Deadman's Castle

by Iain Lawrence

  A big yellow sign told me ALL VISITORS MUST REPORT TO THE OFFICE. A painted arrow showed the way, past display cases full of photographs and trophies.

  There must have been a thousand kids in that building. But they were all tucked away in their classrooms, and the building felt deserted. I walked down the empty hall with my boots squeaking on the floor, my buckles jingling like a gunfighter’s spurs.

  The office door was open. A lady stood at a counter stapling papers together. She tipped her head and looked down at me over the pearly frame of her glasses. The wrinkles around her mouth looked as hard as cement, like she hadn’t smiled in thirty years.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “I want to go to school,” I told her.

  She stopped stapling. “Are you trying to be funny, young man?”

  “No,” I said. “I want to go to school. I don’t have to pay, do I?”

  She stared at me a little longer. “Just a minute,” she said, and walked away into another room.

  In a moment she was back. She brought a younger lady in a gray skirt, who smiled at me and said, “I’m Principal Harris. And you are…?”

  “Igor.”

  She looked suspicious. “You don’t go to school at all?”

  “I get homeschooling,” I told her. “But I want to come here instead.”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said. “You can’t just walk into a school and start classes. You have to be registered by your parents. You need their approval.”

  “But they wouldn’t approve,” I told her. “Especially not my dad.”

  “Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “Why is that?”

  “He doesn’t want me talking to people.”

  “Is that so?” Principal Harris frowned. “Hmmm,” she said. “I think I’d better meet this father of yours.”

  It was about then that I understood why Dad didn’t want me talking to people. Principal Harris invited me into her office, closed the door, and started asking questions. I started with the Greenaway story, but almost before I knew it I was giving her my address. To make things even worse, I realized I didn’t know the name of the street. “It’s Dead End Road,” I said stupidly. “The street beside the river. With the big apartments.”

  The school day ended. With a sound like a buffalo stampede, the halls filled, then emptied. I wanted to leave too, but Principal Harris kept me there. Through her windows I saw the sky turning gray as she grilled me about my homeschooling. “My dad calls it ‘unschooling,’ I told her. “He gives me books and I write reports. He used to be a professor.” Then she raised her eyebrows and said, “Oh, really? And he ran a hardware store in Greenaway?”

  It was a nightmare. When I left her office the building really was deserted. I lost my way in the halls and went out through a back door. Afraid I might not make it home before dark, I started jogging. I aimed for the iron gate to Dead End Road but ended up on Jefferson Street.

  People were moving along the sidewalk. They bunched up at the corners to wait for the lights, then burst across like flocks of startled birds. Fun and Games had closed for the day; Dad wasn’t there. On Dead End Road, the town house windows lit up one by one as I hurried by. There was no more than half an hour of daylight left, and the little overgrown patch of bushes and trees at the end of the park seemed black and spooky.

  I ran up the driveway, and Dad opened the front door as I stumbled onto the porch. “Where have you been?” he said. “A few minutes more and—”

  He looked past me. A car was driving slowly up the street.

  “Did that car follow you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You don’t think so?” He grabbed my shoulder and hauled me into the house. Then he closed the door to a crack and peered through it.

  I had an awful thought that Principal Harris had come for her talk with Dad. But the car went past our driveway at the same slow speed, with Dad watching every moment. He said, “I want to know where you’ve been.”

  I wasn’t ready to tell him the truth, not when he was already angry. I said, “Just out.”

  “Did you talk to anybody?”

  “Dad!”

  He opened the door again and stepped out to look down the street. Standing behind him, I saw the car swing around in the loop. It came just as slowly back again. Then its headlights flashed across the trees as it turned into our driveway.

  “SOMEONE’S GETTING OUT!”

  I thought Dad would have a fit when he saw the car stop outside the house. He barged back across the porch, yelling at me to “Get inside!” I was already in the doorway, but he gave me a push that sent me reeling into the hall. Then he closed the door to a narrow slit again and pressed his eye against it.

  “The headlights have turned off,” he said. “I think he’s found us.”

  I said, “Dad—”

  “Get down!” He motioned toward the floor.

  Mom came into the hall with Bumble half hiding behind her. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Keep back!” said Dad. “The car door’s opening. Someone’s getting out!”

  “Who is it?” asked Mom.

  “I can’t see yet.”

  Mom spread out her arms to shield Bumble. I said, “Dad, it’s not the Lizard Man.”

  He looked at me, his face so white that I could see the outline of his clown smile still circling his cheeks, the makeup not quite washed away. I said, “It’s the principal from the school.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” he asked.

  “ ’Cause I talked to her, Dad.”

  “You what?”

  We heard the tapping of high-heeled shoes on the porch. The doorbell rang, gonging through the house like church bells. Bong, bong, bong, BONG.

  So that was how Principal Harris met the Watsons, with the four of us cowering in the hall like we thought she’d come to shoot us. She looked very surprised.

  For more than half an hour Principal Harris talked with Mom and Dad in the living room. She invited me to join them, but Dad wouldn’t allow it. I was sent upstairs with Bumble, and though I tried to listen through the heating vent in the floor, I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  After the principal left, my parents kept talking. Mom was the loudest, and some of her words came through the vent. He can’t live like this forever. Put yourself in his place. If he follows the rules, there’s no problem; you said so yourself.

  When Dad called for me to come downstairs, I expected him to be angry. But he was furious. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at me, he looked like a snake. His eyes were little slits, his mouth a thin line. “You have no idea what trouble you’ve started,” he said.

  We’re bugging out. That was what I thought he would say. But Mom came breezing out of the living room with a big smile on her face.

  “You’re the one who needs a new suit,” she said.

  I didn’t know how she’d convinced Dad to go along with it, but I was starting school.

  Of course there was a catch. Mom would have to drive me there in the morning and drive me back right after school.

  “But I can go out again, can’t I?” I asked. “I can still stay out until dark. Right?”

  Dad shook his head. “You’ll have homework. If you go to school, the rules change.”

  I didn’t argue. I was so happy, I didn’t care.

  AROUND THE LION

  I refused to go to school in a suit. But I did let Mom take me to Value Village after dinner and pick out a bunch of clothes for me. Even that was a bit of an adventure. I hardly ever went shopping with my mother, and I’d never gone to Value Village. It was amazing. I’d never seen so much junk in one place.

  Mom bought me three shirts and two pairs of pants, a pencil case, and a metal lunch box with pictures of Spider-Man all over it. When she drove me to school on Wednesday morning, I thought I looked pretty cool. But I wasn’t sure about the lunch box. “You think kids really use these?” I
asked.

  “If they don’t, they should,” said Mom. “They’re very practical.”

  She came into the school to get me registered, and everything was going pretty well until Principal Harris asked for a contact number.

  “Why do you need that?” asked Mom.

  “In case of emergency,” said the principal. “We might have to get hold of you. Or Igor’s father.”

  “I understand,” said Mom. She opened her purse, and I watched her sort through the things inside. She found a brochure for Fun and Games and read out the phone number.

  Principal Harris gave Mom a funny look and then handed me my schedule. “I’ll take you up to room 242 for earth science,” she said.

  “Should I come along?” asked Mom.

  “No!” I told her.

  Principal Harris was more tactful. “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  Classes had already started, and I felt a little nervous as we walked through the empty halls. I wondered: What if Dad was right and the kids laughed at my name? What if nobody talked to me? What if nobody liked me?

  “Room 242 will be your homeroom, and your locker’s right outside it,” said Principal Harris. “But you’ll need something to carry your things from class to class. Most of the kids use a backpack.”

  We came to the stairs and started up to the second floor. The clicking of the principal’s shoes echoed back and forth.

  “Did you bring your lunch?”

  I held up my Spider-Man box.

  “Oh, my.”

  That was the last thing she said until we got to the door of room 242. Then she looked down and asked, “Are you ready?”

  I nodded.

  “You missed homeroom today, but you’ll have it here every morning with Mr. Little. You’ll also come back at the end of the day for your last class, which is a free period. So you’ll see a lot of Mr. Little. I think you’ll like him.”

  She knocked on the door, waited a moment, and pushed it open. Mr. Little was right there, coming to let us in. Only a couple of inches taller than me, he looked like a rumpled elf in pants too long and a jacket too big. Only the very tips of his fingers poked from his sleeves.

  I did like Mr. Little. I liked him right away. But when he stepped aside and I saw thirty kids staring at me from their desks, I felt super hot all of a sudden. In my coat and big boots I must have looked like an explorer straight from the North Pole, carrying his lunch in a Spider-Man box. I tried to hide it behind my back.

  Mr. Little put his hand on my shoulder. “Class, this is Igor Watson,” he said.

  Dad was right. People did laugh. They chuckled and snickered, and one kid brayed like a donkey. Hee-haw. But above all the laughter one girl called out, “Whoa! Cool name.”

  I recognized her as the girl on the concrete lion. She sat by the windows, wearing silver jewelry that sparkled in the sunlight. Her face was painted white with makeup, her lips and eyes the deepest black. The lion rider was a Goth.

  “You can take that seat in the back,” Mr. Little told me. He pointed to an empty desk at the back of the room, beside the boy with the hee-haw laugh.

  The room was set up like a theater, with the desks in long rows and an aisle down the middle. Every head turned to watch me as I jingled along in my boots. Hot and sweaty, I slipped into my seat and put my lunch box on the floor beside me.

  Mr. Little was talking about the Ice Age. But I was more interested in studying the kids. The boy beside me, the one with the hee-haw laugh, had big teeth and long legs and hands so large that he might have borrowed them from his dad. The Goth girl had silver chains around her neck and tiny crosses dangling from her ears. When she reached up to touch her hair, I saw that her fingernails were painted black, and they slid down her neck like shimmering beetles.

  “As the glaciers retreated, they left behind huge boulders they had carried along,” said Mr. Little. “You can see some of them down by the river. Anyone know what they’re called?”

  I knew the answer. But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by holding up my hand.

  “Come on. Anybody?” asked Mr. Little.

  He gave up and wrote the word on the blackboard. “Erratics,” he said. “Two hundred years ago people thought the devil had dropped them from the sky. Erratics were out of place. Bizarre and inexplicable.”

  He might have been describing me, something snatched from one place and dumped in another where it didn’t belong. That first day lasted forever. I wandered from class to class without talking to anybody, and nobody talked to me. At noon, I ate my lunch alone, then shoved my Spider-Man box into a garbage can. When the buzzer rang at the end of the day, Room 242 emptied in an instant. I was left behind like a big, dumb rock.

  I walked out the front door to see fresh snow covering the ground. The Goth was up on the lion’s back, wearing her long black coat and combat boots. A group of kids stood below her. From the top of the steps, I heard them talking.

  “Maybe he’s mute,” said a girl with red hair.

  Somebody asked, “Don’t you love the lunch box?” and everyone laughed, like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

  “Did you see his clothes?” asked another girl. “They’re so shiny!”

  The Goth said, “They’re old-man clothes.”

  I wanted to slip back into the school and leave by a different door. But it was too late for that. I went down the steps and past the kids like I didn’t even know they were there.

  “What a loser,” someone said.

  I felt myself blush. Then the hee-haw kid started chanting, and others joined in, hooting like foghorns. “Eeeeeeegor. Eeeeeeeegor!”

  Out on the street stood a convoy of minivans. Beside the jelly bean car, my mom stood waving.

  Don’t do that! I told her under my breath. As I came closer she walked around the front of the car like she wanted to hug me or kiss me. Afraid the kids were watching, I dodged around her and climbed into the van through the sliding door.

  Bumble screamed hello from her car seat. She held Hideous George toward me so I could shake his little hand. In the front, Mom buckled herself slowly into her seat. “Where’s your lunch box?” she asked.

  “I lost it,” I said.

  “Oh, what a shame. We’ll have to replace that for you.”

  “No, Mom,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t need another one.”

  “Well, whatever you think.” She put on her turn signal and pulled out from the curb. When we were safely away from the school I climbed into the passenger’s seat. Mom looked over and asked, “So how was your first day?”

  “Terrible!” I said.

  “Why?” she asked. “What was so terrible?”

  “Everything!” I said. “Dad was right. I don’t fit in.”

  “Give it time,” said Mom. “Maybe tomorrow—”

  “I don’t know if I’m going back,” I said.

  She risked a sideways glance at me, looking away from the road for a tenth of a second. “So you want to quit?” she asked. “Already?”

  “Maybe.”

  I slouched in my seat and put my feet on the dashboard. Dad would have swatted them down, but Mom just looked mildly annoyed.

  Behind us Bumble shouted again. “Mom, George is hungry. He wants to stop and get candy!”

  “Well, he’s going to be a disappointed little monkey,” said Mom. “He doesn’t want to rot his teeth, does he?”

  “He doesn’t have any teeth!” yelled Bumble.

  “And maybe that’s why.”

  Bumble laughed.

  We drove along Jefferson, past Fun and Games. But Dad wasn’t out on the sidewalk.

  “Where’s the clown?” I asked.

  “If you mean your father, he probably got off early and went home,” said Mom.

  But he wasn’t there either. No one except Mom and Bumble had walked on the fresh snow.

  “That’s funny,” said Mom.

  She
sounded more curious than concerned. I figured Dad would show up before long, and Bumble didn’t seem to care at all. “Do you want to build a snowman, Igor?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay, Mom?”

  “As long as you don’t build it anywhere near the river,” she told me. “And change out of those clothes first. You’ll ruin them.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They’re old man’s clothes,” I told her. “I hate them.”

  “What, just because they’re polyester? Honey, they’re not ‘old man’s clothes. Don’t worry about what people think.”

  Mom got Bumble out of the car, then knelt in the snow to fasten her little boots. I had a funny feeling she would turn around when she’d finished and tighten my buckles. But she went into the house to wait for Dad, and Bumble and I walked down to the backyard. In the gloomy gray shadow of the apartment buildings next door, we began to build our snowman.

  We started with a handful of snow and rolled it up and down the yard. It was more than two feet high when Bumble stopped to make an angel. She fell backward into the snow and started fanning her arms and legs. I sat on the snowman’s partly built body, looking off toward the river.

  In the forest on the other side, a little flurry of snowflakes fell from a tree. I saw branches bending and a larger clump of snow falling loose. And then a half-hidden face appeared in the shadows of the bushes.

  It was an awful shock. I stood up and motioned to Bumble. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to scare her. I said, “I’m getting cold.”

  “But I want to finish the snowman.”

  “We can finish it tomorrow.”

  I reached down to grab on to her snowsuit. But Bumble cried, “No!” She rolled onto her side and curled up like a pill bug. “I want to do it now.”

  The man was moving behind the bushes, crawling toward the river. “Bumble, come on,” I said, and tried to pull her up.