Oddest of All (4 page)

Unfortunately, the table is close to the edge of the stage. Too close. Tripping over my untied shoelace, I hurtle headfirst into the darkness.

My body makes some very unpleasant sounds as it lands.

 

Okay, I probably could have accepted the broken leg.

I might even have been able to live with the memory of the look on Tiffany's face.

But when the ambulance guys came and put me on a stretcher, and everyone stood there watching as they rolled me out of the school, and Mikey followed after them to tell me that my fly had been open during the entire fiasco, I really thought that was too much.

Anyway, that's how I ended up in this hospital bed, staring at my right leg, which is up in traction.

Tiffany came to visit a while ago. That would have been wonderful, except she brought along her boyfriend, Chuck. He goes to another school and is old enough to drive.

Something inside me died when she introduced him.

To make things worse (and what doesn't?), it turns out that Chuck was in the audience yesterday.

“You were brilliant, man,” he says. “At least, until the part where it all fell to pieces.”

I want to shove a Hostess cupcake down his throat.

After they are gone, Mikey shows up.

“Tough luck, Murphy,” he says, looking at my cast.

I try to remember that he is my best friend, and really thought he was saving my life when he Heimliched me.

It is not easy.

“Cheer up,” he says. “It couldn't get worse than this.”

He's lucky my leg is in traction and I can't get out of bed. He is also lucky I don't have a cupcake on me.

After Mikey leaves, I make two decisions: (a) I am going to change my name, and (b) I never want to be thirteen again as long as I live.

There is another knock on my door.

“Hello, Murphy,” says a soft voice.

It's Laurel.

She smiles shyly. “Can I come in?”

I've never noticed how pretty she is when she smiles. For a brief moment I think life may not be so bad after all.

I am pretty sure, however, that this is a delusion.

After all, my name is still Murphy Murphy.

And I'm still thirteen years old.

I don't even want to think about what might happen next.

T
HUNDER
rumbled overhead.

A crack of lightning split the midnight sky.

My father said a word I don't get to use.

“What's the matter, James?” asked Chris Gurley. (My father's name is actually Henry, but Chris and I were sitting in the backseat and pretending he was our chauffeur, so we were calling him James.)

“Nothing,” Dad muttered, as heavy drops began to spatter the windshield. “I just wanted to get back to Syracuse before this storm started. I'm exhausted.”

We were driving home from a Halloween storytelling concert put on by a couple of Dad's friends. I was thinking about their last story, the tale of “The Phantom Hitchhiker,” when I spotted a woman walking along the road ahead of us.

I felt a shiver, as if the story was coming true.
Stop it, Nine
, I told myself.
You're being silly
. Before I could suggest to Dad that we should offer the woman a ride she turned and ran straight at us, waving her arms wildly. As she got closer I could see that she was screaming. For a terrifying moment, I actually thought she was going to fling herself onto our hood.

“Dad, watch out!” I cried—unnecessarily, since he was already slamming his foot against the brake and wrenching the steering wheel to the right. I caught a terrifying glimpse of the woman's twisted, screaming face through my window as we shot past, missing her by inches.

We were going way too fast when we hit the side of the road. Next thing I knew we were bouncing down a steep bank, and I realized with horror that we were going to roll over.

Everything seemed to slow down as the car went onto its side, then its top. When we stopped, I was hanging upside down in the dark, held in place by my seat belt. The radio had somehow gotten turned on, and a country-and-westem song was blaring through the dark, which only added to the weirdness.

“Nine!” cried my father, shouting to be heard above the radio. “Chris! Are you all right?”

“I think so,” muttered Chris. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was also upside down.

“I'm all right,” I said. “Except for the blood rushing to my head.”

I noticed that my voice was shaking.

“See if you can unhook your seat belts,” said Dad.

I reached down with my hand. The car roof—which was now the floor—was only a couple of inches from my skull. Bracing myself, I fiddled with the seat belt. When I finally opened the buckle I fell to the ceiling, landing on my head.

I heard a thump as Chris landed beside me. Between the music, the darkness, the hanging upside down, and the terror of the accident, we were pretty confused. It took a few moments of crawling around on the ceiling/floor to find one of the doors, and a few more to pry it open.

The rain was coming down so hard that within seconds my clothes were soaked and clinging to my skin. I was so relieved to be out of the car that I didn't really care.

Once we had finished checking to see if we really were all okay, my father muttered, “I'd like to get my hands on that dame. Do you think that was some sort of Halloween prank, or is she merely crazy?” He stopped as if struck by what he had just said and looked around nervously, obviously wondering if a crazy woman might be watching us even now.

“Where do you suppose she went, anyway?” asked Chris, sounding as nervous as I felt.

I looked around, but between the darkness and the rain, I doubt I would have seen her if she was standing more than ten feet away.

“You two keep your eyes open,” ordered Dad. Then he turned his attention to the car.

“How bad is it, Mr. T.?” asked Chris after a minute.

“I won't know until we can get a better look at it,” he said mournfully.

I felt really bad for him. The Golden Chariot, as he calls our car, is a 1959 Cadillac. It's huge (comparing it to a modern car is like comparing a seven-layer cake to an Oreo) and it's my father's pride and joy. He's a preservation architect, after all, and he likes his cars the way he likes his buildings—big, old, and fancy. Given the time and money he had put into the Chariot, I could see why he would feel bitter toward the woman who caused us to plunge into the ditch.

Despite her spooky appearance, it didn't occur to me to think the woman might have been a ghost. After all, Dad had seen her, too, and while by this time in our lives Chris and I had seen several ghosts, Dad had yet to spot one. It just wasn't something you expected of him.

“Well, we can't stand out here in the rain,” he said gloomily. “We'd better see if we can find someplace where we can make a few phone calls.”

“That may not be easy,” said Chris.

She was right. We had been taking one of my father's famous “shortcuts” along an old country road and hadn't seen a house for the last two miles. Which meant we could either walk back those two miles through the pounding rain, or keep going on the hope that we might find a house not far ahead. Since we couldn't really get any wetter even if we tried, we decided to gamble on going forward.

“Besides,” said Dad, “maybe we'll run into that maniac and I can give her a piece of my mind. Wait a minute while I get the flashlight.”

Lying on his back, he managed to retrieve a flashlight from the glove compartment. Following his lead, we scrambled out of the ditch and up to the road. The rain was pelting down so hard that it hurt. Since there was pretty much zero traffic, we were soon walking side by side. I kept looking around, worrying that the woman might jump out of the bushes or something. What she had done already was so crazy there was no telling what else she might do.

Here's the first thing I learned that night: If you walk through freezing rain for twenty minutes, you'll probably be willing to knock on the door of a house you normally wouldn't get near on a bet—especially if there's no other house in sight. Of course, given how dark it was, “in sight” didn't amount to much in this case.

Actually, we didn't even see the house at first. We only realized it was there because I bumped into something and shouted “Ouch!” When Dad lifted the beam of the flashlight to see what the problem was, we saw a mailbox. The name
B. SMILEY
was painted on the side.

“They've got to be kidding,” snorted Chris.

“I don't care if Smiley shares the house with Dopey, Doc, and Grumpy,” I replied, “as long as they let us out of this rain.”

Though the house wasn't visible from the road, we found an unpaved driveway just past the mailbox. It was lined with trees whose branches met overhead, making it almost a tunnel. The branches provided a little relief from the storm, but the effect was so creepy I decided I would have preferred the rain.

Just before we left the tree tunnel a bolt of lightning revealed the house. It was about fifty feet ahead of us. Tall and brooding, it had a steep roof and a pair of spooky gables. It looked like something out of a nightmare, the kind of place you're
supposed
to find when your car breaks down on a cold, rainy night. The only light came from a single window on the second floor.

My father waited until the rumble of thunder had passed, then said, “Well . . . is it?”

What he meant was, “Is it haunted?”

This wasn't an unreasonable question. Ever since Chris and I had met the Woman in White at the Grand Theater, we had been growing increasingly sensitive to ghosts. Sometimes we knew if a place was haunted just by looking at it.

Sometimes, but not always.

“I can't tell,” replied Chris, shouting to be heard above the sudden gust of wind that made the shutters on the house begin to bang.

“Me, either!” I bellowed.

I didn't bother to add that I had come to the conclusion that people were a lot more dangerous than ghosts anyway. Not that I don't find ghosts eerie. Something about meeting the spirit of a person who has crossed into the world of the dead makes my flesh tingle no matter how many times it happens.

“Well, standing in the rain is stupid,” said Dad at last. “Let's go.”

Leaving the cover of the trees, he sprinted toward the porch. I don't know why he bothered to run; we were already totally drenched. Maybe it was the promise of shelter being so close. Pointless or not, Chris and I sprinted after him.

The steps sagged beneath our weight as we dashed up to the porch. It was a relief to be out of the downpour—even if it meant standing at the threshold of such a weird-looking place.

Dad stared at the door for a moment but didn't make any move to summon the owner. “Don't be silly, Henry,” he muttered to himself at last. “It's just an old house in the country.” He played the beam of the flashlight over the doorframe until he found the doorbell button. He pushed it vigorously.

No one answered for a long time. I was wondering if we were going to have to start walking again when an old man's face appeared at the little window in the door. His expression was hard to read, and at first I thought he was going to turn around and leave us standing on the porch. But after a moment the door creaked open.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

His voice was scratchy, as if he didn't use it very often.

“We had an accident up the road a bit,” said my father. “Could we use your phone, please?”

A strange expression flickered across the old man's face. It vanished almost immediately, as if he had caught himself telling a secret. His features froze into place, only his eyes betraying that something bothered him. With a shake of his head he said, “Don't have a phone.”

My father sighed. He tried to keep it from showing, but I could tell from his eyes he was feeling a little desperate. “Is there anyone near here who
does
have a phone?” he asked.

The old man shook his head again, and I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid. “No one near here at all,” he said.

“Any chance you could give us a ride?” asked Dad. He was sounding more desperate with each question.

Another shake of the head. “I don't drive anymore.”

Dad looked back at the storm. He took a deep breath, then said, “I know it's a lot to ask, but could we possibly stay here for the night?”

It was the old man's turn to hesitate. He studied the three of us for a moment, then nodded and stepped aside so that we could enter.

His silence was spooky, but not as spooky as his house. The place looked like something from another time—or at least as if it hadn't been cleaned since some earlier period in history. Dust lay thick on every surface. Cobwebs tangled in the corners. The pattern on the carpet had nearly disappeared.

“My name is Henry Tanleven,” said my father, extending his hand.

The old man looked at my father's hand as if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. Finally he took it in his own and said, “Benjamin Smiley.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smiley,” said my father. “And my apologies for intruding on you this way. This is my daughter, Nine, and her friend, Chris Gurley.”

Mr. Smiley looked surprised by my name. “It's really Nina,” I explained, as I did almost every time I first met someone. “People call me Nine because they like the way it sounds when you put it together with my last name.”

Usually people take a second to figure out the joke, then smile and nod. Sometimes they start to smile before I explain, because they've already figured it out. Despite his name, Mr. Smiley looked as if he had no idea what a joke was. He just stared at me and said “Nine” in a flat voice.

Before I could think of what to say, an enormous clap of thunder shook the walls of the house.