Down the Rabbit Hole (6 page)

“Here you go,” said Grampy, handing Ingrid the .22.

Ingrid took her stance the way he'd taught her, feet apart, nicely balanced. She laid the butt against her shoulder, released the safety, got the farthest Coke bottle to the left in the middle of the sight. Then she took a breath and let it out slowly, relaxing inside until she saw nothing but the very center of that Coke bottle and squeezed the trigger the way Grampy said to, like she wanted just a little bit of toothpaste but all at once. Then came the bang and kick. The Coke bottles stood undamaged.

Grampy looked surprised. “Must not be focusing,” he said. “Pretend it's the enemy.”

“I don't have enemies,” Ingrid said. “And even if I did, I couldn't shoot them.”

“A deadly enemy,” Grampy said, perhaps not hearing her. “When there's no choice, him or you.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Past the point of fear.”

“What does that mean?”

Grampy blinked. His eyes returned to normal. “Sometimes fear helps,” he said. “Like fear of flunking a test, so you study. But when bad's going to happen for sure, fear only hurts.”

Ingrid raised the .22, again got the farthest Coke bottle to the left in the sight. She tried to pretend
the Coke bottle was a deadly enemy but failed because she couldn't picture a face. Then it hit her that Cracked-Up Katie had had a deadly enemy with a face, no question. She breathed in and out slowly, went still. The Coke bottle seemed to grow in the sight, bigger and rounder. Him or you. She gave the trigger that toothpaste squeeze.

Blam.
The Coke bottle shattered in a million pieces. The sun caught them in midair and made a rainbow.

“R-I-P,” said Grampy.

Ingrid took aim at the next bottle. Squeeze. Shatter. Another little rainbow bloomed over the end of the corral. Was anything more fun than this? She was getting the third bottle in the sight when Grampy said, “Damn.”

Ingrid looked up, followed his gaze. Out on Route 392, the green MPV was already coming back. Mom was so quick about everything, quick and efficient. She was also antigun, to the max, would go into orbit if she ever found out about their little hobby.

“Your turn, Grampy,” Ingrid said.

He raised the handgun.
Blam blam blam
: All the Coke bottles exploded off the rail, making a whole
series of rainbows that shimmered for a moment and fell apart. Grampy was a great shot. He'd fought on some island in the Pacific and refused to ride in the Mazda or any other Japanese car.

 

They were having a second mug of tea—Grampy's heavily laced with VO—when Mom came in with the marshmallows.

“What a peaceful scene,” Mom said. “Like from a Norman Rockwell painting.”

Grampy took another sip.

“Thanks for the marshmallows,” Ingrid said. “Who wants some?” No takers. Not surprising on Mom's part, the way she watched her weight, but hadn't Grampy said something about a hankering for marshmallows? Ingrid stuck one on a fork and went to the fire. Flames licked around the marshmallow, slowly browning it. Ingrid got a little mesmerized; fires did that to her.

Over at the table, Mom had sat down opposite Grampy.

“I hope you like the picture. Mark found it at the library fund-raiser.”

Ingrid, gazing into the fire, heard the slurp of Grampy taking another drink.

“He's on the board now,” Mom said.

Slurp.

Mom lowered her voice. “Mark and I have an idea we'd like you to think about.”

A long pause. The skin of the marshmallow caught fire, blackening just the way Ingrid liked it.

“It involve selling off my land?” said Grampy.

“Only a very small section,” Mom said. “From the old tractor shed down to the back road. The Ferrand Group—”

“Where is he?” Grampy said.

“Tim Ferrand?”

Something crashed. Ingrid turned to look. Grampy's mug lay in pieces on the floor. “I'm not talking about any damn Ferrand vultures,” Grampy said. “I'm talking about Mark.” Grampy started shaking; he didn't look so strong all of a sudden. Ingrid's marshmallow slipped off the fork and fell into the fire. “Why'd he send you out to do the dirty work? What kind of man does that?”

“It's not dirty work,” Mom said. “And besides, I'm the one in real estate. If you'll just listen, Pop”—she called him Pop?—“I'm sure you'll see how different this is from any other—”

“It's not for sale,” Grampy said. “Not from the
shed to the back road, not an acre, not one square inch.” He got up, found another mug. “You go on back and tell him.”

 

Mom and Ingrid got into the car.

“What was that all about?” Ingrid asked.

“Nothing,” Mom said. She turned too fast out of Grampy's driveway and the tires squealed. That wasn't like Mom at all. They rode the rest of the way without a word.

Night had fallen, a dark, moonless night. Mom's headlights cut two weak yellow beams in the blackness. Ingrid forgot about the land behind the tractor shed and the Ferrand Group. Dark and moonless: She understood the meaning of that right away. This night was made-to-order for doing what she had to do. Her mind was made up: Grampy and Benjamin Franklin stood behind her.

D
OWNSTAIRS
M
OM'S
and Dad's voices rose and fell in irregular patterns, like waves on the monitor of a sick patient. Ingrid got busy at the computer. MapQuest said that the distance from 99 Maple Lane to 341 Packer Street was 4.2 miles with lots of lefts and rights: a long and complicated journey at night. As Ingrid studied the map, she saw something she'd never realized before: Her neighborhood, Riverbend, and the Flats weren't really that far apart as the bee flies, or the crow, or whatever the expression was. All you had to do was cut through the town woods. The distance looked like half as much as going by road, maybe even less.

Ingrid knew there were paths in the woods. She'd
done lots of exploring back when Flanders was alive, knew how to get to the kettle pond and the big rock with
RED RAIDERS RULE
spray-painted on the side. Three or four paths came together at the big rock. She'd just have to find one leading off to the left, like so, and in what couldn't be more than four or five minutes, she'd be popping out somewhere on Packer Street. From there she could simply read the house numbers. All she needed was a flashlight.

Ingrid searched around, found her camp flashlight in the closet, under her sleeping bag. She switched it on: nice and bright.

What else? Dark clothes. Ingrid chose jeans, brown hiking boots, a black fleece jacket, and a matching pompom hat that said
STOWE
on the front. She checked the time: 11:37. Mom's and Dad's voices had faded away. Ingrid stepped out of her room, listened. She heard the kettle whistling. That would be Mom, waiting up for Ty, who had a midnight curfew. Ingrid got in bed, lights off, clothes on, and waited.

A car pulled up outside at 12:05. A door banged shut and the car peeled away, which meant some older kid and not a parent was driving. A minute later, Mom said something that ended on a rising note, and Ty said something not much longer than
a grunt. That would be Mom asking about his evening and Ty saying as little as possible. Then came his footsteps on the stairs, lots of flowing and splattering liquid sounds from the bathroom, footsteps again. To her surprise, they kept going, past Ty's bedroom. There was a soft knock on her half-open door.

“Ingrid?” Ty said. “You awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Hear you had a good game today,” he said. “Nice job.”

“Thanks,” Ingrid said. Wow. Had that ever happened before, or anything even close? No.

“Night.”

“Night.”

Ty went into his room and closed the door.

Ingrid waited for him to fall asleep, waited for the house to go completely quiet. And while she waited, she had a thought: What about asking Ty to go with her? She'd never shared any secrets with him before, but she'd never had any to share, nothing important. He was her big brother, after all. What was the point in having a big brother if not for times like this?

Ingrid clipped the flashlight onto a belt loop, went down the hall, stood outside Ty's door. She heard him talking in a low voice. He was on the
phone. And what was that smell? She took a quiet sniff. Not quite the same smell as Grampy's VO, but not that different. Ty had been drinking. The big-brother plan wasn't going to work.

Down to the basement, across the TV room, maneuvering around all the unseen weights, to the walkout sliding door at the back of the house. It wasn't locked. Ingrid took that for a sign. She slid it open without making the slightest sound and stepped into the night.

 

A surprisingly cold night, with the wind whipping across the patio, cutting through Ingrid's fleece jacket. Behind her, a TV screen light shone in Mom and Dad's room, sending a trembling blue oblong into the darkness. Ingrid skirted its edge, then hurried across the yard and into the trees.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. It came in different shades: the sky the lightest, a kind of charcoal; the tree trunks and branches, mostly bare, a little darker; the ground darker still; and the path black. Night was nothing to fear. The world stayed exactly as it was during the day—only the lighting changed, like when Mr. Rubino worked the board for the Prescott Players. Ingrid followed the trail
into the woods, a path that seemed to shine like polished black coal. She didn't even need the flashlight.

How about counting steps? Might be a good idea, giving her some idea of the distance. Ingrid started counting, had reached 679 when something rose in front of her, the same shade of darkness as the trees, but much bigger, big and looming. The rock? Ingrid switched on the flashlight. Yes, the rock, almost the size of a small hill, with
RED RAIDERS RULE
spray-painted on the side, plus peace signs, hearts with arrows through them, and a few anatomical scribbles. The rock already. This was going great. Griddie—night tracker extraordinaire.

Beyond the rock lay the Punch Bowl, a kettle pond formed by a long-ago glacier. Ingrid felt the rising dampness, cold on her face. Flanders had loved diving into the Punch Bowl for sticks she threw. Once Flanders got started, he just wouldn't stop and he had this annoying way of poking you in the leg with the stick as a signal for more. He'd been a hyper dog, with a crazy tail-biting thing when he really went over the top, and he hadn't liked being patted either. But she missed him, especially right now.

Ingrid studied the paths that came together by the big rock. There were four: the path she'd been on,
another going right, around the Punch Bowl, a third leading straight ahead, and a fourth bearing left. Bingo. Ingrid cut the light and set off on the path bearing left.

The path took her up a long rise. The trees seemed to grow closer together, and maybe because of that the different shades of darkness began to blend and the path lost its polish, making it harder to see. But she didn't want to switch on the flashlight; better not to see than to be seen.

Ingrid kept going, a little slower now, the only sounds her own breathing and the occasional crunch of a twig or acorn beneath her feet. She'd lost count. From above came a strange beat, heavy, regular, getting louder. Ingrid felt a whoosh of air above her head, and an instant later a branch creaked, very near. Oh my God. Flashlight. She jabbed the beam toward the sound. An owl, huge and white, with pointy devil ears, sat on a branch that overhung the path, less than ten feet away. Its eyes, the color of liquid gold, gazed right into the beam, maybe blinded. Ingrid had never seen an owl before, not in the wild. A funny thought. How could this be the wild? She was practically in her own backyard.

Somewhere far away a dog howled, very faint, but
the owl seemed to hear. Its head turned slowly, reaching an impossible angle; then the owl spread its wings—so wide—and in two heavy flaps rose off the branch, out of the beam, and into the night. Ingrid switched off the flashlight, kept going. Was the owl another good sign? Had to be: She felt a sense of kinship with it, both of them up to something in the night woods.

The path leveled out, bent around an enormous tree trunk, rose again, and then began sloping down. A light blinked in the distance, then another, then a lot. Two or three minutes after that, Ingrid stepped out of the woods and into an alley behind a tall, narrow house. A window opened on the top story. Ingrid heard music. A lit cigarette came spinning out. The window closed. Ingrid stepped on the butt, squished it out.

She walked around the house, came out on the street, not far from the corner. It was quiet: no one around, cars parked on both sides, gingerbread houses, all run-down. None of the streetlights were working, so Ingrid had to go close to the corner to read the sign: Packer Street. She turned back to the narrow house, read the number by the porch light: 339. Ingrid recognized the darkened house next
door but checked the number anyway, just to be sure: 341. She followed a narrow walkway around to the alley and stared up at the back of Cracked-Up Katie's house, where not a glimmer of light showed.

How to get in? That was a question she hadn't considered, maybe should have at the start, when instead she was goofing about Benjamin Franklin jimmying open windows. For that you needed some kind of tool. A jimmy, whatever that was.

There were four windows at the back of Cracked-Up Katie's house: a basement window, barred over; one on the first floor; and two more above, out of reach. There was also a door, which she tried first. Locked, no surprise. She stepped over to the first-floor window, put her hands on the glass, pushed up. It didn't budge. Was there anything lying in the alley she could stick in between the sill and the bottom of the window? Nothing she could see in the dark, and she couldn't risk using the flash: Music leaked into the alley from 339, the thumping bass rappers liked. It might have been coming right out of the ground.

Ingrid knelt by the basement window, examined the grate. It was made of thick crisscrossed metal bars with arrowhead-shaped ends, the whole thing attached to the wooden siding of the house. Ingrid
put her hand on one of the bars, gave a hopeless little tug. The grate came right off, screws or bolts or whatever they were ripping out of the rotten wood. She almost tipped over backward.

Ingrid examined the window. It wasn't the kind that went up and down, more the kind attached at the top that might swing up and in if given a push. Ingrid gave it a push. It swung up and in, then got stuck, leaving an opening about a foot wide. She gazed in, saw nothing.

Ingrid got facedown on the ground, wriggled back into the opening feetfirst; not a very big opening, but all she needed. Halfway in, she felt around with her feet. No floor. She lowered herself a little more, a little more, still not finding it. She ended up hanging there in the basement, fully stretched and clinging to the windowsill, her feet dangling in midair.

Choice one: She could try to pull herself up, start over. That meant doing an actual pull-up. Ingrid had done pull-ups before, two in a row at soccer camp, for example, but she hadn't been wearing boots and all these clothes. She tried an experimental little pull-up, rose an inch or so. She'd been much stronger in the summer.

Okay. Choice two: She could just let go. Alice, down the rabbit hole.