by Lorraine Ray
Later that same afternoon, Stephanie slumped in the bay window of her grandparents’ library and watched her Aunt Helen drift by outside on the grassy expanse of the garden lawn. Drift by once more, that is, because she had already drifted by five or six times since Stephanie had been sitting there. This time her aunt was closer, the shadow that came first on the lawn was nearly life-sized, and when Aunt Helen herself strolled by the window, Stephanie could see her aunt’s sour expression, an expression just like she had licked a palm-full of that lime chili powder, Loco Lemon, that was so popular with the kids at her school.
Aunt Helen paced the lawn with her left hand clutching her right arm at the elbow, and with this right arm held stiffly at her side. Aunt Helen’s shoulders hunched high; they rode up near her ears. She was pale and skinny, skinnier than Stephanie remembered her being before, when Stephanie had previously thought her aunt was about as skinny as a person could ever get. Was anything drawing her attention inside? To Stephanie? Stephanie hoped not. She liked her Aunt Helen, but all this pacing around was rather weird. It was painful for Stephanie to admit that her aunt might be a First-Class, A-Number One, Weird-o Person. Admitting this was horrible, especially since Aunt Helen, age twenty-three, was the youngest person Stephanie was going to have near her for the next three days and Stephanie wanted desperately for her aunt to play.
For two whole hours after she had arrived at her grandparents’ home, she had played with Grandpa Drummond. What an awful experience that had been! He had not let her change some little mistakes she made at the board games, and he made her read the entire instructions to chess aloud—with him correcting her reading mistakes—before they could even set the horses and castles on the board. And he kept calling her ‘his little snickerdoodle’ and teasing her. He asked for the names of her boyfriends, who he said he wanted to call. Stephanie thought he was some kind of fiend, probably, about that boyfriend thing. She didn’t want to remember how awful playing with her grandfather had been.
The ominous tick of a black ormolu clock on the mantelpiece above the fireplace mocked Stephanie’s thumping heart. Should she go outside and play with Aunt Helen, she wondered? Was Aunt Helen in a good mood walking around out there that way? Somehow, looking at her aunt, that didn’t seem very likely.
During their discussion on the way home from school, Granny Hilda had made a big deal about how Stephanie ought to leave Aunt Helen alone as much as possible because she had something important to do. Hmmm, thought Stephanie, was walking past the library windows over and over again with one arm holding the other one down the important thing Aunt Helen needed to do? If so, Stephanie didn’t think her Aunt Helen was doing it with much style. Stephanie thought almost anyone who was hardly trying at all could walk by the windows better than what Aunt Helen was doing; the whole performance was a big mess, really. Aunt Helen barely turned her head when she got next to the windows. A better way to walk by any window, in Stephanie’s opinion, would be to walk right around the lawn and come up slyly, though acting perfectly normal, until you were right near the windowsill. Then, just as you crossed in front of the glass, you should pull down your lower eyelids and roll up your eyes at whoever was inside, like you were some kind of freak, or you thought they were, and then you should run off to a spot behind the nearest bush. Dense, leafy bushes grew against the garden wall near the gate. Perhaps she really ought to go out and show Aunt Helen what she could do with the remaining hours of the day?
But no, Stephanie remembered Granny Hilda had said Aunt Helen needed to be alone; consequently, Stephanie thought the best job for her now was to make sure that no one who might be planning to disturb her aunt lurked in Grandpa Drummond’s library.
Stephanie took it upon herself to creep toward the big, overstuffed couch and pounce upon it as though she suspected some demon intruder was crouching behind it. She peeked over the back. At nothing.
Crossing the room quickly, she tipped over a large basket to see if anyone had gotten in there when she wasn’t looking, but the contents consisted solely of air and with that secured, she began to worry about the windows and she yanked back the pair of flowery curtains covering the French doors. “Ah-ha!” she cried at the sight of the big empty yard outside. In the middle of the huge lawn a tiled fountain bubbled. Vines hung from the garden walls, giving the edges a jungle-like look, but with careful searching Stephanie located Aunt Helen in a far corner. Helen appeared to be engaged in an intense debate with a large rose bloom.
Stephanie let the curtains fall back into place. No, she decided, going out there now would be a mistake.
In desperation fueled by boredom, Stephanie began milling around the library. Granny Hilda and Grandpa Drummond’s library displayed three trophy heads on the walls. The north wall sported an elk head, while the east wall was graced by the presence of a javelina and a mountain lion. Granny Hilda had told her that these had once belonged to their great grandfather James, who was a civilian packer with the Army in Arizona when they pursued Geronimo. He’d personally shot the hapless animals and had their heads mounted on plaques.
They were depressing things, relics of human wastefulness, which were now moldering away. A bald spot gleamed like a halo above the glassy eyes of the despondent mountain lion. The elk seemed particularly moth-ridden. Of course, they were not exactly intruders, but it didn’t take much imagination for Stephanie to believe that they might disturb Aunt Helen.
“Step one foot on the battle zone,” Stephanie muttered suddenly to the lion. “Take the puzzle.”
She sidled up to the big bay-window and sneaked another peek at Aunt Helen. No longer addressing the rose bush, she was moving monotonously around the garden again and had been joined on the lawn by a pair of brown grackles, arrogant birds, which were pacing, squawking, and screeching in front of Aunt Helen like silly heralds. Well, Stephanie thought, she’s okay now; she’s got plenty of company out there walking around with her.
“Destiny brought this puzzle to me,” Stephanie said, swinging around to address the elk head in a smooth voice of cool and calm contemplation. She breezed nonchalantly around the library, swiping the sunny surfaces of occasional tables and tipping several books off the shelves. “Destiny, destiny...” she muttered.
But this cool mood didn’t last; she spun around to face the snarling javelina, a large specimen of an old male with curling tusks in a roaring red mouth. Its plaque had been mounted lower on the wall than the elk but she still couldn’t reach it, if she was on the floor, not even if she stretched her arm up completely and stood on her toes. She circled to the far side of the room and, standing with her tiny shoulder blades pressed against the wallpaper, she taunted the high, snarling head. “Show yourself!” she said first, looking around the room as though her adversary were hiding behind the furniture. “I see you now, enemy!” she growled at the javelina. “A costly mistake!” She narrowed her eyes. The javelina, though fixed by the taxidermist in a rage, was now looking more like it wanted no part of what would be a highly one-sided battle with an angry eight-year-old. “I summon Wormdross!” she cried, issuing a challenge to her favorite imaginary foe. She had only recently developed a passion, which was Ku-gug-oh, and she pretended she was battling for life points many times throughout the day. “Weapon? What is my weapon, you say?”
She looked around her for any weapons. She saw two heavy glass paperweights, a short mallet with a wooly cover hanging at the side of a brass gong, and, in the far corner of the room, the very best thing, a long stick. The stick was an expensive, utterly useless souvenir blackthorn cudgel purchased during Drummond and Hildegard’s tour of Scotland. Due to Stephanie’s quick thinking, this stick had now found its very first use. She ran over to it and grabbed it with both hands. Lifting it slowly, the tip rose above her head. The stick was extremely heavy, and she was unprepared for that, so she couldn’t keep it upright long before its weight took it crashing down on the couch cushions.
“Darn,” she said.
It was a struggle, but she l
ifted the stick again and brandished it higher. “Wormdross it is!”
With the heavy stick wobbling above her head, she skirted the coffee table in front of the couch and stopped. She spun around and scurried back to the western wall. There she flattened herself and tried to think of something better to say. Where dreams become nightmares was all she could come up with. “Where dreams become nightmares!” she cried. She prepared herself for the onslaught against the terrible furry head with its horrible snarl.
“It’s time to d-d-d-dual!” she said. This last, famous invocation was what she needed to charge the javelina in an angry rush. To punish it was her fondest desire now that it had been so impudent as to stay in place during her taunts. Running across the room she took on the stuffed head, delivering several ineffective blows on its gray bristle-covered snout. After the blows, the little beady black eyes of the animal had a hateful, injured look. The look made Stephanie seethe, but she decided to careen off as though she feared a counterattack.
No sooner had she run away from the head than she changed her mind and decided she ought to rush the poor stuffed head again. She came back and whacked and walloped it with a punishing series of blows and jabs. First one side and then the other the hairy pig head felt her blows rain, on its snout, its eyes, and its open jaw.
“I will summon a monster to defeat you! I have four thousand life points left!” she said.
Drat! Stephanie ducked as the shadow of a lumbering figure crossed the curtains at the French door. Aunt Helen chose that moment to walk languidly by the library door again. Her lean shadow bent over a bed of mint and tweaked a faucet handle. Then Helen stooped and pinched a dried mesquite bean between two fingers. Straightening stiffly, Helen carried the bean to the garbage can near the gate. After dropping the bean in the trash, she paced back across the lawn. Her shadow floated on the bright green grass, floated right up to the house!
Stephanie was horrified when her Aunt Helen walked up the curved brick steps to the library’s French doors and opened them!
Chapter Four