Mr. DiSilvio gave Arthur the same fake smile. "I've heard a lot about you from Anthony."
He stuck out his hand, and Arthur shook it. Arthur's face was red, and I guessed he was thinking about the sorts of things Anthony must have told his father.
"Didn't I just see you in the library?" Mr. DiSilvio asked.
Arthur and I looked at each other, not sure what to say. Mr. DiSilvio must have been the man reading the paper. The man we'd barely noticed. The man sitting close enough to hear every word we d said.
Without waiting for us to reply, Mr. DiSilvio slipped his hands into his pockets, jingling his coins and keys. "I always spend an hour or so there in the morning," he went on, "browsing through The Wall Street Journal. It's a pleasant way to start the day."
I slunk a little lower on the bench and wished he would go away. He had a way of making me feel stupid, tongue-tied, itchy with heat and sweat and embarrassment.
"I couldn't help overhearing what you said about going to the Magic Forest tonight." Mr. DiSilvio shook his head. "Despite the rumors, there's no money buried there. Mrs. Donaldson took the secret of its whereabouts to the grave."
The sun was in my eyes, and I had to squint to see him clearly. "Frankly," he went on, "the park's a dangerous place, especially after dark. You could trip over a log, injure yourself, maybe break a leg. The buildings aren't safe, either. The county condemned the whole place. Surely you've noticed the big red signs posted everywhere. Not to mention the 'no trespassing' signs." He frowned. "I'm tempted to call your parents and tell them what you're up to. As the owner, I'd feel responsible if anything happened to you boys."
I found myself agreeing. The park was dangerous. Spooky. Deserted. Overgrown with vines and weeds. A weird and lonely place full of grotesque statues and dilapidated buildings. The haunt of Jarmons and Phelpses and who knew who else. I didn't want to go to there. Not in the daytime. And certainly not in the nighttime.
Mr. DiSilvio smiled at me approvingly. "This is real life, kids," he said, "not a TV thriller."
I glanced at Arthur, expecting him to shoot off his big mouth. Eyes slitted against the sun, he stared up at Mr. DiSilvio. To my surprise, he nodded his head. "We were just kidding around," he said. "I'd be scared to go out there after dark. Even in the daytime it's way too creepy."
Turning to me, he added, "Let's just forget the whole thing, Logan. Stay home, watch videos at my house or something. I just rented a cool Japanese horror movie."
"That's a great idea," I said, limp with relief. Saved—I was saved. Instead of meeting some horrible end in the Magic Forest, I'd have a chance to grow up after all.
"Now you're making sense," Mr. DiSilvio said. Glancing at his watch, he added, "Nice to see you, boys. Take care."
As he walked away, I sighed happily. "I didn't think you'd give in like that. I expected you to—"
Arthur stared at me, obviously puzzled. "What makes you think I gave in?"
"Well ... you said we'd stay home, didn't you? And watch videos?"
"Logan, did you take a stupid pill instead of a vitamin this morning?"
My heart dropped with a cold thud from my chest to my stomach. "You mean we're still going?"
"How else can we get the briefcase and clear Mrs. Donaldson's name?" he looked at me closely. "Are you wimping out on me?"
I shrugged. "Of course not. It's just that—"
"It's just that you're scared." Arthur tossed the soda can into a trash basket and grabbed his bike. "I only said that to keep him from calling your mother. I hope it worked."
I pedaled after Arthur silently. I should have known what he was up to.
We split up at the corner so my mother wouldn't see us together. Before he rode away, Arthur said, "There's something about DiSilvio, something fake and sly and, and..." His voice trailed off. For once he couldn't find the right word.
But I knew exactly what he meant.
18
After a long afternoon of reading and watching TV, I went to bed around nine, my usual time. I had to wait until dark—full dark—to risk sneaking out. When I thought it was safe, I slid the screen up and climbed out my window onto the front porch roof. Quietly, very quietly, I crept to the edge and climbed down the pine tree beside the house. I felt like a kid in a book running away from home.
I peeked through the living room window. Mom and Dad sat side by side on the couch watching an old movie. Suddenly, I felt this huge tide of sentimentality rush over me. There they were, totally unaware that their one and only child was about to risk his life on a dangerous mission. What if I never returned? Picturing their sorrow almost made me cry. Their son, their little boy—lost forever in a jungle of kudzu.
Just as I was about to climb back up the tree, I heard a low whistle from Arthur's yard. It was too late to back out. I had to go.
Quietly, I wheeled my bike out of the garage. With Bear trotting beside us, Arthur and I rode away into the night. Automobile headlights shone in our faces, almost blinding us. A man yelled at us for riding without lights. I guess it didn't help that we were both wearing dark clothes.
It took us longer than we'd thought to get to Wal-Mart. When we finally arrived, a little after eleven, the huge neon sign was out and the parking lot was dark and spooky in the moonlight.
"That's Violet's old Ford." Arthur pedaled toward the only car in the lot. "Sorry we're late," he called out.
No one answered. We looked inside. The car was empty.
"Where is she?" I asked.
We went to the store and peered through the glass doors. A dim security light lit the interior. It was obvious everyone had left.
Arthur frowned. "Something's wrong. I feel it in my bones."
I felt it, too, a sort of cold dread rising from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. "What should we do?"
Before Arthur could come up with an answer, a shadowy figure stepped out from behind a row of Wal-Mart Dumpsters. I didn't know who it was, nor was I about to hang around and find out.
With adrenaline pumping through me, I started pedaling toward the highway and home. Arthur sped past me. But not Bear. Tail wagging, the dog ran toward the Dumpsters.
"Come back here!" somebody yelled at us.
"It's Danny." Arthur braked to a screeching stop, and I swerved to miss hitting him.
The two of us watched as Danny pedaled toward us on his old bike. "What are you doing here?" he hollered.
"What are you doing here?" Arthur asked.
Danny pulled up beside us. "Looking for my mother," he said. Even though he kept his head down, I could see bruises on his face. One eye was swollen shut.
"What happened to you?" Arthur asked.
Danny shrugged. "None of your business, weirdo."
"Your mother's not here," I said in an effort to change the subject.
Danny looked at me scornfully. "Duh."
"We were supposed to meet her after she got off work," I went on.
"My dad beat you to it," Danny muttered.
"She's with Silas?" Arthur asked.
Danny gripped his bike's handlebars so tightly, his knuckles turned white. "Looks like it."
"Why would she go anywhere with him? She hates Silas."
"He has a way of making you do what he says." Apparently unaware of what he was doing, Danny touched his eye.
Arthur winced. "But you and your dad—"
"Don't say anything else about him. He don't deserve to be a dad or a husband or anything else. I wish they'd kept him in jail. I wish I never had to see him again in my whole life!" With that, Danny bent over Bear and rubbed his face in the dog's fur. "Good old Bear," he whispered. "Best old dog in the world."
Arthur and I glanced at each other. Neither of us knew what to say or what to do. And we were scared. Scared for Violet, mainly, but also for Danny, who seemed to be crying, even though he couldn't be, not really. But still...
Finally, Arthur said, "He won't hurt Violet, will he?"
"What do you think?" The o
ld Danny was back in control, sneer and all.
"Where did he take her?" Arthur asked.
"The Magic Forest, idiot. Where else? He thinks she knows where that money is." Danny frowned at his mother's empty car. "I came out here to warn her, but he got her first."
He sped off on his bike. When he saw us following him, he yelled, "Get out of here. Go home. You'll just mess everything up!"
But nothing could stop Arthur. Ignoring Danny, he headed down the highway right behind him. I rode after them, and Bear ran with me.
From the top of the hill, we stared down at the Magic Forest's parking lot. Except for a line of bulldozers waiting to roar into action the next day, it was empty.
Danny scowled at Arthur and me. "I told you not to come with me," he said.
Arthur shrugged. "Logan and I were supposed to meet your mother and drive out here with her."
"My mother wouldn't go anywhere with you jerks."
"Your mother's a nice person—" I began.
"A lot nicer than you," Arthur interrupted. Danny raised his fist, and Arthur stepped back. "Anyway," he went on, "we're here, and we're not leaving until we find Violet."
Pushing off with one foot, Danny sped down the hill. "If you get in trouble, don't expect no help from me," he yelled over his shoulder.
"Charming," Arthur muttered.
With Bear behind us, we caught up with Danny at the bottom of the hill. Avoiding the main gate, we followed the fence into the woods, stowed our bikes, and crawled through a hole in the fence.
If the Magic Forest was scary in the daylight, it was truly terrifying in the dark. All around us kudzu lifted and fell in the breeze, sighing as if it were a living, breathing creature, a shape changer. Now it was a monster, now an ogre, now a long-armed witch, always menacing, never benign, never still. Shadows shifted, darkened, lightened, grew, shrank. Leaves murmured like ghosts whispering to each other of death and decay.
With the help of a flashlight, Arthur studied the map. Bear cocked his head to the side and watched us, tail wagging, tongue lolling, eager to do whatever it was we were going to do.
Shoving me aside, Danny peered over Arthur's shoulder. "You think you know where it's at?" he asked.
Arthur nodded. "The first thing we need to do is find the right path. I figure it's the one that goes past the Old Woman's Shoe." He studied the map and looked around. "It should be over there somewhere, not far from Willie the Whale."
Thanks to a full moon and a cloudless sky, we could see almost as well as if it were daytime. Which meant, of course, that we could also be seen. Our shadows were dark and sharp on the pavement. We didn't say much for fear of being heard. Nor did we linger. In fact, we walked so fast, we were almost jogging, ever alert to danger, ever scanning the kudzu for the landmarks on the map.
Oddly, it wasn't the possibility of meeting Silas that frightened me as much as the unknown things that might be hiding in the kudzu—the ones all kids fear. Every monster who'd ever lain in wait under my bed or in my closet had found its way to the Magic Forest—the nightmare forest. Each time the breeze lifted the vines, I expected them to reach out and grab us, plants come to life like the apple trees in The Wizard of Oz.
"Shouldn't we have come to the shoe by now?" I whispered.
We walked a little slower, fearing we d passed it. An owl hooted off to the right somewhere, and the kudzu rustled menacingly, rising up around us like phantoms of the night. I felt goose-bumpy. Anxious. Even Bear was tense.
"There it is." Arthur pointed to what appeared to be the toe of a giant s boot poking out of the kudzu, its yellow paint cracked and peeling. "Now for Mother Hubbard's Cupboard."
"I hope you know where you're going," Danny muttered. "What if he hurts my mother? What if..." He looked around at the kudzu raising and lowering its scraggly arms in a breeze. "Man, I hate this place."
We'd come to another fork in the path. Consulting his map, Arthur pointed to the right. "This way."
I looked at the map. "Are you sure?
"Positive." Arthur hurried ahead of me, his tennis shoes slapping the pavement.
"You'd better be right," Danny said in a sort of threatening way.
I followed Arthur silently, but Bear loped ahead, glancing back now and then to make sure we were still there. The moon glided along beside us, lighting the path but casting everything else into darkness.
After ten or fifteen long minutes, I spotted decaying turrets poking up from the weeds and vines. If I remembered the map right, Cinderella's Castle was in the middle of the park—and nowhere near Mother Hubbard's Cupboard.
I hurried after Arthur. "This isn't right. The castle's straight ahead. We took a wrong turn."
"I knew I shouldn't listen to a loser like you," Danny said.
We ran back the way we d come. At one point, I tripped on a vine and fell on the very knee I'd scraped in my bike accident. With fresh blood running down my leg, I limped after Arthur, who hadn't even noticed I'd fallen. It occurred to me he was the most self-absorbed person I'd ever known.
"Here s the path," Arthur called. "Hurry up. Are you walking in your sleep or something?"
I didn't waste energy explaining I was injured—no point in giving Danny something to jeer at. Instead, I kept my eyes out for the cupboard. I spotted it before Arthur or Danny, a dilapidated refreshment stand, listing to one side but still sporting a faded sign for frozen custard.
We stopped to study the map again. "Next we look for the Crooked Man's House," Arthur said. "It should be this way."
"Should be?" Danny asked. "Better be."
We set off down yet another winding path, overgrown with weeds and underbrush and kudzu. As usual, Bear trotted ahead, sniffing and turning his head from side to side, as if he were looking, too.
After several minutes, we found what seemed to be the remains of the Crooked Man s House, now a pile of broken beams and shingles. Eagerly, we passed it by, scanning the kudzu for the Dish and the Spoon, our next landmark.
Just around a bend, we spotted the tall wooden Spoon sticking up above the vines, its peeling face ghastly in the moonlight. There was no sign of the Dish, but a headless fiberglass cow lay on the path beside a plastic moon split into two pieces.
"The gingerbread men should be straight ahead," Arthur said.
Deeper in the park than I'd gone before, I stumbled through the weeds behind Arthur and Danny. The darkness seemed darker here, the kudzu taller and thicker. All around us, the breeze made a melancholy sound, and the kudzu leaves lifted and fell.
My heart sped up, and I jumped at every sound—an insect's chirp, a bird's flapping wings, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth.
Seemingly unfazed, Arthur hummed and whistled in a tuneless, irritating way and played with the flashlight. He held it under his chin and shone the light upward, making his face into a hideous mask. He swept the beam across bushes and vines and trees.
"Quit shining that thing all over the place," Danny finally said. "You want to tell everybody where we're at?"
Arthur didn't say anything, but he turned the flashlight off and even stopped humming.
Ahead of us, Bear looked back and wagged his tail as if he were encouraging us to follow him. He led us off the path and through a dense thicket of brambles, honeysuckle, and kudzu, tangled into an almost impenetrable barrier.
After stopping a few times to sniff and once to lift his leg, Bear led us to the ruins of the Witch's Hut, almost completely hidden in a jungle of kudzu.
Danny actually grinned. "He's one smart dog, ain't he?"
He started toward the hut, but Arthur grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him. For a second, I thought Danny was going to punch him, but all he said was, "Don't you ever touch me again."
"I just want to make sure nobody's there," Arthur said.
"I was going to do that." Danny said it as if Arthur had tried to stop him from checking out the hut.
The three of us crouched in the kudzu with Bear and surveyed the h
ut. Despite the broken windows, sagging roof, and rotten boards, the place was still standing. Maybe the tree beside it had protected it from the weather and the worst of the kudzu.
Just as we were about to approach the dark doorway, I grabbed Arthur's arm and pulled him down. My heart was pounding so hard I could hardly speak. "Look," I squeaked, "by the door. A woman."
Arthur tensed for a second and then laughed. "It's the witch—the one I used to think was a real live crazy woman." He stood up, his glasses shining in the moonlight. "I can't believe she's still there."
The witch stood just inside the door, stinking of dampness and decay. Her black dress had rotted into faded tatters, and her green papier-mache face was crazed with cracks and splotched with mildew. Her hair fell in moth-eaten strings. The arms she'd once waved hung limply by her side. In her current condition, she looked like a corpse propped up to scare visitors away.
"You were scared of that old thing?" Danny laughed. "You really are a wimp."
"I'm not scared of it now," Arthur said. Edging past the witch, he shone his flashlight into the darkness. I glimpsed merry-go-round animals, a fake wishing well, and several teacups the size of small Jacuzzis. Stuffing and springs popped out from rips in the teacups vinyl upholstery.
"Those are the seats from Alice's Tea Party ride," Arthur told me. "The cups spun round and round and up and down—more nauseating than scary." He started to laugh. "I rode it once after lunch and barfed it all—hot dogs, cotton candy, French fries, frozen custard. I must've splattered everyone in a twenty-foot radius. You should've been there, Logan. It was hilarious."
Danny shook his head. "Too bad they didn't have YouTube then. Think of all the hits you would've got. Everybody loves barfing kids."
"We didn't come here to remember the good old days," I said. "Let's find the evidence before Silas shows up."
Paying no attention to me or Danny, Arthur swept his light around the room and stopped on a bunch of larger-than-life wooden figures leaning against a wall—Humpty-Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, the Knave of Hearts, Little Bo Peep and her sheep.