Like a guardrail.
I don’t have much time.
Christopher hid the bike down the road, then ran the rest of the way to Shady Pines. He looked through the window to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap. Then, he crept into the old folks home, opening the door with a…
Crrrreak.
He tiptoed down the long hallway. Into the parlor. A nurse played the piano in the corner. The song was Blue Moon. Several of the older people played chess and checkers.
“I found them, Mr. Olson,” a woman’s voice said.
Christopher knew that voice. It was his mother. Christopher turned around. He saw his mother walking up from the basement with a small box.
“They were in storage right where you said they’d be,” his mother said.
Christopher watched his mother walk to Ambrose Olson, sitting in a rocking chair in the parlor. She handed a shoe box to him. The old man took off the lid and pulled up a stack of something wrapped in old white string.
Christmas cards.
A cold breeze moved through the old folks home. Christopher heard some of the older ladies complain to the nurses about the temperature and wrap themselves in their shawls. Christopher saw Ambrose Olson take the first Christmas card out of its envelope. The front of the card was a picture of Santa yelling at Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU FORGOT YOUR GLASSES?!
The room stopped. Christopher watched Ambrose crack open the faded, yellow card. The same card that was left in the white plastic bag.
WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE THE LIGHT…
JUST FOLLOW YOUR NOSE!
And a personal note written in a scrawl…
I’m sorry if I scare you sometimes.
I never mean to.
Merry Christmas
Love, David
P.S. Thank you for the baseball glove. But especially the books.
The nice man wasn’t the one giving him clues.
WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE THE LIGHT…
JUST FOLLOW YOUR NOSE!
David Olson was.
“What is that?” a voice asked. “Did you hear something?”
Christopher looked down the hallway as the hissing lady entered the parlor. David Olson was wrapped around her shoulders like a mink stole. He was her pet. A little demon with two missing front teeth. He was terrifying.
I’m sorry if I scare you sometimes.
I never mean to.
“What lovely handwriting,” Christopher’s mother said.
Merry Christmas
Love, David
P.S. Thank you for the baseball glove. But especially the books.
“Thank you,” Ambrose said, closing the card. “David loved to read.”
Christopher’s heart pounded. He shifted his weight. The floor creaked just a little. The hissing lady turned.
“What is that? Who’s there?” the hissing lady whispered.
She looked right at Christopher, who froze like a deer in headlights.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU FORGOT YOUR GLASSES?!
But she could not see him.
The hissing lady looked around the room. Sniffing the air. Sensing something.
“Are you in here?” the hissing lady whispered. “Are you in here, Christopher?”
Christopher started to inch back out of the parlor. Little steps. Don’t breathe. Don’t let her hear me.
“Just say something. I won’t hurt you,” she whispered.
Christopher looked outside. The sun was setting. He was running out of daylight. The mailbox people lined both sides of the road now. The hissing lady moved to Christopher’s mother.
“Are you watching, Christopher?” she asked calmly.
The blood pounded his temples. He knew it was a trap. His mother was the bait. He stood in the hallway, crouched down. Ready to rush at her if she did anything to his mother. The hissing lady whispered in Christopher’s mother’s ear. Christopher saw his mother scratch her ear absentmindedly.
“If you don’t come out, your mother is going to die,” she hissed.
The hissing lady pursed her lips and blew on his mother’s neck. She instantly shivered and found herself reaching for the thermostat. Christopher’s heart pounded.
“Ready? Now, watch this, Christopher,” the hissing lady said.
Mrs. Collins burst into the room, angry as a snake.
“Your son burns my son’s arm, but that’s not good enough for you,” Mrs. Collins barked at Christopher’s mother.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Collins. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You left my mother alone in her room. She wandered off again!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Collins. I had to help Mr. Olson. The volunteers are gone. We’re understaffed tonight,” she replied wearily.
“If you had a dollar for every one of your excuses, I’d be working for you!”
“Why weren’t you watching her, Mrs. Collins?” Ambrose barked. “She’s your God damn mother.”
Christopher could feel the anger in the room rising higher and higher.
“This is just the beginning, Christopher…” The hissing lady smiled. “It will keep going…and going…and going…Now, watch this!”
Suddenly Mrs. Collins’ mother came into the room in her wheelchair.
“Mom, thank God,” Mrs. Collins said.
The old woman stood up on her crooked legs. She looked right at Christopher.
“Oh, hi. You’re here. You can see me,” the old woman shouted.
“Who can see you?!” the hissing lady asked.
“The little boy. He’s standing right there.” She pointed. “They all think I’m talking nonsense. But he knows. He knows.”
The hissing lady leaned and whispered into the old woman’s ear.
“You’re all going to die.”
“We’re all going to die,” the old woman repeated.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Christopher’s mother said. “Calm down.”
“Death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas Day!” the hissing lady whispered.
“Death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas Day!” the old woman screamed.
“Mom, get back to your room!” Mrs. Collins barked. “Mrs. Reese, help me!”
But the old woman would not stop. She chanted over and over. Screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas Day!”
The hissing lady left her and turned in Christopher’s direction. She smiled.
“I’m surprised you haven’t made a sound,” she said. “But that’s not why I showed you all this. I just had to keep you entertained until nightfall.”
The sun dipped below the horizon. David Olson uncurled from her neck.
Christopher could feel the room turning cold around him. The cotton candy smell turning to blood. He looked back at the hissing lady, who smiled.
“Because we can see you at night, buddy. There you are. What a handsome boy.”
The hissing lady started running right at Christopher.
“You’re off the streeeeeeeet!” she screamed.
Christopher ran to the front door. The hissing lady jumped at him just as Christopher opened the door, and his eyes were hit with the flashlight.
“CHRISTOPHER! THANK GOD!” Mary Katherine exclaimed as she opened the door to his tree house.
The flashlight from her cell phone blinded him. For a moment, Christopher didn’t know where he was. He grabbed her arm, thinking she was the hissing lady. The heat from his fever shot from his forehead through his fingertips.
“Ow!” Mary Katherine screamed. “Stop it! You’re burning me!”
Christopher looked around and realized that he wasn’t in the old folks home anymore. He was back in his tree house. The hissing lady wasn’t grabbing him. It was Mary Katherine. Christopher let go of her arm. She ripped off her jacket and rolled up her sweater. Her skin was red. Tiny blisters popped up over her arm.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry,” Christopher said.
“Where the heck have you been?” Mary Katherine asked, angry and frightened, rubbing the burn.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come out here and play,” he said.
“Well, you could have gotten us both in a ton of trouble, you know that?”
“I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”
“Only God can forgive you. But He would. So yes, I forgive you. Come on. Let’s get you back home. We have to deal with your nose.”
Christopher brought his hands up to wipe his nose, and he saw the blood, wet and red on his fingertips. His face flushed with fever. His joints ached. And the itch split into a blinding headache. He had never felt so sick in his life. Not even when he had the flu.
Christopher thought about the speed he had on the highway. The invisibility. The clarity of thought that came with the itch. If those powers led him to feeling this ill on the real side, he didn’t think he could stand much more.
Before it killed him.
Mary Katherine kindly helped Christopher out of the tree house. His joints creaked with every step. Christopher looked up at the sky. There was no more daylight. He saw a star shooting across the sky. One more sun. One more soul.
When he reached the ground, he looked at the white plastic bag hanging on the branch next to the tree. He instinctively opened it, but there was nothing inside. No Christmas cards. No hidden messages. Just the itch. Christopher thought about the trail of bread crumbs that led him to Shady Pines and the last lines of David’s card.
P.S. Thank you for the baseball glove.
Christopher remembered the times a baseball-glove smell had come to him. Sometimes he was in his room. Sometimes on the bus. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how present the smell had been. Baseball season was long over. He couldn’t remember kids carrying their gloves. Just footballs—Nerf or plastic. But the baseball-glove smell was always around.
I’m sorry if I scare you sometimes.
I never mean to.
Christopher closed his eyes. He let the itch work its way through his mind. He saw the trail of bread crumbs laid out in front of him. He saw the space between the words. The thoughts playing hide-and-seek. Leading him down the trail. The first card telling him to FOLLOW YOUR NOSE to the lady in the attic whose card told him to go see your mother right now. She needs you. And the bicycle that was left in David Olson’s driveway to give Christopher the time to get to his mother at the precise moment when she handed Ambrose David’s Christmas card that ended P.S. Thank you for the baseball glove and the final clue of the puzzle…
But especially the books.
The itch stopped. Christopher opened his eyes. He could feel the blood running from his nose so deeply, he could taste it on his lips. But he didn’t care. Because he finally caught the thought playing hide-and-seek. David was not a demon. He was a little boy passing notes. And there was one place in town where a kid could leave a note for another kid. Even if there were five decades between them. The one place where every kid in Mill Grove got their books.
Mrs. Henderson’s library.
Mary Katherine turned the flashlight back to the trail. She saw a couple of deer frozen in the light.
“Oh, God. Jesus. I hate deer,” Mary Katherine said, crossing herself. “Now, how do we get out of here?”
Christopher led Mary Katherine away from the clearing. Far away in the distance, he could hear bulldozers ripping up the trees. Mr. Collins had won his court battle. Construction had resumed. Just as Christopher thought it would. It wouldn’t be long before Mr. Collins ripped down most of the woods on his march to Christopher’s tree house.
“But what does the tree house do exactly?” he had asked the nice man.
you built a portal to the imaginary world.
Christopher didn’t know if the nice man was captured or being tortured.
He didn’t know if the nice man was dead or alive.
All he knew was that as long as the nice man was missing, there was nobody to protect the world from the hissing lady.
Except him.
Chapter 44
Special Ed woke up. He scratched his arm and stared at the tree outside his bedroom window. The tree was covered in snow. The weight of the snow pulled the branches down, so that they all looked like a sick smile.
Sick smile, Eddie. That’s what a frown is. It’s just a smile that got sick.
His grandmother used to say that to him before she got all skinny and died. He didn’t know why he was thinking of her now. It was like she was there in the room with him. She smelled like an old dress. And she was whispering.
Listen to Grandma.
Special Ed got out of bed.
His feet didn’t feel the cold wooden floor. He went to the window. He opened it and looked at the wet snow gathered on the windowsill. He gathered it in his hand and made a snowball. Perfectly round. Perfectly smooth. Like the Earth. It didn’t make his hands cold for some reason. It felt nice, actually. Like cotton candy from Kennywood put in the freezer.
Don’t eat too much, Eddie. Your stomach will get sick. Listen to Grandma.
Special Ed closed the window. He hadn’t felt how cold his face was getting in the frosty air. But now his cheeks were red, and he wanted a glass of water. Not bathroom water. Kitchen water. Special Ed walked down the hallway. He passed his father sleeping in the guest bedroom. The snowball was melting in his hand, dripping little water spots on the hardwood floor like a trail of bread crumbs. Special Ed passed his mother sleeping in the master bedroom.
“Why do you sleep in different beds?” he asked his mother once.
“Because your father snores, honey,” she said, and he believed her.
Special Ed walked down the stairs. He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of kitchen water. He used his favorite glass. Hulk…drink! He drank it up in ten seconds. He still felt thirsty. He drank another. And another. He felt like he was getting a fever. But he didn’t feel bad. He just felt hot. It was just so stuffy in this kitchen.
I can’t breathe, Eddie. Go outside. Listen to Grandma.
Special Ed opened the sliding glass door.
He stood there, filling his lungs with cold Popsicle air. For a moment, it took away the stuffiness. And he didn’t feel like his grandmother with the tubes in her nose making him promise never to smoke like her. He wondered if his grandmother had been buried alive and couldn’t breathe in her coffin. Was she knocking on her coffin lid right now? He walked into the backyard and sat on the swing hanging from the old oak tree like a Christmas ornament. What did his grandmother call ornaments again? Something from an old song she liked.
Strange fruit, Eddie.
Special Ed just sat there, thinking about his grandmother as he packed the snowball tighter and tighter. He put the snowball at the bottom of the old oak tree. And he made another snowball. And another. And another. He thought he might need them to defend Christopher and the tree house. Because people take things that don’t belong to them. Bad people like Brady Collins.
A man must protect his friends, Eddie. Listen to Grandma.
When Special Ed finished the last snowball, he looked down and realized he had made a little clearing around the old oak tree. The grass was green and crunchy with frost. And there was a little stack of snowballs like the cannonballs that he had seen on the field trip about the Revolutionary War.
Good guys win wars, Eddie.
He couldn’t remember where he heard it, but he was pretty sure that the word “infantry” came from the word “infant.” Just like how the word “kindergarten” came from the German word “kinder,” meaning “child,” and “garden.” So, everyone in the infantry was just some mother’s infant.
That made sense.
Special Ed went back inside. He closed the sliding glass door, locking the chill outside. He looked into the kitchen and saw the cupboard door was slightly open. Was it always like that? Or did someone just open it? Just a littl
e? Like a coffin lid with an eye peeking out to look at the living. A dead person trying to remember what food tastes like because skeletons don’t have tongues. He remembered when they had to take out his grandma’s tongue from her being sick with cancer. His grandmother couldn’t speak. So, she wrote things down on pieces of paper.
I miss the taste of Dutch apple pie, Eddie.
Eat some apple pie for me, Eddie. Listen to Grandma.
Special Ed went to the refrigerator. He cut a big slice of Dutch apple pie. He looked at the milk carton with the picture of that missing girl on it. Emily Bertovich. He closed the refrigerator and stared at his reading test stuck on the door with four magnets like Jesus on the cross. It was the first time his test was good enough to move from the junk drawer to the fridge. His first A. Special Ed smiled and closed the refrigerator door.
Before he went back upstairs to bed, Special Ed walked to his father’s den. He opened the door and smelled the years of pipe tobacco and scotch ground into the walls. He went to his father’s wood desk. The second drawer was locked, so he took off the top drawer and slid it out. Then, he reached in and pulled out a little leather case that smelled like a fresh baseball glove. He carefully laid the case on the desk and opened it. Then, he looked inside, and he smiled when he finally saw it.
The gun.
Special Ed picked it up. The .44 went heavy in his hand. Without a word, he opened it and saw that there was one bullet left in the chamber. Special Ed held the gun like his heroes in the movies. The moon reflected off its metal like a twinkle in the eye.
Take it upstairs, Eddie.
He walked upstairs and stood outside the master bedroom, watching his mother sleep. Then, he walked past his father sleeping in the guest bedroom. Special Ed noticed his father wasn’t snoring at all. He didn’t know why they had lied to him.
Special Ed went to his room. He looked at the old oak tree outside. The tree with the smile that got sick. Special Ed sat on his bed, eating his Dutch apple pie. When he was finished, he wiped the crumbs from his blanket to the floor. Then, he put the gun under his pillow and put his head down. He looked at the clock: 2:17 a.m. He closed his eyes and thought about the first Avengers movie. How all of the Avengers stood in a circle and won the war. Because they were the good guys. And good guys are the only ones who win wars.
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