The House on Hoarder Hill

by Mikki Lish

  “What time will they be here?”

  “Tonight, I guess. But we have to get away now.”

  They paused at the back door and then crept toward the phone in the hallway. The faint clamor of the suit of armor bashing upon the floor could still be heard.

  Hedy quickly found the number she needed, taped to the wall by the phone, and she dialed it. “Uncle Peter, it’s Hedy. Can we come and stay at your house? Now?”

  “Muddy bells, what happened?” said Jelly, jumping out of Uncle Peter’s car an hour later. She was dressed like a rainbow, starting with a red bandanna and ending with purple sneakers.

  “What are you doing here?” Hedy asked, surprised.

  “Grandad told us you called for an emergency pickup, and I was desperate to get out of going to Max’s Christmas concert. That’s where he is now, with Mom and Dad. But what happened here?”

  Hedy couldn’t find the words with Uncle Peter striding through the gate.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked. “Where’s John?”

  “Let’s go now,” Spencer said, untangling himself from Jelly’s hug and taking a few steps toward the gate.

  “Wait a moment,” Uncle Peter said. “I can’t whisk you away without a word to your grandfather. Now, what happened? Did you have a fight?”

  Hedy fidgeted with the end of her striped scarf. “He’s not here.”

  “Well, does he know you called me?” Uncle Peter frowned. “Who did he leave you here with? Mrs. Vilums?”

  Hedy bit her lip. She had naively hoped that Uncle Peter would indeed whisk them away, without looking to speak to a grown-up. Instead, he walked through the front door and peered around as though he might find Grandpa John in the house after all. He tilted his head, listening. “What’s that noise?”

  “What … what noise?” Hedy asked.

  “There’s a racket upstairs.” Uncle Peter began walking toward the stairs.

  “No, Uncle Peter, don’t!” Hedy raced in behind him and tried to block his path. “Don’t go up there.”

  Uncle Peter stared at her. “Hedy, I’m even more worried now. What is it?”

  Hedy gulped. There was no plausible story to spin, and so the truth came tumbling out. “It’s a suit of armor,” she said at a near whisper. “It turned Mrs. Vilums to stone. But we didn’t mean for her to get hurt. We were looking for Grandma Rose. And we found Grandpa’s magic box in a secret hidden room in the attic, but we can’t get in. And there’s a cube missing from it. And now I think Mrs. V is stone for good, but she told us to get away.”

  Uncle Peter squinted, trying to keep up. “The Kaleidos is in the attic?”

  Hedy nodded glumly. “But we can’t get in.”

  A fleeting look of hope touched Uncle Peter’s face. He took off up the steps, two at a time, ignoring Hedy’s protests. Spencer and Jelly scurried in, and the three children raced up behind him. Uncle Peter was already halfway down the second-floor hallway when they reached the top of the stairs. The noise of the armor was louder now, and Uncle Peter had slowed. But as he passed the room holding Nobody’s chandelier, there was an explosive crash. The blue door cracked, and pieces of wood fell away, leaving a gaping window into the room itself. Dust billowed out.

  A shard of glass had shot into Uncle Peter’s arm, and blood bloomed through his shirtsleeve. He waved for the children to stay back, but they ignored him and rushed to his side.

  “Grandad!” Jelly said shrilly. “Are you all right? What should we do?”

  Uncle Peter touched the glass shard and grimaced. “We’ll need to find a bandage before I take this out.”

  Through the hole in the door, Hedy could just make out the broken dark green glass and heavy chain of Nobody’s shattered chandelier. The glass abruptly sputtered with blue light—then, moments later, those threads of light twisted off the glass and marshaled in the air. They thrashed over one another in an angry cloud before winking out, leaving a rapidly fading afterglow.

  That was the moment, of course, that Grandpa John appeared at the head of the stairs, his arrival below masked by the clamor of the explosion. “What the devil have you done?”

  “You’re back already,” Hedy said weakly.

  “Too late, it seems.” Grandpa John examined them frostily as he stalked toward them. His jaw muscles were set, and his lips were a thin, furious line. “I knew something had happened,” he went on. “If only I’d got here sooner and somehow stopped the wreckage of my home.”

  “Can you have your tantrum downstairs?” Uncle Peter asked, wincing at his bloodied arm. “I don’t want to have to fight whatever it is you have up there.”

  Grandpa John tersely waved them toward the main staircase. “It won’t come down from the attic.”

  “How do you know?” Hedy asked.

  “It belongs to me, doesn’t it?”

  “But what if your things aren’t listening to you anymore?”

  Grandpa John glowered at Hedy. “Everyone to the kitchen.”

  Spencer got there before anyone else and sat by the liar birds’ box, cradling a chick for comfort. Jelly helped Uncle Peter to a seat, but Hedy couldn’t decide whether to stand or sit, and ended up shrinking into the doorway. It was when Grandpa John entered—bandage, bottle, and cotton swabs in hand—that he noticed someone missing. “Where’s Mrs. Vilums?”

  Hedy and Spencer stared at each other. Whatever they said would lead to question after question, and Hedy didn’t have it in her to think of a believable explanation. Finally, she said, “In the garden.”

  “Why is she out there when half the house is blowing up?”

  “She turned to stone.”

  Grandpa John froze. “Not the Medusa Glass?”

  “What’s that?” Hedy asked, confused.

  Grandpa John’s eyes darted downward; he had mentioned something they weren’t supposed to know about. “How did she turn to stone?”

  “She’s a statue that turns into a woman,” Hedy said, staring at a button on Grandpa John’s chest so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “Upstairs when the armor attacked us, she blocked it to save us. And she started turning to stone when the sword struck her. She wanted us to take her to the stone bench in the statue graveyard. That’s where she was when she wasn’t here as a person.”

  Grandpa John rubbed his forehead, struggling to comprehend everything Hedy had just said, then tried a different tack. “Why are you here?” he demanded of Uncle Peter.

  “We were scared,” Hedy jumped in. “We were scared because the armor attacked us and Mrs. V said to get away.”

  “Of course it attacked, I created it to do so,” Grandpa John said, vexed. “That’s what Sir Roland does, he guards … up there.”

  Sir Roland? the children mouthed at each other.

  Uncle Peter kept his eyes on the floor. “Guarding your Kaleidos?”

  Grandpa inhaled sharply. “Guarding any number of things that need to be kept safe,” he said softly, “or kept safely away from people. Hedy, why were you up there? Why does no one in this house ever have the courtesy to do as I ask?”

  Uncle Peter, his skin looking gray, lifted his wounded arm. “Can we attend to this before I bleed all over your kitchen floor? Then you can reprimand them all you like.”

  Silently, Grandpa John daubed the wound with iodine antiseptic and bandaged it. Uncle Peter refused to go to the doctor. “I just need to lie down.”

  They walked him to the living room, where he could lie on the couch. Blanketed with his coat, Uncle Peter closed his eyes and thanked them wearily, saying he’d call if he needed them. Before they left the room, a blue filament fleetingly crackled over the tiny bulbs of the Christmas tree lights. Neither Grandpa John nor Jelly saw it, but Spencer jerked and, like Hedy, peered about the room for any sign of Albert Nobody. There was none.

  “Maybe it’s just wonky lights,” Hedy said hopefully to Spencer. He didn’t look convinced and scuttled from the room ahead of Hedy. She left the door ajar and then, with a remor
seful look at poor Uncle Peter, tiptoed after the others.

  The children awkwardly took seats around the kitchen table while Grandpa John put on the kettle. The air of anger radiating from him could have boiled the water on its own. As his teacup clattered on its saucer, Hedy noticed his hands trembling a little. She steeled herself for another explosion, worse than the one in Nobody’s room.

  “Looks like you’ve outdone yourselves,” he said at last. “Why you thought don't touch anything meant sneaking up to the attic and setting off sentries, or detonating God-knows-what to destroy my house, is completely beyond me.” He scowled around the table. “I should never have agreed to you coming here. So out with it. What’s been going on?”

  Hedy thought and thought, torn about what to say. An hour ago, she would have said anything to get out of the house. But what if they were never allowed back, never to find Grandma Rose? Who else would save her? There seemed to be only one way to force Grandpa John’s hand: the truth.

  “You were the one who made Grandma Rose disappear,” she said softly.

  Grandpa John’s gaze fell upon her, troubled. “I know that. I know that more profoundly than anyone.”

  “But you took a piece of the box out and that’s when it stopped working.” Hedy swallowed, her heart hammering. The wrinkles on her grandfather’s brow deepened. There was nothing to do now except plow on. “We were shown what happened.”

  “Shown by whom?”

  Hedy shot a look at Spencer, who nodded in encouragement. “By Albert Nobody.”

  “Long dead,” Grandpa John said dismissively, but then he suddenly twisted his head, thinking. Comprehension dawned. “Nobody’s”—he said a word that was guttural and incomprehensible, something like tru-juk-lin-kot—“was in the ruined room upstairs. You’ve been in there. You caused that!”

  Spencer finally found his voice. “We didn’t cause that!”

  “But had you been in there?” Hedy and Spencer’s silence was all the answer Grandpa John needed. “Why? After everything I told you.”

  “Grandma Rose told us to find her,” Hedy blurted out. “She wrote messages to us—she wrote ‘find me’ in dust, and she wrote it in those fridge magnets too!”

  Grandpa John turned in his chair to look at the fridge magnets, which had long been scrambled into gibberish.

  “You saw it in the fridge magnets yourself,” she pressed. “It said ‘find me.’ And then you scrambled the letters.”

  “That was Rose?” he asked, with a catch in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would she ask you? Why you and not me?”

  “Mrs. Pal said it’s because you closed yourself off to magic, but—” Hedy said.

  “Mrs. Pal? You told her all this?”

  “No, we didn’t, she guessed! But if you did it, Grandma Rose wouldn’t want to ask you for help, would she?”

  There was a scraping sound—the fridge magnets were moving again. Four letters only, spelling JOHN.

  “It’s Grandma Rose!” Spencer cried. “See? We weren’t lying!”

  “Look!” Jelly yelped, pointing a finger at a kitchen window. In the frost clouding the corner of the windowpane, an invisible finger was writing JOHN. And then on the table in front of them, a small puff of sugar was sprinkled, and through the grains was written, Help me, John.

  Grandpa John had frozen, stunned. Nothing moved except a tear that fell over his lower lash. Finally, he whispered, “Rosie?”

  Me, Rose wrote in the sugar.

  A cry escaped from Grandpa John; he tried to muffle it with a hand over his mouth.

  Hedy, Spencer, and Jelly shared a puzzled look. Grandma Rose had just asked Grandpa John for help. Did that mean he wasn’t guilty?

  “Seems hard to believe, John.” To their surprise, standing in the doorway with a skeptical look was Uncle Peter. Even the liar birds seemed surprised; they flapped with a great shuffle in their box. Although he was leaning against the doorframe, looking pale, Uncle Peter seemed surprisingly well considering how drained he had been a short time ago.

  “What do you mean?” Grandpa John said hoarsely.

  “What are the chances of it being her?” said Uncle Peter. Jelly jumped from her seat to give him a hug. He seemed uncomfortable with the embrace, perhaps because of his cut, and briefly put his good arm around her before pointing her back to her seat. “Like you said, why would she have contacted them and not you?” There was something cold about the way he said “them,” and the dismissive wave of his hand in their direction. He was angry with them for causing his injury, Hedy thought guiltily.

  Grandpa John walked to the fridge magnets to touch them lightly, a look of wonder on his face. He crossed to the window where his name had been written in the frost and touched the glass with his hand, leaving his own imprint of steam on the inside. “But it feels like Rose. I can feel her here now.” He desperately wanted it to be true; they could all hear it in his voice.

  “You’re imagining it,” Uncle Peter said sadly. “Perhaps you want her back so much that your mind’s playing tricks on you.”

  “We didn’t imagine these messages being written,” Hedy said indignantly. “We all saw Grandma Rose do it. We didn’t imagine those other messages either. It’s her!”

  Uncle Peter shook his head and pushed himself off the doorframe to stand behind his brother. “I didn’t say you imagined the writing altogether. But what’s more likely? Rose suddenly reaching out after being trapped all these years? Or something from one of your locked rooms, something in your collection?”

  Grandpa John’s head jerked around, glaring.

  Uncle Peter scoffed. “Don’t look at me like that, old man. You hoard peculiar things—something in your collection is playing tricks on you.” He pointed his finger at the children. “Something is tricking the children into turning your house upside down and getting into all the things they’re not supposed to. It even tricked them into distrusting you. And look what happened upstairs. More of your family could’ve been lost, because of you.”

  A rock formed in Hedy’s stomach, plummeting down, down, down. Had the past week been a lie? Had they been played like fools by some nasty spirit, tricked into breaking Grandpa John’s rules, into suspecting their own grandfather?

  Grandpa John’s shoulders fell, and he took a long shuddering breath. Hedy’s eyes smarted with tears. Worse than doubting their grandfather, they’d given him hope, only now it was leaking out of him, leaving a smaller, more fragile shell than before.

  Uncle Peter placed a hand on Grandpa John’s shoulder. Hedy noticed that one of his fingernails had been bruised in the explosion; it was starting to go purple. “John, I think all this junk of yours is going to be the death of you one day.”

  “I keep these things from hurting people,” Grandpa John insisted. “It’s my duty. After what happened to Rose, I shouldered that burden.”

  “Maybe, to truly stop these things from hurting people, you need to extinguish them altogether.”

  Grandpa John stared at his brother, appalled. “What?”

  “Get rid of this stuff that has a mind of its own,” Uncle Peter said softly. “Free yourself of the burden. Make the world a less dangerous place by purging it all. Just burn it. Burn these things you own, because right now they’re owning you. They’re tying you to memories you need release from. You’ll be free. Goodness, it could be just like our younger days. Get a couple of motorcycles and ride the land, biting at the wind in our teeth.”

  Hedy gave a start. Where had she heard that before?

  “I still have the bikes in the garage.” Grandpa John sounded lost.

  Uncle Peter nodded. “Of course you do. You keep everything. Let’s build a bonfire and torch the rest of it, the whole dangerous lot.”

  The brothers worked nonstop for an hour, carrying armloads of items from the house and dropping them in a pile on a clear patch of dirt in the back garden, while the children sat under the dining room table and told Jelly everything that
had happened since Hedy and Spencer last saw her. Eventually, they gathered by the back window, watching the pile of objects grow taller and wider. Small cardboard cartons were stacked like an igloo, hiding unseen artifacts. Ornaments swept from shelves were pitched over the pile. As Uncle Peter walked out with the framed maps that had hung on the walls of Hedy and Spencer’s bedroom, he smiled. “Aren’t you misbegotten creatures going to help?”

  None of them spoke. Uncle Peter’s teasing wasn’t as good-natured today.

  “We’re not supposed to play with fire,” Spencer said finally.

  “You weren’t supposed to go poking about in all those rooms either.” He scratched his beard as though it irritated him. Something had dirtied his hair, darkening a patch that hung over his brow. “Come on. Lost your sense of adventure all of a sudden?”

  “Do we have to?” Jelly groaned.

  Her grandfather suddenly turned on his heel with a chilly look. “Stop your whining and help.” His tone was quiet and sharp, the usual warm boom of his voice completely absent.

  After a breath, Jelly muttered, “We’ll be there in a second.”

  As Uncle Peter left the kitchen with a jaunty stride, Hedy saw Jelly rub at tears with a quick dash of her fist. “Are you okay?” she asked her cousin.

  Jelly shrugged, looking stung. “He’s never looked at me like that before. That mean look. Never. Mostly it’s your grandad who’s the grumpy one.”

  “Well, he was probably hit on the head by the explosion.”

  “I guess so,” Jelly said. “But does a hit on the head turn you into a troll? You’d think his arm would be bothering him more than anything else.”

  Spencer suddenly straightened from the liar bird box. “Grandpa John’s not going to burn the chicks, is he?”

  “He couldn’t!” Hedy exclaimed.

  “But they’re kind of magical, so he might.” Spencer wrung his hands. “We’ve got to hide them.” He picked up the box of birds, and the creatures inside fluttered and thumped against the cardboard sides. “One bird’s fallen asleep in my pocket. Where can we hide the others?”