‘What?’ I said, mostly just to make her speak again.
‘Struwwelpeter. Why does Mr Andersz call him that?’
‘Oh. It’s from some kids’ book. My mom actually had it when she was little. She said it was about some boy who got in trouble because he wouldn’t cut his hair or cut his nails.’
Jenny narrowed her eyes. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘I don’t know. Except my mom said the pictures in the book were really scary. She said Struwwelpeter looked like Freddy Krueger with a ‘fro.’
Jenny burst out laughing, but she stopped fast. Neither of us, I think, liked the way laughter sounded in that room, in that house, with those black-bordered faces staring at us. ‘Struwwelpeter,’ she said, rolling the name carefully on her tongue, like a little kid daring to lick a frozen flagpole.
‘It’s what my mom called me when I was little,’ said Peter from the doorway, and Jenny’s fingers clenched hard and then fell free of mine. Peter didn’t move toward us. He just stood there while we watched, paralyzed. After a few long seconds, he added, ‘When I kicked the shit out of barbers, because I hated having my hair cut. Then when I was just being bad. She’d say that instead of screaming at me. It made me cry.’ From across the foyer, in the living room, maybe, we heard a single, soft bump, as though something had fallen over.
With a shrug, Peter released us and stepped past us back into the foyer. We followed, not touching now, not even looking at each other. I felt guilty, amazed, strange. When we passed the windows the curtains billowed up and brushed across us.
‘Hey, Kelly,’ Peter whispered loudly into the living room. He whispered it again, then abruptly turned our way and said, ‘You think he’s dead?’
‘Looks like it,’ I answered, glancing down the hallway toward the kitchen, into the shadows in the living room, which seemed to have shifted, somehow, the sheet some way different as it lay across the couch. I couldn’t place the feeling, it was like watching an actor playing a corpse, knowing he was alive, trying to catch him breathing.
‘But the car’s here,’ Peter said. ‘The Lincoln. Hey, Kelly!’ His shout made me wince, and Jenny cringed back toward the front door, but she shouted, too.
‘Kell? Kelly
‘Oh, what is that?’ I murmured, my whole spine twitching like a severed electrical wire, and when Jenny and Peter looked at me, I pointed upstairs.
‘Wh—’ Jenny started, and then it happened again, and both of them saw it. From under the half-closed door at the top of the staircase — the only door we could see from where we were — came a sudden slash of light which disappeared instantly, like a snake’s tongue flashing in and out.
We stood there at least a minute, maybe more. Even Peter looked uncertain, not scared, quite, but something had happened to his face. I couldn’t place it right then. It made me nervous, though. And it made me like him more than I had in a long, long time.
Then, without warning, Peter was halfway up the stairs, his feet stomping dust out of each step as he slammed them down, saying, ‘Fucking hilarious, Kelly. Here I come. Ready or not.’ He stopped halfway up and turned to glare at us. Mostly at me. ‘Come on.’
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Jenny, reached out on my own for the first time and touched her elbow, but to my surprise she jerked it away from me. ‘Jenny, she’s up there.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she whispered.
‘Come on,’ Peter hissed.
‘Andrew, something’s wrong. Stay here.’
I looked into her face, smart, steely Jenny Mack, first girl ever to look at me like that, first girl I’d ever wanted to, and right then, for the only time in my life, I felt — within me — the horrible thrill of Peter’s power, knew the secret of it. It wasn’t bravery and it wasn’t smarts, although he had both those things in spades. It was simply the willingness to trade. At any given moment, Peter Andersz would trade anyone for anything, or at least could convince people that he would. Knowing you could do that, I thought, would be like holding a grenade, tossing it back and forth in the terrified face of the world.
I looked at Jenny’s eyes, filling with tears, and I wanted to kiss her, though I couldn’t even imagine how to initiate something like that. What I said, in my best Peter-voice, was, ‘I’m going upstairs. Coming or staying?’
I can’t explain. I didn’t mean anything. It felt like playacting, no more real than holding her hand had been. We were just throwing on costumes, dancing around each other, scaring each other. Trick or treat.
‘Kelly?’ Jenny called past me, blinking, crying openly, now, and I started to reach for her again, and she shoved me, hard, toward the stairs.
‘Hurry up,’ said Peter, with none of the triumph I might have expected in his voice.
I went up, and we clumped, side by side, to the top of the stairs. When we reached the landing, I looked back at Jenny. She was propped in the front door, one hand on the doorknob and the other wiping at her eyes as she jerked her head from side to side, looking for her sister.
At our feet, light licked under the door again. Peter held up a hand, and we stood together and listened. We heard wind, low and hungry, and now I was sure I could hear the Sound lapping against the edge of the continent, crawling over the lip of it.
‘OnetwothreeBoo!’ Peter screamed and flung open the door, which banged against a wall inside and bounced back. Peter kicked it open again, and we lunged through into what must have been a bedroom, once, and was now just a room, a blank space, with nothing in it at all.
Even before the light swept over us again, from outside, from the window, I realized what it was. ‘Lighthouse,’ I said, breathless. ‘Greenpoint Light.’
Peter grinned. ‘Oh, yeah. Halloween.’
Every year, the suburbs north of us set Greenpoint Light running again on Halloween, just for fun. One year, they’d even rented ferries and decked them out with seaweed and parents in pirate costumes and floated them just offshore, ghost-ships for the kiddies. We’d seen them skirting our suburb on their way up the coast.
‘Do you think—’ I started, and Peter grabbed me hard by the elbow. ‘Ow,’ I said.
‘Listen,’ snapped Peter.
I heard the house groan as it shifted. I heard paper flapping somewhere downstairs, the front door tapping against its frame or the inside wall as it swung on the wind.
‘Listen,’ Peter whispered, and this time I heard it. Very low. Very faint, like a finger rubbed along the lip of a glass, but unmistakable once you realized what it was. Outside, in the yard, someone had just lifted the tongue of the bell and tapped it, oh so gently, against the side.
I stared at Peter, and he stared back. Then he leaped to the window, peering down. I thought he was going to punch the glass loose from the way his shoulders jerked.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘All I can see is the roof.’ He shoved the window even further open than it already was. ‘Clever girls!” he screamed, and waited, for laughter, maybe, a full-on bong of the bell, something. Abruptly, he turned to me, and the light rolled across him, waist-high, and when it receded, he looked different, damp with it. ‘Clever girls,’ he said.
I whirled, stepped into the hall, looked down. The front door was open, and Jenny was gone. ‘Peter?’ I whispered, and I heard him swear as he emerged onto the landing beside me. ‘You think they’re outside?’
Peter didn’t answer right away. He had his hands jammed in his pockets, his gaze cast down at the floor. He shuffled in place. ‘The thing is, Andrew,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to do.’
‘What are you talking about?’