The House on Hoarder Hill

by Mikki Lish

  “Today’s Saturday, so I’ll have Monday,” said Spencer. “It’ll be like time travel.”

  Hedy picked Saturday, which looked like lasagna to her.

  “Excellent,” said Grandpa. “I’ll have Friday. Looks like shepherd’s pie.” Setting the tubs on the worktop to thaw, he suddenly seemed lost. “Well, now, what shall we do?”

  “Do you have Wi-Fi, Grandpa?” asked Hedy.

  “Why what?” Grandpa replied, puzzled.

  There was no internet here. No video games. No friends. No cellphone signal. They explored the garden for a short while and found some unusual statues but headed back inside when sleet began to fall. Grandpa tried to teach them a card game, but neither Hedy nor Spencer could get the hang of the rules.

  Spencer slumped farther and farther onto his arms until he was very nearly head down on the table. The long, dull days began to stretch in front of Hedy, and she worried she hadn’t brought enough books with her.

  So when the doorbell rang, both children immediately sprang up in the hope of some exciting interruption.

  “What is it?” Grandpa John asked, perplexed.

  “The doorbell!” they said.

  Grandpa John got to his feet, looking a little put out. Grumbling about his hearing, he stalked down the hallway. As he squinted through the peephole of the door, he snorted. “You old nosy parker.”

  “Who is it, Grandpa?” asked Spencer.

  Grandpa John winked at Spencer and turned the four locks of his front door to open it. On the porch stood a man with a gray beard and a wide smile. He was taller than Grandpa John and had a sizeable round belly, but their eyes and noses were shaped alike. It was their great-uncle Peter, Grandpa John’s brother. They were supposed to call him Uncle Peter, because he’d once said the “great” made him feel old.

  “What are you doing here?” Grandpa John asked without a proper greeting.

  “I came to see my family, you old grump,” Uncle Peter boomed.

  “You missed Mom and Dad,” Spencer piped up. “They’ve already left.”

  “Did I? I am sorry. I was catching up with a dear old friend who loves to talk almost as much as I do. But I’m here now to say hello!” He held his arms wide and swept both of the children into a hug.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting tea, then?” Grandpa John sighed.

  “Yes, please, old boy.”

  As they followed Grandpa John back to the kitchen, Uncle Peter whispered, “I’m surprised your grandfather is letting you stay, considering how he hates people touching his things! I hope this spooky old house doesn’t scare you.”

  Hedy felt a jolt of loyalty to Grandpa John at that. “No, we think it’s cool.”

  “I’m a little bit scared,” confided Spencer.

  Uncle Peter nodded in understanding. More loudly, he said, “Any time you want to come and stay, you just tell your grandfather. I’m only about half an hour away, although you’d think I lived in the Arctic with the number of times John and I visit. And your cousins live near me. You haven’t seen them since you were babies—a travesty, an absolute travesty. They’re about your ages.”

  Hedy remembered her mom mentioning these cousins, a girl and a boy.

  “I want to learn magic tricks from Grandpa while I’m here,” hinted Spencer.

  “Oh, I was a magician too in my day. Loads to teach you,” said Uncle Peter. “More famous than you, wasn’t I, John?”

  Grandpa John placed the teapot on the table, steam rising from its spout. “After I retired, perhaps.” Then he thought for a moment. “No. Not even then.”

  Uncle Peter harrumphed and stroked his beard. “It’s time you met your cousins again. Angelica and Max. I told them you were staying here, and they’re bursting to come and meet you.”

  Hedy and Spencer looked at each other in hope.

  “Please, Grandpa, can they come over?” asked Hedy.

  “What? More of you?” Grandpa protested.

  “Please?”

  Grandpa pointed at Uncle Peter. “This is your fault. We were all set for a nice quiet time.”

  “Pah!” said Uncle Peter. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Uncle Peter stayed for an hour, chatting and joking with the children easily. He had a musical voice that was perfect for the stage, and that he used to impersonate magicians he’d known, including Grandpa John. Both Hedy and Spencer were disappointed when it was time to walk him to the front door.

  “I’ll bring your cousins over in the next day or so,” Uncle Peter promised, reaching for his hat on the hall table. Hedy was sure Uncle Peter had placed it with the rim down, but now it was turned over, like a bowl waiting to be filled. None of the others seemed to notice. Had she remembered it wrongly? There was something peculiar about this hall table, she decided. But before she could ask any questions, Uncle Peter hugged the children goodbye, hopped into his car with a wave, and zoomed down the hill.

  Grandpa John was in a strangely quiet mood during dinner. It drifted over the table like a fog, dampening any chatter by the children. Was he bothered by them being there? The near silence continued as they cleaned and dried the dishes, and Hedy was relieved when Grandpa suggested it was time they go to bed.

  “I wonder how long it would take to learn all of Uncle Peter’s tricks,” Spencer said as they padded down the hallway to their bedroom.

  “Years, I bet.”

  “I wonder how old Grandpa was when he started learning.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Hedy noticed Spencer drawing closer and closer to her. “What’re you doing?”

  “It’s so much bigger here than at home,” said Spencer. “I wish Grandpa would turn on more lights.”

  “Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”

  They passed the doorway to the room next to theirs. The door, a now-faded dark green, was very slightly ajar. “Let’s have a look in here,” Hedy said softly. The door squeaked as she opened it.

  “Hedy!”

  “It’s okay, Spence. He won’t hear.”

  “Grandpa doesn’t want us looking through his stuff!”

  Hedy began edging into the room. “You stand guard.”

  But Spencer followed, bumping into her in his eagerness to stay close. “I hate standing guard.”

  The room was crammed from floor to ceiling: towers of boxes looming over a bear rug on the floor; shelves overflowing with books, clocks, and strange brass devices Hedy didn’t recognize; enormous glass jars holding dried plants and tiny bones; and a large stuffed deer head overlooking it all. Hanging nearby on the wall was a dusty metal contraption that looked like a large bundle of feathers. The feathers were as long as Hedy’s forearm, some brass and some like dull steel, and folded down like a Chinese fan. She wondered what they unfurled to.

  Drifting closer to a shelf, Hedy couldn’t help reaching out one finger toward a small but incredibly lifelike figurine of a Roman charioteer being pulled by two horses. His whip and the horses’ manes and tails streamed in an imagined wind. As her finger made contact, she heard whispers of neighing and the thunder of hooves.

  Spencer gave her a hard nudge. “Don’t touch!”

  Before Hedy could say anything, there was a heavy thump behind them. They spun round.

  “What was that?” Spencer asked in a panicked whisper.

  On the floor, in the middle of the room, lay a large leather-bound scrapbook.

  “It was just that scrapbook falling off the shelf,” Hedy said. But her heart was beating like a drum.

  “How did it fall off?” asked Spencer. “We weren’t anywhere near it.”

  Hedy didn’t answer. She knelt to pick up the book, and out fell a photograph of a woman who resembled their mother. She was dressed in a short outfit with fringing around the hem and a silk top hat.

  Dressed like a magician’s assistant.

  Spencer peered over her shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  “Hmmm” was all Hedy said, although she had a strong feeling she knew who this was.


  And then, right beneath their feet, the floor seemed to ripple. A bump in the floorboards, about the size of Hedy’s fist, moved in a meandering curve, slowly at first and then faster.

  “Argh!” yelped Spencer.

  Hedy shushed him—she didn’t want to get caught in here—but the ripple in the floor was freaking her out too. They huddled together as it inched closer until, a foot and a half away, the bump came to a stop beneath a dark brown knot in the wood. The bump flattened and disappeared so that the floorboard looked normal. Except … the knot in the wood squeezed in tight, and then snapped out again, as though it were a blinking eye.

  Just then, they heard Grandpa John coming up the stairs to say good night. Hedy crammed the photograph into the pocket of her dressing gown. She grabbed Spencer by the hand, and they ran.

  They were in their beds by the time Grandpa John walked into their room. Hedy’s thudding heart slowly calmed as she lay back against her pillow with her mom’s striped scarf wrapped around her neck. Had they imagined that strange thing in the wood?

  “Grandpa, I’m scared,” blurted out Spencer, eyes like saucers.

  “Really? Of what?”

  Hedy knew that Spencer was about to get them both into trouble. “He just misses Mom and Dad,” she threw in hastily, and gave Spencer a look that meant, Don’t spill the beans, or we’ll both get it.

  Spencer shot back a look that said, Don’t butt in when I’m talking, but also, Fine, I won’t say anything.

  Grandpa John didn’t catch any of these glared messages as he absentmindedly pottered around the bedroom. “I’m sure Mom and Dad miss you too,” he said. “Do they read to you before bed? I never did for your mother, and maybe I should have. What if I read you a story … ?” He plucked an old paperback from the shelf near the windows. “This book belonged to your grandmother,” he murmured softly. A long, slow sigh escaped his chest, and he seemed to shrink into himself.

  “What was Grandma like?” Hedy asked.

  Grandpa John put the book back and picked up a pair of metal magician’s rings, each about the circumference of a soccer ball. He began to deftly play with them, passing them through each other like magic. Neither Hedy nor Spencer could catch how he did it.

  “Everybody who met Rose loved her,” Grandpa John said softly. “She was very quick to joke. Very generous.”

  “How did you meet her?” asked Hedy. The metal rings were now balancing steadily, impossibly, on top of each other.

  “I pulled her from the audience during a show.”

  “Was she ever your assistant?”

  Grandpa John didn’t reply. He was staring off into a place much further away than the walls of their bedroom.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Eh? Pardon, my girl?”

  “What happened to Grandma?”

  The rings began to tremble, clinking and chattering against each other until the top one tumbled down and onto the floor. Grandpa John simply stared at it and said, “The magic went wrong.”

  Spencer slid into the cave he had made of his duvet and pillow, scared but fascinated. Grandpa John bent to pick up the ring and continued softly.

  “I had a box for my show. A large one that hid things. I made it. The Kaleidos, I called it. It was brilliant, a showstopper.” He smiled very briefly. “But one night, the magic box went wrong. She was just … gone.”

  Grandpa John turned away from them, placing the magician’s rings back on his shelf and then looking closely at an old map on the wall. He blew his nose quietly into his handkerchief. Hedy sneaked a look at the photograph in her dressing-gown pocket. The woman who looked like their own mother had to be their missing Grandma Rose.

  “Grandpa, can you stay here until I fall asleep?” Spencer said in a half whisper.

  “But Hedy is right here.”

  “She’s all the way over there, though!”

  As Grandpa John tucked Hedy’s duvet around her, she noticed his eyes were a little watery. She tentatively hugged him. “Are you okay, Grandpa?”

  Grandpa John gave her a solemn wink, pulled up a chair beside Spencer, and turned off the lamp.

  Hedy woke as she heard Grandpa John’s footsteps leaving their room. She tried flipping the pillow over and covering her head with the duvet, but couldn’t get back to sleep. Moonlight slipped into the room through the gap in the curtains, and Hedy finally threw back her covers and opened the trunk at the end of her bed. She pulled out her flashlight and, checking that the photograph of Grandma Rose was in her pocket, crept out.

  She stole into the room next to theirs, closing the faded green door mostly but not all the way, and picked up the scrapbook to flip through it. The first half was filled with newspaper clippings, cut-out advertisements, and flyers for the shows of “The Amazing John Sang, Magician.” Sometimes a young Peter Sang was the opening act, and sometimes it was other magicians Hedy had never heard of. There was a magician who cut off his own head (Gross, thought Hedy), one who seemed to pull a tiger out of a basket, and another who turned into an X-ray of himself. There were many photographs of Grandpa John, and some of Rose too. They looked happy.

  Hedy found the spot where the photograph in her pocket belonged and replaced it. As she went to return the scrapbook to its shelf, the faintest whisper seemed to drift next to her ear.

  Hedy spun around, suddenly remembering the bump in the floorboards. She didn’t see anything moving, but her turn knocked a small table, and a large framed photograph wobbled. Hedy leaned down to have a closer look with her flashlight.

  The glass of the frame was thick with dust, but Hedy could make out John, Rose, and a toddler—her mom, she guessed—wearing party hats and blowing out candles on a birthday cake. As she stared at the photograph, words were spelled out in the dust, as if being drawn by an invisible finger:

  The muffled brrrrrng of a phone downstairs stirred Hedy the next morning. She opened an eye slowly, waking up to sunlight sneaking into the room. Against her back, curled the other way, was Spencer, snoring lightly. Hedy gave a start, properly awake now, remembering in a rush what had happened the night before.

  Hedy shivered and pulled the blanket up right beneath her chin. She had been so frightened to see the words being written in the dust by who-knew-what that she had dropped the frame with a squeak and sprinted back to the bedroom, closing the door with a reckless bang. She had dived into Spencer’s bed and lain very still, thoughts awhirl. First there was that thing moving in the floorboards, and now some ghost was in the house, wanting to be found. Hedy didn’t even believe in ghosts, but the problem was that this ghost seemed to believe in her.

  Just as she was trying to work up the courage to get out of bed without waking Spencer, the sound of Grandpa John’s footsteps came down the hallway. “Hedy! Spencer! Your mom and dad are on the phone.”

  Spencer woke in the blink of an eye, and before Hedy could tell him a thing, he tipped out of bed, half-tangled in blankets. “I want to talk first!”

  Hedy scrambled behind him, reluctant to stay in the room on her own. Grandpa John waited for her as Spencer took the stairs two at a time. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  Hedy hesitated. Would Grandpa John be angry with her for being in that room? Would he tell their parents and make them come back early? If they did, they might not get another chance on another dig. She couldn’t risk her shot at visiting Egypt with them one day. So she just nodded at Grandpa and held his hand tightly, looking at the house with new eyes.

  “No!” Spencer was saying into the phone. “Hedy slept in my bed, she was so scared!”

  Grandpa John looked at Hedy, his bushy gray eyebrows raised.

  “Spencer was creeped out in the night, so I kept him company for a bit,” she said, feeling guilty at the lie.

  “Nothing … bothered you in the night?” Grandpa John asked.

  Should I tell him? Hedy wondered for a fleeting moment, then decided against it. “No, I was fine.”

  Grandpa John relaxed. “Good. How about
some soft-boiled eggs for breakfast?”

  When Grandpa bustled away, Spencer beckoned Hedy over. Covering the bottom of the large curved telephone receiver with his hand, he whispered, “Can I tell Mom about that thing rolling in the floor?”

  “No, don’t,” Hedy whispered back. “We weren’t supposed to be in there, remember? Anyway, I’ve got something else to tell you.”

  “What?”

  Hedy took the receiver. “Later.”

  “Hedy,” Mom asked over the phone, “did you really sleep in Spencer’s bed last night? What’s wrong?”

  Hedy very nearly told her all the strange things that they had seen, but the worry in Mom’s voice made her pause. They’ve only just gotten there, she thought. I can’t make them come back for weird bumps in the night. “Nothing. I was keeping Spence company,” she said, and then she began to ask a thousand questions about Spain to reassure Mom that everything was fine.

  In the kitchen, Grandpa John was clanking saucepans between the stovetop and the sink while Spencer set the table with cutlery. Hedy felt her fears about last night begin to fade in the warmth of the room with its smell of butter and toast.

  “Grandpa,” Spencer said, “do you know Merlin?”

  “Merlin? The magician?” Grandpa held three boiled eggs in his hand and raised them higher than his head. “How old do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know. How old is Merlin?”

  “Spencer, Merlin was around hundreds of years ago,” Hedy said. Now both children were watching Grandpa as he rolled the eggs around in his hand up near the ceiling.

  “Bombs away,” Grandpa murmured. With miraculous precision, he dropped three eggs into three egg cups waiting on the bench. The eggs landed with a satisfying crack but didn’t smash into eggy messes the way they should have, falling from that height.

  “How did you do that?” Spencer asked, darting to inspect the perfect eggs. He gently picked off a sliver of shell from one.

  “Merlin taught me that one,” Grandpa John replied jokingly.

  “Come on, please, Grandpa, teach me?” Spencer begged.