His dream was to move again—even returning to their old neighborhood would be better than this—but he could figure out no way to facilitate such an outcome. His parents seemed to like it here, and, after they’d invested so much money in the place, it was highly unlikely that they’d be willing to give it up.
He did tell his mom and dad when they woke up several minutes later, showing them through the window what had happened. Still afraid that he was being watched, that his every word and gesture were under scrutiny, James did not editorialize, did not indicate that he was frightened or that he thought anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He just stated the facts, letting them draw their own conclusions, hoping those conclusions would be the right ones. But his parents looked at each other as though they’d already known about this, or at least knew what had caused it, and instead of the shock and disbelief for which he’d been hoping, there was only a grim matter-of-factness as they talked about how much work it would be to replace the plants.
Megan came into the kitchen to rinse out her cereal bowl, heard what they were talking about and looked out the window for herself, but she said nothing, offered no opinion, simply shot James a quick frightened look and then moved on.
He had to talk to someone; he couldn’t keep everything bottled up like this forever, and later that morning, he finally told Robbie about all that had happened.
But he told Robbie at his house.
They were hanging out in Robbie’s room, and the conversation drifted around to the headquarters and their detective agency, which neither of them seemed to be very excited about anymore. James sensed some ambivalence in his friend, maybe even a trace of fear, and without preamble, he said, “My house is haunted,” and blurted everything out. The words tumbled from his mouth as though poured from a pitcher, events out of sequence, descriptions over thoughts over feelings. He received no ridicule, just nods of acknowledgment that told him his friend had some of the same misgivings and had experienced the same sorts of feelings he had.
James had started with the text threat on Megan’s phone, and he ended with it as well, explaining for probably the third or fourth time that he was afraid to even think bad thoughts in their house. “Like that Twilight Zone,” he said, although Robbie didn’t get the reference.
“I knew there was something wrong,” Robbie admitted. “All that stuff with the dirt. It’s why I didn’t want to do that anymore.”
James thought of their headquarters, of the displayed skeletons he had unearthed, and he shivered. “Yeah, but I have to live there.”
“What are you going to do?” Robbie asked seriously.
James shook his head. “I don’t know. What can I do?”
“I think you should tell your parents.”
“I’ll be dead. It said, ‘I’ll kill you both.’ There’s no room for interpretation of that.”
“But can it?”
“I was almost buried alive!”
Robbie leaned forward. “But you did that to yourself. Okay, maybe it somehow got into your mind and made you want to go into that hole, but it couldn’t come out and get you. No one in your family’s been harmed. I don’t think it can do it.”
James remembered the panicked, desperate feeling of having the dirt fall in on him and shook his head. “No.”
“Then tell them outside your house, like you’re telling me. When you’re at the store with your dad or something.”
For a brief second, there was a ray of hope. But it quickly faded. “Then my dad would try to do something. Or tell my mom. And it would know. And then it would get me. Me and Megan.”
“What do you think it is, anyway?” Robbie asked. “A ghost? Some sort of demon? What?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you must’ve thought about it.”
“Maybe it’s the house itself. Like in Monster House or something.”
“Maybe,” Robbie said thoughtfully.
“I just don’t know what we can do about it. Except move. And that’s not going to happen. Who knows? Maybe even if we did move, it would follow us.”
“We’ll think of something. Both of us are on the case now.” Robbie smiled. “The R.J. Detective Agency in our first and biggest mystery.”
James tried to smile back, but he didn’t feel like smiling. He wasn’t sure Robbie understood the scope of this thing. Sure, his friend believed him and was scared of the house, but this was big, this was deep, and there was no way two kids could stop something of this magnitude.
“I’m thirsty,” James said. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Hawaiian Punch.”
They walked out to the kitchen, where Robbie’s mom was talking on the phone. After lunch, she was going to take them to go swimming, and if he played his cards right, James thought he might be able to finagle an invitation to dinner. He wanted to put off going home for as long as possible. Especially now. Spilling his guts to Robbie made him feel as though he’d broken the rules, and he couldn’t help thinking that he would be punished as soon as he got home. He dreaded the thought of returning.
He accepted a glass of Hawaiian Punch and took a big drink, then nearly choked as a terrible idea abruptly occurred to him.
What if he’d already been punished? What if Megan had just fallen down the stairs and broken her neck? What if he returned to find his parents dead? He was filled with a sudden need to call home and make sure everyone was all right. The compulsion was strong, but he resisted it. If he gave in, doubt and worry would rule him. He would never be able to leave the house without being certain that something awful was about to happen. He needed to relax, not think about it, enjoy the time he had away from home.
The fear would return soon enough.
Robbie grabbed a bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies, and the two of them returned to the bedroom, where they were planning to play games on Robbie’s computer until it was time to eat. Entering the room a half step behind his friend, James saw something he hadn’t noticed before. He suddenly felt cold. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. A small reddish box was protruding from the top of Robbie’s bedspread, its upper third resting on the pillow.
Robbie frowned. “I don’t know.” He walked over, picked it up—
—and James saw the frightening face of the Old Maid on the cover of a battered box of cards. She was not smiling, as she had been on the card he’d found on his bed, but possessed instead the terrifying rage of the Old Maid he remembered from when he was little. The hag glared at him, and he felt like a kindergartner again, afraid of supposedly benign pictures that to him revealed sinister import.
“That’s weird,” Robbie said, but he didn’t seem overly concerned. “I never saw that before.” He turned the box over in his hand. “That old lady looks kind of creepy, huh?”
James nodded dumbly. He was filled once again with the urge to call home, the certainty that something horrible had befallen his family, and, finally, he gave in. His mom answered when he called, and she turned out to be fine. So did his dad. So did his sister. His mom seemed slightly confused as to why he’d called, so he made up an excuse, a weak fictional distillation of the truth, telling her that he’d heard a siren coming from the direction of their neighborhood and wanted to make sure the house hadn’t burned down. She laughed. “No, nothing’s burning,” she told him. “Don’t worry. Have a good time.”
But he did worry.
Robbie’s mom made them tuna sandwiches for lunch, then drove them to the Municipal Plunge, where they spent the better part of the afternoon playing in the water, leaving only when a lifeguard announced that the pool would be closing for a private party. They changed in the boys’ dressing room, and on the way home, Robbie’s mom stopped off at Dairy Queen, where all three of them got sundaes.