So we took a different path and came out near the funeral home. The street was empty, and we walked right down the middle, three in a row, the way we’d walked up the hill on my first visit to Deadman’s Castle. When we saw a car coming toward us, we moved over to the side of the road.
The car’s engine purred as it came nearer. Sunlight shone on black metal, glaring off a hood the size of a Ping-Pong table. The car stopped when it came up beside us. The window rolled open and a man called out.
“Which of you is the Weaver kid?”
Without thinking, I held up my hand as I turned to look at the car.
There were two men inside it, and the driver opened his door and stepped out. He was wearing a black suit with a black tie and shiny black shoes. He said, “Hello, son. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
His voice sounded familiar, but I’d never seen him before.
“You probably don’t know who we are, do you?”
It wasn’t hard to guess. “You must be the men my dad calls the Protectors.”
He nodded. “It’s good to see you’re safe. Where’s our Mr. Griffin?”
The Lizard Man, he must have meant. So that was his name. Mr. Griffin. It sounded harmless, even comical, like one of the puppets I’d seen on Fraggle Rock when I was young. But it made him human too, in a way I wouldn’t have thought was possible only a few hours earlier. Suddenly all the things that had happened seemed unreal, as though I’d only dreamed them.
“He’s in the castle,” I told the Protector. “I think—”
I choked up. The Protector put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s okay. We’ll take the three of you home. Let you get cleaned up and settled down. Then you can talk to me.”
With that, I remembered where I’d heard his voice. He was the man who’d answered the phone when Angelo dialed the number on my hundred-dollar bill.
“How did you know to come here?” I asked.
“Your dad called as soon as he saw you were missing, and we’ve been looking everywhere for you. Then a man walking his dog spotted Griffin’s car in the field and called the police. They let us know.”
“But—”
“There’ll be time for this later,” said the Protector. “Right now I want to get you all home.”
“My dog’s hurt,” said Angelo. “She’s—”
“Don’t worry, son. We’ll make sure she gets help.”
The Protector herded us toward the car. He took a black cell phone from his pocket and started dialing. Then he turned away to talk to someone.
The other man got out of the car to open the back door. He was dressed the same way, all in black, and to me he didn’t look much different than the first man. But Angelo recognized him right away.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re the guy who was feeding squirrels in the park.”
The man looked embarrassed. “Yes, that’s right,” he said.
We got a ride home in that big black car, the exact sort of thing Dad had warned me about. With the Protectors in front, Angelo, Zoe, and I sat in the back. Angelo, in the middle, held Smasher on his lap. He kept petting her head and never looked up, never said a word. I thought he was still in shock. But maybe he was ashamed of the way he’d begged and cried. But I didn’t know what to say to make things better.
At Zoe’s house, the squirrel feeder got out to walk her to the door. As she stepped from the car Zoe said, “I’ll see you guys later.” Then she bent down and leaned through the window. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked me.
“I think so,” I said.
The Protector was back in five minutes. Angelo and I sat almost in silence as we drove back across Jefferson and down Dead End Road. The only thing Angelo said was “So your dad’s not crazy after all. How about that?”
I got home to find the driveway packed with official-looking cars. The curtains were pulled wide open in the front window, and Mom and Dad and Bumble stood there, looking out.
The driver kept the car running. “I’ll take your friend home,” he said. “Tell your parents I’ll be right back.”
I got out of the car with the other Protector, then turned to look at Angelo. “See you, Bonito,” I said.
“Not if I see you first,” he said, and I knew at that moment that we would still be friends. Though it might take a while, we could even be better friends than we’d ever been before.
I shut the door and watched the car drive away. Mom, Dad, and Bumble came running out to meet me, and we all hugged each other on the front lawn. Dad looked like a wreck. “I was afraid I might never see you again,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
He kept his hands on my shoulders, like he was afraid I’d run away. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
“I wish I could say the same,” said Mom. “When your father told me you were gone, I nearly died. I really did.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I hugged her again. “The Lizard Man’s dead. I saw it happen.”
“Oh, honey, I know. They told us already.” She leaned down and kissed me. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Dad put an arm around Bumble, an arm around Mom and me. “I feel as though I’ve woken from a nightmare,” he said. “I can hardly believe it’s over.”
I felt him shiver and looked up. He was crying. “Oh, Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
That made him blush. “I’d better get back inside,” he said. “They’re giving me the third degree in there.”
Mom squeezed his hand as he pulled away. With the Protector still beside us, we watched Dad walk up the path to the house.
“Bumble, why don’t you go check on George?” asked Mom.
“Okay!” cried Bumble, and off she went at a run. It made us laugh to see her scampering along. Even the Protector sort of chuckled. But Mom turned serious again.
“You know, it was your dad who told the men where to look for you,” she said. “He’s come to know that Lizard Man pretty well, and he had a feeling that’s where he might have gone.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“He’s been looking out for you all along.”
The Protector nodded. “I can verify that.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He chose the perfect place to hide,” said the Protector. “Surrounded by apartments. People watching every moment. In a crowd, you disappear. We might never have found him if not for your phone call.”
I looked at Mom, trying to figure it out.
“Have we been hiding from the Protectors?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Since when?”
“Since we came to the city,” she said. “It was your father’s idea. I didn’t want to go along with it at first, but—”
“So he wanted the Lizard Man to find us?”
“No, of course not,” said Mom. “But the way we were living was tearing us apart, and it had to stop. Your dad thought the safest place in the whole world would be right under the Lizard Man’s nose, but he knew the Protectors would never allow it. He made sure that the Lizard Man couldn’t get to you without going past him.”
“But I messed it up,” I said.
Mom smiled. “Not really. You’re the one who phoned the Protectors.”
“Well, me and Angelo,” I said. “But I thought that phone can’t be traced.”
“It wasn’t easy,” the Protector told me. “We knew who was calling. No one outside your family has the number you dialed. We got the city pretty fast and the neighborhood three days later. But it was only yesterday we thought we’d found the house. With your dad dressed up, we couldn’t be sure. The clown looked suspicious.”
Mom put her arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “There’s a lot of people with a lot of questions.”
“Don’t be nervous,” said the Protector. “You’re the hero here.”
EPILOGUE
&nbs
p; When I leaned forward to blow out the thirteen candles on my birthday cake, I couldn’t think of anything to wish for. I had great friends, a good school, and a happy family, and that was all I’d ever wanted.
Across the table, Bumble stared at the burning candles. Smoke rose from each one in a little brown coil. “Make a wish, Igor,” she said.
But there was nothing I needed. My folks had bought me a computer and a cell phone because Dad said we didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing anymore. They’d even bought me a bicycle, because Mom said that every boy should have a bicycle.
But Angelo didn’t have one. So I ended up pushing mine along wherever we went, and hardly ever rode it. Zoe thought that was hilarious, like I didn’t understand the concept of bicycles. I told Angelo that he could ride it whenever he wanted, but he never did. Trevor said he didn’t know how.
“His mom wouldn’t let him have a bike ’cause her best friend was killed on one when she was a kid,” he told me. That part actually turned out to be true. The part where her friend was hit by the president’s limousine, not so much.
“The candles are melting!” shouted Bumble. She kept looking up at me and back down at the cake. “They’re going to burn out!”
Still, I couldn’t think of a thing to wish for. I was allowed to go anywhere I wanted and stay out until dark, or even later sometimes. And I didn’t have to worry about Dad embarrassing me on Jefferson Street. He had quit his job at Fun and Games and was teaching English again.
“Igor!” shrieked Bumble. Her little hands were squeezed into fists, and her eyes were bulging out. “Make a wish!”
I didn’t need any money. Dad had told me to go ahead and spend my lifeline. But I’d lived so long with nothing that I couldn’t bring myself to break a hundred-dollar bill. So poor Benjamin tagged along wherever I went, still scrunched up in my sock.
The flames reached up like yellow fingers, burning the candles faster. I kept leaning over the cake, smelling the smoke and the melting wax. Bumble quivered all over, and Mom watched me with the cake knife clutched in her hand, ready to start slicing. Even Dad looked puzzled.
“Just make a wish,” he told me. “Blow out the candles.”
But it wasn’t that easy. My last wish had brought the Lizard Man. It had nearly killed me in the end.
It had made me a little bit famous.
One of the big papers ran a tiny story about a man found at the bottom of Deadman’s Castle. It made it sound like an accident, and my name wasn’t mentioned. Neither was Zoe’s or Angelo’s, but soon everyone we knew had heard that the three of us were mixed up in it. The story spread from kid to kid like a weird, mutating virus. Everyone got a different version.
Suddenly Deadman’s Castle became a scarier place. Kids still climbed the hill and dared each other to go inside. But no one went farther than the first dark room. They said they heard strange sounds coming up from the bottomless pit.
A month after school had started again I heard that workers had sealed the entrance with metal grates. But I didn’t go up to look. Even Zoe had never gone back to Deadman’s Castle.
“The candles are falling over!” shouted Bumble.
They had burned to little stubs, leaning in all directions. I had only a few seconds left to make a wish. But I was sure it would come true, and I didn’t want to take any chances.
“Bumble, you make the wish,” I said.
Her eyes opened wider. “Really?”
“Sure.”
Her excited grimace made us laugh. She was so happy that even her hair was vibrating.
“You better hurry,” said Mom.
Bumble closed her eyes and bit her lip. She scrunched her face and tightened her fists. “Okay!” she yelled, and leaned forward to blow out the candles.
The flames bent and flickered. Six went out, and then three more. Bumble was turning red.
I helped her. So did Mom and Dad, all of us blowing together. The last candles went out, and the smoke flurried away.
“What did you wish for?” asked Mom.
“If I tell you, it won’t come true,” said Bumble.
“You could give us a hint.”
She thought about that for only a second. Then she grinned. “George is going to be very happy.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Like Igor, I moved a lot while I was growing up. Before I finished seventh grade, I’d lived in ten houses and gone to seven schools. Like him, I had never had a real friend for any length of time.
But that changed when we moved to Calgary. For three years, we stayed in one place. Our home was an old rambling house that we forever after called “the Yellow House,” to set it apart from “the Green House” that came after it. At the bottom of our backyard was the Elbow River, frozen over in the winter, raging brown in the spring with the dirt of the Canadian prairie. On one side was a park, on the other a towering apartment building that shaded the house from the afternoon sun.
To get to school I had to walk up the river and cross a bridge to the other side. I usually used the concrete bridge on busy Fourth Avenue, but sometimes went a little farther to the swinging bridge made of rope and wood.
Behind the school was a hill, and on top of the hill was a ruin that we called Deadman’s Castle. It was possible to go down into the ruins, but in third grade I was never brave enough to do that. I had heard that a kid had been killed in there.
Down the street from the school was a funeral home. Sometimes, in winter, we took cardboard boxes from the dumpster behind it and went sledding down the hill, along paths between the trees. I once shot out from a trail and crossed the street so close to a passing car that my brother was sure I’d gone right underneath it.
In all the places we’d known, that was our favorite neighborhood, and it became the setting for Deadman’s Castle. I imagine it has changed a lot in the fifty-odd years since I’ve been there, and probably never was exactly as I remember it. I know the house is gone. Condominiums sprawl across the hill that I’d once thought was as tall as a mountain. I’m not sure that I ever want to go back.
This story is, in a sense, a bird’s nest of memories. Little bits of my life have been tangled together to make the thing that holds it. In the Green House I was haunted by a man who called me on the telephone. He asked if I’d ever had a good lickin’ in my life, then promised to come over and give me one. He always called in the evenings, and only when my father was not at home.
Thinking about it years later, my writer’s mind came up with the bizarre idea: What if my father was making those calls?
It’s not remotely possible. But that idea hatched in my nest of memories into the beginnings of Deadman’s Castle.
At first I couldn’t decide if the Lizard Man was real or a figment of a madman’s imagination. When it was clear that he had to be real, the Protectors had to be real as well. I imagined that Igor and his family would be guarded by federal agents under the Witness Protection Program. But movies and TV hadn’t taught me how the program really works. I was wrong.
The real-life Witness Security Program is run by the U.S. Marshals Service. It provides round-the-clock protection to witnesses and their families, giving them new lives under new identities. And it’s done a remarkable job. According to the website of the U.S. Marshalls, not one person under their active protection has ever been harmed or killed while following the program’s guidelines.
The Protectors in Deadman’s Castle are not U.S. Marshals. If they were, the story would not be possible the way I imagined it. I hope people will think of them as guardians, agents of a mysterious and secretive government bureau.
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Deadman's Castle Page 18