by B. B. Wurge
The hinges on the ladder squeaked, and I froze and listened to their snoring. One of them stopped, and then the other one stopped too. I waited, with the metal ladder half unfolded in my arms, my heart pounding. I wondered what I would say if they came out and saw me. I couldn’t think of a story that would sound at all plausible. I tried to think of one, my mind racing, but then I heard them start to snore again. I let the ladder down the rest of the way, and then stood and rested for a moment until my arms and legs stopped trembling.
I began to climb the ladder. My sneakers made soft metallic thumps on the steps, so I went very slowly. All I could see above me was a square of pure black, and I hoped that I would not crash into anything loud. When I got to the top of the ladder and my head was well inside the attic, I started to see dimly in the light filtering up from below. I could see some cardboard boxes, and just over my head, a string for a light. I pulled on the string, and the light clicked on with a horrible loud snap. But this time the Whingles didn’t stop snoring.
I didn’t dare pull the staircase up after me, or turn off the light, so I had to leave it as it was and hope that Mr. and Mrs. Whingle didn’t get up in the middle of the night.
The attic had no windows. It was full of old furniture and boxes and lots and lots of dust. The only light came from the dim bulb I had just turned on, hanging from a rafter under the sloping roof. The bulb was swinging and sent shadows darting and moving all around me, which was frightening at first. But then I got used to it. I could see only a little way around, and then the space faded into darkness. The attic was one very long room that stretched from one end of our row of houses to the other, with no dividing walls. The Whingle’s house was near one end of the row, so I stepped carefully across the rough, unvarnished, dusty floorboards toward the other end.
I wondered if people in other houses would hear my footsteps and think that a ghost was walking around the attic; but the dust did a good job of muffling the sound.
Chapter 13
Nobody Is Home
My grandmother’s house was eight houses away, so all I had to do was count eight trap doors. That was easy. But I had better count carefully, because I didn’t want to come down into someone else’s house and get arrested for burglary.
Every trap door had a light bulb over it. When I got to the second trap door, I could hardly see in the dimness, so I felt around for the light string and pulled it. The click echoed loudly around the attic. A big spider, upside down on the rough splintery boards of the ceiling, looked at me angrily and then ran away to a darker place. I would have to turn on each light as I got to it, in order to see where I was going.
When I got to the eighth door, I knelt beside it and inspected it. The metal staircase was folded up intricately and lay on top of the trap door. I pushed down on it, but it didn’t unfold downward. It wouldn’t, of course, because it was blocked by the boards that my grandmother had nailed into place. Then I tried pulling up on it, and it lifted a few inches although it was very heavy. The machinery of rods and springs was designed to be pulled downward from below, but I thought I could hinge it upward if I pulled hard enough. I braced my feet far apart, grasped the metal rods, and heaved, and the whole trap door swung up on its end. I didn’t want it to topple back again and make a booming noise. Also, if my head was in the way and it fell on me, I would get splattered. So I found a baseball bat sticking out of a box, and used it to wedge open the heavy door.
Then I knelt beside the square opening. I was looking directly down on the three wide boards that my grandmother had nailed into place. They were nailed at either end, the nails driven up into the ceiling. I crouched forward and put my eye to the crack between two of the boards. I found myself looking down from a ceiling view into my own house, and saw one of my socks on the floor eight feet below me. I wanted more than anything to get down there, just to be back home again. It was very strange, but I felt as though my grandmother would be there, like usual, if I could only get in.
I was pretty sure that if I jumped in the air and landed with my full weight on the boards, I would go crashing through them and get into our house. But that would make a lot of noise, and I might get hurt.
If I could pry loose one of the boards, I was sure I could fit through the space. The boards were pretty wide. But I would need a tool to pry it loose with. I don’t know why, but people put their tools in the basement and their books and clothes in the attic. There were lots of books and clothes.
I found a plastic ice scraper for a car window, but when I tried to pry loose one of the boards, the ice scraper broke. Then I found a large plastic Donald Duck doll sticking out of a box by the back legs. When I took it out and looked at it, I realized that the hand was thin and flat, so maybe the arm would work as a wedge tool. It could bend a little, so it wasn’t likely to snap off like the ice scraper had done.
It was slow work, and I kept scraping my knuckles on the rough boards. Gradually, one of the boards came loose. The nails were very long, and made a groaning sound as they pulled out, one bit at a time. I had to fetch some old clothes out of another box and wad them under my knees. I was there for about half an hour before one end of the board finally came loose. The other end was easy to loosen after that. I held the board tightly with two hands and wiggled it until the last nail came loose, and then I drew the board carefully up and set it next to me. Then I put back all the clothes I had borrowed, and also put back the Donald Duck.
I slithered through the hole where the board had been, feet first, and dangled by my hands. I was only a few feet above the floor, so I let go and fell with a loud bang. I didn’t care about the bang. I didn’t think about it, because I was so excited to be home again. I looked into my bedroom. I felt like I hadn’t seen it in a thousand years, but it was the same as always, my bed messy and unmade. Then, my heart hammering, I ran downstairs.
I knew my grandmother would never come home again. But everything looked so normal around me that I almost felt like she had to be here. “Grandma?” I said. I didn’t shout. I didn’t want to make too much noise. I really half expected to see her in her bedroom, but it was empty. I stood in the doorway and turned on the light. I even looked under the bed. I knew she wouldn’t be under there, but I wanted her to be home so much that I wasn’t thinking clearly.
I went downstairs checking each room as I passed it; the schoolroom, the storeroom, the living room, and the kitchen. But nobody was home. It was strange and spooky to see everything just as we had left it, and to think that it wasn’t ours any more. The pot of spaghetti sauce was still sitting on the stove. I wondered if the sauce technically belonged to Mr. Jubber now.
While I was standing in the kitchen, I heard an awful sound. I heard the front door of the house open and footsteps come in.
Chapter 14
Mr. Jubber Tries to Think
The clock in our kitchen read 1:25. The thought flashed through my mind that I had made too much noise and somebody had called the police. I was in trouble now. They’d arrest me, and I’d get remediated and everything. I’d get sent to some horrible new family, a thousand times worse than the Whingles who weren’t bad people in their own way. I should have just stayed with them and behaved myself.
But then I heard a voice and knew that it wasn’t the police after all.
“Jubber!” the voice shouted. “What a life! I tell you! Great show, too. Wow. I love a good musical.” It was Mr. Earpicker. He started to sing, but his voice was so harsh that it sounded more like he was being killed. I couldn’t recognize the tune. “Darn nice of you to take me out! Expensive, those tickets.”
Any second, they might walk in the kitchen and see me. I couldn’t get back up the stairs, because the foot of the stairs was in full view of the front door. I felt panicked. I didn’t know what to do. Trembling, I reached out a hand and snatched open a cabinet that my grandmother usually kept p
ots in. There was a large empty space, because the biggest pot that she owned was on the stove full of sauce. I didn’t know if I could crawl into the cabinet without making a lot of noise banging against the other pots, but I had to try. I moved like lightning. It is amazing how fast and careful you can be when you have to. The only sound I made was a scraping sound when I pushed an iron skillet aside. I don’t think they heard me, because Mr. Earpicker was singing again. I closed the door after me the best I could, but I couldn’t close it all the way because there was no handle on the inside.
“Jubber,” Mr. Earpicker shouted. “Let’s celebrate your new house. Come on, let’s see if the old bat has a corkscrew. I bet she does. I bet she dipped into the bottle all day long. I bet she was drunk as a dragon. She was half dragon anyway, that nasty old bat. Ha!”
The footsteps came into the kitchen. The cabinet door was open about an inch and I could see out of the crack. I could see only the bottom half of Mr. Jubber, but Mr. Earpicker was so short that I could see almost all of him, up to his neck. He was carrying a bottle of red wine.
“Gotta be here somewhere,” he said, opening drawers and standing on his toes to look inside. I was terrified. What if he opened the cabinet I was hiding in?
“Got it!” he shouted suddenly, and I saw him twisting the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle. “You get some glasses, Jubber. Let’s do this properly.”
Pretty soon they were sitting down at the kitchen table, drinking wine out of two juice glasses. Mr. Earpicker’s legs dangled over the edge of the chair. His feet didn’t reach the ground.
“You’re real quiet, Jubber,” Mr. Earpicker said. “That’s what I like about you. No back talk. I can’t stand back talk. That Pointy, she’s a caution! She talks back so much you’d think there was a mouth on the back of her head. Ha! Get it? On the back of her head! Oh my god, but she’s perfect. You gotta admit. The way she handles kids. Biff! Bam! Whack! And they don’t know what hit ’em. Ha! She’s great to have around, sometimes. Say, Jubber, how come you look so glum? We got the house, signed, sealed, delivered.”
Mr. Jubber put his glass down on the table and said, slowly, in a dull voice, “Well. . . . You see. . . . I keep thinking. . . .”
“Don’t,” Mr. Earpicker interrupted in his fast, high voice. “Thinking’s not good. You’re not good at it. Leave the thinking to me. Here, have some more wine. What’s the problem here? What were you thinking?”
“It’s just that, you know, it’s real nice, this house. But. . . .”
“It’s more than real nice! Location! Park nearby! Path nearby! Everything right here! Fancy stuff, Jubber. Worth selling your last house. Who needs a thirty-room mansion anyway? Better to liquidate and get the cash. Say, what’s the problem?”
“I can’t figure out,” Mr. Jubber continued slowly, “if it’s my house, then why is it in your name? Shouldn’t it be in my name?”
“Jubber, you lubber. Hey! Woah! Did you catch that? Oh my God! Hold the press! It rhymed! I’m a poet! This is amazing! Jubber, you lubber, I told you. It’s a tax thing. You gotta trust me. You see, Jubber, you’re rich. You’re real rich. You’re unbelievably rich. And naturally, you wanna be more rich. Me, I got brains. I know how to work it. So you give me your money, and you get richer. See? See? Simple as simple! Simple as pie in the sky! Simple as tic tac toe. You get it, don’t you?”
“I. . . . I guess so. . . .” Mr. Jubber raised his glass again. I couldn’t see his face. From where I was crouching, I could only see a little above the tabletop. He must have taken a huge gulp, though, because the glass was nearly empty when he put it back down.
Mr. Earpicker filled it up again right away. “I like you, Jubber. I really do. That’s why I’m going to all this trouble for you. You should thank me!”
“Well. . . . Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Say, but did you see the look on the old bat’s face when the steam roller hit her? Did you see that? Did you?”
“Uh . . . no, I missed that.”
“Darn! Me too! I missed it! I wanted to see it! But it happened too fast. I turned around, and it was all done. Blam! Whang! The sidewalk looked exactly like that thing had driven over a couple of cans of tomato paste. Say, that was brilliant. You were brilliant. Sometimes you’re real smart. Telling her to stand right there and wait for you, when you knew those steam rollers were going to come charging around the corner like that!”
“But . . . I thought. . . . Didn’t you tell her?”
“Me? No! Jubber, I won’t take the credit here! It was your own brain wave. It was your own whopper of an idea.”
“I thought it was your idea—”
“Don’t be so modest, Jubber! Of course it was yours. I had nothing to do with it.”
I felt my face get hot, and I started to tremble. I wanted to come charging out of there and start kicking those two people, starting with Mr. Earpicker. Maybe I could grab a frying pan and hit him over the head. But even though I really wanted to do something, I realized that I had better not. It was better to stay hidden and see what else they said.
Mr. Earpicker twisted around in his seat, looking around the kitchen. “Look at that! The old bat, she sealed up the basement door! Say, Jubber, you think she’s got any skeletons down there? Ha! Ha!”
I didn’t know what to make of this comment. Did he mean real skeletons of extinct animals? If my grandmother was right, then Mr. Earpicker knew all about the hole in the basement. But he could just as well mean regular, human skeletons. He might just be making a nasty comment about my grandmother. It was hard to tell.
“Jubber,” he said, “Tomorrow we’ll look through the whole darn house and see what else she did to it. Tennis balls in the soup, turtles in the toilet, tigers in the tearoom, this is fun! This is a blast!”
He twisted around in his seat again and looked the opposite direction. “Say, Jubber, it’s real late. Look at the time. My god! Is that clock right? Did the old crackpot set her clock wrong? No! It really is! It’s almost two o’clock! I gotta go! I only meant to stay half a minute! Say, but it was great. Great housewarming. You throw a heck of a party. You’re my friend, right? Of course you are. You gotta trust me. Always trust me, Jubber. See you tomorrow.”
Mr. Earpicker leaped up and ran out of the kitchen. Mr. Jubber started to get up too, slowly, but Mr. Earpicker was already gone. The outside door slammed shut.
Mr. Jubber sat back down again and emptied the rest of the wine bottle into his glass. He sighed. “That man,” he said slowly. Then he took a long drink of wine. “Gives me a headache.”
Chapter 15
The Potato Peeler Gets Me Through
Mr. Jubber sat in the kitchen for a long time. I was afraid he might fall asleep at the table and I wouldn’t be able to break into the basement without waking him up. He drank the rest of the wine in his glass, and finished the rest of Mr. Earpicker’s glass too. Then he sat still for a while, breathing heavily and muttering to himself. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Finally he got up heavily and stumped out of the kitchen.
I knew all the sounds of this house. I knew exactly which room he was in and which floor he was on. I followed him with my ears as he stumped slowly up the staircase. When I was sure that he had reached the second floor, I crawled out of the cabinet and snuck to the foot of the stairs so I could listen to him better.
Then I remembered about the trap door to the attic. If he went up to the fourth floor, he would see that someone had broken into the house. He would see the missing board, and the open trap door, and he would see that the light in the attic was on. Then he would call the police, and I’d be caught. I clutched the staircase railing and listened intently as his footsteps went up, higher and higher.
“Please,” I thought, “please stop at the third floor.” But the footsteps continued up the staircase.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped. I knew he had reached the fourth-floor landing. He must have been staring at the break-in, because I didn’t hear any sound for a minute. Then I heard him mumble, “Earpicker’s right. She really was a loony.”
I heard him open my bedroom door and go in. Then I heard the sound of my bed squeaking. He had climbed into my bed! I crept up the staircase as quietly as I could, and as I neared the top floor I could hear him softly snoring. I braved looking in the door, and there he was, stretched out on my bed with his clothes and shoes still on, his great round face pointed up at the ceiling, and his eyes closed.
At first I felt mad. I didn’t like him in my bed. But then I decided he had done me the best possible favor by going to the top of the house, far away from where I would be working in the basement, and falling asleep.
I didn’t waste any more time on Mr. Jubber. I went right back downstairs to the kitchen and carefully checked the basement door. My grandmother had done a very thorough job welding it closed, and I couldn’t see how I was going to get it open. It looked hopeless. The door was metal, the edges were sealed, and the lock was completely blocked off by melted silver dollars. If I couldn’t get through the door, then I’d have to go through the wall next to the door. I’d have to carve a hole in the plaster.