Out on a Limb (13 page)

I was trying hard to control my face, which wanted to do a big obnoxious grin. Devo was trying hard to control his face too, to act like he wasn’t impressed. For sure he was, though, because other people had their mouths hanging open. Up at the top of the hill, Bridget was grinning the way I was trying not to. I waved at her and she waved back. Then, with jelly-legs, I rode off toward the treehouse, the cool one for a change.

NOTEBOOK: #17

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Hallowed Evening

I couldn’t think of a Halloween costume. We had no dress-up things at all at the treehouse. We didn’t even have any old clothes to paint or glue things onto. “Mom, I still don’t have a costume,” I complained as she worked at the folding table.

“No? You’ll figure something out,” Mom replied, rewinding her battery-operated CD player. She replayed gorilla grunts and scribbled something down.

“But we’ve got nothing to make it out of. We should buy some costume stuff.”

“Buy costume stuff! Where are we going to store costume stuff, in a treehouse? Just use your imagination,” Mom said, exactly as expected.

“I can’t use
just
imagination—I’ll be naked. I at least need some actual clothes to apply my imagination to.”

“You’ll be fine,” Mom said. “You know Rosie, I’ve gotto mail this grant proposal before November first, so it would be a real help if you’d make Tilley’s costume too.” I sighed and muttered and grumbled and headed down the treehouse ladder to look for costume materials. I wandered the grounds, trying to figure out how to make costumes out of rocks or tree stumps. Eventually I thought of more suitable materials. Tilley could be a scarecrow stuffed with meadow grass. I could be a bag of groceries, made of boxes and jugs and stuff from our household recycling.

I made the costumes on Halloween after school, as darkness fell. A big autumn moon rose through the bare oak branches, up toward the clouds. Tilley and I got into costume and waited for Mom and Dad to get home.

“You know what we should do,” I said as I painted Tilley’s triangle nose. “We should trick-or-treat at Grand Oak Manor, and see what it looks like inside.” The dead plants had made me more curious than ever about Great-great-aunt Lydia. I still hadn’t figured out what kind they were. My parents, as scientists, probably could have identified them, but I’d kept their discovery secret. If Dad was having second thoughts about the safety of the treehouse, I didn’t want to tell him about weird stuff happening. And stabbing dead plants to our tree was definitely weird. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like an act of voodoo. I liked this idea. It was creepily thrilling to think that Great-great-aunt Lydia was a practicing witch. Since she was going to be our enemy, I wanted her to be an interesting one. I wanted her to be wicked. Her voodoo or witchcraft or whatever did not scare me. Nothing had ever happened, up to that point in my life, to make me believe in the occult.

“I’m not trick-or-treating at Grand Oak Manor,” Tilley answered. “It’s scary in there.”

“Oh, come on, Tilley,” I said. “I was just making all that stuff up, about the man-eating fish and the deer being turned into a tree. You know that.”

“I know, but it’s still scary. Cause Great-great-aunt Lydia doesn’t like us.”

“She won’t know who we are. We’ll be in costume. We’ll be disguised.”

“A triangle nose is a bad disguise.”

“So I’ll draw a scarecrow face on a grocery bag and put it over your head. I’ll do one for me too. It’s a great spying opportunity Tilley. Any real spy would jump at the chance.”

“I’m not gonna be a spy anymore. I’m gonna be an astronaut.”

“Well, when you apply to be an astronaut they’re going to test you for bravery. So you may as well start practicing now.”

I stepped through the arched doorway and got two brown paper grocery bags from the recycling box on our porch.

“What are you doing?” Tilley asked.

“Making your scarecrow head.”

“I don’t
want
to trick-or-treat at Great-great-aunt Lydia’s.” Tilley stuck out her lower lip for emphasis.

“If you don’t want to you don’t have to. We’ll just go down to the gap in the fence.”

“Why?”

“You’re not scared to stand outside the fence, are you?”

“No.”

“Well,” I said illogically. “That’s why we’re going.” I made our heads and folded them into my cargo pocket. We strapped on our headlamps and descended through the trap door. It’s a bit dangerous going down a ladder in the dark as a bag of groceries, and I was glad when my feet touched the ground.

“Switch off your headlamp, Tilley,” I said. “In honour of Halloween.” Guided by the amber moon, we crossed the meadow. A raccoon hunched along ahead of us, looking suspiciously over its shoulder before veering off toward the stream. We reached Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence, and felt our way along to the loose board. I swung it to one side. There was a light on in the turret at Grand Oak Manor, and another one down on the main floor.

“Great-great-aunt Lydia must
want
trick-or-treaters, Tilley,” I said. “Otherwise she’d switch off all the lights. That’s what anti-Halloween people do.” As we peered through the fence gap, clouds swallowed up the moon. Suddenly all was darkness, except for the few golden windows of Grand Oak Manor.

“I can’t see,” Tilley said.

“Which is perfect,” I said. “Cause neither can Great-great-aunt Lydia. We’ll get all the way to her front doorstep without her seeing. She’ll think we came from Bellemonde Drive, like the other trick-or-treaters.” I stuck one foot through the gap in the fence.

“You said we were staying outside the fence.”“

You can stay here, if you want. I’m going in.” My grocery costume stuck in the gap until I shifted my contents. I peered through my cut-out eye holes. It was hard to see, but the bushes were one shade darker than the dark beyond. They were just visible enough for us to guess at the path. Holding Tilley’s scarecrow arm, I led us halfblindly toward the front of Grand Oak Manor. When I saw the darker darkness of the deer-shaped tree, I knew we were getting close.

A weird smell wafted up my nostrils. It was sweet, and musky, and smoldering. I’d never smelled anything like it before. As I stood inhaling, I saw a tiny red glow suspended in the darkness beyond the deer tree. The glow flared, then dwindled. My eye holes shifted, and when I got them back the glow was gone. But from the same area came a single dry cough. I leaned down to Tilley’s bag head. “Tilley,” I whispered into the paper of my own bag. “There’s someone there.”

“What?” Tilley’s bag head crinkled. “I can’t hear you.”

I plucked off my own head. “There’s someone
there
,” I whispered again, tugging her stuffed meadow grass arm. We turned and ran, snagging bushes in our hurry. I tried to listen behind myself, but the shifting of my groceries was louder than any pursuing footsteps would have been. We slipped through the fence gap and swung the board shut behind us. I switched on my headlamp so we could run faster, but I didn’t pause again until we reached our oak tree.

“I
told
you it was scary in there,” Tilley accused from the treehouse porch as I climbed through the trap door. I felt bad for bringing Tilley into the Manor garden, because actually, it
had
been scary. Why was Great-great-aunt Lydia lurking out there in the pitch black garden? And what had she been silently thinking, as she listened to us approach? What was the glow? And what was that weird smell? I got my bunch of dead plants out of my bunk cupboard and broke off a handful. “What are you doing?” Tilley asked, as I dropped the dead plants onto the castiron stove. I held a match to them.

“Smell that,” I said, as they smoked, then flamed. “Is that what we just smelled in the garden?”

Tilley sniffed. “Sort of,” she said. “But sort of not.That smell in the garden was creepy. Really creepy.”

“Yeah,” I said. I swept the ashes into the stove, deciding that it was time to restore a wholesome atmosphere. “Want to play checkers ’til it’s time to go out?” I asked. We did, and Tilley brightened right back to normal. Tilley tends to get over things quickly.

During our second game I saw the LED lights of my parents’ bikes flickering along the meadow. “Right down,” I called from the porch. We met them at the shed, and the four of us rode off across the dark meadow. Our bicycle headlights swooped through the night. I tingled with adrenalin. Part of the adrenalin was from the scare in the Manor garden, and part was from suspense about what was going to happen later. Because that night, definitely, without fail, one hundred percent for sure, I was going to tell Bridget about the treehouse. It was my unspoken vow.

We reached the end of the woods and entered the world of sidewalks and houses and streetlights. Pumpkin smiles flickered at us as we rode through the wispy Halloween air. A few streets later we reached Bridget’s house. “This is it,” I said, wheeling my bike into her front yard.

“Goodness,” said Mom.

“Imposing,” said Dad.

Bridget opened the door. She was a mosquito, with coat hanger wings, and sieves for eyes, and a paper towel tube for a proboscis, and a half-inflated red balloon for a drop of blood. Her parents came up behind her and introduced themselves to Mom and Dad. This was a moment of danger. With Paige being so mental about Edwardian houses, there was high risk that she would say something about the mansion. If she did, Mom and Dad would look all confused and blurt out that we lived in a treehouse, because I had never told them about the misunderstanding. I’d known that there was no way to explain it to my parents without triggering a lecture about pretending to be something I wasn’t.

The conversation on Bridget’s doorstep was about, if I’ve got this right, the latest resolutions of the Parents’ Advisory Committee. It was so boring that I wondered how even grown-ups could stand to talk about it, but I was paying close attention, in case the topic suddenly switched to mansions. If it did, I was going to create a distraction by falling down in a pretend faint. I thought that this would be hard to do realistically, and painful, and damaging to my costume, so I was relieved when Mom and Dad kissed me goodbye and rode off with Tilley toward Eveline’s.

Paige briefed us on Halloween safety. “Now what are you going to do?” Paige asked Bridget, in review.

“We’re going to hitchhike to the convenience store and accept drugs from strangers. Honestly, Mom, what do you think we’re going to do? We’re going trick-or-treating. We’ll avoid flames and explosives and we’ll look for cars before we cross the street. We’ll be fine.” And out we went.

It was my most profitable Halloween ever. In my old neighbourhood people gave out teeny chocolate bars; and homemade stuff like popcorn balls that we’d throw away in case of poison or razor blades; and Halloween kisses made of industrial adhesive. In Bridget’s neighbourhood we got great stuff. We were on our way from a house that had just given us each a full-size chocolate bar
and
a bag of chips when Bridget said “Look at that.” She pointed to a winged dragon that was walking toward us.

“That’s like something from special—” I was about to say ‘effects’ when the dragon threw something at my feet. I screamed at the first explosion, and again as the firecracker ricocheted along the walkway. There is something humiliating about screaming, at least when the scream isn’t followed up with an actual 911-type emergency. It all felt familiar. I marched to the dragon and there, inside its jaws, behind its fangs, was Devon Radcliffe. Beside him were three bed-sheet ghosts, all rumpling up with laughter. “You idiot,” I yelled. “That’s dangerous. Didn’t your nanny teach you that.”

“My what?” Devo said.

“Nanny. Nanny. Your nanny.” I spotted her at the curb, in the driver’s seat of the black Range Rover, her face floating among the reflections on the driver’s side window. I pointed. “Her.”

“Her? You mean my driver.”

“Driver? Good spin, Devo. Nice try. But we all know a nanny when we see one.”

“So watcha got here,” Devo said, yanking my pillowcase. “Candied slugs?” As I snatched at it he turned and peered inside. “Mars bars, chips. A bit normal for you, isn’t it?” He dropped the pillowcase on the walkway. I crouched to get the stuff he’d spilled.

“Don’t go to her house,” Devo called to other trick-or-treaters, pointing down at me. “They’re giving out slugs.”

I straightened up. “You are so boring,” I said. “Is that the only joke you can think of?”

“Who’s joking? Where is your house, anyway? I bet it’s straight out of the Adams Family.”

“Yeah right. It’s only on
Bellemonde
Drive,” Bridget said. It made me feel a bit sick to hear her bragging to our archenemy about my mansion. That could only make it harder for her to find out, later that night, that I actually lived in a treehouse.

“Well whoop-de-do,” was what Devo said.

“Come on Bridget,” I said. “Let’s not waste our time talking to this loser.” With as much dignity as a mosquito and a bag of groceries could manage, we marched away. On the opposite sidewalk we saw Kendra (witch), with Twyla (scuba diver), Sienna (right half angel, left half devil), and Nova (pirate queen).They didn’t say hi, and we didn’t either. Bridget and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder consulting our custom-made trick-or-treat map, and went off on our own special route. Our route was ambitious, and the candy massed in our pillowcases like treasure in a chest. After awhile my arms ached with the weight of it. I was cold too, and I didn’t mind when Bridget asked, three quarters of the way through our route, if I would mind going home.

At her place we changed into pyjamas and poured our landslides of candy onto her bedroom carpet. We took turns choosing until it was all divided. Then we each separated our treats into three broad categories: chocolate bars, candies and savoury items. We then sub-divided each category. Chocolate bars were separated into plain milk; plain dark; containing fruit or nut bits; containing creamy or semi-liquid filling; containing chewy centre; containing biscuit or crispy centre; etc. There was a lot of debate about categories, so it took forever. Then when everything had been properly classified we made detailed inventories, to protect our stashes from family members.