The Book of Bad Things (6 page)

L
ATER, AFTER THE SUN
was low in the sky, Ping’s mother called for her to come inside and clean up for dinner. The girls said good-bye with the hope of seeing each other again soon, and Cassidy made her way back to the Tremonts’ house. Dennis’s BMW was parked in the driveway and his daughter Deb’s Taurus was in front of it, its engine still steaming and clicking in the open garage.

Cassidy didn’t want to go back into the house just yet, so she perched on the wicker chair on the front porch and flipped through her notebook, finding the last blank page, and filling it with the little she knew of grave robbers. She’d have to look up more about the subject on Rose’s laptop that evening if she had a chance. She supposed that what Mr. Chase and the others had done that afternoon had been a type of grave robbing too. His laugh echoed in her memory, and she grimaced thinking of his prize fox. She secretly hoped it woke up and bit him.

“Cassie!” a voice called from the street. “You’re here!”

Cassidy looked up and noticed the boy from the supermarket waving at the edge of the lawn. Hal. “Hey!” She waved. “Yup, I made it … back.” She’d almost said
home
.

“I can see that,” he called out. “Hey, is there any good stuff left up at the Hermit’s place?”

Cassidy remembered their conversation. He’d been waiting to get off his shift so he could come scrounge like the rest of them. She shrugged, lifting her hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.

“Wish me luck!” he said.

“Good luck,” Cassidy called out, as the boy walked on.

“Who you talking to?” Joey was standing behind her just inside the screen door.

She flinched. How long had he been watching her? “Your old babysitter. Hal.”

“Well, my mom wanted me to tell you that she put some appetizers out. My dad’s got some burgers on the grill out back.”

“Everyone’s sitting down to dinner?”

“Everyone else is. I’m not really hungry,” said Joey. He turned around and disappeared into the shadows behind the screen door.

Cassidy sat at the picnic table on the back patio, pushing a pile of cold bean salad from one side of her plate to the other, her stomach feeling tight and too small to fit anything inside. It was the opposite of what Cassidy had regularly experienced only a year ago when she’d stuffed herself silly at every meal.

Dennis and Deb were seated beside her, talking about their days. Dennis Tremont was tall and thin, though he appeared broader when in his navy lawyer suit than in his current costume, a faded concert tee and black jeans. His hair was gray, which made him look a little older than he actually was, but slightly scruffy and handsome, like the hipster dads she’d seen in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods. Deb was obviously his daughter — they had the same sharp nose and wide, intelligent eyes. But Deb also had her mother’s long neck and pale skin. Her dark auburn hair fell in effortless curls to her shoulders, which were bare except for the thin straps of a summery floral dress. Cassidy had never realized how much Deb looked like Joey. But Joey wasn’t around for comparison; he’d already gone upstairs to his bedroom.

After a moment of silence, which Cassidy hadn’t noticed, Rose reached out and took her hand. “I’m very sorry I forgot to pick you up today. I’ve got lots planned for the next couple weeks. I swear, I’ll make it up to you.”

Cassidy wore a tiny smile, answering in a small voice, “You already have.”

“Tomorrow morning, you and Joey are taking an art class at the college. Sound like fun?”

“Totally!” Cassidy forced herself to sound excited. She wanted badly to tell Rose about the conversation she’d overheard earlier that afternoon. But as the light grew purple around them and the tree frogs began their familiar and lovely chorus, she realized that she should probably keep Rose and Dennis and Deb out of whatever was happening between her and Joey. There was so much more going on with him than any of them probably understood.

The day hadn’t been all bad. She’d made a new friend, after all.

In the kitchen, Cassidy scraped her plate into the trash bin. She wondered what Ping was doing next door. Possibly, she was reading one of those magazines she’d mentioned.
Strange State
? Cassidy thought maybe tomorrow they could call up someone in the editor’s office and tell them about the Hermit of Chase Estates and the junk that everyone had pulled out of her house, or about Lucky, the ghost dog that was haunting the woods nearby. Or maybe, Cassidy thought, she’d add these odd things to her own little journal.

Later, after presenting her gifts to the Tremonts — a bag of chocolate-covered potato chips from an expensive store on Atlantic Avenue and a small cheesecake from a famous Brooklyn bakery — she climbed the stairs to Tony’s bedroom,
her
bedroom for now, thinking of what Levi Stanton had said about the nature of what scares us. The first step in conquering fear is recognizing where it’s coming from. Cassidy had begun her
Bad Things
journal with this idea in mind. Stepping into the darkness beyond her host-brother’s closed door, she made the decision that the name
Joey Tremont
would never go into her book. She would not allow him to become a
Bad Thing
, no matter how hard he tried to make her believe the opposite. They’d been friends once. How hard could it be to make that happen again?

I
N THE CITY
, at night, when Cassidy slept on her little couch, she could hear the trains of the subway as they passed underground several blocks away. Sometimes the weight of the train would vibrate her entire neighborhood. Often, these vibrations would catch something in Cassidy’s apartment — a picture frame hanging loosely, a couple glasses touching in the sink’s drying rack, a piece of furniture sitting just-so on the slightly slanted wood flooring — and release a faint but obnoxious rattle. The noise never lasted long enough for Cassidy to find its source on the first try. And so she would wait fifteen minutes for the next train to pass, to send out its vibrations, and the rattle would come again.

It was like a game, though an unpleasant one — every passing tremor leading Cassidy closer to the offending object until finally she’d zero in on it. She’d shift that frame on the wall, or separate the glasses by the sink, or kick at the chair or bureau or table that had somehow, by pure chance, ended up in the exact wrong position. Then, if all went well, she’d crawl back underneath her blanket to capture a few more hours of sleep before dawn.

It was such a
city
type of annoyance, that when Cassidy was woken by a similar rattle that first night back in Whitechapel, she opened her eyes into darkness and panicked that the whole day had been a dream, that she was still in Brooklyn, huddled on her hot little couch. But soon Tony’s room —
her
room — took shape, and she clutched at the soft sheets she’d taken from the hall closet only that afternoon.

Above, the ceiling fan spun at mid speed, creating a soft din that almost drowned out all other noise. Almost. Something was rattling close by, just like in the city when the subway growled through its underground passages.

Cassidy sat up. She straightened her T-shirt and shorts. She stood still and craned her neck, listening. The vibration must have been tiny or very far away, because she could not feel it against her bare feet. Tony’s bedroom was above the garage and was large enough that it looked out on both the front and back yards. There was usually a cooling cross-breeze after the sun went down. What if the breeze itself was the culprit?

But the rattle sounded as though it were coming from beside the window facing the street. As she neared the sill, she thought that the bookcase there must be rubbing ever-so-slightly against the wall. She pulled the wooden case away and the rattle stopped. She listened to the quiet night to see if the rattle came again from somewhere else. But it did not. The house itself must have been trembling. But why? How? A couple years ago, she’d felt the earthquake that hit the city; her desk at school had rocked back and forth like she was on a boat. But this had been different.

Cassidy heard a soft humming. Low and barely perceptible. If she hadn’t been standing by the window, she’d never have noticed it. The humming was not melodious; more like the chanting of the Buddhist monks that Mrs. Mendez had played for her world-music class earlier that year. Cassidy listened closely. There were layers inside of it. Different notes. Discordant. Difficult. Like a song the moon might sing while dreaming.

She imagined Joey in the next room, wondering if he was asleep. Her heart sped up at the thought of confronting him the next day…. Not
confronting
, exactly. Talking. Acknowledging that something strange was going on between them. She hadn’t quite picked out the words she’d use, and in fact, had only hours earlier fallen asleep scripting fantasy responses to all the ways he might answer her questions.

Cassidy had just pulled herself away from the bookcase and the window when another sound echoed into the night. Something was moving out on the street, as if bits of gravel were caught underneath a heavy object that someone was dragging up the road toward the cul-de-sac.

Kneeling at the window’s edge, Cassidy leaned forward until her face met the taut screen. Though the half-moon had already dipped below the horizon, she could make out a dark shadow, human shaped, limping up the road. The figure wore a sort of shift or dress or nightgown. She moved stiffly, as though severely injured.

Cassidy grasped the window ledge, digging her fingernails into the wood, pinching the tips of her fingers so that she knew she wasn’t dreaming.

Why would someone be out so late, especially if they were hurt?

She wanted to run out into the hallway and pound on Joey’s door, to make him see what she was seeing, but she was frightened that the walker would hear her, peer up at her, see her face. That would be a bad, bad thing.

Screee. Screee.

The sound grated at her eardrums as the figure moved farther into the cul-de-sac, into the darkness of the trees that surrounded the old farmhouse where Ursula Chambers had died.

When the shuffling sound was an echo in her memory, Cassidy stood, moving slowly backward toward her bed, keeping the street in sight. Then, just as she reached the mattress, a barking exploded the new quiet. Short. Harsh. Angry. Like the barking she’d heard that afternoon coming from the backyard.

Another figure, the same shape and size that Lucky had been before he’d died, followed in the path of the first one, dragging its hind leg before it too disappeared into the darkness of the dead-end street.

I’ve read that you should never try to wake anyone who is walking in her sleep. To do so could be harmful to her. The thing is, I can’t find any information about what kind of harm. Will the sleepwalker immediately go insane? Will her brain explode? Will she lose her memory, or even worse, will she slip deeper into sleep and never wake up again? It all sounds silly to me. Impossible.

I think sleepwalking is probably more dangerous if you leave the person alone.

Janet and Benji told me a story about their teenage cousin, Flora, who lives on Long Island. Flora has been sleepwalking since she was really young. It started out kind of cute. Flora’s mother would find her going through her closet in the middle of the night. With the lights off. When Flora’s mother asked what she was doing, Flora said she was looking for an outfit to wear to her birthday party. Her birthday wasn’t for another six months or so.

Another time, Flora woke up while standing in the kitchen. The smoke alarm had gone off because she’d put a jar of peanut butter in the microwave for five minutes. The peanut butter had turned crispy and black. After the initial fright of being awoken by the alarm, the rest of the family came downstairs and opened the windows to clear the smoke. Everyone had a good laugh.

But as Flora grew older, her family began to worry about the sleepwalking. Flora started leaving the house in the night. She’d wake in the morning, her feet muddy and plastered with pieces of grass, with no memory of going outdoors. Flora’s mother responded by putting chain locks on all the doors.

It didn’t work.

One night, Flora’s mother woke up to find flashing lights out in the street. Someone was knocking on the front door. The police had found Flora way out on the Long Island Expressway, wandering in her nightgown along the shoulder of the highway. She’d almost been hit by a car.

Flora’s in some sort of sleep study now at a local hospital. She’s under constant observation. She might even be taking medicine. According to Janet and Benji, her doctors say she’ll grow out of it someday. Until then, they’re not taking any chances.

I’m just thankful that Flora’s family cares enough to try to wake her up when she’s in trouble. Can you imagine what might happen if her mother wasn’t around to help?

I sure can.