The Haunted

Ten

“Look what I found.”

James stared admiringly at the traffic cone in Robbie’s closet, more impressed than he was willing to admit. They had both been trying to find furnishings and decorations for their headquarters—which was what they’d agreed to call the upstairs room in James’s garage—but so far James had not really come up with anything. Oh, he’d scrounged up a couple of folding chairs, and his dad had given him a junky bookcase, but he hadn’t found anything cool.

Like the traffic cone.

“That’s not all,” Robbie said. “Check it out.” He went over to his bed, crouched down and from underneath pulled out a life-size cardboard cutout of the stick-figure Greg Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

James couldn’t hide his excitement this time. “Where’d you get it?”

“The garbage. Can you believe it? Our neighbor, Mrs. Asako, works at The Store, and I guess she took this home when the last book came out. She must’ve got tired of it, because it was in her garbage this morning, and I snagged it before anyone else could.”

“Awesome,” James said, grinning.

“What I was thinking was that we could check out other people’s garbage cans. We might find some good stuff.”

“Especially in alleys, like the one behind our house. People dump a lot of things there!”

“Yeah. And even if we don’t find anything today, we might next week. Or the week after that.”

“I bet we can fill up our whole headquarters within a month!”

Actually, James had to admit, they’d gotten a lot done over the past few days. Robbie and his brother didn’t have to go to camp this week, since their mother had taken vacation days off from work, and James and Robbie had been able to work on their headquarters. The first day had basically been spent cleaning up, and yesterday they’d started to plan out what they were going to do and where things were going to go. With his dad’s help, they’d moved the bookcase to the right of the window and the two folding chairs against the opposite wall (in case they ever found a desk to go with it). He and Robbie had tried to rig up a secret entrance, connecting twine to the trapdoor at the top of the ladder and threading it back through a hole so they could pull the twine and the door would open, but it didn’t work.

The most interesting thing that had happened was that they’d found the skeleton of a puppy in a small box in the corner of the loft. Robbie said that it was most likely a family pet, that someone had probably intended to bury it and forgotten to do so. But the box didn’t look like a coffin, and James thought that someone had bought the skeleton and intended to display it. Either way, it was cool, and they did display it, setting it up on the top of the bookcase.

“We should have cards made up,” Robbie said. “Business cards.”

James nodded. He’d read the Brains Benton book Robbie let him borrow, and he liked the idea of the two of them starting their own detective agency. It seemed possible. It seemed like something they could do. “My dad’ll let us use his computer.”

“I still like the R.J. Detective Agency.”

“We’ll see.”

They’d been trying to come up with a name for themselves, but so far had not been able to reach an agreement. Robbie wanted to call their organization the R.J. Detective Agency, the R standing for Robbie, the J for James. James preferred the FBI, the letters standing for Freelance Boy Investigators, although that was something they would never reveal to outsiders. “Besides,” he’d argued, “we’d get real cases that way, because people would think they were calling the actual FBI.”

It was going to be difficult to find a name they both agreed on.

James’s dad would be picking them up in less than an hour, so they used the time to comb the street, looking for castoff furniture or decorations that they could use in their headquarters. The only thing they found was a metal wine rack, and while they didn’t really have a use for it, the object was too good to pass up, and they took it anyway. They’d figure out something to do with it later.

They were a lot luckier in the alley behind James’s house. After taking the traffic cone, the Wimpy Kid cutout and the wine rack up to their headquarters, they cut through the backyard and went out to the alley, where, halfway down the block, they discovered an old exercise bike. It was standing in front of a fence, beside a trash can, with a piece of paper taped to its handlebars on which someone had written the word Free.

“Awesome!” James said, grabbing the handlebars and pulling the bike out farther into the alley so they could get a better look at it.

“There’s no chain,” Robbie pointed out.

“Big whoop.” James sat on the seat, held the handlebars and pedaled. “It still works without it.”

“And we could always get one.”

James swung off the bike. “This would be perfect for when we’re brainstorming. We could take turns riding the bike and thinking when we’re working on a case. It’ll help us relax and clear our minds.”

“But how’ll we get it up there?”

“My dad’ll help us.”

“Yeah, we need to talk about that,” Robbie said.

“Talk about what?”

“I think we need some sort of security.”

“Against my dad?”

“Not him specifically. Everyone. Don’t you think we should get some sort of lock or something so that no one else but us can get in the headquarters?”

James nodded slowly. “Like my sister.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s a good idea. But we’ll do it after we get the place set up. We still need my dad to help us carry stuff, and we don’t want him to know how to get in. We’ll do it after we’re all done.”

“Okay,” Robbie agreed.

They carried the bike back to James’s house, hauling it through the gate and into the backyard, leaving it near the side of the garage while they went back out to search some more. There was nothing else in the alley, but at the end of the block, they turned and walked down the next street, glancing into open trash containers, looking for pieces of furniture set next to the curb. They were rewarded with a torn footstool that they found in front of a tan duplex. “I found it,” James announced. “You carry it.”

Robbie agreed with the logic and, holding the stool by one of its stubby legs, lugged it up the street while they continued to look.

Moments later, a garbage truck rounded the next corner with a loud rumble and started toward them. They were both getting tired anyway, so they decided to head back, but when James turned around, he saw a group of older kids skateboarding up the street. His heart lurched in his chest, and his first instinct was to run, but it became apparent almost immediately that these weren’t the kids from his old neighborhood. Still, he stepped onto the grass of a nearby house and waited until they passed by.

Back home, he convinced his dad to take a break, and he and Robbie went upstairs in the garage and guided the exercise bike through the trapdoor while his dad pushed from below. After kicking his dad out, they began rearranging things, even finding a spot for the wine rack, which Robbie said they could fill with Coke bottles or cans. The place was gradually starting to come together, and James thought it was looking pretty good.

They still needed to figure out a way to make their entrance secret, and he let Robbie stay in the headquarters and think about it while he went into the house to snag some Pringles for them to snack on. He grabbed a couple of Capri Suns as well, and returned to find his friend bent down in front of an opening in the far wall. He had apparently pulled off a board to reveal the space behind it, and James put the drinks and snacks down on top of the bookcase, walking over. “What are you doing?”

Robbie looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“What are you doing?” James repeated.

“There’s a secret compartment back here.” He motioned behind him. “I tripped over that nail sticking out of the floor, and I almost fell and my foot hit the wall, and this board came loose.”

James crouched down next to his friend. “What’s in it?”

“Nothing. I was hoping for treasure or a map or something, but …” He moved aside to let James look. “See for yourself.”

James peered into the space and at first saw nothing but a small rectangular area approximately the size of a shoe box. Then he noticed that, in the center of the space, there was a low pile of dirt. It was roughly the size and shape of an anthill, but something about the smoothness of its sides made it seem deliberately constructed. It reminded James of a sculpture he’d seen an artist working on at an arts-and-crafts fair last year. The artist had used a knife to pare down and smooth out the sides of a mound of clay, and it had looked quite a bit like this.

As James watched, the right side of the piled dirt collapsed, and that triggered something in his mind. He suddenly remembered a dream he’d had the other night. He’d been in a hole, or, more accurately, a tunnel, a tunnel he had dug in the dirt. He was sliding through this tunnel on his stomach and eating the dirt in front of him. It was a crazy dream, but the craziest thing about it was that the dirt tasted great. He’d never encountered anything like it, and he found that he not only loved the taste but the texture. Everything about the dirt was amazing. It was the most exquisite flavor he had ever come across, and he wanted more, he wanted all of it, and seconds later he was creating a new tunnel as he ate through the wall to his left.

Now, curious, James reached into the compartment and picked up a small sample of the dirt in front of him, putting it to his lips. On his tongue, the granules felt odd, rough, dry, not enticing at all, but the flavor …

Was good.

“What are you doing?” Robbie stared at him, shocked, and James suddenly realized how completely whacked-out this must seem.

Seem?

It was completely whacked-out, and he didn’t know what had come over him, why he’d done it. It was as though he’d been hypnotized or was in a trance, and he spit out the dirt in his mouth, grimacing as he wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. Standing up, he hurried over to the bookcase, grabbed one of the Capri Sun pouches, yanked off the straw, shoved it in the hole and drank. He finished the whole pouch, but he could still taste the dirt, and it—

It still tasted good.

No! He shouldn’t be thinking that, didn’t want to think that, and he tried to force his brain to concentrate on something else.

But the mood in the loft had shifted. Robbie was looking around the room as though he didn’t recognize it, as though he was a little bit afraid of it, and James, too, felt slightly spooked. He glanced toward that open hole in the wall, and it seemed somehow darker than before. Why had someone made that secret compartment? he wondered, and none of the answers he came up with were good.

Reaching for the board, he quickly covered up the space.

And everything shifted back.

The uneasiness he had felt only seconds before, the air of dread that had seemed to hang over their headquarters, disappeared. All was back to normal, and it was hard to imagine that it had ever been different. He and Robbie looked at each other.

“Who do you think made that secret compartment?” Robbie asked. “And what do you think they used it for?”

“I have no idea,” James admitted.

They were both silent after that, neither of them knowing what to say, both of them embarrassed by what James, for some inexplicable reason, had done. Robbie walked over to the bookcase, opened the can of Pringles and pulled out a handful of stacked chips. James stood awkwardly in the center of the room, trying to think of something to do. Finally, he walked over to the window and looked down at the backyard, wondering whether they could put some sort of screen or shade over the glass that would allow them to see out but keep others from looking in. That way, they could spy on anyone planning to approach the headquarters.

His eye took in the grass, the bushes, the house. His gaze traveled up the side of the house to the window of his father’s office on the second floor—

And he quickly sucked in his breath.

Standing in the window, staring out at him, was a dirty man wearing tattered clothes.

Grinning.

It was the man from his dream, the man from the basement, and even from here, James could see the unnatural whiteness of the teeth, the odd musculature of the not-quite-human face.

Where was his dad? James wondered. The idea that his father was also in the office, with this … thing, made James’s blood run cold. “Robbie?” he said, but his voice came out a whispered croak. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Robbie?”

“What?”

James heard his friend walking over, but he refused to look, keeping his full attention on the figure in the window. A split-second before Robbie drew close enough to see him, the man disappeared, winking out of existence as though shut off by a switch.

“You just missed it!” James pointed. “There was a man standing in that window.”

“Your dad?”

“No. The man who I dreamed was in the basement.”

Robbie said nothing, but his face was pale.

“He was there. I saw him. He was looking at me.”

Robbie didn’t argue, and James knew that his friend believed him.

He didn’t want Robbie to believe him, James suddenly realized. He wanted to be talked out of what he’d seen, wanted to be faced with a perfectly reasonable, rational explanation that was so airtight and all-encompassing he could not deny its truth. He didn’t want to be left with this confusion. And fear.

But he said nothing to Robbie, and the two of them worked in silence as once more they rearranged their scavenged furniture.

The next morning, James found a bobcat skeleton in the dirt.

He wasn’t even sure why he decided to dig the hole when there was still so much work to do on their headquarters, but after breakfast there remained two hours until Robbie came over, and James went outside, took a shovel out of the storage shed and shoved its pointed end into the hard-packed earth of the backyard, using his foot to press it in more deeply, piling the loosened dirt into a mound next to one of the rosebushes. In his mind was some vague notion of making a secret tunnel, or perhaps an underground space where he could hide things, but, in truth, he had no plan, no real reason for doing what he was doing. He just … felt like digging.

And dig he did. Beneath the hard layer of topsoil, the dirt became looser, easier to shovel out, and he worked with increasing focus and dedication until, about three feet down, he came to the skeleton.

It was complete and unwrapped, and he didn’t know how he knew it was that of a bobcat, but he did. The dirt here had started to become a little harder, firmer, and he was easily able to dig around and under the bones, removing the skeleton intact. Placing it on the ground, he studied it, wondering how it had gotten there and what had happened to the animal, what had killed it. If he could clean off the skeleton and keep it together, they could put it in the headquarters along with the puppy. The place would look like a real crime lab.

But he didn’t try to clean it off now. He picked up the shovel, stepped back into the hole, and once again started digging. There were other skeletons beneath and around the bobcat: a squirrel, a rat, a rabbit. It was an odd coincidence that he’d started digging at the very spot where all of these animals had been buried, but James didn’t really think about that, didn’t really think about anything, just kept shoveling, placing the bones on the flat ground next to the growing mound of dirt.

He was sweating from exertion, but he didn’t stop, didn’t slow, in fact picked up the pace. He kept looking over his shoulder at the back door of the house, wondering whether—

hoping

—his mom or dad would see him, come out and make him stop digging.

But they didn’t, and he kept on. As the bottom of the hole grew deeper, narrower, he started thinking about what it would be like to tunnel into the earth headfirst, not using the shovel but using his mouth, eating his way through the soil, carving out a smooth passageway with his body. Although he made no conscious decision to do so, James scraped out an alcove that slanted away from the main body of the hole, then tossed the shovel onto the ground above. Dropping to his knees, he placed his head into the recessed cavity. The dirt smelled good, fresh, sweet.

“What are you doing?”

James jumped at the sound of the voice, bumping his head on the roof of the alcove, causing a light sprinkle of dirt to rain about him. He noticed all of a sudden what an awkward position he was in, and he had to wiggle around, squirming backward and doing a twisted push-up in order to get himself into a squatting position in the center of the hole. He looked up to see Robbie peering down at him. His friend looked confused, disgusted, frightened.

“What is going on?” Robbie demanded.

James hopped up guiltily, dusting the soil from his hair as he pulled himself out of the hole. He tried to smile, but his friend didn’t smile back.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” James said, trying to convince himself as much as Robbie. He brushed the dirt from his shoulders. “Nothing.”