Skeleton Man Read online

  The lady shook her head. She was losing her patience. “Dear,” she said, “we have checked things very thoroughly.”

  She turned and gestured to the tall stranger she was determined to hand me over to. The expression on her face said that she was sorry to bother him, but they needed to humor me to keep me from making a scene. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a big wallet. It was covered with snakeskin.

  “Here,” she said, taking the wallet and holding it out to me.

  I put my hands behind my back. I didn’t want to touch it.

  “Oh!” she said in an exasperated voice. “Look!”

  She flipped the wallet open. There was a driver’s license with a picture of the man who was saying he was my uncle. The picture looked more human than he did, but it was him. I looked over at him. A horrible thought came to me. Maybe I was the only one who could see him this way. Maybe he looked normal to other people. I snuck a glance at him. He gave me that little nod and knowing smile again. A shiver went down my back.

  “Dea-arrr, look here,” the lady said, her impatient finger pointing to the license. There was his name, the same last name as my family’s. She flipped the license over to show me another clear plastic pocket with a photo in it. It was the smiling face of my father, the high-school graduation photo he’d shown me more than once. She flipped again, and there was a picture of my dad and mom’s wedding. The photos were just the same as those my dad always carried in his wallet. That wedding photo even seemed to have the same torn corner….

  She slapped the wallet shut and handed it back.

  “Then it is settled,” she said. “Until your parents return, you will be in the custody of your great-uncle.”

  And that was that. Unlike in a court of law, when grown-ups make a decision about a kid’s future there is no appeal.

  I was just so worn-out from all the attention that I didn’t protest. I let him take me to this old spooky house.

  What was that? Footsteps, heavy ones on the stairs.

  Now I am afraid.

  2

  The Knock on the Door

  IT’S THE SEVENTH NIGHT that I’ve been in this house. I should be ready for his routine by now, but I’m not. First there is the all too familiar sound of heavy feet thumping up the stairs: thump, thump, thump. Then there is a long silence while he catches his breath. Thump, thump, thump and silence. There are exactly thirty-six stairs, so he does this eleven times. The twelfth time is when I hear the wood on the landing creaking. Then comes the worst part. The silence. Because even though he makes noise coming up the stairs, the noise always stops when he reaches the top. Just that first creak when he steps up from the last stair.

  And then nothing.

  I imagine that his feet don’t really move. He just glides half an inch above the rug, like Dracula in the movies. I know that can’t be what happens. I know I’m just scaring myself and that it’s the thickness of the rug in the hallway that cushions his steps so that I don’t hear them. But even so, I find myself getting up from the bed to stand in the middle of the room, staring at the chair I have in front of the door. And I’m thinking, maybe, just maybe, he won’t come to my door tonight. Maybe he’ll just go down the hall and into his own room and hang by his toes from the rafters or whatever he does. Maybe he’ll leave me in peace.

  As always, I’m holding my breath. I’m listening like a deer does when it catches the scent of a mountain lion and then the wind changes so that it can’t smell it anymore. But the deer knows the lion is out there somewhere. Maybe moving away, maybe getting closer, maybe…

  WHACK-WHACK!

  The crack of his bony knuckles against the thick wood of the door makes me jump a mile. But I don’t scream, like I did the first night he did this after I was brought here.

  “You all right?” he says. His voice isn’t all that scary, even though it’s muffled by the door and sounds as distant as the voice of a memory or a ghost.

  I lean back away from the door, trying to make my voice sound as far away from it as possible.

  “I’m okay. I’m in bed. I’m going to sleep,” I say. Then I wait.

  SNICK! That’s it. It’s the sound of the lock on the outside. Like every other night, he’s locked me in. The first night it scared me, but now it makes me breathe a sigh of relief. I count out under my breath. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then I hear it. The sound of his feet going back down the stairs. And unless he comes floating down the halls at midnight, or maybe flying outside to peer in my windows, that’s it for the night. I can try to go to sleep now. I’m locked in and, I guess, safe.

  And, like the other nights before this, I will try to not think about what it is that I am locked in against. I’ll try not to think about why there are bars on my windows.

  I look around the room. There’s not much to see. There’s the four-poster bed, the bedside stand, and a table by the window, which is covered with thick purple curtains. The walls are bare, though there are square and rectangular-shaped places where the wood isn’t quite so dark. I guess there used to be pictures hanging there. There’s no closet, just one of those old stand-up wardrobes. It has only six coat hangers in it, but my stuff is still in the suitcase and the cardboard box I brought with me. I’m not planning on staying long, so I don’t want to unpack. All the furniture in the room seems to be pretty old, all made of dark wood. The rug on the floor is new and it is cream colored. It doesn’t really go with everything else in the room, but at least it means that things aren’t so dark in here. I’m grateful for that because the only light is the one on the nightstand and it’s got a 40-watt bulb in it. There’s also a light in the bathroom, which is attached to the room. I always leave the bathroom door open with the light turned on.

  I walk over to the window. Bad idea, a voice is saying to me. But I’m doing it anyway. Don’t look outside. But I can’t help myself. I reach for the curtain, feel the heavy fabric in my hand, pull it back.

  The whole world explodes in a great burst of light and sound.

  3

  The Dream

  I DON’T SCREAM. It was only thunder and lightning, a rumble that shook the whole building as if it were a dollhouse rocked by a giant’s heavy foot thudding down next to it. When there was lightning Mom always said it was the flashbulb of the Creator taking pictures with a giant camera.

  Dad always said thunder is the rumbling steps of the Henos, the Thunder Beings, who live in the sky. They’re good guys who throw down lightning like spears to destroy monsters.

  But this time, at least, their lightning spears seem to have missed. In that moment of absolute brightness outside, my eyes took their own quick picture, one that made me yank the curtains back in place and get into bed with the covers over my head. What had I seen in the flash of lightning? Down there, on the lawn, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed hat, was a man. A tall man, skinny as a skeleton. He was standing at the door of an old shed. It was my uncle.

  My mind is going a million miles a minute now. Why was he there? What is he doing? Am I just being paranoid or am I really in some kind of danger? My mind keeps going back to that shed, too. It’s a lot older and bigger than the little plywood one Dad has in back of our house. It doesn’t have any windows in it like Dad’s shed, just one heavy door with a new padlock on it. What was my uncle going to do in that shed in the middle of the night?

  I can’t find an answer. So I turn it all off by thinking of Ms. Showbiz singing. I think of her singing that song from the musical about Annie, another orphan—assuming I might be one, which I know I really am not. “Tomorrow, tomorrow…” And as I put all my thoughts and fears into imagining her singing I fall asleep. And I dream.

  It’s like some of the dreams I’ve had before. I know I am dreaming, but I can’t wake up. It is what my dad calls an “aware dream.” That is a dream where you know you are a dreamer and, if you are alert enough, you’ll get some help from your dream. Someone or something will guide you or give you a message. But I am too busy
running to look for a guide. Whatever is chasing me is getting closer. I can feel its hot breath on the back of my neck and I know its bony hands are about to grab me.

  Then the dream changes. I am in a cave. I live in that cave and I am not alone there. Someone is sitting in the corner of the cave, his face turned away from me. “Hold out your arm, child!” he says in a rough voice. I hold my arm out toward him, and he reaches back to feel it without looking around. His long, dry fingers squeeze my forearm. “Thin as a stick, thin as a stick,” he growls. “Go into the forest and check your snares. You must eat more, my niece. Eat and grow fat.”

  In an eyeblink I’m not in the cave but in the forest. I’m dressed in deerskin, checking the snares I’ve placed on the trails. I’m worried because I haven’t caught anything. My uncle will be angry.

  Then I see motion in the brush. Something is struggling at the side of the path. It’s a rabbit, its hind foot caught in one of my snares. I lift my stick to hit it. But the rabbit looks up at me and speaks.

  “Little Sister,” the rabbit says, “spare my life, and I will help you save your own life.”

  I put down my stick and loosen the cord from the rabbit’s foot. It doesn’t run away when it is free. Instead it looks me in the eye and speaks again.

  “Little Sister,” the rabbit says, “thank you for sparing me. Now I will tell you what you must know. The one you think is your uncle is not human.”

  4

  Dark Cedars

  I CAN STILL hear the rabbit’s voice when I open my eyes. I look at the clock next to my bed. It is morning, time to get ready for school. I rummage through my suitcase and the cardboard box and find what I need. I don’t feel like putting my clothes into the creepy wardrobe. When I was little my mom read me that book about the wardrobe and the lion and the witch. I wished then that I had a magic wardrobe that I could crawl into and end up in some strange land. Now that I really am in a strange land all I want to do is crawl back home. But if there was some kind of magic door in that wardrobe, it’d probably take me someplace even worse than this.

  I take my toothbrush and go into the bathroom. The only good thing about the room is that it has a bathroom connected to it. It means I don’t have to go out into the hall or downstairs yet and see him. There’s a bathroom built in because the former owners tried to run a bed and breakfast. There’s actually an old sign leaning on its side against the house: DARK CEDARS BED AND BREAKFAST. The name alone is enough to scare people away from it. But I think it probably just didn’t work out because this place is too far from the center of town, even though it is near Three Falls Gorge, which is the town’s main place of “scenic beauty,” as our chamber of commerce puts it. When my uncle got this place he took down the sign.

  While I am in the bathroom I look at myself in the small, smoky mirror hanging over the sink. I think I have the kind of face that only a mother could love, but both my parents tell me I’m wrong. They think thick eyebrows that almost meet in the middle and ink-black hair that grows so thick I need hedge clippers to trim it are positive assets. “There’s so much you can do with that hair,” my mother says. Like get it cut short and dyed blond. My nose is okay, not bumpy or too short or too long, but my lips are too thick. My cheeks look as if I have apples stuffed in them, and when I smile my teeth are straight, but there is this gap between my incisors on top. “Braces will do wonders for you, dear.” As if, I think. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get a real makeover like they have sometimes on the shopping channel.

  Still, though I’m not thrilled with how I look, I don’t hate my looks. I can just see lots of room for improvement. And I know that people must like my face at least a little because whenever I smile at someone they almost always smile back. Except for my uncle. I tried smiling at him yesterday. He just studied my face like a scientist looking at some strange new bug until my smile crawled away and died. I won’t try that again.

  I sigh and lift up my chin. At least I don’t look like a terrified victim in some slasher movie. I just look like a kid about to catch the bus. I leave the bathroom and try the door. It’s not locked from the outside anymore. It never is by this time. I peek outside carefully, my backpack with a large, empty plastic container in it over my shoulder. No sign of anyone up or down the hall.

  As soon as I start down the creaky stairs, he hears me.

  “Come down to breakfast,” he whispers up the stairs. He’s standing at the bottom, half hidden by the old coatrack. He turns and walks away. He doesn’t like me to see his face in the morning. Or ever, for that matter.

  I go into the sunroom. It looks like it used to be a screened porch once. It has a floor of cold stone tiles and is connected to the back of the house. Its four big windows and sliding glass door were probably meant to let in the sun and give you a view of the garden. But there is no sun today, and there hasn’t been a garden out there for a while. The places where flowers once grew are overgrown with nettles and burdock and a few small sumac trees, their leaves all red now that there’s been a frost.

  Although there’s room in the sunroom for several tables, there’s just the one. It’s a glass-topped table with rusty blue metal legs. The two chairs are made of that same rusty blue metal with curlicue designs. The table is set for one. As always, he’s already eaten. At least that’s what he says. I’ve never seen evidence of his breakfast. I see his back as he goes out the sunroom door. I’m never allowed to go out that way toward the big shed in the backyard with heavy-duty hinges on the thick, bolted doors. His toolroom, he says. I wonder again what he was doing out there last night.

  “Eat your breakfast,” he calls back without turning his head. “You’re looking thin.”

  Then he’s gone, and I take my first real breath of the day. The food on the table looks good. I’m hungry. Grapefruit, cereal, toast with butter and jam. I put my backpack under the table between my knees. I take the lid off the plastic container in the backpack and pretend to eat. But each spoonful of cereal, each slice of toast, each piece of fruit goes into the plastic box. I snap the lid onto it and close the backpack. Then I pretend to wipe my lips with the paper napkin, ball it up, and put it on the now-empty plate.

  I’m just in time because, just as he’s done every other day, he sticks his head out of the door of the shed to see if I’ve eaten my food.

  “Done,” I call out in a cheery voice. Then I stand up and walk to the front door, trying to be as calm as possible, hoping that it will not be locked. It isn’t, and I escape down the walk to the corner where the school bus will arrive within five minutes. Time enough to dump the food down the storm drain at the curb edge. Let the rats deal with it.

  Super paranoid, that is what you are saying now. Melodramatic. But I’m determined not to eat the food he gives me. I think he puts something into it. When I first got here I ate what he put in front of me automatically. I started having a headache and my heart was racing, and I felt like some kind of zombie. When I went to bed that night I just conked out. I didn’t even dream. The next day I started my Tupperware routine. If I’d kept eating that food I’d probably be walking with my arms held out in front of me saying, “Yes, Master!” in a hollow voice whenever he spoke to me.

  When the bus comes I take the first seat. Other kids are sitting with friends, but I stay by myself. This isn’t the bus I used to take. No one in my class is on it, and people are still checking me out. I haven’t been in a hurry to be all bright and cheery with my new busmates, either.

  When the bus stops in front of the school, though, I have to start smiling. This is my place of refuge. I’m safe here. Other kids might groan when they walk through the big front doors, but I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all so routine and boring here. I love it. Although when Laura Loh, who is my second-best friend, waves to me from her locker, I pretend not to see her and just go straight into class. I know she wants to talk to me about Greg Iverson and how cute he is and do I think he likes her…and I can’t bear it. For some reason I just can�
��t think of anything to say to other kids right now, and all the stuff that used to interest me seems kind of unreal.

  In our class it is Don Quixote Day. At least it is for Ms. Showbiz. We are all groaning by the time she finishes belting out her medley from Man of La Mancha. I’m groaning the loudest of all because it just makes me feel so safe, so…normal. I feel so great that when Ms. Shabbas tells us to open our workbooks, I burst out in laughter that is so loud and inappropriate that everyone, including Ms. Shabbas, looks at me. Maureen Viola, who is my best friend and who sits two seats away, looks at me and mouths the words: “What is wrong with you?”

  All of a sudden I feel as if I am about to burst into tears. I have to put my head down on my desk. What is wrong with me? I’m not being tortured or anything. My uncle was kind enough to take me in. He’s just a little strange. Maybe I’m the truly strange one with my worries about being drugged and my blockading my door at night and imagining what might be happening in that shed. Too much imagination, that’s me.

  Ms. Shabbas has a little talk with me that afternoon. She asks me to wait behind when the rest of the class is leaving for gym. She’s worried about my behavior. “Is everything all right,” she pauses, “…at home?”

  What home? That is what I want to say. I want to scream and cry and have her hold me in her arms while I sob against her shoulder. But what good would that do? So I give her my patented sunny smile.

  “Everything is fine,” I say. “Really fine.”

  But Ms. Shabbas doesn’t smile back. “Really?” she says in a soft voice. Then she looks beyond that smile, right into my eyes as if she can see my thoughts. It’s not the way my uncle does it, not like someone stealing a part of me. It’s not even like an adult looking at a kid who’s being unreasonable. It’s the way a true friend looks at you when they say they want to help you and really mean it.