The Most Frightening Story Ever Told (20 page)

Mr. Capone nodded gravely, as if he approved of his son's speech.

Mr. Rapscallion bent down to speak to Vito at his level. “Well, that's right handsome of you, Vito,” he said. “You know I bet you could talk my ear off, sonny, given the chance. But right now I'm not interested in you being my friend. Or your daddy. All I'm interested in is that he has the correct paperwork.”

Mr. Capone put his hand in his breast pocket and Mr. Rapscallion hoped there would only be some papers in it and not a gun when the hand emerged again.

To the bookseller's relief, the gangster handed him the consent forms, and Mr. Rapscallion had Elizabeth take Vito to the Reading Room to wait with the other kids.

Then he looked at his watch. “Where's Billy?” he said when Mercedes returned to his side. “I thought he'd be the first. Not the last. It's not like him at all.”

“Oh dear,” said Mercedes. “He said something about having to persuade his dad to sign the forms and put in an appearance.”

“What?” Mr. Rapscallion frowned. “You mean he didn't ask him before he put his name in the box?”

“He never expected his name to be selected,” explained Mercedes. “Not with so many other names in that box.”

“Maybe you have a point.” Mr. Rapscallion looked anxiously at his watch again. “I really should have taken the precaution of drawing a sixth name as a backup. Just in case there was a no-show.”

“I'm sure he'll come if he can,” insisted Mercedes. “Billy will be so disappointed if his father refuses to allow him to take part.”

“Is that likely, do you think?”

“I don't know,” admitted Mercedes. “But surely you've met Mr. Shivers.”

“Ah, no,” admitted Mr. Rapscallion. “He wrote to me once to give his permission for Billy to accompany me to Kansas City. Odd sort of letter, really.”

“In what way?” asked Mercedes.

“The handwriting. It was very faint. As if the pen was running out of ink. The letter couldn't have been harder to read if it had been written in lemon juice.”

“From what Billy's told me,” said Mercedes, “his family has had a pretty tough time of it. There's not much money in that house.”

Mr. Rapscallion looked at his watch for a third time in as many minutes. “It's almost midnight. Look, if he's not here in two minutes, we'll have to start without him.”

Two minutes passed. The town clock started to strike the midnight hour.

Mr. Rapscallion shook his head and did his best to contain his disappointment. He had been counting on Billy.

“Too late, we'll have to start without him. Mercedes? If you could lock the door, please? We don't want anyone coming in and spoiling the ‘atmosfear' after I get started. It's going to be hard enough to scare these four brats as it is.”

Mercedes knew there was no point in arguing with Mr. Rapscallion. She went to the door and was actually reaching for the large brass key that was sticking out of the lock when, hearing a knock on the other side, she opened the door to reveal Billy and a man she assumed must be his father.

“Hey,” said Billy. “Dad, this is Mercedes. Didn't I tell you how nice she was?”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Shivers. “Mercedes. That's a lovely name.”

Mercedes hurried them inside the Haunted House of Books and called out after Mr. Rapscallion.

“Thank goodness you're here,” Mercedes told Billy. “For a moment there I thought we were going to have to start without you.”

“Glad you could make it, Billy,” said Mr. Rapscallion. He cocked an ear at the town clock, which had almost finished striking midnight. “Only just, by the sound of things.”

“I'm sorry we're late,” said Billy. “I saw Redford outside and stopped to say hello. I'm so glad she's here.”

“Me too, Billy,” said Mr. Rapscallion.

“She's calling herself Altaira again. Isn't that good news?”

“It sure is, Billy, and thanks.”

Mr. Rapscallion smiled at the man behind Billy. “I guess you must be Billy's father.”

Mr. Shivers was a tall, thin man with not much hair. There were shadows under his eyes and his clothes were old and threadbare. He wore a rather unfashionable pair of widely flared jeans, and a Windbreaker that wouldn't have broken the breeze from a fan-assisted oven. On his feet were a pair of work boots and in his hand was a lunch pail, as if he had just come straight from physical work of some kind. But he had a lovely, kind smile, as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Mr. Shivers held out a thin hand. “Fenton Shivers,” he said. “I'm pleased to meet you, sir. Billy's told me so much about you. How kind you've been to him. You and your shop have been the best things to happen to Billy since his accident.”

“It's been a pleasure, Mr. Shivers,” said Mr. Rapscallion, shaking the other man's hand. “Billy's a credit to you. Polite, thoughtful, hard-working, diligent and a keen reader. Need I say more?”

“That's good to hear.” Mr. Shivers glanced around the shop. “What a great place this is. I can see why Billy likes it here.” Then he sighed. “But I'll be honest with you, Mr. Rapscallion. I was of two minds about allowing Billy to join in something like this.”

“You were?”

“We're not like most people, Mr. Rapscallion. Me and my wife. We don't do much socializing, sir. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Let me ask you something. This scary story. What's it about?”

“Dad,” protested Billy. “Please, you're embarrassing me.”

“Billy, I'm your father. It's my job to look out for your spiritual welfare.”

“Ghosts.” Mr. Rapscallion shrugged. “Apparitions. Specters. The usual kind of stuff.”

“Oh, that's all right then.” Mr. Shivers smiled. “So you're saying there's nothing unpleasant or unholy about this story of yours.”

“Are you a religious man, Mr. Shivers?”

“Yes sir, I am. Is that a problem for you?”

“No, not at all. I respect you for wanting to look out for your son's spiritual welfare. Not many parents do, these days.” Mr. Rapscallion pulled a face and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, Mr. Shivers? The so-called scariest story in the world is not half as scary as I'd hoped. In fact, I'm kind of worried about what's going to happen. To be honest, I've kind of oversold it. The other four kids are not exactly what you would call shrinking violets.”

“So I hear from Billy,” said Mr. Shivers.

“I'm a bit worried what they're going to do when they realize they've not been scared at all,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Putting it mildly, they're rather less forgiving than your son.”

Mr. Shivers smiled again. “I can believe that,” he said. “Billy's an unworldly sort of boy, Mr. Rapscallion.”

“Nothing wrong with that, Mr. Shivers. Nothing wrong with that. We all need our dreams. Our own idea of heaven.”

“I'm sure everything will work out for the best,” said Mr. Shivers.

“I sure hope so,” said Mr. Rapscallion.

“I know so,” said Mr. Shivers. He reached for his back pocket and pulled out a couple of folded sheets of paper. “There you go. The consent forms. Like you asked.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Billy. “Thanks for letting me do this.”

Mr. Shivers turned and went out of the door.

Mr. Rapscallion went down to the Reading Room accompanied by Billy, Mercedes and Elizabeth.

In addition to the six chairs that had been bought from the old Edgar Allan Poe Club, in Boston, the Reading Room had some oak paneling on the walls that had come from a haunted castle in Scotland. All the thick purple drapes had been pulled and there was a small coal fire and a clock ticking loudly on the mantelpiece to help with the “atmosfear.” A large tank of tropical fish added a surreal blue light to the room.

Not that this “atmosfear” was having any effect on the four kids who were in there. Not yet, anyway.

Wilson Dirtbag, Hugh Bicep, Lenore Gas and Vito Capone were hardly the kind of kids to wait patiently for the arrival of their host, Mr. Rapscallion. In the absence of a television set or a cell phone, they were easily bored. And when they were bored they became…mischievous, which is a nice word covering a whole multitude of sins that any one of the four was capable of committing.

Wilson Dirtbag was disappointed that there were no books on the empty bookshop shelves. Not because he would have read one but because he would have liked to burn one. Wilson loved to start fires. He thought about burning the stuffed raven on the bust above the door, and only the thought that this might have disqualified him from winning the thousand dollars deterred him from tossing it onto the coals. So he took out a marker pen and amused himself by writing several rude words on the oak-paneled walls.

Hugh Bicep, no less badly behaved than Wilson, ate his banana and threw the skin onto the floor in the hope that someone else would slip on it, the way they did in cartoons. Next he unwrapped the large packet of sandwiches his father had given him and ate two in as many minutes. Then he peeled the buttered bread off another and tossed it up at the ceiling to see if he could make it stick there. And when it did, he tossed another and then another, until the ceiling was tiled with squares of white bread. At this point he sat down to admire his handiwork and thought it very funny when one of the slices of bread fell, buttered side down, onto Lenore's head.

Lenore had been amusing herself by testing her own not inconsiderable strength. She had picked up the poker from beside the fireplace and, in an effort to test her strength, managed to bend it several inches when the slice of buttered bread fell onto her head. At first she didn't notice since she had so much hair on top of her head it looked like a bird's nest, and it was only when Hugh Bicep started laughing at her that she guessed what had happened. So she peeled it off her head and smacked the buttered slice onto Hugh's face, which at least stopped him laughing. Although only because as soon as Hugh had peeled it off his face, he put the slice in his mouth and started to eat it. Hardly satisfied with the effect that her retaliation had had on her muscular fellow contestant, Lenore took another of his sandwiches, peeled it in half and slapped the two slices hard against his ears.

Upon entering the Reading Room, Vito Capone sat down in a chair and closed his eyes. But the light from the tank was too bright for him to doze. And not to be outdone by the juvenile delinquency of the other three, he got up and looked more closely at the tropical fish, to see if there was any havoc that could be caused in the tranquil blue underwater world of the tank. He decided he didn't like the fish because they reminded him of a dentist's waiting room, and he hated dentists almost as much as he hated policemen and judges and the feds. So, first of all, he heated the poker in the fire and then doused it a couple of times in the water, just to see what effect it might have on the fish. Not a good effect, it has to be said. But that didn't appear to bother Vito. In fact, it seemed to give him an idea. He took two of the fish now floating on the surface of the water, folded them in the brown paper that had been wrapping Hugh's sandwiches and laid the little parcel on Mr. Rapscallion's chair.

“That's a Sicilian message,” he told Wilson and the others.

“Meaning what?” asked Hugh.

Vito realized he had only a vague idea what the message meant.

“I'm not exactly sure,” he admitted. “I think it means you can't get any sleep when there are fish in the room.”

When Mr. Rapscallion came into the Reading Room he did his best to ignore the graffiti on the walls, the slices of bread sticking to the ceiling, the bent poker and the parcel of dead fish that had been laid on the chair that had once belonged to Edgar Allan Poe. There seemed little point in making things worse by trying to confront the culprit(s). Besides, he was still rather hoping against hope that the story might deliver a real scare to these unpleasant brats. Even if that did mean he might also scare Billy.

And yet. As he watched the boy take his seat, for some reason he couldn't quite explain, he wasn't worried about scaring him. Not anymore. Not since speaking to Mr. Shivers. There was a strength in Billy he hadn't perceived before. And a realization that, in his own way, Billy was actually every bit as tough as the other four. Perhaps tougher. How could Billy not be tough? It was obvious that Billy's family circumstances were very hard. His father had been wearing the oldest clothes Mr. Rapscallion had ever seen.

“All right, settle down,” he said to no one in particular. “Right, then. If everyone's ready?”

He glanced over at Mercedes and Elizabeth, who were going to observe the proceedings from the edge of the room.

“Ready,” said Elizabeth.

“Ready,” said Mercedes.

“Are you all sitting comfortably?” Mr. Rapscallion asked the five kids.

“I'll be a lot more comfortable when I've got that thousand bucks in my hand,” said Wilson Dirtbag.

“Dream on, Dirtbag,” said Hugh. “The green stuff is as good as mine.”

“The only green stuff you're leaving with,” said Lenore Gas, “is the salad in your sandwiches.”

“I'll take care of the muscle boy's green stuff,” said Vito Capone. “Out of my share.”

“All of you be quiet,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “The next person to talk will be disqualified.”

He opened the cover of the book by Mary Shelley and John Polidori, which creaked loudly like an ancient wooden door in a remote Romanian castle, and a rather damp, musty smell filled the air, as if a coffin had been opened.

Mr. Rapscallion read the title aloud he found on the first page: “
The
Modern Pandora,
or
The Most Frightening Story Ever Told.
By Mary Shelley and John Polidori.”

The second that Mr. Rapscallion finished reading out the title and before he could read any more of what was printed there, the very peculiar thing happened. Once again. The book seemed to produce a knocking, hollow sound, like someone banging the tip of a walking stick on the bare wooden floor of an empty old house.

Wilson Dirtbag gulped loudly. “What was that?” he said. “That weird sound?”

“It seemed to come from inside the book,” said Hugh.

“It did,” said Mr. Rapscallion, and carried on reading from the title page: “ ‘Let the reader beware. The story contained in these pages is not to be trifled with. Frightful it is. And supremely frightful is the effect of that which lies herein. Under no circumstances should this story ever be read alone, or on a dark and stormy night. No more should this story ever be read aloud to children, to the mentally infirm, or to those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned. M.S. Villa Diodati. Italy. 1816.' ”

“You never said it was an Italian story,” said Vito, making a fist. “And in case anyone hasn't noticed, it
is
a dark and stormy night.”

“Relax, will you?” Lenore Gas shook her head and whispered. “He's just trying to scare you.”

“Shh,” said Billy. “I want to hear.”

“Yes, Billy's quite right,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Shh.” And, turning over the page of the old book, he began to read the story itself.