The Scariest Night

by Betty R. Wright

  The incinerator chute was at the end of the fifth-floor hallway near the stairwell that ran all the way down to the first floor. Erin thought the chute was the most interesting thing—maybe the only interesting thing—in the apartment building. You opened a little door, dropped in the bag of garbage, and somewhere far below (in the castle dungeon!) fires raged, swallowing up whatever hurtled down. Erin tried to imagine the goblin who tended the fire. At night he probably slept in one of the dungeons. He hadn’t seen the sun in years.

  Erin opened the chute and listened briefly before tossing the garbage bag into the opening. It was very quiet down there. She leaned forward and whistled through her teeth, but there was no answering whistle from below. Of course there wasn’t! Embarrassed, she let the little door swing shut and looked around hastily to see if anyone was watching. She was just in time to see something orange-red and furry dart past her and down the stairs.

  “Rufus!”

  With a squeal of anguish Erin raced after her cat. She’d left the apartment door open just a crack so that she could get back in, forgetting that Rufus considered every partly open door a challenge. Now he was running loose in this terrible place where he wasn’t wanted.

  What would happen if Mr. Grady saw him? The Lindsays would probably be ordered out of their apartment, and her mother and father and Cowper would think she’d made it happen on purpose. As Erin dashed down the stairs, she thought of an even more chilling possibility. If Mr. Grady caught Rufus, he might take him prisoner and do something horrible to him. And it’ll be all my fault.… No, it’ll be Cowbird’s fault. Again! We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for his dumb old master class.

  When Erin reached the fourth floor, Rufus was halfway down the hall, moving fast. She started after him, not daring to call. And then the real nightmare began. A door opened almost in front of her, and a tall thin man stepped out. He was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, and he had a huge ring of keys fastened to a loop of his belt. Keys to the dungeon! In one hand he carried a wrench, in the other a plunger. He was talking over his shoulder to someone in the apartment, and his back was to Rufus.

  He stopped talking to throw out a long arm and halt Erin’s headlong charge.

  “No running in the halls, young lady!” He spoke in a kind of growl. “Who might you be, anyways?”

  “Erin—Erin Lindsay.” She backed away from him. “I-I live on the fifth floor—just for the summer.”

  “Oh, you’re one of them.” He eyed her as if she were an alien from another world. “Well, I guess I didn’t say nothing to your folks about running in the halls. Didn’t think I had to. That boy looks like he knows how to behave himself. Can’t see why a big girl like you …”

  Erin’s face burned. She couldn’t tell this ogre she’d been chasing her cat.

  “I say a big girl like you should know better. We have old people living here. You could bowl ’em right over. Next thing you know, they’d be suing the management.”

  Thirty feet down the hall, Rufus had stopped and was looking over his shoulder. Erin trembled. What if he decided to come back to see what was going on?

  “I was l-looking for something I lost,” she stammered. “I dropped it when we were moving in,” she added, turning the truth into a lie.

  “Well, I don’t see why you expect to find it on the fourth floor since you’re up on five,” Mr. Grady growled. “I can tell you right now, girly, you won’t find anything lying around in these halls. I sweep ’em every day of my life. Sundays, too.”

  Another door opened, this one just a little beyond where Rufus crouched. A woman stepped out—or maybe it was a girl. In the dim light Erin couldn’t be sure. For what seemed an endless moment they all stood there, Erin and Mr. Grady, Rufus and the stranger. Then the newcomer bent down and scooped up the cat. With one swift move she dropped him into her shopping bag and straightened, just as Mr. Grady turned around and glared at her.

  “Good morning, Mr. Grady. It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” The voice was light, girlish, full of laughter.

  “Morning.” The superintendent looked as if he’d like to say it wasn’t a lovely day at all. “Just remember, no running in the halls,” he snapped turning back to Erin. “Knock somebody down. Lawsuit. Always blame the super. That’s the way people are.” Muttering under his breath, he stomped past her and down the stairs.

  Erin waited till he was out of sight, then scooted down the hall. “Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed. “Thanks for saving my cat’s life.” At the sound of her voice, Rufus’s head popped up from the canvas bag. He enjoyed empty bags and boxes as much as he liked partly opened doors.

  His rescuer smiled. “I didn’t, really,” she said. “But Mr. Grady would have been very angry. And he certainly would have made you get rid of your pet. He’s a bear about rules.”

  The woman was tiny, hardly as tall as Erin, and very thin. Narrow white sausage curls framed her face, and there were explosions of tiny wrinkles around her eyes, as if the force of her bright blue gaze had left its mark. She must be very old, Erin thought, but then she wasn’t so sure. The woman’s hair and her wrinkles made her look old, but her voice and her eyes were young.

  Erin knelt and lifted Rufus from the bag. “Poor baby,” she crooned.

  “You’d better come inside for a few minutes,” the woman suggested. “Give the bear time to get back to his den. You wouldn’t want to run into him again, I’m sure.”

  Erin shuddered. Now that she’d met Mr. Grady, she was going to be more careful than ever to keep Rufus hidden.

  “You just sit in here and rest a minute, dear,” the sweet voice coaxed. “I was going shopping, but it can wait. My name is Molly Panca. What’s yours?”

  “Erin Lindsay.”

  “And my friend in the bag? I can’t keep calling him the cat.”

  “Rufus Lindsay.”

  They were in a tiny living room, not half the size of the Lindsays’. A kitchen opened off one side; the second door was closed. The living room windows were the ones Erin had seen from the car two days ago. The pink net curtains were held back with strings of artificial roses. Tiny silver and gold Christmas balls hung from the crocheted hems and sparkled in the sun.

  The rest of the room was just as unusual. Pastel pink shawls covered the couch and the two chairs, and there were artificial flowers everywhere. Bright bouquets stood on the end tables, the bookcase, and in a basket in one corner. A string of silk daisies was wound around a lampshade. The air was heavy and sweet.

  “Would you like a glass of iced tea, dear? There’s nothing as refreshing as iced tea on a summer’s day.”

  “No, thank you.” Erin suddenly remembered that her apartment door was still standing open. “I’ll have to go back upstairs—soon as I’m sure that man is gone.”

  Rufus slithered off her lap and stared up at Molly Panca. His look said he’d never seen anyone like her.

  “That’s a pretty skirt,” Erin said shyly. She remembered one like it from a family photo album, a picture of her grandmother when she was in high school. The skirt was cut from pink felt, and a white felt poodle with a sequin collar danced along the hem. With it, Molly Panca wore a long-sleeved blouse with a ruffled collar. Her sneakers had pink laces.

  “I bought this skirt at the Goodwill,” Molly said proudly. “I only paid fifty cents for it—can you believe that?” She looked kindly at Erin’s jeans and T-shirt. “Do you shop at the Goodwill store, too?”

  “I don’t even know where the Goodwill store is,” Erin said. “We just moved here the day before yesterday. From Clinton. We’re going back at the end of August.” It sounded a long way off.

  “So right now you’re lonesome,” Molly Panca commented, as if Erin had said that, too. “And Rufus is lonesome. This summer will be harder on him than it will be on you. People can make their own magic.”

  Erin squirmed uncomfortably. Molly Panca sounded like a mind reader who didn’t particularly agree with what she was discovering in Erin’s head. “I’
d better go home now. I left our door open. And besides, my mom and dad will be back pretty soon. They were just taking my brother to his class.”

  Her hostess beamed. “You have a brother? Well, you are lucky, aren’t you? I always wanted a brother when I was your age.”

  Erin bit her lip.

  “I hope you’ll come back to see me again soon,” Molly Panca continued. “My family would love to meet you. Pop Rufus in a sack and bring him along if you want to. He’d enjoy a change, I’m sure.”

  She reached into her shopping bag and brought out a shabby green wallet. “Here’s my card,” she said grandly. “You tell your mother and father I’m here if they ever need me. I love to help my neighbors—no charge, of course.”

  With her arms full of Rufus, Erin couldn’t hold the card high enough to read it. Besides, she was in a hurry to leave. In another minute Molly Panca might ask why the Lindsays were in Milwaukee and what kind of class Cowper was taking. And then she’d tell Erin again how lucky she was to have a brother.

  “Thanks again for saving Rufus,” Erin said. “I—we really appreciate it.”

  Molly Panca smiled with dazzling sweetness. “My pleasure, dear.” She gave Rufus a farewell scratch behind the ears. “Come again, old fellow. We do enjoy company.”

  Back upstairs, Erin was relieved to find that her parents hadn’t returned. They would be annoyed if they knew she’d gone out and left the door open. She went into the living room and curled up in an overstuffed chair to examine Molly Panca’s card.

  MOLLY ELIZABETH PANCA it said in fine black script. Under that was a single word: Medium. A third line read Seance by appointment.

  Medium? Wasn’t a medium a person who talked to dead people?

  Even though the living room was stuffy-hot, Erin shivered with pleasure. Here at last was something neat she could tell Heather and Emily and Meg. Meeting a medium was almost as exciting as exploring a haunted schoolhouse. Erin shivered again, wondering what Molly Panca had meant when she talked about her family? Her apartment had been very small, very quiet. Erin didn’t see how there could be people in the other rooms.

  Not live people, anyway.

  Chapter Five

  “A medium.” Mr. Lindsay fingered Molly Panca’s card and grinned at Erin. “Some people have all the luck. Imagine meeting a medium on your second morning in the big city.”

  “But I can hardly believe you went into the apartment of a total stranger.” Erin’s mother sounded distracted. She had a stack of catalogs and forms spread out on the coffee table and was busy lining up the classes she wanted to take this summer.

  Erin frowned. “She saved Rufus’s life, Mom. Did you want me to say, ‘No, my mother won’t let me talk to you’?”

  Mr. Lindsay laid the card on the table. “A bit testy, aren’t we?” he said mildly. “Your mother just wants to keep you out of trouble, my queen.”

  “But you always tell me to be polite. And now you say—”

  “That’s enough.” Mrs. Lindsay pushed aside the pamphlet. “Of course we want you to be polite. But we don’t know this person, and she does sound rather—peculiar.”

  “Maybe she’s crazy,” Cowper said. He was at the far end of the couch, sitting cross-legged, an anxious, almost angry expression on his face.

  “She’s not crazy,” Erin said hotly. “She’s a really nice person, and she’s my friend.”

  “You only met her today,” Cowper argued. “She can’t be your friend. Friends take a long time.”

  Erin gritted her teeth. He was right, of course; Molly Panca wasn’t her friend the way Heather and Meg and Emily were her friends. But Molly wasn’t crazy, either. She was just different.

  “You’d have to be crazy to think you could talk to dead people, wouldn’t you?” Cowper wondered. “You’d have to be off the wall.”

  “Liar!” Furious, Erin jumped up and stormed down the hall to her bedroom. It was drab and depressing in there, but at least she didn’t have to listen to her foster brother.

  Erin’s father knocked and came in, a few minutes later. “You mustn’t let Cowper get to you,” he said. “The poor kid’s kind of upset, and he has to take it out on someone. He thinks he’s not going to be able to keep up with the rest of the people in his class.”

  “Why not?” Erin was surprised. She hadn’t known Cowbird ever had any doubts about how good he was.

  Mr. Lindsay shrugged. “The other students are all adults. He says they’ve had more training in harmony, more—oh, I don’t know. It’s all Greek to me. Anyway, he’s scared, and that’s why he’s grumpy.”

  So for once maybe Cowbird wasn’t going to be his teacher’s shining star. Erin tried to feel sorry for him, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Anyway, I’m sure the boy’s wrong about how well he’s going to do,” Mr. Lindsay continued. “Your mother talked to the instructor for a minute or two, and he was very excited about having Cowper in the class. But you know Cowper—once he gets an idea you can’t shake him. Anyway,” he hurried on, “I came in here for two reasons, madam. Number one, how would you like it if I brought home some books for you from the university library? There are probably lots of good books for kids.”

  Erin nodded eagerly. “Ghost stories! Suspense!”

  “Right. And other good stuff, too. Second,” her father continued, “you’ll be happy to hear that the boxes from home just arrived. Your mother said you packed some posters and stuff.”

  “And my skateboard,” Erin said. The arrival of the boxes was good news. In Clinton, skateboarding had been her favorite activity, next to reading and watching mysteries on television. Whenever she was especially angry with Cowbird, she’d snatch up her board and the bag that held her shoes, helmet, and knee pads and hurry off to Market Park. A half hour of practicing G turns and Ollies, of roaring up the ramp and pulling air at the top before she swooped down again—that was the best medicine for the raging resentment that sometimes made her head ache and set her stomach churning. She was good at skateboarding. It was something Cowbird had never even tried; he might hurt his hands.

  She followed her father down the hall to where two big cartons were waiting in the foyer. Her mother was on her knees between them.

  “Might as well leave them here while we unpack,” she said without looking up. “I believe there’s something for every room in the apartment.” She lifted out a long cardboard mailing tube that had been stretched diagonally across the top of one box. “Here are your posters, Erin. Just what you’ve been waiting for.”

  Erin took the tube and propped it against the wall. There were layers of towels and bed linens in the box, a handful of her mother’s favorite kitchen tools, the camcorder, a dictionary, and finally, at the very bottom, her skateboard. Erin lifted it out, admiring for the hundredth time the bright decals on the underside. Her knee and wrist protectors were tucked into corners of the box, and her helmet was stuffed full of washcloths and dish towels.

  She ran her fingertips over the slick surface of the board. For a moment the fresh green smell of Market Park was all around her, so real that she ached with longing.

  Cowper had come out into the hall and was lifting his radio from the other carton. His eyes were solemn behind his glasses as he watched Erin check her board.

  “You won’t be able to use that here,” he said. “The sidewalk’s a mess.”

  “I will too,” Erin snapped. Then she remembered what her father had said, and she lowered her voice. “I don’t care about a few little bumps.”

  “They aren’t little bumps,” Cowper said. “Whole squares of concrete are missing. And there’s lots of holes. You’ll break a leg or something.”

  “I will not. Just because you’re afraid—”

  “Erin, Cowper, stop it!” Mrs. Lindsay rocked back on her heels and wiped her forehead. “Do you have to argue about every little thing?”

  Erin gathered her helmet and other equipment and stood up, clutching the skateboard. “I’m going outside,” she said coldly.
“Right now.”

  “You watch it, now,” her father called after her. “Cowper’s right about that sidewalk. It’s a disaster. I guess the city fathers figure there’s no point in fixing it if the whole area’s going to be turned into an expressway in the next couple of years.”

  Erin scowled. Cowbird couldn’t stand up on a board for ten seconds, and if he ever tried a simple G turn he’d fall flat on his face. Yet if he said the sidewalk was too rough for skateboarding, everybody agreed with him.

  Everybody but me. Erin slammed the door behind her, much harder than necessary.

  The day was steamy when Erin stepped out onto the wide front steps. It was the first time she’d been outside since she’d driven with her mother to buy groceries yesterday morning. Then she’d been wondering where they would find a grocery store in this clutter of empty lots and crumbling foundations. She hadn’t even glanced at the sidewalk in front of the apartment. Now she realized that Cowper and her father were right. As far as she could see in either direction the sidewalk was ruined. Whole sections were gone, and what was left was uneven and full of holes. No one, not even the skateboard champion of the universe, could skate on that!

  Erin leaned against one of the stone lions that guarded the door, and her anger seeped away. Despair took its place. If she couldn’t skateboard during the long days ahead, what could she do?

  An old man—the same one they’d seen the day they arrived—came out of the building dragging his grocery cart behind him over the bumpy sidewalk. A few minutes later, two elderly ladies pushed open the door and stared at Erin before continuing down the steps. Must be going to the grocery store, she thought. She watched the women pick their way cautiously over the broken pavement, holding onto each other’s arms for support. They had a long walk ahead of them on a hot day.

  I feel sorry for them, Erin thought and was momentarily pleased to have had a good Sara Crewe—like feeling without working at it. But I feel sorrier for me, she added, and of course that wasn’t like Sara Crewe at all.

  Cars and trucks moved up and down Kirby Avenue. A van full of children rolled by, and a little girl waved and smiled from the back window. Erin waved back, but she didn’t smile. She couldn’t. She felt as if the world were winding down and might end at any minute.