by Andrew Smith
And ever since she’d turned fourteen, Bahar had picked up a few jobs babysitting around Blue Creek, all from the flyer she’d posted in the Teen Zone. Still, I had to conclude the following:
Gooseneck Barnacles > Unclogging Disgusting Rain Gutters with Dead Squirrels in Them > Babysitting
Because it was just after we read the 1933 feature on Blue Creek history and Bahar had talked (actually, “argued” is a more accurate term) me and Karim into walking back to the library with her so she could photocopy the next article she’d found about the Purdy House, when her parents texted Bahar to tell her that she needed to come home right away because there was a young family of prospective clients that was interested in employing her to babysit their offspring.
So Karim and I were free and off the hook.
Or at least that’s what we thought, as Bahar once again joined the ranks of the employed.
“Maybe you guys can stay here and read it on your own,” Bahar said. “In 1962 it was like one of those old sci-fi movies here in Blue Creek, what with the Cold War going on, and a screwworm infestation and all.”
“Screwworm infestation?” I asked.
“It was a tense time,” Bahar said. “I don’t know where people got their ideas from all those years ago.”
“Everyone smoked cigarettes then, even on TV shows,” Karim said. “The chemicals they put in cigarettes can make you go insane.”
I nodded in agreement. On the other hand, my dad and I had eaten a lot of trash and bugs on our survival campouts, and eating garbage was probably just as bad for your sanity, but I didn’t want to confess that to Karim and Bahar.
So after Bahar left us there in the library, Karim and I took advantage of our freedom and sat down on one of the big red couches in the Teen Zone, slipped our shoes off, put our feet up on one of the ottoman cubes, forgot all about screwworms and what Bahar wanted us to read, and watched everyone who’d come in for Tuesday Teen Gamer Afternoons. There was a tournament going on, and everyone was playing this game called Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners, which was totally confusing to me, but there was a lot of shooting and things blowing up in it, so it probably had to be better for you than cigarettes or eating garbage.
There is something that becomes unavoidable in the lives of Princess Snugglewarm fans. In the same way that I’d been hypnotically drawn to Trey Hoskins’s wall display for A. C. Messer and Princess Snugglewarm versus the Charm School Dropouts when we’d walked into the library on Sunday, my eyes latched on to a familiar shade of pink T-shirt, and a magical unicorn who had a blood-spattered horn named Betsy, which was worn by one of the boys sitting at the consoles where everyone was waging war on everybody else.
Princess Snugglewarm fans are all okay people, as far as I’m concerned.
I bumped my knee into Karim’s so I could get his attention.
“Hey. Brenden Saltarello’s over there playing in the Battle Quest tournament,” I said.
Karim shifted uncomfortably beside me on the couch. He said, “I’m going to go somewhere quieter so I can read that article Bahar gave us.”
That was something I did not think Karim would voluntarily do.
And I’d just been getting comfortable. On the big projector screen, some gamer had blown up the Eiffel Tower. Several of the kids there were mad about it and were dropping giant cucumbers from dirigibles; some high-fived each other. I couldn’t tell which side of the war Brenden was on—if he liked France or not.
I said, “You are?”
“Yeah. The 1962 one, right?” There was a little bit of urgency in Karim’s voice, but judging by his jittery legs, I figured he had to go to the bathroom or something.
“Um.”
And then Karim was gone. He left me there alone on the couch, watching the violence and destruction of Paris from enormous bomb-laden cucumbers on the main screen in the Teen Zone, with only his empty shoes to keep me company.
I waited there on the couch for Karim to come back, but after an hour had gone by and the entire planet had been pretty much destroyed by teenage video gamers and exploding vegetables, the tournament finally settled with a noisy victory from a high school boy, and the Teen Zone quickly began emptying out.
Trey Hoskins, whose hair was magenta that day, found me sitting there alone and asked why I hadn’t been playing in the tournament. I told him the truth—that whatever side I was on would have gotten mad at me because of how horrible I am at video games, especially ones that use vegetables for evil as opposed to good—and then he reminded me about returning the new Princess Snugglewarm graphic novel by Saturday morning, and coming in to see the author, A. C. Messer. I assured him that I would, that I had already finished reading Charm School Dropouts, and it was the best one ever, so I’d probably read it a few more times before I had to bring it back. Trey knuckle-bumped me in approval, and then caught me staring at his hand when he did.
Trey Hoskins’s fingers were totally purple.
He said, “That’s what happens when you do this to your hair and you don’t have gloves.”
Then Brenden Saltarello walked toward us. In my entire life, I’d probably said fewer than a dozen words to Brenden Saltarello, outside of the usual “Hey” or “Thank you for not knocking my face off with your baseball,” and stuff like that. And inevitably, the “Hey” routine would happen again. But I could see why Karim liked him. Everyone liked Brenden Saltarello.
When Brenden passed by, he said, “Thanks for the game, Trey.”
And Trey said, “See you Saturday, Brenden.”
Of course Brenden Saltarello had to be planning on coming in Saturday to see A. C. Messer talk about Princess Snugglewarm. Nobody who wore a shirt like his would ever miss the opportunity to meet the actual creator of the Princess Snugglewarm universe. Just thinking about it made me excited, like it was my birthday coming up or something.
Then Brenden did a chin nod at me and said, “Hey, Sam.”
I did a chin nod back. “Hey, Brenden. That’s a great shirt.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Brenden Saltarello looked down at the carpeted space between the ottoman and sofa, and said, “Why do you have so many shoes?”
I didn’t know what to say. This was a question I had not been expecting. So I said, “Oh! You never know when you might need more shoes.”
Brenden Saltarello just looked at me for a few seconds of awkward silence, like he was thinking I was probably the stupidest kid in the world, which is totally what I felt like. Then he shrugged, glanced back at my “extra shoes” one more time, and left.
Karim did not come back.
I looked down every aisle, in every possible research area, but he was gone, and I was a little bit mad about being abandoned at the library by my best friend.
So I texted him.
SAM: Hey. Where are you???
KARIM: Pike Street. Almost at your house.
SAM: Why?
KARIM: Because you said I could stay over.
SAM: No. Why did you leave?
KARIM:…
SAM: Karim?
KARIM: I wanted to read the article Bahar told us about. It was too noisy in TZ.
SAM: You are walking all the way to my house in your socks.
KARIM: Not really. They’re your socks. I borrowed them when you were at LP yesterday.
SAM:…
KARIM: Sam?
SAM:…
KARIM: Sam?
SAM: I put your shoes in the lost and found.
KARIM:
SAM:…
KARIM: My mom’s going to be mad at you.
SAM: When the poison gas goes away and she gets back from the (excuse me) nudist colony in Mexico with your dad.
KARIM:
SAM:…
KARIM: Did you really leave my shoes in lost and found?
SAM: No. I am carrying them like a dummy. I’m almost on Pike.
KARIM: Thank you. Sorry for ditching you.
SAM: Why did you leave? Never mind. You don’t have to tell me.
>
KARIM: Yeah. BS.
SAM: Karim! EXCUSE YOU.
KARIM: No. I meant Brenden Saltarello.
SAM: Oh. Oops.
KARIM:
KARIM: I’m at your house now.
SAM: I’ll be there in like ten minutes.
KARIM: Your mom asked me where my shoes are.
SAM: Well? What did you think she would do?
KARIM: I told her that you won them from me in a poker game behind the liquor store with some old men who just got let out of jail.
SAM:…
KARIM: Sam?
SAM:…
KARIM: Sam?
SAM:…
KARIM: Well, she is pretty mad at you for gambling, and she told me she was going to make you give me my shoes back. She’s getting me some ice cream right now, btw.
39. Hellgrammites are really disgusting bug larvae that bite, but people like using them for fishing bait, because apparently fish will eat anything that fits into their mouths. Hellgrammites most closely resemble the worst things you could ever see in a nightmare.
40. I’ll admit it, they look horrible, but not terrifying like hellgrammites.
HAUNTED HOUSES, LABORATORIES, AND WINDMILLS
“No one better be gambling in there, or both you guys are going to be in a lot of trouble,” Dad said through my closed bedroom door.
Dad seriously could have taken a few lessons from some of the teachers at Dick Dowling Middle School on how to make authentic scary-sounding threats to twelve-year-old boys.
What was Dad thinking? I don’t even know how to play poker.
“We’re not gambling, Dad. We’re reading. I promise.”
I glared at Karim, the magic lie-telling machine, who just grinned and shrugged.
It turned out that Bahar had been right about screwworms—whatever those are.
The front page of the Hill Country Yodeler had several stories. One was about the opening of the Austin County Fair; another was about how the county had run out of money for its screwworm eradication program;41 another was about how Boy Scout Troop 116 needed to find some new recruits because they were down to just five boys who were all brothers and one cousin; and one was the story Karim and I had been tasked with reading, which was an article about how the town of Blue Creek was attempting to sell off the Purdy House in order to raise money to purchase a new fire truck.
Blue Creek’s Plan to Sell off Unwanted House to Purchase New Fire Truck Goes Bust
Blue Creek’s Town Council is looking for a spare $37,651.48 in order to purchase a much needed fire truck, and they just might have found a solution to their problem: auctioning off the long-abandoned Purdy House. The scheme may have paid off, if only it weren’t for the ghosts and all the other things that go bump in the night.
Last week’s “Fishing for Fire Trucks Fundraiser” at the annual Blue Creek Days celebration only managed to raise a woeful $348.52 toward the targeted cost for a new pumper truck, $38 thousand.
“Three hundred and fifty dollars won’t buy much more than a few dozen buckets and some sand shovels,” said Blue Creek’s honorary mayor, Brock Skoog, who is also the varsity baseball coach and civics teacher at Blue Creek High. Skoog added, “You can’t put out a Russian-atomic-bomb-generated house fire with buckets and shovels.”
Skoog said, “We’re going to need top-of-the-line emergency equipment, given the dangerous actions of the Soviets in our hemisphere, and the Purdy House has sat vacant long enough. The people of Blue Creek should put the home to good use in order to benefit everyone. Winning this crisis means preparedness.”
It is not the first time Blue Creek’s Town Council has attempted to sell the Purdy House. The house was put up for auction in 1933, but at that time there were so many foreclosures in the county that the property attracted no bids whatsoever.
Skoog had been hoping for a better outcome with this attempt, since the home has now stood unoccupied for more than half a century.
Unfortunately for Blue Creek’s all-volunteer fire department, after Skoog and a group of citizens spent a troubling night in the mysterious Purdy House, hopes for making the sale—and purchasing the new fire truck—have all but vanished like the mists of a nightmare.
“After what I saw there, you won’t ever get me to step foot anywhere near that house, not ever again,” said Blue Creek Realtor and hair salon owner Annabelle Hoitink.
Mrs. Hoitink and a group of other council members including Skoog, Patrick Snipes—honorary mayor from 1958—and Shirley Beverly, wife of Cal Beverly of the Blue Creek Fire Department, all spent Tuesday evening inside the old estate in an effort to dispel persistent rumors about the haunting of the Purdy House.
The evening may have been a bust for the Town Council, however, as no more than forty-five minutes into the experiment, all the guests fled the house in fear.
“Almost as soon as we got inside the home, there were odd noises like muffled screams, doors opening and closing by themselves, objects moving in front of our eyes, and two of the guests claim to have seen a shadowy image of a boy standing alone at the top of the staircase,” said Mrs. Hoitink.
“No one in their right mind would ever spend five minutes in that wretched place,” Hoitink exclaimed.
At this point, the Town Council has decided to yet again postpone the auction of the house, with no date determined as yet for when another may be held.
“Who would ever want to buy that place?” asked former mayor Patrick Snipes, adding, “And as far as the new fire truck is concerned, all of Blue Creek might be better off burning down if it will serve to get rid of that particular abomination.”
“And those were reasonable people—responsible grown-ups—who couldn’t even last one hour alone in the Purdy House,” Karim said.
I nodded and glanced at my window, which was pointing in the direction of Karim’s house, which meant it was also pointing at the Purdy House beyond.
“No wonder it’s been empty for so long,” I said.
The new people—the Monster People, as Karim preferred to call them—had been in the house since Sunday, but nobody had seen them, and the town of Blue Creek hadn’t burned to the ground yet.
When Dad knocked on my door to call us out for dinner, we both jumped.
Karim took a deep breath and said, “I’ve had enough of this Purdy House stuff. I wish those people never moved here.”
And just as we were catching our breaths and about to join the rest of my family in the kitchen, both of our phones buzzed with a message from Bahar:
You guys! The people I’m babysitting for are THE PEOPLE who moved into the Purdy House.
Karim looked like he was about to throw up.
I texted back:
Wait—Did you tell them YES?
And Bahar replied:
It was too late to do anything about it by the time they brought me here. They have a little boy. Named Boris.
Bahar was texting us from the Purdy House.
There was so much swirling around in my head at that moment. Bahar’s words “it was too late” were almost as troubling as the fact that the little boy was named Boris, which sounded like the name of every villain in every scary movie ever made.
“They’re probably going to turn Bahar into their thrall now,” Karim said.
I didn’t know what a thrall was.
“What’s a thrall?” I asked.
“You know how in horror movies, a lot of times monsters have humans who are brainwashed into doing whatever the monsters want? Like luring victims to haunted houses and laboratories and windmills and things? That’s what a thrall does.”
Karim knew a lot about monsters and stuff.
My dad knocked on the door again and said, “Guys! Come on before your corn dogs get cold!”
And Bahar sent another text:
I’m about to go inside now. You guys should come over here.
41. I read the whole article, hoping to learn what screwworms are, but the story didn’t say, so I suppose
everyone in Texas knew what screwworms were in 1962, and so maybe I’m glad that we don’t have a screwworm crisis today.
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MONSTER PEOPLE (PART 4)
What Everyone Needs to Know about the Monster People:
Have not been seen in daylight. May be vampires.
Have a lamp made out of a dead raccoon.
Have a hideous black flying beast that is bulletproof and comes out of their house at night during all the screaming.
Have a coffin buried fifty feet below the ground to keep the Wolf Boy from digging it up again.
Have a kid named Boris.
May be transforming Bahar into a mindless thrall with no will of her own.
THE LOSER OF THE WAR OF JENKINS’S EAR
No one who had lived in Blue Creek for the past century had ever summoned the guts to go inside the Purdy House, maybe with the apparent exception of four people who only lasted three quarters of an hour there.
And now Bahar—my best friend’s cousin, someone who was nice to me when she didn’t have to be, someone who I kind of “liked”42—was for all we knew hopelessly trapped inside the most haunted house in Blue Creek, and possibly all of Texas, for that matter.
Knowing this, how were Karim and I ever supposed to concentrate on an intellectually uninteresting dinner of corn dogs and potato puffs?43
To make matters worse, my little brother, Dylan, who was almost four years old, had somehow gotten it into his uncivilized head that mayonnaise was the same thing as whipped cream, and was going through what Mom called a “phase” where he put mayonnaise44 on everything, which included potato puffs and corn dogs. So all this ended up making Karim nervous, scared, sad, nostalgic, and heartbroken.
And that’s a lot of powerful competitors playing tug-of-war with the neuron ropes inside the head of a twelve-year-old boy. Besides, how nostalgic could anyone who’s only lived twelve years actually be?
Throughout dinner, Karim kept his head down in order to avoid making eye contact with Dylan’s bottle of mayonnaise.
It was probably too soon, I thought.