by Mikki Lish
Hedy racked her brains. “They’re going through the whole house. What about the garage?”
“What if Grandpa John starts burning things from the garage?” Spencer fretted.
“He wouldn’t keep anything magical out there. It’d be too easy for thieves to break into it.”
Spencer grabbed his aviator cap. “Let’s go now before they come downstairs.”
They hurried outside toward the garage. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Spencer crooned to the two chicks in the box.
Liar! Liar! Liar! chimed the birds, betraying Spencer’s real thoughts. He clamped his mouth shut.
“Where do we put them?” Jelly asked as she closed the garage door behind them. “Come on, Spencer, you’re the birdmaster.”
He peered around, then pointed to a dark space below a shelf of trowels and coils of rope and chain. “We could fit it in there and put the paint bucket in front of it.” He whipped off his aviator cap and tucked the two chicks inside it so they had a warm nest, then slid the box into its hiding place.
“I hope they don’t poo in your hat,” Hedy said, trying to joke.
“Good thing it’s Dad’s,” Spencer said, with only a flicker of his usual cheeky grin. It was hard to laugh with everything that was going on. He peeked into his pocket. “This little one is still sleeping,” he added, satisfied.
Hedy poked her head out through the doors at a particularly loud clatter outside, straining to see what was happening. “Grandpa John’s brought out those big paintings from the hallway. The people with animal heads.”
“But what’s wrong with those?” Spencer objected. “They’re cool!”
Jelly scrunched up her nose. “Actually, they’re sort of creepy.”
“Even if they are creepy, it’s still nuts,” Hedy said. “We have to try to stop this.” She ran across the backyard, the others at her heels. “Grandpa John?”
He was stacking the paintings of the skunk and magpie at the edge of the heap. There were tantalizing things on the stack that Hedy had never seen: a skirt made of brilliant peacock feathers, a wide black leather case with a brass clasp, a small wooden foot.
“Grandpa John, don’t set all your stuff on fire,” Hedy pleaded. “I promise we won’t touch anything else. We’re really sorry about upstairs. We’ve learned our lesson, honest.”
Grandpa John looked at her sorrowfully. “We’re beyond that now, Hedy. It’s not your apology I’m after. That room upstairs could have exploded while you were in it. Sir Roland could have skewered you with his sword.” He shook his head slowly. “I won’t be responsible for your mother losing either of you, not after she lost her own mother.”
Hedy couldn’t think of anything to say. Grandpa John regarded the pyre sadly, then squared his shoulders and turned back to the house to find more belongings to burn, not caring that the children didn’t follow him.
“We need a grown-up to talk him out of this,” Hedy said. “Someone he’d listen to.”
“What about Mrs. Pal?” Spencer asked. “She sold some of this stuff to Grandpa John, didn’t she?”
“Good idea, Spence,” Hedy said. “Her number’s on that card. Come on.”
After Hedy had retrieved Mrs. Pal’s card from her backpack, the children huddled by the phone in the hallway. “Okay, I’ll call Mrs. Pal and tell her what’s happening,” Hedy said. “When I say go, you get Grandpa John to come down to the phone.”
Dialing on Grandpa John’s old rotary phone seemed to take centuries. The three of them clustered around the receiver and waited for the line to ring. After five brrrrrng-brrrrrngs, the call was picked up.
“This is the Palisade,” said Mrs. Pal at the other end.
“Mrs. Pal! It’s Hedy van—”
“We cannot take your call just now …” Mrs. Pal’s recorded voice mail message went on.
The children all groaned.
“… however, please leave a message after the beeeeep …” Mrs. Pal actually imitated the beep noise.
“Leave a message,” Jelly nudged Hedy.
“… and we will return your call.” Beeeeep.
“Um, um. Mrs. Pal, it’s Hedy and Spencer,” Hedy stumbled. “Grandpa John is building a bonfire out of all his magical things, because he’s afraid the stuff is dangerous. Please, please, we need you to talk him out of—”
Click.
A finger had come down on the receiver cradle, ending the call. Unnoticed, Uncle Peter had walked up behind them. “Mrs. Pal is just enabling John’s obsession,” he said, “and the worst thing to do is allow that little hawker to buy back these things and resell them. She profits by sending more menace out into the world.”
Behind them the phone rang. It had to be Mrs. Pal calling back. But before they could answer, Uncle Peter reached out and lifted the receiver, then immediately dropped it back down, hanging up. “Let John do what he needs to do.” The phone shrilly rang again, but Uncle Peter hung up on the caller once more. “You can go and help your grandfather with the bear rug.”
All three of them looked at one another in dread, forgetting the phone. They raced up, taking the stairs two at a time to find Grandpa John had rolled up Doug neatly and was hoisting him off the ground. Doug’s eyes were wide with terror.
“No, Grandpa John, please, not that one!” Hedy cried.
Grandpa John grunted as he tossed Doug over his shoulder. “I can’t risk these things hurting people anymore.”
“But he wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Hedy insisted.
“How do you know?” Grandpa John asked.
Jelly jumped in front of her cousins. “Uncle John, Uncle John! Let us take this one down for you. We can handle it together. Come on, you two.” She turned and winked very slightly. “We can get this outside to the fire pile.”
“Yes! We’ll take the bear!” Spencer insisted.
Grandpa John released Doug to the three children, and they scooted down the stairs before he could change his mind. They dodged Uncle Peter in the kitchen and hurried Doug to the garage, telling him what was happening in low, urgent whispers. As they hid him under Grandpa John’s car, Doug said anxiously, “Stan. We can’t leave Stan behind.”
“We won’t,” Spencer promised, already turning to run back to the house with the girls on his heels. But at the base of the staircase, they found Uncle Peter had already carried Stan down, holding the deer head by the great antlers. It was startling that Uncle Peter’s wound wasn’t giving him any trouble; in fact, a trick of the light was making him stand taller and thinner than before.
“We can help with this one!” Spencer yelled, reaching for the deer.
The girls took hold of Stan’s antlers and neck, pleading for Uncle Peter to let go. “It’s too big for you,” he barked.
They tugged this way and that, and then suddenly Stan bashed into the wall, two tips of his antler piercing the plaster.
“Ow!” Stan yelled.
The children froze, and Uncle Peter chuckled at their expressions. “Oh, I already knew he could talk.”
“How?” Hedy demanded, but Uncle Peter didn’t answer, instead hoisting Stan out of reach of the children.
“Unhand me!” Stan said in his most imperious tone, but his voice quavered.
“No pets allowed at Hoarder Hill,” Uncle Peter said, shaking his head. He pushed past to take the deer head outside.
“Let me go!” Stan bellowed, to no avail.
The children ran after them. Uncle Peter held Stan aloft, as though he weighed nothing, and tossed the deer onto the pyramid of Grandpa John’s belongings. Stan’s antlers twisted in the frame of a wooden loom and an open crate, stopping him from tumbling down to be retrieved by the children.
“Don’t let me catch you trying to extract him,” Uncle Peter told them, pointing a long finger, “or I might set fire to this lot while you’re up there.”
Hedy stared at the finger. His bruised fingernail had gone completely dark, a color between red, purple, and black. It looked like Nobody’s fin
gernail that had fallen out of the chandelier. The skin on her neck crawled with a dreadful thought. Furtively studying her great-uncle, Hedy realized that his hair had not darkened in places from the dust. Some hairs were actually turning brown. His brow was higher and more square, and his eyes seemed odd—were they too light?
Hedy leaned very close to Jelly’s ear and whispered very softly. “Does he seem different to you?”
Jelly bit her lip. “He looks weird, and he’s all mean.”
“I think he’s turning into someone else.” As Hedy voiced the theory, it suddenly felt absolutely right.
“What?” Jelly squeaked. “You mean he’s possessed?”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Spencer whispered.
“Hedy thinks Grandad is possessed,” Jelly said, “and that’s why he’s being such an ogre.”
Spencer’s jaw dropped. “Ask him a question to test whether it’s him or not.”
The girls shared a look, and then Jelly gave Spencer a quick thumbs-up.
They trailed after Uncle Peter, who was returning inside. “Grandad,” Jelly called out, “what’s Nana making us for lunch? I’ve forgotten.”
Uncle Peter’s back stiffened. Over his shoulder, he replied, “I don’t remember. What she usually makes, I suppose.” He wasn’t looking the children in the eye.
Jelly’s hands shot out and gripped her cousins’. “Nana lives in New Orleans,” she reminded them softly, “she has since before I was even born! That’s not him!”
“Then who is it?” Spencer asked, horrified.
“Well, think about it. Who could possibly be that mean?” Hedy hinted darkly.
Realization swept across Spencer’s face. “Nobody.”
How do we get him out?” Spencer shivered as he spoke, as though bugs were crawling over him. “What if he takes Uncle Peter’s head off?!”
Hedy gave Jelly what she hoped was a reassuring look. “He wouldn’t.”
“I don’t want to go near him,” Spencer said.
Neither did Hedy, and—after the mention of “head off”—neither did Jelly. Albert Nobody’s cruel manner, what he had revealed about Grandpa John, the headless figurines, what he was doing to Uncle Peter—all of it made wild thoughts of fleeing cross Hedy’s mind. Should they make a run for it?
Upstairs a debate was going on. “Here, I’ll help you,” they could hear Uncle Peter’s voice saying.
“No, no, I can manage,” replied Grandpa John.
“Look, you take the music, and I’ll take the stool. I’m hardier than you, old man.”
“Nonsense. Oh, fine then. But don’t break it.” Grandpa John, it seemed, still couldn’t help fretting about his belongings.
“Why the devil not?” Uncle Peter scoffed. “You’re about to burn the thing.” Then Uncle Peter—or rather, Uncle Peter’s body—came walking down the stairs, holding Simon’s piano stool. Behind him was Grandpa John, arms loaded with a tall stack of sheets of music. On the top of the stack was a bundle of paper tied with a navy-blue ribbon: Simon’s composition.
“Oh, there are our obliging, cooperative grandchildren,” Uncle Peter called out mockingly. “Make way.”
All three children drew back from Uncle Peter, gaping at him. His neck seemed to have grown longer, and as he brushed past Hedy, something caught on a large button on her coat. Out jerked a gold pocket watch on a chain. It looked exactly like the one she and Spencer had taken out of Nobody’s chandelier.
Crash. Uncle Peter’s face was gleeful as he—no, as Nobody, Hedy reminded herself—tossed the piano stool onto the small hill of Grandpa John’s belongings. Grandpa John, struggling with the dense weight of the sheet music, set his stack down on the ground and straightened, rubbing a fist into his back.
“Grandpa John, please let me have the music. Please!” Hedy cried. She pulled the ribbon-tied bundle from the pile, but Grandpa John held out his hand for it to be returned.
“It needs to go, Hedy. We can’t start making this exception and that. If I stopped to think of every little thing that I thought might be harmless and would perhaps be all right to keep, I’d never get this done.” His voice cracked on the last few words. This bonfire would be like cutting off a part of him.
“It’s just music,” Hedy pleaded, rolling the papers in her hand.
A firm hand descended and wrenched the roll of music from her, so forcefully that she fell to the ground.
“Peter!” Grandpa John protested.
“Whoops!” exclaimed the person who was not Uncle Peter. Green eyes regarded Hedy, amused. He held out a hand to help her up, but Hedy refused to take it. “Let’s start this now,” he said, stuffing the sheet music along with the other twisted wads of paper into the pyre, like many wicks to set it all alight. “John, did you get the first pieces of your strange box of woe?”
Grandpa John, who was helping Hedy to her feet, turned pale and shoved a hand in his pocket. Hedy saw that there was something cube-shaped in there.
“John?” Uncle Peter’s eyes were ruthless and trained laser-sharp on Grandpa John’s pocket. “She’s never coming back. You have to admit, it’s pretty morbid keeping a thing like that. It was time to move on years ago.” He ambled over to his brother and held out a hand. “Give this one to me, and I’ll help you bring the rest of it down, piece by piece. It might take all night for us to get rid of that box, but we’ll do it together. We will unshackle you.”
With a trembling hand, Grandpa John withdrew from his pocket a glimmering cube, one of the many that Hedy and Spencer had seen for a short moment in the secret room, a cube of the Kaleidos. “I could only bring one,” he murmured. “I don’t know if I have the heart to bring more.”
“One is a good start,” Uncle Peter said smoothly. He plucked the cube from Grandpa John’s hand and placed it on the pyre, then pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket.
“No!” Hedy’s voice rang out desperately as Uncle Peter lit a flame centimeters from the roll of Simon’s music. “Grandpa, that’s not Uncle Peter. It’s Albert Nobody inside him, making him do this!”
Those strange green eyes narrowed, and Uncle Peter’s head shook. “She’s lying,” he told a bewildered Grandpa John. Then he tilted his hand and lit the top of the roll of music.
“Non!” shouted a voice. Their heads whipped around. Surging from the upturned piano stool was Simon. With a torrent of spat curses, all in French, the ghost curled himself around the composition, and the fire withered to a blackened edge at the top of the paper.
Uncle Peter grunted angrily and knelt to light another wad of music, but before he could flick out another flame, Spencer ran forward and, with a yell, kicked Uncle Peter’s fist. The lighter went flying. After a shocked moment, Uncle Peter grabbed Spencer by the shoulders to push him hard, yards away. Spencer twisted awkwardly to protect the sleeping chick in his pocket and crashed near one of the paintings from the hall, knocking the frame with his head.
“Peter! Are you out of your mind?” Grandpa John thundered.
Hedy saw red. She lowered her head and ran at her great-uncle, but his strong forearm stopped her charge, flinging her away so that she flew into Jelly and the pair of them collapsed to the cold ground. The breath was knocked out of her with an oof. Trying to find her feet, she helplessly watched as Uncle Peter took a step to retrieve the lighter, but then something astonishing happened.
Simon gave a roar, then flowed that short distance into Uncle Peter, disappearing from sight. Uncle Peter bucked and fell to the ground, convulsing. Grandpa John moved toward his brother, but his attempts to subdue the spasms were in vain, and he took a punishing kick to the ear. Hedy struggled up and pulled Jelly with her, looping around the two old men to help Spencer to his feet. The three children were unable to wrest their eyes from Uncle Peter as he gasped mutely on the ground, eyes bulging, fingers clawing the earth, head beating back.
The dark-colored patches of hair on his head lightened back to his usual gray color, then turned dark again, and the
n light, unable to settle. Through Uncle Peter’s blinks, it seemed as though his eyes were changing color back and forth, and an intense blue light seemed to rage under his skin. After a few long moments of agony, he let loose a ravaged howl. On the ground, the dark fingernail popped off Uncle Peter’s finger with a spark of blue light. He rolled to one side and coughed. There was a flash in his mouth, and he spat out a tooth as the golden watch fell out of his pocket. The darker color through his hair finally leached away entirely, leaving Uncle Peter’s gray curls in their place.
A pale haze gathered and thickened in the air: Albert Nobody. His head appeared clearly enough, like a blue-tinged hologram, though his body was hazy. He was handsome, but there was a contemptuous twist of malice to his mouth and eyes that spoke to his true, ugly nature.
Simon floated out of Uncle Peter and hovered protectively over the lightly singed roll of music that stuck out from the pyre. Uncle Peter sagged on the ground; the wound on his arm began to bleed through the bandage once more. When Jelly hurled herself to the ground to help him up, he could only pat her hand, too drained to stand.
Nobody turned his gaze upon Grandpa John and smirked. “Look at how old and feeble-minded the Amazing John Sang, Magician, has become,” he jeered.
“Oh, I don’t mind being old and feeble,” Grandpa John said steadily. The desolate look about him was gone. He had drawn himself up to his full height and pulled his shoulders back. “I may not be in my prime any longer, but at least I had a prime. Still no body for you, I see. You were a nobody then, and you still are.”
Nobody’s mouth tightened. “How’s your wife? Oh, of course, silly me—you lost her. No one to stoke your mighty ego for all these years.”
“How did you get out?” Grandpa John asked.
“Your nosy grandchildren, of course.” Nobody chuckled. “You don’t have much of a rein on them, do you, John? You know, I showed them the truth about the night she disappeared.”
“Truth? You have them thinking I did it!” Grandpa John seethed.