Thief of Always (4 page)

      As he reached the porch, the first clouds he'd seen all afternoon crept over the sun, and their shadow made the House, which had wavered in the heat of the afternoon like a mirage, suddenly loom, dark and solid.

      "You're real," he said, as he stood panting on the porch. "You are, aren't you?"

      He started to laugh at the foolishness of talking to a House, but the smile went from his face as a voice, so soft he was barely certain he heard it, said:

      "What do you think, child?"

      He looked for the speaker, but there was nobody at the threshold, nor out on the porch, nor on the steps behind him.

      "Who said that?" he demanded.

      There was no answer, which he was glad of. It hadn't been a voice at all, he told himself. It had been a creak of the boards underfoot, or the rustling of dry leaves in the grass. But he stepped into the House with his heart beating a little faster, reminding himself as he went that questions weren't welcome here.

      What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether this was a real place or a dream? It felt real, and that was all that mattered.

      Satisfied with this, he raced through the House into the kitchen where Mrs. Griffin was weighing the table down with treats.

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      VI

Seen and Unseen

      "Well," said Wendell as they ate, "what are you going to be tonight?"

      "I don't know," Harvey said. "What are you going to be?"

      "A hangman," he said, with a spaghetti grin. "I've been learning how to tie nooses. Now all I've got to do is find someone to hang." He eyed Mrs. Griffin. "It's quick," he said. "You just drop 'em and-snap!-their necks break!"

      "That's horrible!" Mrs. Griffin said. "Why do boys always love talking about ghosts and murders and hangings?"

      "Because it's exciting," Wendell said.

      "You're monsters," she replied, with a hint of a smile. "That's what you are. Monsters."

      "Harvey is," Wendell said. "I've seen him filing down his teeth."

      "Is it a full moon?" Harvey said, smearing ketchup around his mouth and putting on a twitch. "I hope so. I need blood...fresh blood."

      "Good," said Wendell. "You can be a vampire. I'll hang'em and you can suck their blood."

      "Horrible," Mrs. Griffin said again, "just horrible."

      Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out the landing window, there-hanging between the bare branches of the trees-was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man's smile.

      "Look at it!" Harvey said. "I can see every crater. It's perfect."

      "Oh that's just the start," Wendell promised, and led Harvey to a large, musty room which had been filled with clothes of every description. Some were hung on hooks and coat hangers. Some were in baskets, like actors' costumes. Still more were heaped at the far end of the room on the dusty floor. And, half-hidden until Wendell cleared the way, was a sight that made Harvey gasp: a wall covered from floor to ceiling with masks.

      "Where did they all come from?" Harvey said as he gaped at this spectacle.

      "Mr. Hood collects them," Wendell explained. "And the clothes are just stuff that kids who visited here left behind."

      Harvey wasn't interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they'd been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.

      "Take your pick" said Wendell. "There's bound to be a vampire somewhere. Whatever I come in here wanting to find, I find it sooner or later."

      Harvey decided to leave the pleasure of choosing a mask until last, and concentrated instead on digging up something suitably batlike to wear. As he worked through the piles of clothes he found himself wondering about the children who'd left them here. Though he'd always hated history lessons, he knew some of the jackets and shoes and shirts and belts had been out of fashion for many, many years. Where were their owners now? Dead, he presumed, or so old it made no difference.

      The thought of these garments belonging to dead folk brought a little shudder to his spine, which was only right. This was Halloween, after all, and what was Halloween without a few chills?

      After a few minutes of searching he found along black coat with a collar he could turn up, which Wendell pronounced very vampiric. Well satisfied with his choice, he went back to the wall of faces, and his eyes almost immediately alighted upon a mask he hadn't previously seen, with the pallor and deep sockets of a soul just risen from the tomb. He took it down and put it on. It fitted perfectly.

      "What do I look like?" Harvey asked, turning to face Wendell, who had found an executioner's mask which fitted him just as well.

      "Ugly as sin."

      "Good"

      There was a flickering family of pumpkin heads lined up on the porch when they stepped outside, and the misty air smelled of wood smoke.

      "Where do we go trick-or-treating?" Harvey wanted to know. "Out in the street?"

      "No," said Wendell, "it's not Halloween out in the real world, remember? We're going to go around to the back of the House."

      "That's not very far," Harvey remarked, disappointed.

      "It is at this time of night," Wendell said creepily. "This House is full of surprises. You'll see."

      Harvey looked up at the House through the tiny eyeholes of his mask. It loomed as large as a thunderhead, its weathervane sharp enough to stab the stars.

      "Come on," said Wendell, "we've got a long trip ahead."

      A long trip? Harvey thought; how could it be a long trip from the front of the House to the back? But once again Wendell was right: The House was full of surprises. The trip which would have been a two-minute walk in the bright afternoon-soon became a trek that had Harvey wishing he'd brought a flashlight and a map. The leaves rustled underfoot as though snakes were swarming through them; the trees that had shaded them by day now looked frightful in their nakedness, gaunt and hungry.

      "Why am I doing this?" he asked himself as he followed Wendell through the darkness. "I'm cold, and I'm uncomfortable." (He might have added frightened to the list, but he left that thought unsaid.)

      As he was about to suggest they turn back, Wendell pointed up and hissed: "Look!"

      Harvey looked. Directly overhead, a form was moving silently against the sky, as if it had just launched itself from the eaves of the House. The moon had slunk away behind the roof, and shed no light upon this night-flyer, so Harvey could only guess at its shape from the stars it blotted out as it sailed. Its wings were wide, but ragged-too ragged to bear it up, he thought. Instead it seemed to claw at the darkness as it went, as though it were crawling on the very air itself.

      A glimpse was all Harvey had. Then it was gone.

      "What teas that?" he whispered.

      He got no answer. In the moments he'd taken staring up at the sky, Wendell had disappeared.

      "Wendell? " Harvey whispered. "Where are you?"

      There was still no reply. Just the slithering in the leaves, and the moan of hungry branches.

      "I know what you're doing," Harvey said, louder this time. "And you won't scare me that easy. Hear me?"

      This time there was a reply of sorts. Not words, but a creaking sound from somewhere in the trees.

      He's climbing up into the tree house, Harvey thought, and determined to catch Wendell and scare him back, he followed the sound.

      Despite the nakedness of the branches, their mesh kept all but a glimmer of starlight from falling on the groves. He slipped his mask down around his neck so as to see a little better, but even then he was nearly blind, and had to listen out for the sound of Wendell's ascent to guide him. He could still hear the creaks plainly enough, and stumbled in their direction, his arms outstretched to grasp the ladder when he reached it.

      Now the sound was so loud he was certain he must be standing beneath the tree. He looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the trickster, but as he did so something brushed his face. He snatched at it, but it was gone, at least for the moment. Then it came again, brushing his brow from the other side. He snatched at it a second time, then, as it touched him again, caught hold of it.

      "Got you!" he cried.

      His yell of triumph was followed by a rush of air, and the sound of something crashing to the ground at his side. He jumped, but refused to let go of whatever he was holding.

      "Wendell?" he called.

      By way of a reply a flame flared in the darkness behind him, and a firework erupted into a shower of green sparks, its light making a gangrenous cavern of the grove.

      By its flickering light he saw what he held, and seeing, let out a panicked yammering that had the crows rising from their roosts overhead.

      It was not a ladder he'd heard creaking, it was a rope. No, not even a rope: a noose. And in his hand, the leg of the man hanging from the noose. He let go of it and stumbled backward, barely suppressing a second shout as his eyes rose to meet the dead man's stare. To judge by his expression, he had died horribly. His tongue lolled from his foamy lips, his veins were so swollen with blood his head looked like a pumpkin.

      Either that, or it was a pumpkin.

      A fresh fountain of sparks now burst from the firework, and Harvey saw the truth of the matter. The limb he'd held was a stuffed trouser leg; the body a coat spilling bundles of clothes; that head a mask on a pumpkin, with cream for spittle and eggs for eyes.

      "Wendell!" he yelled, turning his back on this scene of execution.

      Wendell was standing on the far side of the firework, his ear-to-ear grin lit by its spitting sparks. He looked like a little demon, fresh from the inferno. At his side was the ladder that had come crashing down to get the drama underway.

      "I warned ya!" Wendell said, holding up his mask. "I said I was going to be a hangman tonight!"

      "I'll get you back for his!" Harvey said, his heart still beating too fast for him to see the funny side of this. "I swear...I'll get you back!"

      "You can try!" Wendell crowed. The firework was beginning to fizzle out; the shadows around them beginning to deepen again. "Had enough of Halloween for tonight?" he asked.

      Harvey didn't much like admitting defeat, but he nodded grimly, swearing to himself that when he finally got his revenge, it would be choice.

      "Smile," Wendell said, as the fountain of sparks dwindled. "We're in the Holiday House."

      The light had almost gone, and even though Harvey was still enraged at Wendell (and at himself, for being such a sucker), he couldn't let it die away without making peace.

      "All right," he said, allowing himself a tiny smile. "There'll be other nights."

      "Always," said Wendell. The reply pleased him. "That's what this place is, " he said, as the light went out. "It's the House of Always."

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      VII

A Present From the Pass

      There was a Thanksgiving feast awaiting them when they got back into the House.

      "You look as though you've been in the wars," Mrs. Griffin remarked when she set eyes on Harvey. "Has Wendell been up to his tricks?"

      Harvey admitted that he'd fallen for all of them, but there was one that impressed him in particular.

      "What was that?" said Wendell with a smug grin. "The falling ladder? That was a clever little touch, wasn't it?"

      "No, not the ladder," said Harvey.

      "What then?"

      "The thing in the sky."

      "Oh that..."

      "What was it? A kite?"

      "That wasn't my doing," Wendell replied.

      "What was it then?"

      "I don't know," Wendell said, his smile disappearing. "Better not to ask, eh?"

      "But I want to know," Harvey insisted, turning to Mrs. Griffin. "It had wings, and I think it flew off the roof."

      "Then it was a bat," Mrs. Griffin said.

      "No, this was a hundred times bigger than a bat." He spread his arms. "Great, dark wings."

      Mrs. Griffin frowned as Harvey spoke. "You imagined it," she said.

      "I did not," Harvey protested.

       "Why don't you just sit down and eat?" Mrs. Griffin replied. "If it wasn't a bat then it wasn't anything at all."

      "But Wendell saw it too. Didn't you Wendell?"

      He looked around at the other boy, who was digging into a steaming plate of turkey and cranberry sauce.

      "Who cares?" Wendell said, chewing as he spoke.

      "Just tell her you saw it."

      Wendell shrugged. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. It's Halloween night. There's supposed to be bogeymen out there."

      "But not real ones," said Harvey. "A trick's one thing. But if that beast was real..."

      As he spoke he realized he was breaking the rule he'd made on the porch: Whether the winged creature was real or not didn't matter. This was a place of illusions. Wouldn't he be happier here if he just stopped questioning what was real and what wasn't?

      "Sit down and eat," Mrs. Griffin said again.

      Harvey shook his head. His appetite had disappeared. He was angry, though he wasn't quite sure at whom. Maybe at Wendell, for his shrugs; or at Mrs. Griffin, for not believing him; or at himself, for being afraid of illusions. Maybe all three.

      "I'm going up to my room to change," he said, and left the kitchen.