The Book of Bad Things

by Dan Poblocki

  CASSIDY WAS WOKEN the next morning by distant sirens. Normally, in the city, this wouldn’t have bothered her — she might even not have heard them — but in Whitechapel, the noise was jarring.

  She opened her eyes to the dim light of Tony’s curtained bedroom. She slid her hand under her pillow and caught her finger on the hard edge of her notebook. She pulled out the book and glanced down at the page to which she’d opened it the previous night. Hauntings.

  The rain and the wind had pummeled the valley. Usually, on nights like that, Cassidy would open the book to whatever entry might best help her sort out what was frightening her most. Some people had dream catchers hanging over their beds; Cassidy had her Book of Bad Things tucked beneath her pillow.

  She closed the book and stuck it in her backpack, then she marched to the window opposite the bed and pulled back the curtain. By then, the sirens had stopped, but in the dawn’s glow, she could see flashing lights down the hill, parked in front of a large house near the entrance of the development. Police cars or fire trucks or an ambulance. Cassidy couldn’t tell.

  She made her way to the bathroom. The sounds of television drifted up from downstairs in the living room. Deb and Dennis must be up, getting ready for their early days. After washing her hands and splashing water on her face, Cassidy galloped down the stairs to see if she could catch them before they left. She’d barely chatted with either of them since early in the week. She found them, father and daughter, sitting together on the front porch, perched on the dew-damp white wicker furniture, drinking from steaming mugs.

  “Cassidy!” said Dennis. “We haven’t seen nearly enough of you!” Deb raised her mug sleepily.

  Cassidy smiled and shrugged. “We still have plenty of time before I head back to the city.”

  “I hope my son’s been treating you all right,” said Dennis. “I know he’s been a little mopey lately.”

  Mopey? Cassidy thought. That’s one way to put it. “We’ve been having fun.”

  Dennis glanced at his daughter, then nudged her leg with his knee.

  Deb sat up straight. “Speaking of fun,” she said, clearing her throat, her eyelids still heavy, “they’re showing Jaws on the lawn in the center of town tonight. I’m going with my friend Julie, but there’s room in the car for a couple more. You and Joey wanna join us?”

  Dennis had obviously goaded Deb into making an invitation. Still, Cassidy wasn’t going to pass up an outdoor movie in Whitechapel, even if Joey was being mopey. “Sure! I hope you don’t mind if I cover my eyes.”

  “Only if you don’t mind if I scream my head off,” Deb said, laughing. “Dad, you sure you and Mom don’t want to come too?” Cassidy blushed, imagining inviting her own mother to go out somewhere. Naomi would have died.

  “If I can get home from the city early enough, I’ll try my best. My god, that movie …” he said, shuddering as he stood. Stepping through the screen door, he added, “But I suppose this town could use a good distraction.”

  A chill wind rustled the small leaves of the potted plants Rose kept on the porch. The sky was filled with pink clouds, light blue beyond. The storm had blown away the heat and humidity. Maybe the troubles of Whitechapel were gone too?

  Deb squinted up the street, toward the top of the cul-de-sac and the overgrown driveway there. “Weird stuff happening lately,” she said, as if reading Cassidy’s mind. “Makes me wonder if there was something to those stories Joey’s been telling for the past year.” Glancing at Cassidy, she smirked. “Ghosts and zombies! Ha. You don’t believe in that stuff?”

  “Not sure,” said Cassidy, shrugging, then sitting down on a rocking chair and hugging her arms against the chill. “I believe in what I can see, I guess.”

  “Then let’s hope you don’t see Ursula Chambers wandering around Whitechapel,” Deb sniffed, nonchalantly. “I hear there’s been a lot of that going around.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah.” Deb nodded. “The folks at the greenhouse where I’m interning this summer say they’ve seen her themselves.”

  Cassidy glanced up the street, remembering the Dumpsters that had sat there until yesterday. “Did your friends say anything about her house? Did they take anything from her driveway when the crew was cleaning up?”

  Deb sipped her coffee, staring into Cassidy’s eyes, squinting with concern. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. Also said Ursula showed up in the middle of the night, telling them to put it back.” She chuckled. “They’re all having some sort of mass hallucination. It would seem so ridiculous to me, except for the fact that Mrs. Moriarty really died.”

  Cassidy shivered. Was it that cold out here? “You’re going to the greenhouse today?”

  “Yup. In a few.”

  “Can you do something for me?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “Tell your friends who’ve seen Ursula, the ones you work with, to put it back.”

  “Put what back?”

  Cassidy glanced toward the flashing lights that were still parked down the hill. Fingers of ice ran along her spine, and this time she knew it wasn’t the breeze. “Tell them to put back whatever they took from her.”

  INSIDE, ROSE WAS PUTTERING about in the kitchen. When she saw Cassidy, she cried out, “No more rain!”

  “Yay!” said Cassidy softly, waving her hands in halfhearted excitement.

  “How about we go get that lazybones out of bed,” Rose said, shaking a thumb toward Joey’s room at the top of the stairs. “Then we’ll hop in the car and take a trip out to Quarry Lake for a morning swim? Heck, maybe we’ll make a day of it!”

  Cassidy imagined his reaction if she pounded on his door. “Can we invite Ping too?” she asked.

  Quarry Lake was up in the hills off the main road, several miles past Junkland. As its name suggested, the lake had once been the site of an old rock quarry, but sometime in the past fifty or so years, had been turned into a swimming hole. A field of grass, shaded intermittently by a few mature oaks, led to the water’s edge. On the far side of the lake, a sheer cliff rose about thirty feet from the surface. At the top of this rock wall, thick woods — pine and scrub — seemed poised to leap past the periphery and into the deep water below.

  The lake was always cold, even on the hottest of summer days. As Cassidy laid her towel onto the grass, she wondered if she’d even be able dip a toe in today. Her goose bumps still hadn’t gone away after her talk with Deb. Her bathing suit hugged her body under her shirt and shorts. Rose was chattering away on her cell phone by the trunk of one of the oaks. Ping and Joey arranged their towels and bags in partially shaded spots on the grassy makeshift beach. Both appeared stone-faced, thoughtful, afraid. Cassidy knew why; she felt the same way.

  On the way out of the Estates, Rose had driven past the Chases’ house. Police had been crowded around the driveway, where an ambulance was parked. Rose had slowed, and they’d noticed Mrs. Chase sitting in the back of the ambulance wearing a numbed expression even as a couple EMT workers and cops spoke with her. “Wonder if everything’s okay,” Rose had said, turning onto the main drag. None of the three had said a word in response. Cassidy couldn’t help but remember Joey’s map, how it had revealed that the old farmhouse now hiding in the woods up the hill had once stood on that very spot.

  “Hey you guys,” said Ping sitting on her towel, reaching into her tote bag and pulling out a copy of Strange State. She opened to a dog-eared page and spread out the magazine on her towel. “Check this out.” Cassidy and Joey scooted over toward her. Ping pointed at an article titled “Mysteries of Whitechapel’s Quarry Lake.”

  “Whoa,” whispered Joey, leaning closer. “You just bought this, didn’t you?”

  Ping smiled. “Turns out that this whole area is a hotbed for strange activity. People tell stories that Quarry Lake is actually a bottomless portal to another dimension. Others say they’ve seen strange creatures swimming out in the middle of the water.”

  Cassidy’s already weakened desire to hop into the water
that morning instantly evaporated. “What kind of creatures?”

  Ping squinted, reading. “Giant snakes. Fish with huge teeth. Humanoid things with great big hands that will pull you into the depths.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Joey, sitting back on his heels.

  “This is what this whole magazine is about. Folklore. Most of it’s probably a load of bull. But there might be some truth mixed in somewhere.”

  “But people still swim here,” said Cassidy, glancing out at the water. Never before had the placid surface seemed so ominous. She nodded at the few other people who had parked themselves on the grass all around them. “If there were monsters here, don’t you think this place would be deserted?” Like the area around Mrs. Chambers’s house?

  Ping laughed. “Probably.” She stood and waved for Cassidy and Joey to join her. “Let’s prove the conspiracy theorists wrong.” She dropped the magazine, then she took off, sprinting toward the water.

  PING WAS ALREADY HALFWAY across the pond by the time Cassidy and Joey jumped from the grass into the icy water. It had always been a shock to Cassidy whenever she’d dropped straight down at the edge of Quarry Lake. Not only was the temperature jarring, but the rock was sheer even on this side of the water. There was no gradient to the shore, like at a beach. It had been dug out long ago, she imagined, by steam-powered cranes and dust-covered men with muscled arms. It was easy to imagine how stories spread about the water being bottomless. In the city swimming pools, where Cassidy had learned how to swim, you could see the tiled floor below. Here, if you looked down, you’d barely find your toes kicking at the ends of your legs, and beyond that, there was only the blackest black.

  Joey splashed Ping who whooped and waved, but Cassidy was suddenly overcome with hints of those familiar bad feelings — the numbness, the headache, the disorientation — that came when the world seemed like too much. She scrambled back to the rocky ledge. And when she happened to brush her leg against a slimy part of the underwater wall, she yelped and kicked and splashed until she was lying safely upon the grass beside the shoreline, catching her breath, staring at the sky. When she blinked, she saw pale hands, wrinkled flesh, rising quickly through the watery dark.

  She stood, shivering, glancing back toward her towel, her backpack, and the notebook she knew was inside. She wanted desperately to sit and write another entry, to lock her fright onto the safety of the page, like Levi had told her to do, where it was only a story, where it couldn’t hurt her. Joey and Ping were in the center of the lake, treading water like pros. She knew if she refused to join them in their fun, her memories of Quarry Lake might be forever ruined.

  Voices carry across water, so when Ping called out “What’s wrong?” Cassidy heard it as if Ping were beside her.

  She shouted the first thing that came into her head. “It’s cold!”

  Her heart pounded sludge through her chest as she thought once more about the Book of Bad Things. She inhaled a deep gulp of air, then jumped back into the water. Snakes, teeth, clutching hands. With every stroke she pulled, Cassidy shoved them down into the depths of the lake, into the depths of her mind. She would not allow the lake to become a bad thing either. With every breath she took, she felt lighter, weightless. Seconds later, she arrived at her friends.

  “I thought you were gonna chicken out,” Joey said, flicking droplets of water at her.

  Cassidy grunted. “I’m not a chicken.”

  “Relax.” He smiled. “I’m just pulling your leg.”

  Pale hands … Rising from the darkness …

  With that, Cassidy kicked out at him, brushing his calf with her toe. When he screamed, wide-eyed, looking like a fool, she laughed and whispered back, “Relax. I’m just kicking your leg.”

  After a three-way splash attack, Cassidy realized that the panicky feeling had disappeared. And the stories that Ping had shared from the magazine were only stories once more. “So what else does Strange State say about Whitechapel?” she dared to ask. “What other weird things should we know?”

  Ping mentioned a few other articles she’d come across within the past day: barren places in the woods where no birds would sing, caves that belched soot, huge boulders that were balanced impossibly upon a few small stones, and ancient tunnel systems that were supposedly home to feral children and their cannibalistic parents. By the time she finished recounting what she’d read, the trio had traveled nearly all the way to the base of the sheer rock wall that rose high over their heads.

  “These places are all in Whitechapel?” Joey asked. “How come I’ve never heard of them?”

  “They’re not all in Whitechapel,” Ping answered. “But they’re nearby. I might even be able to point out most of them to you on that old map.”

  Feeling an ache in her limbs, Cassidy waved for the group to follow her as she ventured back across the water. “You still think you should write to the editors, Ping? Tell them about what’s been happening by us in Chase Estates? ‘The Mystery of the Moving Farmhouse.’ ”

  “Yeah,” said Joey. “That and ‘The Ghost of the Hermit Hoarder.’ ”

  Ping followed Cassidy. “I forgot to tell you guys that I asked my dad about the old Chambers house. How it could have ended up where it is now, and why.”

  “And?” Joey asked. “What did he say?”

  “He’ll do some research and get back to me. One of the benefits of having academics for parents.”

  Once they’d returned to their stuff, they toweled off and lounged in the grass, digging into the cooler that Rose had brought along for bottled water. To Cassidy’s surprise, Rose was still on the phone, by the tree. Joey watched his mom, looking nervous as she paced back and forth. Something was wrong. The early-morning sirens echoed in Cassidy’s mind.

  She wrapped her towel tightly around her shoulders. After a few minutes, she slathered on some more sunscreen, then lay down out of the shadows’ reach, to beat the deep chill radiating from her bones.

  Rose told them what had happened, but only after Joey begged her when they were in the car, heading home.

  Kitty Chase had found her husband’s body on the floor of his office that morning. He was covered in nicks and scratches, as if he’d been attacked by wild animals. The police were confounded. The house had been sealed up. The alarms had been set. Strangest of all, Mrs. Chase claimed she’d found Owen’s office crowded with taxidermy animals, items Owen had told her he hoped to trade at the auction house in the fall. A fox. An owl. A badger. A hawk. The group of stuffed creatures had been arranged in a macabre circle around Owen’s body, as if they’d watched him die. As if they were the guilty party.

  Cassidy and Ping huddled close in the backseat, their chests heaving at the shocking news. Up front, Joey sat stiffly and stared forward. Driving in silence, Rose must have been in a bit of shock herself, Cassidy figured, or else she might not have divulged such disturbing details to a group of twelve-year-olds.

  Ping leaned close, whispering in Cassidy’s ear, “He took those animals from the Chambers house. We saw him do it!”

  Cassidy nodded, not saying aloud the questions that ran through her head. Did Ursula take something of his in return? His most valuable possession? Had she stolen his life?

  HOURS LATER, AFTER DINNER — pizza and salad — Joey’s sister, Deb, drove Cassidy and Joey into town for the outdoor film. Jaws in the park.

  On the way, Deb stopped to pick up her friend Julia. Once the two older girls were together, their conversation circled around the topics of jobs and movies and boys named Hal and Trevor and Billy and Calvin (with a brief digression into the town’s recent deaths) and did not stop until Deb found a parking space at one of the already crowded public lots. Cassidy was almost glad that Deb and Julia had so much to catch up on; she wasn’t sure what she would have said to Joey otherwise.

  The four hauled blankets and folding chairs out from the back of the car and trudged up the hill in the direction of the crowd. The Whitechapel Parks Department had set up a screen on a large p
iece of lawn several blocks away from the town hall, where the roar of the churning rivers wouldn’t interfere with the sound system. Cassidy imagined, though, that the sound of the meeting waters might only have enhanced the effect of the film. The lawn was already peppered with small groups of people who’d come out to enjoy the old movie while sitting under the stars, but Deb managed to find a spot in the center where they wouldn’t have an obscured view.

  Joey sat beside Cassidy and munched on the kettle corn that Rose had stuck in the picnic tote. Cassidy opened a can of ginger ale and took a swig.

  The day’s sun had baked the grass. The blanket was thick and warm underneath them. Deb and Julia sat just behind them in the low folding chairs, continuing their prattle, this time in whispers. The crowd around them was filled with others their age. Who knew who was listening?

  Cassidy sat with Joey in silence, but she didn’t mind that he was quiet. Now that she understood that Lucky’s death had been weighing on him like a lead blanket, she felt better about the changes in their friendship. It didn’t make everything okay between them, not in her opinion, but she was happy that at the very least, he hadn’t refused to come along to the movie or to Quarry Lake that day. Strange, Cassidy thought, that it had taken several bad things — deaths and hauntings — to occur in order for him to see her as a friend again.

  The sky was still blue, but night was coming up quickly, stars blinking to life above them. The notice in the paper had mentioned that the film would start at dusk.

  “Hey, you guys!”

  Recognizing the voice, Cassidy and Joey sat up and looked around. Ping stood several blankets back and was already hopping over people’s outstretched feet as she made her way toward them. Cassidy and Joey waved. Leaping the last few feet toward their spot, Ping plopped down on the blanket between them. “Hi, Deb,” she said quickly before turning back to her friends.

  “You came with your family?” Joey asked.