against his eyes made the ghost reappear with a vacant sort of smile on his face. “Who are you?” asked Kyle, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

  “‘Who was I?’ is probably a better question.”

  “Okay, who were you then?” asked Kyle, feeling bolder and less afraid.

  “I was a person who loved weird things as much as you do. I even sold weird things once. And sometimes I’d make things that I didn’t tell anyone about.”

  “Like these glasses?”

  “Maybe so,” said the ghost, smiling silently. He shrugged and continued, “In my line of work I came across the very best weird stuff there ever was. It came with the territory. Why, I once owned a two-headed dog. And a thing that would blow up my hand like a balloon—great fun that was.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Kyle, and all he could think about as he looked at his own hand was how fun it would be to blow it up like a balloon and float away.

  “No, no, I’m serious. There were many weird things. But the glasses—those are special. I kept them.”

  “So I see!” said Kyle, sitting up straighter in the beanbag. “But how did you get my letter if you’re—you know . . .”

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah, dead.”

  “Being on the other side of a situation makes almost everything harder, but a few things are easier, like seeing when someone is trying to find you. Your order form was so very, very rare. Well, I just had to see you for myself. And so here I am and here you are.”

  “Yes, here we are,” said Kyle, not knowing what else to say.

  The ghost looked at Kyle for a long moment, turning his head sideways, as if he was a little nervous about asking. . . .

  “What sort of weird things have you got in your collection?”

  And then the two of them talked and talked about every weird thing either one of them had ever seen or found or hoped to get a hold of. They talked of slot machines, ventriloquist dummies, skeleton arms, and fake books with secret compartments.

  “I once had a secret spy scope that could see through walls,” said the ghost.

  “Did not!”

  “No seriously, I really did.”

  Night began to fall on the lake as they spoke, and the room grew dim.

  “Your mother will be calling you to dinner before long,” said the ghost. “So there’s something important I must tell you right away. The second rule about the glasses, which is a bit of a secret among us ghosts, is that we can’t do anything to you. You can see me and we can talk, but you don’t have to worry. I can’t affect the physical world, and neither can they.”

  “Who?” asked Kyle, but the ghost didn’t answer him directly.

  “I’d like to show you something.”

  “What is it? Is it something weird?”

  “Come to think of it, I suppose it is,” said the ghost, and he looked very seriously at Kyle for the first time since they’d met.

  “Will you look out the window for me, just for a second? There’s something I want you to see.”

  Kyle trusted the ghost and popped right up out of the beanbag. When he reached the window and looked outside, all the color drained out of his face and he thought again that he’d arrived at a pretty good moment to scream his head off. But again, he didn’t, because the ghost came near and gently nudged Kyle back into his seat.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, but at least they were far away. They can’t come in here. I won’t let them.”

  “What were they?”

  “Those were the bad ghosts. They were bad people in life and bad ghosts they have become. Just remember, they can be awfully mean and very scary to behold, but they can’t harm you. Not in this life, anyway.”

  Kyle trembled where he sat as he thought of drawing the attention of what he’d seen hovering above the lake: more ghosts, but not the nice kind like the man in the room. They were ghouls and monsters with terrible faces and teeth and sunken eyes. Th
ey were the kind of ghosts that haunted.

  “I’m what you might call a benevolent ghost,” said the ghost. “I’m friendly, in other words. I mean you no harm. I rather like a little conversation, especially with someone that shares the same interests as I do. And as long as I’m here, those ghosts outside won’t come in.”

  Kyle had to admit they had enjoyed a long and totally awesome conversation about the best things ever. Not a single second of it had been boring, scary, or stupid.

  “So I shouldn’t look outside,” said Kyle. “I can do that. No problem.”

  “And more important, don’t ever take the glasses out of this room. Here you’re safe, but out there—well, they might not be able to hurt you, but they sure will scare you. We can’t have the Ghost Vision Glasses out there.”

  “No problem!” said Kyle. “I’ll just keep them in the cool box you made behind the little door, and whenever I come up here we can talk about weird stuff all day long! I’ll even bring some of my best weird stuff so you can see it.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Totally!”

  The ghost smiled at Kyle and it seemed genuinely happy.

  “I’d very much enjoy seeing the Chia Head.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of amazing.”

  The ghost stood up and put his hand out as if to ask for the glasses.

  “Time to put them away for now,” he said. “But before you take them off, promise me you’ll never take them out of this room.”

  “I promise,” said Kyle, and he meant it. Nothing in the world could make him want to leave the safety of the attic with the glasses on. Not after the terrible things he’d seen floating over the lake.

  “And one more thing,” said the ghost as Kyle reached up to take off the glasses. “In case something happens and we don’t see each other again, I had a marvelous time talking to you. You’re very interesting.”

  “Ditto,” said Kyle, and he took off the Ghost Vision Glasses, which felt heavy in his hands.

  The ghost was gone and seemed to have otherworldly good timing, because Kyle’s dad came up the stairs a few seconds later.